A Stuffy Government Yearbook and Its Beautiful, Exotic Worms
February 17th, 2013 |
5
Consider this image: Is it a work from a modern-day Book of Kells? A Chinese seal? The cover of The Neverending Story? No. Would you have guessed it is from a U.S. government publication? Here it is in its original context (don’t miss the caption!). Here’s another, of a free-living marine nematode called Draconema (see [...]
Keep reading »
Nematode Roundworms Own This Place
February 9th, 2013 |
9
The next time you find yourself becoming mosquito chow, remember this video: This is Strelkovimermis spiculatis — a parasitic nematode, or roundworm — casually escaping from an unlucky, soon-to-be-expired mosquito larva. The way this larva twitches as the nematode slithers out is gut-wrenching. You can still see the poor larva’s vitals pumping even after nematode [...]
Keep reading »Forget Human Spaceflight: Send Worms Instead!
July 14th, 2012 |
7
Spaceflight is hard on the body, but, even so, a new study has found that the tiny nematode (or roundworm) Caenorhabditis elegans appears to age more slowly in space than on the ground. Whether the same is true of human tissue remains to be seen, although many genes in the millimeter-long worm have analogues in [...]
Keep reading »
See what we're tweeting about
