Human memory is all too fallible. We all misplace items or forget to run an errand occasionally; our memories of specific events can fade with time as well. But severe memory issues can have a devastating impact on quality of life for individuals with clinically…
One of the responsibilities for us as researchers is to have the courage to challenge accepted "truths" and to seek out new insights. Richard Feynman was a physicist who not only epitomized both of these qualities in his research but also took enormous pleasure in…
Could a semantic, chemical authoring tool be developed for Microsoft Word? The paper and PDF formats that are the standard vehicles for scholarly communication are great at presenting natural language for people to read, but are not as good at carrying the machine-interpretable semantic data…
Interest in cloud computing is growing at a rapid pace, particularly in commercial environments. We believe there is a real opportunity to fulfill the potential of cloud computing—and we're working to bring about that full potential. We have partnered with the European Union to develop…
Innovations in wireless networking technology are driving our increasingly connected world, with smartphones gaining acceptance for both professional and private use. In the future, we foresee a vast majority of smartphone apps relying on cloud services to enhance the mobile experiences. Project Hawaii, a research…
You may be familiar with the Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF), an open source bioinformatics .NET library that is designed to provide core functionality for genomics research from commonly-used file parsers to algorithms and web connectors. We're pleased to announce that we are continuing to invest…
As we approached the holiday season in Colombia, we had already received one of the biggest gifts on our wish-list: on November 12, the government of Colombia officially committed to the establishment of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in the city of Manizales,…
Computers have increased the reach of biological science, altering the path of medicine with such revolutions as human genome sequencing—which is already causing a shift in treatment approach from epidemiological (based on patterns in the general population) to care that is tailored to individuals. Researchers…
—Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche, Research Program Manager, External Research division of Microsoft Research, Cambridge When a wildfire strikes, every second counts. Time lost can all too often be measured in lost life, deforestation, and property damage. Enter the Virtual Fire application, based on Microsoft Bing Maps, ESRI…
Once upon a time, being a "gadget fanatic" usually meant you were an early adopter of new technologies, someone who'd own the latest multi-megapixel digital camera or high-powered handheld device. A rare few with engineering and embedded development programming skills might push this a bit…
When you type a word or phrase into a search engine, there are a number of things that could go wrong. You might not know how a term is spelled or, in your rush to jump to the results, you could transpose or otherwise mistype…
I'm here in Washington, DC, at the second annual mHealth Summit, where I gave a talk and conducted a keynote interview with Bill Gates. During a wide-ranging discussion, Bill stressed that improved health is the key to controlling many of the world's most challenging problems.…
