DNA-Based Computer Solves Truly Huge Logic Problem

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:16:31 -0800
To: cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: DNA-Based Computer Solves Truly Huge Logic Problem
Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com

At 01:44 PM 03/15/2002 -0600, James Choate wrote:
>    http://unisci.com/stories/20021/0315023.htm
and many of you autodeleted or ignored it,
because it's just Jim forwarding stuff again.

However, it had a catchy title, and sure enough,
Len Adleman is up to new tricks -
this time he's gotten a DNA computer to solve a problem instance with
2**20 possible values.  It looks like the popular 3-SAT problem
which many NP-complete problems are easily resolved to.

The real article is in "Science", the AAAS journal,
but the unisci.com article doesn't give a real footnote to it.

Now, if he'd pointed us to Slashdot,
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/16/1353240&mode=thread&tid=126
we'd have the references to http://physicsweb.org/article/news/6/3/11 ,
which says "(R Braich et al 2002 Science to appear)",
a comment by someone who talked to one of the researchers,
confirming that, yes, it was a 24-clause 20-variable 3-SAT problem,
and references to USC News (Adleman works at USC)
http://uscnews.usc.edu/usctoday/action.lasso?-database=USCToday.fmp&-response=Detail.html&-logicalOp=and&-recID=35637&-search
which has a slightly longer version of the article that _does_ have references,
including http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml
which (for a free registration) will let you see the *real* article.

But Jim knows y'all can read slashdot for yourselves :-)

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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