Sarah and The Spider

A small house spider was foolish enough to cross the living room while Sarah and Amar were watching TV. On hearing Sarah scream, and seeing the spider I immediately took Sarah's Bug Watcher (tm) and imprisoned the poor spider. I've always wanted to catch a spider as a specimen to show Sarah what it looks like under a microscope.

The small spider is seen in Sarah's Bug Watcher(tm) above, circled in white. Notice the amount of heavy duty tape around her Bug Watcher(tm). Truth is we are all ABSOLUTELY freaking scared of spiders - especially yours truly. We wouldn't want the spider to escape while our eyes are merely a few inches away from its poisonous fangs now, do we?

Here is the spider's thorax, magnified using the Bug Watcher(tm). Yours truly, Puan Mama Sarah, and Sarah were all fascinated looking at this magnified specimen. Notice the spider's hairy body.

The spider's head and thorax. Not only did Sarah learn something tonight, PMS did as well. PMS learnt that a spider has 8 eyes instead of just 2. That's what I call education for the whole family.

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Believe it or not - pictures of the spider were all taken by Sarah using "her" 3 megapixel Sony Cybershot. The force is strong in that little one...

PS
Psst DITH, what do you think of this watermark?

Video of the day: Cellular Visions

I thought I was in no mood to update the blog tonight, since there was a massive traffic jam on the way back from work and I had to spend THREE AND A HALF HOURS trawling over obscure parts of the motorway -- almost reaching LONDON, lost, hungry and with only half a gauge of fuel remaining (no mood to be optimistic tonight, hehehe).

That was until I had a look at this video: Cellular Visions - The Inner Life of a Cell.
[click the video link, Flash player required]

If there was an Oscar for web videos, I would put my vote behind this one. I am still picking my jaw from the floor - it is simply amazing and a must see especially if you (i) like biology (ii) are a medical student (iii) interested in science.

The video is a high definition 3D rendered animation of the internal organs/micro machines in a cell working dynamically to maintain cell functions.

I had (traumatic) flashbacks of biochemistry and physiology (argh, Ganong!) throughout watching this video.

Highly recommended.

Ps

1. Enjoy!
2. Challenge: Try and name as many organelles, proteins and processes as possible - see how many you could recognise!