Word: x-rays
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Jhoti and four of his scientists hit the pub when they had their eureka moment. In October 2002 their advanced X-ray and crystal technique revealed that a chemical was binding to a protein that is a possible cause of Alzheimer's disease. The chemical was a fragment of what could eventually become an Alzheimer's-conquering drug. "I first thought the team had played a trick on me," says Jhoti. Drug giant AstraZeneca, which had been searching for such a chemical for years, enlisted Astex's help. In 2003 the company signed a contract to pay Astex $40 million...
...most convincing reason to scrap the new system is that security and personal privacy don’t have to trade off. New x-ray scanners have been implemented at London’s Heathrow Airport that can detect solid objects under concealed clothing. While these images are anatomically detailed, they are viewed by same-sex screeners, are anonymous, and are not stored. Why can’t the same thing be used in U.S. airports? Well, according to a TSA spokeswoman quoted in a Reuters story, “There are a number of privacy issues that need...
...report in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that expectant moms who get dental X rays may be at risk for having underweight babies. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found that among the women they studied, those who had babies weighing less than 51/2 lbs. were twice as likely to have had dental X rays. Researchers were quick to say they didn't know how radiation might affect pregnancy or whether the babies' low birth weight was due to X-ray exposure alone. Whatever the risk, say the study's authors, it's small. They...
...they do it? By deploying a process called X-ray crystallography. First, they grew a Bace crystal. Then they exposed it to an array of X-rays. A protein is too small to be "seen" by a normal X-ray, but if run through a series of rays, it will produce a recognizable pattern of small dots - it's a bit like seeing the bear in the pattern of stars that make up Ursa Major. The crystallography technique was once used by legendary dna discoverers James Watson and Francis Crick. As Jhoti notes, "it took Watson and Crick over...
...recent investigative piece in The New York Times, prison workers at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-ray described in detail how detainees were tortured in the Cuban detention center. One method involved prisoners being stripped to nothing but their underwear, tied to the floor and made to sit in a chair as interrogators subjected them to loud music, strobe lights and air conditioning turned on to maximum levels for up to 14 hours at a time...