Nikon recently announced the winners of its 2021 Small World micro-photography contest. Some really great photos in here: * Snowflake [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/snowflake] * Louse Body [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/rear-leg-claw-and-respiratory-trachea-of-a-louse] * Slime Mold [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/slime-mold-comatricha-nigra]

I'd read somewhere that red-blood cells don't have any of the typical cellular machinery in them; no nucleus for example. Turns out this is true only for mammals. This Twitter thread [https://twitter.com/c0nc0rdance/status/1434195459996798978] goes over some of the theories as

A neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) hunts a bacterium:

Bert Hubert has written a great overview [https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/] of the vaccine and how it works at the molecular level. The most interesting bit was how the mRNA vaccine isn't technically RNA – one of the nucleotides is replaced with a

A modest discovery [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03119-1] in the quest help humans live longer: researchers were able to trigger regeneration of damaged neurons in old mice and restore their vision.

Journey To The Microcosmos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g] is a YouTube channel I stumbled upon today that does amazing videos of microscopic organisms. Here are two that I liked: Stentors, giant single-celled organisms upto to 4mm long: Tardigrades:

Australian scientists have found two new species [https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-biodiversity-just-got-a-lot-richer-two-new-mammals-discovered-20201106-p56c77.html] of marsupial on the island recently, although they do look a lot like each other. The northern species of greater glider (top left), central species (bottom left) and

Nikon has been running a microphotography competition [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/photomicrography-competition] since 1975 and has made its archives freely available. Here are some of my favourites: * Embryonic development of a clownfish [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2020-photomicrography-competition/embryonic-development-of-a-clownfish-amphiprion-percula-on-days-1-3-morning-and-evening-5-and-9] * Small white hair spider

A wonderful essay [https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/Haldane.pdf] by biologist J. B. S. Haldane on why organisms are the size they are. It's only four pages long, but it might be the best piece of science writing

Marine biologist Alexander Semonov has put together a collection [http://coldwater.science/]of stunning photographs of sea creatures, most of whom were unknown to me.

TIL from this [https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-strange-and-gruesome-story-of-the-greenland-shark-the-longest-living-vertebrate-on-earth] New Yorker article that there are sharks that live to be hundreds of years old: > With the help of a mathematical model that linked size with age, they estimated that one sixteen-foot female was

Apparently stripes are a great way to avoid biting flies: Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447]. > The frequencies of fly-repelling behaviors in cows painted with black-and-white stripes were

On of the most interesting theories about human evolution posits that we learnt to deceive ourselves in order to deceive others. From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deception#Trivers%27_theory]Wikipedia: > It has been theorized that humans are susceptible to self-deception because most

Science Photo Library [https://www.sciencephoto.com/] has an amazing collection of microscopic images, including two showing a Coronavirus infecting a cell. Virus particles (red) outside a host cell (brown and yellow): And here are the virus particles replicating inside a host cell: NB:

A profile [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01315-7]of SARS-CoV-2, and other Coronaviruses. Notable quotes: > It was a family of dynamic killers: dog coronaviruses could harm cats, the cat coronavirus could ravage pig intestines. Researchers thought that coronaviruses caused only mild symptoms in humans,

From [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/copper-virus-kill-180974655/] the Smithsonian Magazine: > Heavy metals including gold and silver are antibacterial, but copper’s specific atomic makeup gives it extra killing power, Keevil says. Copper has a free electron in its outer orbital shell of electrons that

How [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects] various types of vaccines work and what the prospects are for a COVID-19 vaccine in the near future.

Typical infectious disease modelling is done with an SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) model. We assume members of the population are either Susceptible (not infected yet), Infected (currently infected and capable of infecting others), or Recovered (immune and unable to infect others). The average number of people

TIL [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/science/aphantasia-minds-eye-blind.html] that some people are incapable conjuring mental images.