Lecture 1 – What is Life?

The talk around the country among health insurance companies is that their insurance business is dying.
What is happening? First, the consolidations in other industries, resulting in large, multistate corporations, already mean that many companies self insure their employees. Even many local firms have large enough work forces that they can be self-contained risk [...]

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. News Report @ BBC News
The synthetic cell looks identical to the ‘wild type’See also:
Full Paper: D. G. Gibson et al [2010].”Creation of [...]

“a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life. Szostak’s protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the [...]

Could alien life exist in the form of dancing specks of dust? According to a new simulation, electrically charged dust can organise itself into DNA-like double helixes that behave in many ways like living organisms, reproducing and passing on information to one another. Full article @ The New Scientist Space

Lecture Notes: What is life?Dennet, D.C. [2005]. “Show me the Science“. New York Times, August 28, 2005Kanehisa, M. [2000]. Post-genome Informatics. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1, Blueprint of life, pp. 1-23.Scientific American: Special Issue on the evolution of Evolution, January 2009.

This blog is used to post and discuss materials for the I-485/H-400/I-585 “biologically inspired computing” course at Indiana University. Welcome!

Here is a story by Robert Gavin in the Boston Globe about the deteriorating financial condition of Massachusetts hospitals. This is another in the now all-too-familiar type of story about layoffs of health care workers in our state, something some of us predicted several months ago.
While there are some who suggest that a move [...]

Image via WikipediaHere’s a short and sweet digestible tip sheet, from Chromadex, on how to successfully tackle the FDA GMPs for Dietary Supplements, Dietary Supplement cGMP Highlights and Tips for Success – Tech Tip 0014 (PDF) 
Return Home: http://drughealth.blogspot.com/
GMP Posters
The Health, Drug, Prescription, and GMP Supersite Gift Store
Return to Mobile Home: http://drughealth.mofuse.mobi/
The ADA Guide to [...]

Sometimes an expression that would be appropriate and kind in normal circumstances can add pain or anxiety in a clinical setting.
A friend recently went to the Emergency Room because of some bad symptoms. After a few tests, the attending returned to give the diagnosis. He started out by saying, “I hate it when [...]