Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Neurobiology

Mapping the Brain's 'Symphony'

Francis Collins at the NIH in his new blog discussed the Human Connectome Project, an NIH-funded effort to map all the neural connections in the human brain. He noted that whereas before only an isolated region of the brain might have been analyzed, recent advances in computer science, math, imaging, and data visualization can now allow researchers to study the human brain as an entire organ. S. Pelech is astonished that "the Human Connectome Project, has set out to map the brain’s neural connections in their ENTIRETY." He questions whether the project proponents truly appreciate the scale of such as proposal and whether the knowledge gained from such an undertaking is really worth the costs. Read More...