Science News of the day: Tiny Dinosaurs, Treatments for (Color-) Blindness
For those of you who don’t already know this IRL, I have now made the switch from being a science writing intern in Boston to a social media intern in Washington, DC. My new employer is Science Magazine, or more specifically, Science’s online news division called ScienceNOW.
Since my job consists of monitoring Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere all day, I’ve been on top of the science news cycle (i.e. surfing the web) even more than usual. Today has been a good day for wacky news, so I’ll start with the least surprising and work my way up.
4. Water droplets with opposing charges repel each other, as seen in the movie above. Read that again if you’re not surprised. I said opposites REPEL. Remember in high school, when you were taught that opposites attract? Well, not always. And the reason has to do with a complicated bit of physics that you can read more about at ScienceNOW.
3. Next up, also from ScienceNOW, a possible treatment for color-blindness using gene therapy. Apparently, when you inject some human genes into the eyes of otherwise colorblind monkeys, they gain the ability to perceive color. Think about this for a moment. Monkeys are NATURALLY COLORBLIND. They’ve NEVER seen color before in their lives! We’re essentially giving them an extra sense! I want to shoot up on some shark cartilage now, so I can sense electric current while swimming.
2. Wired and NYT are reporting on a new fossil of a T. Rex-like creature that was found. Imagine a scaled down version of a T. Rex, not that much bigger than you. Incidentally, the original paper was published in this week’s Science, although honestly I don’t find it as crazy as…
1. Woman’s blindness is cured by tooth graft, in a medical operation that reads like a recipe for foie gras. I had to read this a few times before I understood what was going on. Apparently, when you have a rare, blindness-causing corneal disorder like this woman does, a reasonable thing to do is to remove one of your canine teeth (the pointy one that makes some people look like a vampire), implant it in your shoulder so it can grow into a piece of corneal tissue, and then remove it from your shoulder and stick it in your eye, sewing the whole thing shut with a piece of cheek skin for a few months. The result? Restored sight! I’m not even going to think about how many lab monkeys had to die for somebody to come up with this.
There it is, your weird science news for the day. Check back soon for more useless knowledge, and don’t forget to become a fan of ScienceNOW on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter at @ScienceNOW.