Gina Glover, a photographer with a degree in Human Genetics, is the creator of these amazing works of art. “Chromosomal Stripy Socks” won the Medical Research Council/Novartis/Daily Telegraph Visions of Science award and appeared on the cover of Nature.
If you are interested in science photography or the intersection of art and science I highly recommend reading the interview!
Martin Pescatore (Alcedo atthis) by Fabrizio Moglia on Flickr.
The Science Of Spider Webs
[credit: (top) Susan Ford Collins on Flickr/ (bottom) Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation, in collaboration with S. Cranford, G. Bratzel and M.J. Buehler (all three from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rihcard C. Yu and Andaluz Yu of Green Pacific Biologicals ]
From the National Science Foundation (Feb 1st, 2012):
View a video interview with Markus Buehler of MIT, an animationof a spider web under extremes stresses, and an animation of a spider web subjected to mechanical forces.
While researchers have long known of the incredible strength of spider silk, the robust nature of the tiny filaments cannot alone explain how webs survive multiple tears and winds that exceed hurricane strength.
Now, a study that combines experimental observations of spider webs with complex computer simulations shows that web durability depends not only on silk strength, but on how the overall web design compensates for damage and the response of individual strands to continuously varying stresses.
Jumping spider - Asianellus (=Phlegra) festivus by Lukjonis on Flickr.
Your source for daily science things.: Velella!
This is Velella velella. Try saying that six times fast. Note that it’s essentially a little air bubble with a hard sail (really, more like a series of tubes filled with air), and underneath are tentacles that the velella use to feed. They float on the surface of the sea and wander over…
‘The histological appearance of the vagina is, at first glance, similar to that of the esophagus (In the bad old days of medical teaching histology profs. would ask questions that elicited rude wrong answers from students who mistook the esophagus for the vagina)’
All the layers found in skin
source: http://www.histology.leeds.ac.uk/respiratory/respiratory.php
Alveoli are cool
one distinct feature of a thymus is a hassall’s corpuscles. sometimes when viewing lymphatic histology slides, it can be hard to identify which organ you are looking at. just remember that in the thymus, as we age, there is a more abundance of these corpuscles.
