22 Oct Macro Photographs Composed of Nearly Ten Thousand Images Show the Incredible Detail of Insect Specimens

Commercial photographer Levon Biss typically shoots portraits of world-class athletes—sports players caught in motion. His new series however, catches subjects that have already been paused, insect specimens found at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. The series originally started as a side-project capturing the detail of bugs that his son would catch at home, and is now displayed at the museum in an exhibition titled Microsculpture.

During the course of his selection from the museum’s collection Biss rejected more than 99% of the bugs he came across, only choosing those that were of the right size and color. To capture these subjects in such immense detail, each part of the insect required a completely different lighting setup.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.thisiscolossal.com

22 Oct Largest batch of Earth-size, habitable zone planets

In a press release on February 22, 2017, NASA announced the discovery of the most Earth-sized planets found in the habitable zone of a single star, called TRAPPIST-1. This system of seven rocky worlds–all of them with the potential for water on their surface–is an exciting discovery in the search for life on other worlds. There is the possibility that future study of this unique planetary system could reveal conditions suitable for life.

In February 2018, closer study of the seven planets suggested that some could harbor far more water than the oceans of Earth, in the form of atmospheric water vapor for the planets closest to their star, liquid water for others, and ice for those farthest away. The new study pinned down the density of each planet more precisely, making TRAPPIST-1 the most thoroughly known planetary system apart from our own.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: exoplanets.nasa.gov

22 Oct Touchdown on Titan: How we landed a probe on another planet’s moon in 2005

Sourced through Scoop.it from: astronomy.com

14 Oct Planned intermittent fasting may reverse type 2 diabetes, small study suggests

Planned intermittent fasting may help to reverse type 2 diabetes, suggest doctors writing in the journal BMJ Case Reports after three patients in their care, who did this, were able to cut out the need for insulin treatment altogether.

Around one in 10 people in the US and Canada have type 2 diabetes, which is associated with other serious illness and early death. It is thought to cost the US economy alone US$245 billion a year. Lifestyle changes are key to managing the disease, but by themselves can’t always control blood glucose levels, and while bariatric surgery (a gastric band) is effective, it is not without risk, say the authors. Drugs can manage the symptoms, and help to stave off complications, but can’t stop the disease in its tracks, they add.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: medicalxpress.com

14 Oct Model helps robots to navigate more like humans do

When moving through a crowd to reach some end goal, humans can usually navigate the space safely without thinking too much. They can learn from the behavior of others and note any obstacles to avoid. Robots, on the other hand, struggle with such navigational concepts.

MIT researchers have now devised a way to help robots navigate environments more like humans do. Their novel motion-planning model lets robots determine how to reach a goal by exploring the environment, observing other agents, and exploiting what they’ve learned before in similar situations. A paper describing the model was presented at this week’s IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.mit.edu

07 Oct Architectural Photography Awards 2018 shortlist revealed

Some of the most striking international architecture and imaginative photography.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.bbc.com

06 Oct A new way to manufacture small batches of biopharmaceuticals on demand using Pichia pastoris

MIT researchers have developed a new way to rapidly manufacture biopharmaceuticals on demand. Their system can be easily reconfigured to produce different drugs, enabling flexible switching between products as they are needed. "Traditional biomanufacturing relies on unique processes for each new molecule that is produced," says J. Christopher Love, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. "We’ve demonstrated a single hardware configuration that can produce different recombinant proteins in a fully automated, hands-free manner."

The researchers have used this manufacturing system, which can fit on a lab benchtop, to produce three different biopharmaceuticals, and showed that they are of comparable quality to commercially available versions. Love is the senior author of the study, which appears in the October 1, 2018 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: phys.org