The Zebrafish Is Used As Model In Developmental Biology. Here Two Juvenile Fish Of Just Two Days Old.

Hey... what the fuck???

So I read the article, and this is super cool. Basically what happened is that they let a drop of butyl alcohol out from a syringe onto the surface of another liquid, and it just... hung out there? For a very significant amount of time, too. In the past, this type of "droplet levitation" has only lasted a few milliseconds max, but this droplet was staying levitated without any external forces applied for tens of minutes.

The reason this happens is because of Solutocapilllary convection, which as far as I can tell essentially boosts the surface tension of that one spot in the underlying liquid using vapor molecules, so that the butyl alcohol molecule can't sink in.

Also, the reason why I specified that the reason this was cool is because it was done without external forces is that APPARENTLY we've been able to levitate things using sound waves since like... the 1930s. And it makes sense that you can do that, in principle, but it still looks absolutely wild to see.

leaving a three hour lab be like:

what time is it? why is it dark outside? where did the sun go?

I'm starving.

I'm never doing that again (literally has the same lab scheduled the following week).

Therocephalians were a group of synapsids very closely related to – or possibly even ancestral to – the lineage leading to modern mammals. They were a diverse and successful group of carnivores during the latter half of the Permian, but suffered massively during the "Great Dying" mass extinction, with only a handful of representatives making it a few million years into the Triassic.

Tetracynodon darti was one of these rare Triassic therocephalian survivors, living in what is now South Africa around 251 million years ago. Only about 25cm long (~10"), it had slender limbs and strong claws that suggest it was a scratch-digger. Its long snout was lined with pointed teeth, and it was probably an active predator hunting by snapping its jaws at fast-moving prey like insects and smaller vertebrates.

Its combination of small size, burrow-digging habits, and unspecialized diet may be the reason it scraped through the Great Dying when most of its relatives didn't – but unfortunately it seems to have been a "dead clade walking", disappearing only a short way into early Triassic deposits.

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References:

Fontanarrosa, Gabriela, et al. "The manus of Tetracynodon (Therapsida: Therocephalia) provides evidence for survival strategies following the Permo-Triassic extinction." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 38.4 (2018): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2018.1491404

Sigurdsen, Trond, et al. "Reassessment of the morphology and paleobiology of the therocephalian Tetracynodon darti (Therapsida), and the phylogenetic relationships of Baurioidea." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 32.5 (2012): 1113-1134. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254315180_Reassessment_of_the_Morphology_and_Paleobiology_of_the_Therocephalian_Tetracynodon_Darti_Therapsida_And_The_Phylogenetic_Relationships_of_Baurioidea

Wikipedia contributors. “Tetracynodon” Wikipedia, 21 Aug. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetracynodon

Wikipedia contributors. “Therocephalia” Wikipedia, 01 Oct. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therocephalia

A tiger bursting to freedom after being rescued from a poacher’s snare in the Russian Far East.

“Culture”-ally stimulating art. Even mold can be beautiful… 

by microbiologist Antoine Bridier-Nahmias

via Magical Contamination 

Virophages are such a wild concept. It’s a teeny virus that infects a bigger virus. What a genuine flex of natural selection.