The observation of living cells is undergoing a revolution as various techniques have increased the resolution of microscopy images to the nanometer scale. Cells are crowded, complex, three-dimensional environments. That makes the full panoply hard to study simultaneously because much of it takes place above or below the microscope’s narrow focal plane. One way of solving this is a technique known as expansion microscopy, in which the cell is filled with a polymer that expands when it is place ...read more
An egg is an amazing thing, culinarily speaking: delicious, nutritious, and versatile. Americans eat nearly 100 billion of them every year, almost 300 per person. But eggs, while greener than other animal food sources, have a bigger environmental footprint than almost any plant food — and industrial egg production raises significant animal welfare issues.So food scientists and a few companies are trying hard to come up with ever-better plant-based egg substitutes. “We’re trying to reverse- ...read more
Other than the sloth, whose smile is pretty much permanently attached, the non-human animal most associated with smiling is the bottlenose dolphin. But somewhat like the sloth, the dolphin’s smile is just a feature of the way its mouth turns up at the sides. A dolphin that appears to be smiling at you when it bobs up beside your boat might not be thinking, “Hey, let’s be friends!” even though it’s difficult for humans to interpret that delightful expression any other way.But if dolphin ...read more
Bright, burning lava surging from a fissure on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula is so voluminous that it's easily visible to orbiting satellites. The image above, which is about three and a half miles across, was created using data acquired by the Landsat 9 satellite on November 24th. If you look carefully at the left-most extension of the flowing lava you can make out a couple of turquoise-colored spots. This is Iceland's iconic Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa that attracts tourists from around the ...read more
When I was a kid, I liked to dig holes in my backyard in Cincinnati. My grandfather joked that if I kept digging, I would end up in China.In fact, if I had been able to dig straight through the planet, I would have come out in the Indian Ocean, about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) west of Australia. That’s the antipode, or opposite point on Earth’s surface, from my town.But I only had a garden spade to move the earth. When I hit rock, less than 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, I couldn’ ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine