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Whether your interests lie in scientific arenas, the corporate world, or in government, you have certainly heard the praises of big data: Big data will give you new insights, allow you to become more efficient, and/or will solve your problems. While big data has had some outstanding successes, many are now beginning to see that it is not the Silver Bullet that it has been touted to be. Here our main concern is the overall impact of big data; the current manifestation of big data is constructing a Maginot Line in science in the 21st century. Big data is not “lots of data” as a phenomena anymore; The big data paradigm is putting the spirit of the Maginot Line into lots of data. Big data overall is disconnecting researchers and science challenges. We propose No-Boundary Thinking (NBT), applying no-boundary thinking in problem defining to address science challenges.

Currently there are definitions from many agencies and research societies defining "bioinformatics" as deriving knowledge from computational analysis of large volumes of biological and biomedical data. Should this be the bioinformatics research focus? We will discuss this issue in this review article. We would like to promote the idea of supporting human-infrastructure (HI) with no-boundary thinking (NT) in bioinformatics (HINT).

Wireless Nanosensors and Systems research project has been investigating a systems approach to designing sensors systems. The effort is multifaceted and ranges from the design of low-cost sensors for various applications, such as biomedical or structural health monitoring, to the design of wireless interfaces and protocols with suitable networking and design of protocols to transmit sensor data from one place to another securely and to the design of appropriate applications themselves. The research team has been developing a system-engineering framework that forms the basis for collaborative activities across three campuses, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas State University, that captures the relationship between sensors, wireless interfaces, the network, the testbed that facilitates applications-level communications.