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Article: Particle accelerator reveals new insights into how insects breathe.
- Article from:
- Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
- Article date:
- January 23, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Chicago Tribune. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Jeremy Manier
CHICAGO _ Field Museum zoologist Mark Westneat often compares his current research with the science he practiced as a boy: frying ants with focused sunlight from a magnifying glass.
Only now, Westneat and his colleagues are bombarding insects with radiation 1 billion times more intense than a medical X-ray, using a $500 million particle accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont. And these bugs revealed something interesting before they died for science _ the discovery that many insects breathe by flexing their windpipes, similar to how we use lungs.
Believe it or not, scientists hadn't known that _ most thought ...