Cultural revolution

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It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. --- Enrico Fermi ---

Why the petri became science's favorite dish

Borrowing a technology used to make microchips, researchers have crafted patterned glass surfaces in dishes

that encourage live nerve cells to grow, connect and wire themselves to attached electrode arrays.


At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, biomedical engineer Steve Potter and colleagues have grown

“minibrains” of rat neurons capable of communicating and controlling external computers and robots, in some cases

thousands of miles away.


Some observers of the biological sciences say it may be possible, perhaps even probable, that the petri dish will

ultimately disappear altogether, that computer models will replace live cultures.


Computer modeling has come a long way, agreed Potter at Georgia Tech. “We use it ourselves. But one of the reasons we

still use petri dishes is to answer the questions modelers don't know.


“Biology is far too complicated for us to figure out anytime soon. Even the complexity of a single cell is amazing.

You look inside and you see superhighways with identifiable things whizzing along from place to place. And that's just one cell.

Put 100 billion together in a brain and you get a whole new set of properties and questions.”

Why the petri became science's favorite dish

Borrowing a technology used to make microchips, researchers have crafted patterned glass surfaces in dishes

that encourage live nerve cells to grow, connect and wire themselves to attached electrode arrays.


At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, biomedical engineer Steve Potter and colleagues have grown

“minibrains” of rat neurons capable of communicating and controlling external computers and robots, in some cases

thousands of miles away.


Some observers of the biological sciences say it may be possible, perhaps even probable, that the petri dish will

ultimately disappear altogether, that computer models will replace live cultures.


Computer modeling has come a long way, agreed Potter at Georgia Tech. “We use it ourselves. But one of the reasons we

still use petri dishes is to answer the questions modelers don't know.


“Biology is far too complicated for us to figure out anytime soon. Even the complexity of a single cell is amazing.

You look inside and you see superhighways with identifiable things whizzing along from place to place. And that's just one cell.

Put 100 billion together in a brain and you get a whole new set of properties and questions.”

© Copyright 2007 Union-Tribune Publishing Co



> An 'Eventual' application could be the 'mapping' - of the 'existant' properties of the neuro-pathways - in respect

to Neuro Muscular Disabilities - and the re-directing of the synaptic 'firings' of said nerve activity - to insure the

correction of said pathways of a neurophysiological malfunction - signaled by the re-growth and mapping of bioelectrical

activity in the brain. Incorporating the bioelectrical (or biofeedback) factor into the equation - may possibly allow

for a subject to re-learn the disability in question - enabling the disabled individual corrective assessment of neuro-

pathways and a means to the synaptic remapping of the said pathways.