Four short links: 4 April 2017
Molecular Informatics, Culture Pain, Science Commercialization, and Early UIs
- DARPA Looking to Molecular Informatics — Instead of relying on the binary digital logic of computers based on the Von Neumann architecture, Molecular Informatics aims to investigate and exploit the wide range of structural characteristics and properties of molecules to encode and manipulate data. “Chemistry offers a rich set of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid, scalable information storage and processing,” said Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “Millions of molecules exist, and each molecule has a unique three-dimensional atomic structure as well as variables such as shape, size, or even color. This richness provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures.”
- Google Wing Team’s Woes — To solve the design problems, the flight-testing crew’s supervisor, Tony Nannini, wanted to do what Google managers often do in such situations: Collect loads of data. And there the pain began.
- Nocera’s Latest: Bionic Leaf — Nocera’s core tech is artificial photosynthesis, and they have a steady stream of related headline-grabbing demos. I suspect their challenge is scale. Science is about doing something once, however expensive or manual the process. Commercialization is about driving it from pioneers to settlers and town planners, but that’s easier said than done.
- Charles Babbage’s Mouse Pointer (Webstock) — Marcin Wichary’s fascinating talk from this year’s Webstock.
