Korean rights

I'm delighted to report that Atlantic have accepted an offer for the Korean rights to Genesis Machines. The book will be published by Forest of Knowledge, a division of Nexus Press.

Stupidity and the War on Terror

A ridiculous story about a post office in the US that was shut down and visited by agents in hazmat suits, just because a woman reported receiving a letter from India.

I loved this comment in the ensuing Fark discussion thread:

Shortly after 9/11 I filed a police report for a guy who found a "suspicious white powder" in a textbook sent to him by the publisher. As it turns out the "suspicious white powder" is something commonly known as printer's dust. It's harmless.

I'm not sure why this guy thought McGraw-Hill was trying to kill him, but seeing as he works in the Math Department I'm sure he has plenty of enemies.

George Church and constructive biology

There's a nice article by George Church in the latest issue of The Edge.

Genesis Machines preview

As you may know, my popular science book Genesis Machines: The New Science of Biocomputing will be published by Atlantic Books on November 9. I've placed a short sampler excerpt on the book website. It's in PDF, so you'll need a suitable application, such as Adobe Reader.

Blog down-time

The blog will not be updated until after I have moved office to Manchester Met (on June 26). Please check back then for the latest news on the move, as well as other updates.

Synthetic biology - follow-up discussion

Apologies for the lack of recent posts - we've been househunting up north in preparation for my move to Manchester Met.

Anyway, I thought I would point you towards an interesting post on Soft Machines, Richard Jones' always-excellent blog. His most recent post concerns synthetic biology (see below), and a discussion thread has also developed.

Synthetic Biology review

(Subscription may be required).

Synthetic biology: new engineering rules for an emerging discipline

Ernesto Andrianantoandro, Subhayu Basu1, David K Karig and Ron Weiss

Molecular Systems Biology 2 doi:10.1038/msb4100073

Synthetic biologists engineer complex artificial biological systems to investigate natural biological phenomena and for a variety of applications. We outline the basic features of synthetic biology as a new engineering discipline, covering examples from the latest literature and reflecting on the features that make it unique among all other existing engineering fields. We discuss methods for designing and constructing engineered cells with novel functions in a framework of an abstract hierarchy of biological devices, modules, cells, and multicellular systems. The classical engineering strategies of standardization, decoupling, and abstraction will have to be extended to take into account the inherent characteristics of biological devices and modules. To achieve predictability and reliability, strategies for engineering biology must include the notion of cellular context in the functional definition of devices and modules, use rational redesign and directed evolution for system optimization, and focus on accomplishing tasks using cell populations rather than individual cells. The discussion brings to light issues at the heart of designing complex living systems and provides a trajectory for future development.

Moving

I'm delighted to say that I am leaving Exeter to take up a Senior Lectureship in the Department of Computing and Mathematics at Manchester Metropolitan University.

I was very impressed with the vision and ambition shown at Departmental, Faculty and University level, and am very much looking forward to working there. I start there in mid-June, and new contact details will follow once they are confirmed.

Leonardo in Exeter

We took the little 'un to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition that's currently running in Exeter. The museum has done an admirable job in securing a loan of the sketches from the Royal collection, and I felt privileged to be able to examine them at such close quarters.

I was particularly taken with "A study of a woman's hands" (possibly for the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani), c.1490. Quite apart from its possible significance as a study for such a well-known piece, it contained, almost as a doodle, a lovely sketch of a grotesque head in its top left corner.

I also loved "A sheet of pictographs", drawn over an architectural plan, c.1490, also known as rebuses or cryptograms. A detailed description of this sheet is given in Charles Nicholl's biography Leonardo Da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind.

The Great Debate

While at a meeting in Manchester this week I had the pleasure of meeting Caspar Hewett of the University of Newcastle, who, in his spare time, runs an organisation called The Great Debate. To quote the website, "The Great Debate is an umbrella title for a series of courses, day schools, public discussions and workshops on topics including Darwinism, human nature, the human mind, consciousness, development, sustainabilty and environmental thought."

I was greatly impressed by Caspar's energy and commitment, and am glad to offer a link here with the strong recommendation that you visit, and even consider getting involved.

Science in the Docks, Art in the Stocks

In the middle of last month I gave the opening talk at an ESRC-sponsored art/science crossover event. There's now an online report of the event. I'm not sure that I was arguing for the use of synthetic biology to create works of art per se, simply that the applications I highlighted used biological systems as the medium, rather than simply as inspiration. Nontheless, the report gives a decent overview of the whole event, which was certainly well worth doing (despite chronic tiredness, my daughter having been born less than a week previously...)

Aventis Prize

Congratulations to fellow Atlantic Books author Vivienne Parry; her book The Truth About Hormones has been shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Prize.

Bioprinting

"Sitting in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering."

Authorities approve Airbus result

The EASA and the FAA have both formally approved the result of Sunday's Airbus A380 evacuation trial, and the aircraft is now certificated to carry up to 853 passengers.

Nature Imitation Methods - Theory and Practice (NIM 2006)

International Workshop Session at the ISDA 2006 - 6th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent System Design and Applications, Jinan, Shandong, China, October 16-18, 2006.

NIM'06 will focus on the following topics:

• Evolutionary computation
  
• Neural networks
  
• Artificial immune systems
  
• Ant colony optimizations
  
• Cellular Computing
  
• Artificial life
  
• DNA Computing
  
• Combination of all above (hybrid approaches)
  
• Real applications
  

Important Dates:

• Special Session Proposal: May 1, 2006
  
• Paper Submission: May 15, 2006
  
• Notification of Acceptance: June 15, 2006
  
• Final Paper Submission: June 30, 2006
  

See the workshop webpage for further details (declaration of interest: I am on the Program Committee).

A380 evacuation test a success?

Airbus are claiming success after yesterday's A380 evacuation test, the results of which are yet to be verified by the authorities (but the signs suggest that this is just a formality). Airbus think they managed to evacuate 873 "passengers" (half of whom were Airbus employees, with the other half being recruited from local gyms...) in 80 seconds.

The test didn't run quite as smoothly as Airbus might have hoped, though, with one participant breaking his leg, and 32 others suffering minor injuries (many sustaining friction burns on the slides).

Thos familiar with our recent work on A380 evacuation modelling will know that one of the main variables of interest was delay caused by passengers pausing at the upper exits (which are 8m off the ground). The editor of Flight International, Mark Daly, was one of the participants in the test: "One of the big concerns was whether anybody would hesitate at the top of the slides," said Mr Daly. "The finding was that nobody does - in a panic situation, your universe contracts and you're only really conscious of the few feet around you."

Hopefully Airbus will release enough data to allow us to test the validity of our existing model, but there's no requirement for them to disclose anything other than the bare details of the test.
We'll wait and see.

A380 evacuation trial - date

According to "regulatory sources", Airbus have scheduled the A380 evacuation trial for Sunday March 26th. For more background, see our recent work on the aircraft.

DNA origami

Paul Rothemund has written a paper that appears on the cover of this week's Nature (the link goes to a news story with an image of a DNA "smiley face", see the open access editor's summary, or the full paper (requires subscription)). He's come up with a way of folding a single DNA strand to form arbitrary two-dimensional shapes (much like origami experts fold a single sheet of paper into a multitude of designs).

Much work has been done on DNA nanotechnology, mainly inspired by the work of Ned Seeman. Rothemund's approach differs in that, rather than using many different "tiles" that self-assemble into a macro-scale single object, he folds a single section of well-sequenced viral DNA, using short "staple" strands to pin the whole complex together.

This work is wonderfully elegant, and is just one of several significant papers published by Rothemund. He first came to the attention of the DNA computing community at the first ever international workshop in 1995, when he described his scheme for a molecular Turing machine, and he's continued to produce work of outstanding quality.

Science in the Dock

The ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at Exeter is organising a week of public outreach activities.

"Egenis invites you to get involved during ESRC Social Science Week: On 14 March, ‘Science in the Dock – Art in the Stocks’ will bring together artists and scientists from the South West to discuss and critique each other’s work in a public symposium."

I'm giving the opening address, and will be talking about bacterial cameras and general synthetic biology. It should make an interesting change from the sort of event that I usually attend, so I'll try to post a summary of what went on (further details of the programme are available at the Egenis website).

Blog down-time

The blog will not be updated over the next week or so, as I'll be "away" on paternity leave.