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Science Fiction in the News Articles
Related to material in Blood Music
by Greg Bear

A marvelous novel, expanded from the short story of the same name. Vergil Ulam is a frustrated biologist and geneticist working on biological computers - in a word, smart viruses and bacteria. When he is kicked out of his lab for working with recombinant DNA, he decides to take some of his work home. A classic cautionary tale about fooling with Mother Nature.

Science fiction in the News articles describe real-world events that relate to the ideas and inventions in sf novels and movies. Select a news article:

Humans Teach Bacteria New Language
   A group of scientists lead by Professor James C. Liao are engineering an artificial cell-to-cell communication network by teaching bacteria to communicate with each other and to work together in a whole new way.

Biomolecular Computer: The Tiniest Doc?
   The vial at shown here contains trillions of tiny doctors capable of both diagnosing a particular form of cancer as well as administering an anti-cancer agent.

Bacillus Loquacious: AI-2 and the Talkative Bacterium
   "When we think about bacteria, we think about them as being tiny single-celled organisms that live these very asocial reclusive lives," said Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. "In fact, bacteria have developed language, an

Biocomputers (Biological Computers) Come Closer
   Researchers continue to take small steps toward the creation of biological computers.

Bacterial Art - Culture In A Dish
   It shouldn't surprise us that bacteria can create beautiful patterns while solving problems (just like we sometimes do), but these pictures still surprised me.

Morgellons Disease Has Science-Fictional Effects
   Morgellons syndrome is an almost sfnal disease process - if it really exists.

Logic Gates Built Inside Living Cells
   Remarkable development allows logic gates to be placed inside living cells.

Bacteria Talk To Each Other On Bassler Video
   Exceptional talk by molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler details the latest research and thinking about how bacteria work together to help us and harm us.

Bacterial 'Computer' Solves Math Problem
   Genetically modified bacteria solve yet another math problem. It takes a while to program them, but when you can double your number of processors every few hours, the calculations go faster.

Slime Mold Network Engineering
   It turns out that the yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a very clever little engineer. Greg Bear, are you listening?

First DNA-based Artificial Neural Network
   Artificial intelligence at a molecular scale.

The Most Complex Synthetic Biology Circuit
   'The earliest biologic strings had been inserted into E. coli bacteria as circular plasmids...'- Greg Bear, 1984.

Can Gut Bacteria Make You Smarter?
   'Vergil had trained the lymphocytes in the past six months to interact as much as possible with each other and with their environment...'- Greg Bear, 1984.

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