We talk a lot about vaccines these days, and for good reason. But it’s easy to forget that, even in the excitement swirling around COVD-19 vaccine development, other bio-medical research is quietly also being conducted in our nation’s cleanrooms and laboratories. So we’re going to take a mini ‘Pandemic Pause’ today and shift the focus [Read More…]
What do you get if you cross a parrot with a centipede? Take a moment…A walkie-talkie! Yes, as anyone with a kindergartener knows, the old jokes really are the best. But when it comes to crossing one animal with another – also known as hybridization – it’s time to get serious. Although the idea of [Read More…]
Back in 2011, a ‘wild card’ movie based on The Dark Fields, a science fiction novel by Alan Glynn, hit the box office to unexpected success. Grossing more than $160 million on a slender $27 million budget and starring Hollywood icons Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, the narrative follows writer Eddie Morra as he [Read More…]
Can we have a show of hands for those whose oral health is such that they have never had a cavity, a crown, a root canal, or an extraction? Hmm….not seeing many hands going up right now. And that’s not surprising. Few of us are fortunate enough to avoid the excruciating anxiety of that long [Read More…]
From way back in the Stone Age to our current Silicon Age, we have labeled periods of our development as a species by the materials we have come to master: stone, bronze, iron, and so on.(1) And, at each stage, our adoption of nature’s materials has also brought with it the development of other consumables [Read More…]
From the perfect Super Venti Flat White (yes, it is ‘a thing’) crafted for us at the Starbucks drive-thru to the tailored Tesla designed to indulge our most whimsical aesthetic consideration, the world is becoming increasingly customized whether we like it or not. And however we perceive this transition – good, bad, or indifferent – [Read More…]
Near to an abandoned Mayan temple in the steamy jungles of Guatemala, camouflaged beneath a matrix of overgrown vine and lianas, nestles a small medical clinic catering to the needs of, at most, a handful of patients. A private facility, not marked on any known map, the clinic is an important link in the supply [Read More…]
When you hear the phrase ‘designer babies,’ what springs most readily to mind? It’s an emotionally, socially, and politically loaded term that’s come to represent much of what’s ethically questionable in genetic research. Perhaps we might think of the movie Gattaca (that we referenced last week) in which genetics equal destiny. Or the 2003 German [Read More…]
Reproduction used to be simple. Boy meets girl. Egg meets sperm. Nine months, one baby shower, and a whole lot of trips to Buy Buy Baby later, a new addition arrives to much billing and cooing by the proud grandparents. Oh those halcyon days. Today, the landscape is so much more nuanced as advances in [Read More…]
Update: Now also featured on Cleanroom Technology According to science writer Mary Roach in her eye-opening and entertaining book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, early anatomists had an almost child-like curiosity with the inner workings of the human body. Engaging with it as cartographers of an unexplored continent they staked their claims to its [Read More…]
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