The Warren Astronomical Society meets monthly on the first Monday of every month in the auditorium at Cranbrook Institute of Science. We do a bit of club business early on, then have a major presentation usually put together by one of our members. As an appetizer, Larry Phipps will present a slideshow of the latest photos from Hubble since the successful servicing mission. Dave D'Onofrio, former club president, plans to present "Computer-like Systems in the Cell," an application of his engineering background to molecular biology. He writes: "Computer systems dominate our cultural and industrial way of life. They influence not only the products we make, but the way we communicate, learn and live. Computers need a robust storage system capable of sharing massive data bases and operating systems along with an architectural schema of logical gates, arithmetic processes and graphical engines manifested through the construction of integrated circuits, via the micro processor. It is not surprising to learn that the principles of computer science and engineering governing these devices, find their way to help us describe what we see inside the cell. "This presentation takes a comparative look at the engineering sciences to that of DNA processes operating within the cell. These bio-processes emulate computer like processes such as information storage systems and other computer like architectural constructs that are present in almost every cell of our body. "From a cosmological view, the Big Bang resulted in the creation of matter and energy that evolved into the universe we see today. However, 'Information,' an abstract entity, exists independently of matter and energy and will be shown to exist inside the cell and manifest itself in the form of computer like architecture, file formatting and hard drive "like" operations. "This presentation makes use of multiple animations from Harvard, North Dakota State University, and my own creations to help the audience quickly comprehend the computer-'like' structures found in the cell. This work is soon to be published in a professional peer-reviewed journal."
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