Our neurons exist in a staggering vast network, with 100 billion cells forming some 100 trillion connections. And it’s up to these ordinary cells to form that network on their own, snaking across the brain or even across the body, in order to find the right target. In my latest column for Discover, I look at new research that reveals some of the elegantly simple tricks our nervous system uses to wire itself. Check it out.
Originally published May 18, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Biomechanics is the science of flesh and bone–how birds fly, sharks swim, muscles twitch, and tendons spring. In January, I went to a fascinating session at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology where biomechanics experts talked about how they’ve been trying to turn their insights about biomechanics into commercial products. One of the most surprising examples came from Charles Pell, a North Carolina inventor, who explained how surgical tools could be much improved by taking biomechanics into account. I later paid Pell a visit at the offices of his company, Physcient, to find out more about their first creation: a rib spreader that promises to spread ribs without breaking them. The result was an article which appears in today’s New York Times. Check it out.
[Image: Gray’s Anatomy]
Originally published May 17, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, May 17, 2011
In the 1940s, the Nobel prize–winning neurobiologist Roger Sperry performed some of the most important brain surgeries in the history of science. His patients were newts.
Sperry started by gently prying out newts’ eyes with a jeweler’s forceps. He rotated them 180 degrees and then pressed them back into their sockets. The newts had two days to recover before Sperry started the second half of the procedure. He sliced into the roof of each newt’s mouth and made a slit in the sheath surrounding the optic nerve, which relays signals from the eyes to the brain. He drew out the nerve, cut it in two, and tucked the two ragged ends back into their sheath.
The Zimmer clan is preparing for some renovations to the house, which means boxing up all my books. We’ve got a particularly tall stack of copies of my first book, At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales With Legs, and How Life Came Ashore and Went Back to the Sea. We’d rather sell these books than pack them. And so, from today till Friday, I’ll be offering autographed copies at my Amazon store for the low, low price of $5. (Imagine me shouting all this, Crazy-Eddie style.)
If you’re not familiar with the book, you can check out its carlzimmer.com page or check out thisreview in Times Higher Education, in which the reviewer writes, “It is wicked, I know, but I have the habit of turning over the corners of pages whenever I chance upon something unexpectedly interesting, exciting or informative. Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge quickly became the most dog-eared book on my shelves.”
The New York Times, May 16, 2011
DURHAM, N.C.—The sign on the door at the renovated tobacco warehouse reads “Physcient.” Inside are a few rooms that, depending on where you look, seem like an artist’s studio, a machine shop or a natural history museum. A lathe stands next to a drill press; along other walls are vises, huge enamel-red C-clamps, microscopes and plywood frames covered in electronics. But there are also reed-woven sculptures of insects called water boatmen hanging on the walls, along with glass-fronted boxes holding preserved flying dragon lizards. Casts of human rib bones are scattered on tables. A huge cast of a fearsome pair of fish jaws rests on a row of books.
Continue reading “Turning to Biomechanics to Build a Kinder, Gentler Rib Spreader”