Free The Delta Chain by Ian Edward Page B

for
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