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 … Read More
Against a neutral blue background, the young man in a pressed, button-down shirt and polka dotted tie smiles the hesitant smile of the new hire. Blue eyes matching his suit blazer and blond hair slicked to one side, Scott … Read More
In 1941, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in a mid-air collision over the bucholic hamlet of Roxholme, England. Practicing maneuvers in his Spitfire VZ-H, an aircraft he’d flown in … Read More
Almost two years ago, we wrote a short article on the FDA regulation of a nascent industry, one that has the FDA sounding the alarm regarding contamination from carcinogens and the vaporizing of metal nanoparticles. Despite our concerns – … Read More
In the Worlds Fair Exposition of 1893, one young entrepreneur, Clark Stanley, stood before an excited crowd of onlookers and plunged his hand into a sack of live rattlesnakes. Pulling out an unfortunate herpetological victim, he sliced it open … Read More
It’s an open secret that scientists tend to have a love-hate relationship with fiction. Not all fiction – less so the bodice-rippers or cozy thrillers that spill off the bookstore shelves – but one specific genre: science fiction. Sometimes … 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 … Read More
We have a riddle for you: what is both ancient and futuristic, biodegradable and naturally sustainable, is delicately engineered in a cleanroom with a tensile strength five times that of steel, is a simple formulation but has applications in materials … 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 … Read More
In his frequently hilarious and always engaging 2006 travelogue, Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, memoirist J. Maarten Troost describes his multi-year sojourn in a culture that kicks back after a long … Read More
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