This is a picture of two cancer cells splitting and dividing to become four cancer cells. Even though it looks stunning, I hate it. To think that those little clouds and wisps have so much power is just terrifying.
Scientists have developed a pair of robotic hands that are both strong and sensitive. The tweezers can guide themselves to pick up and move individual cells without damaging them, and have a grip that can be as slight as 20 nanoNewtons of force. In fact, so advanced are the little grippers, that they can be hitched up to a microscope and, with the right software, function without human control. More below.
It’s been an amazing week for microscopic photography buffs (and those of us who just like to look at neat pictures with significance we can barely comprehend). Just the other day we featured this gallery of electron microscope photos from the Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. Now, Nikon has just announced their winners in their Small World contest, comprised solely of photographs from beefy light microscopes (Ed: NOT like the ones you probably used in science class). The gallery is worth a click through, if only to remember that natural phenomenon are even crazier than Hollwood cgi. That top shot is the winner, a red and green fluorescence image of a double transgenic mouse embryo.
