Tiny, Injectable Robots Could Be the Future of Brain Treatments

Movie still from the 1966 film "Fantastic Voyage" depicting a shrunken submarine amid red blood cells

A movie still from the 1966 film "Fantastic Voyage"

20th Century Fox

In the 1966 movie "Fantastic Voyage," actress Raquel Welch and her submarine were shrunk to the size of a cell in order to eliminate a blood clot in a scientist's brain. Now, 55 years later, the scenario is becoming closer to reality.

California-based startup Bionaut Labs has developed a nanobot about the size of a grain of rice that's designed to transport medication to the exact location in the body where it's needed. If you think about it, the conventional way to deliver medicine makes little sense: A painkiller affects the entire body instead of just the arm that's hurting, and chemotherapy is flushed through all the veins instead of precisely targeting the tumor.

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Michaela Haas
Michaela Haas, PhD, is an award-winning reporter and author, most recently of Bouncing Forward: The Art and Science of Cultivating Resilience (Atria). Her work has been published in the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, and numerous other media. Find her at www.MichaelaHaas.com and Twitter @MichaelaHaas!
Scientists find enzymes in nature that could replace toxic chemicals

Basecamp Research is using portable labs like this one to gather samples from ecosystems around the world.

Oliver Vince

Some 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, nine major islands rise from the mid-Atlantic. Verdant and volcanic, the Azores archipelago hosts a wealth of biodiversity that keeps field research scientist, Marlon Clark, returning for more. “You’ve got this really interesting biogeography out there,” says Clark. “There’s real separation between the continents, but there’s this inter-island dispersal of plants and seeds and animals.”

It’s a visual paradise by any standard, but on a microscopic level, there’s even more to see. The Azores’ nutrient-rich volcanic rock — and its network of lagoons, cave systems, and thermal springs — is home to a vast array of microorganisms found in a variety of microclimates with different elevations and temperatures.

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Summer Rylander
Summer Rylander is an independent journalist based in Nuremberg, Germany. She covers foodways, responsible tourism, and the conservation of our biodiverse planet. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Adventure dot com, Reader's Digest, the i Paper, and more. Follow her at @summeroutside.
Small changes in how a person talks could reveal Alzheimer’s earlier

In an initial study, Canary analyzed speech recordings with AI and identified early stage Alzheimer’s with 96 percent accuracy.

Adobe Stock

Dave Arnold retired in his 60s and began spending time volunteering in local schools. But then he started misplacing items, forgetting appointments and losing his sense of direction. Eventually he was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s.

“Hearing the diagnosis made me very emotional and tearful,” he said. “I immediately thought of all my mom had experienced.” His mother suffered with the condition for years before passing away. Over the last year, Arnold has worked for the Alzheimer’s Association as one of its early stage advisors, sharing his insights to help others in the initial stages of the disease.

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Sarah Philip
Sarah Philip is a London-based freelance journalist who writes about science, film and TV. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahph1lip.