The microscopic world is filled with as much terror and delight as the one visible to our pedestrian eyes. And for 47 years, Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition has celebrated the tiny by showcasing some of the most memorable images taken under an optical microscope using a variety of different methods. Their latest annual selections were released this week.

The top winner is an incredibly detailed hand of a Madagascar giant day gecko in its embryonic stage of life—a feat that took many hundreds of photos to accomplish. Other images include the beginnings of a heart cell, a grotesquely beautiful slime mold, and an artfully posed daddy long legs.

Here are some of the top entries, along with honorable mentions.

Zero-click spyware is even nastier than it sounds, according to new findings. But first…

The first-of-its-kind meta-analysis synthesized the results of 80 different scientific research.

Jikaboom/iStock.

Unsurprisingly, the duration of the impairment depends on the dose of THC, whether it was inhaled or taken orally, the frequency of the individual’s consumption, and the requirements of the work being performed while intoxicated, according to a press release published by the University of Sydney.

Apps that create images based on text can deliver amazing results, but there are problems with the data sets some are trained on and the lack of compensation for artists, says Annalee Newitz.

Follow us on all social media @CarlSaganDotComInstagram — https://www.instagram.com/carlsagandotcomTwitter — https://twitter.com/carlsagandotcom

Is a molecule conscious? Is Gaia conscious? Are you?

All strength-duration curves expectedly climbed as pulse duration decreased (Fig. 9 A). The nerve stimulation thresholds rose much faster (similar to findings with H-FIRE¹⁷), thereby decreasing the ratio of cell killing and excitation thresholds for shorter pulses (Fig. 9 B). Nanosecond pulses showed a profound and unequivocal advantage over conventional 100-µs pulses: The ratio of cell killing and excitation thresholds dropped from as high as 500 for unipolar 100-µs pulses to 13 for unipolar 150-ns pulses. Engaging bipolar cancellation further decreased this ratio to only 4 for bipolar 150 ns pulses (Fig. 9 B). Thus, bipolar nanosecond pulses are the best choice for the reduction of neuromuscular stimulation from PEF ablation.

The stimulation boundaries for ablation with different pulse durations and shapes are illustrated by a hypothetical example in Fig. 10. Based on data in Fig. 9 and numerical simulations of the electric field distribution, we explored how far electrostimulation will reach from an ablation area. A tumor 0.7 cm in diameter was placed between two needle electrodes (0.5-cm diameter, 1.7-cm center-to-center distance) for ablation by PEF, and 300 pulses were delivered at the minimum amplitude needed for tumor ablation. Nerve stimulation occurred within a range of about 2 cm for bipolar 200-ns pulses, but as far as 20 cm away for unipolar 100-µs pulses.