Brock News

Nanobot

A rendering of the nanobot. The long strands of DNA cleave off the shorter strands in the presence of disease, causing the sample to glow.

Scientists have engineered nanoparticles to do all sorts of amazing things, from killingdiseased cells in the body to creating a powerful water-resistant coating. Now a team led by researchers at Brock University in Canada has created a nanobot that can help diagnose disease more quickly and accurately than before. The scientists recently published a study outlining the technology in the journal ACS Nano.

“The design [of the nanobot] is complicated, but the way you use it is extremely simple,” Feng Li, a chemistry professor at Brock University, says in a press release. The body of the nanobot is just 20 nanometers in diameter—smaller than the head of a pin—and made of gold. It has short and long strings of DNA—the long strings are tailored to a specific disease (the researchers were first testing it for tuberculosis) and the short strings contain a compound that fluoresce if the strand is cut. If the bot is dropped into a blood sample in which there are cells containing tuberculosis DNA, the long strands identify the disease and cleave off the short DNA strands, causing the sample to glow.

To test their nanobots, the researchers dropped them into test tubes containing blood samples from healthy humans along with a single strand of tuberculosis DNA. The researchers watched in real-time as the samples glowed brighter and brighter—the samples glowed brightest after about 20 minutes.

That speed is important as most tuberculosis tests take at least a day and need to be analyzed by doctors or specialized lab technicians. And while that’s a good thing to have for bacterial infections like tuberculosis, it would be also be useful to quickly diagnose other highly contagious viral diseases like Ebola. Though the particles can't themselves combat a disease, they could diagnose it faster so that doctors can treat the illness more effectively. The researchers don't mention the cost of the particles, but if they're inexpensive enough, they could someday be used commonly in clinical practice.

The researchers next plan to modify the nanobots to detect specific types of microRNA, which scientists use as biomarkers to diagnose diseases like cancer, Parkinson’s, and heart disease.

Spyker Cars

Spyker C8 Preliator

Spyker C8 Preliator

Spyker’s motto is Nulla tenacia invia est via, or “For the tenacious, no road is impassable.” It’s a motto the Dutch supercar company must really take to heart, because after several years of financial troubles, it’s back with a new model at the 2016 Geneva International Motor Show.

The Spyker C8 Preliator shares quite a bit with its predecessor, the C8 Aileron, including an aircraft-inspired design language and a 4.2-liter V8 engine sourced from Audi. But this time, Spyker has added a supercharger, which means the max speed is hair over 200 mph and the 0-60 mph time is well under 4 seconds.

At the same time that Spyker struggled for financial survival, it was also creating the Preliator (or “warrior” in Latin). During those years, automobiles became driveable accessories for our smartphones, and small-batch, handmade, and bespoke supercars were no longer enough. In addition to custom-dyed leather and Chronoswiss dials, people wanted Bluetooth. Of course the Preliator has Bluetooth connectivity, and it will play nice with your iPhone. The sound system has been upgraded, and a heads-up display with navigation is standard.

For fans of the old-school charm of Spyker cars, there’s still plenty of that in the Preliator. The dash is still machined aluminum, and the rows of satisfying toggle switches are in place. The stick shift for the manual 6-speed Getrag transmission is on an exposed rail that runs down the center of the car. (You can get an automatic ZF transmission, but why?) And while the cockpit still feels like an airplane, it is roomier than the C8 Aileron’s, which was pretty tight.

It’s easy to offer leather to match your favorite pants and an HUD in every car when you’re only going to make 50 of them, though. That’s the production number Spyker has set for the Preliator. It’s also easy when the starting price is around $350,000, depending on the exchange rate, since Spyker operates on the Euro. Now it remains to be seen if the Preliator is the fighter that brings Spyker all the way back from the edge of ruin.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

Drone With A Flamethrower

This is a drone with a flamethrower.

Last summer, Connecticut teenager Austin Haughwout made headlines with a creative little craft project: He attached a gun to a drone. In December, Haughwout released a video of a hobby kit built drone carrying a flamethrower and roasting a turkey. Flamethrowers, it turns out, are weirdly legal in most states. Because he flew on private property, nothing Haughwout did was explicitly illegal. A pair of new bills before the Connecticut legislature aim to change that.

As written, both bills would make both of Haughwout’s armed drone uses illegal. here’s the text, as it appears identically in Raised Bill 148“An Act Concerning The Weaponization Of Drones Based On A Program Review And Investigations Committee Study” and raised Bill 5274, “An Act Concerning The Use Of Drones”:

Except as otherwise provided by law, no person shall operate or use any computer software or other technology, including, but not limited to, an unmanned aerial vehicle, as defined in subdivision (29) of section 15-34 of the general statutes, as amended by this act, that allows a person, when not physically present, to release tear gas or any like or similar deleterious agent or to remotely control a deadly weapon, as defined in section 53a-3 of the general statutes, or an explosive or incendiary device, as defined in section 53-206b of the general statutes.

Raised Bill 148 is currently being considered by the Program Review & Investigations Committee, and is sponsored by committee co-chair Rep. Christie Carpino. The other bill, Raised Bill 5274, sits before the Public Safety Committee. If either pass into law, using a weapon attached to a drone will become a felony.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

Marble Machine

Martin Molin playing his Wintergatan Marble Machine.

Marbles are not known for their musical qualities. Clattering spheres ricochet through plastic towers in preschools, their collisions a cacophony lost amidst the everyday chaos of small children playing. In the hands, or, well, the machine of Martin Molin, those same marbles are transformed through volume and artifice into an amazing spectacle and impromptu concert.

Two thousand marbles flow through the 3000-part machine. They hit drum heads, fall in cascades, bounce off glockenspiel keys, and turn kinetic motion into aesthetic sound. Molin hand-cranks the marbles through the device, and then toggles various levers and switches to change the sound, turning it from an over-large music box into a musical instrument.

Similar devices have been simulated, like the Radeon 9700 Pipe Dream. While that was impressive from an animation standpoint, this marble-wielding masterpiece is very much a physical device. Molin’s 14-month-long production process for the Wintergatan Marble Machine is extensively documented on YouTube. It’s as much an engineering marvel as it is an aural delight.

Watch it below:

Surrey Nanosystems

Vantablack

A researcher holding a sample of Vantablack applied to aluminum foil.

Just call it the dark ages. The latest controversy in the art world is a furor over the darkest material ever created.

In 2014, Surrey NanoSystems announced that it had created Vantablack, a "forest" of nanotubes that can be grown on an aluminum base. It is the darkest material ever, absorbing so much light that it can fool the eye into seeing a smooth surface on a crumpled sheet of aluminum foil, something like this:

It's really neat, but many artists are furious that the exclusive rights to use the ultra-black material in art have been given to Anish Kapoor a sculptor.

Surrey NanoSystems is restricting the use of Vantablack in art, but not other areas, citing the difficulty of actually using the material, and their basic desire not to deal with the customs headache of exporting it from the UK. Vantablack is not a paint or a pigment, as Surrey NanoSystems points out in their FAQ's :

Vantablack is generally not suitable for use in art due to the way in which it's made. Vantablack S-VIS also requires specialist application to achieve its aesthetic effect. In addition, the coating's performance beyond the visible spectrum results in it being classified as a dual-use material that is subject to UK Export Control. We have therefore chosen to license Vantablack S-VIS exclusively to Kapoor Studios UK to explore its use in works of art. This exclusive licence limits the coating’s use in the field of art, but does not extend to any other sectors.

While artists might disagree with the idea that a nanotech company gets to decide what is "generally not suitable for use in art", Surrey NanoSystems is not restricting the use of Vantablack entirely. Their decree presumably means that the company could license it's use in products like space-based telescopes and cameras. Vantablack's unique ability to absorb 99.965 percent of visible light and 99.85 percent of infrared radiation means that it can prevent unwanted light from reaching a camera sensor, an incredibly valuable trait in space, where researchers are trying to capture faint light from distant stars.

This loophole could potentially also allow Vantablack's continued use in commercial products, like the single can of Lynx body spray which Surrey NanoSystems coated in Vantablack. It took 400 hours to coat the single can of body spray in Vantablack, making it impractical for mainstream use for now. The labor intensive work of not-art went on display to the public in Shoreditch last summer, and was part of this ad video.

Clearly, the answer to all artists who want to work with the coating? Simply sign up to work with a scientist or an ad agency. Just don't call it art.

No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky

The game was listed on the PlayStation Store Update page for $60 as a pre-order, but the listing was later taken down.

No Man’s Sky continued its tour of teases this week, with what appears to have been an accidental advertisement for pre-order.

The gaming world collectively leapt yesterday when Sony advertised a $60 pre-order for No Man’s Sky, which would actually be available later this week.

But that post seems to have been made in error: Sony has since taken it down, and no comment has been made from either Sony or the studio about what happened.

A pre-order of course doesn’t actually mean you’re getting the game any earlier, but the studio behind No Man’s Sky has been cryptic about actual release dates since the game’s creation, and it would be a big deal to have pre-orders planned 90 days out.

With an officially slated June release date, we’re left to assume we’ve still got three months to wait until we get to play the unprecedented scale of open world that the team behind No Man’s Sky has been bragging about all this time.

The pre-order was advertised to begin on March 3, so it could still happen tomorrow, or the next day, or really any time between now and June. And since the game has suffered innumerable setbacks and delays in the course of development, it could conceivably take longer than that to actually get to your console.

What we’re saying here is that we’ll believe a pre-order when the transaction is complete on a menu, and we’ll believe a launch when the game’s main menu hits our screens.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

THeMIS Robot

The THeMIS (Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System) is not to be confused with the weenis, which is the loose flap of skin over an elbow.

When robots go to war, they will be short, squat, and in bodies unlike those of humans. Estonian company Milrem’s new ground robot has no gleaming silver skull, no pointy battledroid face, and no blinking Cylon eyes. Instead, Mirem’s Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System (or THeMIS), which debuted at this year’s Singapore Air Show, is a simple green platform on tracks.

THeMIS boasts a top speed of almost 22 mph. It is is 6.5 feet n length, and just under 3 feet in height. This lets it keep a much lower profile than human soldiers. It weighs 1,500 pounds, and can carry a 1,500-pound payload on top of that. The “hybrid” part of the name comes from THeMIS’s diesel-electric engine and battery. It can run on just electrical power, or it can use gas and battery for up to 8 hours straight. It’s also modular, so the same robot body can carry cargo, use a robot explosive ordnance disposal arm, or just carry a big freaking gun.

Other options, advertised in a colorful pinwheel of options, list it as a drone launcher, an anti-tank missile launcher, a firefighting tool, a stretcher carrier for medevac, and a communication relay, among others. An unmanned ground vehicle, it can be remotely piloted, has “follow mode” where it travels behind a specific person, or be somewhat autonomous.

Watch it below:

NASA/Scott Kelly

Scott Kelly

Scott Kelly during his year in space on the International Space Station

Here on Earth, your height is mostly determined by the genes you inherit from your parents. And once you’ve stopped growing, your dreams of getting any taller are pretty much kaput--unless you go to space.

When Scott Kelly returned to Earth this week after spending almost a year on the International Space Station, he came back about two inches taller than when he left Earth.

What caused this growth? Spending time in a zero-G environment like that of the International Space Station causes the spine to stretch. On Earth, gravity keeps the vertebrae in place by constantly pushing them together. But without gravity, the vertebrae will naturally expand slightly, causing a person to become taller.

However, this growth is minor and temporary. Typically, astronauts in space can grow up to three percent of their original height, but no more than that. And after a few months back on Earth, gravity will shrink a person back to her original height.

In addition to this height increase, zero-G environments also come with a large list of other potential side effects to the human body, many of which are still pretty unknown--a reason why NASA is currently studying both Scott Kelly and his identical twin Mark, who unlike his brother spent this past year on Earth, to better understand these physiological changes.

So if you do wish you were slightly taller, consider becoming an astronaut who participates in long term space missions. But remember to relish your extended height when you’re up there, because once you get back down to Earth it’s all going to shrink.

Popular Science

Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive VR headsets

Which one should you buy?

The Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are on their way to market. After months of rumors and hype, you can now finally buy pre-order both virtual reality headsets online: the Oculus Rift went on sale first in January for $599 and is expected to ship in March, whereas the HTC Vive went on sale in late February for $799 and is expected to begin going out to buyers in April.

The Facebook-owned Oculus kicked off what we know to be the modern virtual reality wave, and many companies iterated on the company's ideas. Among them, but certainly not the only one, was Taiwanese electronics giant HTC. In a partnership with Valve, the folks behind PC service Steam (and game we’ve all spent too much time playing, Portal), HTC has devised its own VR helmet. And both are awesome.

With both virtual reality devices coming in 2016 and opening their doors for preorder, it can be tough to choose which one you’ll get. But with price tags reaching the stratosphere, you’ll want to make the right choice on your coolest PC accessory yet. Console-focused gamers, your VR priorities lie elsewhere. Those faint of wallet turn around now.

Xavier Harding/Popular Science

HTC Vive Pre

The newest HTC Vive cleverly puts a camera on the front of the device.

The best things in life are too expensive

Preordering the Oculus Rift will cost you $599. Putting money down for the HTC Vive will run you $799. HTC Vive hopefuls can look forward to their device arriving around May 2016 while Rift buyers can expect their VR helmets to start shipping in late March if you were quick to buy, or July 2016 if you buy yours right now.

And that’s without considering the PC you’ll either need to have already or purchase alongside your new headset...

For the HTC Vive, the PC required needs to have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, AMD Radeon R9 290 or better for GPU, Intel i5-4590, AMD FX 8350 or better for CPU, 4GB of RAM, an HDMI 1.4 port, DisplayPort 1.2 or later and a USB port of the 2.0 variety or higher.

The Oculus Rift minimum PC requirements are largely the same. GPU needs to be an Nvidia GTX 970, AMD R9 290 or something higher, CPU an Intel i5-4590 or higher, and HDMI 1.3 instead of 1.4. As for USB ports, the Rift requires three USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 ports. And Oculus requires more RAM, at 8GB.

For either headset you buy, PCs of this caliber run at around $1,000. And that’s a separate cost from the pricey VR headset.

The Oculus Rift, however, may bring a better pre-order bundle, if only for one title: EVE: Valkyrie. We played the space shooter back at Playstation Experience in December and the game will come preloaded on Oculus Rift units that are purchased right now.

In addition to EVE, Rift buyers will get Lucky’s Tale. The game follows a tiny fox that looks a little like Tails from the Sonic the Hedgehog games of old. The platformer offers a very kid-friendly look and will likely serve as a good time-waster. Named after Oculus’s founder Palmer Luckey? We’ll never know.

Microsoft

Xbox One Controller

Xbox One Controller, ships with every Oculus preorder

What else you’re getting for that price

The Oculus Rift comes with an Xbox One controller. Not quite one of Microsoft’s Pro controllers, but a quality button-box nonetheless. If you own an Xbox One, the purchase of an Oculus Rift is even more beneficial for you. The Rift will also ship with an Oculus Remote, presumably for use with watching video in VR.

The HTC Vive on the other hand will ship with an HTC custom controller for each hand. While not an Xbox controller, they will be made for a VR experience and will allow for motion control out of the box. Oculus Rift’s motion control-supporting controllers will arrive later this year.

Futureproofing & other considerations

Back at MWC 2016, we dubbed the HTC Vive the most futuristic VR headset around, still. The ability to walk around in virtual reality is something the Oculus supports, but HTC embraces. And features like the ability to connect your phone and see text and phone call notifications from within fire are a nice touch. Considering HTC has teamed up with Valve, we can expect that Steam will have greatest compatibility with the Vive and any games like Left 4 Dead, Portal or Half-Life 3 (confirmed) will hit Vive first. And the Vive has a camera on the front that lets you peak into the real world without removing the headset.

Oculus may not have a game delivery service on the level of Steam, but they do have the power of Facebook behind them. Oculus was acquired by the social network in 2014 for $2 billion. And Zuckerberg isn’t looking to let that go to waste.

But it isn’t just social apps, Oculus also has 100 games coming to the Rift this year, including Rock Band and Minecraft. And with the Samsung Gear VR, there’s the possibility of apps that require less horsepower coming to Oculus’s more high-end headset. We could even see a future where those really wanting to lighten their pockets would spend the extra $200 that the Vive demands on a Gear VR for the road. Perhaps one day this will be viable.

Oculus

Oculus Rift hand controllers

Oculus Rift controllers, coming after launch

And The Winner Is...

While both headsets are great, for now we’d have to recommend your pre-order go to the Oculus Rift. Provided you already have a PC, the Rift is $200 cheaper and comes with EVE: Valkyrie. And Xbone owners can look forward to the extra controller that comes with the VR headset.

The HTC Vive offers more advanced technology (the existence of a camera on the exterior cannot be understated). But until the software library offers a killer app that makes the device a must buy, Oculus’s Rift is smarter pre-order.

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016

Ghost Octopus

A previously unknown species of octopus on the ocean floor.

Researchers aren't used to seeing ghosts on the seafloor.

But on the latest cruise of a submarine controlled on NOAA's Okeanos Explorer they found an adorable octopod all ready for Halloween on the seafloor near Hawaii's Necker Island.

The team working on the remote-controlled submersible has captured other amazing sea life before but none so spooky as this. The researchers were sending a live stream of their exploration back to shore, where land-based scientists were surprised by the apparition. The octopod is believed to belong to a completely unknown species, and may even be part of an unknown genus.

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016

Approaching the ghost octopus

This submarine ain't afraid of no ghostopus.

See the spookily adorable ghost octopus in action here (and listen in to the excitement of the researchers seeing it for the first time).

NASA/David C. Bowman

Don't forget to buckle up

Test dummies will measure how much of an impact future astronauts can expect during watery landings of the Orion spacecraft.

NASA is designing the Orion capsule to carry astronauts to Mars. When those astronauts get back to Earth, they'll probably land on solid ground using parachutes. But just in case they need to make an emergency landing in the ocean, NASA has been testing Orion in a 20 foot deep pool at NASA's Langley Research Center. An upcoming splash test will have some interesting passengers onboard.

“We are excited about this testing because we’ll have suited-up test dummies inside the capsule,” said Ellen Carpenter, Langley project manager in a statement. “Including test dummies will help NASA ensure the crew is protected from injury during splashdown in future missions.”

The two test dummies--a 105-pound woman and a 220-pound man--will be suited up and strapped into Orion, then dropped into the test pool at various angles. Just like the test dummies used to test car safety, these two are embedded with sensors that record how much of a beating each body part takes. That'll help NASA engineers make sure the spacecraft is safe for future astronauts.

The series of nine drop tests will begin this spring.

NASA/David C. Bowman

Another view

Engineers install test dummies in the Orion spacecraft.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

FliteTest Hovercraft

Look at it go, hovering over the snow.

How close to the ground can a vehicle go and still count as flying? FliteTest, the group of drone crafters and model airplane enthusiasts best known for their giant Star Destroyer and Helicarrier craft projects, this week set their sights much, much lower. So low their vehicle isn’t a plane, but a hovercraft.

Well, one hovercraft, and one weird low flying machine:

Both craft were home-built using hobby kit motors, power supplies, and controls. The FliteTest team built them over a course of the day, partly for fun, and partly to showcase a water-resistant foamboard.

Watch them in action below:

NASA, ESA, AND P. OESCH (YALE UNIVERSITY)

Distant Galaxy

The most distant galaxy ever seen.

A long time ago, a galaxy far, far away sprang into existence. Billions of years later, light from that galaxy hit a mirror in a solar-powered satellite orbiting the third planet of a medium-sized star, and the scientific community of the ruling species of that planet got really excited. And they all lived happily ever after.

In a paper published in Astrophysical Journal researchers announced that they had observed a galaxy 150 million years older than the previous record holder.

"We've taken a major step back in time, beyond what we'd ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We managed to look back in time to measure the distance to a galaxy when the Universe was only three percent of its current age," said the lead author of the paper, Pascal Oesch.

For those who don't know the age of the universe off the top of their heads, that means that the galaxy formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was still really young. But its ancient ancient age isn't the only thing that has the researchers so excited. It's also surprisingly bright and well-populated with stars, producing roughly 24 new stars a year, a rate 20 times faster than our own galaxy, the Milky Way (we still beat it in terms of overall size--our galaxy is 25 times larger.)

"It's amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon," co-author Garth Illingworth said.

Though this is an amazing achievement, the astrophysical community hopes that the record will soom be broken again, once the long-anticipated James Webb Space Telescope launches in October of 2018.

Danielle Futselaar

Arecibo Observatory

An artist's impression of radio waves hitting the Arecibo telescope, where the repeating FRB's were discovered.

Of all the weirdness in the universe, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the weirdest. Sure, possible (probably not) alien megastructures might beat them in an astrophysical brawl, but FRBs are really strange.

How strange are they? Well, they are intense bursts of radio waves only last for an instant (thousandths of a second), only 20 of them have ever been noticed, and we've only potentially pinpointed the galaxy of origin for one of those 20 or so FRBs. Adding to their mysterious allure, that last location is currently a hot topic of debate. We basically have no idea what they are, or where they come from. For a long time, scientists thought they might be caused by explosions or collisions of distant stars.

Then, one of the FRBs got put on repeat. Usually, an FRB only happens once, a single burst coming from an unknown part of the sky, but in a paper published this week in Nature researchers found a repeating sequence of a total of 10 FRBs.

“Not only did these bursts repeat, but their brightness and spectra also differ from those of other FRBs,” Laura Spitler, first author of the new paper said.

So now, instead of just one strange category of weird radio signals, astronomers have a totally new category to deal with. There is some speculation that instead of being caused by an explosion or other cataclysm, this repeating FRB was caused by a rotating neutron star, but we won't know until we get more information.

“Once we have precisely localized the repeater’s position on the sky, we will be able to compare observations from optical and X-ray telescopes and see if there is a galaxy there,” Jason Hessels a corresponding author of the paper said. “Finding the host galaxy of this source is critical to understanding its properties.”

Luckily, researchers looking into this topic will soon get an assist from three new, massive radio telescopes that will begin operation in the next year. Hopefully, the new instruments will be able to provide answers in addition to raising questions.

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The haze over Pluto, as seen by New Horizons

Pluto, our solar system's poor demoted dwarf planet, really seems to be full of surprises. New Scientistclaims to have seen emails that suggest Pluto does indeed have clouds, not just an atmospheric haze.

The emails started last September, around the time when NASA publicly released images showing Pluto's hazy glow. Though, it was difficult to tell with the available images obtained from the New Horizons mission whether what they were seeing was truly evidence of clouds hovering above Pluto's surface, because it was hard to tell whether the clouds were leaving shadows. That is, until March 1, when John Spencer, a scientist with the Southwest Research Institute sent a new email with a newly downloaded image from New Horizons attached, suggesting strongly that these might indeed be clouds.

What's the difference between clouds and haze, you ask? “One way to think of it is that clouds are discrete features, hazes widespread,” wrote Alan Stern, the principle investigator with New Horizons, according to New Scientist. It remains to be seen what these clouds might be made of (probably some mixture of nitrogen), and whether this might help the dwarf planet's bid for earning back its place in our solar system. To take a peek at these potential clouds yourself, head over to New Scientist.

Sarah C. Ogden

Zika virus (marked in green) causing cell death (marked in red) in neural progenitor cells (grey and white).

On February 1, the World Health Organization declared microcephaly and its possible association with the Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. So far, the Zika virus that may be causing the rare birth defect has been found in placental tissue and even in the brain tissue of fetuses diagnosed with microcephaly. In a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers make the link between Zika and microcephaly a little stronger.

In the month-long study, scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Florida State University, and Emory University grew neural progenitor cells from human stem cells. Neural progenitor cells eventually grow into cortical neurons, which are cells that make up the brain's cortex. Microcephaly, notably involves an interference with normal growth of the cortex. The researchers then subjected these cells to the Zika virus, and found that within three days, the virus had spread through the plate of cells, and that there wasn't any sign that the cells were fighting back.

Wired points out that the way the stem cells were grown does not replicate what happens naturally in the body, so it will take more research to gain a clearer view of what is happening within infected fetuses as they grow. This is just the beginning of many studies to answer the questions scientists currently face with the rising concern of Zika and microcephaly. Next, the researchers aim to grow "mini-brains" in the lab to watch for longer-term effects on neural tissue, with the aim to find ways to combat it.