Featured
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Research Highlights |
3D-printed camera sees like an eagle
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News Explainer |
Brain scans spot early signs of autism in high-risk babies
Experts say replication is needed and other hurdles must be surmounted to apply findings to the clinic.
- Ewen Callaway
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Technology Feature |
Neuroscience: Big brain, big data
Neuroscientists are starting to share and integrate data — but shifting to a team approach isn't easy.
- Esther Landhuis
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News & Views |
Improving the image of nanoparticles
A biocompatible probe that combines fluorescent nanodiamonds and gold nanoparticles allows cells to be imaged using both optical and electron microscopy techniques, opening up fresh opportunities for biological research.
- Christopher S. Wood
- & Molly M. Stevens
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Technology Feature |
The real-time technicolour living brain
Neurobiologists are coming up with innovative ways to get high-resolution pictures of the whole brain at work.
- Amber Dance
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Obituary |
Roger Yonchien Tsien (1952–2016)
Creator of a rainbow of fluorescent probes that lit up biology.
- Timothy J. Rink
- , Louis Y. Tsien
- & Richard W. Tsien
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Research Highlights |
Ancient scroll virtually unrolled
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Letter |
A method for imaging and spectroscopy using γ-rays and magnetic resonance
A new imaging and spectroscopy approach combines the ability of magnetic resonance imaging to manipulate nuclear spins with the high sensitivity of γ-ray detection, enabling a greatly reduced number of nuclei to be used compared to conventional NMR signal detection.
- Yuan Zheng
- , G. Wilson Miller
- & Gordon D. Cates
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News |
Reactor shutdown threatens world’s medical-isotope supply
Canada’s Chalk River reactor, which makes large amounts of technetium-99m, will end production next month.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Dogs can tell when praise is sincere
Study suggests that man’s best friend probably understands more than we thought when we talk to them.
- Helen Shen
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News |
Brain's chemical signals seen in real time
Imaging technique reveals dopamine surges as mice learn to associate a sound with pleasure.
- Sara Reardon
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News & Views |
Nanocolumns at the heart of the synapse
A nanocolumn spans the synaptic cleft between neurons, connecting regions of neurotransmitter molecule release and capture. This discovery informs on mechanisms of synaptic organization and regulation. See Letter p.210
- Stephan J. Sigrist
- & Astrid G. Petzoldt
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Research Highlights |
Microscope can see under the sea
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News & Views |
A modern map of the human cerebral cortex
An authoritative map of the modules that make up the cerebral cortex of the human brain promises to act as a springboard for greater understanding of brain function and disease. See Article p.171
- B. T. Thomas Yeo
- & Simon B. Eickhoff
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Outlook |
Imaging: Show me where it hurts
Technology for peering into the brain is revealing a pattern of pain, and differences between the acute and chronic forms.
- Simon Makin
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Technology Feature |
Illuminating life's building blocks
A suite of tools now enables scientists to see proteins at work in living cells at the single-molecule level.
- Marissa Fessenden
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News Q&A |
Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness
Drug researcher David Nutt discusses brain-imaging studies with hallucinogens.
- Zoe Cormier
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Letter |
TAM receptors regulate multiple features of microglial physiology
Microglial phagocytosis is required for neurogenic niche maintenance and response to injury; the TAM kinases Mer and Axl are expressed by microglia in the adult CNS, and mediate the clearance of apoptotic cells from the niche.
- Lawrence Fourgeaud
- , Paqui G. Través
- & Greg Lemke
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Books & Arts |
Imaging: Medical modernist
Thomas Schnalke extols the dual genius of pathology sculptor and abstract artist Adolf Fleischmann.
- Thomas Schnalke
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Outlook |
Prognosis: Proportionate response
Work to determine which prostate cancers are truly dangerous may finally be coming to fruition.
- Sarah Deweerdt
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News & Views |
Super-resolution ultrasound
By infusing blood vessels with gas-filled microbubbles and using rapid ultrasound imaging to detect the bubbles, super-resolution imaging of an entire vessel system has been achieved in a rat brain. See Letter p.499
- Ben Cox
- & Paul Beard
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Letter |
Ultrafast ultrasound localization microscopy for deep super-resolution vascular imaging
Conventional clinical ultrasound imaging has, at best, sub-millimetre-scale resolution, but now a new ultrasound technique is demonstrated that is based on fast tracking of transient signals from a sub-wavelength contrast agent and has sufficiently high resolution to map the microvasculature deep into organs.
- Claudia Errico
- , Juliette Pierre
- & Mickael Tanter
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Outlook |
Screening: Don't look now
Mammogram screenings are an established part of women's health care, but are they more trouble than they are worth?
- Emily Sohn
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Outlook |
Perspective: The risks of overdiagnosis
Screening mammograms catch some cancers that pose little threat. Alexandra Barratt explains why she may decide to skip the scans.
- Alexandra Barratt
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News & Views |
Extra dimension for bone analysis
A combination of two techniques — computed tomography and small-angle X-ray scattering — and serious computing power have enabled multi-scale, three-dimensional analysis of bone and tooth tissue. See Letters p.349 & p.353
- Peter Fratzl
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Letter |
Six-dimensional real and reciprocal space small-angle X-ray scattering tomography
A small-angle X-ray scattering computed tomography method that reduces the amount of data that needs to be collected and analysed to reconstruct the three-dimensional scattering distribution in reciprocal space of a three-dimensional sample in real space is demonstrated by measuring the orientation of collagen fibres within a human tooth.
- Florian Schaff
- , Martin Bech
- & Franz Pfeiffer
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Research Highlights |
Cheap MRI uses small magnets
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Outlook |
Cell imaging: Beyond the limits
Powerful super-resolution microscopes that allow researchers to explore the world at the nanoscale are set to transform our understanding of the cell.
- Katherine Bourzac
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Technology Feature |
Connectomes make the map
Working at a variety of scales and with disparate organisms and technologies, researchers are mapping how parts of the brain connect.
- Amber Dance
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News |
Fly larvae brains filmed in action
Videos of neural activity in fruit-fly larva's brain and central nervous system mark a step up from zebrafish imaging.
- Alison Abbott
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Research Highlights |
Nanocrystals seen in solution in 3D
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Research Highlights |
A boost for magnetic imaging
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Research Highlights |
Graphene protects cells for imaging
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Spotlight |
Spotlight on Genetics
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Research Highlights |
Cancer-cell transfer filmed
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Research Highlights |
A 3D map of skin microbes and molecules
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Books & Arts |
Scientific instrumentation: The aided eye
Philip Ball examines two studies on how optical instruments taught science to see.
- Philip Ball
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News |
NIH invests US$41.5 million in placenta research
US agency launches project aimed at monitoring organ in real time.
- Sara Reardon
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Article |
A mesoscale connectome of the mouse brain
In mouse, an axonal connectivity map showing the wiring patterns across the entire brain has been created using an EGFP-expressing adeno-associated virus tracing technique, providing the first such whole-brain map for a vertebrate species.
- Seung Wook Oh
- , Julie A. Harris
- & Hongkui Zeng
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Letter |
Visualization of an endogenous retinoic acid gradient across embryonic development
Genetically encoded probes for the non-peptidic morphogen retinoic acid allow the quantitative measurement of physiological RA concentration in vivo; the results support the source–sink diffusion model of morphogen dynamics proposed by Francis Crick in 1970.
- Satoshi Shimozono
- , Tadahiro Iimura
- & Atsushi Miyawaki
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Article |
Magnetic resonance fingerprinting
A new approach to magnetic resonance, ‘magnetic resonance fingerprinting', is reported, which combines a data acquisition scheme with a pattern-recognition algorithm that looks for the ‘fingerprints’ of interest within the data.
- Dan Ma
- , Vikas Gulani
- & Mark A. Griswold
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Nature Video |
LOL cats like stroking too
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News |
Brain scans of rappers shed light on creativity
Functional magnetic resonance imaging shows what happens in the brain during improvisation.
- Daniel Cressey
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Research Highlights |
A peek at organelles in live cells
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News Feature |
Neuroscience: Idle minds
Neuroscientists are trying to work out why the brain does so much when it seems to be doing nothing at all.
- Kerri Smith
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News |
Light-sensing chip captures sperm on the move
Lens-free system provides first direct evidence of spiralling swimming pattern.
- Helen Shen
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Research Highlights |
fMRI translates thoughts to words
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News |
Ageing eyes hinder biometric scans
Research suggests that irises do not remain the same for life after all.
- Duncan Graham-Rowe
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