This is not a work of art. It’s an image of microscopic blood flow in a rat’s brain, taken with one of many new tools that are yielding higher levels of detail in brain imaging.
Here are seven more glorious images from neuroscience research →
Alexandre Dizeux
Regulatory efforts to protect data are making strides globally. Patient data is protected by law in the United States and elsewhere. In Europe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guards personal data and recently led to a US $1.3 billion fine for Meta. You can even think of Apple’s App Store policies against data sharing as a kind of data-protection regulation.
“These are good constraints. These are constraints society wants,” says Michael Gao, founder and CEO of Fabric Cryptography, one of the startups developing FHE-accelerating chips. But privacy and confidentiality come at a cost: They can make it more difficult to track disease and do medical research, they potentially let some bad guys bank, and they can prevent the use of data needed to improve AI.
“Fully homomorphic encryption is an automated solution to get around legal and regulatory issues while still protecting privacy,” says Kurt Rohloff, CEO of Duality Technologies, in Hoboken, N.J., one of the companies developing FHE accelerator chips. His company’s FHE software is already helping financial firms check for fraud and preserving patient privacy in health care research.
High-frequency terahertz waves have great potential for a number of applications including next-generation medical imaging and communication. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have shown, in a study published in the journal Advanced Science, that the transmission of terahertz light through an aerogel made of cellulose and a conducting polymer can be tuned. This is an important step to unlock more applications for terahertz waves.
The terahertz range covers wavelengths that lie between microwaves and infrared light on the electromagnetic spectrum. It has a very high frequency. Thanks to this, many researchers believe that the terahertz range has great potential for use in space exploration, security technology and communication systems, among other things.
In medical imaging, it can also be an interesting substitute for X-ray examinations as the waves can pass through most non-conductive materials without damaging any tissue.
Ocean bays that pinch West Antarctica are home to two distinct populations of Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti). The shared secrets of their ancestors do not bode well for the future health of our planet.
A new DNA analysis of the two geographically separated octopus populations indicates they were once part of one big family.
This direct historical connection suggests that around 125,000 years ago, the massive 2.2 million cubic kilometer (530,000 cubic mile) West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) that separates the two bays had fully collapsed into the sea.
Facing an alcohol crisis, the US sees 12% of adult deaths linked to abuse. Excessive drinking risks permanent brain damage, Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome. Symptoms mimic drunkenness and can lead to irreversible psychosis. Prevention? Cut back or quit. Concerned? Seek medical advice for potential Vitamin B1 treatment.
Aging Cell is an open access geroscience journal addressing the biology of aging, from molecular mechanisms of aging to age-related disease.
A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed the first dual-color optoelectronic neural probe.
Unlike previous, single probes, which often control brain activity in only one direction—excitation or inhibition, but not both—this new design can enhance and silence the electrical activities of the same neurons within specific cortical layers of the brain. It promises aid the investigation of tightly packed neural microcircuits within the cortex and deep brain regions and, in the longer term, add to the functional mapping of the brain.
Guangyu Xu, assistant associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, an appointee of the Dev and Linda Gupta Professorship at UMass Amherst, and principal investigator of the study hopes the device can ultimately help researchers identify the origin of brain diseases.
A review discusses the current perception of brain immunity and its implications for brain aging, diseases, and immune-based therapies.
The ban on selling Apple Watches with blood-oxygen sensors also impacts the repairs of any Apple Watch with the same feature.
The Human Genome Project promised medical advances from knowledge of the DNA inside nearly every human cell. Now, around 20 years later, nucleic acids — the building blocks of DNA and RNA — are at the centre of powerful approaches to new medicines.
