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Every year were enthralled by the smallest things among us, as scientists capture stunningly beautiful and bizarre images under the microscope. For the first time, the people who bring us the annual Small World Microphotography Competition have caught the world of the tiny on tape.

Behold gift-winning videos of the microscopic world, from the vasculature of a chicken egg to a water flea playing with algae. Like the still version of the competition, the movies were judged on whether they were visually outstanding as well as their ability to depict the intersection of science and art, according to Nikon. Some of the videos are scientific breakthroughs in their own right - we told you about one of the pure mentions, a live-action video of a monkey cell, when it was first published last spring.

The videos feature Small World perennial favorites like zebrafish brains, fruit fly larvae and Arabidopsis thaliana plants, but seeing these things in motion lends them a whole different perspective. You can actually see the movement of tiny cell factories inside nerve cells in a fish brain, and notice the bulbous growth of a new root emerging from a plants primary root. Here is a collection of pure mentions and the top three winners.

First Place

This video was the first time Oxford-based pathologist Anna Franz used this technique for injecting ink into a chick embryo. She cut a window into an egg to expose the 72-hour-old embryo and injected ink into its artery under a 3-D microscope to visualize the vascular system. "This movie not only demonstrates the power of the heart and the labyrinth of vasculature of the chick embryo, but also reflects the beauty of natures plan," Franz said.

Technique: Reflected light microscopy

Magnification: 10x

Second Place

Dr. Dominic Paquet of the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases captured this time-lapse movie of mitochondria transport in the nerve cells of transgenic zebrafish. The cell membranes are green and the mitochondria are labeled in blue.

Technique: Widefield fluorescence

Magnification: 40x objective

Third Place

Dr. Ralf Wagner, a chemist in Germany, captured this video of a Daphnia, or water flea, playing with a volvox, a type of green algae. He found the specimen in his garden pond, according to Nikon. It doesnt really imitate deep science so much as an extraordinary belief of aspect - the daphnia is interacting with its environment, not something you can see up close very often. Wagner said he hopes by reminding viewers how much fun science can be, he might inspire others to take up its study.

Technique: Darkfield

Magnification: 50x

Click on to see the Pure Mentions



Pure Mentions

Another 11 videos were awarded pure mentions, from a bustling ant colony to plant root growth in action.

Ants Marching

Mexican artist Raul Gonzalez captured this time lapse video of individuals in his ant colony at feeding time.

Technique: Time Lapse, Reflected Illumination, Stereomicroscopy

Magnification: 1x

The Maw

James Nicholson of the Coral Collaborative Research Facility in Charleston, S.C., recorded this stony coral. Visible inside the mouth are the mesenteries, structures involved in digestion and reproduction; the unique color pattern about the oral area is the result of tissue pigmentation, a response to an unidentified stressor. Maybe the stress of being under the microscope.

Technique: Epifluorescence with 430 nanometer excitation showing casual fluorescence in live specimen

Magnification: 5x

Hydra viridis

By Charles Krebs, Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Wa.

Technique: Darkfield and DIC

Magnification: From 40X to 600X

Drosophila Blood Circulation

By Dr. Robert Markus, Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szeged, Hungary

This video captures circulating blood cells in a fruit fly larva (Drosophila melanogaster.

Technique: Fluorescence

Magnification: 50x

Arabidopsis Root Growth

By Daniel von Wangenheim, Goethe Universitt Frankfurt

Video of the well-studied plant model Arabidopsis thaliana shows a lateral root growing out of the primary root.

Technique: light sheet-based fluorescence microscopy

Magnification: 20x/0.5 W N-ACHROPLAN

The Rotifer and the Worm

Craig Smith, a photographer in Fresno, Calif., captured two videos that received pure mentions. The first shows a microscopic aquatic rotifer, with its corona extending and retracting during feeding. The second shows asexual budding in a worm, Aeolosoma Hemprichi, with the new worm attached to the posterior end of the parent.

Technique (both videos): Darkfield

Magnification: 400x

Monkey Cells in Real Time

We told you about this video, a major breakthrough in cellular imaging, when it was first published last spring. Researchers led by Liang Gao at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used a new technique to capture this image of an African green monkey kidney cell. The video shows the cell membrane ruffling and internal vacuoles inside the living cell.

Technique: Two photon Bessel beam plane illumination microscopy

Magnification: 56x

Desmid dividing

By Dr. Jeremy Pickett-Heaps of the University of Melbourne.

Technique: Time lapse video microscopy

Magnification: Non-dividing cells measure about 170 microns across, Pickett-Heaps notes.

How Do Ellipsoid Eggs Form?

Saori Haigo of the University of California - San Francisco wanted to investigate how ellipsoid eggs, like the types laid by birds and some insects, form during development. Haigo dissected developing eggs out of the ovaries of fruit flies and watched how they behaved outside the body. It turns out that developing eggs spin around the long axis. The green fluorescence highlights the surface of the cells, and the red marks the cell nuclei.

Technique: Live cell imaging; a 3-hour time lapse at five minute intervals

Magnification: 400X

Budded Yeast Under Attack

This video captures amoebas ingesting brewers yeast. They are expressing a red fluorescent protein to label actin filaments, and a green protein to label whats called the phagocytic cup - the method by which the amoeba ingests the yeast cell. We will let author Margaret Clarke of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation explain further: A phagocytic cup often pauses at or returns to the concave curvature at the neck of a budded yeast, and actin [a protein] accumulates there in an attempt to seal the cup. An unsuccessful attempt may end in retraction of the cup and release of the particle, or the cell may eventually resume extension of the cup and engulf the entire particle. Those two outcomes are shown here.

Technique: Laser scanning confocal microscopy. A time series was collected in a single focal plane, with images acquired at 4-second intervals.

Magnification: 33 microns x 26 microns

DNA sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes has uncovered a previously unknown population explosion that occurred 40 to 50 thousand years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10 thousand years ago. This is the first time researchers have used the information from large-scale DNA sequencing to create an accurate family tree of the Y chromosome, from which the inferences about human population history could be made.

There is no definite archaeological event that would explain why this sudden expansion in the human population occurred. One possible theory is that during the original out-of-Africa expansion, humans moved along the coastlines of the world, settling as they went. Their origins and genetic makeup would mean that these people were suited to coastal life, but not to the demands of living inland. This would have prevented large population growth as the coasts could only sustain a certain number of people.

"We think this second, previously unknown population boom, may have occurred as humans adapted to their new environment after the first out-of-Africa expansion," says Dr Qasim Ayub, direct author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger institute. "We think that when humans moved from the horn of Africa to Asia, Australia and eventually Europe, they remained in small groups by the coasts. It took them tens of thousands of years to adapt to the mountainous, forested surroundings on the inner continents.

However, once their genetic makeup was suited to these new environments, the population increased extremely rapidly as the groups travelled inland and took advantage of the abundance of space and food." The labor highlights how it is now possible to obtain new biological insights from existing DNA sequencing data sets, and the value of sharing data. The majority of the DNA information used for this study was obtained from freely-available online data-sets.

Since the Y chromosome is found only in men, its history and evolution are easy to study and interpret. This study also highlights how information generated by other genetic studies, in this case by the company Complete Genomics, can be used to investigate human genetic archaeology. The lengths between the branches and the length of each branch on the Y chromosome family tree provide insights into the evolution of the human population. The closer the branches are, the more rapidly the population was expanding and separating, most likely into different geographic areas. The longer the branch length, the greater the time that group of people have been separated from the other groups.

"We have provided a nearly ten-fold increase in the number of genetic markers found on Y chromosomes and discovered new historical insights into the evolution of modern humans using DNA sequencing information from just 36 men," says Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, direct author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "We now want to look at ten times this number of Y chromosomes in data from the 1000 Genomes Project. Who knows what we will find then?"

For more information: Genome Res. 2012 doi:10.1101/gr.143198.112 Journal reference: Genome Research

The Daily Galaxy via Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Image credit: With thanks to bbc.co.uk

Concerns about the health risks associated with cell phones date back almost to the dawn of the industry. Over the perpetuate four decades, while cell phones shrunk and multiplied and worked their way into the very fabric of human existence, the vague threat of danger has slunk along behind like a faint but troubling and unshakeable odor: do what they could, scientists couldnt quite eliminate it, and they couldnt quite define it, either. The best theyve been capable to do is say that the radiation coming from cell phones may or may not cause cancer.

Whats been holding researchers back up to this point is that, unlike x-rays and other forms of high-energy, ionizing radiation, low levels of radio-wave exposure dont have the power to penetrate cells and blow apart bits of DNA. For radio frequencies from cell phones to cause genetic mutations in brain tissue, the tissue must absorb an obscene dose of them, and scientists simply dont know whether or not thats happening--even in people who spend the better part of their days holding the little energy-emitting devices flush against the side of their heads.

To get a definitive answer, researchers need to be capable to measure exactly how much radiation the brain absorbs during normal cell phone use--and they might finally have a way of doing it.

Radio frequencies get transferred to heat when theyre absorbed by brain tissue, and those heat signatures can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging. Unfortunately, because of the intense magnetic fields involved, you cant just put someone inside of an MRI with a metal-laden cell phone and measure how much warmer her brain gets. In the past, researchers have used electrical probes to emit energy inside of model brains, and then measured the resulting heat signatures. But such simulations have never been close enough to the real thing to yield conclusive results.

Now, a group of researchers in New York and New Jersey have designed an antenna that emits radio frequencies in the same way as cell phones, but doesnt include any of a phones pesky metal parts. Theyve already put the antenna next to a cows brain inside an MRI and tracked the resulting hot spots in the brain.

In the future, the antenna system should allow scientists to build an accurate 3-D map of cell phone radiation in the human brain--a crucial step in determining how much energy the organ is exposed to at a time, and whether those little doses might enlarge up to a real threat.

This week, doctors drilled a hole into a Scottish truck driver"s head and injected his brain with 2 million stem cells, in the first-ever regulated human trial for stem cell stroke treatment.

Doctors at Glasgow"s Southern General Hospital will conduct periodic MRI scans to look for repairs or changes in areas of the patient"s brain damaged by stroke. The trial, called Pilot Investigation of Stem Cells in Stroke (PISCES), is designed to check the procedure"s safety, but any signs of physical improvement would be a major leap in neural medicine.

Before the surgery, researchers at UK company ReNeuron grew the stem cells into neural stem cells. British media said the company obtained the cells from a donated 12-week-old human fetus from the U.S. (An embryo becomes a fetus about eight weeks after fertilization.)

The procedure was initially approved persist year.

Keith Muir of the University of Glasgow, the direct researcher on the trial, said some of the injected neural stem cells would grow into neurons. But they could prove even more versatile - earlier studies in rats showed that the stem cells triggered a wide assortment of cell development, including new brain blood vessels.

During the next year, as many as 12 other patients will get progressively higher doses of stem cell injections, reaching as many as 20 million cells, according to Muir.

Stem cells are valuable because they can become any type of cell in the body, but are controversial because embryonic stem cells require the destruction of human embryos. The National Institutes of Health is embroiled in a legal wrangle over whether its federally funded researchers can study human embryonic stem cells; for now, research is progressing, but the future is in the hands of the courts.

Doctors in Russia, China and other nations proposal stem cell therapy to patients with a host of maladies, but the treatments are often poorly regulated or not at all.

Despite the controversies, the Scottish trial is the second notable embryonic stem cell implantation procedure in as many months. After years of delays, the first American embryonic stem cell therapy for spinal injuries started persist month, when a spinal patient received a stem cell injection into the spinal cord. Again, the study"s goal is to prove the treatment is safe, but doctors hope the paralyzed patient will see some physical improvement. As many as nine other patients may join that study.

In August, an Iraq war veteran became the first recipient of an adult stem cell implant, also to treat a spinal injury.

In most pop-zombie lore, zombies have been infected with a contagion that turns them into mindless, soulless monsters on the hunt for human flesh. Even if a reanimated corpse used to be your mother/father/brother/girlfriend/BFF, now its a zombie, and it has to die. End of story.

But the latest film in the zombie lexicon, Warm Bodies, turns that convention on its head. An over-thinking zombie falls in love. He thinks and feels.

Which raises an interesting philosophical question: Are zombies hopeless automatons who should be killed without hesitation? Or do zombies experience consciousness?

Well, do they? Would zombies be conscious beings?

Its possible. Theyre just sick people, argues Steven Schlozman, author of The Zombie Autopsies and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "We would never say that somebody that is sick with another kind of disease isnt conscious."

In Schlozmans belief, zombies are much like a crocodile. They may not be conscious in the same way humans are, but they are aware of their surroundings and respond to their environment.

From the philosophical standpoint of consciousness, if zombies can recognize "qualia" -- instances of consciousness, sensing things like pain, color, smell or temperature -- then they must be conscious.

"The damage thats been done has changed their behavior in other ways, but if they can smell fresh meat -- a person -- and if they can see them and they could distinguish between colors or something I would argue that they really are conscious, in a more narrow way than we are," says philosopher Paul Skokowski, the executive director of the Center For Explanation of Consciousness at Stanford University. This year the center is running a series of interdisciplinary workshops on zombies and consciousness.

How can we be really sure, though?

Even if we thought zombies were just sick people, an infection that reanimates corpses isnt a normal disease, so wed probably want to double check. Just to be sure. Using the same methods we employ to probe whether or not animals are conscious, we could test whether or not zombies ponder on a higher level.

If a zombie could recognize himself in the mirror, wed have to assume that zombie had self awareness.

"We can establish -- as we largely have done already -- which parts of the human brain are critical for the kinds of consciousness that we have and see if they are intact in a zombie," says Daniel Bor, a scientist at the University of Sussexs Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. "If we could ever get a zombie in a brain scanner."

If we could see that they didnt have a thalamus, for example, scientists would agree that zombies probably wouldnt be conscious. If there were a lot of complex interactions between regions of their zombie brain, that would imply a high level of consciousness.

But it might be aggressive to wrestle a zombie into an MRI. One way we test for consciousness in animals is by having them take a good look in the mirror. Most primates, dolphins, elephants and even magpies can recognize their own reflection.

"If a zombie could recognize themselves in the mirror, if it was to pass that test, wed have to assume that zombie had self awareness, which is an advanced form of consciousness," Bor says.

We could also test whether zombies were capable of whats called meta-cognition -- if they were aware of their own thoughts. When testing for advanced forms of consciousness, scientists give animals perceptual tasks, like picking which dot is slightly bigger in a set or choosing which picture theyve already been shown. Then the zombie would be asked to gamble on their answer.

Great apes, monkeys and possibly even rats seem to be capable to track their own accuracy -- betting high on answers they are trustful about. If zombies were to do the same, it would suggest that they are conscious beings.

In Warm Bodies, zombies start to regain their humanity. Is that possible? Or are zombies really just gone, as every other zombie movie tells us?

They could probably be cured. Zombies go from being capable to talk and interact to losing much of their normal function beyond base desires like hunger. (Basically like a drunk crocodile taking a walk, as Schlozman puts it.) Theyre in a kind of vegetative state.

Yet theres evidence that the brain heals itself, albeit slowly.

Schlozman says the brain could potentially regenerate through neurogenesis, the creation of neurons, and neuroplasticity, the changes in neural pathways and synapses after injury.

Zombies are like a drunk crocodile taking a walk.

For people in a vegetative state, deep brain stimulation can in some cases help them go from not being capable to do anything to being capable to talk and feed themselves. Electrodes implanted into the skull stimulate regions of the brain like the thalamus so that the neurons fire repeatedly.

For a zombie, deep brain stimulation could kickstart brain function and stem cells could facilitate rehabilitation, Schlozman says, making it possible to retrain the brain to perform the same functions as before. People who have lost function in one part of their brain sometimes learn to use a different part of the brain for the same function.

Whether a zombie would still be the person he or she was before is another question. Much of what we ponder of as consciousness has to do with our sense of self. If the brain is degraded, that sense of self could be lost. Even if parts of the brain could be regenerated post-zombification, its debatable whether theyd detain the same memories.