November 2009
4 posts
Optogenetics: optical stimulation plus genetic... →
In the summer of 2007, a team of Stanford graduate students dropped a mouse into a plastic basin. The mouse sniffed the floor curiously. It didn’t seem to care that a fiber-optic cable was threaded through its skull. Nor did it seem to mind that the right half of its motor cortex had been reprogrammed.
One of the students flipped a switch and intense blue light shone through the cable into...
1 tag
Oops: Backscatter x-ray machines "tear apart DNA" →
Though touted as completely safe because the level of radiation is so low, travelers have been nervous about the devices — and not just because it shows off a nice outline of their privates to the people manning the machines — but because they remain scared of the health problems they might propose.
Looks like a little healthy paranoia might have been a good thing. While the...