Connectionists: first issue of the HFSP Journal now available online

[Valerie Ferrier]

HFSP Publishing is proud to announce the publication of the first issue of
the HFSP Journal, Frontiers of Interdisciplinary Research in the Life
Sciences which is available online free of charge at
<http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=HFSPJX&Volume=LASTVOL&Issue=LASTIS
S>
http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=HFSPJX&Volume=LASTVOL&Issue=LASTISS


 

The HFSP Journal is a new journal which aims to foster communication between
scientists publishing high quality, innovative interdisciplinary research at
the interface between biology and the physical sciences. 

 

The first issue features:

 

• An Editorial from the Editor-in-Chief Arturo Falaschi from the
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste
and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in Italy which discusses the new
frontiers of research in the life sciences, many of which require approaches
from other scientific disciplines.

 

• An Editorial from the President of HFSP Publishing, Mark Bisby from
Ottawa, Canada which explains that the HFSP Journal aims to further the
goals of the Human Frontier Science Program to promote innovative basic
research at the interface between the life sciences and the physical
sciences.

 

• A Commentary from Paul De Koninck from the Centre de Recherche Université
Laval Robert Giffard, Université Laval, Québec, in Canada and his colleagues
which discusses a recent study of synaptic signaling and remodeling by
quantum dot imaging from Daniel Choquet’s group.

 

• A Commentary from Jonathon Howard and Iva Tolic-Norrelykke from the Max
Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany which
discusses two recent articles from François Nédélec’s group which address
the issue of how cortex-microtubule interactions position the mitotic
spindle by a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches.

 

• A Perspective from pioneers in the fields of single molecule imaging and
manipulation of single molecules, Yoshiharu Ishii and Toshio Yanagida from
the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences at the University of Osaka in
Japan, which reviews the insight such approaches have provided into the
visualization of the dynamic operations of molecular motors, enzymatic
reactions, structural dynamics of biomolecules, and cell signaling
processes. 

 

• A Perspective from Kenji Doya from the Neural Computational Unit at the
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in, Japan which reviews basic
the theoretical framework of reinforcement learning which was developed in
the artificial intelligence community and discusses its recent and future
contributions toward the understanding of animal behaviors and human
decision making. 

 

 • An Article from the Wiltschko lab at J. W. Goethe-University in
Frankfurt, Germany and Thorsten Ritz at the Department of Physics and
Astronomy of the University of California in, Irvine, California reporting
on an interdisciplinary study combines behavioral zoology neurobiology and
biophysics to further the current level of understanding of magnetoreception
and bird migration.

 

 • An Article by Ajay and Bhalla from the National Centre for Biological
Sciences at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore, India
who combined experiments and models to shed light onto the mechanisms by
which ERKII signaling spreads long distances in apical dendrites of
stimulated hippocampal pyramidal neurons.


 • Two Articles by Erich Bornberg-Bauer at the Institute for Evolution and
Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Münster, Germany
and his coworkers and by Dan Tawfik and colleagues from the Department of
Biological Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in, Rehovot,
Israel which together report on a multidisciplinary study combining theory,
computational and experimental work that offers an intriguing new
perspective on the evolution of new functions. The study by Bornberg-Bauer
and colleagues addresses the biophysical basis of how mutational paths that
seem to be neutral with respect to the dominant phenotype under selection
can allow adaptive evolution by selecting a latent phenotype. The article by
Tawfik et al. reports on an experimental analysis of protein evolution and
provides the first direct evidence of the existence of latent evolution.


 

The Editorial Board of the HFSP Journal represents 5 distinguished
scientists from different disciplines but each with a strong focus on living
systems:- 

*         Arturo Falaschi  (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology, Trieste and Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy).

*         Marcelo Magnasco (Department of Physics, Rockefeller University), 

*         Peter Seeberger (Department of Chemistry, ETH Zurich,
Switzerland), 

*         Dan Kiehart (Department of Biology, Duke University) and 

*         Mitsuo Kawato (ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto
University, Japan)

 

The HFSP Journal offers its authors the option to pay a fee to make their
research articles Open Access immediately upon publication. For other
articles, access is limited to subscribers for the first 6 months after
publication, and access will be free thereafter. The HFSP Journal is be
published online and in print. 

 

The HFSP Journal is operated by HFSP Publishing the not-for-profit publisher
of the leading international funding agency the Human Frontier Science
Program Organization (HFSPO). This international funding agency has been
supporting innovative research at the frontier of biology since its
establishment in 1989. 

 

Contact:

Dr. Valerie Ferrier

Managing Editor

Tel + 33 (0) 3 88 21 52 83

info at hfsp-publishing.org

 <http://hfspj.aip.org/> http://hfspj.aip.org