Armor that sees
Chitons are a family of mollusks that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. One secret to their success is their tough armor, but new evidence shows this armor has another advantage: it’s full of tiny little eyes that help chitons see predators coming.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant courtesy of KEI at Japanese Wikipedia CC-BY-SA-3.0
Pollution from the clean-up effort
Bursts of airborne radioactivity continue to be observed in the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, even in locations that were scarcely contaminated during the accident in 2011. Researchers suspect that debris removal activities may be dislodging radioactive contamination from the soil causing additional dispersal of the pollutants several years after the accident itself.
Iridescent microscopic eye candy from the coastal waters of Japan
Underwater photography by Kei Nomiyama
Image credits:
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant courtesy of KEI at Japanese Wikipedia (Transferred from ja.wikipedia to Commons.) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons