Author: naylorsa

Scientists against the “War on Drugs”

drugsEveryone has heard about the “War on Drugs”. Most Americans of my generation have sat through D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) classes in middle school learning how to “just say no”. In addition to their intended effects on rates of drug addiction and, perhaps, unintended effects on the size of the prison population, the laws regulating psychoactive drugs are having a less well-recognized effect.

In a special section of Nature Reviews Neuroscience (Neuroscience and the law-Science and Society) there is an interesting editorial about how Schedule I drug laws are stifling neuroscience research and the development of new treatments. I’ll be honest, my first thought was, “Are these guys just old hippies or do they have a good point?”. David Nutt, Leslie King, and David Nichols may be old hippies, but they also have a point. Continue reading “Scientists against the “War on Drugs””

Inception for Mice

fear1Inception is real. At least that’s what the interwebs have been saying this week. A lab at MIT headed by Nobel prize winner, Susumu Tonegawa, has implanted a memory in mouse’s brain. What they did was really cool but it’s definitely nothing like Inception. Continue reading “Inception for Mice”

Second fiddle, better fiddle

Fiddlin Bill Henseley, Mountain Fiddler, Asheville, North Carolina by Ben Shahn, 1937
Fiddlin Bill Henseley, Mountain Fiddler, Asheville, North Carolina by Ben Shahn, 1937

Sometimes you spend years working on a project and then, right as you are about to share your progress with the world, someone else beats you to it. I’d imagine Meng-Tsen Ke, Satoshi Fujimoto, and Takeshi Imai were feeling pretty disgruntled in June when the Deisseroth lab published their technique for making brain tissue optically clear.  The press coverage of CLARITY was immense, I even wrote a post about it. But it turns out while we were all drooling over clear brains, another group was coming up with a cheaper and easier way to make brain tissue see-through. Continue reading “Second fiddle, better fiddle”

Zombie Cabbage!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Fly rooms – the place where fruit fly researchers search for virgins and freaks – around the United States have two things in common: fruit flies and NPR. Thus, I heard the craziest science segment I’ve heard in a long time. You know those cabbages at the grocery store? Those heads of cabbage that always seem to always make way too much coleslaw? Even though they’ve been harvested, shipped and chucked onto the sprinkling grocery shelf, they’re aliiiiiive. Continue reading “Zombie Cabbage!”

Up and Over

Science Careers has compiled an excellent list of articles and stories about scientists overcoming disability, mental health issues, and scores of other problems. With all of the negativity surrounding maintaining a career in science, it’s refreshing to read about how a scientific career is possible even with a few extra hurdles.