Kill the Billion

The Mesoproterozoic – no “boring billion”

The authors show that the Mesoproterozoic (1.6-1.0 bn year before present) was no “boring billion” but a “bustling billion” - not only with Stromatolites and their apex in the Calymmian and Ectasian but also with the presence of multicellular organisms. To make it visible a graphical reconstruction was created. For a long time, it was assumed that there existed no noteworthy biosphere on Earth ...

Connecting the Last Billion

Connecting the Last Billion

The First Four Billion Years

FLIPping the kill switch

I t's always wise to consult others before making a big decision, so a cell seeks input from a lot of different proteins before choosing between survival and death by apoptosis. Fricker et al. describe how one particular protein— cFLIP—can nudge a cell in either direction depending on the expression levels of its three different isoforms (1). Cells contemplate suicide in response to a number of...

Billion-Node Graph Challenges

Graph is a universal model in big data era and finds its wide applications in a variety of real world tasks. The recent emergence of big graphs, especially those with billion nodes, poses great challenges for the effective management or mining of these big graphs. In general, a distributed computing paradigm is necessary to overcome the billion-node graph challenges. In this article, we elabora...