Day: December 20, 2019

Engineers at MIT have come up with a new approach to medical imaging that is both non-invasive and hands-off the patient. Using lasers, they can peer beneath the surface of the skin without any physical contact required, improving upon the limitations of equipment like ultrasound machines.

There’s a myriad of techniques and machines that physicians and medical professionals can use to look inside the human body before having to resort to invasive exploratory surgery, but they each have their pros and cons. Repeated exposures to X-ray machines can result in unhealthy does of radiation, while Computed Tomography (or CT) scans require patients to lie motionless in a claustrophobic, loud, and generally unpleasant metal tube. Ultrasound is one of the simplest approaches, but even it has its limitations as a soundwave-emitting wand needs to be physically pressed against the skin for it to work. That can sometimes rule it out as an option, such as with patients recovering from severe burns.

In a paper published yesterday in the journal Light: Science and Applications, the engineers at MIT explain how they developed a system that mimics the capabilities of an ultrasound machine, but using lasers that, at least in its current form, work from a distance as far as half a meter away from a patient. Lasers can be as innocuous as a pointer that projects a red dot on a slide show, or as dangerous as a tattoo removal gun that can fry a digital camera. The MIT researchers settled on a wavelength of 1,550-nanometers, which is readily absorbed by water but is also safe for human skin and eyes.

Since skin is mostly made up of water, when the laser is targeted at a patient, it’s absorbed and gently heats up, which in turn causes the water in the skin to expand. By pulsing the laser beam, that expansion and contraction of the water in the skin can be controlled, creating a steady oscillation that creates soundwaves, just like the surface of a speaker does in response to electrical signals. Those soundwaves then propagate through the body the same way sound waves from an ultrasound machine’s wand do.

But instead of using a microphone to detect how those soundwaves bounce off the body’s internals, the MIT engineers employed a second laser that serves as a sensitive motion detector. As the soundwaves interact with different types of tissues as they travel into the body, they bounce back with different intensities and frequencies that create vibrations on the surface of the skin that can be detected and measured. Those measurements are then heavily processed through software and algorithms, which produces an image of what lies beneath.

As with more traditional ultrasound techniques, the laser-based system is currently limited to imaging a patient to a depth of about six centimeters below the surface of the skin. And as some of the earlier tests with a metal object embedded in a gelatin mold reveal, the fidelity of the lasers doesn’t quite match the imaging capabilities of existing ultrasound machines. However, the researchers went on to test their approach using animal tissue, and eventually human subjects, and found that the lasers were able to distinguish subtle features such as the differences between bone, fat deposits, and muscle.

The researchers are looking to further improve the capabilities of this system, including boosting its resolution so that even finer tissue features can be imaged, and miniaturizing the hardware so that it could one day be used as a portable imaging solution. And because there’s no physical contact involved, there’s the potential for laser-based ultrasounds to be administered without the need for a highly trained technician to wield the wand, paving the way for them to be performed at home as part of a daily checkup routine.

At the same time, the new technique raises some concerns as it means a person could theoretically be physically examined without any actual physical interactions, and potentially without their knowledge. The idea of walking through a laser filled tunnel that analyzes your body inside and out sounds like science fiction turned fact, but as this technique is further improved and refined, there’s seemingly the potential for it to become a way for someone to assess your health without you even knowing about it.

Early Friday morning, Boeing launched its uncrewed CST-100 Starliner from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the spacecraft experienced an “off-nominal” orbital insertion that will prevent it from rendezvousing with the International Space Station. It’s a serious blow to Boeing’s aspirations to eventually deliver astronauts to the ISS on behalf of NASA.

All seemed well at first, as the uncrewed CST-100 Starliner departed Cape Canaveral this morning atop an Atlas V rocket, blasting off at 6:36 a.m. ET. Around 30 minutes into the launch, however, it became clear that the spacecraft did not reach its intended orbit, and it won’t be able to rendezvous with the International Space Station as planned due to lack of fuel, according to NASA chief Jim Bridenstine.

As Bridenstine explained in a series of tweets, Starliner experienced a “Mission Elapsed Time” anomaly, which made the spacecraft believe “it was in an orbital insertion burn, when it was not.” As a result, Starliner burned more fuel than it was supposed to, which will now prevent it from meeting up with the ISS. That said, Starliner is currently in a “safe and stable configuration,” according to a Boeing press release.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, shared some insight into the incident in a tweet, saying the anomaly wouldn’t have posed a risk to human life.

This is definitely discouraging news. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program, which is seeking to restore America’s ability to independently deliver astronauts to space—something the U.S. hasn’t been able to do since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Had this mission gone well, Boeing and NASA could have proceeded toward the next step, namely a crewed launch early next year. It’s unclear how today’s setback might influence that timeline.

NASA will be holding a press conference at 9:30 a.m. today, at which time we’ll learn more about this incident. We will update this post accordingly, so stay tuned.

Thieves stole roughly 80,000 gallons of water in a region of Australia that’s suffering from one of the worst droughts in the history of the country. And with record-breaking heat and bushfires getting even larger, it feels like Australia is living in the future. That future, unfortunately, looks a lot like Mad Max.

Police in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, report that a farmer in the small town of Evans Plain had about 80,000 gallons of water (300,000 liters) stolen from his property, according to the Australian newspaper. The farmer only noticed the theft from two enormous storage tanks on Sunday, though it could have happened at anytime between December 9 and December 15, according to authorities.

It’s becoming more and more common to see thieves targeting water storage facilities, as climate change continues to devastate Australia as it heads into summer. Just a couple of weeks ago, thieves in the small town of Murwillumbah stole about 6,600 gallons (25,000 liters) of water, enough to fill about six or seven fire trucks, according to local authorities.

And it all feels like something out of a sci-fi dystopia, where battles over water are fought to sustain a meager existence.

Australia is reeling from extreme heat this week, breaking temperature records for the past three days, and reaching an average maximum temperature of 40.9 degrees Celsius (105.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, and 40.7 degrees Celsius (105.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday.

“We’re smashing the extremes by effectively a degree relative to the other cases because that’s by how much the Australian temperatures have warmed,” climate scientist David Karoly told the ABC on Friday. “Climate change has contributed between 1C and 1.5C on top of the natural variability.”

And it’s not just the heat. Australia is attempting to get its large bushfires under control, some of which might be the largest wildfires in modern history. The “megafire” in Gospers Mountain, just outside of Sydney, has burned roughly 7.4 million acres over the past two months and has blanketed the city in smoke.

Sadly, at least nine people have died from the Australian bushfires this season, with two volunteer firefighters in New South Wales losing their live this week, and a citizen of South Australia dying in a vehicle crash yesterday while trying to escape a fire.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, is missing in action while the country experiences a climate crisis. Morrison’s office has denied rumors that he’s vacationing in Hawaii, but photos on social media prove otherwise. Under Australian law, another politician is appointed as acting Prime Minister when the real PM is out of the country, and Morrison’s stand-in isn’t doing much better to take climate change seriously.

“Yes, the smoke is a problem but smoke, as it always does, will blow away,” acting PM Michael McCormack told a local TV news station yesterday.

Morrison issued a statement yesterday apologizing if any Australians were offended by his decision to take a vacation during this time.

“I deeply regret any offense caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time,” Morrison said.

“Our hearts go out to their families, friends and colleagues who have been working tirelessly beside them, particularly during this Christmas period. Given these most recent tragic events, I will be returning to Sydney from leave as soon as can be arranged,” he continued.

But Prime Minister Morrison’s tone was defiant and almost whiney when he spoke to a local radio station via phone from Hawaii.

“I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room,” Morrison told 2GB radio. “That’s the brave people who … are doing that job. But I know that Australians would want me back at this time […] of these fatalities. So I’ll happily come back and do that.”

How generous of you, Mr. Morrison. You’ll come back to see protesters outside your home who are getting harassed by police. But don’t stop at any McDonald’s on your way back. We don’t want another incident.