BIOMEDICINE: An Absorbing Tale

An Architectural Tale of the Two Cities

A comparative study of the corresponding styles of Western and Iranian modern architecture has hardly ever been carried out in detail. This paper aims to sketch out an outline for such an investigation and to present a summary of empirical evidence accompanied by field observations to elaborate the ongoing trend of relationship between architectural styles in Iran and that of the West. This is ...

An expanded TALE repertoire

Cell type–specific gene expression, which is essential during development, relies on the action of enhancers. Several techniques allow for the identification of enhancer elements; Maehr and colleagues have now developed a method to functionally characterize them. They use the clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system whereby guide RNAs and a nuclease-‘dead’ ver...

Triclosan: an Instructive Tale.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released a final rule to ban triclosan and 18 other antimicrobial chemicals from soaps. We applaud this rule specifically because of the associated risks that triclosan poses to the spread of antibiotic resistance throughout the environment. This persistent chemical constantly stresses bacteria to adapt, and behavior that promotes antibiotic resis...

An Update on Statistical Boosting in Biomedicine

Statistical boosting algorithms have triggered a lot of research during the last decade. They combine a powerful machine learning approach with classical statistical modelling, offering various practical advantages like automated variable selection and implicit regularization of effect estimates. They are extremely flexible, as the underlying base-learners (regression functions defining the typ...

Earthworm-An alternative approach to biomedicine