The five most-read posts on Scope this week were:
Ancient crocodile mummies scanned at Stanford: A pair of Greco-Roman crocodile mummies belonging to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley are scanned at Stanford. Preliminary CT images of one of the crocodiles are available here.
Haiti day 3: Amputees: Tracie White, a Scope contributor and writer in the medical school’s communication office, travels to Haiti to report on the country's recovery. On her third day, she visits Paul Farmer's hospital in Cange and writes about the overwhelming demand for prosthetics in the Haiti, which is now home to an estimated 4,000 amputees. Read the entire series here.
How Stanford scanned a 2,500-year-old mummy: This video chronicles the scanning of a 2,500-year-old mummy named Irethorro at Stanford. The same technology was used to image the crocodile mummies, which were scanned at Stanford last week.
Study links bacteria in gut to size of a "gut:" Research from Emory University highlights how factors beyond a sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of low-cost, high-calorie foods may contribute to the obesity epidemic and shows the importance of better understanding the complex community of microbes inhabiting our insides.
Study suggests new strategy for spinal muscular atrophy: A Nature Biotechnology article offers another bit of hope for families whose babies have spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
The Grand Roundup returns every Saturday to recap Scope's most popular stories.
