A thin line separates science from art. It’s often blurred. When scientists employ an artist’s creativity, imaginatively theorize the unimaginable — as Newton, Einstein, and Hawking were able to do — they’ve been known to make discoveries worth hanging on gallery walls. When artists apply methodological rigor to their work, they have a chance to illuminate the seemingly inaccessible aspects of science. Da Vinci, Dalí, Stelarc — each was an artist with a scientific frame of mind.
Two new imaging techniques developed by researchers at the University of Kansas (KU) blend science and art in a hauntingly captivating way. The techniques allow for photos to be taken of 50-plus-year-old vertebrate specimens, depicting the intricacies of their anatomy. Among the specimens imaged were a shrew, python, and viperfish.
The first process entails using “cleared and stained” specimens that have been stripped of their muscles. With their muscles removed, specimens go flaccid and don’t hold their natural shape. The KU researchers’ breakthrough was to place them in a translucent glycerine-gelatin mixture, such that they could pose the specimens and wash the mixture safely away after the photos were taken.
The second technique involves fluorescent imaging, in which the researchers stain the specimen with the compound alizarin, which, years ago, W. Leo Smith, a professor of biology at KU, discovered fluoresces red when exposed to a specific light wavelength.
“The most exciting part of this effort is that you can use these techniques to create beautiful images,” Smith, who lead the study, told Digital Trends. “But perhaps more importantly, these techniques allow vertebrate biologists and paleontologists to more clearly demonstrate anatomical variation or discoveries that they make in publications and presentations. These techniques isolate the skeleton from other parts of the cleared-and-stained specimens and allow for the temporary posing of the … specimens in ways like museums pose dinosaurs or other large fossils on exhibit.”
Scientists have been snapping photos of specimens for science and posterity’s sake for hundreds of years. These allow them to share and disseminate these anatomical models, while keeping the original specimen in a safe location.
Today’s scientists — including biologists, paleontologists, and taxidermists — have already begun to use the technique developed by Smith and his team. He first began presenting the method a few years ago and recently detailed the technique in a paper in the journal Copeia.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.