Dali Clock 2.33 is out now, and is finally installable on your iPhone. Improvements relevant to other platforms include: keeping the clock centered in the window when only 5 digits are being shown; and the elimination of flicker that happened on OSX only when a transparent clock window was overlaying another window that was playing video.
"Here we demonstrate an assembly of molecular switches that simultaneously interact to perform a variety of computational tasks including conventional digital logic, calculating Voronoi diagrams, and simulating natural phenomena such as heat diffusion and cancer growth. As well as representing a conceptual shift from serial-processing with static architectures, our parallel, dynamically reconfigurable approach could provide a means to solve otherwise intractable computational problems."The researchers made their different kind of computer with DDQ, a hexagonal molecule made of nitrogen, oxygen, chlorine and carbon that self-assembles in two layers on a gold substrate. The DDQ molecule can switch among four conducting states -- 0, 1, 2 and 3 -- unlike the binary switches -- 0 and 1 -- used by digital computers. [...]
Their tiny processor can solve problems for which algorithms on computers are unknown, especially interacting many-body problems, such as predictions of natural calamities and outbreaks of disease. To illustrate this feature, they mimicked two natural phenomena in the molecular layer: heat diffusion and the evolution of cancer cells.
So, it sounds like it's a 2-bit cellular automaton where each cell is composed of only 8 molecules (wow). But they said that each cell can route to ~300 others, so it must not be laid out in a hexagonal grid. My guess is that they way they are geting it to do anything is by training a neural net until it evolves custom solutions to whatever problems they have success-conditions for. But has anyone ever gotten an artificial neural network to evolve to something actually useful in the real world, or is it all still AI boondoggle?
Radiation therapy is used to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. But because radiation also damages normal cells, doctors must limit the dose. Melanin, the naturally occurring pigment that gives skin and hair its color, helps shield the skin from the damaging effects of sunlight and has been shown to protect against radiation.
"We wanted to devise a way to provide protective melanin to the bone marrow," said Dr. Dadachova. "That's where blood is formed, and the bone-marrow stem cells that produce blood cells are extremely susceptible to the damaging effects of radiation."
Dr. Dadachova and her colleagues focused on packaging melanin in particles so small that they would not get trapped by the lungs, liver or spleen. They created "melanin nanoparticles" by coating tiny (20 nanometers in diameter) silica (sand) particles with several layers of melanin pigment that they synthesized in their laboratory.
Anti-cancer agent stops metastasis in its tracks
They found that macroketone targets an actin cytoskeletal protein known as fascin that is critical to cell movement. In order for a cancer cell to leave a primary tumor, fascin bundles actin filaments together like a thick finger. The front edge of this finger creeps forward and pulls along the rear of the cell. Cells crawl away in the same way that an inchworm moves.
Macroketone latches on to individual fascin, preventing the actin fibers from adhering to each other and forming the pushing leading edge, Dr. Huang says. Because individual actin fibers are too soft when they are not bundled together, the cell cannot move.
The new animal experiments detailed in the study confirmed the power of macroketone. The agent did not stop the cancer cells implanted into the animals from forming tumors or from growing, but it completely prevented tumor cells from spreading, compared with control animals, he says. Even when macroketone was given after tumors formed, most cancer spread was blocked.
