How the classic computer game Doom became a tool for science

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How the classic computer game Doom became a tool for science
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The 1990s game has been run on bacteria and a satellite and played by neurons in a dish. The 1990s game has been run on bacteria and a satellite and played by neurons in a dish.

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Developers of the computer game Doom released the game's code in 1997, allowing scientists to use it as part of their research.was released in 1993, its utility for science wasn’t immediately clear. Since then, the first-person shooter has been used in many studies, from helping to improve artificial-intelligence modelsIt has also spawned a subculture in which fans and developers, including scientists, try to run the game on different devices — from calculators to digital pregnancy tests. Last month, scientists in Australia reported that they had taught neurons grown on a silicon chip to play the game. The phrases ‘Can it runAlon Loeffler, a synthetic-biological-intelligence scientist who was part of the team at biotechnology company Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia, which trained the neurons, says the team chose, with its more complex environment, was a natural next step, he says, because “the Internet always asks, ‘Can it playThe subculture around the meme reflects the crucial role of play in science, says Mars Buttfield-Addison, a software developer and PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. By engaging in play and having fun, researchers are using the same kind of creativity needed to solve scientific problems. “Making something silly doesn’t take any less work than making something really technical,” she adds, and engaging in fun science can be a powerful motivator.is particularly appealing for research because, in 1997, its code was published online by John Carmack, one of its developers at id Software in Richardson, Texas. This allows people to adapt the game so that it works on other platforms or devices, says Buttfield-Addison.Lauren 'Ren' Ramlan, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, has integrated the game into her research. In 2023, during the first year of her doctoral programme, she used. She attached a fluorescent protein to the bacterial cells that could be turned on or off, making them act like black and white pixels on a screen. She then translated and compressed the first few frames ofAccess the most recent journalism from Nature's award-winning teamFaculty Positions at the Center for Machine Learning Research , Peking UniversityOpen Rank Faculty in Dept of Oncology Science The newly established Department of Oncology Science, College of Medicine at the Unive...

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