Word: petry
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...seems there will be two general elections this year, which is why it already feels like October. It used to be that winners were cultured in the Petri dishes of Iowa and New Hampshire, but now that both G.O.P. candidates have won some and lost some and dug in for the long haul, this race will actually spill across all 24 states holding their contests between now and March 14. The whole landscape is wobbling. Though the exit polls from Michigan suggested, and Bush insisted, that McCain won only because of mischievous Democrats crossing over temporarily, McCain's support...
...seminars when I talk about my work," says Snyder, "somebody will ask me whether the introduction of these stem cells will alter memory." Do the newly generated cells distort or erase old memories? Or will the transplanted stem cells bring with them memories of their upbringing in a Petri dish...
...useful but doesn't quite believe it's a science. Nor does he accept the nest-of-memes view of consciousness. "To be honest, I don't even know what that means," admits Pinker. The problem, he says, is that memetics assumes the brain is essentially passive, like a Petri dish awaiting infection. It doesn't account for the self that responds subjectively, that feels sensations such as love, envy and pain. "Babies are conscious," he points out. "That's why we don't operate on them without anesthesia. And their minds have not been infected by memes...
...years ago, my husband and I were blessed with our own test-tube babies--beautiful girl twins who are equally delightful but totally different. One looks just like me; the other bears little resemblance. Are they both mine? Were my eggs placed in the right drawer? In the right Petri dish? Fertilized by the right sperm? Is someone else raising one of my children? Is ignorance bliss...
That scenario is not as farfetched as it sounds. Talk to anyone in the pharmaceutical industry, and you'll soon discover that genetics is the biggest thing to hit drug research since a penicillium mold floated into Alexander Fleming's petri dish. Sure, scientists have long known genes play a role in almost every ailment from Alzheimer's to yellow fever. But it is only in the past few years that they've learned how to use that information to identify a multitude of new targets and pathways for drug design. Let's count the ways...