Sevenyears ago, biochemist Zheng Cui of Wake ForestUniversitywas conductingaroutineexperiment, injectingtestmice with a strain of cancer cellsso aggressive it caused a 100 percent death rate.
Now to help facilitate the growth of robot scientists for routine, automated experiment, King and his team are urging that the methods and processes of science be formalized, to remove the ambiguities of natural language and make it easier to reproduce experiments and build the bases of knowledge.