TOPIC BIOTECH
Biotech explainers
THE SHORT ANSWER
Where living systems and engineering meet. This section is still small: for now it holds a slime mould that reproduced a rail network and a radiation therapy machine whose software was its only safety net. More will follow as their sources are checked, not before.
Guides
Discoveries and curiosities
BIOTECH / DISCOVERY
Therac-25: When Software Was the Only Safety Net
Six overdoses between 1985 and 1987 from a radiation machine whose safety rested on software. What the Leveson and Turner investigation found.
BIOTECH / DISCOVERYThe Slime Mould and the Tokyo Rail Map
A single cell with no brain grew a network like Tokyo's railways. What the 2010 experiment showed, what press releases added and the algorithm behind it.