Eye

It was announced earlier this year that Bruce Willis was retiring from film-making because his aphasia was making it increasingly difficult for him to perform. However, he seems to be having a bit of a farewell tour as the last few films he worked on trickle out. Perhaps in the light of this , critics should be a bit kinder, cutting both Willis and the films themselves a bit of slack. But this one is just as rubbish and pointless as all the other ropey action movies he has made in the past few years.Here, Willis is…

Some stars burn bright but brief. These transitory novae pepper the sky, with one flaring into naked eye visibility every few years… but it was a recent brief appearance of just such a 'new star' that gave astronomers a chance to probe the secrets of the Universe.  Japanese amateur astronomer Seidji Ueda was the first to raise the alarm worldwide.Amateurs are always on the hunt for galactic novae, as it's one of the key fields where they can contribute to real science. The American Association of Variable Star Observers…

via Warner Bros. One of the many viral sensations to emerge in the aftermath of The Batman was the widespread praise for Robert Pattinson‘s eye acting. Basically, thanks to the Dark Knight’s cowl hiding most of his visage, coupled with his decision to portray the most introverted and insular Bruce Wayne yet, the leading man largely relied on a pair of peepers to do the emotional talking on his behalf. If you think that sounds like we’re making it up, then you can check out exhibits A and B below to see what we…

Eye contact is one of the main reasons video calls don’t feel as natural as real-life conversations. We’ve seen attempts to resolve the issue, such as Dell’s magnetic Concept Pari camera, but a new Kickstarter project has a new approach: A retractable camera that dangles down in front of your screen. Created by a Hong Kong-based brand called MetaAxon, the “3-in-1” Meca webcam is featured on Kickstarter and has already raised $335,454 with 361 backers of the project. The design and functionality of the Meca webcam…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Andrea Benucci and colleagues at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science has developed a way to create artificial neural networks that learn to recognize objects faster and more accurately. The study, recently published in the scientific journal PLOS Computational Biology, focuses on all the unnoticed eye movements that we make, and shows that they serve a vital purpose in allowing us to stably…

When you hear the word "bacteria," you probably picture organisms that couldn't be seen unless they're placed under a microscope. A bacterium that has now been classified as the largest in the world ever discovered, however, needs no special tools to be visible to the naked eye. Thiomargarita magnifica, as it's called, takes on a filament-like appearance and can be as long as a human eyelash. As the BBC notes, that makes it bigger than some more complex organisms, such as tiny flies, mites and worms. It was first…

By Jake Coyle | Associated Press It’s boom times for googly eyes. Within months of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the metaphysical sci-fi comedy whose panoply of metaverses memorably included one that made magic out of a pair of stones and some plastic eyeballs, arrives “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Marcel is an inch-tall seashell with a single googly eye, a pair of Polly Pocket shoes and a very big heart. He introduces himself as a shell, “but I also have shoes and a face.” “I like that about myself,” says…

In an astonishing find, scientists have discovered the largest bacterium that is 5,000 times larger than most known bacteria and is even visible to the naked eye. The organism, Thiomargarita magnifica, appears as thin white filaments measuring roughly 1 cm in length. It was discovered by Olivier Gros, a marine biology professor at the Universite des Antilles in Guadeloupe, in 2009. Gros was carrying out a research on the marine mangrove systems when he stumbled upon the unusually big bacterium in Guadeloupe, France. It…

Scientists have discovered the world's largest bacterium which can be seen with the naked eye. The bizarre bacterium has been found in a Caribbean mangrove swamp. The thin white filament, approximately the size of a human eyelash, is “by far the largest bacterium known to date", said Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-author of a paper announcing the discovery Thursday in the journal Science. Olivier Gros, a…

T. magnifica filaments next to a dime for scale.Gif: Tomas TymlA team of scientists discovered a macroscopic species of bacterium living in the waters off Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, shifting the scales of how big we thought bacteria could be. The newly discovered species is named Thiomargarita (sulfur pearl) magnifica, and it is so large that its single cells are visible to the naked eye.Besides its superlative size, T. magnifica shows signs of increased complexity in bacteria. Instead of its DNA just floating around in…