Next-gen cancer research

The next steps in next-gen sequencing of cancer genomes.

The necessary infrastructure to carry out genomics-driven oncology is now widely available and has resulted in the exponential increase in characterized cancer genomes. While a subset of genomic alterations is clinically actionable, the majority of somatic events remain classified as variants of unknown significance and will require functional characterization. A careful cataloging of the genom...

Educating Next-Gen Computer Scientists

Algorithms, data structures, OSs, database design, compiler design, and programming languages were once the core ingredients of computer science (CS) education—until universities ignited the computer technology revolution by producing the inventors of Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and others. So, is commercial technology forcing CS curriculums to adapt, or are curriculums so rigid that they ignore v...

The At&t Next-gen Tts System

The new AT&T Text-To-Speech (TTS) system for general U.S. English text is based on best-choice components of the AT&T Flextalk TTS, the Festival System from the University of Edinburgh, and ATR’s CHATR system. From Flextalk, it employs text normalization, letter-to-sound, and prosody generation. Festival provides a flexible and modular architecture for easy experimentation and competitive evalu...

Surrogate Markers: Lessons from the Next Gen?

The article by Banerjee and colleagues published in this issue of the journal involving a randomized control prevention trial of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) in Barrett esophagus reported a null outcome despite being well designed and executed. Possible reasons for this null outcome are discussed focusing on use of surrogate endpoints in the trial. The trial is especially topical because it come...

The Evolution of Next-Gen Optical Networks