Yeast - The helpful and harmful organism

Yeast is a big part of our lives and human culture in general. It is involved in everything from alcohol production and bread making, to scientific research and probiotics. However, some yeasts can also be pathogenic and cause human infections.

Yeasts are unicellular fungi that mainly metabolism sugars for energy. They are very common in the wild where they can be found on the skins of fruit and other sugar-rich places like cereal grain crops. Even though yeast plays a huge role in many aspects of our everyday lives, most species are only about 4 microns in diameter, which is about half the size of our red blood cells. in comparison, a single human hair is roughly 80 microns thick.

How to avoid extreme highlights from reflecting surfaces

Optimize your illumination system. Extremely applicable in case of image documentation by a digital camera.

Reflected light is polarized light. This physical property is known by everybody who is doing serious photographies with a single lens reflex camera.

Motif: Landscapes, technical buildings, any kind of documentation for newspaper or book.
Solution: A rotatable polarization filter mounted in front of the objective.

Polarization filter of a reflex camera (source)

Rotate the filter until contrast is maximum, reflections are minimum. A new viewing angle requires a new adjustment.

Picture taken with Pol-Filter, interior visible vs Picture taken without Pol-Filter (source)

Ithytrichia lamellaris: ‘Not observed in a hundred years’

In a little stream in Limburg, the southernmost province in the Netherlands, an apparently unknown animal was unexpectedly found by members of the Macrofauna Workgroup Green Hearth Leudal. During the determination an animal with a very remarkable shape was noticed in a partly transparent tube, which was no larger than 4 mm. The segments of the abdomen of the animal were lobed like bellows of an accordion. In addition, there was a drop-shaped appendix on each lobe. This had to be something very special. Internet gave little to no result. Until an article with a photo attracted attention. In the photo you could see an animal that looked like the captured one. The headline: ‘Not observed in a hundred years’, indicated that something strange might have been caught?

Tardigrades - Some of the toughest, and smallest, animals on earth!

Tardigrades are some of the smallest animals on the planet. Most are around 500 microns (half a millimeter), but newly hatched tardigrades can be 10 times smaller than that. And the biggest ones only reach about a 1.5 millimeters. Tardigrades are more commonly known as water bears. This is because of their bear like appearance when they waddle around looking for food. But, unlike a bear, tardigrades have eight legs which all end in several claw-like toes. Most tardigrades are herbivores and eat thing like algae and other plant material. However, not all tardigrades are grazers, some are hunters and eat things like bacteria, single celled organisms, rotifers and even other tardigrades.

Living tardigrade from the genus Ramazzottius.

Tardigrade from the genus Milnesium mounted in hoyer's medium.

Granulomatous inflammation cat

A granulomatous inflammation occurs when the body, for example, cannot properly clear up an infection or a corpus alienum (foreign body). A well-known example of this is a tubercle (TBC) in an infection with mycobacteria. Then there grows a kind of chronic inflammation with accumulation of neutrophilic polymorphonuclear leucocytes, macrophages, epithelioid cells and giant cells (large erratic cells with multiple nuclei). You can also find lymphocytes and plasma cells in it.