Once again neuroscientists and physicists have teamed up to take brain imaging to a new level -- Supraresolution imaging.  This has the making of a great SciFi movie -- A team of researchers at Harvard University, led by Dr Bernardo Sabatini, combine laser imaging techniques, two-photon laser scanning microscopy (2PLSM) and continuous wave stimulated emission depletion (STED), to go where no human has gone before, peering deep into living brain slices to see nanoscale features of functioning neurons.

NASA's 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope still has a few tricks up its sleeve!  New images were released today from Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3.  Installed back in March, WFC3 extends Hubble's capabilities well into the infrared, allowing it to peer through dust and see further back in time.  For a stunning demonstration, click here.

Shown below are the featured new images, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light all with WFC3:
NGC 6302: remnants of a dying star

It's not all balloons and ponies in bee colonies, despite what you may have learned.   Bees are well known for high levels of cooperation but new research in Molecular Ecology says there is a conflict for reproduction between worker bees and Queens, leading some workers to selfishly exploit the colony for their own needs.

The study focused on Melipona scutellaris, a Brazilian species of highly social stingless bees, found throughout the Atlantic rainforest. Colonies contain around 1,500 workers and are headed by one single-mated Queen.

In case you haven't heard, there's a debate about health care reform going on - today we find out that a campaign promise, no fines if you choose not to use government health care, is off the table if you are middle class.   That's only going to aggravate the situation.  What is needed is some clear thinking and some science-based evidence, but you won't find it in Washington.  Heck, you won't even find it in medicine.

Some turns of events in the technology world are truly surprising.

Who knew that a couple of guys starting up Google would hit it as big as they did? Who imagined that Facebook or Twitter would turn into sensations? Who had any inkling about how successful the iPhone would be?

OK, that last one... not so much.

From the day it was announced, the iPhone was a pre-release sensation.

Can we bring life forms into pure quantum states? Will we ever manage to elevate Schrodinger's cat from thought experiment to real-life experiment?

A recent publication suggests the answers to above questions are affirmative.

The CDF collaboration has recently released a study of the production of pairs of W bosons in a large bounty of proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron collider -3.6 inverse femtobarns of them, or roughly 300 trillions, give or take 6%.

The measurement of the production cross section of this clean and rare electroweak process (its absolute rate, that is) is the most precise ever obtained so far, and reaches down to a level of uncertainty which cannot be improved further significantly at the Tevatron, because it is now limited by the uncertainty in the overall integrated luminosity mentioned above.

Scientists in Germany say they may have an alternative to Botox and cosmetic surgery; high-intensity light from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a lotion made of green tea extract.

Like all miracle products must, they say in Crystal Growth&Design that it works ten times faster than anti-wrinkle treatment that uses LEDs alone. 

Are scientists press shy?    Are researchers who engage journalists ridiculed by other researchers as not serious enough?   

No, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in Journalism&Mass Communication Quarterly - the difference is that scientists who have been trained or otherwise briefed about how to work with journalists are more likely to engage reporters.

The study conducted by journalism professor Sharon Dunwoody, life sciences communication professor Dominique Brossard and graduate student Anthony Dudo says that many mainstream scientists occasionally work with journalists and some do so routinely.

Contrary to more recent claims, that relationship has been steady since the early 1980s.

One of the biggest concerns about president Obama's government health insurance plan is that both quality and waiting lists will suffer in return for broader access.    It turns out patients in the UK, where they already have government-run health care, are willing to sacrifice the former if it will reduce the latter.

75% of surgical patients would consider allowing an unsupervised trainee junior doctor perform their entire operation if it meant they could have it done more quickly, according to a survey published in the September issue of BJUI.

80% of those facing minor surgery believed that would be fine and even 68% of those facing major surgery saying they would consider it.