NASA World Wind – Like google earth with mars, venus, jupiter and the moon.

Nasa's Earth Observatory website hosts various global data visualizations that can be customized into downloadable animations.

via  NOTCOT.:

New data suggest that molecular communication between the plant sexes–specifically the pollen of males and pistils of females–is more complicated than originally thought. Plants, like animals, avoid inbreeding to maximize genetic diversity and the associated chances for survival. Image: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation

via US NSF

From the USGS Landsat Project: An alluvial fan of the Taklimakan Desert in XinJiang Province, China. [high-res]

via Pruned

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design. [press release]

via Science Blog

An indigenous group called the Mundurukú, who live in isolated villages in several Brazilian states in the Amazon jungles, have no words in their language for square, rectangle, triangle or any other geometric shape except circles. . .Yet, researchers have discovered, they appear to understand many principles of geometry as well as American children do, and in some cases almost as well as American adults. An article describing the findings appears in the Jan. 20 issue of Science. [NY Times article]

Thanks, Neil.

Despite the prevailing belief that adult brain cells don’t grow, a researcher at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory reports in the Dec. 27 issue of Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology that structural remodeling of neurons does in fact occur in mature brains. . . In 3-D time-lapse images, the brain cells look like plants sprouting together. Some push out tentative tendrils that grow around, or retract from contact with, neighboring cells. Dendrite tips that look like the thinnest twigs grow longer. [press release] [video 1, 2, 3]

via Medgadget

VRML and animations of polyp oriented modeling of coral growth [article]

The morphogenesis of colonial stony corals is the result of the collective behavior of many coral polyps depositing coral skeleton on top of the old skeleton on which they live. Yet, models of coral growth often consider the polyps as a single continuous surface. In the present work, the polyps are modeled individually. Each polyp takes up resources, deposits skeleton, buds off new polyps and dies. In this polyp oriented model, spontaneous branching occurs.

During the past 18 months, radiologists in Sweden have performed more than 100 virtual autopsies on murder victims, according to Anders Ynnerman, a professor in the Department of Science and Technology at Linköpings University, who also works at the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV) in Linköping. Ynnerman says evidence from virtual autopsies has been used to clarify the cause of death in several criminal trials in Sweden. [video (real) (wma)]

via Medgadget

Virtopsy | born from the desire to implement new techniques in radiology for the benefit of forensic science.

According to Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, aliens could use the widespread SETI@home network the unleash viruses. But then again, if they wanted to, they’ve probably already done so, or maybe they’re living amongst us, or maybe they’re gentle beings and will send us the answer to life, the Universe, and everything.

via Guardian Unlimited | Space