World's most powerful MRI scanner developed

PTI | Oct 28, 2013, 04.36 PM IST
READ MORE MRI scanner|INUMAC magnet|Human brain
World's most powerful MRI scanner developed
The previous record for field strength was around 9.4 Teslas.
WASHINGTON: Scientists have developed the world's most powerful MRI scanner - strong enough to lift a 60 metric tonne battle tank.
The MRI scanner equipped with a superconducting magnet will offer unprecedented images of the human brain when it is fully developed next year, builders claim.
The imager's superconducting electromagnet is designed to produce a field of 11.75 Teslas, making it the world's most powerful whole-body scanner. Most standard hospital MRIs produce 1.5 or 3 Teslas, IEEE Spectrum reported.
The previous record for field strength was around 9.4 Teslas.
The development of the scanner, known as Imaging of Neuro disease Using high-field MR And Contrastophores (INUMAC), has been in progress since 2006 and is expected to cost about USD 270 million.
Standard hospital scanners have a spatial resolution of about one millimetre, covering about 10,000 neurons, and a time resolution of about a second.
The INUMAC will be able to image an area of about 0.1 mm, or 1000 neurons, and see changes occurring as fast as one-tenth of a second, according to Pierre Vedrine, director of the project at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, in Paris.
The wire in the INUMAC magnet is made from niobium-titanium, a common superconductor alloy.
To reach the required field strength, the electromagnet must be able to carry 1500 amperes at 12 Teslas and be cooled by super-fluid liquid helium to 1.8 kelvins.
The inner diameter of the magnet will be 90 centimetres, wide enough for a human body.
The fully assembled magnet will be delivered by September next year, Vedrine said.
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Blood-spotting camera to revolutionize CSI

The Independent | Oct 28, 2013, 03.18 AM IST
READ MORE science|Crime Scene Investigation|camera|blood traces
A camera that can detect and date blood traces is set to revolutionize the science of crime scene investigation. Long considered the holy grail by forensic experts, the new hyperspectral imaging device that can scan for the visible spectrum of haemoglobin could dramatically speed up police inquires, lead to more convictions and reduce the number of miscarriages of justice, its creators have claimed.

A prototype built by researchers at Teesside University has demonstrated extraordinary levels of laboratory accuracy. Month-old blood samples can be dated to within a day, while fresh traces have been pinpointed to within an hour of their being taken, potentially helping police to establish a time of death immediately - a process which at present can take several days - and allowing detectives to build a chronology of events more rapidly.

It is believed the technology could also be applied to other fluids, including sweat, saliva and semen, which could also improve conviction rates for rapes and other sexual assaults.

Meez Islam, a physical chemist in the University's School of Science and Engineering, who led the team working on the project, said that identifying bloodstains often posed serious problems. Forensic teams were still working with techniques devised a century ago, and there was currently no effective way of dating blood.

"Often, you go to crime scenes and what appears to be blood isn't blood. Blood on dark backgrounds can be hard to see and there are traces of blood that are not visible to the naked eye. What this does is provide fast, at-the-scene identification of blood and speed up the investigative process, as items do not need to go back to a laboratory to be examined. To use hyperspectral imaging in a way that scans the crime scene for blood also means that the chances of missing a bloodstain are vastly reduced," he said.

The new technology, which will be unveiled at a forensic science conference in Manchester next month, uses a liquid-crystal tunable filter and is able to offer immediate results. The filter works by isolating different wavelength bands of colour, so that it can detect blood against other similar-looking substances or in hard-to spot locations such as on red clothing, carpets or furniture.

Because blood changes colour over time, from red to muddy brown, at a known rate, the device is able to put an accurate age to a sample. At present, forensic scientists paint chemicals to areas where they believe blood may be present, hoping to produce a reaction with iron found in haemoglobin.

But failure to locate samples has plagued a number of high profile cases.
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confused utterings


U-turn : Butter, cheese, eggs not ?!bad for heart

, TNN | Oct 24, 2013, 05.38 AM IST
READ MORE Weight loss|Obesity|heart|forum|Food Industry
U-turn : Butter, cheese, eggs not bad for heart
Myth Busted
LONDON: A cardiologist of Indian origin in the UK has spun conventional medical wisdom around by showing that fatty food like butter, cheese, eggs and yoghurt can be good for the heart.

Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra published his findings on Wednesday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) saying that the medical advice of cutting down on saturated fats to reduce the risk of heart disease may be wrong. He said that recent studies “have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and risk of cardiovascular disease”.
Malhotra is an interventional cardiology specialist and registrar at Croydon University Hospital in London says scientific evidence shows that advice to reduce saturated fat intake “has paradoxically increased our cardiovascular risks.”

He says the government’s obsession with levels of total cholesterol “has led to the over-medication of millions of people with statins and has diverted our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia” (an unfavourable ratio of blood fats).

Saturated fat has been demonized since the 1970s when a landmark study concluded that there was a correlation between incidence of coronary heart disease and total cholesterol which was then correlated with the percentage of calories provided by saturated fat, Malhotra said.

“But correlation is not causation,” he said. But patients were advised to “reduce fat intake to 30% of total energy and a fall in saturated fat intake to 10%”. One of the earliest obesity experiments published in the Lancet in 1956 compared groups consuming diets of 90% fat versus 90% protein versus 90% carbohydrate and revealed that the greatest weight loss was in the fat consuming group. More recently, a study revealed that a “low fat” diet showed the greatest decrease in energy expenditure an unhealthy lipid pattern and increased insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes) compared with a low carbohydrate and low glycaemic index diet.

Malhotra pointed to the United States where percentage of calorie consumption from fat has declined from 40% to 30% in the past 30 years (although absolute fat consumption has remained the same) but obesity has rocketed. One reason, he said, is that the food industry “compensated by replacing saturated fat with added sugar.” Adopting a Mediterranean diet after a heart attack is almost three times as powerful in reducing mortality as taking a statin, writes Malhotra.

“Doctors need to embrace prevention as well as treatment. The greatest improvements in morbidity and mortality have been due not to personal responsibility but rather to public health… It is time to bust the myth of the role of saturated in heart disease and dietary advice that has contributed to obesity,” he said.

Commenting on the study, the chair of Britain’s National Obesity Forum David Haslam said, “It’s extremely naive of the public and the medical profession to imagine that a calorie of bread, a calorie of meat and a calorie of alcohol are all dealt in the same way by the amazingly complex systems of the body. The assumption has been made that increased fat in the bloodstream is caused by increased saturated fat in the diet whereas modern scientific evidence is proving that refined carbohydrates and sugar in particular are actually the culprits.” 
 
 comment:- looks like a paid advertisement on behalf of

Butter, cheese, eggs suppliers

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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