From the category archives:

Software technologies

Quiz Question:
What is wrong with this model of computation?

August 3, 2011

In the news today: “Governments, IOC and UN hit by massive cyber attack” (BBC)
How did the attack work? In a mind-numbingly ordinary way:

“An email would be sent to an individual with the right level of access within the system; attached to the message was a piece of malware which would then execute and open a [...]

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An advance in atomically precise
building-block assembly

May 27, 2011

A paper in Science reports a design method that substantially advances the macromolecular technology base for building atomically precise nanosystems.
Background: foldamer engineering
As many readers know, biology shows an effective way build large, intricate, atomically precise systems: Use covalent chemistry to build chains of small building blocks, and design these chains to fold into nanoscale building [...]

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3D atomic imaging of nanoparticles
— a new technique

February 24, 2011

From the abstract:
Although atomic-resolution electron microscopy has been feasible for nearly four decades, neither electron tomography nor any other experimental technique has yet demonstrated atomic resolution in three dimensions. Here we report the 3D reconstruction of a complex crystalline nanoparticle at atomic resolution. To achieve this, we combined aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, statistical parameter [...]

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The 7th Peptoid Summit:
Progress in peptoid toolkit development

August 13, 2010

The 7th Peptoid Summit highlighted progress in design technology for one of the most promising toolkits in modular molecular systems engineering.
I’ve outlined the submonomer method for peptoid synthesis as a powerful and convenient way to assemble diverse molecular components, and the recent development of crystalline peptoid nanosheets as a platform for extended atomically-precise structures. The [...]

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Needless Megadeaths:
A Suggestion for Science in the Public Interest

June 16, 2010

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How many minds produce knowledge
(and how they don’t)

December 11, 2009

A review of Infotopia
I’ve been discussing problems with public information and ways to improve it with Michael Nielsen, and on this topic, he recommended Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge by Cass Sunstein. Having just finished reading it, I recommend it too.
With a solid grounding in experiments and studies of group behavior (and enlightened common [...]

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Cybersecurity: Let’s try something that can work

November 25, 2009

William Wulf and Anita Jones have written a brief, tantalizing, and important article in Science: “Reflections on Cybersecurity”. They point the way out of a tangle of security problems (not all, of course) that costs billions of dollars in losses billions in countermeasures, and billions more in opportunity costs — some known and some [...]

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Quantum Computing:
Sorry, no speedup in solving linear systems

November 10, 2009

In the science press, Big News often turns out to be hyped trivia, but the current Big News in quantum computing is something else — a self-hyping mutant of genuine big news, the discovery of an algorithm that promises exponential speedup in a class of problems where the result depends on the solution to a [...]

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Total Recall:
How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything

September 20, 2009

Gordon Bell, a long-time leader and innovator in the world of computation, has immersed himself in a life-changing experiment. Bits and pieces of news about it have been circulating for years, and his new book, just published, gives a full picture. In brief, Gordon records and indexes what he sees, hears, and more — [...]

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Slides for Talk on Nanotechnology
and Computational Challenges

July 28, 2009

I’ve posted the slides for my WORLDCOMP’09 keynote, “Advanced Nanotechnology: Advanced Computing on the Critical Path”: Click here to download.
My earlier talk for the 2009 Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum was directed to a non-specialized nanotechnology audience and surveyed near-term directions in framework-directed self assembly as a basis for next-generation nanosystems. The WORLDCOMP’09 talk is organized like [...]

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Macromolecular Modeling
for Molecular Systems Engineering

April 16, 2009

Nir London of the Macromolecular Modeling Blog has invited me to offer my perspective on the field. After patiently waiting for me to complete it, he’s posted the resulting essay, which I have cross-posted below.
The Macromolecular Modeling Blog is hosted by the Rosetta Design Group, which offers molecular modeling services based on the Rosetta protein [...]

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CAD for Nanoengineering: Atoms, materials, and nanostructures

March 9, 2009

Computer-aided design of structures on an ordinary scale can ignore atoms, and this is a major simplification. A piece of steel, for example, can typically be treated as a homogenous and isotropic material. The dimensions and angles of a steel component can be chosen freely: With few limitations, a steel plate can be of any [...]

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