Image of the day- the natural world down a microscope

Links to two image-series today- both courtessy of The Sun newspaper. The first is a beautiful series of images of living organisms and natural phenomena (baby starfish, soap bubles, snail eggs, a fly larva and several others). You can find the article here-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2819061/Pictures-from-under-the-microscope.html

most of the images are in a gallery linked from that article.

The second image series is an article and a further succession of 6 images of planet Mars-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2807544/Pictures-of-Mars-reveal-astonishing-beauty.html

Best of the Year's Science

Good Afternoon! Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Lately I have been posting quite a few links, quotes and images, rather than longer articles. I seem to have come across a lot of relevant links for some reason recently.

In that spirit, then, I have 2 links today- the first is yahoo's list of "top 10 scientific discoveries of the year" (yes, it's that time of year again) -

http://uk.yearinreview.yahoo.com/2009/blog/7

and the second is this astronomy article, also on yahoo, talking about the discovery of some new planets in a solar system a little like our own-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091213/tsc-three-new-planets-discovered-4b158bc.html

The Best of the web: Today’s links

It is not hard to find good wildlife images on the internet, but there are some really magnificent pictures of birds and flowers on this flikr photostream- http://www.flickr.com/photos/natural_wonders_photography/

There’s a lovely picture of the truly ridiculous-looking “Madagascan leaf-nosed snake” (Langaha madagascariensis) here-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/g-na/3212269140/
Generally, in the animal kingdom, it is the males who have the more outlandish ornaments – horns, headwires, peacock’s tails and so on- but in this case, the males have a comparatively discrete thin, pointed snouts, making them look like twigs, whilst the females have the more elaborate leaf-shaped noses for which the species is famous. These weird creatures live on tree-living animals, such as lizards, frogs and bird nestlings and grow to around a metre long.

This week’s educational link is to this article on snakes of Madagascar -
http://www.wildmadagascar.org/wildlife/snakes.html

The Best of the Web- Today’s Links

One of the more depressing wildlife stories to hit the news this week was that of the pet shop in Yokohama, which sells all sorts of rare, difficult-to-care-for and (allegedly) endangered species to the general public. That story was published in a British tabloid newspaper (The Sun)- you can find it here- http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2667441/Pick-up-a-penguin-sloth-or-alligator-at-worlds-most-exotic-pet-shop.html.

Of course, not all animals adopted by individuals have a bad life – the story of “Christian-the-lion” (a captive bred lion cub bought in Harrods’ Pet Shop and eventually released into the wild by his owners) is wonderfully uplifting (http://victorianeblik.blogspot.com/2009/08/christian-lion.html)- but, on the whole, this trade clearly does not benefit anyone.

I think the most interesting science story this week, however, is this scientific study by Craig Bennett and colleagues at The University of California and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire measuring brain activity in a dead fish. The point of the publication (a scientific poster), of course, is to show that fMRI (a tool used in a lot of studies of brain activity) can give false readings and should be used with caution. There’s a synopsis of the study and paper on “Wired” –here- http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
The article’s dry tone and some of the comments are pretty good: nerd-humour at its finest.