Researchers at a French institute have resurrected an extinct virus from the human genome. Yes, you read it right, they resurrected it from the human genome itself. The virus, dubbed [i]phoenix[/i], is from a class of viruses known as retroviruses which ...
All posts by Paras Chopra
Microsoft announces Synthetic Biology
Microsoft has announced $500,000 funding for research on Computational Challenges in Synthetic Biology. It is a very exciting opportunity for synthetic biology researchers to give a boost to their research from the funding obtained.
Make sure you ...
iGEM 2006
iGEM competition this year took place at MIT with 37 teams from all over the world participating to make [i]cool[/i] biology projects. Take a look at the competition this year at: http://www.igem2006.com ...
Intellectual Property Issues in Synthetic Biology
[URL=https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/34274/1/synbio.plos.1031.pdf]This paper[/URL] details various issues regarding IP in Synthetic Biology. I haven't read it, but it seems interesting. It should serve as good pointer to budding Biohackers. ๐ ...
The Artificial Being Project Updated
The Artificial Being Project has been updated. Check it out at: http://www.paraschopra.com/projects/ai-being/ai-being.pdf ...
Democracy as a paradigm for Artificial Intelligence
I have lately realized that Artificial Intelligence can be best achieved if it is modeled on democracy. Democracy works in a decentralized manner and all the decisions it makes go through rigorous debate. The best of all, there is no single entity respon...
Mangta – google your way to cool stuff
I have launched a beta (or perhaps alpha) version of Mangta. It is a webservice which will let you search for songs, movies, ebooks, software, games and all other kinds of cool stuff using clever google tricks.
Take a look at it. Click to [URL]htt...
Misc. Philosophy Questions
Alejandro Barreto asked me a few of his philosophical questions. I am reproducing the relevant part of conversation below.
> 1. What is the basis of entire reality? And what does Godel's Incompleteness > Theorem got to do with this?
As...
Why do I write this blog?
I dunno. Maybe I am litle egoist; I like express myself even when nobody is listening. Or, maybe this blog will help the person who will write my biography ๐ ...
The limit of genomic tinyness
[URL=http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10259&feedId=online-news_rss20]A new species of bacteria[/URL] has been discovered with minimalistic genome size having just over 180 genes and less than 200k bp. They say it could be an organelle into mak...