Lifeboat Foundation

S cientists are very careful about claiming that no one else has ever done something before — the last thing they need is some overlooked lab saying, um, right here! — but researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital are confident they’re on solid ground. Their high-resolution MRIs of a complete, intact human brain, they say, are “unprecedented.”

Other labs have sliced up brains and seen features down to 80 or even 50 microns. (One micron is a 10,000th of a centimeter, and 75 of them is about the width of a human hair.) The MGH team got 100-micron resolution in a whole brain, producing the most detailed three-dimensional images of an intact brain ever seen.

The scientists started with an MRI machine with a 7-tesla magnet, a significantly stronger magnetic field than the 0.5-to-3 teslas of most MRIs in clinical use, which optimized the signal-to-noise ratio. But they also built custom state-of-the-art software that, depending which physics parameters it directs the MRI to optimize, reveals particular features of the tissue, from tiny bleeds to swelling to white and gray matter.

Scientists have developed an automated tool for mapping the movement of particles inside cells that may accelerate research in many fields, a new study in eLife reports.

The movements of tiny molecules, proteins and cellular components throughout the body play an important role in health and disease. For example, they contribute to brain development and the progression of some diseases. The new tool, built with cutting-edge machine learning technology, will make tracking these movements faster, easier and less prone to bias.

Currently, scientists may use images called kymographs, which represent the movement of particles in time and space, for their analyses of particle movements. These kymographs are extracted from time-lapse videos of particle movements recorded using microscopes. The analysis needs to be done manually, which is both slow and vulnerable to unconscious biases of the researcher.

Snap on Tuesday unveiled new-generation Spectacles sunglasses that can take 3D pictures to share on its Snapchat messaging service known for ephemeral posts.

Spectacles 3, set for release late this year, were described as a limited release and priced at $380, more than twice the price of an “Original” version available at the Southern California company’s website.

Spectacles sunglasses with built-in cameras that synchronize wirelessly with smartphones to share pictures or video snippets to Snapchat were launched in late 2016.

A team of scientists from MIT and Rice University recently discovered a new method for creating qubits that could revolutionize both quantum computing and cancer research – and all it takes is some household bleach and a UV light.

Qubits are the basic units of information used in quantum computing. Typically, when scientists create them they go through a complex process involving lasers or shearing single photons off of light using complex, difficult-to-work-with reactants that produce unwanted side-effects. These time consuming methods often require trial-and-error and seldom produce perfect results.

A flamingo lives 40 years and a human being lives 90 years; a mouse lives two years and an elephant lives 60. Why? What determines the lifespan of a species? After analyzing nine species of mammals and birds, researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) found a very clear relationship between the lifespan of these species and the shortening rate of their telomeres, the structures that protect the chromosomes and the genes they contain. The relationship is expressed as a mathematical equation, a formula that can accurately predict the longevity of the species. The study was done in collaboration with the Madrid Zoo Aquarium and the University of Barcelona.

“The telomere shortening rate is a powerful predictor of species lifespan,” the authors write in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The study compares the telomeres of mice, goats, dolphins, gulls, reindeer, vultures, flamingos, elephants and humans, and reveals that species whose telomeres shorten faster have shorter lives.

(KINSHASA, Congo) — Doctors in Congo say that two Ebola patients who were treated with new anti-Ebola drugs in Goma in eastern Congo have been declared “cured.”

Doctors fighting Ebola quickly used the case on Tuesday to press the message that people with Ebola can recover if they seek proper care.

Astronomer Dr David Whitehouse said the “enormous” black hole discovered by astronomers in South America showed the whole universe might one day be swallowed by a black hole. He told Sky News: “We’re beginning to realise that we had thought that there was a limit to the size of black holes in the centre of a galaxy because they can only swallow so many stars. Black holes grow by swallowing matter and gas and stars and dust.

An international team of subsurface explorers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have uncovered a previously undescribed ‘Jurassic World’ of around 100 ancient volcanoes buried deep within the Cooper-Eromanga Basins of central Australia.

The Cooper-Eromanga Basins in the north-eastern corner of South Australia and south-western corner of Queensland is Australia’s largest onshore oil and gas producing region of Australia. But, despite about 60 years of petroleum exploration and production, this ancient Jurassic volcanic underground landscape has gone largely unnoticed.

Published in the journal Gondwana Research, the researchers used advanced subsurface imaging techniques, analogous to medical CT scanning, to identify the plethora of volcanic craters and lava flows, and the deeper magma chambers that fed them. They’ve called the volcanic region the Warnie Volcanic Province, with a nod to Australian cricket legend Shane Warne.

Last September, an American traveling in Kenya suffered a serious stroke, and was hospitalized there for a month. The stay didn’t go well: The person suffered a bout of pneumonia, a urinary tract infection, and a brush with sepsis, a life-threatening immune reaction to infection.

Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, and the author of Big Chicken.

Eventually the traveler’s condition stabilized enough to be brought home, to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Maryland. Because they had been in that foreign hospital for so long, the US institution decided to be extra careful. It put the patient (who hasn’t been named publicly, to respect medical privacy) into an isolation room and required that everyone on the treatment team wear a gown and gloves. After consulting the state health department, the hospital also decided to check the patient for any superbugs that might have been picked up overseas.