cloud computing

This summer, Seattle's weather has been cloudy and cold. Luckily, "cloud" has another meaning. For those of you wondering, what "cloudy" means, Eric Nilsson, from Insilicos, has a great article in Xconomy on Seattle and cloud computing. A quick description of cloud computing would is to think of computer hardware, that is, the servers and data centers, as "utilities." Where other utilities like the Rocky Reach Dam produce and sell electricity, cloud utilities sell computing power. How they ... Read more

These days, DNA sequencing happens in one of three ways. In the early days of DNA sequencing (like the 80's), labs prepared their own samples, sequenced those samples, and analyzed their results. Some labs still do this. Then, in the 90's, genome centers came along. Genome centers are like giant factories that manufacture sequence data. They have buildings, dedicated staff, and professional bioinformaticians who write programs and work with other factory members to get the data entered, analyzed, and shipped out to the databases. (You can ... Read more