Plasmapheresis: are bigger studies necessarily better?

Are Bigger Brains Better?

Attempts to relate brain size to behaviour and cognition have rarely integrated information from insects with that from vertebrates. Many insects, however, demonstrate that highly differentiated motor repertoires, extensive social structures and cognition are possible with very small brains, emphasising that we need to understand the neural circuits, not just the size of brain regions, which un...

Tighter Variational Bounds are Not Necessarily Better

We provide theoretical and empirical evidence that using tighter evidence lower bounds (ELBOs) can be detrimental to the process of learning an inference network by reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of the gradient estimator. Our results call into question common implicit assumptions that tighter ELBOs are better variational objectives for simultaneous model learning and inference amortization...

Bigger isn't better

H IV-1 induces e x t e n s i v e changes in its host cell's nuclear pores, Monette et al. reveal. Like all viruses, HIV-1 hijacks the molecular machinery of its host cell to drive its own replication. One process disrupted by the virus is protein transport between the nucleus and cytoplasm. For example, HIV-1 prevents an RNA-binding protein called hnRNP A1 from entering the nucleus so that it c...

Bigger and better things.

Is bigger better?

What is medical science all about? Surely it is about the value chain, which begins with basic research and ends—if there is an end— with a useful product. There is a widespread perception that scientists do a lot of basic research, but neglect the application of their findings. To remedy this, a number of organizations and philanthropists have become dedicated advocates of applied or translati...