How Microsoft is helping to ‘solve‘ cancert Microsoft’s research labs around the world, computer scientists, programmers, engineers and other experts are trying to crack some of the computer industry’s toughest problems, from system design and security to quantum computing and data visualization.A subset of those scientists, engineers and programmers have a different goal: They’re trying to use computer science to solve one of the most complex and deadly challenges humans face: Cancer.And, for the most part, they are doing so with algorithms and computers instead of test tubes and beakers.“We are trying to change the way research is done on a daily basis in biology,” said Jasmin Fisher, a biologist by training who works in the programming principles and tools group in Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K., lab. One team of researchers is using machine learning and natural language processing to help the world’s leading oncologists figure out the most effective, individualized cancer treatment for their patients, by providing an intuitive way to sort through all the research data available. . Another is pairing machine learning with computer vision to give radiologists a more detailed understanding of how their patients’ tumors are progressing.Yet another group of researchers has created powerful algorithms that help scientists understand how cancers develop and what treatments will work best to fight them.And another team is working on moonshot efforts that could one day allow scientists to program cells to fight diseases, including cancer.
Two core computer science approaches.Although the individual projects vary widely, Microsoft’s overarching philosophy toward solving cancer focuses on two basic approaches, said Jeannette M. Nod32 Eset Antivirus And Serial For Activation Products here. Wing, Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of the company’s basic research labs.One approach is rooted in the idea that cancer and other biological processes are information processing systems.Using that approach the tools that are used to model and reason about computational processes – such as programming languages, compilers and model checkers – are used to model and reason about biological processes.The other approach is more data- driven.
· · Live co-authoring and the new Tell Me box highlight what's new in Microsoft Office Word 2016. The latter saves you from hunting through ribbon icons to get. Microsoft Office Download. Microsoft Office the original office productivity set of programs developed by Microsoft. The MS Suite was created to enhance productivity.
It’s based on the idea that researchers can apply techniques such as machine learning to the plethora of biological data that has suddenly become available, and use those sophisticated analysis tools to better understand and treat cancer. Both approaches share some common ground – including the core philosophy that success depends on both biologists and computer scientists bringing their expertise to the problem.“The collaboration between biologists and computer scientists is actually key to making this work,” Wing said. Wing said Microsoft has good reason to make broad, bold investments in using computer science to tackle cancer.
- Forget Microsoft, it's possible to kit your PC out with high quality, professional, legit, software totally free, possibly saving you hundreds.
- Learn more about Microsoft Word and Excel Templates and the Office Ready Software.
For one, it’s in keeping with the company’s core mission.“If you talk about empowering every person and organization to achieve more, this is step one in that journey,” she said. Beyond that, she said, Microsoft’s extensive investment in cloud computing is a natural fit for a field that needs plenty of computing power to solve big problems. Longer term, she said, it makes sense for Microsoft to invest in ways it can provide tools to customers no matter what computing platform they choose – even if, one day, that platform is a living cell.“If the computers of the future are not going to be made just in silicon but might be made in living matter, it behooves us to make sure we understand what it means to program on those computers,” she said. Organizing knowledge to find better treatment.
The research teams’ efforts also come amid major breakthroughs in understanding the role genetics plays in both getting and treating cancer. That, in turn, is spurring an even stronger focus on treating each cancer case in a personalized way, sometimes called precision medicine.“We’re in a revolution with respect to cancer treatment,” said David Heckerman, a distinguished scientist and senior director of the genomics group at Microsoft. Even 1. 0 years ago people thought that you treat the tissue: You have brain cancer, you get brain cancer treatment. You have lung cancer, you get lung cancer treatment. Now, we know it’s just as, if not more, important to treat the genomics of the cancer, e. That research has been helped along by recent advances in the ability to more easily and affordably map the human genome and other genetic material.
That’s giving scientists a wealth of information for understanding cancer and developing more personalized and effective treatments – but the sheer amount of data also presents plenty of challenges.“We’ve reached the point where we are drowning in information. We can measure so much, and because we can, we do,” Fisher said. How do you take that information and turn that into knowledge? That’s a different story. There’s a huge leap here between information and data, and knowledge and understanding.”Researchers say that’s an area where computer scientists can best help the biological sciences. Some of the most promising approaches involve using a branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning to automatically do the legwork that can make precision medicine unwieldy. In a more basic scenario, a machine learning system can do things like identify a cat in a photo based on previous pictures of cats it has seen.
In the field of cancer research, these techniques are being deployed to sort and organize millions of pieces of research and medical data.“These are our fortes, artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Hoifung Poon, a researcher in Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, lab who is using a technique called machine reading to help oncologists find the latest information about effective cancer treatments for individual patients. Another big advantage: cloud computing.
Using tools like the Azure cloud computing platform, researchers are able to provide biologists with these kinds of approaches even if the medical experts don’t have their own powerful computers, by hosting the tools in the cloud for anyone to access over the internet. Microsoft researchers say the company also is well- positioned to lead computing cancer efforts because of its long history as a software company providing a platform other people can build from and expand on.“If you look at the combination of things that Microsoft does really well, then it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to be in this industry,” said Andrew Phillips, who heads the biological computation research group at Microsoft’s Cambridge, U. K., lab. In his field specifically, Phillips said researchers benefit from Microsoft’s history as a software innovator.“We can use methods that we’ve developed for programming computers to program biology, and then unlock even more applications and even better treatments,” he said. Of course, none of these tools will help fight cancer and save lives unless they are accessible and understandable to biologists, oncologists and other cancer researchers. Microsoft researchers say they have taken great pains to make their systems easy to use, even for people without any background – or particular interest – in technology and computer science.
That includes everything from learning to speak the language of doctors and biologists to designing computer- based tools that mimic the systems people use in their labs.“We are always talking about building tools that help the doctors,” said Aditya Nori, a senior researcher who specializes in programming languages and machine learning and is working on systems to assess tumor changes. Name. Jasmin Fisher.
Title. Senior researcher. Education. Degree in life sciences; masters in biophysics and physiology; Ph. D. in neuroimmunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.
How did you get interested in the intersection of biology and computer science? By the time I was nearing the end of my Ph. D., amid the buzz of excitement over the newly emerging interest of systems biology, I became intrigued by the potential of computational methods for investigating complex, dynamic biological systems. Why did you decide to pursue this work at Microsoft Research? My goal was, and still is, to develop cutting- edge technologies that will change the way we do research, and in particular advance cancer research. I think the best place to do such foundational work is in an environment like Microsoft Research. Fisher doesn’t want to cure cancer.
Microsoft Word 2. Conditional Formatting. Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Word 2. Go to "Replace", click in the box next to "Find what" and type in your condition.
If your condition is more than just words and/or numbers, check in the "Format" or "Special" buttons to see if you can (or need to) more closely identify what you want Word to find.) Then click in the box next to "Replace with" but don't type anything. Instead, click on the "Format" button and choose how you want it formatted. Then of course, click "Replace all". Please note, this will only work for text already in the document. All future occurrences will have to be "replaced" again.
Please also remember that Word is designed to work with text and probably won't be as good at identifying mathematical variables as Excel. I hope this was helpful!