Interestingly, he does not use colors, just clear, transparent glass, because while almost all pictures you see of viruses, from scanning electron microscopic images to text-book diagrams, have color, the color is added for scientific visualization. So, he believes, his glass replicas are more realistic. This is described in this interview.
About the works:
The pieces, each about 1,000,000 times the size of the actual pathogen, were designed with help from virologists from the University of Bristol using a combination of scientific photographs and models.
The … organic materials in [some] meteorites probably originally formed in the interstellar medium and/or the solar protoplanetary disk, but was subsequently modified in the meteorites’ asteroidal parent bodies. … At least some molecules of prebiotic importance formed during the alteration.
Amino acids are the building blocks of life as we know it. They can be formed from abiotic (non-biological) chemical reactions (in a jar with electricity for example). It’s been known for a while that amino acids can be found on comets and asteroids, but now this fascinating article suggests that a lot of the chemical reactions that created these precursors to life happened on the asteroids themselves. Then when the asteroids bombarded the Earth, the seeds of life were delivered. More details here.
Leonid meteor shower seen from orbit. Image credit: BMDO/APL via NASA JPL.
This, of course, is just one of several hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth: livescience.com outlines seven.
This video from NASA (via physorg.com) includes a nice little section showing the movement of charged particles (cosmic rays) through the Sun’s magnetic field. What’s really neat, is that the Voyager spacecraft (now 33 years old) have discovered magnetic bubbles at the edge of the solar system that make the particles dance a little. It’s a wonderful application of the basic principles of electricity and magnetism.
After the joy of playing around with microscopy and staining last fall, it’s no surprise that someone has taken the science of staining and specimen preservation and turned it into art.
Iori Tomita has done an amazing job at making visible the internal organs of the specimens.
Using a method that dissolves an animals natural proteins, Tomita is able to preserve these deceased animals with striking detail–highlighting the finest and most delicate skeleton structures.
To further enhance the visual appeal of these ornate skeletons, Tomita selectively injects different colored dies into hard bones and soft bones to create a 3-d effect. Without the addition of the dye, the animals remain translucent.
Transparent specimen by Iori Tomita. Note the exquisite detail (via Stinson (2011)).
Tomita’s website has some excellent photographs, and there appear to be two books available from Amazon.com.jp. More pictures can be found online here and here. Lisa Stinson at Wired has more pictures and details on the method.
To follow up my own attempts at a fish anatomy lesson, I asked the people at the Gulf Coast Research Lab’s Marine Education Center to include a dissection in their program for our Adventure Trip. They chose squid.
Squid are nice because they’re mostly soft tissue and the organs are fairly easy to identify. They’re also quite charismatic, which piqued the students’ interest. These squid were going to be used as bait, so I didn’t feel too badly about using them for science.
Squid and reference diagram.
Once again, our guide, Stephanie, was an excellent teacher. A good time was had by all, even though it was a bit gruesome.
An excised beak.
I would have liked to have a little more time to draw some diagrams, but I don’t think my students would have had the patience. It was the Adventure Trip after all, and they’d much rather spend the time outside.
As for the future, I like this note about squid dissection:
… this … is a tactile experience. You may want to explore this aspect through sensory activities, written descriptions, poetry, and/or artwork. Encourage students to experience the many textures found inside and outside the squid’s body. Moving fingertips along the suckers is suggested as well – the suckers do not scrape or hurt if you are gentle with them.
–Center for Educational and Training Technology, Mississippi State University: Squid Dissection
This quote comes from a Mississippi State website, which also has a great set of calamari recipes in addition to dissection instructions. I’m always in favor of an interdisciplinary approach; food-preparation rather than purely dissection.
Finally, the University of Buffalo’s Biology 200 class has some excellent, labeled pictures, for reference.
Tiny quantities of dysprosium can make magnets in electric motors lighter by 90 percent, while terbium can help cut the electricity usage of lights by 80 percent.
There has recently been a bit of a furor over the fact that, currently, China produces 90% of the world’s rare earth metals. Special properties of these elements are making them extremely important in a lot of high-tech and alternative energy technologies.
Fiber-optic cables can transmit signals over long distances because they incorporate periodically spaced lengths of erbium-doped fiber that function as laser amplifiers. Er is used in these laser repeaters, despite its high cost (~$700/kg), because it alone possesses the required optical properties.
The rare earths are so chemically similar that they’re lumped together in one corner of the periodic table, which is why they have not been used a lot until now. Only recently has their influence on elecromagnetic systems been discovered. Wikipedia has a good list of the elements with some of their uses.
The rare earth elements.
Many people are worried about one country controlling so much of a single resource, especially since China cut its export quotas earlier this year. Fortunately, rare earth metals are found in places other than China, and, as the demand continues to outstrip supply, it’s just a matter of time for high prices to to bring more mining and recycling projects into production.
Extruding sediment from the corer into the sieve. Dashed lines indicate where the piston and metal rod extend inside the barrel of the corer.
On the first morning of the Coastal Science Camp, between dip netting and seining at the estuary, we tried sampling beneath the seabed using a little coring device which I seem to have to forgotten the name of.
Some students were quite excited about the chance to sample beneath the surface of the sediment. Student displays the sampling device is in his right hand.
Usually, they can see the little holes in the seabed where the benthic macrofauna live, but not this time. All the sediment pouring into the Mississippi Sound from this spring’s swollen rivers had made the waters too turbid to see through. So we were coring blind.
The corer is simply a metal (stainless steel) barrel with a rubber piston inside. The piston is connected to a handle at the top with metal rod. To sample, you put the tip of the barrel at the sediment-water interface and push the barrel into the sediment at the same time holding the handle steady to keep the piston from moving into the sediment. Holding the piston steady provides a little suction on the inside of the barrel, which helps the barrel move into the sediment, and keeps the sediment in the barrel when you pull it out. However, it does help to put your hand on the bottom of the barrel as soon as possible to keep the sediment from falling out, even if that means sticking your hand into the sediment itself.
Keeping you hand on the bottom of the barrel keeps the sediment from falling out before it gets to the sieve.Vague layering is visible in the sediment.
Once you’ve recovered the sediment, you extrude it into a sieve. Sometimes you can see a little layering in the extruding sediment, but we did not take the time to try to interpret it since our focus was on finding benthic fauna.
The sieve’s mesh is pretty coarse, so anything sand sized or smaller is washed out as you gently rock it back and forth in the water. We did not find much. Mostly small pebbles. Without being able to see the seabed our sampling pattern was pretty random.
Small pebbles in the sieve.
The more persistent groups (the class had been broken into groups of two or three) did find a couple things, including a polychaete, which is a segmented worm.
A polychaete.
They also turned up a small, clawed, lobster-like organism:
We also found the burrow of an unknown organism, surrounded by a clayey cast. It looked very much like some of the fossilized burrow casts we saw at Coon Creek.
Burrow, with surrounding cast.
This type of sampling was not everyone’s cup of tea, however. Fortunately, the water was shallow and warm, so a good time was had by all.
Some groups were less successful at finding benthic macrofauna than others. They had other things on their mind.
