“We Are All Gonna Get Diabetic These Days”

We're all gonna die!

What’s a poor biomedical reporter to do when entire television networks and newspapers turn their undivided attention to suicidal terrorist pilots? Forget the scientific journals. Those stories won’t run. Try another stemcell story? Not unless it’s a terrorist cell. No, the solution is to scare the living daylights out of everybody. It’s called following the news. And what better way than to po...

"Can't we all just get along?

These are the days of lasers in the jungle

For tropical forest carbon to be commoditized, a consistent, globally verifiable system for reporting and monitoring carbon stocks and emissions must be achieved. We call for a global airborne LiDAR campaign that will measure the 3-D structure of each hectare of forested (and formerly forested) land in the tropics. We believe such a database could be assembled for only 5% of funding already ple...

The perils of plenty: what are we going to do with all these genes?

This new century's biology promises more of everything--more genes, more organisms, more species and, in short, more data. The flood of data challenges us to find better and quicker ways to summarize and analyse. Here, we present preliminary results and proofs of concept from three of our research projects that are motivated by our search for solutions to the perils of plenty. First, we discuss...

Before We Get There, Where Are We Going?

Fictional stories abound where artificial intelligence gives rise to manmade servants that make our lives a holiday (or a nightmare). Naturally, the optimist has a strong motive to ask: How might we design and implement an artificial servant? We regularly operate under the notion that one agent helps another by doing something for the other. However, the story behind this is much more complicat...