Nikon has handed out awards in its second annual Small World In Motion competition–a contest for the best video of the world we can’t see with our naked eye.

Here are a few of my favorites…

A tiny animal called a rotifer lives inside a tube attached to a plant. It beats hairs called cilia to pump food into the tube, where it can be ground up by the rotifer’s jaw-like structures.

Continue reading “The Hidden World Moves” →

It’s not easy to push the explosive terror of norovirus out of the public square. It takes another virus that’s even more worrying and even more adept at spreading suffering around the world.

I speak, of course, of influenza. Continue reading “Influenza: Our Incompetent Enemy” →

New Scientist physical science new editor Victoria Jaggard writes, “I was excited to see the return of the science ink emporium. It’s encouraged me to finally share a piece I had done about a year ago. Basically, until high school I was completely in love with only music and literature, while my classes made science seem deadly dull. Then my English teacher introduced me to science writing, and that changed everything. Science as presented in magazines like Discover and Scientific American (and of course National Geographic) was messy and heroic and as full of joy and heartbreak as any great novel, and the story-telling was just as engaging. That got me so excited about science that I started noticing how it also inspired photography, sculpture, music, theater … even fashion. Now I’m a complete space geek, which is something I never would have predicted at 17, and a huge supporter of better science communication through the arts. I chose this astrolabe –an astronomy tool from 17th-century India, used in a 21st-century study of brass metallurgy–to remind me that science and beauty have gone hand-in-hand for millennia.”

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here and in Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

Originally published January 13, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

When biologists think about the evolution of life, they think about climbing mountains.

To understand their alpine frame of mind, imagine a biologist studying the fish in a lake. Each fish may be born big or small. Fish born at certain sizes may be more likely to survive and reproduce than others. Each fish may be aggressive or shy. Again, their aggressiveness may determine their odds of having babies.

To picture all of this, it’s very helpful to imagine a landscape. Each point on that landscape is a different combination of aggression and body size. They’re like the longitude and latitude on a map. Each combination leads to a particular level of reproductive success. Picture that success as the elevation of that point on the landscape. The more success, the higher the altitude.

Continue reading “Watching Fish Climb Darwin’s Mountain” →