{"id":124,"date":"2006-03-30T09:20:12","date_gmt":"2006-03-30T09:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/?p=124"},"modified":"2013-08-26T18:09:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T23:09:11","slug":"micheal-crichton-solved-it-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/micheal-crichton-solved-it-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Crichton Solved it First!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Ricky smiled again, and shrugged. &ldquo;Hey,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It gets the job done.&rdquo; Those kettles in the next room were indeed tanks for controlled microbial growth. But Ricky wasn&rsquo;t making beer&mdash;he was making microbes, and I had no doubt about the reason why. Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That was an excerpt from Michael Crichton&#8217;s <em>Prey<\/em>, a sci-fi novel, and an excellent read, published in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>That particular quote was in reference to the protagonist discovering that a R&amp;D company was using bacteria (in his case &quot;Theta-d 5972 [&#8230;] A strain of E. coli.&quot;) to grow nanoparticles, which in turn built nanobots. I am a lover of sci-fi novels, the more plausible, the better. Michael Crichton is a physicist, and his novels tend to be incredibly beleivable&#8230; Just read on!<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Only a week ago on March 19, 2006, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/4782152.stm\" rel=\"follow\">according to BBC<\/a>, researchers from Norwich <em>used a plant virus to create nanotechnology building blocks! <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&quot;By linking iron-containing compounds to the virus&#8217;s surface, the John Innes Centre team was able to create electronically active nanoparticles. [&#8230;] &#8216;We started to think about the virus particles as nano-building blocks,&#8217; explained Dr David Evans, a chemist at the John Innes Centre and the lead author on the Small paper.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>I think it is quite an amazing accomplishment, and I would love to hear what the Michael Crichton has to say when he hears it&#8230; Patents anyone? :P<\/p>\n<p>You can see a brief synopsis of Crichton&#8217;s writing style and technique (no spoilers) at the Wikipedia article <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crichton\" rel=\"follow\">here<\/a>; as always, feel free to add to it.<br \/> If you want to purchase (highly recommended!) <em>Prey, <\/em>you can grab it real cheap off <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0002STNQ2\/sr=8-1\/qid=1143710181\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/103-1984574-2221415?%5Fencoding=UTF8\" rel=\"follow\">Amazon<\/a>, or drop by a Barnes and Noble near you.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/micheal-crichton-solved-it-first\/\" rel=\"follow\">digg<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/neosmart.newsvine.com\/_news\/2006\/03\/30\/150910-michael-crichton-solved-it-first\" rel=\"follow\">seed<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ricky smiled again, and shrugged. &ldquo;Hey,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It gets the job done.&rdquo; Those kettles in the next room were indeed tanks for controlled microbial growth. But Ricky wasn&rsquo;t making beer&mdash;he was making microbes, and I had no doubt about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/micheal-crichton-solved-it-first\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xDa-20","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1901,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}