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New High-Speed 3D Microscope Could Make Biopsies a Thing of the Past

MediSCAPE, a high-speed 3D microscope designed by Columbia Engineers, can see real-time cellular detail in living tissues to guide surgery, speed up tissue analyses, and improve treatments. A Columbia Engineering team has developed a technology that could replace conventional biopsies and histology with real-time imaging within the living body. Described in a new paper published today (March 28, 2022) in Nature Biomedical Engineering, MediSCAPE is a high-speed 3D microscope capable of capturing images of tissue structures that could guide surgeons to navigate tumors and their boundaries without needing to remove tissues and wait for pathology results. For many medical procedures,…

Scientists Work To Turn Noise on Quantum Computers to Their Advantage

A group of scientists from the University of Chicago and Purdue University constructed a unique “fingerprint” of the noise on a quantum computer as it is seen by a program run on the computer. Scientists simulate ‘fingerprint’ of noise on quantum computer. Unique study could point way to new approach, uses for quantum technology. For humans, background noise is generally just a minor irritant. But for quantum computers, which are very sensitive, it can be a death knell for computations. And because “noise” for a quantum computer increases as the computer is tasked with more complex calculations, it can quickly…

New Male Birth Control Pill Effectively Prevents Pregnancy – Without Side Effects

Women have many choices for birth control, ranging from pills to patches to intrauterine devices, and partly as a result, they bear most of the burden of preventing pregnancy. But men’s birth control options — and, therefore, responsibilities — could soon be expanding. Today, scientists report a non-hormonal male contraceptive that effectively prevents pregnancy in mice, without obvious side effects. The researchers presented their results this week at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2022 is a hybrid meeting that was held virtually and in-person March 20-24, with on-demand access available March 21-April 8. The…

Cities in Space: Inspiring Future Generations to Live Off-World

Lead Image: A scene clip from the video game Mass Effect. The Citadel is a space station which is a type of O’Neill cylinder and it houses around 13 million souls. Ask anyone in the public or commercial sector and they will likely tell you that we are living in a “second Space Age,” or “SpaceAge 2.0.” Not only is our presence in space increasing dramatically, but so is the accessibility of space. Between the declining costs of launching payloads and the growth of space agencies worldwide, more people can participate in the sector than ever before. In the coming…

Stunning Video Showcases the Largest, Most Detailed Simulation of the Early Universe to Date

Lead Image: Small clip of the Thesan simulation. See video in article below. Named after a goddess of the dawn, the Thesan simulation of the first billion years helps explain how radiation shaped the early universe. It all started around 13.8 billion years ago with a big, cosmological “bang” that brought the universe suddenly and spectacularly into existence. Shortly after, the infant universe cooled dramatically and went completely dark. Then, within a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe woke up, as gravity gathered matter into the first stars and galaxies. Light from these first stars turned…