Category: Health

TSA to stop using all x-ray body scanners

rapiscansecure1000sp__small_customThe TSA has announced that it plans to remove all x-ray (or backscatter, as it’s also known) body scanners and use only the radio-wave based scanners.  The backscatter technology has received much criticism over health concerns and a lack of scientific testing to show they’re safe, and while the TSA finally started investigating the health risks associated with those machines in December of 2012, they say the decision to stop using these machines is due to the company’s inability to provide a timely software upgrade that would replace the actual image of the passenger with an avatar or other abstract graphical representation.

I’d written about the concerns with backscatter technology previously, and am hesitant to get too excited about this news.  My concern now is that the study into the health effects will be terminated (as it should, to save money), yet OPI Systems (the backscatter scanner manufacturer) will upgrade their software and slightly change their hardware to allow them to release a ‘new’ model of scanner later this year which the TSA will then accept as a replacement for the 174 backscatter machines currently due to be sent back to OPI.  Since it’s a ‘new’ machine, it’ll restart the clock, so to speak, for getting the TSA to begin investigating the health impact of it, then there will be a long, protracted study, etc, with the technology being used all the while.  Of course, that’s just my pessimistic speculation..for now, it’s a victory for health as the machines are due to be removed and replaced with a safer technology.If you’re curious..check out this link for a good side by side comparison of the two scanner technologies.

DNA photographed

Using some cool trickery with silicon nanopillars and an electron microscope, scientists in Italy managed to photograph and actual strand of DNA, including the closeup image below where you can start to make out the double helix structure.  Impressive work!

You can read more about it in The Atlantic.

Crowdsourcing medical research

Researchers in Sweden have developed a genetically engineered virus that they believe may be able to fight some forms of cancer.  While that sounds great, they ran into a reality check when they looked at doing clinical trials…what they need to do to truly test this virus is going to cost one heck of a lot of money, and finding backers for that is not easy.  So, they’ve turned to the internet for help, hoping to raise around three million dollars to allow them to tackle the first phase of the clinical trials.  If that test is successful, the hope is that it would spur enough interest from big companies to foot the bill for continuation and completion of testing.  You can read more about it here, or check out the video below.

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑