Daily briefing: Faster MRI scan tracks groups of neurons as they fire

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Huge piles of used plastic bottles at a bottle recycling facility

Mixed plastics are difficult to recycle, but a new process shows how it can be done.Credit: China Photos/Getty

Researchers have used chemistry and bacteria to break down mixtures of plastics, usually a headache to recycle, into useful chemical ingredients. The process works with soft food-packaging plastic, the strong, lightweight plastic used to make drink bottles, and even polystyrene, which includes styrofoam. But scaling it up will be a challenge. Selling the molecules that the bacteria produce will be difficult because demand for those products is much smaller than the quantity of waste plastics.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Science paper

A twist on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) enables it to map neuronal activity in mice so fast that it can track groups of neurons as they fire. Researchers improved the fMRI time sensitivity by tweaking the software and by applying frequent, repetitive stimulation to the animals that they were testing, making it possible to observe faster brain activity. The biggest question now is whether this method can be applied to human fMRI scans. People might not respond to repetitive stimulation the same way every time — they might get bored — and complex thought processes might be too long-lived and wide-ranging to track in this way.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Science paper

Features & opinion

Cosmologist Encieh Erfani tells Nature why she resigned from her institution in response to protests that have gripped Iran following the death of a woman who was in custody of Iran's morality police. “After the death of Mahsa Amini, students were shouting: ‘The streets are covered in blood and our professors are silent,’” says Erfani. “As a faculty member, I teach students and I could not stay silent any more.”

Nature | 5 min read

A dragon learns how to keep humans guessing about the true nature of the Universe in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 4 min read

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an idiosyncratic survey of geology, a vivid biography of plastic-surgery pioneer Harold Gillies and a look at the neuroscience of magic.

Nature | 3 min read

In this week’s Nature Podcast, host Benjamin Thompson and the team discuss human brain organoids implanted into rats and the exoskeleton boots that learn as you walk.

Nature Podcast | 18 min listen

Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify.

Quote of the day

A Nobel prizewinner is six times more likely than someone less well known to have their paper recommended for acceptance by a reviewer, finds a preprint study co-authored by behavioural economist Stefan Palan. (Nature | 6 min read)

Reference: SSRN preprint

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