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LATEST ARTICLES ( 295 )

• How Does the Cortex Compute?

  Gary Marcus, Adam Marblestone, and Thomas Dean have an opinion piece in Science this week challenging the notion of the “canonical cortical circuit”. They have ... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What’s Wrong with Neuroscience

  Here is a cute parable in Frontiers in Neuroscience from cognitive scientist Joshua Brown at Indiana Univeristy.  It mirrors a lot of what I’ve been saying for... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selection of the Week

  The legendary twentieth century violinist David Oistrakh playing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, from over 50 years ago.  Unfortunately, I can’t listen to this... Read more

  Posted on 31 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Ebola Response

  The real failure of the Ebola response is not that a physician went bowling after returning from West Africa but that there are not more doctors over there... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• It Takes a Team

  Here is a letter (reposted with permission) from Michael Gottesman, Deputy Director for Intramural Research of the NIH, telling the story of how the NIH... Read more

  Posted on 15 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Perils of Word

  Many biology journals insist on receiving manuscripts in Microsoft Word prior to publication. Even though this probably violates some anti-trust law, I... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Incompetence is the Norm

  People have been justly anguished by the recent gross mishandling of the Ebola patients in Texas and Spain and the risible lapse in security at the White House. Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Nobel Prize in Physiology Or Medicine

  The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded this morning to John O’Keefe and May-Brit Moser and Edward Moser for the discovery of place cells and gri... Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Linear and Nonlinear Thinking

  

  A linear system is one where the whole is precisely the sum of its parts. You can know how different parts will act together by simply knowing how they act in... Read more

  Posted on 01 October 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selection of the Week

  Let’s bring in the fall with Vivaldi’s Autumn from the Four Seasons. Detroit is mostly known for cars and bankruptcy but it also has great culture. Read more

  Posted on 26 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selection of the Week

  The Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903 by Johann Sebastian Bach played by Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, perhaps the best Bach interpreter since... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Julia Update

  I’m totally committed to Julia now.  It is blitzing fast and very similar to Matlab with some small differences (improvements). Read more

  Posted on 16 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selection of the Week

  I think the Meditation from Jules Massenet’s opera Thais is appropriate for the day after September 11.  Here is violinist Sarah Chang. Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Unintended Consequences

  Here is a true story. A young man is trained to hit people as hard as possible and to react immediately to any provocation with unhindered aggression. Read more

  Posted on 10 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Morality of Watching (American) Football

  The question in this week’s New York Times Ethicist column is whether it is wrong to watch football because of the inherent dangers to the players. Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selection of the Week

  I think we should start September off with Beethoven.  Here is the first movement of the Sextet in E-flat op.81 b for two horns and strings performed by the... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MCMC for Linear Models

  I’ve been asked in a comment to give a sample of pseudo code for an MCMC algorithm to fit a linear model to some data. See here for the original post on MCMC. Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• J. Bryce McLeod, 1929-2014

  I was given the sad news that J. Bryce McLeod died today in his home in England. Bryce was an extraordinary mathematician and an even better human being. Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Julia Vs Python Update

  We’ve been using Julia for a little over a month now and I am quite pleased thus far. It is fast enough for us to get decent results for our MCMC runs; runs... Read more

  Posted on 19 August 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Numerical Integration

  

  Solving differential equations numerically is a very mature field with multiple algorithms carefully explained in multiple textbooks. Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2014 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE