Nikon recently announced the winners of its 2021 Small World micro-photography contest. Some really great photos in here: SnowflakeLouse BodySlime MoldHere are also some of the ones I liked from the 2020 version of the contest.

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 goes over some of the theories as to why mammals don't have nucleated

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

Bert Hubert has written a great overview 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 different molecule. This is done so

A modest discovery 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 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 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 the southern species. / Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Nikon has been running a microphotography competition since 1975 and has made its archives freely available. Here are some of my favourites: Embryonic development of a clownfishSmall white hair spiderHippocampal neuron receiving excitatory contactsMite on the back of honeybee

A wonderful essay 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 I have ever read. Highly recommended. Here's a great bit on how

Marine biologist Alexander Semonov has put together a collection of stunning photographs of sea creatures, most of whom were unknown to me.

TIL from this 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 at least two hundred and seventy-two years

Apparently stripes are a great way to avoid biting flies: Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack. The frequencies of fly-repelling behaviors in cows painted with black-and-white stripes were also lower than those in the non-painted and black-striped cows. These results

On of the most interesting theories about human evolution posits that we learnt to deceive ourselves in order to deceive others. From Wikipedia: It has been theorized that humans are susceptible to self-deception because most people have emotional attachments to beliefs, which in some

Science Photo Library 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: These photos are of

A profile 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, until the outbreak of severe acute

From 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 easily takes part in oxidation-reduction reactions

How 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 that some people are incapable conjuring mental images.