The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution

Author: Susan Hockfield

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 0393634752

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"Entertaining and prescient…Hockfield demonstrates how nature’s molecular riches may be leveraged to provide potential solutions to some of humanity’s existential challenges." —Adrian Woolfson, Science A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies that radically reshaped the world: radios, televisions, aircraft, computers, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. Today, a new technological convergence—of biology and engineering—promises to create the tools necessary to tackle the threats we now face, including climate change, drought, famine, and disease World-renowned neuroscientist and academic leader Susan Hockfield describes the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped to create them. Virus-built batteries. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Computer-engineered crops. Together, they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the twenty-first century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.

Life's Ratchet
Life's Ratchet

Author: Peter M. Hoffmann

Publisher:

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0465022537

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Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. People are essentially giant assemblies of interacting nanoscale machines.

Out of Control
Out of Control

Author: Kevin Kelly

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 666

ISBN-13: 9781857023084

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A synthesis of research and theory, this work chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the adaptability and autonomy of living organisms becomes the model for human made systems and machines. The author combines ideas from the Choas Theory, cybernetics, current thinking on evolution and research into computerized artificial life with his own experience of on-line culture to show that industrial culture is now obsolete. This book presents the prospects of imminent revolution as Kelly identifies new frontiers of thinking about biological systems that will change the way the natural world is percieved.

Viral Molecular Machines
Viral Molecular Machines

Author: Michael G. Rossmann

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-02-02

Total Pages: 685

ISBN-13: 1461409802

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This book will contain a series of solicited chapters that concern with the molecular machines required by viruses to perform various essential functions of virus life cycle. The first three chapters (Introduction, Molecular Machines and Virus Architecture) introduce the reader to the best known molecular machines and to the structure of viruses. The remainder of the book will examine in detail various stages of the viral life cycle. Beginning with the viral entry into a host cell, the book takes the reader through replication of the genome, synthesis and assembly of viral structural components, genome packaging and maturation into an infectious virion. Each chapter will describe the components of the respective machine in molecular or atomic detail, genetic and biochemical analyses, and mechanism. Topics are carefully selected so that the reader is exposed to systems where there is a substantial infusion of new knowledge in recent years, which greatly elevated the fundamental mechanistic understanding of the respective molecular machine. The authors will be encouraged to simplify the detailed knowledge to basic concepts, include provocative new ideas, as well as design colorful graphics, thus making the cutting-edge information accessible to broad audience.

Making Sense of Life
Making Sense of Life

Author: Evelyn Fox KELLER

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0674039440

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What do biologists want? How will we know when we have 'made sense' of life? Explanations in the biological sciences are provisional and partial, judged by criteria as heterogenous as their subject matter. This text accounts for this diversity.

Cell Biology by the Numbers
Cell Biology by the Numbers

Author: Ron Milo

Publisher: Garland Science

Published: 2015-12-07

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1317230698

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A Top 25 CHOICE 2016 Title, and recipient of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) Award. How much energy is released in ATP hydrolysis? How many mRNAs are in a cell? How genetically similar are two random people? What is faster, transcription or translation?Cell Biology by the Numbers explores these questions and dozens of others provid

The Genesis Machine
The Genesis Machine

Author: Amy Webb

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-02-15

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1541797930

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Named one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FAR The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies. Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field—which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code—has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. It gives us options to deal with existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to fuel. But there are significant risks. Who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass extinction event? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.

The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines
The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines

Author: Chris Kempes

Publisher: Seminar

Published: 2018-09

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 9781947864184

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Why do computers use so much energy? What are the fundamental physical laws governing the relationship between the precise computation run by a system, whether artificial or natural, and how much energy that computation requires? This volume integrates concepts from diverse fields, cultivating a modern, nonequilibrium thermodynamics of computation.

Autonomous Robots
Autonomous Robots

Author: George A. Bekey

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2005-05-20

Total Pages: 595

ISBN-13: 0262292475

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An introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that reviews over 300 current systems and examines the underlying technology. Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO, and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics—the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.