e of the old adage: you'll never know if you don't try.
Interesting title as it's slightly misleading at first, but ultimately
truthful.





Fresh idea for about page. Move mouse and enjoy - UE
http://userlook.com/about/

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UE
Don't forget to place mouse over cheese.





Scientists Make Mice Immune to Radiation - miles
http://www.dotmed.com/news/story/10571/

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Udo
As has become standard in science articles, this one too is highly
sensationalistic and potentially misleading.

NO is, in low doses, a signaling molecule used by the body to facilitate
intercellular communication. Similarly to ischemic attacks (as in strokes),
what follows acute radiation exposure is a massive disruption of normal cell
operations. There are, to use a bit of programmer lingo here, "checksums" in
place to detect these kinds of disruptions and to shut down affected cells
immediately. This is essentially like a segmentation fault or any other kind
of fatal exception, and it's called apoptosis.

During normal conditions, apoptosis signaling pathways are essential to weed
out cells that aren't functioning properly. During massive crisis, however,
this mechanism kills people, because it is suddenly triggered in a large
amount of cells. That's what kills stroke and heart attack victims (if they
survive the incident itself). The body simply doesn't know that in this case
it would be life-saving if it kept corrupted cells alive.

A similar thing happens with acute radiation poisoning: cells die en masse,
usually the mucosae are affected the worst, leading to massive shock and
internal bleeding. This particular research apparently focuses on halting
these apoptosis pathways, so the body doesn't self destruct.

Yes, that's essential. However, there is a price to pay that the article
almost completely ignores. While interfering with the cell death signal saves
you from immediate death, it does nothing to repair damaged porteins and DNA.

~~~
miles
As has become standard in strongly-upvoted HN posts, this one too is highly
sensationalis