Open Source Software for Humanity
Homework Week 8

Due Wednesday, 4/2

• Open Source Biology: Listen to the interview with Drew Endy on Open Source Biology. Endy is working in a brand new scientific field known as Synthetic Biology and he describes some of the challenges involved in building biological systems when some of the building blocks have been patented.

  Note that Endy's Powerpoint slides for the lecture are available on that same page for download. For a complete experience, download the slids (PDF) and follow along with the audio.

  Here's the Biobricks web site.

  After listening to the interview, do some on-line research about synthetic biology and Endy's work and write a short essay (250-300 words) that answers the questions:

  • What is synthetic biology and why is it important?
  • Can open source licensing help in this field and, in your opinion, is open source licensing likely to succeed?

  Post your essays here: http://www.cs.trincoll.edu/hfoss/wiki/Open_source_biology

• MySQL Exercise. As described in class, modify the MySQL example we did in class to add an HTML form that prompts the user for a "joke category" and then filters the joke list by that category.

  NOTE: To help you locate the various PHP examples we have done together in class, I've zipped them together and placed a link to the zip file on our course home page.