Researchers unite efforts to boost the application of the Raman technique in the Clinic

Although it is very advantageous for the early diagnosis of multiple pathologies, including cancer, perhaps because of ignorance, the Raman spectroscopy technique is still very little applied in the clinic. In Europe, only a few hospitals in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK use it.

Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy, identified with the name of the scientist who discovered it, the Indian Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930, is a high-resolution optical technique that through the incidence of radiation (light) on any sample can obtain information in seconds. That is, it provides information about the compounds present in the analyzed sample.

There are ghostly shapes hidden in magnetic fields.

They're not made of stuff in the way a lightning bolt or a beam of light is. A lighting bolt carries a fairly defined group of electrons from the sky all the way to the ground. Sunshine that hits your face consists mostly of the same photons that traveled millions of miles from the sun.

But magnetic fields contain things called skyrmions that are different from electrons and photons; a skyrmion is a knot of magnetic field lines looping around each other. As it drifts from one spot to the next,

Scientists have readjusted the timeline of the formative years on Mars and claim the red planet could have been home to life before Earth was habitable, according to Daily Mail.

A study has tweaked the timings of when the cratered surface stopped being bombarded with meteorites and says life may have developed between 4.2 billion and 3.5 billion years ago.

This, the authors claim, predates when Earth became a thriving oasis by around 500 million years.

Scientists in Japan have created mini-brains with functional neural networks.

These so-called mini brains, known more formally as cerebral organoids, may not be conscious, but their use in the lab could provide key insight to the processes by which information is encoded, scientists say.

The organoids are essentially a simplified version of the human brain which have been grown artificially using 3D tissue cultures, according to Daily Mail.

They lack more supporting structures such as blood vessels and the surrounding tissues, and cannot ‘think.’

But, they’re still capable of some basic neural activity, the researchers say.

Mars, it appears, is belching a large amount of a gas that could be a sign of microbes living on the planet today.

In a measurement taken on Wednesday, NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered startlingly high amounts of methane in the Martian air, a gas that on Earth is usually produced by living things. The data arrived back on Earth on Thursday, and by Friday, scientists working on the mission were excitedly discussing the news, which has not yet been announced by NASA.