Li Ma studies the molecular determinants of breast cancer progression, while Jeffrey Tyner is screening the genome for cancer drug targets.

Subha Madhavan, Director of the Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics at the Georgetown University Medical Center, discusses current and future applications of Big Data within the biomedical field, and the potential challenges Big Data might confer to biomedical research and patient care.

Researchers have identified a region on a chromosome in Plasmodium falciparum—a major malaria parasite—that helps to explain how the parasite developed resistance to the best known anti-malarial treatments in Southeast Asia.

New findings from the Paisley Caves in Oregon suggest that a stone tool technology known as Western Stemmed projectile points overlapped with—rather than followed—the technology of the Clovis culture.

The Clovis culture, defined by its distinctive broad, fluted projectile points, is believed to have arrived in North American about 13,500 years ago. Many researchers had believed that Western Stemmed projectile points evolved directly from Clovis technology.

For his novel approach to creating maps that enable researchers to zoom in on the human genome and reveal features of DNA structure inside the nucleus, Erez Lieberman Aiden has been named the 2011 Grand Prize winner for the GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists. The annual competition includes a grand prize award of $25,000 and is supported by GE Healthcare and the journal Science.

An international research team has sequenced the Neandertal genome, using pill-sized samples of bone powder from three Neandertal bones found in a cave in Croatia. The results appear in the 7 May issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS.