Where's the Beef

The Ideas Factory-The Matter Compiler

I have often written about the need to know about what is coming , what we can expect from technology, see for instance my discussion of the articles about Ian Pearson's Business 2010 and Siemens' Pictures of the Future. Now British scientists have created a framework called the Ideas Factory and a weblog about it. So what comes out of the scientists' sandpit(That's what THEY call it ;-)? Read the blog and comment upon it. Software-controlled matter!! .

The Matter Compiler: "

The final project to go forward from the Ideas Factory on the Software Control of Matter is based on theoretical chemistry/materials science and computer science, and we anticipate this linking strongly to the experimental activities funded from the Ideas Factory. As with the two experimental projects, a few administrative hurdles need to be jumped before EPSRC funding can be confirmed.

An ambition to assemble molecules and materials under atomically precise control demands a big leap forward in control engineering and computer science. Is it possible to anticipate the properties and needs of a ‘nano-assembler’? If so, there is a need for a high level instruction language and a computer compiler that translates commands in this language into instructions for the ‘nano-assembler’. This development will require a breakthrough in understanding of chemical synthesis that must embrace the radically new ‘pick and place’ assembly method which is now possible in scanning probe microscopy (SPM). The Matter Compiler project is thus both an exercise in foresight, to anticipate developments in this area, and a prototype implementation for the engineering control and computer science aspects of directed molecular assembly. It has as inputs data from SPM experiments of collaborators, energy landscapes for ‘pick and place’ reactions and the vast knowledge base of classical synthetic chemistry, including methodologies such as retrosynthesis. This will be supplemented by reaction schemes for ‘pick and place’ reactions deduced from first principles quantum chemistry calculations and the technology of object oriented databases and inference engines.

The team is led by Dr Harris Makatsoris (Engineering, Brunel University) and comprises Professor Malcolm Heggie (Chemistry, University of Sussex), Dr Nick Holliman (Computer Science, University of Durham), Dr Helen Wright (Computer Science, University of Hull) and Professor Jeremy Ramsden (Advanced Materials, Cranfield University).

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(Via Software Control of Matter.)

Science, Biology for the Rest of Us

Sometimes, if not always, I/we need to check what scientists tell us. They talk science language; we talk business. So we need "translators". Access Excellence is such a site, highly recommended!

Access Excellence, launched in 1993, is a national educational program that provides health, biology and life science teachers access to their colleagues, scientists, and critical sources of new scientific information via the World Wide Web. The program was originally developed and launched by Genentech Inc., and in 1999 joined the National Health Museum, a non-profit organization founded by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as a national center for health education. Access Excellence will form the core of the educational component of the National Health Museum Website that is currently under development. .

If, say, you wish to know about Transfer and Cloning of the Insulin Geneyou just go to http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/VL/GG/transfer_and.html

I like the graphics or Visual Library. I pull down an illustration and ask the scientist to explain how and where her/his invention fits in. Works well.