This sCMOS camera image shows the blood vessel pattern on the surface of the cerebral cortex of a mouse as seen through the chronic cranial window.
Author: Sigita Augustinaite
Banner six images
Window to the brain
Hanging drops
The "hanging drop" experiment is a technique used to grow tiny crystals from protein solutions. These are needed for X-ray diffraction, a technique used to determine the 3D structure of proteins. In this method, small drops containing a protein solution are placed on a coverslip, creating a droplet that is suspended by gravity. The droplet is then placed in a sealed chamber, where it is allowed to slowly evaporate over time, leading to the formation of crystals.
Author: Saacnicteh Toledo Patino
Chaotic flow in porous media
We combine 3D flow measurements and X-ray tomography to a dilute polymer solution in an array of glass spheres in order to "freeze" a chaotic instability known as elastic turbulence. Streamlines are coloured by a flow instability criterion to relate elastic stress and instability propagation.
Authors: Daniel W. Carlson, Kazumi Toda-Peters, Amy Q. Shen, and Simon J. Haward
Microscopic plankton species
Various kinds of microscopic plankton species, including diatoms, algae, and foraminifera, that were captured using a plankton net in the surface waters near the Sesoko Station in Okinawa.
Authors: Vasyl Vaskivskyi, Maya Street, Kim Ward, Javier Tejeda, Nikki Suzuki, Natkamol Jeamsinkul
Astrocytes in Sensorimotor Cortex
Astrocytes perform various tasks in the brain, including regulation of neuronal signaling and maintenance. Astrocytes are the most abundant glia cell type in the central nervous system.
Author: Aleksandra Gavrilova
Parasitic plant Balanophora fungosa from Iriomote-jima
This non-photosynthetic plant steals all essential resources from its tree hosts. It lives inside host roots and appears aboveground only for reproduction several months every year. Balanophora fungosa has a unique biology, physiology, and one of the smallest (15 kbp and 20 genes) and most AT-rich (87.4%) plastid genomes known so far.
Author: Petra Svetlikova