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Anxiety and exhaustion pose a danger for astronauts, so NASA is testing a hand-held device that warns when stress or lack of sleep means they are not up to the job. The astronauts have to press a specific button as quickly as possible when a light flashes, and the device measures their reaction time and warns if they are unfit to perform critical procedures such as a spacewalk or a shuttle docking.

Genetic studies will be speeded up by a “lab on a chip” that allows live worms to be flowed through the channels etched on its surface. Created at…

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