Robots of the Imperial Army

[whulorigan]

When enough energy is passed through lanthanum, it heats up, melts and/or vaporizes...

So, either the lanthanum hull grids are not element 57, or the physics of the OTU are different.

Or perhaps the Lanthanum is a crucial element that forms part of the alloy/compound/material that makes up a "Lanthanum" Hull-grid and/or inner jump-drive coils, whose material properties are diferent than the pure Lanthanum metal by itself.

 

[whulorigan]

DNA Computing

Very basic Organic (nucleic-acid based) computing has also been experimented with, but i am not sure how much of a potential speed-improvement it might be over semi-conductors.

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Got a citation for that one? I'd like to read more about that...

I suspect it's slower...[/FONT]

I am remembering it from an article in Science News within the last 2 years, but I unfortunately do not have a reference off the top of my head. If I can locate it, I will post it.

I have managed to track down the Science News Article (but you will need to be a subscriber to view it Online):

SCIENCE NEWS: Flexible DNA computer finds square roots
New digital circuit designed to use molecules to crunch a wider variety of complex math problems
By Daniel Strain June 2, 2011
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/flexible-dna-computer-finds-square-roots

I also found the following other references while searching:

Science 3 June 2011:
Vol. 332 no. 6034 pp. 1196-1201
DOI: 10.1126/science.1200520

Scaling Up Digital Circuit Computation with DNA Strand Displacement Cascades. Lulu Qian1, Erik Winfree
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1196.figures-only
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1156.full.pdf

Physical Review Letters
Reliability and Efficiency of a DNA-Based Computation
R. Deaton, M. Garzon, R. C. Murphy, J. A. Rose, D. R. Franceschetti, and S. E. Stevens, Jr.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 417 – Published 12 January 1998
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.417
http://www.csce.uark.edu/~rdeaton/dna/papers/dna_ep.pdf

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing