Was reading about microchips that are designed to allow a few mistakes (known as 'Sloppy Chips'), and pondering equivalent kinds of 'coding' errors and entropy in biological systems. Can a fair comparison be made between the two? OK, to setup my question I probably need to run through my (basic) understanding of biological vs silicon entropy...

In the transistor, error is a bad thing (in getting the required job done as efficiently and cheaply as possible), metered by parity bits that come as standard in every packet of data transmitted. But, in biological systems error is not necessarily bad. Most copying errors are filtered out, but some propogate and some of those might become beneficial to the organism (in thermodynamics sometimes known as "autonomy producing equivocations").

Relating to the article about 'sloppy chips', how does entropy and energy efficiency factor into this? For the silicon chip efficiency leads to heat (a problem), for the string of DNA efficiency leads to fewer mutations, and thus less change within populations, and thus, inevitably, less capacity for organisms to diversify and react to their environments - leading to no evolution, no change, no good. Slightly less efficiency is good for biology, and, it seems, good for some kinds of calculations and computer processes.

What work has been done on these connections I draw between the biological and the silicon?

I'm worried that my analogy is limited, based as it is on a paradigm for living systems that too closely mirrors the digital systems we have built. Can DNA and binary parity bit transistors be understood on their own terms, without resorting to using the other as a metaphor to understanding?

Where do the boundaries lie in comparing the two?

A single cell, such as a bacterium, is the simplest thing that can be alive. In addition to the materials from which it is constructed, it needs three features: a way of capturing energy (a metabolism), a way of reproducing (genes or something like genes) and a membrane that lets in what needs to come in and keeps out the rest.

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.

The scientific paper is published in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.

In books, films, video games and folklore, zombies are undead creatures, able to turn the living into other zombies with a bite.

But there is a serious side to the work.

In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection. The researchers say the exercise could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations.