The Bright Future Of Biology

There has been some exciting discoveries this past time, but we still have not solved the matter of computers versus humans. On one hand, there are these amazing people, like the person described in this article:

Biology student breaks highest grade record in post-war UP

The summa cum laude leading this year’s batch of University of the Philippines graduates in Diliman will have the highest general weighted average (GWA) in the history of UP after World War II.

BS Biology student Tiffany Grace Uy will graduate with a GWA of 1.004. She will lead the 29 students who will graduate summa cum laude at the flagship campus of the country’s national university.

Uy’s 1.004 bested the grade obtained by BS Mathematics graduate John Gabriel Pelias in 2011. Pelias obtained the then highest post-war grade in UP with a GWA of 1.016.
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In 1927, BS Business Administration graduate Exequiel Sevilla graduated with a GWA of 1.00, the highest grade a UP student can receive.

Uy received a grade of 1.00 in all subjects except Art Studies where she obtained a grade of 1.25.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/700770/biology-student-breaks-highest-grade-record-in-post-war-up#ixzz3nGCTv5Xb

That's just incredible. But then on the other side, computers have their own areas that us humans are unable to be as proficient in. One example is the speed with which they are able to calculate complex problems, and the amount of data that can be used. Just look at this:

Computer solves 120-year-old biology problem that had scientists stumped

Can computer software invent scientific theories and ideas as well as crunch numbers? That's the suggestion being put forward by Michael Levin and Daniel Lobo, two computer scientists at Tufts University, Massachusetts in the US, who have programmed a computer to come up with its own scientific hypothesis on one of biology's most well-known mysteries.

The mystery in question: how the genes of a sliced-up flatworm regenerate into new organisms. It's one that's baffled the brightest human minds over the last century or so, and the two researchers picked it because it was "incredibly interesting", as William Herkewitz reports for Popular Mechanics. "These worms are basically immortal, you can cut them up and they continuously form new organisms," Levin told Herkewitz. "And why that happens could be key to developing everything from regenerative medicines to designing self-repairing robots."

Read more at: http://www.sciencealert.com/computer-solves-120-year-old-biology-problem-that-had-scientists-stumped

Whether it's us humans or the machines that will be contributing to new discoveries in the future, it seems like we are going the right way.

Related reading: http://compscigail.blogspot.com/