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A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned. The same team took the first-ever single-molecule image in 2009 and more recently published images of a molecule shaped like the Olympic rings. The new work opens up the prospect of studying imperfections in the "wonder material" graphene or plotting where electrons go during chemical reactions. The images are published in Science. The team, which included French and Spanish collaborators, used a variant of a technique called atomic force microscopy, or AFM. AFM uses a...

By synchronizing 98 tiny cameras in a single device, electrical engineers from Duke University and the University of Arizona have developed a prototype camera that can create images with unprecedented detail. The camera's resolution is five times better than 20/20 human vision over a 120 degree horizontal field. The new camera has the potential to capture up to 50 gigapixels of data, which is 50,000 megapixels. By comparison, most consumer cameras are capable of taking photographs with sizes ranging from 8 to 40 megapixels. Pixels are individual "dots" of data – the higher the number of pixels, the better resolution...

We have heard a lot about exoplanets in the past year. But for all the talk about these planets, which orbit a star other than our sun, we still haven't actually seen one. One tool could change that, giving us our first look at a distant planet that could be the next best thing to Earth. Currently, scientists detect an extra-solar planet by measuring the dimming of its star as the planet passes between it and our line of sight (this is known as the Transit Method). By observing the way the star's light shines around the planet, it's possible...

Credit: Image courtesy of Nature Press Superman has nothing on Jianwei Miao, at least in the vision department. Miao, a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues have developed a way to image any type of nanoparticle with unprecedented accuracy. In the picture above, the technique, called electron tomography, shows a gold nanoparticle made up of 3871 atoms. Inside the nanoparticle, the researchers could easily resolve multiple "grains" (green, gold, blue, and red) in which atoms in each grain share a common atomic alignment that is offset from neighboring grains. The technique also manages to...

Travelers will get more protection from prying eyes when going through security screening thanks to an upgrade to more imaging machines at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and many other airports around the country. TSA tested the software earlier this year on one machine at the Atlanta airport, as well as at airports in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. The testing was successful and in the coming months the software will be rolled out to all similar machines at 40 airports, including all of the imaging machines at Hartsfield-Jackson. The $2.7 million software upgrade comes in the wake of an outcry over...

An SUV with the word "Nateveo" [or something like it] just cruised through my neighborhood. It had a 5-foot tall rig attached to its roof. Wondering if it is an imaging company ala Google Earth OR someone trying to capture Wi-Fi nets. Tried Googling - no help there ... Any thoughts ???

Enlarge Image In living color. This three-dimensional, true-color image of an apple was generated using a new technique of making holograms (inset) that allows the image to be viewed using ordinary white light. Credit: Science/AAAS Researchers have developed a new way to create true-color holograms that can be viewed from any angle using ordinary white light. The advance could lead to a new generation of electronic devices, such as cell phones or miniature televisions that display three-dimensional (3D) images. True 3D images can be created in several ways. In the 1960s, researchers generated the first holograms by firing a...

What was billed as a memorial for victims of the Arizona shooting rampage turned into a rollicking rally, leaving some conservative commentators wondering whether President Barack Obama's speech was a scripted political event. Not so, insisted the White House and host University of Arizona. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday he and other aides didn't expect the president's remarks at the school's basketball arena to receive as much rousing applause as it did. Gibbs said the crowd's response, at times cheering and shouting, was understandable.

Vol. 330 no. 6011 pp. 1612-1613 DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6011.1612 News IntroductionTen years ago, Karl Deisseroth was stuck. A psychiatrist and neuroscientist, he wanted to learn how different brain circuits affect behavior—and what went awry in the brains of his patients with schizophrenia and depression. But the tools of his trade were too crude: Electrodes inserted into the brain would stimulate too many cells in their vicinity. So in 2004, Deisseroth and his students invented a new tool. They inserted a gene for a light-activated algal protein into mice brains, where it entered nerve cells. By stimulating those cells with a laser,...

Hollow silica nanoparticles filled with gas behave as efficient contrast agents for use in ultrasound imaging. This could improve detection of tumours in breast cancer patients, claim US scientists.Ultrasound imaging is a safe, fast and non-invasive technique used for medical diagnosis. However, one shortcoming is the inferior image contrast compared to more sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To improve this, radiologists use microbubble contrast agents to enhance the reflection of ultrasonic waves and therefore improve the quality of the ultrasound image, or radioactive seeds that are injected into the patient before surgery to visualise the entire tumour. However, the contrast...

Doctors frequently misuse antibiotics when treating patients hospitalized with respiratory tract infections (RTIs), according to a study to be published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. The study, which tracked patients in two Pennsylvania hospitals, found that doctors often use antibiotics to treat patients whose infections are known to be caused by viruses. The findings are alarming because antibiotics are not effective against viruses, and antibiotic overuse has been linked to the development of resistant bacterial strains. "[T]hese data demonstrate at least one area where antibiotics are commonly used in hospitalized patients without clear reason," write...

OKLAHOMA CITY – Will Rogers World Airport will get full body scanners like the one at Tulsa International, though at least one area resident says the “naked machines” will be enough to keep her from flying. Following the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest flight 253, the federal Transportation Security Administration has ramped up plans to make sure airline travelers are thoroughly searched and even scanned in new machines. Some travelers are not thrilled with the idea of having to go through the body scanners, or “naked machine,” as Norman resident and activist Kaye Beach calls them. “The way I...

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The brains of autistic people are less active than expected when they're engaged in self-reflective thought, a finding that helps explain autism-related social difficulties, say British researchers. Using functional MRI, they measured the brain activity of 66 males, half of whom had autism, while they were asked questions about their own or the Queen's thoughts, opinions,preferences, or physical characteristics. The researchers were particularly interested in an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is known to be active when people think about themselves. In non-autistic volunteers, this part of the brain...

In a remarkable home movie, an international team of researchers has filmed individual metal atoms as they move around and react within the confines of a carbon nanotube. As well as demonstrating the power of the imaging technique, the work has shown that the interior of carbon nanotubes may not be as inert as previously assumed.Andrey Chuvilin from the University of Ulm in Germany and colleagues trapped single atoms of the heavy metal dysprosium within hollow fullerene spheres made up of 82 carbon atoms, and enclosed a series of these dysprosium-seeded cages within single-walled carbon nanotubes, with the fullerenes stringing themselves along the...

If you're watching the complex processes in a living cell, it is easy to miss something important—especially if you are watching changes that take a long time to unfold and require high-spatial-resolution imaging. But new research* makes it possible to scrutinize activities that occur over hours or even days inside cells, potentially solving many of the mysteries associated with molecular-scale events occurring in these tiny living things. A joint research team, working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has discovered a method of using nanoparticles to illuminate...

Four thousand years ago, a government bureaucrat in Mesopotamia jotted down a tally of slave laborers on a clay tablet. The bureaucrat left behind the count in wedge-shaped symbols that proved hard to fully decipher with the naked eye. Until now. Researchers at the University of Southern California's West Semitic Research Project have helped uncover its hidden narrative with the aid of lighting and imaging techniques that are credited with revolutionizing the study of ancient texts. Over the last three decades, the USC project has produced thousands of crisp images of inscriptions and other artifacts from biblical Israel and other...

Videos show T cells breaching the central nervous system's defences.A T cell (green) is seen moving with the flow of blood before crawling against it and exiting the blood vessel.Ingo Bartholomaeus et al, Nature 2009 Despite being surrounded by a supposedly unbreachable defensive line, the body's central nervous system can still be attacked by autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.Now, researchers led by Alexander Flügel, director of the Institute for Multiple Sclerosis Research at the University Medical Centre in Göttingen, Germany, have watched in real time as T cells — blood cells linked to the immune response — penetrate the...

Live-cell fluorescence imaging identifies bona fide reprogrammed cells.Fluorescence imaging could help resolve whether iPS cells have been properly programmed.Alamy The next tools for reprogramming cells to an embryonic-like state might just be a camera and a set of fluorescently tagged antibodies. Researchers imaged more than a million human cells in vitro as they changed from skin tissue cells, known as fibroblasts, into colonies of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. As expected, many similar-looking colonies appeared, but only very few consisted of fully reprogrammed iPS cells. After assessing which were which, researchers led by Thorsten Schlaeger and George Daley of the...

Techniques used to image tumours and infections improve when the carbon nanotube 'contrast agents' are gold plated, researchers in the US have discovered. The gold plating reduces the nanotubes' potential toxicity while boosting their effect as contract agents, thereby allowing far fewer of them to be used for the same effect.Doctors use both photoacoustic and photothermal imaging to examine diseased tissue. The techniques involve shining a laser onto the tissue and measuring either the emitted heat - that is, the infrared radiation - or ultrasound. By adding contrast agents, such as pigmented biomolecules, the tissue responds better to the laser and...

Materials displaying 'self-erasing' colour images have been created by chemists in the US, who have studied how certain nanoparticles can assemble and disassemble themselves under different wavelengths of light.The materials, which are printed with ultraviolet (UV) light and erased with visible light, could one day be used for self-expiring bus tickets or for carrying secret messages.'Self-erasing papers are important for time-sensitive materials and secure communications,' said study leader Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. 'On the fundamental level, what we describe is also a very different way of looking at the concept of information storage. We're not using traditional coloured inks per se,...