A revolutionary new technique uses food dye to provide a ‘window’ into the body by making skin transparent.

Researchers made the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice see-through by applying a mixture of water and a common yellow food colouring called Tartrazine, commonly found in cornflakes, sweets, energy drinks and chicken stock as well as crisps. 

The ground-breaking technique, described in the journal Science, gives medics a new way to see organs within a body by rendering overlying tissues transparent to visible light.

It is yet to be tested on humans as food dyes as food dyes can be harmful.

But the process was reversible in tests with animals, and scientists say it may ultimately apply to several medical uses – from locating injuries to monitoring digestive disorders and identifying cancers.

Dr Guosong Hong, of Stanford University in the United States who helped lead the work, said: ‘Looking forward, this technology could make veins more visible for the drawing of blood, make laser-based tattoo removal more straightforward, or assist in the early detection and treatment of cancers.

Tartrazine is commonly found in energy drinks (File image) 

It is also found in cornflakes (File image) 

Dr Guosong Hong (pictured) said: ‘Looking forward, this technology could make veins more visible for the drawing of blood, make laser-based tattoo removal more straightforward, or assist in the early detection and treatment of cancers’

‘For example, certain therapies use lasers to eliminate cancerous and precancerous cells, but are limited to areas near the skin’s surface. This technique may be able to improve that light penetration.’

To master the new technique, the researchers developed a way to predict how light interacts with dyed biological tissues.

The predictions required a deep understanding of light scattering, as well as the process of refraction, where light changes speed and bends as it travels from one material into another.

The research team explained that scattering is the reason we cannot see through our body. Fats, fluids within cells, proteins, and other materials each have a different refractive index, a property that dictates how significantly an incoming light wave will bend.

In most tissues, those materials are closely compacted together, so the varied refractive indices cause light to scatter as it passes through.

It is the scattering effect that our eyes interpret as opaque, coloured, biological materials.

The researchers realised if they wanted to make biological material transparent, they had to find a way to match the different refractive indices so light could travel through unimpeded.

The chemical is often found in fizzy drinks 

Building on fundamental insights from the field of optics, the researchers realised dyes that are the most effective at absorbing light can also be ‘highly effective’ at directing light uniformly through a wide range of refractive indices.

One dye the researchers predicted would be particularly effective was tartrazine, the food dye more commonly known as FD & C Yellow 5.

When dissolved into water and absorbed into tissues, tartrazine molecules turned out to be perfectly structured to match refractive indices and prevent light from scattering, resulting in transparency.

The research team first tested the technique on thin slices of chicken breast.

As tartrazine concentrations increased, the refractive index of the fluid within the muscle cells rose until it matched the refractive index of the muscle proteins – the slice became transparent.

The researchers then gently rubbed a temporary tartrazine solution on mice.

First, they applied the solution to the scalp, rendering the skin transparent to reveal blood vessels criss-crossing the brain.

Then they applied the solution to the abdomen, which faded within minutes to show contractions of the intestine and movements caused by heartbeats and breathing.

When the dye was rinsed off, the tissues quickly returned to normal.

One dye the researchers predicted would be particularly effective was tartrazine, the food dye more commonly known as FD & C Yellow 5 (File image) 

File image of a little boy drinking an orange soda at a beach bar in late afternoon light

The tartrazine did not appear to have long-term effects, and any excess was excreted in waste within 48 hours.

The researchers suspect that injecting the dye should lead to even deeper views within organisms, with implications for both biology and medicine.

Study lead author Dr Zihao Ou, Assistant Professor of physics at The University of Texas, Dallas, said: ‘We combined the yellow dye, which is a molecule that absorbs most light, especially blue and ultraviolet light, with skin, which is a scattering medium.

‘Individually, these two things block most light from getting through them.

‘But when we put them together, we were able to achieve transparency of the mouse skin.’

Dr Ou, who conducted the study while a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, added: ‘For those who understand the fundamental physics behind this, it makes sense; but if you aren’t familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick.

‘It takes a few minutes for the transparency to appear.

‘It’s similar to the way a facial cream or mask works: the time needed depends on how fast the molecules diffuse into the skin.

‘It’s important that the dye is biocompatible – it’s safe for living organisms.

‘In addition, it’s very inexpensive and efficient; we don’t need very much of it to work.’

The researchers have not yet tested the process on humans, whose skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s.

Dr Ou says it’s not yet clear what dosage of the dye or delivery method would be necessary to penetrate the entire thickness.

He said: ‘In human medicine, we currently have ultrasound to look deeper inside the living body.

‘Many medical diagnosis platforms are very expensive and inaccessible to a broad audience, but platforms based on our tech should not be..

‘Our research group is mostly academics, so one of the first things we thought of when we saw the results of our experiments was how this might improve biomedical research.

‘Optical equipment, like the microscope, is not directly used to study live humans or animals because light can’t go through living tissue.

‘But now that we can make tissue transparent, it will allow us to look at more detailed dynamics. It will completely revolutionise existing optical research in biology.’

Scottish Widows is planning to ‘supercharge’ pension engagement as it launches a revamped app and TikTok channel in a bid to drive young people to take notice of their pensions.

The life insurance and pensions firm said it is investing £100million to improve its digital offering, including launching its TikTok channel ahead of ‘pension engagement season,’ This is Money can reveal. 

As many as one in four people in their 20s aren’t saving anything for retirement, according to data from Scottish Widows, with 38 per cent of people not on track to save for their minimum lifestyle requirements.

Scottish Widows has rebranded its app platform, investing £100m to boost digital engagement

Jackie Leiper, managing director at Scottish Widows, told This is Money: ‘People are on their internet banking accounts almost every single day. 

‘We know that pensions and investments get nowhere near that level of interaction and engagement from people.

‘The investment we’re making is to create a digital ecosystem and experience that allows people not only to look at their products with us, but actually to connect the accounts with other providers as well.’

Scottish Widows hopes by launching a TikTok channel, it can tap into viewers, especially younger people, who are interested in improving their pension and before it is too late to make a real difference.

Leiper added: ‘If you’re in your 20s, you’re not really thinking about retiring, are you? But actually, we know that people in their 20s and 30s can make the biggest difference by small steps that they take.’

Generally, people don’t really start to take notice of their pensions until they are in their 40s, Leiper said, ‘by which point they’ve got quite a short window to really make some real difference or take some real action’.

Working with TikTok, Scottish Widows found that searches for ‘#retirementplanning’ had increased 300 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 compared with a year ago, while ‘#retirement’ had increased 60 per cent.

Meanwhile, 81 per cent of TikTok users said they want to know more about personal finance, with a third actively searching for this content on the platform. 

The ‘#retirementplanning’ tag had more than 10 million views in the first quarter of 2024.

Scottish Widows: Leiper says most people won’t expect a traditional firm to be at the cutting edge of digital engagement

Scottish Widows said young people could gain the most by engaging with their pensions early in life, arguing that if the auto-enrolment age threshold was lowered to 18 and the lower earnings limit was reduced, savers could add an extra £46,000 to the average future pension pot, an increase of 45 per cent.

‘This generation of people in the 20s and 30s aren’t going to have any of the gold-plated pension schemes that perhaps my generation have had, so the steps they can take now could really make a huge difference for them,’ Leiper said.

‘The TikTok channel is quite experimental, but it is showing that there is a demand there and that if we can go where the people go then that’s probably our best opportunity to make the biggest difference.’

On top of the TikTok channel, Scottish Widows is also updating its brand and app, including introducing gamification features which it hopes will help to easily explain difficult concepts to users.

Having launched just weeks ago, the firm’s compound interest in-app game has already seen 53,000 visitors, or one in five app visitors.

Leiper said its ‘beat the gap’ and ‘pension mirror’ games, meanwhile, have ‘had amazing engagement and really helped to simplify down the messages and help people make decisions more easily.’

‘The gamification team are miles ahead of our competitors and nobody else is doing this in the pensions and investment space, certainly in the UK,’ Leiper added, ‘most people wouldn’t expect to see it from quite a traditional company like ours.’

Scottish Widows is currently recruiting a full gamification team, with the aim of creating standalone games for everyone to use., as well as expanding its features to other aspects of its business.

‘Ultimately what we would be hoping that people do is actually start taking steps to close the gap they’ve got, so that they have what they need for retirement,’ Leiper said.

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Are we in the golden age of sea travel? Or have we left it behind? 

These fascinating vintage photographs will no doubt suggest to some that today’s ‘floating city’ cruise ships don’t have the romance or glamour of the passenger ships of yesteryear. The archive photographs show life on board the Conte Rosso and Conte Verde, Italian transatlantic liners built in Scotland in the early 1920s and designed to transport passengers from Europe to North and South America. 

The Conte Verde was 180m/590ft long, less than half the length of the world’s biggest cruise ship in 2024, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas (364m/1194ft), yet it still had room for more than 2,400 passengers across 10 decks and was considered the height of luxury.

Those in first class luxuriated amid interiors built by craftsmen and artists brought over to shipyards in Scotland from Florence. And even those in third class had use of an outdoor pool.

Launched in 1922, the Conte Verde took many memorable trips across the ocean, including transporting European football teams to the first-ever World Cup in Uruguay in 1930.

Scroll down to see what life was like on these grand vessels…

The Conte Verde launched in 1922 from Genoa in Italy on its maiden voyage to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The ship is pictured here departing on a later voyage from Genoa in 1936. Many passengers used the ship to emigrate and may have been permanently bidding farewell to Europe and their families

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Pictured is the dining room onboard the Conte Verde in the 1930s. A Times article, written when the ship launched in 1923, said the ‘wealth of artistic detail everywhere (onboard the ship) recalls the old-time splendour of an Italian palace’. The writing above the door at the back of the room, ‘A Tavola Non S’Invecchia’, means ‘At the table, one does not grow old’ and reflects Italy’s joyful approach to dining

This image shows a Thanksgiving buffet for the ship’s first-class passengers in 1930. What might they have been treated to? A first-class Conte Verde menu card dating back to 1939 advertises the ‘New Moon cocktail’, which was made with dry Gordon gin, sherry, French vermouth, angostura bitters, absinthe and a squeeze of lemon peel. The Conte Verde could transport 450 first-class passengers

Pictured is the first-class dining room onboard the Conte Rosso transatlantic liner, the sister ship to the Conte Verde. It was also renowned for its ornate interior furnishings and launched in 1921

Chefs are pictured in the second-class kitchen on the Conte Verde in 1930. Second class was the smallest class onboard, with room for 200 passengers

Passengers are shown here in the ship’s third-class dining room in 1930. The Conte Verde had space for more than 1,700 third-class passengers and the majority of these were people emigrating overseas to start a new life

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This photo, which dates back to 1930, shows passengers playing games and relaxing on the Conte Verde’s deck. A first-class brochure from 1939 advertises clay pigeon shooting on the ship’s second-class deck

This picture depicts the Conte Verde’s third-class swimming pool in 1930. Other activities for passengers included ball games, evening concerts and dancing

Passengers are pictured praying on the deck of the Conte Verde in 1930. The journey from Europe to the Americas on an ocean liner took around a fortnight

Pictured is the surgery onboard the Conte Verde in 1930. Unlike a cruise ship, ocean liners wouldn’t make stops along the route, so sick passengers wouldn’t have had the chance to get off

This is the gym onboard the Conte Verde’s sister ship, the Conte Rosso, in the 1930s. The Conte Rosso was notable for its outdoor dining areas – unusual for the time

This image depicts the French national football team aboard the Conte Verde on their way to participate in the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. According to The Guardian, Lucien Laurent, a French footballer onboard, said: ‘There was no talk of tactics or anything like that, no coaching. It was just running about the boat on the deck. Running, running all the time. Down below we would do exercise – stretching, jumping, running up stairs, lifting weights’. The Conte Verde transported several other teams to the tournament, including Romania, Brazil and Belgium. England did not participate in the event

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Pictured is Amedeo Pinceti, the captain of the Conte Verde in 1930. The ship had around 400 crew members

This photo depicts people watching the departure of the Conte Verde from New York in the 1930s. Later in the 1930s, the ship was used to travel between Italy and Shanghai. Many Jewish refugees escaped Europe on the Conte Verde until the route was closed in 1940 when Italy joined the war. The ship was bombed and sunk in the 1940s in Asia and was eventually scrapped in 1949. After WWII, the use of ocean liners dramatically dropped due to the launch of speedier long-distance flights. Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 is now the only ocean liner still in service

By Xantha Leatham, Deputy Science Editor

Published: 23:59 BST, 8 September 2024 | Updated: 00:47 BST, 9 September 2024

Night owls have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes because their body clock is out of sync with society, experts have warned.

It is already known that those who stay up late and are more active at night are more likely to smoke, eat unhealthy food and have a higher body mass index, which are all linked to the condition.

However, the increased diabetes risk may not be down to lifestyle alone, researchers said.

Instead, they suggest the link could also be because a night owl’s body clock may be out of sync with the rest of society.

A team from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands analysed sleep timing, waist circumference and the BMI of more than 5,000 people.

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Night owls have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes because their body clock is out of sync with society, experts have warned. Pictured: Stock image of security guard

Researchers suggest the link could also be because a night owl’s body clock may be out of sync with the rest of society (stock image)

Of the group, 1,576 had MRI scans to measure visceral and liver fat, while electronic health records were used to check how many people had type 2 diabetes.

Patients were categorised into three groups, or ‘chronotypes’, based on their sleep timing – late, early and intermediate.

Dr Jeroen van der Velde, lead researcher, said: ‘Previous studies have indicated that a late chronotype – preferring to go to bed late and wake up later – is associated with an unhealthy lifestyle.

‘Late chronotypes are more likely to smoke or have an unhealthy diet, for example, and it has been suggested this is why they are at higher risk of obesity and metabolic disorders including type 2 diabetes.’

The group was followed up for an average of 6.6 years, during which 225 patients were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

When taking into account age, sex, total body fat and lifestyle factors such as exercise, diet and smoking, the study found people who preferred to stay up late still had a 46 per cent higher risk of type 2 diabetes than people in the intermediate group.

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Dr van der Velde suggested there could be ‘other mechanisms also at play’ outside of lifestyle.

Researchers also found night owls tended to have a higher BMI, a larger waist circumference, more visceral fat and higher liver fat content (stock image)

‘A likely explanation is that the circadian rhythm or body clock in late chronotypes is out of sync with the work and social schedules followed by society,’ he said.

‘This can lead to circadian misalignment, which we know can lead to metabolic disturbances and ultimately type 2 diabetes.’

Researchers also found night owls tended to have a higher BMI, a larger waist circumference, more visceral fat and higher liver fat content.

Dr van der Velde added: ‘People with a late chronotype are probably more likely to eat until later in the evening.

‘While we did not measure this in our study, there is growing evidence that time-restricted eating, not eating anything after a certain time, such as 6pm, may lead to metabolic benefits.

‘Night owls who are concerned about the increased risk of type 2 diabetes might want to try this or, at least, try to refrain from eating late in the evening.

‘The evidence isn’t there yet but, in time, we aim to provide specific advice regarding the timing of lifestyle behaviour.’

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The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Madrid.

• Morgan Rogers has caught the eye since signing for Aston Villa in January
• He says he time he spent with Lincoln, Bournemouth and Blackpool shaped him 
• LISTEN NOW: It’s All Kicking Off!, available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday and Thursday

By Jack Gaughan

Published: 20:31 BST, 8 September 2024 | Updated: 01:52 BST, 9 September 2024

Morgan Rogers admitted that loneliness during loan spells made him reevaluate his attitude as he embarks on a Champions League campaign just three years after playing in League One.

The Aston Villa forward has shone since joining Unai Emery’s side from Middlesbrough in January and will be integral when Villa meet the likes of Bayern Munich and Juventus.

Emery has been so taken by Rogers’ performance that he questioned the FA’s wisdom in picking him for the England Under 21s, who face Austria in a friendly on Monday night.

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The Manchester City academy product has earned rave reviews so far this term, particularly against Arsenal, and believes time spent away at Lincoln City, Bournemouth and Blackpool shaped him.

‘I struggled to get into the team at Bournemouth,’ Rogers said of a six-month spell consisting of just one Championship start. ‘I was far away from home. There were different challenges there where I probably grew up the most.

Morgan Rogers admitted that loneliness during loan spells made him reevaluate his attitude

‘I was focusing on myself more rather than blaming other things. Bournemouth helped me to become more open to getting better regardless of what people think of you.

‘There was no reward of playing at the end of a week so how do you assess how you’re doing? Ultimately if you look at the bigger picture you want to be the best version of yourself in your prime.

‘It was about stepping stones. Days moaning and wasting away training, with disappointment, isn’t going to get it done. It’s about still coming in every day regardless of what people think because you don’t want to waste a day getting to that end goal.’

Rogers – who was living alone on the south coast – credits a friendship with Bournemouth defender Chris Mepham with making sure he buckled down.

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‘When I was younger I wasn’t coasting but without being funny I was the best in certain teams,’ he added. ‘I didn’t have to have that mentality to be the best on the pitch and to challenge myself.

‘When I went on these loans you find out that there are levels above and that is where I found that out, needing to come with the same work rate, desire and attitude to be the best version of myself.

‘There were times where I didn’t because I thought I didn’t need to but looking back at it I know now what needs to be done to get to that level.’