Deciphering the tree of life

What’s a bee without its honey, a butterfly without a flower’s nectar? It’s a pretty puzzle posed by the fossil record, which suggests that insects evolved long before flowering plants did.

With the rise of genetics, a new window has opened onto evolution – one that could provide a fresh perspective on old problems such as the disparity between insect and angiosperm (flowering plant) evolution.

Computational phylogenetics is the development of computational and mathematical techniques that aid in the estimation of evolutionary history, using molecular data such as protein and DNA sequences to construct a “tree of life.” To calibrate their molecular results, evolutionary biologists add the fossil record to the mix, and assume that a new species will evolve at the same rate as its ancestors.

Interview

One person’s view, behind the scenes of middleware

John White, security team leader of EMI, discusses his work.

Feature

Neighborly efficiency

A new approach to k-nearest neighbor problems could give a speed boost to applications ranging from face recognition to music genre classification.

Podcast of the week

Alan Sill of OGF discusses standards, grids, and clouds

Alan Sill, Open Grid Forum’s new vice president of standards, discusses the overlap between grids and clouds during this audio interview with Cloud Commons’ Derek Stevens.