A Role for Bottom-Up Synthetic Cells in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things?

The potential role of bottom-up Synthetic Cells (SCs) in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) is discussed. In particular, this perspective paper focuses on the growing interest in networks of biological and/or artificial objects at the micro- and nanoscale (cells and subcellular parts, microelectrodes, microvessels, etc.), whereby communication takes place in an unconventional manner, i.e., via chemical signaling. The resulting "molecular communication" (MC) scenario paves the way to the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to impact biotechnology, nanomedicine, and related fields. The scenario that relies on the interconnection of natural and artificial entities is briefly introduced, highlighting how Synthetic Biology (SB) plays a central role. SB allows the construction of various types of SCs that can be designed, tailored, and programmed according to specific predefined requirements. In particular, "bottom-up" SCs are briefly described by commenting on the principles of their design and fabrication and their features (in particular, the capacity to exchange chemicals with other SCs or with natural biological cells). Although bottom-up SCs still have low complexity and thus basic functionalities, here, we introduce their potential role in the IoBNT. This perspective paper aims to stimulate interest in and discussion on the presented topics. The article also includes commentaries on MC, semantic information, minimal cognition, wetware neuromorphic engineering, and chemical social robotics, with the specific potential they can bring to the IoBNT

Multiple viewpoint modelling framework enabling integrated product-process design

Nowadays, companies have to cope with numerous constraints at organisational and technical levels in order to improve their competitiveness edges such as productivity, efficiency, and flexibility. Integrated product-process design becomes more and more complex to manage because of increasingly customized products related to various stakeholders and concerns geographically distributed. It is still represents a huge challenge, especially in the early phases of product development process. In such a context, the management of information within integrated product-process design highlights needs in a consistent engineering model that enables product lifecycle management (PLM) integration. The paper presents a novel multiple viewpoint framework called multiple viewpoint assembly oriented, considering product design and assembly process domains in the broader context of concurrent engineering and PLM. The proposed framework describes the consistency, the propagation of information change, and mechanisms of views generation among the product lifecycle stages in order to support assembly oriented design philosophy. A new modelling language called System Modeling Language is used to describe the proposed model from a systems engineering point of view. The implementation of the model in a Web-service called PEGASUS as an application for PLM systems is describe

A Role for Bottom-Up Synthetic Cells in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things?

he potential role of bottom-up Synthetic Cells (SCs) in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) is discussed. In particular, this perspective paper focuses on the growing interest in networks of biological and/or artificial objects at the micro- and nanoscale (cells and subcellular parts, microelectrodes, microvessels, etc.), whereby communication takes place in an unconventional manner, i.e., via chemical signaling. The resulting “molecular communication” (MC) scenario paves the way to the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to impact biotechnology, nanomedicine, and related fields. The scenario that relies on the interconnection of natural and artificial entities is briefly introduced, highlighting how Synthetic Biology (SB) plays a central role. SB allows the construction of various types of SCs that can be designed, tailored, and programmed according to specific predefined requirements. In particular, “bottom-up” SCs are briefly described by commenting on the principles of their design and fabrication and their features (in particular, the capacity to exchange chemicals with other SCs or with natural biological cells). Although bottom-up SCs still have low complexity and thus basic functionalities, here, we introduce their potential role in the IoBNT. This perspective paper aims to stimulate interest in and discussion on the presented topics. The article also includes commentaries on MC, semantic information, minimal cognition, wetware neuromorphic engineering, and chemical social robotics, with the specific potential they can bring to the IoBNT

Open problems in artificial life

This article lists fourteen open problems in artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated

Unified Theory of Relativistic Identification of Information in a Systems Age: Proposed Convergence of Unique Identification with Syntax and Semantics through Internet Protocol version 6

Unique identification of objects are helpful to the decision making process in many domains. Decisions, however, are often based on information that takes into account multiple factors. Physical objects and their unique identification may be one of many factors. In real-world scenarios, increasingly decisions are based on collective information gathered from multiple sources (or systems) and then combined to a higher level domain that may trigger a decision or action. Currently, we do not have a globally unique mechanism to identify information derived from data originating from objects and processes. Unique identification of information, hence, is an open question. In addition, information, to be of value, must be related to the context of the process. In general, contextual information is of greater relevance in the decision making process or in decision support systems. In this working paper, I shall refer to such information as decisionable information. The suggestion here is to utilize the vast potential of internet protocol version six (IPv6) to uniquely identify not only objects and processes but also relationships (semantics) and interfaces (sensors). Convergence of identification of diverse entities using the globally agreed structure of IPv6 offers the potential to identify 3.4x10[subscript 38] instances based on the fact that the 128-bit IPv6 structure can support 3.4x10[subscript 38] unique addresses. It is not necessary that all instances must be connected to the internet or routed or transmitted simply because an IP addressing scheme is suggested. This is a means for identification that will be globally unique and offers the potential to be connected or routed via the internet. In this working paper, scenarios offer [1] new revenue potential from data routing (P2P traffic track and trace) for telecommunication industries, [2] potential for use in healthcare and biomedical community, [3] scope of use in the semantic web structure by transitioning URIs used in RDF, [4] applications involving thousands of mobile ad hoc sensors (MANET) that demand dynamic adaptive auto-reconfiguration. This paper presents a confluence of ideas