Thursday, February 14, 2013

Team Creates MRI for the Nanoscale: Level Comparable to an Atomic Force Microscope


I read “Team Creates MRI for the Nanoscale: Level Comparable to an Atomic Force Microscope,” which is about the MRI imaging that reveals details of living tissues and diseased organs and tumors, which used to be primarily found in x-rays. This is called the nonoscale MRI. Dr. Carlos Meriles, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, and the University of Stuttgart to see even tiny atoms that can help doctors determine diseases and causes for disease. ‘"Standard MRI typically gets to a resolution of 100 microns," about the width of a human hair, said Professor Meriles.”’ This new technology allows doctors to see 10,000 times better. Dr. Meriles and his students studied how diamonds that have missing carbon atoms, a defect is formed. This defect is called nitrogen-vacancy (NV). Thease imperfections have a spin, which can be used to serve as sensitive sensors. Through this process, they discovered the reasons behind the new nanoscale MRI machine.
This will help the world in the future because it will allow doctors to see everything up to blood cells more clearly. Many diseases can only be found in X-ray machines, once they are big enough to be seen, but with the help of this machine, tumors, cancers and diseases can be seen before it is too late to minimize the effects of these diseases.
I thought this article was very confusing. The beginning was not too difficult to understand, but once they author started talking about the diamond aspect, he got too scientific for my understanding. He was also not very clear as to who made the MRI, because in some places it sound like the students and Dr. Meriles created it, but at other places, it seems as though they were just studying the machine.

City College of New York. "Team creates MRI for the nanoscale: Level comparable to an atomic force microscope." ScienceDaily, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Feb. 2013.

3 comments:

Alina Atayan said...

Gabby did a nice job trying to review this complex article. For one her first paragraph was very clear and clearly expressed what the break through was. It gave a basic understanding which is important. She also integrated quotes well. The quotes she selected were useful in understanding how the new MRI technology is ten times better than it previously was. She also did a nice job explaining why it is an important step forward and she listed multiple diseases, such as cancer, that will be easily diagnosed know. It was hard for me to understand how the MRI device worked, especially when the diamonds were mentioned. Maybe she could have looked up a little more about this so her readers could understand it better. Or she could have chosen a different article that was on a simpler topic. I learned that they are upgrading technology which is very important to me since it will definitely help the growing number of people who are getting cancer.

Anonymous said...

Matt James


I thought gabby did a good job of reviewing this article. I could tell by her description that this article was quite complex and I thoguht she did a great job summarizing it to a point that we all can undestand it. Another thing that she did well was relate this article to the future; she actually told us how this discovery can help us instead of just telling us a cool new discovery that means nothing the average person. Finaly, I liked her use of quotes to give us a feel of the author's point of view and let us in on how she interperated the article.

I thought she could done a little bit better of a job simplifying the article, just dummying the review down a little bit would make less double takes on sentences necessary. I also thought she could have done more in terms of how he medical community has reacted to this.
I learned that MRI's can now go much deeper than simply the base level muscles and tissues which is a good thing for modern science.

Tatiana said...

Tatiana Baxter
March 3rd 2013
Chem II Block D-Odd

Blog Comment March 4th 2013

After reading Gabby’s article review, I felt she did a great job summing up the article. I really liked her explanation of what the MRI did exactly. I felt like this explanation helped me to better understand what was happening in the article. I also really liked how she compared the new machine to an X-Ray, which gave me a sense of how powerful it is and was an accessible comparison for most people. I liked how Gabby really went into detail about how this machine will help more than an X-Ray (or any other machines that are out there), as it was something I was initially confused about.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed Gabby’s review, I felt she could have explained how this new technology was developed with a little more information. I also felt that she could have placed an example of someone that the machine has helped (perhaps with a specific disease) to really get a sense of how much the machine will help the medical field.
I learned that this new machine could reveal details of living tissue, deceased organs, and tumours. I think that it is incredible that we now have this kind of technology in our lives. Great job Gabby!