Category: 7. Science

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A new technology that uses clinical MRI machines to image metabolic activity in the brain could give researchers and clinicians unique insight into brain function and disease, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign report. The non-invasive, high-resolution metabolic imaging of the whole brain revealed differences in metabolic activity and neurotransmitter levels among brain regions; found metabolic alterations in brain tumors; and mapped and characterized multiple sclerosis lesions — with patients only spending minutes in an MRI scanner.

Led by Zhi-Pei Liang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I., the team reported its findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Understanding the brain, how it works and what goes wrong when it is injured or diseased is considered one of the most exciting and challenging scientific endeavors of our time,” Liang said. “MRI has played major roles in unlocking the mysteries of the brain over the past four decades. Our new technology adds another dimension to MRI’s capability for brain imaging: visualization of brain metabolism and detection of metabolic alterations associated with brain diseases.”

Conventional MRI provides high-resolution, detailed imaging of brain structures. Functional MRI maps brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow and blood oxygenation level, which are closely linked to neural activity. However, they cannot provide information on the metabolic activity in the brain, which is important for understanding function and disease, said postdoctoral researcher Yibo Zhao, the first author of the paper.

“Metabolic and physiological changes often occur before structural and functional abnormalities are visible on conventional MRI and fMRI images,” Zhao said. “Metabolic imaging, therefore, can lead to early diagnosis and intervention of brain diseases.”

Both MRI and fMRI techniques are based on magnetic resonance signals from water molecules. The new technology measures signals from brain metabolites and neurotransmitters as well as water molecules, a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging. These MRSI images can provide significant new insights into brain function and disease processes, and could improve sensitivity and specificity for the detection and diagnosis of brain diseases, Zhao said.

Other attempts at MRSI have been bogged down by the lengthy times required to capture the images and high levels of noise obscuring the signals from neurotransmitters. The new technique addresses both challenges.

“Our technology overcomes several long-standing technical barriers to fast high-resolution metabolic imaging by synergistically integrating ultrafast data acquisition with physics-based machine learning methods for data processing,” Liang said. With the new MRSI technology, the Illinois team cut the time required for a whole brain scan to 12 and a half minutes.

The researchers tested their MRSI technique on several populations. In healthy subjects, the researchers found and mapped varying metabolic and neurotransmitter activity across different brain regions, indicating that such activity is not universal. In patients with brain tumors, the researchers found metabolic alterations, such as elevated choline and lactate, in tumors of different grades — even when the tumors appeared identical on clinical MRI images. In subjects with multiple sclerosis, the technique detected molecular changes associated with neuroinflammatory response and reduced neuronal activity up to 70 days before changes become visible on clinical MRI images, the researchers report.

The researchers foresee potential for broad clinical use of their technique: By tracking metabolic changes over time, clinicians can assess the effectiveness of treatments for neurological conditions, Liang said. Metabolic information also can be used to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their unique metabolic profiles.

“High-resolution whole-brain metabolic imaging has significant clinical potential,” said Liang, who began his career in the lab of the late Illinois professor Paul Lauterbur, recipient of the Nobel Prize for developing MRI technology. “Paul envisioned this exciting possibility and the general approach, but it has been very difficult to achieve his dream of fast high-resolution metabolic imaging in the clinical setting.

“As healthcare is moving towards personalized, predictive and precision medicine, this high-speed, high-resolution technology can provide a timely and effective tool to address an urgent unmet need for noninvasive metabolic imaging in clinical applications.”

Reference: Zhao Y, Li Y, Jin W, et al. Ultrafast J-resolved magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging for high-resolution metabolic brain imaging. Nat Biomed Eng. 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41551-025-01418-4

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Topline

The Northern Lights may be visible in the U.S. overnight on Wednesday and Thursday just as the Milky Way appears in the night sky. The delayed arrival of a coronal mass ejection traveling towards Earth may cause a geomagnetic storm, according to the latest forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It follows a false alarm on July 1-2, but also notable displays of aurora in northern U.S. states in recent weeks.

Key Facts

Where To See The Northern Lights

NOAA’s aurora viewlines indicate potential aurora displays are possible in northern U.S. states and Canada. U.S. states that may see aurora include (northerly parts of) Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. In the U.S., regions close to the Canadian border will have the highest chance.

When To See The Northern Lights

When and where aurora is visible is uncertain until a turbulent solar wind is detected by NASA’s DSCOVR and ACE satellites. Orbiting the sun from around a million miles from Earth, they give a roughly 30-minute warning of aurora displays after measuring the solar wind’s speed and magnetic intensity. Check NOAA’s 30-minute forecast or use the Glendale App for up-to-the-minute forecasts. Be prepared to fail — it may take multiple trips to finally see aurora, as displays can be unpredictable.

The Milky Way In June

Early July is a great time to see the Milky Way. Although it’s visible from the Northern Hemisphere all year, its bright core only becomes visible in the southern sky after dark from late May through September. The bright core is the center of the galaxy, home to a dense concentration of stars, star clusters and nebulae. You’ll need to be away from light pollution to see it.

Further Reading

ForbesBootid Meteor Shower: How To See ‘Shooting Stars’ On FridayBy Jamie CarterForbesA Comet 85 Miles Wide Is Erupting In The Solar System — What To KnowBy Jamie CarterForbesNASA Urges Public To Leave The City As Milky Way Appears — 15 Places To GoBy Jamie Carter

The study, published in Royal Society Open Science, found chlorothalonil – one of the world’s most extensively used fungicides – severely impacts insect reproduction and survival, even at the lowest levels routinely detected on food.

“Even the very lowest concentration has a huge impact on the reproduction of the flies that we tested,” says lead author Darshika Dissawa, a PhD candidate from Macquarie’s School of Natural Sciences.

“This can have a big knock-on population impact over time because it affects both male and female fertility.”

The researchers exposed fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to chlorothalonil levels matching those typically found in produce from cranberries to wine grapes. Even at the lowest dose, flies showed a 37 percent drop in egg production compared with unexposed individuals.

Chlorothalonil is a widely applied broad-spectrum fungicide in American agriculture, used on crops like:

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Peanuts
• Corn
• Turfgrass (e.g., golf courses)
• Fruits such as peaches, strawberries, and melons

Supervising author Associate Professor Fleur Ponton says the dramatic decline was unexpected.

“We expected the effect to increase far more gradually with higher amounts. But we found that even a very small amount can have a strong negative effect,” Associate Professor Ponton says.

Although banned in the European Union, chlorothalonil is extensively applied to Australian crops including orchards and vineyards, often preventatively when no disease is present.

The findings add to mounting evidence of global insect population decline, with some regions reporting drops exceeding 75 percent in recent decades.

“We need bees and flies and other beneficial insects for pollination, and we think this is an important problem for pollinator populations,” Associate Professor Ponton says.

The research highlights a critical knowledge gap in pesticide regulation, with fewer than 25 scientific papers examining chlorothalonil’s effects on insects despite its widespread use.

The researchers recommend more sustainable practices, including reduced application frequency to allow insect population recovery between treatments.

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The new weather satellite Meteosat Third Generation Sounder-1 (MTG-S1) lifted off on board a Falcon 9 rocket from the US company SpaceX on Tuesday. It is expected to provide more precise weather forecasting.

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An instrument for monitoring air pollution was also launched into space together with the satellite from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The European Space Agency (Esa) announced that the launch had been successful.

The spacecraft, developed by Esa on behalf of weather satellite operator Eumetsat, will “revolutionise weather forecasting and climate observation in Europe”, said Tobias Guggenmoser from Esa. As an Eumetsat member, Switzerland will also utilise the satellite’s data.

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Swiss satellite tech to improve weather forecasting from space

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Aug 23, 2018


The Aeolus satellite, which is carrying Swiss technology, will measure winds around the globe.

Read more: Swiss satellite tech to improve weather forecasting from space

The infrared sounder will collect data on temperature, humidity and trace gases at an altitude of around 36,000 kilometres. This can help to recognise and predict rapidly developing and potentially dangerous weather patterns. “By recording 1,700 infrared channels every half hour, we can slice the sky into layers (…) so that meteorologists can see exactly what is happening at every altitude,” explained Guggenmoser.

The satellite, whose main contractor is the company OHB Bremen, is a major step forward for Esa. Europe previously only had imagers, which are satellites with imaging instruments, but not sounders with spectroscopic instruments for geostationary weather satellites.

More precise warnings, more protection, less damage

Before MTG-S1 lifted off into space, an imager from the satellite series had already been launched into space. Another is due to follow next year to complete the constellation. Together, these three instruments should be able to see the formation of thunderstorms before clouds even form and thus provide more precise storm warnings. The hope is that communities will be able to better prepare for severe storms in the future, resulting in less damage and fewer deaths.

The newly launched missile also carries the Sentinel-4 satellite of the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) for monitoring air quality. The instrument analyses the composition of the atmosphere, for example with regard to ozone and nitrogen dioxide, and is intended to provide more precise information on air pollution in Europe. Switzerland does not use the data from the Copernicus satellite as it is not a member.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

NASA is exploring the properties of a metal alloy that shrinks as it is heated, as boffins in its Astrophysics Division think it may be needed if the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HBO) is to succeed.

Readers doubtless know that metals expand when heated. As explained in a NASA blog post that’s a problem for space telescopes because if their components warm and expand it can mean that the shape of their mirrors change in ways that make it harder to conduct observations.

NASA has already developed materials that compensate for those effects and used them in the James Webb Space Telescope and in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that the aerospace agency intends to launch in 2027.

The HBO, NASA’s next space ‘scope project after the Nancy Grace Roman, will need even more resilient materials.

To understand why, the post explains how to observe exoplanets.

“As light passes through a planet’s atmosphere or is reflected or emitted from a planet’s surface, telescopes can measure the intensity and spectra (i.e., ‘color’) of the light, and can detect various shifts in the light caused by gases in the planetary atmosphere. By analyzing these patterns, scientists can determine the types of gases in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.”

Observing those shifts is no easy matter, “because the exoplanets appear very near their host stars when we observe them, and the starlight is one billion times brighter than the light from an Earth-size exoplanet.”

That means the Habitable Worlds Observatory “will need a contrast ratio of one to one billion (1:1,000,000,000).”

To achieve that contrast ratio, the HBO will need to be 1,000 times more stable than the James Webb telescope.

Which is why NASA scientists and a company called ALLVAR are investigating a “negative thermal expansion” (NTE) alloy that shrinks when heated.

According to NASA’s post, “A 1-meter-long piece of this NTE alloy will shrink 0.003 mm for every 1° C increase in temperature.”

“Because it shrinks when other materials expand, ALLVAR Alloy 30 can be used to strategically compensate for the expansion and contraction of other materials,” NASA’s post states.

Tests have delivered promising results: ALLVAR apparently built a test mirror mounted on struts of a titanium alloy that expands when heated and struts made with Alloy 30. Both alloys performed as expected, with Alloy 30 offsetting the expansion in the titanium alloy to produce a stable mirror.

NASA thinks the tests also showed Alloy 30 “enabled enhanced passive thermal switch performance and has been used to remove the detrimental effects of temperature changes on bolted joints and infrared optics.”

Space boffins are therefore considering how to use Alloy 30 in many other space scenarios.

You might want to consider using it, too, as NASA wrote “ALLVAR developed washers and spacers are now commercially available to maintain consistent preloads across extreme temperature ranges in both space and terrestrial environments.” ®

Little luck or skill is needed to find them: scientists believe that there are more dinosaur eggs here than at any other place on Earth. 

The area, closed to the public, is nicknamed “Eggs en Provence”, due to its proximity to the southeastern city of Aix en Provence. 

“There’s no other place like it,” explained Thierry Tortosa, a palaeontologist and conservationist at the Sainte Victoire Nature Reserve. 

“You only need to look down to find fragments. We’re literally walking on eggshells here.” 

Around 1,000 eggs, some of them as big as 30 centimetres (12 inches) in diameter, have been found here in recent years in an area measuring less than a hectare -– a mere dot on a reserve that will span 280 hectares once it is doubled in size by 2026 to prevent pillaging. 

“We reckon we’ve got about one egg per square metre (11 square feet). So there are thousands, possibly millions, here,” Tortosa told AFP. 

“Eggs” is not in the business of competing with other archaeological sites -– even though Tortosa finds the “world record” of 17,000 dinosaur eggs discovered in Heyuan, China, in 1996 vaguely amusing. 

“We’re not looking to dig them up because we’re in a nature reserve and we can’t just alter the landscape. We wait until they’re uncovered by erosion,” he said. 

“Besides, we don’t have enough space to store them all. We just take those that are of interest from a palaeontology point of view.” 

– Holy Grail –

Despite the plethora of eggs on site, the scientists still have mysteries to solve. 

Those fossils found so far have all been empty, either because they were not fertilised or because the chick hatched and waddled off. 

“Until we find embryos inside -– that’s the Holy Grail — we won’t know what kind of dinosaur laid them. All we know is that they were herbivores because they’re round,” said Tortosa. 

Fossilised dinosaur embryos are rarer than hen’s teeth.  

Palaeontologists discovered a tiny fossilised Oviraptorosaur that was at least 66 million years old in Ganzhou, China, around the year 2000. 

But Tortosa remains optimistic that “Eggs” holds its own Baby Yingliang.

“Never say never. In the nine years that I’ve been here, we’ve discovered a load of stuff we never thought we’d find.” 

Which is why experts come once a year to search a new part of the reserve. The location is always kept secret to deter pillagers.

When AFP visited, six scientists were crouched under camouflage netting in a valley lost in the Provencal scrub, scraping over a few square metres of clay-limestone earth, first with chisels, then with pointy-tipped scribers.  

“There’s always something magical — like being a child again — when you find an egg or a fossilised bone,” specialist Severine Berton told AFP. 

– Unique –

Their “best” finds -– among the thousands they have dug up — include a small femur and a 30-centimetre-long tibia-fibula. They are thought to come from a Rhabdodon or a Titanosaur — huge herbivores who roamed the region.

In the Cretaceous period (89-66 million years BCE), the Provencal countryside’s then-flooded plains and silty-clayey soils offered ideal conditions for dinosaurs to graze and nest, and perfect conditions to conserve the eggs for millennia. 

The region, which stretched from what is now Spain to the Massif Central mountains of central France formed an island that was home to several dinosaur species found nowhere else in the world.

Alongside the endemic herbivores were carnivores such as the Arcovenator and the Variraptor, a relative of the Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. 

In 1846, French palaeontologist Philippe Matheron found the world’s first fossilised dinosaur egg in Rognac, around 30 kilometres from Eggs.

Since then, museums from across the world have dispatched people to Provence on egg hunts. Everyone, it seems, wants a bit of the omelette. 

Despite efforts to stop pillaging, problems persist, such as when a wildfire uncovered a lot of fossils in 1989 and “everyone came egg collecting”, Tortosa said. 

Five years later the site was designated a national geological nature reserve, closed to the public — the highest level of protection available. 

The regional authorities are now mulling over ways to develop “palaeontology tourism”, a move Tortosa applauds. 

“France is the only country in the world that doesn’t know how to promote its dinosaurs,” Tortosa said.

“Any other place would set up an entire museum just to show off a single tooth.”

dac/so/ol/gil/bc

Led by Zhi-Pei Liang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I., the team reported its findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Understanding the brain, how it works and what goes wrong when it is injured or diseased is considered one of the most exciting and challenging scientific endeavors of our time,” Liang said. “MRI has played major roles in unlocking the mysteries of the brain over the past four decades. Our new technology adds another dimension to MRI’s capability for brain imaging: visualization of brain metabolism and detection of metabolic alterations associated with brain diseases.”

Conventional MRI provides high-resolution, detailed imaging of brain structures. Functional MRI maps brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow and blood oxygenation level, which are closely linked to neural activity. However, they cannot provide information on the metabolic activity in the brain, which is important for understanding function and disease, said postdoctoral researcher Yibo Zhao, the first author of the paper.

“Metabolic and physiological changes often occur before structural and functional abnormalities are visible on conventional MRI and fMRI images,” Zhao said. “Metabolic imaging, therefore, can lead to early diagnosis and intervention of brain diseases.”

Both MRI and fMRI techniques are based on magnetic resonance signals from water molecules. The new technology measures signals from brain metabolites and neurotransmitters as well as water molecules, a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging. These MRSI images can provide significant new insights into brain function and disease processes, and could improve sensitivity and specificity for the detection and diagnosis of brain diseases, Zhao said.

Other attempts at MRSI have been bogged down by the lengthy times required to capture the images and high levels of noise obscuring the signals from neurotransmitters. The new technique addresses both challenges.

“Our technology overcomes several long-standing technical barriers to fast high-resolution metabolic imaging by synergistically integrating ultrafast data acquisition with physics-based machine learning methods for data processing,” Liang said. With the new MRSI technology, the Illinois team cut the time required for a whole brain scan to 12 and a half minutes.

The researchers tested their MRSI technique on several populations. In healthy subjects, the researchers found and mapped varying metabolic and neurotransmitter activity across different brain regions, indicating that such activity is not universal. In patients with brain tumors, the researchers found metabolic alterations, such as elevated choline and lactate, in tumors of different grades — even when the tumors appeared identical on clinical MRI images. In subjects with multiple sclerosis, the technique detected molecular changes associated with neuroinflammatory response and reduced neuronal activity up to 70 days before changes become visible on clinical MRI images, the researchers report.

The researchers foresee potential for broad clinical use of their technique: By tracking metabolic changes over time, clinicians can assess the effectiveness of treatments for neurological conditions, Liang said. Metabolic information also can be used to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their unique metabolic profiles.

“High-resolution whole-brain metabolic imaging has significant clinical potential,” said Liang, who began his career in the lab of the late Illinois professor Paul Lauterbur, recipient of the Nobel Prize for developing MRI technology. “Paul envisioned this exciting possibility and the general approach, but it has been very difficult to achieve his dream of fast high-resolution metabolic imaging in the clinical setting.

“As healthcare is moving towards personalized, predictive and precision medicine, this high-speed, high-resolution technology can provide a timely and effective tool to address an urgent unmet need for noninvasive metabolic imaging in clinical applications.”

This work was supported by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

The moon is in another phase of the lunar cycle, and we have all the information you need about tonight’s visibility and what to look out for.

The lunar cycle is a series of eight unique phases of the moon’s visibility. The whole cycle takes about 29.5 days, according to NASA, and these different phases happen as the Sun lights up different parts of the moon whilst it orbits Earth. 

See what’s happening with the moon tonight, July 2.

What is today’s moon phase?

As of Wednesday, July 2, the moon phase is First Quarter. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation, 48% of the moon will be lit up and visible to us on Earth.

First Quarter is the stage of the lunar cycle where the moon appears to be a half moon. This is day seven of the lunar cycle, and with significantly more of the moon on display, there’s plenty to see when you look up.

Unaided, you’ll be able to see the Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, and the Mare Fecunditatis on the moon’s surface. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, these will be positioned in the top right of the moon. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, direct your gaze to the bottom left.

If you have binoculars, you’ll also spot the Endymion Crater and the Posidonius Crater are visible, as well as the Mare Nectaris. And with a telescope, like last night, you’ll be able to see the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 spot and the Rupes Altai. You’ll also get a sneak peek at the Descartes Highlands. NASA tells us this is a crater just south of the Apollo 16 landing spot.

Mashable Light Speed

When is the next full moon?

This month’s full moon will take place on July 10. The last full moon was on June 11.

What are moon phases?

Moon phases are caused by the 29.5-day cycle of the moon’s orbit, which changes the angles between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Moon phases are how the moon looks from Earth as it goes around us. We always see the same side of the moon, but how much of it is lit up by the Sun changes depending on where it is in its orbit. This is how we get full moons, half moons, and moons that appear completely invisible. There are eight main moon phases, and they follow a repeating cycle:

New Moon – The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter – Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.

Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon – The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous – The moon starts losing light on the right side.

Last Quarter (or Third Quarter) – Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.