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The invention of a nanobrain takes us one step closer to the future of medicine

Remember Innerspace? Dennis Quaid and his submarine-like ship are shrunk to the size of a cell and accidentally injected into the hapless Martin Short. Quaid navigates the hazards of Short’s bodily functions in order to plot his escape. Twenty years on, there’s something rather quaint about it. A vessel the size of a cell? With a pilot inside? Compared to today’s innovations in nanotechnology, it’s akin to using a tractor trailer to find your way through a corn maze.

Our best parallel now would be closer to using two dozen R/C cars, controlled by a tiny remote brain, to swarm through the maze. Although our most sophisticated nanomachines are still not yet ready to navigate your blood stream, Japanese researchers have recently come one step closer by inventing a nanotech “brain.” The device, comprised of seventeen molecules of the chemical duroquinone, is arranged as a ring of sixteen, with one in the middle, all connected by chemical bonds. By manipulating the state of the middle molecule with a scanning tunneling microscope, the scientists were able to make the ring of sixteen simultaneously follow suit.

While the brain is very much in its early stages, the work is a an important step towards nanomachines playing a role in medicine. The one-to-many concept is critical to robotic control and has the potential for applications in future generations of computing.

Sure the sexes learn differently—but at what level?

If we have learned anything about education in recent years, it’s that the one-size-fits-all mentality of the basal reader just does not work. People learn differently; sexes learn differently. But the research has only gone so far in exploring from where these differences originate. Previously, studies focused only on cognition or brain function. Now, a new report out of Northwestern has combined the study of both areas to demonstrate that boys and girls use slightly different parts of their brains to process language.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that girls used more of the language areas of their brains than boys when determining whether particular words rhymed—either on paper or spoken out loud. The boys used more of their brain areas dedicated to how the input was received; whether visually or orally.

But the study seems more impressive for its methods than results. Its researchers hasten to point out that the differences likely don’t persist into adulthood and might just be a function of the fact that boys take longer than girls to mature. Nevertheless, the findings could have potential implications for educators, not least in the growing debate over single-sex classrooms.

New studies on bats and bluegill sunfish add to scientists’ knowledge of a rare and enviable trait

The hummingbird is an animal that by all rights shouldn’t be able to fly. Its wing movements are not at all like that of other birds. But not only can they fly, they’re so good at it that they’re the only species which can fly backward. They’re also one of the few—but not the only—that can hover. And in the past week alone, two new studies on hovering animals have been made public. One is on bats and the others on the bluegill sunfish.

A team of researchers from Drexel, MIT, Harvard, and George Washington University have been studying the bluegill sunfish’s ability to hover. By using only its pectoral fins, the fish can hover and rotate or move forward and come to a controlled stop. The motion was discovered by filming the fish in a tank while introducing tiny particles to reveal the trajectory of its fins in the water. The sunfish moves its pectoral fins in an unusual “cup and sweep” motion, which produces no drag. The team is using the data to build a mechanical spandex fin for submarines in the hopes of increasing their mobility in the water.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden, meanwhile, have been studying a similar ability in bats. Using a specially constructed wind tunnel and fog as tracer particles, the scientists trained the bats to fly from one end to the other and videotaped the results. They discovered the bats were able to generate an unexpected amount of lift by changing the curvature in their wings, allowing them momentarily to hover.

Check out a video of the bat in motion below.