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#askabiogeek
Three Horror Movies That Even a Scientist Could Love
As a scientist I have mixed feelings about SF-oriented horror, which tends to show my lab coat-wearing brethren as myopic, obsessive, morally challenged individuals or as humorless skeptics. When Fringe needed a scientist for its team of white hats, the best they could come up with was a former, vaguely repentant mad scientist. Kind of unfair, considering how many plot ideas they've stolen from our journals. But there are a few bio-inspired scary movies out there that I would recommend. More » -
#askabiogeek
Where Are My Medical Nanobots?
Reader Wendy asks: When will nanobots clean out my arteries? While medical molecular machines are not likely to appear in the clinic soon, there's a decent amount of research going into the development of nanoscale robotics, and not only for therapeutic use. One could easily imagine these widgets appearing in diagnostic assays and nano-scale manufacturing. Before we can hope to command tiny robots to crawl or swim to a damaged or stenotic artery to effect repairs, we first need to build tiny robots capable of crawling or swimming. More » -
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What's the Future of Cancer Diagnosis?
I talked about the importance of early cancer diagnosis in a previous post, and reader Ian wrote back to ask for more detail. Early detection can be life-saving, but accuracy in these tests is also a serious problem - a test that misses existing cancers is obviously bad, but one that detects cancers that aren't there or suggests a future cancer that will never develop can expose patients to unnecessary procedures, some of them invasive. I'm not knocking cancer screening — just noting that, for a given test, the potential for early detection is not the whole story. Early unambiguous detection is the goal. Let's take a look at a few of the methods we can apply to improve cancer diagnosis. More » -
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Where Is My Cure for Cancer?
Welcome back to Ask a Biogeek, a column where you ask biology researcher Terry Johnson any question you want — no matter how weird. Reader Charlie writes: More » -
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Forget the Jetpack - Where Are My Replacement Organs?
Welcome to Ask a Biogeek, a column about cutting-edge biology by UC Berkeley researcher Terry Johnson. Knowing which organs you can live without is all well and good, but wouldn't you rather have replacement organs? Tissue engineers already have some pretty good ones if you happen to lose your skin or severely damage your bones. And there are some other organs we're cooking up for you too, as long as you can hold out for a few more years. More »
