My music professor thinks he’s found a cure for cancer. And he can’t wait to tell you about it. Anthony Holland, a composer and electronic music guru at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., developed the idea of bombarding cancer cells with electromagnetic waves — and thus destroying them — after reading about the efforts of American inventor Royal Rife (Rife initially proposed the idea in the 1930s, though his work was later discredited by the medical community). Several years ago, Holland established a research project with Jonathan Brody, a former student who is now a molecular biologist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Early results were promising, but the relationship became strained. Holland formed a non-profit company to advance the... MORE

You’ve never seen a goblin spider-claw in quite the same way. The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is currently showcasing images obtained by its scientists using an array of advanced techniques. The exhibition, Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies, features more than 20 sets of large-format prints from the many disciplines represented in the Museum — including Invertebrate Zoology, which produced the image of the goblin spider. Associate Curator in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology Lorenzo Prendini, an arachnologist, uses UV fluorescence imaging to study scorpions, in this case ten different species of Opistophthalmus. (Image: © AMNH\L. Prendini and S. Thurston) The striking exhibition takes as... MORE

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame holds its 27th annual induction ceremony in Cleveland this Saturday. I happen to be in the area, and optics is never far from my mind. So, naturally, I decided to draw up a list of the Top 5 Optics Moments featuring Hall of Fame inductees. Without further ado: The Who (1990 inductee) / Led Zeppelin (1995) — Early Laser Light Shows The Who and Led Zeppelin were using lasers as early as 1975 — setting the stage for ever more elaborate rock shows in the latter half of the decade and beyond. Led Zeppelin introduced the practice during an Earl’s Court performance in London in May of that year, firing a single beam with an output of only 500-750 mW. The Who got a little more ambitious at a show in October, at Granby Halls in Leicester,... MORE

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments this week over the constitutionality of the health care mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — otherwise known, of course, as Obamacare — another provision of the law is back in the news. In Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, the chief rival for his seat, traded words this week over the 2.3 percent medical device tax scheduled to go into effect in 2013 as part of the Affordable Care Act. Brown, the Republican who won Ted Kennedy’s seat in a 2010 special election, has long opposed the tax, and for his efforts he was named “Legislator of the Year” in 2011 by the Washington, D.C.-based Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA). Defenders of the tax believe any added... MORE

Transvaginal ultrasound doesn’t often show up on the comics and editorial pages, as it did in a Doonesbury storyline that ran all of last week. But then, transvaginal ultrasound isn’t often wielded as a political tool demanding satire. The storyline concerns a Texas law that went into effect in February. According to the law, a woman seeking an abortion must undergo a sonogram at least 24 hours before the abortion is performed. The doctor then must provide, “in a manner understandable to a layperson, a verbal explanation of the results of the sonogram images, including a medical description of the dimensions of the embryo or fetus, the presence of cardiac activity, and the presence of external members and internal organs.” He or she must also play audio of the... MORE

The neuroscience talk is totally full, the sign said. “Stick around, though. We are playing the audio in the front bar.” That would be the front bar of The Bell House, a converted warehouse on a lonely, formerly industrial stretch in Brooklyn, a chic little joint a couple of doors down from a furniture materials supplier and a stone’s throw from The Gowanus Studio Space and The Brooklyn Dog Training Center. It was the February meeting of the Secret Science Club and cognitive neuroscientist David Carmel, of NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, was speaking about … well, something suitably mind-boggling, I’m sure. I couldn’t follow the audio in the front bar; I suffer a rare, totally self-diagnosed disorder where... MORE

I’d intended to write more about Newt Gingrich’s plans to reshape the face of the moon. Things change. When I wrote my last post, for example, people and pundits alike had largely written off Rick Santorum’s candidacy and were focusing on Gingrich as the primary threat to Mitt Romney’s inexorable but seemingly unwelcome march toward Tampa. No more, of course (unless things change again by the time you read this). As any of these men would likely tell you in private, unguarded moments: There are no guarantees in life. Instead, I’d like to talk about what makes the idea of colonizing the moon — of exploring the stars, generally — so compelling. Several years ago I wandered into the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a curious little place in the... MORE

Some 20 years ago, in the crowded back room of an Irish pub in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., two or three friends and I came up with a truly inspired plan: We would push a couple of tables together, raise a tiny flag and declare ourselves a sovereign nation. We would collect taxes from one another to pay for our beer and onion rings. And when we ran out of money, we would wage war on neighboring tables, pillaging and plundering and hauling off whatever we needed to maintain our little settlement. It would never have worked, of course. To begin with, we had no legal claim to the tables in question. Also, with few natural resources and no economy to speak of, it would have been difficult to survive without significant infusions of cash and additional resources from somewhere outside the pub... MORE

It wasn’t exactly “drill, baby, drill,” but it was a minor kerfuffle about national parks and energy independence. Surely I would find something there to distract me. The turbid waters of the Pacific curved away as the plane banked right and continued to ascend. Santa Monica rolled past underneath us. West Hollywood. The San Gabriel Mountains. Never a fan of flying — how a piece of machinery so large and cumbersome can stay aloft is beyond me — I tried to focus on the copy of The Los Angeles Times in front of me. A headline in the middle of the front page caught my attention: “The power’s there; U.S. parks want only to tap it.” The accompanying article noted that millions of dollars have been spent on renewable energy... MORE

The folks at NASA must be a pretty hip bunch, judging from the ideas they’ve come up with to engage people about the many mysteries of the cosmos. The most recent example: “Hubble’s Hubble,” a video in which images captured by the Hubble Telescope are set to music by an artist — Ben Greenberg, multifarious guitarist with the group Pygmy Shrews and the avant-classical quartet Zs — who started recording under the moniker “Hubble” well before anyone asked him to write music for the homonymous space observatory. Got that? Greenberg didn’t set out to make “space music,” he told NPR’s Lars Gotrich. Rather, he decided on the name Hubble while in the throes of a temporary obsession with the Hubble IMAX movie. Only... MORE