Monthly Archives: January 2015

Software application developers have long sought to manipulate and exploit the processing power available to them in order to get the most out of the applications and systems that they seek to program. In this post-millennial era of app enlightenment, a huge percentage of us know that the brains of a computer is called the Central Processing Unit or CPU for short. So when programmers need something faster and more powerful than a CPU, where do they go?

Software developers working on geospatial intelligence systems, bio molecular research programs, scientific research and (perhaps surprisingly) high-end computer games will often look to use a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) alongside their CPU-based power.

How GPUs accelerate computers

Sometimeslabeled High Performance Computing (HPC), this type of software development relies on the GPUs ability to manipulate and alter a computers calls to memory at extremely high speeds. This allows the machine to accelerate the creation, delivery and presentation of image-related data that will end up being displayed on screen. In simple terms, it means we can make computers do really cool and often really insightful stuff. So like what?

Mapping out a human beings genome structure involves a lot more graphics power than Space Invaders ever did, so GPUs fit the bill well. The human genetic instruction book contains roughly three billion base pairs of DNA. While the genome in every cell of the body is identical, each type of cell needs to be different to serve its specific purpose e.g. growing, fighting disease, creating hormones or one of several other hundreds of thousands of jobs.

So how do your bodys individual cells get programmed to do the right thing on any given day? Developers and researchers have used Nvidia GPUs to work out what appears to be the answer.

The human genome folds into 10,000 loops

Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, MIT and Harvard University used Nvidia Tesla GPUs to time-map how the human genome folds itself to form a computing instruction set for our own body to work from. They created the first high-resolution 3-D maps of entire folded genomes and found the human genome is folded into around 10,000 loops.

Original post:
Human Genome Folds Form Computer Program For Life

Climate change "is not a hoax," according to theU.S. Senate, which voted 98 to 1 in favor of an amendment stating as muchWednesday. Explaining his vote, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that there was "Biblical evidence" of climate change, but that humans were not responsible for it.

With this amendment,Democrats had hoped to force Republicansto take a stance onthe reality of global warming. They didn't succeed. Two other amendments attributing climate change to human activity failed to achieve the 60 votes needed to advance.

There are somewhat intellectuallyrespectable positions to take against climate-change legislation -- for example, that the costs of stopping global warmingmightoutweigh the benefits -- but the Senate's is notone of them.

"In conclusion, the Senate is pretty clearly a hoax," Brad Plumer wrote.

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What's in Wonkbook:1) Quantitative easing in Europe2) Opinions, including Warren on discrimination in housing 3) Climate votes, abortion and more

Number of the day:$30.35. That's the average hourly wage for an Uber driver in New York, according to an analysis commissioned by the company -- about twice that of conventional taxi drivers. Emily Badger in The Washington Post.

1. Topstory: European Central Bank considers buying bonds

The bank's decision Thursday will be an important one for Europe and the euro. Quantitative easing "marks a critical juncture in the history of the currency and the European unity it embodies. The prospect of large-scale government-bond buying to fight the threat of deflation has not only reinforced national trench lines at the heart of the single currency. A failure of the institution's most controversial measure to date, combined with government dawdling on economic reforms, risks condemning the region to a spiral of dissatisfaction in which unemployment and economic weakness drive voters to politicians who say regional integration has gone too far." Jana Randow and Alessandro Speciale for Bloomberg.

European investors weren't impressed by the bank's proposal, though. "The European Central Banks executive board proposed buying roughly 50 billion ($58 billion) a month in bonds for at least a year, according to people familiar with the matter, but Markets largely shrugged as investors pondered whether the ECB will do enough to stoke Europes fragile economy. ... Investors are counting on the ECB to unveil a program that will shock and awe the market." Brian Blackstone in The Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading here:
Wonkblog: Senate rejects link between human activity and climate change