Standard compression algorithm could revolutionize physical and biological computations, researchers say
(PHYSorg.com Physics)

Entropy, a measure of the molecular disorder or randomness of a system, is critical to understanding a system`s physical composition. In complex physical systems, the interaction of internal elements is unavoidable, rendering entropy calculation a computationally demanding, and often impractical, task. The tendency of a properly folded protein to unravel, for example, can be predicted using entropy calculations.