I study systems biology using the fruit fly as my model organism. I recently attended my first “fly meeting,” a conference of others who study Drosophila melanogaster. Here are thoughts on studying the fly in general, and my impressions of that event in particular. —Nicolas Pelaez
The Amaral Lab welcomes Dr. Andrea Lancichinetti
Dr. Andrea Lancichinetti received his Ph.D. in Physics from Politecnico di Torino in Turin (Italy) in 2012. He joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow. His research interests are focused on clustering algorithms in networks, null models for testing the significant of modules and benchmarking.
A short traveler's guide to moving abroad
What is it about changing to a new environment that frightens but excites us at the same time? Is it the sense of discovery of a new place? The fear of going into the unknown? Of leaving and completely losing sight of your comfort zone?
Minority Report in real life: Predicting crime using data instead of psychics
The weather was quite warm on the evening of March 22. It had been a particularly pleasant walk from the train station to the bar in Lakeview—a pretty decent neighborhood in Chicago. As I was sipping my gin and tonic, I was listening to Brett Goldstein, the Chief Data Officer ...
Who should hold the reins?
Recently I went to my first meetup (just a group activity amongst strangers that is facilitated through the meetup website) that focused on Data Science in Chicago and was organized by Mike Stringer from Datascope Analytics. At this meeting Brett Goldstein, the Chief Data Officer of Chicago, was presenting and I have to say it was a wonderful talk and experience.
SOPA: A war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me… An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of CENSORED comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! – Aragorn, in The L*** of the R****: The R***** of the K***
On Writing Well
Good writing is exceedingly difficult, and we in the science and engineering disciplines do not do enough to teach our students how to write. Yet for me, two of the most important skills that I lacked as a newly minted Bachelor of Science can be taught in Engineering curriculum instead of the English classrom. — David Mertens
Scientific publishing in an open access world
This week, congress officially shelved the 'Research Works Act’. This bill was proposed late last year and its main point was banning federal agencies from mandating that federally funded research be made publicly available. This bill stands in direct opposition to the recent trend of open access publications and prior ...
Simple or simplistic?
I very much appreciate the effort, but I just don’t agree with a model for human interactions based on the maximization of a utility function, nor with the restriction of human responses to a very limited set of discrete, fixed-no-matter-what strategies.
Marked to Model
I recently watched Moneyball, a movie that is based on the true story of the Oakland Athletics and how they used statistical analysis and modeling (sabermetrics) to put together a team of “misfits” that eventually won a record 20 consecutive games. Sabermetricians take the rich statistical information that is kept ...
The Wired Generation
At this present moment, as I am writing this, I am among the most connected human beings in all of history. If you wanted to, you could send me a Facebook message, email me, send me a Gchat message (all of which I get both on my laptop and my ...
The Egocentrism's Dilemma
As children, we all go through a stage during which we claim whatever interesting object we see as “Mine!” We eventually outgrow this extreme egocentrism, more or less. Such evolution takes many iterative cycles of fitting our current mental model to the new information from experience. As part of our ...
Behind the screen
Blink is a wonderful book. So wonderful that I tend to think that every good story I ever read about bias, decision making and a number of other topics must have been in there. I just spent several hours trying to find one of those stories. Unfortunately, I couldn’t – ...
The Probability of a Psychic Octopus
You remember Paul, he was world-renown as the most successful prognosticator of the World Cup. He successfully predicted the results of all of Germany’s games, and he correctly picked Spain as the winner in the final. Paul was the sensation of the year, with hundreds of articles written and TV reports made acclaiming his amazing soccer intuition. Also, he was an octopus.
Review of Packing for Mars
Life in space sounds utterly unappealing in Mary Roach’s new book, Packing for Mars. The book’s anecdotes primarily revolve around the troubles of vomit, body odor, and poop in a zero gravity environment. The discomforts of a space station it seems, far outweigh the small joys of floating. Roach’s focus ...
Nicolás Peláez awarded HHMI International Student Research Fellowship
Nicolás Peláez, a Colombian born graduate student jointly advised by Luis Amaral and Rich Carthew, was one of 48 international students working at U.S. institutions awarded the prestigious HHMI International Student Research Fellowship. Sean B. Carroll, HHMI’s vice-president for science education, noted that the “applicant pool was spectacular” and that ...
Diffusion in complex system: is the anomalous usual?
A brief history of anomalous diffusion as it relates to complex systems. — Haroldo Ribeiro
Movie science, science fantasies and real science for Ph.D. students
I love movies. Especially when they show cool scientists doing crazy science. It doesn’t matter if it would take 500 million times the energy of all nuclear weapons on Earth combined to stop the rotation of the Earth’s core. When scientists in a movie tell me that it “just stopped ...
How can we improve Biology education?
Biology is frequently talked and thought of as the field of science for those who are inclined to do science but are turned off by math and physics. This is a serious problem that not only impacts the quality of education, but also the preparedness of students for adapting throughout ...
Individual intelligence vs. collective wisdom?
To both philosophers and scientists, the way that the human society is organized has always been a compelling subject. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Niccolo Machiavelli may enjoy telling stories about social contracts, monarchy and oligarchy, and modern physicists and social scientists see a world full of “links” and “hub nodes”. Regardless ...