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Cutting-edge technique uncovers how the spine’s shock absorbers bear load
Hanna Isaksson is in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lund University, 22363 Lund, Sweden.
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By combining information from two X-ray techniques, it is possible to visualize the response of soft biological tissue to mechanical loads on multiple scales, as Newham et al.1 write in Nature. The authors use this method to observe how compressive loads are transmitted between micrometre- and nanometre-scale components of intervertebral discs — the shock-absorbing structures found between the vertebrae of the spine. The information provided by such studies could help scientists to design synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable properties of biological tissues.
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