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What
is Bioinformatics? |
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Bioinformatics
is an interdisciplinary subject which integrates
fields like biology, chemistry, biophysics, biostatistics
and computer science to solve biological problems.
The ultimate goal of Bioinformatics is to enable
the discovery of new biological insights as well
as to create global perspective from which unifying
principles in biology can be discerned. |
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What
are all biological Problems? |
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The
first and foremost biological problem is to annotate
functional genes hidden in sequenced genomes which
can be effectively scanned by computational approaches.
The other problems include protein structure prediction,
Drug discovery, metabolic pathway manipulation
and much more. These problems can be consolved
in a faster way by using bioinformatics as a catalyst. |
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What
is Medical Informatics? |
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Medical
Informatics is an applied discipline which lies
in the intersection of computer science and medicine.
It also draws from areas of library and information
science, statistics, health policy making, and
others. It is the science of how to collect and
manage medical and health information using computers.
Design of computing solutions for medical informatics
benefits best from expertise in computer science,
medical and health sciences, and cognitive sciences.
The former two due to the need for deep insight
in both computing and health disciplines, and
the latter due to the need for careful attention
to human factors and interfaces which may be of
particular importance to success in healthcare. |
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What
is Genomics? |
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Genomics
is any attempt to analyze or compare the entire
genetic complement of a species or species (plural).
It is, of course possible to compare genomes by
comparing more-or-less representative subsets
of genes within genomes. |
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What
is Proteomics? |
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Proteomics
is the study of proteins - their location, structure
and function. It is the identification, characterization
and quantification of all proteins involved in
a particular pathway, organelle, cell, tissue,
organ or organism that can be studied in concert
to provide accurate and comprehensive data about
that system. |
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What
is Pharmacogenomics? |
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Pharmacogenomics
is the application of genomic approaches and
technologies to the identification of drug targets.
In Short, pharmacogenomics is using genetic
information to predict whether a drug will help
make a patient well or sick.
It
Studies how genes influence the response of
humans to drugs, from the population to the
molecular level.
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What
is Pharmacogenetics? |
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Pharmacogenetics
is the study of how the actions of and reactions
to drugs vary with the patient's genes.
All
individuals respond differently to drug treatments;
some positively, others with little obvious
change in their conditions and yet others with
side effects or allergic reactions. Much of
this variation is known to have a genetic basis.
Pharmacogenetics is a subset of pharmacogenomics
which uses genomic/bioinformatic methods to
identify genomic correlates, for example SNPs
(Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), characteristic
of particular patient response profiles and
use those markers to inform the administration
and development of therapies. Strikingly such
approaches have been used to "resurrect"
drugs thought previously to be ineffective,
but subsequently found to work with in subset
of patients or in optimizing the doses of chemotherapy
for particular patients.
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What
is Cheminformatics? |
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"The
use of information technology and management
has become a critical part of the drug discovery
process. Chemoinformatics is the mixing of those
information resources to transform data into
information and information into knowledge for
the intended purpose of making better decisions
faster in the area of drug lead identification
and organization"
In
fact, Chemoinformatics is a generic term that
encompasses the design, creation, organization,
management, retrieval, analysis, dissemination,
visualization and use of chemical information.
Related
terms of cheminformatics are chemi-informatics,
chemometrics, computational chemistry, chemical
informatics, chemical information management/science,
and cheminformatics.
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What
is the difference between Medical Informatics
and Bioinformatics? |
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"Biomedical
Informatics is an emerging discipline that has
been defined as the study, invention, and implementation
of structures and algorithms to improve communication,
understanding and management of medical information."
Medical Informatics is more concerned with structures
and algorithms for the manipulation of medical
data, rather than with the data itself. This suggests
that one difference between bioinformatics and
medical informatics as disciplines lies with their
approaches to the data; there are bioinformaticists
interested in the theory behind the manipulation
of that data and there are bioinformatics scientists
concerned with the data itself and its biological
implications and some in both. Medical informatics,
for practical reasons, is more likely to deal
with data obtained at "grosser" biological
levels---that is information from super-cellular
systems, right up to the population level-while
most bioinformatics is concerned with information
about cellular and biomolecular structures and
systems. |
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What
constitutes "Nano" technology? |
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The
"nano" prefix means one billionth.
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter in size,
one millionth of a millimeter. By comparison
"micro" technology would be one thousandth
of a millimeter. A centimeter, approximately
one half of an inch, is one hundredth of a meter
and a millimeter is one thousandth of a meter.
Proportionately,
a human hair is approximately 50,000 nanometers
wide. Nanotechnology or nanoscience operates
on the subatomic level in terms of size. The
technologies contain entire systems that are
built to atomic specifications.
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What
is the definition of Nanotechnology? |
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Though
the field encompasses several research or development
areas, the essence of nanotech is the size "The
precision placement, measurement, manipulation
and modeling of sub-100 nanometer scale matter."
Nanoscience
and engineering have combined to be referred
to as Nanotechnology.
The laws of physics, chemistry, and biology
are no longer applicable to nanoscale structures.
These items are between the size of isolated
molecules or atoms and bulk materials and research
has shown that the laws that were created to
fit the micro world we previously faced.
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What
is a Knowledge Based System? |
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Knowledge-Based
Systems (KBS) are software programs which have
as a central component an abstracted collection
of knowledge (knowledge base) in some knowledge
representation. The program uses this knowledge
along with logical control to make decisions in
the process of executing. These systems have advantages,
for example, they are easily modified as new knowledge
is learned and the knowledge can be easily reviewed
by human inspection. Typical knowledge representations
used in the system might include a rule base,
semantic network, or criteria table representation. |
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What
is a semantic network? |
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A
semantic network in a graphical knowledge representation.
In the representation, individual items are related
to one another by lines connecting them. For example,
two individual's names might be connected by a
named line (arc) called siblings that indicates
they are brother and sister. This form of knowledge
has an advantage because it is visually meaningful
to humans since it parallels a similar kind of
diagrammatic representation in educational psychology
called a concept map. Semantic networks can be
translated into other forms of representation,
such as a rule base, and can be used by knowledge-based
computer systems. |
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What
do we mean by "Intelligent" software? |
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The
term "intelligent," when applied to
software, is generally interpreted to refer to
software which behaves in a way which seems like
human intelligence. This term can be contrasted
with Artificial Intelligence and Artificially
Intelligent systems. |
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What
is Artificial Intelligence and when is a program
considered Artificially Intelligent? |
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Artificial
Intelligence is a discipline of disciplines combining
areas of Cognitive Science, Computer Science,
and Theoretical Mathematics. More strict definitions
stipulate that it is study of intelligent methods
using the tools which have been developed in the
AI field, such as knowledge representations and
forms of algebraic manipulation of logic (e.g.
First Order Predicate Calculus and Resolution
Theorem Proving). By this definition, AI might
be considered a discipline of advanced programming
techniques, and a system which uses those techniques
could be considered Artificially Intelligent. |
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What
is an Intelligent Tutoring System? |
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Intelligent
Tutoring Systems (ITS) are software programs which
provide instruction for a learner with guidance
and insight in the way a teacher would guide a
student. In an ITS program the knowledge of "how
to teach" is distinct from that which is
to be taught and from that which the student knows.
Each of these areas of knowledge may be captured
in a knowledge base or at least some form of an
abstraction which the program operates upon to
control its execution. |
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What
is a cognitive strategy? |
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In
education, influencing a learner and assisting
them in retention of information can be central
and important tasks. To achieve these, the use
of various cognitive strategies can be very effective,
when carefully chosen to be appropriate for each
learning situation. To influence a learner about
the importance adequate pet care, the developer
may appeal to affect (individual feelings), or
to reinforce the importance of diet in nutrition,
an authority figure such as a doctor might be
enlisted to provide the advise. To assist in retention
of information, cognitive techniques might be
incorporated into the design and presentation
of content which mimic mental processing of material.
In data interpretation, for example, pictorials
grouping related information together and emphasizing
differences can be very useful. A conscious awareness
and attention to these strategies and techniques
results in systems which are better designed for
human factors, interface, and learning. |
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What
is Client / Server architecture? |
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A
client / server (C/S) system is a software architecture
which distributes processing between a client
(user) computer and a central server. Part of
the computer program is actually executed on each
machine and the two components communicate over
a network. The client portion of a C/S database
may form queries on the user's machine while those
queries are executed on the server returning only
the results. The internet can also be considered
a C/S system where the user's client (browser
software) interacts with a server which returns
HTML pages. In this kind of software, the software
can be developed to create either thin or thick
client systems. |
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How
is a thin client different from a thick client? |
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In
a client / server (C/S) system, the amount of
software and processing carried out on the client
machine versus the server machine may be shifted
to place more of the software on the client or
more on the server. When more software is shifted
to the client, we say the client is thicker. Systems
with large, task specific client software (e.g.,
traditional two-tier C/S database systems), are
typically referred to as thick clients while small
programs which are more generic such as a browser
are typically referred to as thin client systems.
There is a spectrum in-between which can be exploited
to meet special constraints of specific software
behavior, responsiveness, and bandwidth. |
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Are
there different kinds of intranets? |
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There
is some variation in what individuals identify
as an intranet. Some individuals characterize
any system which uses TCP/IP as an intranet regardless
of how the software is distributed in a client/server
architecture. At another extreme, some implicitly
assume that the client software will be limited
to a browser only and all other software will
be located on a server machine or machines. The
latter kind of intranet is often sighted as a
low maintenance system which can even be implemented
on a network computer do to its small software
profile. Other installations may be somewhere
in-between, having a browser - HTML server front
end and other software both on the network servers
and the client machines. To some extent, these
factors may be chosen depending upon the needs
of the users and constraints of the application
and network connections. |
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