July 1, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 13)

URL:
http://www.us.net/life

Rating:
Strong Points: Thorough approach
Weak Points: A bit weak in some content areas

Summary:
How much do you suppose it is worth to solve the issue of the origins of life to the satisfaction of the scientific community? $100,000? $500,000 or $1,000,000? The answer is the last number in the series. Unfortunately, the anonymous nature of the prize money donation has put a snag in the efforts to proceed with the contest. So, you can’t enter it at this time, but the contest itself is worth noting and (I suspect) it will probably be opened up again soon. The purpose of the contest is to “stimulate research into chaos, complexity, information, probability, self-organization, and artificial life/intelligence theories as they relate directly to biochemical and molecular biological reality.” The four qualifications for winning the grand prize are too detailed to go into here, so I won’t. From my perspective, though, they range from difficult to trivial to satisfying. Is the contest for you? There’s only one way to determine that—check it out.

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