Testing the Goods: The Midnight/Shot, a Pocket-Sized Infrared Camera

The Midnight/Shot offers one key feature--infrared photos and videos--that you won't find on your average point-and-shoot, or even your average DSLR

By Dan Bracaglia and Dan Nosowitz Posted 08.12.2011 at 12:28 pm

Tree Shot at Night Foliage quickly became our favorite subject to shoot with the Midnight/Shot Dan Bracaglia

This may sound like a high-school science lesson, but to understand how the Midnight/Shot IR camera takes its eerie and beautiful shots, you must first understand what exactly infrared light is. Stay with us. (Please.) Because that understanding is key to appreciating that this little $150 camera can take photos most $3,000 DSLRs can't.

What's New

So, the lesson: The longest wavelength of light that is visible to the naked human eye is red. Infrared light is essentially electromagnetic radiation that is at a wavelength slightly longer than that of visible light. That slightly longer wavelength makes infrared light invisible to the naked eye.

All digital cameras, including the Midnight/Shot, contain a filter, generally located in front of the sensor, that blocks out all infrared light?without this filter, digital images would have a pink fuzz around the edges, since digital sensors are very sensitive to IR and the different wavelength would cause the lens to focus at a different point. However, in its "IR mode," the Midnight/Shot removes that infrared filter from the light path. It avoids the pink fuzz problem by using exclusively black and white for IR photos, and by being a relatively low-resolution camera to begin with. (This version of IR is different than the "heat map" photos, like this cup of coffee, that we sometimes associate with IR photography. Those are actually taken with thermographic cameras--heat emits IR, yes, but in a longer wavelength than the one the Midnight/Shot sees.)

Science lesson over (and it wasn?t so bad, right?).

So why is infrared photography so cool? It allows us to see a world that is ordinarily completely invisible to us. Plus, it makes photos look really unusual and cool--contrast is dialed way up, with trees often seeming snow-white and the sky looking pitch-black, for example. IR photography isn?t new--in the old days of infrared photography, special IR-sensitive films were used. Unfortunately, the handling and processing of those films, in addition to the physical price of them, made IR photography out of reach for most photographers. But within recent years, many photographers have begun experimenting with the removal of that IR filter located in their digital cameras. In fact, there are quite a few services out there that will convert your camera for you (LifePixel being one of the largest). But as this conversion can cost nearly $500, it?s nowhere near worth it for someone who just wants to experiment with this very unusual branch of photography.

Enter the $150 Midnight/Shot, a tiny, solid-feeling (if plasticky) compact camera, boasting a roomy 3-inch LCD, a 5MP CMOS sensor and the ability to shoot authentic infrared images--you can even shoot infrared video at 640x480p--all for $150. To trigger the IR mode, you actually twist a little grooved ring around the lens to physically move the IR filter away from the lens.

The main difference between the Midnight/Shot IR camera and an expensive DSLR converted for IR photography is that the DSLR captures only infrared light, thanks to the filter placed in front of the sensor that blocks nearly all wavelengths except for the infrared ones. The Midnight/Shot, on the other hand, allows for all spectrums of light to flood the sensor--not just infrared, but also all visible light. Without the insertion of an additional filter to block out the other wavelengths, the Midnight/Shot is no different than a point and shoot with a busted IR-blocking filter?essentially a full-spectrum camera.

Check out some sample shots from the Midnight/Shot camera.

What's Good

We brought the Midnight/Shot along with us to a nighttime concert in Central Park to see how it'd fare. The results were, to our surprise, pretty impressive. The instructions do state that at night, the subject must be within nine feet of the camera. That's because at night, with the absence of light (including infrared light), you'll need to use the camera's little IR flashlight, located just above the lens, to provide your own (invisible to the naked eye) IR light. Without the flashlight, taking photos in a dark room would result in a black picture. In the daytime, you don't have to worry about that, but we did end up with several completely dark images, due to our negligence in reading the instructions. The flashlight generally does a better, or at least more dramatic, job of exploiting the "IR look" of photos than just using regular sunlight.

Still, we came home with a few winners--all in black-and-white, since the camera only shoots infrared in monochrome (it shoots in color when not in IR mode). You will notice that the IR-effect tends to give foliage and anything with chlorophyll an eerie white glow. This is because chlorophyll is known to reflect IR light back more than just about any other surface, which means any kind of greenery is going to give a particularly strong image. The IR effect is very particular--it looks almost like some sort of digital aftereffect, except even more unearthly. It's not going to be ideal in every situation, but we did find it to be a very fun toy to play around with--"how's that going to look in IR? How about that?"

However, the true genius of this inexpensive camera is revealed when the lights are turned off. Thanks to the IR flashlight located above the lens, the Midnight/Shot is able to see in complete darkness?something an expensive IR-converted DSLR can?t do. While the manufacturer claims that the beam is capable of illuminating objects shrouded in blackness up to eight feet away, our tests showed the beam's limit is more like six feet. For the best results, we recommend being no more than 3 feet away from your subject. Here's what we mean:

Night Vision With the Midnight/Shot: �Dan Bracaglia

The camera itself feels sort of like a cheap-ish knockoff of the Canon S95?pretty much the top compact camera in the game right now?which means it?s a thin, minimalistic black design, very businesslike, with no more buttons than necessary. It?s very easy to use, once you figure out how to activate IR mode, which is of course what you?ll mostly be doing with it.

What's Bad

It is still a basically no-name-brand $150 point-and-shoot, and one with middling specs at that, so in terms of performance, it's not exactly the most impressive camera you can buy. It does feel pretty cheap, though not necessarily fragile--it's very plasticky, but it doesn't feel as if it's liable to fall apart. We could probably pick apart its specs and shooting options, but that's really missing the point of the camera.

The Midnight/Shot IR Camera: Slim and inoffensively designed. �Midnight/Shot

The Price

$150 at ThinkGeek, which we think is a totally fair price. Cheap, even.

The Verdict

If you're looking for a new all-purpose point-and-shoot, forget about the Midnight/Shot. It's not for you. But for photography geeks and the generally curious, this is a really fun toy. You can replicate the effect in Photoshop, mostly--though not without some very significant time figuring out all the particular light and contrast settings--but we really liked playing with real IR photography, seeing how different objects and scenes would react with the filterless camera. The night vision mode, as expected from the camera's marketing, was one of the most fun features--it really does see in the dark, to a limited extent, and in our time with the camera, the feature didn't even start to get old. It's inessential, but definitely fun.

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This Worm Is the First Animal Engineered to Produce Biological Blocks Not Found in Nature

Meet the 21st amino acid

The First Animal to Produce Artificial Amino Acids Jason Chin/Sebastian Greiss

Researchers at Cambridge claim they?ve engineered the first animal with artificial information embedded in its genetic code in such a way that it generates biological molecules that have never been seen before in nature. That is, it churns out an amino acid that is wholly new, rather than one of the 20 found in natural living things.

A quick biology primer, just in case high school biology isn't so fresh. DNA is of course the blueprint for all of our biological stuff. It gives instructions on how the amino acids should arrange themselves into proteins, which pick up the heavy lifting of life from there. There are just 20 amino acids, arranged in different combinations, that are encoded in the genome.

The Cambridge team has created nematode worms that generate a 21st, never before seen amino acid. That?s big, because it basically enables a new resolution in genetic manipulation, a kind of ?atom-by-atom control? over biological molecules, as one biologist put it to the BBC.

The artificial protein produced by their artificially enhanced nematodes simply contains a fluorescent dye that glows red under UV light--a test to ensure that their genetic manipulation worked. But ostensibly scientists could do all kinds of things with this technique by producing all kinds of novel amino acids and proteins. Unlike an artificial recreation of something natural--something akin to the Venter Institute?s ?synthetic life?--these nematodes represent that creation of something wholly new.

Keep an eye on this story. It?s bursting with potential for mind-blowing scientific innovation and chilling sci-fi screenplays.

[BBC]

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Astronauts might have to abandon space station (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? Astronauts may need to take the unprecedented step of temporarily abandoning the International Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall.

Until officials figure out what went wrong with Russia's essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the current residents have to leave in mid-November.

The unsettling predicament comes just weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

"We have plenty of options," NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, assured reporters Monday. "We'll focus on crew safety as we always do."

Abandoning the space station, even for a short period, would be an unpleasant last resort for the world's five space agencies that have spent decades working on the project. Astronauts have been living aboard the space station since 2000, and the goal is to keep it going until 2020.

Suffredini said flight controllers could keep a deserted space station operating indefinitely, as long as all major systems are working properly. The risk to the station goes up, however, if no one is on board to fix equipment breakdowns.

Six astronauts from three countries presently are living on the orbiting complex. Three are due to leave next month; the other three are supposed to check out in mid-November. They can't stay any longer because of spacecraft and landing restrictions.

The Sept. 22 launch of the very next crew ? the first to fly in this post-shuttle era ? already has been delayed indefinitely. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft have been the sole means of getting full-time station residents up and down for two years. The capsule is parked at the station until they ride it home.

To keep the orbiting outpost with a full staff of six for as long as possible, the one American and two Russians due to return to Earth on Sept. 8 will remain on board at least an extra week.

As for supplies, the space station is well stocked and could go until next summer, Suffredini said. Atlantis dropped off a year's supply of goods just last month on the final space shuttle voyage. The unmanned craft destroyed Wednesday was carrying 3 tons of supplies.

For now, operations are normal in orbit, Suffredini noted, and the additional week on board for half the crew will mean additional science research.

The Soyuz has been extremely reliable over the decades; this was the first failure in 44 Russian supply hauls for the space station. Even with such a good track record, many in and outside NASA were concerned about retiring the space shuttles before a replacement was ready to fly astronauts.

Russian space officials have set up an investigation team and until it comes up with a cause for the accident and a repair plan, the launch and landing schedules remain in question. None of the spacecraft debris has been recovered yet; the wreckage fell into a remote, wooded section of Siberia. The third stage malfunctioned; a sudden loss of pressure apparently was noted between the engine and turbopump.

While a crew may well have survived such an accident because of safety precautions built into the manned version of the rocket, no one wants to take any chances.

One or two unmanned Soyuz launches are on tap for October, one commercial and the other another space station supply run. Those would serve as important test flights before putting humans on board, Suffredini said.

NASA considered vacating the space station before, following the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Back then, shuttles were still being used to ferry some station residents back and forth. Instead, the station got by with two-man crews for three years because of the significant cutback in supplies.

The space station's population doubled in 2009, to six. It wasn't until the space station was completed this year that science research finally took priority.

Even if the space shuttles still were flying, space station crews still would need Soyuz-launched capsules to serve as lifeboats, Suffredini said. The capsules are certified for no more than 6 1/2 months in space, thus the need to regularly rotate crews. Complicating matters is the need to land the capsules during daylight hours in Kazakhstan, resulting in weeks of blackout periods.

NASA wants American private companies to take over crew hauls, but that's three to five years away at best. Until then, Soyuz capsules are the only means of transporting astronauts to the space station.

Japan and Europe have their own cargo ships and rockets, for unmanned use only. Commercial front-runner Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, plans to launch a space station supply ship from Cape Canaveral at the end of November. That would be put on hold if no one is on board to receive the vessel.

Suffredini said he hasn't had time to consider the PR impact of abandoning the space station, especially coming so soon after the end of the 30-year shuttle program.

"Flying safely is much, much more important than anything else I can think about right this instant," he said. "I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to discuss any political implications if we spend a lot of time on the ground. But you know, we'll just have to deal with them because we're going to do what's safest for the crew and for the space station."

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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Astronauts might have to abandon space station (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? Astronauts may need to take the unprecedented step of temporarily abandoning the International Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall.

Until officials figure out what went wrong with Russia's essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the current residents have to leave in mid-November.

The unsettling predicament comes just weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

"We have plenty of options," NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, assured reporters Monday. "We'll focus on crew safety as we always do."

Abandoning the space station, even for a short period, would be an unpleasant last resort for the world's five space agencies that have spent decades working on the project. Astronauts have been living aboard the space station since 2000, and the goal is to keep it going until 2020.

Suffredini said flight controllers could keep a deserted space station operating indefinitely, as long as all major systems are working properly. The risk to the station goes up, however, if no one is on board to fix equipment breakdowns.

Six astronauts from three countries presently are living on the orbiting complex. Three are due to leave next month; the other three are supposed to check out in mid-November. They can't stay any longer because of spacecraft and landing restrictions.

The Sept. 22 launch of the very next crew ? the first to fly in this post-shuttle era ? already has been delayed indefinitely. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft have been the sole means of getting full-time station residents up and down for two years. The capsule is parked at the station until they ride it home.

To keep the orbiting outpost with a full staff of six for as long as possible, the one American and two Russians due to return to Earth on Sept. 8 will remain on board at least an extra week.

As for supplies, the space station is well stocked and could go until next summer, Suffredini said. Atlantis dropped off a year's supply of goods just last month on the final space shuttle voyage. The unmanned craft destroyed Wednesday was carrying 3 tons of supplies.

For now, operations are normal in orbit, Suffredini noted, and the additional week on board for half the crew will mean additional science research.

The Soyuz has been extremely reliable over the decades; this was the first failure in 44 Russian supply hauls for the space station. Even with such a good track record, many in and outside NASA were concerned about retiring the space shuttles before a replacement was ready to fly astronauts.

Russian space officials have set up an investigation team and until it comes up with a cause for the accident and a repair plan, the launch and landing schedules remain in question. None of the spacecraft debris has been recovered yet; the wreckage fell into a remote, wooded section of Siberia. The third stage malfunctioned; a sudden loss of pressure apparently was noted between the engine and turbopump.

While a crew may well have survived such an accident because of safety precautions built into the manned version of the rocket, no one wants to take any chances.

One or two unmanned Soyuz launches are on tap for October, one commercial and the other another space station supply run. Those would serve as important test flights before putting humans on board, Suffredini said.

NASA considered vacating the space station before, following the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Back then, shuttles were still being used to ferry some station residents back and forth. Instead, the station got by with two-man crews for three years because of the significant cutback in supplies.

The space station's population doubled in 2009, to six. It wasn't until the space station was completed this year that science research finally took priority.

Even if the space shuttles still were flying, space station crews still would need Soyuz-launched capsules to serve as lifeboats, Suffredini said. The capsules are certified for no more than 6 1/2 months in space, thus the need to regularly rotate crews. Complicating matters is the need to land the capsules during daylight hours in Kazakhstan, resulting in weeks of blackout periods.

NASA wants American private companies to take over crew hauls, but that's three to five years away at best. Until then, Soyuz capsules are the only means of transporting astronauts to the space station.

Japan and Europe have their own cargo ships and rockets, for unmanned use only. Commercial front-runner Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, plans to launch a space station supply ship from Cape Canaveral at the end of November. That would be put on hold if no one is on board to receive the vessel.

Suffredini said he hasn't had time to consider the PR impact of abandoning the space station, especially coming so soon after the end of the 30-year shuttle program.

"Flying safely is much, much more important than anything else I can think about right this instant," he said. "I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to discuss any political implications if we spend a lot of time on the ground. But you know, we'll just have to deal with them because we're going to do what's safest for the crew and for the space station."

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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Archive Gallery: A Century of Ambitious Amphibious Vehicles

Would you take these seaplanes and other vehicles out for a ride? We'd take our chances on the marsh buggy, but would probably strap on a life vest (or two) while riding the amphibious bicycle

Marsh Buggy: March 1937

We've covered a fair number of amphibious craft over the years, most recently (and perhaps most memorably), a land-water ice cream truck that popped up on the Thames during Britain's National Ice Cream Week. And while you won't find any floating treatmobiles in our archives, the old-time amphibious vehicles we uncovered might prove just as charming.

Click to launch the photo gallery.

As a bonus, we threw in a couple of peculiar seaplanes from the 1930s, because who can resist an illustration titled "Air Conqueror of Tomorrow"? As goofy as some of these concepts look in retrospect (just wait until you see the amphibious bicycle), they're not far removed from the amphibians in operation today. For instance, one French inventor designed an underwater tour bus similar to the ones used in Duck Tours, except that his could actually dip underwater.

Meanwhile, Captain Frank T. Courtney suggested replacing a seaplane's wheels with endless treads in 1932, and prophetically enough, a good number of amphibious vehicles employed by the military draw inspiration from tanks instead of jeeps. Out of all the vehicles outlined in this gallery, the military amphibians are most reminiscent of their modern-day counterparts. Yet for every no-nonsense tank, there's an Arctic vessel equipped with a bladed hull and an airplane propeller, as well as a roly-poly combat vehicle outfitted with hemispherical wheels.

You might be asking whether these vehicles (excepting the military ones) are actually necessary. It's hard enough to maintain a car the runs on dry land, let alone one that can double as a motorboat, but practicality aside, we'd love to have taken one of these vehicles out for a spin. Correct us if we're wrong, but nothing says "August joyride" like a marsh buggy with jumbo-sized wheels.

Click through our gallery to read about the oil-hunting "tank," the Arctic amphibian, and more amphibious vehicles collected from our archives.

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Willow Garage Introduces Discount PR2 SE, a One-Armed Personal Robot for the Rest of Us

PR2 SE Half the arms, nearly half the price. Willow Garage

Willow Garage?s PR2 has provided a unique, open source robotics platform to all kinds of labs and institutions that otherwise wouldn?t have access to a complex robotics system--but not to that many. For all the absolutely cool things you can do with PR2, the $400,000 price tag is prohibitive--only about two dozen commercial and academic labs have their own PR2s. So, in an attempt to make their robot more accessible, Willow Garage is introducing the PR2 SE this week, a pared-down version of the same robot costing a mere $285,000.

So how do you cut more than a hundred grand off a $400,000 robot? You start by removing one of its arms. Robot arms are complicated and expensive, and a lot of roboticists have told Willow Garage their research really doesn?t require two arms (unless you?re researching how to bake chocolate chip cookies). Cut off one arm and the price drops dramatically.

Figure in the 30 percent savings Willow Garage offers to those who show a proven track record of open source development practices, and pretty soon you?re talking about a personal robot at a price that many more universities and other institutions can justify. That?s good for robotics, good for the open source community, and good for Willow Garage. PR2 doesn?t seem to mind either.

Plus, the PR2 SE comes with an updated sensor suite (which as yet has not been fully defined) to offset the loss of that arm, an added value that PR2 SE would likely applaud--if it could.

[Willow Garage via SmartPlanet]

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Driverless Car Drives 175 Miles on Busy Chinese Expressway, No GPS Necessary

Chinese Driverless Car National University of Defense Technology

According to China Daily, back in July, a Chinese driverless car traveled about 175 miles, at around 55 mph, on an expressway laden with other cars. Even more impressive, the car needed no GPS assistance, instead relying on only video cameras and radar sensors to see the road and the other drivers.

The car, a Hongqi HQ3 developed by the National University of Defense Technology, was controlled by a proprietary artificial intelligence system in the car's trunk. It seems like the demo went swimmingly: the car managed to travel the long distance between provincial capitals Changsha and Wuhan, passing cars and changing lanes, with hardly a hiccup.

Of course, as the car relies primarily on visual clues, the demo was conducted during daytime--a lack of light, as well as weather complications like fog, can throw the car's senses off. (Maybe it could use one of these optical sensors?)

China is a bit behind the U.S. when it comes to these driverless cars--some states are already on their way to passing driverless legislation, and Google's driverless cars have already driven a whopping 140,000 hours. On the other hand, only in the U.S. has a driverless car somehow crashed due to human error, so China's one up on us there.

The team behind the car plans to work with China's First Auto Works to produce a commercial version sometime in the future.

[via I Programmer]

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Is It Worth It to Build a Home Theater PC These Days?

The Revival of the HTPC? Geoffrey Morrison

Home theater PCs (HTPCs) have kind of fallen out of favor as simpler, more efficient media gadgets have sprung up. But as we found with the Apple TV, sometimes simpler doesn't mean better. Our friends at Sound+Vision took a second look at the HTPC, and found some distinct benefits for the DIY-minded: a cheap price, endless possible upgrades, and lots of flexibility and power. Check it out here.

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Ancient Burial May Reveal Home of Biblical Figure (LiveScience.com)

An ancient burial box recovered from antiquities looters three years ago contains a mysterious inscription that could reveal the home of the family of the figure Caiaphas, who is infamous for his involvement in the biblical story of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The burial box, also called an ossuary, was discovered in 1990, but the inscription was just recently verified as legitimate (and not the result of forgers trying to increase an artifact's value) by Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University and Boaz Zissu of Bar Ilan University. The box is made of limestone, is covered in decorative rosettes and has an inscription.

In the Bible story of Jesus' crucifixion, a Jewish high priest named Caiaphas is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus.

What is special about the inscription on this ossuary is that the deceased is named within the context of three generations; the inscription also includes a potential residence. The full inscription reads:

(Differences in spellings between Caiaphus and Caiaphas and Beth Imri and Beit Imri, below, are due to alternate translations.)

The Maaziah refers to a clan that was one of 24 orders of high priests during the second temple period, Goren said. While there are some records of the Caiaphus family in Talmudic sources (the central texts of Judaism) that detail their lives after they spread into the Galilee in A.D. 70, the reference to Beit Imri gives new insight into the family's location prior to their migration. [See pictures of burial box]

It is possible that Beit Imri refers to another priestly order, the researchers said in a statement, but it more probably refers to a geographical location, likely that of Caiaphus' family's village of origin.

These ossuaries are traditionally buried in the ground and contain previously buried skeletal remains. Because they spend thousands of years in the ground, the researchers said they develop a distinct coating of microbes, algae and lichen, which can't be replicated by forgers.

"Beyond any reasonable doubt, the inscription is authentic," study researcher Goren said in a statement.

Previously discovered burial boxes, including one claiming to contain the bones of James, Jesus' brother, have been shown to be hoaxes. The researchers claim that the inconsistencies that plagued the box of James aren't present on this box.

The researchers aren't able to trace where the ossuary was discovered, since it had made the rounds in the illegal antiquities trade, but they believe it came from a burial site in the Valley of Elah, southwest of Jerusalem, the legendary location of the battle between David and Goliath. Beit Imri was probably located on the slopes of Mount Hebron, they said.

The finding was published in the current issue of the Israel Exploration Journal.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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More Evidence Links Genes to Parkinson's (HealthDay)

TUESDAY, Aug. 30 (HealthDay News) -- A genetic variation that reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease by nearly 20 percent in many populations has been found by an international team of scientists.

They also identified other variants of the same gene -- LRRK2 -- that double the risk of Parkinson's in whites and Asians.

The Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease consortium's findings are from a genetic analysis of samples from more than 8,600 Parkinson's patients and almost 7,000 controls across 15 countries on five continents.

The investigation was led by neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, and the findings appear in the Aug. 31 online issue of The Lancet Neurology.

"The idea that Parkinson's disease occurs mostly in a random sporadic fashion is changing," lead investigator Owen Ross said in a Mayo news release. "Our study, one of the largest to date in the study of the genetics of Parkinson's disease, shows that a single gene, LRRK2, harbors both rare and common variants that in turn alter the susceptibility to Parkinson's disease in diverse populations."

These and future genetic findings could eventually help identify people at risk for Parkinson's and possibly lead to new treatments, Ross said.

One expert who was not involved in the study agreed that the findings hold promise.

"The finding that some variants in the LRRK2 gene can reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease is very interesting," said Dr. Andrew Feigin, associate professor of neurology and molecular medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. "[It] suggests that in addition to there likely being numerous genetic mutations that increase the risk of apparently sporadic disorders, there are also likely to be many genetic variations that reduce risk," he added.

"Though this observation may not lead directly to better treatments for Parkinson's disease, understanding how different genetic mutations in the same gene lead to increased or decreased risk for Parkinson's disease may provide clues to developing novel therapies," Feigin said.

Experts estimate that up to 2 percent of people over the age of 65 develop Parkinson's disease.

More information

We Move has more about Parkinson's disease.

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