Fantastic Voyage Research Articles

ChemInform Abstract: Fantastic Voyage: Designing Self‐Powered Nanorobots

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Mobile Health News & Products

Mobile Health News & Products

Fantastic Voyage: Designing Self‐Powered Nanorobots

The use of swarms of nanobots to perform seemingly miraculous tasks is a common trope in the annals of science fiction.1 Although several of these remarkable feats are still very much in the realm of fiction, scientists have recently overcome many of the physical challenges associated with operating on the small scale and have generated the first generation of autonomous self-powered nanomotors and pumps. The motors can be directed by chemical and light gradients, pick up and deliver cargo, and exhibit collective behavior.

A fantastic voyage?

A fantastic voyage?

Die zweite Reise des Odysseus in Lukians Verae Historiae

Abstract As is well known, Lucian’s masterpiece Verae Historiae can be read as a travesty of Homer’s Odyssey. The present paper argues that with his fantastic voyage Lucian reacts not just to the Odyssey itself but also to the recent interpretation of the Odyssey by the Middle Platonic and Neopythagorean philosopher Numenios of Apameia. Lucian’s purpose, therefore, in writing the Verae Historiae was presumably to give back to Odysseus some of the resilience that interpretations like that of Numenios had taken away from him, and in general to set mythological poetry free once again from the constraints the philosophers had laid on it.

MICROROCKETS TAKE OFF

ALTHOUGH MICROSCALE motors can’t yet take a “Fantastic Voyage” through the human body like the one portrayed in the 1966 sciencefiction film, a new study suggests that in vitro assays for detecting...

Exploring the Brain, Looking for Thoughts: On Asimov's Second Fantastic Voyage

The aim of this paper is to investigate various concerns which appear in Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain. I will disregard his first voyage inside a human body in Fantastic Voyage I, which the author disavows as not being his own work. In contrast, the second voyage is intricate, suggesting problems drawn from a variety of sources. In a nutshell, Asimov's explorers enter the body of a comatose man in order to read his thoughts. The story can be related both to philosophical thought-experiments, such as those of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and of Herbert Feigl, as well as to personal anxieties peculiar to Asimov.

A Fantastic Voyage into Inner Space: Description in Science-Fiction Novelizations

This article analyzes science-fiction novelizations from a specific narratological angle, namely the literary description. It has been argued that novelizations contain a small amount of description, which is remarkable considering the emphasis on visuality characteristic of sf cinema. The essay highlights a few striking features of descriptions in novelizations, with examples taken from the novelizations of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Terminator (1984), The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage (1966) is presented as the main case study, for description plays a central role in this novel, not only formally but also thematically. Passages from Asimov’s novelization are positioned against relevant scenes from the film, with a focus not only on the difference between the two media but also the discrepancy between media within the sf genre. Finally, the article attempts to open up the discussion, arguing for contextual and medium-specific factors in the disproportion between the abundant visuality of film and the descriptive content of novelizations, and calling for more attention to the vital cognitive side to

I've Got you under my Skin: Narratives of the Inner Body in Cinema and Television

1966 Twentieth Century Fox big-budget film Fantastic Voyage represents a corner stone around which a whole audiovisual trope was built. The topic of the voyage of shrunken people sent to explore the inner space of the body was adopted since then by many feature films, television series and animated TV series, for the aims of education, entertainment or edutainment. While the exploration of the body (and, often, the meeting with its inhabitants) gives space to just a few possibilities of plot development, it leaves open ground for metaphors. Starting from the hypotext, this article analyzes a sample of audiovisuals to try to summarize a taxonomy of narrative schemes and the different metaphors (and their uses) that our body can host.

My Dream of a Fantastic Voyage to See the Inner Workings of a Cell

What would I give to be allowed to embark on a Fantastic Voyage at the nanometer scale inside the cell! In the 1960's film, humans were shrunk down to merely micrometer scale, but we now know that “nano” is the ticket. Imagine being able to observe cellular structural biology in real time and to see proteins and nucleic acids in action, in the concentrated environment of the nucleus, let alone in the cytosol. I imagine a complex molecular ballroom full of many intricately choreographed dancers, changing partners, switching locations, dying and being born again. Imagine the purpose and chaos governing the survival of the cellular microcosm, there for me (for you) to see and ultimately understand. Eva Nogales. Photo by Paul Fetters for HHMI. As a structural biologist, initially trained as a physicist, cells often seem too complex and far afield from my own research. My scientific presentations typically borrow images from cell biologists' websites, and I warn my audience after the first introductory slides that no more cells will be seen for the rest of the talk. However, as a molecular electron microscopist working on the cytoskeleton and large macromolecular complexes, I boast in front of crystallographers and nuclear magnetic resonance experts that we study fully functional complexes, in as close to physiological conditions as one can possibly expect outside of a cell. However, this is obviously not as physiological as if we were visualizing the native complexes in their cellular context! With fully annotated genomes providing nearly complete cellular parts lists, and with ever more powerful light microscopy, among other 21st century techniques, we have come a long way toward understanding the inner workings of the cell. Still, the dream of visualizing the intact cell's anatomy with molecular resolution seems like science fiction. Is there any hope for visualizing these molecular machines where they function and when it matters, even if it is not through our atomically shrunk, craving eyes? I really want to think so. It may not come from a single instrument, like the Star Trek scope where magnification can be cranked until the bar code on individual atoms becomes clear. However, combining currently available methodologies and then taking them to the next level may, step by step, get us there. The first combined electron and light microscopes are already producing data wherein the fluorescent colors of choice are superimposed on the gray levels of individual molecular density. Spectroscopy readings, with nanometer cube mapping capability, are being carved out of cellular slices in futuristic attempts at spatial metabolomics. Three-dimensional maps of hydrated cells will soon become routine, and as the resolution moves from 100 to 10 Å in my life time (if I take good care of myself), we will be able to identify macromolecules by shapes, in snapshots of cellular life. We will be able to follow the paths of single proteins as they meander their way along the chaotic cellular freeways of the cytoskeleton, or fluidly traffic between cellular compartments. We are almost there. My own personal dream of “visualizing” the complete kinetochore protein network, carrying out the dynamic engagement of chromosomes to the mitotic spindle and thus revealing the force coupling mechanism, may be just around the corner. It is not that images are worth a thousand gels, or movies a million pulldowns (although perhaps they are), it's just my own preferred means of getting to know and understand nature. My wish for the future of cell biology: I want to “see” the cell (I leave smelling it and listening to it to biochemists and theoretical physicists, respectively).

Fantastic voyage and opportunities of engineered nanomaterials: What are the potential risks of occupational exposures?

Kagan, Valerian E. PhD, DSc; Shi, Jingwen MSc; Feng, Weihong PhD; Shvedova, Anna A. PhD, DSc; Fadeel, Bengt MD, PhDEditor(s): Schwerha, Joseph J. MD, MPH Author Information

Fantastic voyage: molecular recognition viewed through macroscopic properties

Fantastic voyage: molecular recognition viewed through macroscopic properties

Nanorobots for Medicine: How Close Are We?

Since the pioneering vision of Feynman in his now famous lecture ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ first delivered at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech in December 1959 [1], film and scientific exploration at the nanoscale have been lending each other imagery and targets to achieve. It took only 5 years from Feynman’s lecture for a fellow resident of Los Angeles, Harry Kleiner, to complete the script for the film ‘The Fantastic Voyage’ that was released in 1965 to popularize ‘miniaturization for medicine’ like no scientist could ever do. The inspirational power of miniaturizing matter to navigate throughout the human body and reach the brain to remove aneurysm-causing blood clots depicted in the film, even transcended into the art world thanks to Salvador Dali and his painting ‘Le Voyage Fantastique’ portraying the voyage in to the human subconscious, a result of the painter’s direct involvement in the production of the film (Figure 1). Today, 45 years after this first cinematography-originated use of nanotechnology for medicine, numerous scientists, thinkers, film makers and authors have been describing how this powerful technology can assist us to explore the nanoscale of the human body. However, one question still persists. Where do fantasy, imagination and science fiction stop and where does ‘real’ science and medicine start? The answer is that even though dramatic developments in technology and engineering at the nanoscale have occurred in the last decade, we are still at a state of infancy regarding the capability to design, manufacture, control and navigate nanorobots (nanomachines, nanobots, nanoids, nanites and nanonites or however else described) and purposefully use them for diagnosis or therapy. Some of the most critical challenges are discussed below.

A historical laboratory in Rome

Visitors who climb the austere stairs of the Giuseppe Sanarelli Institute, headquarters of the Public Health Sciences Department, in the University La Sapienza of Rome, may experience a strange feeling: the steps follow one another identically, yet each seems taller and more difficult than the last. It is as if, with every step, time reveals its stories, experiences; ever larger and harder to sustain. Following the corridor it is impossible not to pause and reflect upon the displays of memories and details belonging to the past. There is a constant sensation, almost tangible: it is as if each of the objects, so dense with memories, want to take you on a fantastic voyage to another time and place. Objects made of wood, copper and other materials that come from the past, filled with the scent of a world that no longer exists.

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Colon Capsule Endoscopy: Fantastic Voyage or Ship Adrift in Murky Waters?

Colon Capsule Endoscopy: Fantastic Voyage or Ship Adrift in Murky Waters?

<i>Jerome Bixby's 'The Man from Earth'</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Jerome Bixby's 'The Man from Earth' Rodney Hill (bio) Jerome Bixby's 'The Man from Earth' (Richard Schenkman USA 2007). Anchor Bay. NTSC region 1. 1.78:1 letterboxed anamorphic. US$26.98. As the name above the title might suggest, the greatest strength of Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth lies in its thought-provoking script. As a screenwriter, Jerome Bixby (1923–98) was best known for penning four memorable episodes of Star Trek (US 1966–9), including 'Mirror, Mirror' (6 October 1967), which [End Page 161] introduced the concept of a parallel universe into the Star Trek universe. His short story 'It's a Good Life' (1953) was adapted by Rod Serling for The Twilight Zone (1959–64; broadcast 3 November 1961), was remade as one of the segments of Twilight Zone: The Movie (Dante, Landis, Miller and Spielberg US 1983) as well as prompting a sequel, 'It's Still a Good Life' (19 February 2003), for The Twilight Zone (Canada/US 2003). Bixby also co-authored the original story that was the basis for the film, Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer US 1966), which curiously was then novelised by sf icon Isaac Asimov. In The Man from Earth, Bixby's protagonist, John Oldman (David Lee Smith), decides that he must leave his comfortable, tenured position as a history professor at an unnamed university because of a rather singular problem: he does not age, or so he claims. He can only stay in one place for a few years without arousing unwanted suspicions, and so must move on to start a new life every ten years or so. The story takes place over the course of a long afternoon and evening, at an impromptu gathering of Oldman's colleagues – representing a broad range of academic disciplines, from art history to biology and anthropology – who have come to bid him a fond farewell, during which he finally shares with them his big secret: that he has lived for over 10,000 years. Their responses (like those of the viewer, perhaps) range from incredulity ('You must be joking!') to indignation ('How dare you pull such a prank on us?') to genuine curiosity and wonder ('Tell us more!', 'Can this be true?'). Throughout the evening, each tries with little success to poke holes in the punningly named Oldman's story, but gradually some of them come around to a cautious acceptance of his claims. Although the overly sarcastic Art (William Katt), who is responding to an apparent midlife crisis by dating one of his students and sporting an ill-advised ponytail, might at first seem like an easy cliché, he actually offers an interesting counterpoint to Smith's 10,000-year-old man. If we cringe at the sight of Art cuddling with a 20-year-old co-ed, how awkward must it be for the centuriesold Oldman to be romantically involved with anyone? Aside from such practical questions – which also include, what are John's earliest memories? and when did he realise that he was immortal? – a couple of big surprises are sprung near the end of act two, leading into a rather sudden and mildly confusing resolution. The first and more startling of these revelations comes after Oldman tells of his wanderings 'towards the east', during which he met and studied with the Buddha. This bit of news spurs his colleagues into a rapid series of questions, finally leading to, 'Did you ever meet any figures from the Biblical tradition?' Oldman's hesitation here only serves to make his listeners more insistent that he answer their question, and he reluctantly admits that he was the man who became known as Jesus. However, he is quick to point out that he never claimed [End Page 162] to be divine, and says that his simple teachings (based on Buddhist principles) have often been overlooked in favour of a needlessly complicated mythos that casts the figure of Jesus as a deity. Having gradually acclimatised the audience to the hard-to-swallow premise of a caveman who has lived into the twenty-first century, Oldman's story takes a giant leap that shakes the very foundations of some worldviews – ironically, by...

College Students and the Curriculum: The Fantastic Voyage of Higher Education, 1636 to the Present

By adding student perceptions of the curriculum, we enhance the current history of American higher education over 5 decades. We draw from memoirs, short stories, notebooks, and legends to animate the story of students and the curriculum. The episodes depict historical events and cases that have shaped colleges, curricula, and students. The study is grounded in modern concepts and theories from psychology, sociology, and economics.

Advances in Visualizing the Vasculature

Advances in Visualizing the Vasculature

Nano- and microrobotics: how far is the reality?

There has been an explosion in the development of microscopic and miniaturized technology over the past decade and we have long awaited their arrival and integration into clinical practice. We have now reached the stage where promises are beginning to be delivered. This article reviews their place in modern medicine and looks toward the future. Miniature camera robots (microrobots) provide a mobile viewing platform, enhancing a surgeon’s view. Nanorobots have arisen from the fictional world of the ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and are finally approaching clinical application. As the targeting and drive forces are further developed, these vehicles could be realistically used for delivery of agents for diagnosis and therapies. These new robots have the potential to further evolve the robotic armamentarium for surgeons.