Researchers have developed a swarm of magnetically guided micro-robots that can be injected into the sinuses to create on-site bacteria-killing reactions, offering a potential non-invasive treatment for nasal congestion and infections, though it is still in animal testing stages and faces public acceptance hurdles.
Nature's photo team selects the best science images of June, including a stunning photograph of the Milky Way over baobab trees in Madagascar, an image of microscopic robots organizing themselves into patterns, the orange skies caused by Canadian wildfires in the northeastern United States, a deep-sea coral refuge off the coast of France, and the release of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project aiming to produce the largest-ever spectroscopic survey of galaxies.
Microscopic robots, or microbots, were released onto water and made to spin by a magnetic field, resulting in a pattern with larger ones in the center and smaller ones on the outside. The scientists behind the study showed that they could program the microbots to cluster and move, potentially leading to the assembly of microscopic structures and a better understanding of self-organization.