MEAD is a set of software objects for the purpose of modeling the
electrostatics of molecules using a semi-macroscopic picture in which
the solvent and the molecular interior have different dielectric
constants, the boundary between the different dielectric regions is
dependent on the detailed atomic structure of the molecule, and the
electrostatic potential is determined by the Poisson-Boltzmann
equation. This version of MEAD includes modeling of a membrane as a
low dielectric slab, possibly with a water-filled channel through a
protein in the membrane.

MEAD is written in C++, which is a significant departure from most
molecular software, which is more commonly written in Fortran or
(recently) C. My purpose in choosing C++ was to explore the
object-oriented programming style that C++ facilitates and to make a
software system that other people could borrow pieces from and make
extensions to in a convenient way.

MEAD is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later
version. For more details, see the README, INSTALLATION and COPYING
files inside the distribution. If you use MEAD in a scientific
publication, please cite the papers, Bashford92 and ISCOPE97.

Author:
---------
Donald Bashford
don.bashford@stjude.org

Hartwell Center
Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, TN