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Advanced Biological Computer Developed
First time accepted submitter ben saad issam writes in with news about a new biological transducer built by Israeli scientist. "Using only biomolecules (such as DNA and enzymes), scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed and constructed an advanced biological transducer, a computing machine capable of manipulating genetic codes, and using the output as new input for subsequent computations. The breakthrough might someday create new possibilities in biotechnology, including individual gene therapy and cloning."
Limited lifespan beings.
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I qubet your proteins are folding now
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Why is it that every time foreign people do something amazing, someone has to question them about the actions of their governments?
Someone in Isreal did science? But they oppress the Palestinians, so it doesn't matter.
Someone in Saudi Arabia did science? But they oppress their women, so it doesn't matter.
Someone in China did science? But they censor their internet, so it doesn't matter.
Someone in Russia did science? But Putin is a fascist, so it doesn't matter.
Assuming that you're american, how would you react if you published a scientific paper after making a great breakthrough, and people started asking why you killed all those people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why you tortured them without due process at Guantanamo Bay?
Don't get me wrong, I do support human rights; but you shouldn't blame every single individual for the actions of their government.
Sorry, I disagree. If this was from Syria there could perhaps be a discussion about how their academia is able to innovate despite the civil war going on. The actual war, who's killing who, who's right and who's wrong, would still be off-topic.
This is an excellent observation. Repeated observations of innovation, country by country, gives us a truer feeling for the freedoms present in each country. Also, the purer the ongoing scientific advances made in a country, the more freedom is indicated in that country. In a fascist-lead country there can be progress toward a technical goal that helps the regime. Even so, under such pressure, scientists will guard and hold back their great discoveries because they know it is their perceived value that keeps them in demand (and safe). Scientists jockeying for position under a totalitarian regime withhold rather than share. So when you see a country repeatedly make advances in pure science, and these advances are shared with the rest of the world, you are seeing a country where thinking people do not feel constraints on what they think and do not feel they will be persecuted for their attitudes and thoughts. Ongoing shared diverse excellent scientific contribution is your canary in the coal mine of oppression.
Turn us all into Mentats.
Need the spice!
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
I've... read things you people wouldn't believe...
Like ships on fire near the Tannhauser Gate, maybe?
It's not "very telling". Quite simply: There are a lot of moronic mods out there. Come to grips with the fact that you can't please all the people all the time, and embrace your inner troll. I have. My karma has soared. The mods, They do nothing!
Why is it that every time foreign people do something amazing, someone has to question them about the actions of their governments?
Because that's the only thing they can contribute. They don't understand the science, but they do understand geography.
In this case, I'd say it's more a fault of the articles than the reader: I'm a molecular biologist, and I can't figure out from the summary or the blurby article what's going on.
“Our results show a novel, synthetic designed computing machine that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant results,” says lead researcher Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. “In addition to enhanced computation power, this DNA-based transducer offers multiple benefits, including the ability to read and transform genetic information, miniaturization to the molecular scale, and the aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms.”
Honestly, aside from "DNA-based" and "read and transform genetic information," that sounds exactly like the computer I'm currently typing on. There are no concrete examples of how this could be useful in any article I'm coming across. There's no video of this thing in action. It's all buzzwords and promises.
The actual article can be found here behind a paywall. The abstract:
As computing devices, which process data and interconvert information, transducers can encode new information and use their output for subsequent computing, offering high computational power that may be equivalent to a universal Turing machine. We report on an experimental DNA-based molecular transducer that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant outputs. As a proof of concept, the transducer accomplished division of numbers by 3. The iterative power was demonstrated by a recursive application on an obtained output. This device reads plasmids as input and processes the information according to a predetermined algorithm, which is represented by molecular software. The device writes new information on the plasmid using hardware that comprises DNA-manipulating enzymes. The computation produces dual output: a quotient, represented by newly encoded DNA, and a remainder, represented by E. coli phenotypes. This device algorithmically manipulates genetic codes.
So... in other words they made sequences in ecoli which can be used as a calculator. A very, very, VERY slow calculator. This is not a novel concept people have used DNA for computations before. DNA based computers are probably never going to replace electronic ones, I mean fundamentally, DNA is slower than electricity. Even life finds DNA to be too slow for such calculations, which is why your thoughts are conducted via sodium and potassium gradients. The fact that they don't mention any real uses for this means they couldn't think up a good reason why you'd need to do computations with DNA. "aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms" bullshit.
So, I'd say that Israel sounds like the most interesting thing here. I now know that the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel has a PR department that works VERY hard to make their results sound interesting.
I will say that the techniques here could have real uses and could be important, just not at all in the ways that are being discussed. It could lead to a useful lab technique, maybe. But making a living computer? I'd sooner believe that North Korea had invented cold fusion.
The irony is that the OP's name is definitely Arabic, as are about 10% of undergrads in Israeli universities.
Assuming that you're american, how would you react if you published a scientific paper after making a great breakthrough, and people started asking why you killed all those people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why you tortured them without due process at Guantanamo Bay?
What world do you live in? This happens all the time.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Some of the more interesting threads on Slashdot are the ones that don't stick to the narrow subject the submitter is promoting.
And yet the worst threads are the ones like these that devolve in a political shitfest. Which is any post that barely touches:
Israel, China, the US government, the EU, guns, money, climate, religion, evolution, women, RMS and a handful of other topics that I can't be bothered to dig up from memory. Grow up please.
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<insert Kletsmer sountrack here>
-- 29A the number of the Beast
I was thinking of C-beams.
I heard the first automobile was kind of slow.
ISR,TFYFM!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
May 31, 2013: World Gets Its Most Accurate Clock - Loses just one second in 50 billion years – Most clocks lose minutes over time and need to be reset—but if you're a scientist or an engineer, you need clocks that are just a bit more reliable. And now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have created the world's two most accurate atomic clocks. The next time they'll need to be reset—for a mere one-second delay—is in 50.8 billion years. The researchers' paper describes the significance of the development: It's like "specifying the age of the known universe to a precision of less than one second or Earth's diameter to less than the width of an atom." The clocks, as all atomic clocks do, keep time using light frequencies and the fluctuation of atoms. But small movements of the atom or stray electric fields can interfere with the frequencies, so the new design—known as an optical lattice clock—minimizes these problems, holding the atoms in a vice-like grip, MIT Technology Review reports. And while you're probably thinking no one should be that obsessed with being on time, there are real-world applications. As Smithsonian explains, the clocks may help measure small changes in glacier ice thickness or tectonic plate movement; they're even useful for GPS systems. http://www.newser.com/story/168793/worlds-most-accurate-clock-keeps-time-for-50b-years.html