10.28.2009
by Rebecca Day
You wouldn’t fly on a commercial jet plane unless you were confident that the pilot had logged some serious time in a flight simulator, preparing for every eventuality. Someday it may be just as inconceivable to undergo delicate surgery without assurances that your doctor has taken a few practice runs on a three-dimensional, [...]

The 2008 Pi Mile Run generated more than $4,000, which will benefit a clean-water project in three communities in El Salvador. (large image)
As 255 Madison students and community members thundered down the Lakeshore Path on the first warm Saturday morning in April, they dodged muddy puddles and happy pedestrians out for a weekend walk along [...]

Nature always has a funny way of providing the most terrible catastrophes only to ironically juxtapose them with the best cures for the worst ailments. As some sit in devastation, others research and study the complexity of Mother Earth’s gifts, in hopes that the good conquers the bad eventually. At [...]

Frontiers of health: Sight for sore eyes
Ultra-short laser pulses may allow easier LASIK
by Hilary Parker
Szymon Suckewer needs eye surgery, but he’s not going under the knife just yet—he’d rather wait until no knife is necessary. Having recently developed an incision-free eye surgery technique, he’s confident that will soon be an option.
 

Szymon Suckewer (center) takes an [...]

PASADENA, Calif.– Malaria infects more than half a billion people every year, and kills more than one million, mostly children. Despite decades of effort, no effective vaccine exists for the disease, caused by single-celled Plasmodium parasites. The parasites are transmitted to humans via the bite of infected mosquitoes.
One way to stop malaria is to [...]

An artistic rendition of a smart liquid microlens where a stimuli-responsive hydrogel (dark circular ring) regulates the shape of the liquid lens (center). The liquid microlens autonomously adapts to local environmental stimuli (denoted by small spheres and yellow plasma rays outside the hydrogel) in microfluidics. The stimuli can be biological and chemical agents, and physical [...]