A quick in-n-out trip, just flew into SFO from NRT for a workshop on quantum biology being sponsored by Google, back to Tokyo in just 36 hours.
Here’s the workshop agenda and abstracts.
And a first for me, a five minute video-blog doing a little desktop tour of background on why I’m investing in this research.
Hartmut Neven. Welcome and Introduction
Mohan Sarovar. Quantum Mechanics of Photosynthetic Light Harvesting Machinery
Masoud Mohseni. Optimal and Robust EnergyTransfer in Light Harvesting Complexes
Luca Turin. A Quantum of Solace -Molecular Electronics of Benzodiazepines
Geordie Rose. D-Wave – Natural Quantum Computation
Elisabeth Rieper. Classical and Quantum Information in DNA
Jiri Pokorny. Microtubules – Electric Oscillating Structures in Living Cells
Anirban Bandyopadhyay. Experimental Studies on a Single Microtubule
Stuart Hameroff. Quantum Biology: Clarifying the Tubulin bit/qubit – Defending the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR Model
Jack Tuszynski. Electrodynamic Signaling by the Dendritic Cytoskeleton
Hartmut Neven. Learning From Examples Using Quantum Annealing
Special Workshop at University of Arizona Center for Consciousness Studies
Streaming video, Stuart Hameroff, Anirban Bandyopadyay, and Jiri Pokorny. Mac and Linux-friendly videos are here for Hameroff-Pokorny, and Anirban. Prof Pokorny’s talk begins about 31 minutes into the first file.
After Workshop Notes
Paul Davies’ Beyond Center hosted a workshop on cancer biology attended by many of the Google workshop presenters.
Prof Pokorny mentioned in his Tucson talk how creation of “nanovoltmeters” by the Kopelman group at University of Michigan has allowed, for the first time, a detailed survey of the electric-field potentials inside of the cell. In particular, the presence of E-fields as high as 3.5 MV/m around the mitochondria extend for MICRONS into the surrounding cytoplasm.
This means a couple of things. Firstly, the traditional view of the interior of the cell as a bag of saline with random bit floating around is dead wrong. It seems more appropriate to model the intracellular space as a gel or liquid-crystal.
Secondly, E-fields of such a great magnitude suggest that water in proximity to organelles like mitochondria would be ordered, as opposed to bulk water. This has tremendous implications for how the cell performs computations, and information transfer. A compendium of the original Open Access 2007 Kopleman paper, along with eight others that have cited it, is found here.
Both the Kopelman papers, as well as Anirban’s work show how surprising developments in the life sciences will be facilitated by the application of nanotech-based tools.
New York Times article on quantum computing, mentions Google possible tie-up with D-wave and JPL.
An interesting development in the view of a holographic universe!
David,
Thanks for this clear report of the Google conference. As a poet long interested in the “music of the spheres” in outer and inner space, I’m fascinated by the mystery swirling around this topic. If the task of science is “to think God’s thoughts after him,” perhaps this would make it possible to think God’s thoughts before Him! As Diana Robertson said, “We may explore the universe and find ourselves, or we may explore ourselves and find the universe. It matters not which of these paths we choose.” Or as someone said, “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in haveing new eyes.” Thanks for helping us to see!
Bob