"We have all this interest in X-Files and Star Trek, but all you have to do is look in a garbage can and you are going to see animals that are so much more exciting and different and exotic." - Michael Dickinson, who with fellow scientists at the University of California at Berkeley put flies into a miniature virtual reality chamber, and found how tiny organs called halteres act as a sophisticated gyroscope to keep the insects balanced and make them so hard to swat.
Computimes is edited by Michael Cunningham. Email only (no attachments, faxes or letters please) to computimes@irish-times.ie (private correspondence should be marked Not For Publication).