In the year 2040, cell phones have essentially taken over the world. Citizens have their cell phones glued to their ear more often than not. As a result of the constant radiation, 95% of the entire world develops brain tumors and dies. The only survivors are the Amish, the very young children, and the homeless.
Given the crowded, communal lifestyles of college students, it is not surprising that germs spread quite rapidly. A simple cold or flu virus can infect an entire campus in a matter of weeks (1). That is why institutional health facilities are constantly looking for more effective ways to stop the spread of infectious diseases.
Historically, conventional thinking in evolutionary biology has drawn a bright line separating multicellular from unicellular organisms. Only the cells of animals, plants, and fungi were thought capable of achieving the synchrony required to function as a collective. Bacteria, in contrast, were perceived as blind, deaf, and mute, with each cell single-mindedly focusing on its own metabolism and reproduction. However, recent discoveries in the field of bacterial cellcell signaling have exposed the ubiquity of multicellular behavior in bacterial populations, dramatically altering our understanding of the microbial world.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a medical procedure in which a human egg is fertilized outside of the body, and then reinserted into the womb (1). Approximately four million babies have been born by IVF since it was first introduced in the 1980s (1).
Neuroscientists are scrambling to play with the new toys of optogenetic technology, but with the explosion of popular science articles and even videos of light-controlled dancing mice (1), it is important to step back and evaluate how this technology can be most effectively used to solve meaningful problems in neuroscience.