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IBM Creates MRI With 100M Times the Resolution
An anonymous reader writes "IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI. This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale."
This is a concerning development for those who have been following the advancement of science (MRI Technology). One of the undocumented effects (intentional) of MRI is "direct particle insertion" where the resonance of strong magnetism can be used to transport matter particles as energy through short distances and reassembled within confines of enclosed cavity (skull or chest). This is DOCUMENTED FACT as established by Dr. Paul C. Lauterbur in 1971 through research papers (suppressed as unpublished). With current levels of technology there is too much diffusion by radio waves to take advantage of timing effects due to low resolution. Experiments are performed DAILY to eliminate high levels of interference (government frequencies) but none could prove beyond a doubt a way to perfect a technique for changing neurons due to the small size (can be seen with the strongest microscope only). Having mapped a human brain (genomics) with fine resolution permits modification of magnetic waves to CREATE AND DESTROY thought. This tech was five years to deployment but has been accelerated for widespread acceptance (planned by bureaucracy).
Now if only HP and AT&T would bring back their R&D departments we might see more companies doing basic research like this.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
C. L. Degen, M. Poggio, H. J. Mamin, C. T. Rettner, D. Rugar Nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging PNAS 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812068106.
The abstract:
I think it's important to emphasize that this is a nanoscale magnetic imaging technique. The summary implies that they created a conventional MRI that has nanoscale resolution, as if they can now image a person's brain and pick out individual cells and molecules. That is not the case! And that is likely to never be possible (given the frequencies of radiation that MRI uses and the diffraction limit that applies to far-field imaging.
That having been said, this is still a very cool and noteworthy piece of science. Scientists use a variety of nanoscale imaging tools (atomic force microscopes, electron microscopes, etc.), but having the ability to do nanoscale magnetic imaging is amazing. In the article they do a 3D reconstruction of a tobacco mosaic virus. One of the great things about MRI is that is has some amount of chemical selectivity: there are different magnetic imaging modes that can differentiate based on makeup. This nanoscale analog can use similar tricks: instead of just getting images of surface topography or electron density, it could actually determine the chemical makeup within nanostructures. I expect this will become a very powerful technique for nano-imaging over the next decade.
kebes already pretty much said it, and as I said (under a different name) on Digg,
Saying "100 million times stronger than MRI" is a deceptive way to describe this. The normal usage of MRI that the public is familiar with is to scan your body, or parts of your body. This new technology would work on a "sample," for instance a biopsy. If the new technology operated at the same scale - your whole body - and was at 100 million times finer resolution - then that would be astounding.
But this is a competitor for other microscopes - not MRI.
Education is the silver bullet.
One problem is that though this machine has great spatial resolution (precision in space)....it may not have great temporal resolution (precision in time).
In regards to your curiosity about imaging dendritic connections: It may image where/how the connections are made, which is a great leap for Neuroanatomists. But it cannot measure or record the hundreds of thousands of mechanisms and live actions that the dendrites/axons/cell bodies and their connections make during every one action potential that takes place...Even if this machine could measure outside the nanoscale.
Here's why: Neurons may fire a number of action potentials in millisecond time and increase/decrease in volume as the influx of sodium brings in water into the cell causing it to expand. As enough sodium (positively charged particals) are in the cell causing a depolarization, the voltage-gated ion channels shut off and K+ outflux/Na+ influx ceases. The cell hyperpolarizes, shrinks in volume and it's morphology is changed drastically once again. To capture all this change with such fine resolution is a feat, that sadly, cannot be accoplished by this 3D Machine--since everything it measures must be fixed and perfectly still. What neuroscientist use now for "partial real time brain imaging" is a function MRI or fMRI which measure changes in metabolism (glucose metabolism to be exact) but compromises the great spatial resolution this 3D machine has for the temporal resolution.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
I think you need a call to rand(), a switch statement, and some additional function calls like sleep_in_sun(), eat(), shit(), scratch_aimlessly_at_litter(), tear_through_the_house_for_no_apparent_reason(), etc.
It's C. The cough_up_hairball() function has undocumented side effects, including all of he aforementioned.
Additionally, after 0, the i register underflows when compiled with a particular gcc switch, setting the carry flag and incrementing a pointer in another register. This modifies the LSB of a pointer to an entry in a 256-entry lookup-table that is randomly populated with function pointers which also call those functions. After UNSIGNED_INT_MAX NOPs, the loop starts again.
Now, in C++, he could have just overloaded the "<<" operator to do all of that.
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