Whether exploring distant universe or dashing about a fantasy world, virtual reality has immersed humans in extraordinary places. Now, it seems, mice will be able to join us.

Researchers have developed a pair of virtual reality “goggles” that can bring the mice into various situations, from navigating mazes (导航迷宫) to experiencing the threat of natural enemies.

With a pair of lenses (镜片) and screens mounted on stands either side of a mouse’s head, the recently updated version of “goggles” provides each eye of mice with a 180-degreefield of view. The researchers placed the animals on a treadmill (跑步机) in front of a large screen displaying a digital scene, with their heads fixed to monitor the brain activities. This not only allows mice to see the virtual environment in 3D and gets rid of visual clues of the lab, but offers a way to present virtual images from above —for example, of a hovering hawk. This stimulation causes mice to freeze or flee the same as they react in real environment to survive a hungry bird attack in the wild. When the mice froze, activity from neurons (神经元) in their brains involved in navigation suggested they were in a different location from where they actually were. “It was as if they were thinking about where they would rather be — a safe, covered location up ahead.” Dombeck said, adding such results might help explain how imagination arises in the brain.

The team are also working to identify neurons involved in forming memories when mice navigate a maze, as well as which connections between them are improved to form memories. Answering these questions will help us understand how our brains know where we are in the world around us, how we form memories of those experiences, and ultimately how those memories are degraded in neurodegenerative diseases.

Next time your plane lands, listen to the sound of the tyres hitting the ground. The reason the tyres don’t explode is because they are made of natural rubber. The tyres of cars, motorbikes and trucks are also often made of the same stuff.

Natural rubber comes from trees. Workers cut the trunks of the trees and collect a white liquid called latex(乳胶). In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, huge numbers of rubber trees were planted in countries including Malaysia, Burma and Brazil. More than a century ago, scientists discovered how to make man-made rubber, but natural rubber is much stronger and can last much longer. Nearly half the rubber which is produced each year is natural rubber and there is always a need for more.

Rubber trees are not easy to grow. They are affected by changes in temperature, too much or not enough rain, high winds and disease. Some trees survive while others die and it’s all down to their genes. Two British organizations, the Tun Abdul Razak Research Center(TARRC) and The Genome (基因组）Analysis Center (TGAC) , have been working together to look at rubber trees. This is the genes fit together in very long chains of DNA. The genome for a plant such as a rubber tree or animal needs to grow. The genome contains all the information the plant or animal needs to grow. The genome for a plant such as a rubber tree is smaller than a human genome but it is still very long, which is why it has been so difficult to find. As Ewan Mollison of TARRC says, the work has been like putting a picture puzzle together where all the pieces show blue sea and blue sky.

Now scientists can use the rubber tree genome to produce stronger trees. By understanding the genome, they can change the DNA in rubber trees in useful ways. They can also do it much faster than before. In the future, it will be possible to grow trees which survive climate change and disease.

In the Mediterranean Sea, a model detection system— the System for the Avoidance of Ship-Strikes with Endangered Whales(SAvEWhales) developed by Emmanuel Skarsoulis’s research team, can use the clicks of a sperm whale to determine its location in three-dimensional space. In tests using both artificial sounds and the sounds released from real sperm whales, researchers showed that SAvEWhales can provide enough notice for a nearby ship to change direction or slow down when a whale is in its path.

SAvEWhales’ design is fairly simple. It has won praise from a professor at Cornell University for its getting near-real-time information that ships could use on the spot. For the model detection system, Skarsoulis’s team fixed three buoys(浮标) in a triangle one to two kilometers apart near the Hellenic Trench, a five-kilometer-deep underwater canyon(峡谷). Hanging from each buoy on a 100-meter line was a hydrophone(水中听音器) to detect underwater sound. The three hydrophones picked up information each time a nearby sperm whale clicked. Based on the reflections of the sperm whale’s clicks, the scientists built their method to calculate the depth of the clicking whale. And by running the same calculations each time a whale clicks nearby, the scientists can actively track whales.

So far, the system has only experienced a two-year pilot test, and Skarsoulis and his colleagues have already identified some barriers to expanding it to a full-time monitoring system. These include analytical challenges as well as those involved in maintaining an at-sea system. In fact, fishermen who happened to be nearby watched the first two SAvEWhales buoys that were used disappear underwater, dragged down by strong water flows. Besides, the surface reflection analysis that makes SAvEWhales so powerful can’t be used for whales that communicate through song rather than clicks, such as fin whales.

Yet such monitoring is urgently needed in the Mediterranean Sea, says a whale researcher Nino Pierantonio. Pierantonio notes that other efforts to reduce ship strikes will also be essential tools in protecting the endangered sperm whales. “When reducing speed is not an option, we need another way to achieve it,” he adds.