Free The Delta Chain by Iain Edward Henn Page B

saying so, but you seem a little young for such a role.’ She delivered the words with a warm smile but with a cool edge to her voice. It was a sound Bill Hadley had heard before, whenever a younger, prettier woman joined him and Meredith in a group. Sometimes he found it amusing but at other times, like today, it irritated him.
    ‘Oh, I started young,’ Kate responded without a trace of cattiness, ‘and I’ve been with A.B.C.S. for several years. Me and the megabytes go back a long way.'
    Hadley leaned forward over his plate. ‘Now what’s this business William was on about earlier, regarding your software speeding up the progress of the research?’
    ‘A.B.C.S. is known for business solutions,’ Kate said, ‘and tailoring our own brand of software intelligence to suit the requirements of our clients.’
    ‘Makes sense.’
    ‘But it’s hardly a new concept,’ Meredith said.
    ‘No. But it’s both the sophistication of our systems and the personal on-site service where A.B.C.S. differs. There’s a growing demand for that today.’
    ‘Can’t argue with that.’ Hadley was clearly on side. ‘Your boss, James Reardon, has quite a reputation. Whizz kid and all that. The financial press loves reporting on him. I believe his firm has more than doubled in size in the past two years.’
    Kate ran her fingers through her blonde hair, sweeping it back. ‘Yes. It’s been an exciting company to work for, Bill, and an incredible learning curve. Anyway, getting back to what you referred to on speeding up the research…’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Genetic research is complex beyond my understanding, I don’t mind admitting, and it relies heavily on computing solutions. I’m talking about applied mathematical formulae and algorithms. Are you familiar with concepts such as high-end digital software that applies those techniques?’
    Hadley laughed. ‘Only in layman’s terms. Not so much of the techno jargon, eh.’
    ‘Okay.’ Kate smiled, took a deep breath and searched her mind for the most suitable approach. ‘Let me use as an example, a scientist and his experiments in an earlier age. How about Thomas Edison, regarded as the scientific wizard of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Discovering electric light meant conducting a series of experiments, each one of which tried out a combination of various compounds to see whether they would produce the sought-after result. The fact is, Edison and his team conducted over ten thousand experiments over a period of decades, slowly and surely narrowing the odds.’
    Westmeyer and Hunter shared a grin at the retelling of this famous story.
    ‘Yes. Extraordinary,’ said Hadley.
    Kate continued: ‘Even today, all scientific and medical advances come from seemingly endless tests and trials, and the use of computers to analyse pieces of information along the way has sped up the process. A.B.C.S. has developed a method that James Reardon calls DataStorming…’ she pulled one of her funny, expressive monkey faces, ‘…okay, so it’s a bad word play on brainstorming, but I think it’s kinda catchy.’
    ‘It’s catchy,’ Hadley agreed.
    ‘We’ve created a DataStorming information bank specifically for the Westmeyer Centre. It holds a complete encyclopaedia on every branch of science and medicine. Utilising that knowledge, the software analyses data and formulates the most potentially successful results that can be achieved.
    ‘What that means is that Dr. Hunter can advise DataStorming he wishes to isolate the gene most responsive to fighting leukaemia and to engineer a set of much stronger leukaemia fighting genes. He programs the system to digitally conduct thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of hypothetical experiments and to analyse the hypothetical results. From these, DataStorming then advises the most likely combinations for undertaking the real laboratory experiments.’
    ‘I’m with you,’ Hadley said. ‘So, for instance, Dr. Hunter and his team begin