Nature News: Technical glitches at a Dutch nuclear reactor that produces medical isotopes could lead to rationing of medical tests and treatments across Europe. The High Flux Reactor in Petten is the world's second-largest manufacturer of medical isotopes, and has been offline since last week.

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Nature: Optical imaging routinely uses multicoloured contrast agents ranging from traditional chemical dyes and fluorophores to specially engineered quantum dots. In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), contrast agents have also proved extremely useful, but their effects are largely indistinguishable from one another, leading to essentially monochrome contrast based on increased or decreased signal strength. Gary Zabow Stephen Dodd, John Moreland & Alan Koretsky are bringing 'colour' to MRI. They have developed an approach to produce MRI contrast agents with characteristic spectral signals, based on the control of mechanical structures. Different versions of these probes can be used simultaneously, and are distinguishable by the geometry-dependent spectral 'colour' of their signals.

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Micro-engineered local field control for high-sensitivity multispectral MRI (Nature 453, 1058-1063)

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Reuters: Canada said on Friday it was scrapping a nuclear reactor project designed to produce medical radioisotopes, a move that means half the world's supply will be made by a 50-year-old reactor that was temporarily shut down for safety reasons last year.

The Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine said the announcement was "a major concern" and said Ottawa had to ensure it could access back-up supplies.

The aging National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at the Chalk River facility in eastern Ontario, operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), produces about half the world's supply of the radioisotopes.

The NRU was supposed to be replaced in 2000 by AECL's MAPLE project, which consisted of two small reactors, but they have been plagued by technical problems and cost overruns. AECL said on Friday it was scrapping the project.

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