Sunday, May 09, 2010

So that's why they computed the FT!

Awesome!!
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10 comments:

Tecumseh said...

What's wrong with computing some integrals?

5/09/2010 3:38 PM
Mr roT said...

No idea how they'd do that. Point is that they have an oscillator that they can ramp and by doing so, it will interfere with an incoming signal and spit out the FT.

It can't do anything else.

It's very interesting. Back in WWII-period there were lots of analog computers in existence that could solve PDE and so on. These have been all replaced by digital computers, of course, which are programmable to a lot of different jobs rather than having to be essentially redesigned to solve another kind of problem.

Now, it's back to the future because there's little to redesign on a molecule, apparently. This is wonderful, though I like Adelman's stuff even better.

5/09/2010 3:42 PM
Tecumseh said...

Ah, it's like getting back to Coanda's jet design, or something?

5/09/2010 3:44 PM
Mr roT said...

Exactly.

5/09/2010 3:44 PM
Mr roT said...

Awesome.

5/09/2010 3:46 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...

What did Adelman do?

5/09/2010 8:08 PM
Mr roT said...

His homepage.

This is the paper I am thinking about:

"Molecular Computation of Solutions To Combinatorial Problem," Science, 266: 1021-1024, (Nov. 11) 1994.

A small instance of the' Hamiltonian path problem' is encoded in molecules of DNA and solved in a test tube using the tools of molecular biology. This is apparently the first example of computation carried out at the molecular level and suggests the possibility of fundamental connections between biology and computer science.

I'll get you the paper if you're interested. It is about the smartest thing I have ever seen.

5/09/2010 8:47 PM
Mr roT said...

...though these Japanese here are extremely clever with their FT molecule.

5/09/2010 8:47 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...

That paper does sound interesting. It's available over the internet?

5/09/2010 8:59 PM
Mr roT said...

Adelman.

5/09/2010 9:07 PM

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