Science has a crush on you

As if Facebook-stalking that special someone wasn’t bad enough, a number of new technological breakthroughs are enabling scientists to learn about your mind and body faster than ever before.

On the plus side, I hear science is pretty nice when you get to know it better.

• Philips Medical Systems unveiled a new scanner that can produce 3D body images 22 per cent faster than current systems. The Brilliance CT scanner produces images of unrivaled quality while reducing exposure to radiation by as much as 80 per cent.
  — BBC Health
• A group including researchers from Switzerland and the United States has developed a portable low-cost system that can capture the body’s movements in previously impossible situations. The system uses localized sensors that employ sound to determine a body part’s position.
  — New Scientist
• Scientists have been able to identify vowel sounds made by a patient who is “locked in” — aware, but paralyzed and unable to communicate. By listening to certain neurons in the brain, they were able to correctly identify the vowel sound a patient was thinking 80 per cent of the time.
  — New Scientist
• New technologies are being developed to generate a complete wiring diagram for a piece of the human brain. A complete diagram has been created for a microscopic worm with 302 neurons; researchers are exploring ways to scale up to the human brain.
  — Technology Review