Sexist case-notes can be useful

Can Spurious States Be Useful?

Michel e C eccarelli Isti t uto di Ri cerca sui Sist emi In form atici Perelleli, IR SIP-CNR 80125 Nap oli, It aly Ab stract. Additive automata are analyzed and used as associative memories. Th eir storage capacity is comput ed as well as the attrac tion basin of each memorized pattern. We show how such systems can be used when the patterns to be memorized have a subset of relevant features; "s...

Can viruses ever be useful?

M ost of the terms used for computer viruses arc metaphors: they have a largely medical origin, and are seductive if not literally sexy. The very real worries WC have about AIDS, for example, no doubt colour the way we talk about computer viruses. At the extreme, abstractly viruses arc clearly just algorithms, and like any other algorithm they arc good for some things and not good for others. T...

Use patents can be useful: the case of rescued drugs.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, use patents can have both commercial and therapeutic value.

Commentary: Matched cohorts can be useful.

Can Quantum Computers Be Useful When There

Formulation of the problem. Quantum computers (see, e.g., 5]) have a potential of speeding up computations in many important problems. For example: By using Grover's algorithm 3, 4], for any given error probability e 0 , we can search for an item in an n-item (un-sorted) database in (p n) steps (where checking that a given element is the desired one is counted as a single step). By contrast, th...