Fallen Columns Tell Credible Stories

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

THINK BACK TO that tragic scene near the end of James Cameron’s Titanic when, after the ship has sunk, Rose clings to some fl otsam. Her lover, Jack, tries to hang on, only to slip away as hypothermia overcomes him. From a cinematic perspective, Cameron’s storytelling skills were particularly powerful: you could almost feel the frigid water enfold you, and you could easily project yourself into...

Liz Rhoades: Single molecules tell many stories

R ecent advances in lasers and fl uo-rescent dyes have made it possible to observe individual proteins as they fold into their mature conforma-tion or bind to other proteins. Liz Rhoades is harnessing these techniques to answer questions about the biology of amyloid family proteins—whose aggregation is associated with neurodegenerative syndromes such as Parkinson's and Alzheim-er's disease (1)....

Extracting Resources that Help Tell Events' Stories

Social media platforms constitute a valuable source of information regarding real-world happenings. In particular, user generated content on mobile-oriented platforms like Twitter allows for real-time narrations thanks to the instantaneous nature of publishing. A common practice for users is to include in the tweets links pointing to articles, media files and other resources. In this paper, we ...

We are the stories we tell.

Cédric Blanpain: The stories stem cells tell

A lthough the stem cells found in adult tissues produce a more limited range of cell types than those found in the early embryo, they are absolutely essential to replace cells lost to turnover or tissue damage. Understanding and harnessing the biology of these cells would yield amazing therapeutic benefi ts. But to realize such benefi ts, it's necessary to study as many kinds of stem cells as p...