Meeting notice: 04-07-98 7:30 NE43-773 (545 Tech Sq.)


Suggested topic:

Even simple NT designs require very large investments
of time and energy.  The discipline naturally raises
the question of how these resources might be organized
so as to assure rapid innovation, high levels of
performance, reasonable costs, and multiple sources of
support for those using these designs.

Over the last four or five years a new idea touching
these issues has appeared on the net: open source
programming. (See
http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.programming/oss.html
for commentary and links to basic documents.)  While
this model has to do with bits, not atoms, it seems
worth discussing whether the example it sets is
necessarily irrelevant to our purposes.  Can some
varient of this model be adapted to NT design?  To some
subsets of NT design?

Lecture notice:

Algorithmic Self-Assembly of DNA: Theory and Experiment
4:00pm Monday, April 6, 1998; NE43-518

Erik Winfree
Caltech

        The DNA self-assembly process can be designed
        to simulate the activity of any one-dimensional
        cellular automaton, thereby achieving a "one
        pot" chemical computer capable of universal
        computation.  This gives reason to hope that
        DNA structures can be designed to self-assemble
        according to programmable rules.


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hapgood@pobox.com