An excellent guide to the science of the Drosophila connectome!

When does a map become the territory?

Scientists have found that the ratio between poly- and monounsaturated fatty acids affects the viability of T cells and both humoral and anti-tumor immunity.

Main-group catalysts could make synthesis greener and less costly

Scientists may have been dramatically undercounting the number of vertebrate species on Earth. A large analysis of more than 300 studies suggests that for every recognized species of fish, bird, mammal, reptile, or amphibian, there may be two additional “cryptic” species that look almost identica

An excellent guide to the science of the Drosophila connectome!

Read “” by Joseph E. Julian on Medium.

We’ve spent centuries searching for the soul. We should have been looking for its form. Why identity is an intrinsically stabilized slice of light.

Thought Architect

For more than a decade, Evan Economo’s lab has been using micro-CT machines to scan insect specimens. The resulting X-ray images help researchers study the form and structure of insects—a subfield of entomology known as morphology—but the process is costly and time-consuming.

“One limitation is that you can get this rich 3D dataset, but it could take 10 hours to scan one specimen,” explained Economo, who chairs the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology and holds the James B. Gahan and Margaret H. Gahan Professorship.

As a senior author of a paper published in the journal Nature Methods, Economo tested a high-tech workflow to speed up their efforts.

Some researchers worry about risks of devaluing sign language, overreliance on imperfect devices