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Credit: M. W. Westneat and Science
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Earlier this year, in a report in the 24 January 2003 issue of Science, Westneat et al. showed that insects like this wood beetle breathe by rapid cycles of tracheal compression and expansion, in a mechanism remarkably similar to lung ventilation. Their unprecedented look inside living, breathing insects (including a movie [1.6 MB] showing the inflation and compression of these tiny structures) was made possible by use of a synchrotron -- a large, circular particle accelerator that can generate x-rays one billion times as intense as conventional x-rays. Synchrotron x-ray imaging should prove valuable for probing the structures and functions of other living systems in never-before-seen detail.
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