by following the guidelines here. The following resources related to this article are available online at www.sciencemag.org (this infomation is current as of December 2, 2011): Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online version of this article at:

education on the internet, free of charge, a real possibility. At this pivotal moment it is appropriate to explore the potential for obtaining comprehensive bioinformatics training with currently existing free video resources. This article pre-sents such a bioinformatics curric-ulum in the form of a virtual

m]]l]]s¶D]]¿÷mB]iv]b]oD]m¶¨]iv]§]iv]r]j]t¿rv]]irj]]t]]m] / | ap]]r¿]ÎNy]s¶D]]mb¶r]ix} Û]Ix]]rd]mb]} p—N]t]o%ism] in]ty]m] / || Û]Is]¡uÎc]rN]]riv]nd]p]*N]m]st¶ I always bow to Śri ̄ Śāradāmbā, the limitless ocean of the nectar of compassion, who bears a rosary, a vessel of nectar, the symbol of knowledge and a book in Her lotus hands. Dedicated to the Lotus Feet of the revered Sadguru. This thesis presents a new active mask (AM) framework and an algorithm for segmenta-tion of digital images, particularly those of punctate patterns from fluorescence microscopy. Fluorescence microscopy has greatly facilitated the task of understanding complex sys-tems at cellular and molecular levels in recent years. Segmentation, an important yet dif-ficult problem, is often the first processing step following acquisition. Our team previously demonstrated that a stochastic active contour based algorithm together with the concept of

I hereby declare that I have created this work completely on my own and used no other sources or tools than the ones listed, and that I have marked any citations accordingly. Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt sowie Zitate kenntlich gemacht habe.

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to determine the rates and patterns of change occurring in DNA sequences to reconstruct evolutionary relationships among organisms). This work requires massive amounts of DNA sequence data and is collaborative, involving scientists in many laboratories. Continuing innovations in high-throughput sequencing