Connection Between Epigenome, Selective Mutability, Evolution, and Human Disease
Li, Harris et al., PLoS Genetics
Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere propose a "connection between the epigenome, selective mutability, evolution, and human disease" based on the findings of their study on associations of structural mutability with germline DNA methylation and with non-allelic homologous recombination mediated by low-copy repeats. "Combined evidence from four human sperm methylome maps, human genome evolution, structural polymorphisms in the human population, and previous genomic and disease studies consistently points to a strong association of germline hypomethylation and genomic instability," the Baylor-led team writes.
iPad-Controlled Supercomputing
Keep an eye out this fall for an iPad app that can control your local supercomputer or cloud computing account.
Manish Parashar, a professor at Rutgers University, recently demonstrated the application at an IEEE competition — that he and his team won. Their demonstration pulled together IBM supercomputers in New York and Saudi Arabia, adding and dropping groups of processors as end users tailored the configuration according to the details of the computational task at hand.
Called CometCloud, the new software enable on-the-fly federation of geographically disparate supercomputers located in either data centers, public or private clouds, and enterprise grids.
CometCloud has been used to support academic and engineering projects but only as a research project. Parashar says that he expects the service to become commercialized before the new year.