In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey.

In Paris, a graduate student in a secret laboratory reveals a powerful new technology to a beautiful and mysterious woman. A few hours later, the student is drugged and dumped in a river. Radical environmental terrorists are launching a fanatical campaign--and the very future of the world they seek to protect may be at stake. Only MIT scientist and federal agent John Kenner can stop the deadly plot before the terrifying consequences are realized--and...

Learn about chemist Rosalind Franklin from her early career in coal research ans x-ray crystallography to her groundbreaking phot that showed the structure of DNA.

"A biography of two maverick scientists whose intellectual wanderlust kick-started modern genomics and cosmology. Max Delbruck and George Gamow, the so-called ordinary geniuses of Segrè's third book, were not as famous or as decorated as some of their colleagues in midtwentieth-century physics, yet these two friends had a profound influence on how we now see the world, both on its largest scale (the universe) and its smallest (genetic code). Their...

Xymos Technology laboratory is working on creating cell-sized artificial organisms that can group together to perform complex tasks. The task the microcreations choose is to break free of their human creators.

The co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry discusses his critical research on the ribosome, a molecular machine that actually forces DNA into action, turning genetic code into functioning proteins that create life. "Everyone has heard of DNA--the molecule that seems to hold the secrets to all life. But by itself, DNA is little more than a blueprint for life, resting inertly within our cells. Hardly anyone, however, has heard of a ribosome....

"In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis, ascended to prominent, dangerous roles, and were very lucky to survive. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate...