With the help of several undergraduate researchers, Brusich anesthetizes flies in his lab and sorts them into individual vials. They then use a spring mechanism to launch the vials, at varying angles, against a padded surface. The method was developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison geneticists Dr. David Wassarman and Dr. Barry Ganetzky, Brusich said. It causes the flies to experience the same acceleration, deceleration or rotational forces a human might go through in a car crash.
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