Drill a hole before you can eat

The whelk or Buccinum undatum (Linnaeus, 1758) belongs to the snails (Gastropoda).

The whelk is a large, thick predatory snail with 7 or 8 turns. A deep seam runs between the turns. The mouth opening takes up almost half of the shell and ends in a sipho. On the surface there are horizontal ribs and clear vertical growth lines. Often there are also vertical ribs at the top of the shell. It grows up to 11 cm high and 7 cm wide. The whelk has yellowish-white with dark spots. Whelks washed ashore are often dark blue, because they have been lying on the bottom of the sea for a long time.

Built for speed

The peregrine falcon is one of the fastest birds in the sky. During level flight, with motion generated by wing-beats alone, they can reach speeds between 60-100 km/h. This is one of the fastest known speeds for level flight.

Stamens and a jewel clip

If anything stands out about the bunch of lilies pictured below, it is the large dark coloured stamens. These are worth seeing under the stereo microscope. There is a handy tool to enable this. 

Daphnia’s maneuvers in the dark

Like many other crustaceans, water fleas are very sensitive to light. They have a light-sensitive organ, also called Ocellus, with which they can swim in the direction of the light.

Widespread

Bryum argenteum or Silver moss is perhaps the most widespread moss in the world, although in many regions it is found primarily in human settlements. It is prevalent in atmospherically polluted areas. It can be found in large cities on tarred roads, on concrete structures (e.g. between paving stones, at the bases of walls, on roofs and windowsills) on soil as well as in waste areas, but also in more natural habitats.

Cyanotrichite in a prehistoric turquoise mine.

Cornudella de Montsant, El Priorat, Tarragona, Catalonia.

In the autumn of 2015, we went to recognize the Turquesa mine, also known as Mas de les Moreres mine, with the help of our colleague Jordi Sorribes. This mine is one of the only two known prehistoric copper mines in Catalonia. The other is also found in El Priorat, in La Solana del Bepo, Ulldemolins, an open-pit exploitation of azurite and malachite (Lagarda, 1986; Rafel et al., 2017). A series of archaeological excavation campaigns have been carried out at the Turquoise mine in successive years from 2012 to 2015.

Indicative panel of the special protection of the site. Photo: Joan Rosell (January, 2016).

Neolithic Turquoise Mine. Photo: Joan Rosell (January, 2016).

At the end of 2015, a team of archaeologists from the University of Lleida (Catalonia), led by Dra. Núria Rafel, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory at the same university, worked on the excavation. In this short period of time, and with help of an excavator machine, they uncovered this mine, to document it and take samples of the site before covering it again (Cabós, 2015). The mine is located within the Montsant Natural Park and is protected as a Catalan cultural heritage. For all this, we limited ourselves to recognizing the place and looking for the earthworks around the mine, where we found blue and green spots of all shades (azurite, possible variscite and turquoise and other species pending to identify). But in one of the specimens, when we broke it, we saw some sprays of a different blue colour, very intense, when observed under the microscope it presented small blue aggregates formed by fine needles, it must be said, very aesthetic.

Purple Rain

On and around Mount Etna, Lapillo Vulcanico (Italian) is found all over the place. During explosive volcanic eruptions it falls like rain out of the sky over a wide spread area. The Lapillo Vulcanico from Mount Etna has a purplish color. It is present in thick layers on and around the volcano and can also be found, thinly spread over more remote areas.

Lapillo Vulcanico or Lapilli is a size classification term for tephra, which is material that falls out of the air during a volcanic eruption. Lapilli means "little stones" in Latin. By definition Lapilli range from 2 to 64 mm in diameter. A pyroclastic particle greater than 64 mm in diameter is known as a volcanic bomb when molten, or a volcanic block when solid. Pyroclastic material with particles less than 2 mm in diameter is referred to as volcanic ash. 

It is better not to have this on your skin

Carp Louse. This highly flattened fish parasite is covered with a back shield. At the bottom of the head, the first lower jaws are transformed into suction cups with which they attach to fish. The chest piece consists of only four segments, each of which carries a pair of split-leg shaped swim legs. The abdomen is little developed and not externally articulated.

Sideronatrite from Cabo de Palos (Cartagena, Murcia), a reversible mineral

In the easternmost part of the Murcia region we find the well-known Spanish tourist locality of La Manga del Mar Menor. This inland sea closes to the south by Cabo de Palos, in the municipality of Cartagena.

The hills those define it are found within the Regional Park of Calblanque, Monte de las Cenizas and Peña del Águila. This particular area contains the remains of mining works that began with the Punic period, continued during the Roman Empire and continued until the 20th century.

On one of its highest hills, El Talayón (178 m), we found the “Ferruginosa” mine. This mine has been extensively studied by Morales and Rosell (Morales et al., 2020; Rosell et al. 2017,) due to its particular mineral paragenesis, where chlorides and sulphates stand out.

One of these sulphates is Sideronatrite. This hydrated sodium and iron sulphate, Na2Fe(SO4)2(OH)·3H2O, is found in arid climates. It is found as efflorescences formed by small crystals, of an intense yellow colour, on the walls of the mine galleries. Lanceolated, transparent crystals with a very esthetic orange-yellow colour are observed under magnification.

Čechite, a rare vanadate from the Ulldemolins mines (Catalonia)

Čechite is a very rare lead and iron hydroxylvanadate, with the formula PbFe²⁺(VO₄)(OH), which has been found in very few localities worldwide. The first world location in which it was determined was in the Vrančice mines, in the Czech Republic, in the early 1980s. It has subsequently been found in Italy and the United States. It has no industrial interest, despite the fact that vanadium is a strategic element, since this mineral occurs in small quantities. 

This species usually appears as small tabular to equidimensional crystals, with a black color and a resinous to submetallic luster. The best crystals known until recently were those of the Czech Republic.

Just a beautiful preparation

Here we see the images of a beautiful preparation made by Mike Smith. The cross section trough the ovary of Buddleia globosa shows many details. Note that the ovary (and later the seed capsule) is covered in tangled hairs (stellate-tomentose) and how the base of the style is also hairy. The second fluorescence image shows this in detail.

A better image for your stereo microscope

In compound microscopes, an illumination parallel to the optical axis is the standard. A lot of hardware is implemented to ensure this axial illumination: Center-adjustable Field and Aperture diaphragm, centerable light rings for Phase contrast and Darkfield for transmitted light, center-adjustable objectives and/or centerable rotatable stages in Polarization microscopes. With all these microscopes we are working on 2-dimensional samples.

In stereo microscopy, a 3D image from a 3-dimensional sample is our ambition. Different viewing angles for both eyes create different images on the retina of the left and the right eye. Our brain is going to process both images. This concept is best comprehensible in the Greenough construction of a traditional stereo microscope: two complete separate beam paths from objective to the eyes, mounted in a relative angle of 11°-16°. But even in the modern, more flexible CMO (Central Main Objective) concept a different viewing angle is realized.

Greenough type                       CMO (Galilean) type 

Water worms

When searching for macro fauna in a small pool in the province of Limburg, The Netherlands, the worms on the video were found alongside many other organisms. These worms belong to the Oligochaeta, a subclass within the ringworm taxonomy. There are species that live in the soil on land and species that live in the water.

Oligochaeta are well-segmented worms and most have a large body cavity that is used as a hydro skeleton. Usually each segment has little bundles of chaeta or ‘bristles’ on the outside, The bundles can contain one to several hairs and contain muscles to pull them in and out of the body. This allows the worm to get a grip on the ground or mud while it nestles into it. When digging, the body moves peristaltically, alternately it contracts and stretches forward.

Does this grow into a stink bug?

The Common green stinkbug or Palomena prasina is a common bug. You can find it in large parts of Europe, North Africa and the temperate parts of Asia. The bug has adapted to all kinds of biotopes such as forests, grasslands with suitable shrubs, marshes, gardens and parks, as long as food plants grow.

How do you look after four times shedding your skin

An adult female mosquito lays her eggs on the water surface. This can be in a ditch, in pools in the floodplains, in a pond or in the rain barrel. Each species has its own preference. The number of eggs that are laid is very different from species to species and can be up to 300 at a time. After a few days, the larvae crawl out of the egg. These larvae feed on algae, microbes and other substances in the water.

It’s green and it has tentacles!

Hydras are tiny animals, which are closely related to jellyfish. Green Hydras live in shallow fresh water, such as streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds, where they attach themselves to plants, stones, twigs, or other objects. Unlike their jellyfish cousins, they don't like to float around. They are very common. A Green Hydra can grow up to 30 millimeters long, but usually they are less than 15 mm.

One hydra can have anywhere from four to twelve tentacles. Each tentacle has tiny bumps, called nematocysts. The nematocysts release a material that paralyzes

Some roses are growing in the desert

Desert Rose is the name given to rosette formations of the minerals gypsum and barite with sand inclusions. The 'petals' are crystals flattened, fanning open along characteristic gypsum cleavage planes. The rosette crystal habit tends to occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a shallow salt basin.

‘Flowers’ beneath the surface

Bryozoans - commonly called moss animals - form plant-like colonies. There are about 4000 species of bryozoans, which occur in both fresh and salt water, from the tropics to the polar regions. In this case the video shows a fresh water variety. They attach themselves to every conceivable surface providing grip. The colonies of bryozoans are formed by a large number of individual animals, which are also called zooids. Any zooid, which usually is not yet a millimeter in length, is locked up in a ‘shell’, which can be box-shaped, oval, vase-shaped or tube-shaped, depending on the shape of the colony.

How to chase away nightmares

Citrine is rare in nature. In the days before modern gemology, its tawny color caused it to be confused with topaz. Today, its attractive color, plus the durability and affordability it shares with most other quartzes, makes it the top-selling yellow-to-orange gem. In the contemporary market, citrine’s most popular shade is an earthy, deep, brownish or reddish orange. It’s an attractive alternative not only for topaz, but also for yellow sapphire. The finest citrine color is a saturated yellow to reddish orange free of brownish tints. According to legend it is the symbol of friendship and is able to chase away nightmares.

Learning from rats

The rat proves science daily services in areas such as surgery, cancer, heart disease, embryology, diabetes, paraplegia, addiction etc. In research, in the twentieth century, the rat has been partially displaced by the mouse, which is smaller, propagates faster and is easier to manipulate genetically. But because of its greater pharmacological similarity with humans and his larger body - useful in surgeries – the rat has maintained himself in the lab.

Uterus of rat with fetus | Stereomicroscope SMZ171 | Moticam 10

Laboratory rats have bicornuate uteri and weigh between 200 and 400 g. There are numerous different "strains" with slightly different gestational features. A commonly