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While X-rays can produce harmful radiation, a new technique using laser-induced sound waves provides highly detailed images of the structures in our bodies.
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Photoacoustic imaging is an emerging imaging technique that shoots micro-pulses of laser light at a specimen or body part, which selectively heats up parts of the tissue causing them to expand, and generate waves of pressure – a.k.a. sound waves.

Ultrasonic sensors are situated to capture these microscopic changes, and a processing software then reconstructs the image based on what the sensors “hear.” The speed of the laser can be adjusted depending on what type of tissue one would like to visualize.

The photoacoustic imaging technique is beginning to take off in both the medical and scientific worlds, as it provides us with super clear, incredibly detailed images of the human body and the structures inside it.

Researchers are blurring the distinction between brain and machine, designing nanoelectronics that look, interact, and feel like real neurons. Camouflaged in the brain, this neurotechnology could offer a better way to treat neurodenerative diseases or control prosthetics, interface with computers or even enhance cognitive abilities.

Electrodes implanted in the brain help alleviate symptoms like the intrusive tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease but current probes face limitations due to their size and inflexibility. In a recent paper titled “Precision Electronic Medicine,” published in Nature Biotechnology, Shaun Patel, a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Charles M. Lieber, the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, argue that neurotechnology is on the cusp of a major renaissance. Throughout history, scientists have blurred discipline lines to tackle problems larger than their individual fields.

“The next frontier is really the merging of human cognition with machines,” says Patel. “Everything manifests in the brain fundamentally. All your thoughts, your perceptions, any type of disease.” He and Lieber see mesh electronics as the foundation for these machines, a way to design personalized electronic treatment for just about anything related to the brain. “Today, research focused at the interface between the nervous system and electronics is not only leading to advances in fundamental neuroscience, but also unlocking the potential of implants capable of cellular-level therapeutic targeting,” write the authors in their paper.

Women innovators across the United States have been selected as AAAS IF/THEN® Ambassadors by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Lyda Hill Philanthropies to share their stories and serve as high-profile role models for middle-school girls.

Information about the 125 women selected as AAAS IF/THEN® Ambassadors can be found at www.ifthenshecan.org/ambassadors.

IF/THEN®, a national initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, seeks to further women in science, technology, engineering and math by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers.

AMAZING STUFF, 3D printing is revolutionizing medical and technological science… Respect AEWR wherein we have found the causes and a cure for the pandemic plague mankind has called natural aging when it is the reverse the most unnatural thing on earth to do is age and die. Proven long ago by Science sitting waiting for us to pick it up in the established data of mankind’s humanities… We search for partners-investors to now join us in agiongs end… r.p.berry


The Chicago-based biotech company BIOLIFE4D announced today that it has successfully 3D-bioprinted a mini human heart. The tiny heart has the same structure as a full-sized heart, and the company says it’s an important milestone in the push to create an artificial heart viable for transplant.

LUXEMBOURG—( )—SES announced today that it has selected SpaceX as a launch partner to deliver its next-generation Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellation into space on board Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral. The two companies have disrupted the industry in the past when SES became the first to launch a commercial GEO satellite with SpaceX, and later as the first ever payload on a SpaceX reusable rocket. Their next launch, in 2021, will be another one for the records as the revolutionary terabit-scale capabilities of SES’s O3b mPOWER communications system disrupt the industry again.

The global O3b mPOWER system comprises an initial constellation of seven high-throughput, low-latency MEO satellites, each capable of generating thousands of electronically-steered beams that can be dynamically adjusted to serve customers in various markets including telecom and cloud, communications-on-the-move and government. O3b mPOWER also will include a variety of intelligent, application-specific Customer Edge Terminals integrated with SES’s terrestrial network and dynamically optimised using the recently announced Adaptive Resource Control (ARC) software system, further boosting O3b mPOWER’s market-leading flexibility.

FRANCE’S tourist beaches are being overrun with toxic slime which experts say can kill sunbathers and swimmers within seconds.

The green algae releases poisonous gases when trodden on causing those nearby to faint and suffer cardiac arrest, say reports.

At least three people and dozens of animals have already died, but some fear other deaths may have been mistakenly passed off as drownings.