Blog: New Center Developing Computational Bioresearch Tool

New Center Developing Computational Bioresearch Tool
University of Chicago (01/27/12) Steve Koppes

University of Chicago researchers led by professor Gregory Voth are developing a technique that might lead to a new and simpler way to predict molecular motion inside a cell. The research is backed by a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which is being used to launch the Center for Multiscale Theory and Simulation. "What's impressive about Greg's team is the variety of theoretical and computational tools that it brings to bear," says NSF's Katharine Covert. The tools include a theoretical and computer simulation capability for describing biological systems at interconnected multiple scales. "This is what we call the multi-scale problem, and probably nowhere in the natural world does the multi-scale problem manifest as dramatically as in the biology regime," Voth says. The center will use an extensive new cyberinfrastructure network, which will provide a wide range of computational equipment, software, and techniques to support its work. One of the center’s most important computational tools is a technique called coarse-graining, which is a way of simplifying a complex problem in a mathematically precise way, with real-world physics built in.

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Blog: The Mathematics of Taste

The Mathematics of Taste
MIT News (01/24/12) Larry Hardesty

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers used genetic programming, in which mathematical models compete with each other to fit the available data and then cross-pollinate to produce more accurate models, to analyze taste-test data. Swiss flavor company Givaudan asked researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) to help interpret the results of taste tests in which 69 subjects assessed 36 different combinations of seven basic flavors. For each subject, the researchers randomly generated a mathematical function that predicted scores according to the concentrations of different flavors. After all of the functions were assessed, the best ones were recombined to produce a new generation of functions, and the whole process was repeated about 30 times. To establish the model's accuracy, the CSAIL researchers developed another model to validate their approach. Taste preference "is a pretty brilliant area in which to apply the evolutionary methods--and it looks as though they're working, also, so that's exciting," says Hampshire College professor Lee Spector.

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Blog: Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections

Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections
Technology Review (01/23/12) Mike Orcutt

A group of freelance Web researchers have created a Twitter bot, called a socialbot, that can fool users into thinking the bots are real people and serve as virtual social connector, accelerating the natural rate of human-to-human communication. The system grew out of the Web Ecology Project, an independent research group focused on studying the structure of social media phenomena. Some of the Web Ecology Project researchers, led by Tim Hwang, created their own organization, called the Pacific Social Architecting Corp., to continue the development of socialbots. In further experiments, the group tracked 2,700 Twitter users, divided into randomly assigned target groups of 300, over 54 days. The first 33 days served as a control period, during which no socialbots were deployed. Then, during the 21-day experimental period, nine bots were activated, one for each target group. On average, each bot gained 62 new followers and received 33 incoming tweets. The researchers also found that there was a 43 percent increase in human-to-human follows, after the socialbots were introduced, compared to the control period.

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