Bioinformatics Becomes Respectable

Biological data becomes computer literate: new advances in bioinformatics.

Bioinformatics is an art and science concerned with the use of computing in biological research areas such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, genetics, and evolution. This review paints a broad picture of bioinformatics, drawing examples from genomic sequencing and microarray analysis. I highlight the role of bioinformatics at multiple points along the path from high-tech data generation...

Respectable hypnosis.

Decentralized Polling with Respectable Participants

We consider the polling problem in a social network where participants care about their reputation: they do not want their vote to be disclosed nor their misbehaving, if any, to be publicly exposed. Assuming this reputation concern, we show that a simple secret sharing scheme, combined with verification procedures, can efficiently enable polling without the need for any central authority or hea...

Moral Imbecility from a Respectable Family

It seems unfair to take as an example of a moral imbecile one of the type usually selected. The social standing of the parents is important in this regard and also the early environment. Are not most of those ordinarily classed as moral imbeciles such because of environment? A case should be selected where the social standing of the parents is good and the environment cannot be questioned. Then...

The Push to Make Software Engineering Respectable

S oftware engineering (SE) is maturing as a discipline and profession, but three decades after the first NATO Conference on Software Engineering, it is still not regarded as a legitimate , respectable engineering profession. In 1995, Gary Ford and Norman Gibbs of the Software Engineering Institute evaluated what it means for a profession to be mature and how SE was doing. 1 Their extensive and ...