Category: computing – Page 723
“Ribocomputing devices” ( yellow) developed by a team at the Wyss Institute can now be used by synthetic biologists to sense and interpret multiple signals in cells and logically instruct their ribosomes (blue and green) to produce different proteins. (credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University)
Synthetic biologists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and associates have developed a living programmable “ribocomputing” device based on networks of precisely designed, self-assembling synthetic RNAs (ribonucleic acid). The RNAs can sense multiple biosignals and make logical decisions to control protein production with high precision.
As reported in Nature, the synthetic biological circuits could be used to produce drugs, fine chemicals, and biofuels or detect disease-causing agents and release therapeutic molecules inside the body. The low-cost diagnostic technologies may even lead to nanomachines capable of hunting down cancer cells or switching off aberrant genes.
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IBM and Sony have successfully developed a magnetic tape storage cartridge capable of containing more than 300 terabytes of data. This device, which comes in the smallest format there is, could revolutionize data storage even in cloud platforms.
Magnetic tape drives have been around for more than six decades now. It’s commercial use has been mostly for storing data, such as tax documents and health care records, from mainframe computers. From the first 2-megabyte tape drives in the 1950s, today’s versions are now capable of storing up to 15 terabytes. IBM has been pushing it further.
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In a new world record, scientists at IBM have captured 330 terabytes of uncompressed data, or the equivalent of 330 million books, into a cartridge that can fit into the palm of your hand. The record of 201 gigabits per square inch on prototype sputtered magnetic tape is more than 20 times the areal density currently used in commercial tape drives. Areal recording density is the amount of information that can be stored on a given area of surface.
Tape drives were invented over 60 years ago and were traditionally used for archiving tax documents and health care records. IBM’s first tape unit used reels of half-inch-wide tape that could only hold about 2 megabytes.
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Many of you will likely already know who Professor George Church is and that he is an important and senior member of the research community engaged in treating the aging processes to prevent or reverse age-related diseases, not to mention all kinds of other applications for genetic engineering. For those who are not familiar with him a short bio follows.
George Church is a professor at Harvard & MIT, the co-author of over 425 papers, 95 patent publications and the book Regenesis. He developed the methods used for the first genome sequence back in 1994 and he was instrumental in reducing the costs since then using next generation sequencing and nanopores plus barcoding, DNA assembly from chips, genome editing, writing and re-coding.
He co-initiated the Genome projects in 1984 and 2005 to create and interpret the world’s only open-access personal precision medicine datasets. He was also involved in launching the BRAIN Initiative in 2011.
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Theoretical physicist Lucien Hardy is pushing wants to push the boundaries of quantum physics by performing a Bell test using humans as links. This could potentially shed light on the existence of human consciousness and just what it is made of.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing and interesting phenomena in quantum physics is what Einstein referred to as a “spooky action at a distance” — also known as quantum entanglement. This quantum effect is behind what makes quantum computers work, as quantum bits (qubits) generally rely on entanglement to process data and information. It’s also the working theory behind the possibility of quantum teleportation.
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