Archive for December, 2014

Neural Networks Demystified Part 1: Data and Architecture – YouTube

Tuesday, December 30th, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxe2T-V8XRs

Programming tools: Adventures with R : Nature News & Comment

Tuesday, December 30th, 2014

http://www.nature.com/news/programming-tools-adventures-with-r-1.16609

Charles Yerkes: Conquistador of Metroland | The Economist

Monday, December 29th, 2014

http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636509-how-vision-and-cunning-unknown-american-changed-shape?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/conquistadorofmetroland

Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics | Science | Smithsonian

Monday, December 29th, 2014

www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/string-theory-about-unravel-180953637

Everything We Know About the Missing AirAsia Plane | WIRED

Monday, December 29th, 2014

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/airasia-qz8501/?mbid=social_twitter

Amazon.com: PiKo-1 Electronic Peak Flow Meter and FEV1 Meter: Health & Personal Care

Sunday, December 28th, 2014

On Amazon but reviews indicate that computer interface is a bit problematic

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002W2A1I

Spiro PD

Sunday, December 28th, 2014

Seems to have a complex computer interface; not available from Amazon

http://spiropd.com/

My Spiroo Can Tell Your Doctor When You’re Out Of Breath | TechCrunch

Sunday, December 28th, 2014

works with iphone but doesn’t appear to available as of Dec-2014

http://www.myspiroo.com/
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/my-spiroo-can-tell-your-doctor-when-youre-out-of-breath/

Amazon.com: Microlife PF 100 Peak Flow Meter for Spirometry with FEV1: Health & Personal Care

Sunday, December 28th, 2014

http://www.amazon.com/Microlife-PF-100-Meter-Spirometry/dp/B000BH8TUA

Works but has clunky computer interface

Machine Intelligence Cracks Genetic Controls | Quanta Magazine

Sunday, December 28th, 2014

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141218-machine-intelligence-cracks-genetic-controls/

QT:{{”

The splicing code is just one part of the noncoding genome, the area that does not produce proteins. But it’s a very important one. Approximately 90 percent of genes undergo alternative splicing, and scientists estimate that variations in the splicing code make up anywhere between 10 and 50 percent of all disease-linked mutations. “When you have mutations in the regulatory code, things can go very wrong,” Frey said.

“People have historically focused on mutations in the protein-coding regions, to some degree because they have a much better handle on what these mutations do,” said Mark Gerstein, a bioinformatician at Yale University, who was not involved in the study. “As we gain a better understanding of [the DNA sequences] outside of the protein-coding regions, we’ll get a better sense of how important they are in terms of disease.”

Scientists have made some headway into understanding how the cell chooses a particular protein configuration, but much of the code that governs this process has remained an enigma. Frey’s team was able to decipher some of these regulatory regions in a paper published in 2010, identifying a rough code within the mouse genome that regulates splicing. Over the past four years, the quality of genetics data — particularly human data — has improved dramatically, and
machine-learning techniques have become much more sophisticated, enabling Frey and his collaborators to predict how splicing is affected by specific mutations at many sites across the human genome. “Genome-wide data sets are finally able to enable predictions like this,” said Manolis Kellis, a computational biologist at MIT who was not involved in the study.

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