This is an update of my previous post. The current project I am working on needs to access to a folder on a remote server. It seems like a simple task, but there is one issue: I am a Mac user. Mounting a server folder is very useful if you have a lot of data to share with your colleagues. It is insane to copy it to your hard drive every time that it changes or manage large amounts of data with version control since it will slow down the repository. The best solution we found in the lab is using SSH and mounting folders using sshfs. It works really well in Linux and we don’t want to use a different system for other operating systems.
Persuading doctors to quickly adopt new treatments
By Marla Paul CHICAGO —- Doctors are more likely to try a new therapy when they are persuaded to do so by an influential colleague, reports a new Northwestern University study whose findings on adopting innovations also have relevance for business, education and research. The authors have used the new ...
Daniel Stouffer receives University of Canterbury’s Early and Emerging Career Researcher Award
Two University of Canterbury (UC) academics have been named the inaugural recipients of the University of Canterbury ’s Early and Emerging Career Researcher Award. Dr Brendon Bradley (Civil and Natural Resources Engineering) and Dr. Daniel Stouffer (Biological Sciences), an alumnus of the Amaral Lab, received the award for their outstanding ...
Big data study provides first insights into behavior of users of peer-to-peer file sharing
OCT 8, 2014 // Megan Fellman Peer-to-peer file sharing of movies, television shows, music, books and other files over the Internet has grown rapidly worldwide as an alternative approach for people to get the digital content they want — often illicitly. But, unlike the users of Amazon, Netflix and other ...
Filippo Radicchi receives Complex Systems Society's Junior Scientific award
Professor Radicchi (Indiana University), a lab alumnus, is part of the new generation of scientists that are making significant contributions to the study of complex systems and networks. His many important contributions span from theoretical studies of structural and dynamical properties of networks, to analyses of large-scale empirical data about ...
Mounting a remote folder on OS X over SSH
The current project I am working on needs to access to a folder on a remote server. It seems to be a simple task, but there is one issue: I am a Mac user. Mounting a server folder is very useful if you have a lot of data to share with your colleagues. It is insane to copy it to your hard drive every time it changes or manage large amounts of data with version control since it will slow down the repository. The best solution we found in the lab is using SSH and mounting folders using sshfs. It works really well in Linux and we don’t want to use a different system for other operating systems.
New publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution
Congratulations to current graduate student Adam Hockenberry and recent PhD Irmak Sirer for their recent publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution! The genetic code uses 64 three letter words (codons) to code for a mere 20 amino acids, resulting in multiple ways to code the same protein chain. Usage of ...
Troubleshooting the Pyenv/Homebrew Combination
When first starting to use pyenve with homebrew, there are a couple things you can do to horribly mess things up. Or you could avoid doing them, if you’d prefer to have things functional. I tried both approaches.
Irmak Sirer awarded Ph.D.
Being fashionably late, Irmak Sirer, widely known as the sharpest dresser in the Amaral lab, successfully defended his doctoral thesis.
Chuyue Yang presents at Undergraduate Research & Arts Exposition
Sophomore Chuyue Yang was amongst a small number of undergraduate students selected to give an oral presentation at the Northwestern Undergraduate Research & Arts Exposition on June 2nd 2014. During her 2 years of research in the lab so far, she has investigated the usage of specific genetic motifs in ...
Being a new graduate student at Northwestern University
Unsurprisingly, questions about your life never end and starting graduate school made me think of some of the questions.
Using pyenv
Pyenv is a simple, yet powerful, tool that manages different python versions all from within a user’s home directory.
Want to do complex systems research?
Of course you do! The Amaral lab currently has several openings for Postdoctoral Fellows that we are looking to fill immediately. The main website page succinctly describes our main research areas (complex systems, systems biology, and science of science) and we currently have a number of exciting projects that focus ...
I wish I knew then what I know now (reproducible methods are awesome!)
I started working in computational research with no meaningful experience. I spent two years in high school “programming” in C++ on a Windows 98 machine with an IDE that made the programs run (sometimes) through what must have been magic. The past five years have been a constant refinement of ...
Pitfalls of giving talks at seminars and conferences Part I
Bad talks are inflicted upon us all too often at seminars and conferences. You get up early in the morning, feel an excitement about the day’s talks, walk into the room upbeat, and are frustrated by an unprepared, incoherent, and boring lecture. One essential part of research that is often ...
Speed up your Python & Numpy codes
If you run short simulations, you may tell yourself that you don’t need faster code because it only takes a few of seconds or up to a couple of minutes and you don’t want to “waste” your time learning non interesting coding tricks. However, my experience tells me than good programming habits are easier to learn than bad ones, they decrease the probability of having bugs in your code, and you’ll have a clearer and better organized result.
Historians have a tough job, give them a little slack
Not every discipline has the luxury of being able to bootstrap random iterations to test the significance of their argument
Fake mathematics is amazing
How the apparently preposterous act of ignoring infinite values can sometimes lead to wondrous results.
Annoying things about conferences (Part II)
There is something about big faceless crowds that always feels intimidating, hostile, even if we know it is not real, and make us act accordingly. Scientist and fourth-graders alike.