Blinking eye cells on a polymer chip – along with other “organs-on-chips” – offer a new way to examine the effects of drug treatments on humans, according to the panelists of a Feb. 16 news briefing at the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting.

Two AAAS members – one of them a AAAS fellow – were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Novel imaging techniques are making it possible to study the brain while it’s at work. These new, non-invasive tools – representing significant advances related to positron emission tomography (PET), 3-D microscopy and the use of magnetic fields and nanoparticles to remotely control targeted cells – permit the real-time study of neural activity in unprecedented detail.