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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Some Big Ideas - Amazing Inventions Scientists and researchers are always looking for new ways to fight disease, to make complex tasks easier, to make life better. A sampling of inventions in progress. 'Rewiring' The Brain Sawing open someone's skull for research purposes is a no-no, but brain scientists have found the next best thing. By projecting an electrical charge through the skull, they can now flick neurons on and off without ever breaking the skin. The technique, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, uses a $30,000 contraption to fire a powerful magnetic pulse into the cranium, creating an electric charge that activates brain cells. That's enough for some eye-catching parlor tricks: a zap above the temples makes muscles twitch involuntarily; one over the back of the head makes you see sparks. But the real magic begins when TMS pulses are fired in rapid succession. Depending on the frequency, repetitive TMS has long-term sensitizing or inhibitory effects, in principle allowing doctors to "rewire" the brain. Remote control: Researches use powerful magnetic pulses to turn parts of the brain on and offThat has researchers reaching for their magnets. Doctors already use the technique to treat depression, stimulating areas of the brain that process moods; a large-scale clinical trial reports to the FDA next spring. And it doesn't stop there: TMS can be used to speed up thought processes, boost creativity and even turn off the voices in schizophrenics' heads. The military is interested in using the technique to turn off fatigue in soldiers. But forget about building your own orgasmatron: the brain's pleasure centers are too deeply buried to be targeted by TMS. —Ben Whitford Rip Van Winkle Scientists studying animal hibernation have discovered that much of the damage caused by oxygen deprivation is a result of residual oxygen in the body, which produces harmful compounds called free radicals. The findings have inspired a counterintuitive strategy to minimize the effect: reduce the amount of oxygen to induce a state resembling suspended animation. A team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle placed mice, which do not hibernate, in a sealed chamber. By gradually increasing the levels of hydrogen sulfide in the chamber, they "pushed aside" much of the oxygen within the animals' cells. The mice entered a comalike state, in which their body temperature, respiration and heartbeat decreased. Revived after six hours, the rodents showed no ill effects. Someday, similar techniques could reduce brain damage in accident victims en route to the hospital and extend the shelf life of organs for tranplantation. —John Horgan Mind Over Matter Sever your spinal cord and you lose control of your arms and legs. But what if the brain could bypass the spine altogether? Researchers are already working on a "mind chip" that might transmit brain signals directly to the limbs. New Motion: A microchip picks up the brain’s signalsIn neuroscientist John Donahue's lab at Brown University, Matthew Nagle, paralyzed from the neck down in a stabbing four years ago, had a tiny silicon sensor implanted in his brain's motor region. The chip sent signals from Nagle's neurons to a computer; Nagle was able to direct the on-screen cursor to send e-mail, draw a circle and even play Pong. More significantly, he could open and close a robotic hand. Donahue envisions similar chips' controlling not just prosthetics but actual paralyzed arms and legs. There's a long way to go. For starters, he must make the technology port-able (currently it fills his lab) and find a way to implant the chip without extensive surgery. But for people suffering from spinal-cord injuries, the tiny chip could change lives. —Eric Pape Better Vaccines Conventional vaccines are notoriously fragile, making fighting a pandemic a logistical nightmare. New vaccines using viral DNA rather than whole virus proteins to stimulate the immune system promise to be easier to manufacture and transport—and could provide new weapons against previously untreatable diseases. Straight shot: A “gene gun” uses viral DNA to combat diseasesInjected DNA gets lost in the body, so British researchers attached viral DNA to tiny particles of gold dense enough to penetrate targeted cells. Then they used a "gene gun" to blow the particles directly into the skin. Human testing of DNA vaccines for bird flu, genital herpes, HIV and lung cancer has begun; if all goes as planned, they could be worth their weight in gold. —Walter Alarkon It Tastes Good, Too Feeding starving children isn't easy. Aid workers use milk-based food supplements, which spoil easily and must be given in hospitals. Now there's a new option: Plumpy'nut, enriched peanut butter invented by two French scientists who noticed that the chocolate-and-hazelnut spread their children ate had the same nutritional profile as milk supplements. A 20-pound baby gains two pounds every five days on a Plumpy'nut diet, at a cost of just 75 cents a day. And unlike milk, Plumpy'nut doesn't spoil, so parents can care for their kids at home. New hope: A mother in Niger feeds her hungry baby with the spreadFive years ago, the average Doctors Without Borders relief campaign reached only a few thousand children; this year, using Plumpy'nut, the group will feed more than 30,000 children in Niger alone. "It's been a major revolution," says the group's French president, Jean-Herve Bradol. The WHO is now likely to add home care with Plumpy'nut-style food to its treatment guidelines. The peanut-butter cure seems set to spread. —Ben Whitford Desktop Fusion For more than half a century, physicists have been trying to harness fusion, the nuclear reaction that makes the sun shine and hydrogen bombs explode. But experimental reactors built so far have been gigantic, expensive furnaces that produce less energy than they consume. Now UCLA researchers have built a fusion reactor the size of a lunch bucket—and they say they can prove it works. Star power: UCLA scientists have harnessed fusion reactionsThe reactor uses heat to create electricity in a crystal bathed in deuterium gas, an isotope of hydrogen. The resulting charge strips electrons from the deuterium atoms, repelling them and focusing them into a fast-moving stream so energetic that it triggers fusion when it collides with a target. The device still produces less energy than it consumes. But the neutrons released by the reaction could be useful for irradiating tumors, scanning baggage or even powering a spacecraft. And it doesn't even have to be plugged in to work; all it needs is a little heat. Dunking it in warm water could be enough to kick off some fusion. That's heavy! —John Horgan Your Body On A Chip There are three ways to test an experimental drug, and they're all lousy: swish it around in a dish with cells, give it to animals or test it on people. Drugmakers often do all three—and still wind up with drugs that have unforeseen side effects. Cornell researcher Michael Shuler knew that a drug's effect depends less on chemistry than on the way it navigates the obstacle-course of the body's organs: being broken down by the liver, absorbed by the intestines and held onto by fat. He created a lab-size suite of artificial organs to duplicate the havoc, and fellow researcher Greg Baxter helped shrink the whole thing onto a microchip. Etched into the stamp-size device are chambers and channels lined with living human or animal tissue. When pumped through with artificial blood laced with test drugs, this torso-on-a-chip can highlight both harmful and beneficial effects other tests miss. That could reduce the need for animal testing, and do a better job of steering the right drugs to human trials. Drug companies are now looking at the device, and results are impressive. The chip has correctly shown that the pesticide ingredient naphthalene damages lungs, and that the cancer drug Tegafur effectively attacks colon tumors—results conventional tests miss. The FDA isn't likely to let companies skip animal tests altogether, but the chip should identify likely losers earlier in the process, knocking up to $100 million off the cost of drug approval. Assuming, of course, no one comes forward to defend the rights of chips. —David H. Freedman What's That Fish Doing In Here? The makers of 3-D displays have a bone to pick with the "Star Wars" movies. It's those holograms that the characters use for Jedi videoconferencing—they've set expectations way too high. Current 3-D displays, which show each eye a piecemeal image and trick the brain into combining them, can cause headaches and nausea. Luckily for us, true holographic displays are on the way. A hologram depicts a fishLight from a hologram reaches the eye exactly the way light from a real object does, thanks to microscopically fine patterns that bend rays like a bank of tiny lenses. The patterns have always proved too complex for video displays. But the U.S. military is developing a six-foot-wide display able to produce sharp, color video holograms more realistic than any moving image ever seen—though at a price only a government could handle. Consumers may not have to wait long for more-affordable holographic video. Researchers at MIT have already built a table-size prototype; they say a medium-resolution holographic computer monitor costing between $500 and $1,000 could be on the market within a year or two. It may not be all that long before a holographic Tony Soprano is glaring at you from the middle of your living room. At least you'll hope it's a hologram. —David H. Freedman
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