he winners of the 2012 Nikon International Small World photography contest were announced Oct. 23. The competition, launched in 1974, honors those spectacularpictures taken through a microscope, called photomicrographs. Each year a panel of judges picks the top 20, plus honorable mentions. First place went to this photo showing the blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo.  Live newborn lynx spiderlings shot using Reflected Light, Fiber Optics and Image Stacking Techniques at six times magnification. This image received second place. (Walter Piorowski)  Human bone cancer (osteosarcoma) showing actin filaments (purple), mitochondria (yellow), and DNA (blue) captured with the Structured Illumination Microsopy (SIM) technique at 63 times magnification. This image received third place. (Dr. Dylan Burnette/National Institutes of Health)  This space-y photo of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) visual system halfway through pupal development took home fourth prize. Image shows the fruit fly's retina (gold), photoreceptor axons (blue) and brain (green).  Cacoxenite (mineral) from La Paloma Mine, Spain in the Transmitted Light technique at 18 times magnification. This image received fifth place. (Honorio Cócera-La Parra/University of Valencia Museum of Geology, Department of Geology)  Eye organ of a Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) third-instar larvae pictured in the Confocal technique at 60 times magnification. This image received seventh place. (Dr. Michael John Bridge/University of Utah HSC Core Research Facilities - Cell Imaging Lab)  Myrmica sp. (ant) carrying its larva captured using Reflected Light and Image Stacking Techniques at five times magnification. This image received ninth place. (Geir Drange)  To capture the development of bat embryos of the species Molossus rufus, the black mastiff bat, Dorit Hockman placed the embryos of different ages side-by-side. This image received 20th place. |
Winning photos showcase microscopic world
How to waste time at work
 OK, I admit it - I can be guilty of time wasting. Like so many millions of others over the summer I whiled away many a wistful hour trying and spectacularly failing to get tickets from the Olympic website and cursing the useless thing. Thank goodness Team GB were more successful than me or the website. But this got me thinking about top time wasters at work. Salary.com (which is not afraid to waste time on a 'Wasting Time at Work' study) found that about 64% of respondents said they visit non-work related websites every day during work hours. About a fifth of respondents admitted to wasting up to 5 hours a week, with social networks being the main culprits. This obviously prompted me to trawl the internet to find out other favourite time-wasting activities (the irony is not lost on me). Among the other most common time wasters cited is socialising with other workers - which is a bit of an odd one as you would have thought the average office would be an even stranger place if nobody actually talked to each other. Carrying out 'personal business' is another popular timewaster - shopping, errands, nipping to the bank are all seen by a lot of us as natural part of the working day. But to a certain extent these issues pale into insignificance compared to the biggest work timewasters of all - and they are not all employees' fault. Here are my top office timewasting pet hates. Useless meetings Where do I start? A meeting for the sake of a meeting can be soul destroying for everybody concerned. Poorly directed meetings without a meaningful agenda - that mean attendants ramble on with their own agendas. Or everybody just waiting around for people to arrive…and waiting and waiting. Various research has suggested that around 50% of time in meetings is wasted. From my experience that could be a gross understatement. I have seen various solutions - such as everybody being forced to stand up in the hope that they will get itchy feet and actually get to the point. But in reality, there is one golden rule. Cut down the number of meetings, only do the must-haves and plan them carefully. Office politics Yes, the whisper at the water cooler, hot gossip over a coffee, bartering at the bar - office politics has to be the most annoying thing about work. Clear communication, fair rewards and transparent management are the only remedies, but,let's face it, work does its best to bring out our Machiavellian sides. Email addiction Emails should be a great time saver, but so many businesses have become so addicted to them that they become a big timewaster. Overwhelming your inbox, interrupting your flow, increasing your anxiety that you might actually miss something important because somebody has emailed it to you rather than actually talked to you. Emails have their place, but if businesses are not careful, that place is in the spam folder. Dealing with colleagues Fixing other people's mistakes, picking up the pieces if they have only done half the job, having to do their dirty work. This can take up a huge amount of time for employees and is a quickfire way to breed resentment and low productivity. This goes back to the basics that so many businesses forget - proper training and regular progress reviews. Right, I am glad I got that off my chest and I hope I haven't wasted your time. But that brings me to my most important point. The real question businesses need to ask about timewasting is - why are employees doing it in the first place? Unchallenging work, poor management and motivation are all common problems. Just think how much more any business could get done with a productive workforce. The answer doesn't just rely on banning Facebook - it relies on good old fashioned management skills. Right, must dash. No time to waste... |
Freaky early Jurassic Park 4 character designs
You might have read our story a while back about the frankly bonkers script for 'Jurassic Park 4' that found its way online back in 2007. Very briefly, it saw an evil corporation (aren't they all?) create genetically engineered dinosaur mercenaries with the DNA samples nicked by Dennis Nedry in the first film.
Steven Spielberg came up with the story, which he apparently called "the mother of all ideas", but it was just too weird to ever get made. However, recently surfaced images of the dino-mercenaries (assuming they're genuine) show us how this bizarre sequel might have looked.
According to the reddit post, they're a mixture of original concept art by Carlos Huante and renders created by ILM artist Andrew Cawrse.
The designs are odd. They don't even look like dinosaurs to us, with several sites pointing out their similarity to The Lizard from 'The Amazing Spider-Man'.
Thankfully these mutant monstrosities never shuffled onto cinema screens, but a new 'Jurassic Park' adventure could still be in the works. This summer it was announced that 'Rise Of The Planet of the Apes' duo Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver were writing a script for a totally different 'Jurassic Park' sequel, with the film only "two years away", according to producer Frank Marshall.
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Pictures of the week: From a royal visit to autumnal meerkats
 A group of adorable meerkats have fun in a pile of autumnal leaves at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling, where staff have added foliage to the animals' enclosure .  Pakistani students in Peshawar pray for the recovery of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, who was shot on Tuesday by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women.  An electrical storm lights up the night sky behind the business district in Madrid, Spain on Wednesday evening.  Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic celebrates winning the China Open by breaking into 'Gangnam Style' before accepting the trophy.  women arranges books on a shelf at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opened  Wellwishers light candles at a beach during a memorial service to mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorists attacks, in Bali. A decade after twin bombs killed scores of tourists partying at two beachfront nightclubs on the Indonesian resort island, survivors and victims' families braved a fresh terrorism threat to remember those lost to the tragedy.  A spectacular sunrise over the giant sculpture by internationally renowned artist Sean Henry of a man and woman situated 300 yards out to sea off the coast of Northumberland at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. |
Chocolate week
 If we're being 100% truthful, any week is chocolate week with us, but during October 8th - 14th we're glad to see the rest of the country getting on board and celebrating the all-round fantastic-ness of chocolate during the official Chocolate Week. There are events across the whole country where you can taste, make and enjoy chocolate in all its many and wonderful forms. Happy eating! [Related article: Gregg Wallace's chocolate pudding] When: October 10th
[Related article: Chocolate and Amaretto Panna Cotta] When: October 8-14th [Related article: Chocolate may reduce men's stroke risk] When: October 8-14th |
Could you be a food addict?
 You can't stop thinking about ice cream. You go into your room and try to read, file your nails, text a friend - anything to distract yourself. Your brain is insistent: Ice cream. Ice cream. Soon, you're telling yourself that you deserve ice cream - after all, you've had a crappy day. And before you know it, you're heading to the freezer, pulling out a litre, and going at it straight from the tub. Mmmmmm. Until you hit the cardboard the bottom. The litre of ice cream is gone and you're totally full - of regret. "Why did I do that?!" you moan. "I'm starting a diet tomorrow." Then you head to bed, making sure to avoid the full-length mirror when you pull off your now snug skinny jeans. [Related article: Clinical food addiction could affect as many as one in 200 people] Sound like addiction? According to a 2011 report in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, your behaviour qualifies as worthy of an addict's if (and I'm paraphrasing here): 1. You engage in an activity to satisfy an appetite. (Check) I'll admit it. When it comes to food, my behavior occasionally kicks me into the addict category - and that's also the case for Taffy Brodesser-Akner, whose essay in this month's SELF chronicles her stint in a 12-step program to get her eating under control. The mother of all 12-step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous or AA, was founded in 1935, followed by Narcotics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. These days, there are practically as many types of 12-step programs as there are diets, including Workaholics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Neurotics Anonymous and even Underearners Anonymous. [Related article: 7 surprising things that make you fat] Clearly, 12-step is trendy, but does it work? Well, it did for Taffy (she lost 40 pounds in a year), but what I find so surprising about her story is that she is not a big advocate of the regimen. In fact, despite her amazing success, one day she up and quit. Why? As she writes in the piece: "These days, everything's a disease: If you like porn, you're a sex addict; if you've forgotten to apply sunscreen, you're tanorexic. I'm not saying food addiction isn't real. But I would say that the pleasure centers of the brain light up when we eat not because we're addicted but because food is pleasurable - and maybe that's okay." In other words, Taffy didn't want to be defined as an addict for life. "Maybe I had been sick, but I wasn't anymore, and I refused to forfeit my right to redefine myself," she writes. Nor did she want to adhere to a rigid diet plan forever. The trouble is, most 12-step programs aren't what you'd call loosey-goosey, and Taffy's program - Compulsive Eater's Anonymous - was no exception. Flour and sugar are forbidden. Protein and veggies are allowed, but in strictly defined amounts. (e.g. There's lots of meticulous weighing of food.) That kind of control can be comforting, but it can also be confining. And while it might be necessary for someone trying to swear off booze or pills, it might be overkill for someone trying to balance their eating habits. [Related article: The Office's Lucy Davis reveals secret bulimia battle] A rigid diet can also backfire and make you fatter, something I've experienced personally. I've battled with my weight since the age of 13, see-sawing between a high of size-14 to a low of size-8 and everywhere in between. My weight has gotten in the way of my love life, how comfortable I feel in my skin and my day-to- day happiness. But the only time I've been able to break free of the demoralizing cycle of binging and dieting, dieting and binging, is when I adopt a less-rigid approach to food. Research confirms that for most people, very strict diets only lead to backsliding. A 2011 study in the journal Appetite shows that the more rigid the regimen, the tougher it is to resist cravings. And a 2002 study at Louisiana State University found that people who are very controlled about their eating (read: rigid) are more likely to show signs of mood disorders. Which is not to say that 12-step programs are a bad idea - for booze, or even for food. Some people thrive on strict limitations. Me? I tend to be an instant gratification kind of girl. The secret to keeping myself at a steadyish size 10, where I am these days, is to have a bowl of ice cream when I'm tempted, then get on with my life. |
This week’s 10 best dressed celebrities
 Kate Hudson The Almost Famous actress - and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy's squeeze - looked picture perfect in a red, off the shoulder Prabal Gurung Resort 2013 gown, gold clutch and simple hair and makeup at the amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles this week. It's a very different look from the monochrome, slightly masculine ensemble that she rocked in the past, and we love it.  Ashley Greene The Twilight actress had another great week in fashion after she impressed us in her floor-length, hot pink gown and nude wrap dresspreviously. She wore a white Antonio Berardi Resort 2013 dress at the Third Annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in Los Angeles (left) and a vivid red Roland Mouret knee-length frock at Variety's 4th Annual Power of Women event, in the same city. She's teamed both dresses with a trusty pair of elongating nude peep toes.  Cheryl The Under The Sun singer co-ordinated with her beau, Tre Holloway, on the pair's date night to Zuma in London. Both opted for autumnal shades of burgundy for their intimate meal, and Cheryl plumped for on-trend leather. It's not the first time she's rocked the fabric, having worn a leather panel skirt on another date with Tre in the past. This is a look we'll definitely be imitating.  Nicole Scherzinger The X Factor judge definitely won in the show's style stakes last weekend. She looked fierce in a black, mesh Izmaylova Pleione dress for the live shows on Saturday, before changing into a strapless, gold Kristian Aadnevik number for Sunday's controversial results show. It's not the first time the star has impressed with her style – she wowed us last week in an on-trend lacy number, too. Tulisa's got some serious catching up to do…  Linda Evangelista The former model and face of L'Oreal looked chic and stylish in a tweed skirt suit at the 80th anniversary of Chanel's 'Bijoux de Diamants' Collection in New York, which she teamed with plain black heels. We predict a stampede for similar styles in the high street come winter.  Taylor Swift The We Are Never Getting Back Together singer caught our eye twice this week with her London looks. First, she wore a pretty Alice + Olivia skater dress from its spring 2013 collection, teamed with her favourite Charlotte Olympia's 'Kitty' heels, for BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards. Later we spotted her looking pretty in a winter floral dress for her appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show. Despite her boyish name, girly is definitely a good look for Taylor.  Lauren Conrad Fresh from impressing us with her style choices at New York Fashion Week, the reality TV star turned author looked polished in a dotty dress from her Paper Crown collection, teamed with her favourite beige quilted Chanel bag, at the Third Annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in Los Angeles. Now if you could start wearing something a little more autumnal Miss Conrad, we'd love you even more - you're making us feel so nostalgic about the summer.  alma Hayek The Savages actress showed off her hourglass figure in an on-trend green dress and trusty nude patent courts for her appearance on The Wendy Williams Show in New York. Judging by this, her autumn style is likely to live up to her summer style.  The Duchess of Cambridge Catherine combined style and comfort for her trip to the North of England this week. Wearing key autumn shades of burgundy and khaki, the Duchess looked polished in her coat made by an independent English designer (left) and in her high-street favourite, Reiss (right) as she attended the launch of the FA's National Football Centrewith husband William. She teamed both looks with her favourite Aquatalia By Marvin K. Collection black boots.  Sienna Miller The Factory Girl actress made her return to the red carpet in style following the birth of her baby Marlowe. She wore a cream Alessandra Rich Spring 2012 dress, which skimmed her post baby figure, coupled with Prada pumps, for the screening of The Girl at the Hamptons International Film Festival in New York. We can't to see more of her red carpet style following her absence from celeb world. |
Five viruses that changed computing history
 In the past ten years, cyber crime has evolved. Attacks have gone from electronic infections which were often unleashed by accident to carefully targeted attacks used not just by criminals but by nations. Below are five landmark attacks which show how hackers have evolved from mere pranksters to digital gangsters - and how much damage their attacks have caused. Damage: Email systems crash worldwide Motivation: Vandalism The Melissa virus was typical of earlier viruses – a kind of electronic vandalism, written by lone hackers, and designed to secure fame for their geeky creators. But Melissa arrived just as the internet made this sort of 'playful' attack horribly destructive. Named after a Miami stripper, the Melissa virus spread so rapidly that it brought down email servers around the world, including Microsoft's. It caused £48 million (€59m) worth of damage. It spread via a document that supposedly offered passwords to pornographic websites. Its creator, David L Smith, made no money at all from Melissa, but detectives rapidly traced the virus back to him from a post he made on a sex forum, and he was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Zeus – 2006 Damage: Multiple cyber bank robberies, including one $78 million (£48m / €59m) Motivation: Theft The Zeus trojan marked a new dawn for malicious software. It's not designed to crash machines, or win notoriety for teenage hackers. The Trojan – spread largely through infected emails - is designed to infect machines and remain there, unseen, stealing information and then money. In one attack on banks, hackers stole $78 million. Six years later, it's still running rampant around the world, in new 'stealth' versions that are ever more difficult to detect. Customised versions of Zeus are still sold today on illegal cybercrime forums in Russia and around the world. Several million PCs in the U.S. are still infected with Zeus, including thousands within major companies. The trojan records key strokes from infected PCs, and has been used to steal information from companies around the world including dozens of banks, Nasa, and Amazon. 'It was only a matter of time before someone sought to make money off their skills,' says Norton's Director of Security, Kevin Haley. 'Criminal entrepreneurs stepped it up. The second half of the 2000s brought an explosion of banking Trojans. Crime paid.' Koobface – 2009 Damage: Thousands of stolen bank details, earning $1 million (£600k / €760k) a year Motivation: Theft The Koobface worm earned its creators $1 million a year, and ushered in a new era for PC infections – with attacks that spread rapidly through social networks. Koobface is an anagram of 'Facebook' – a tribute to how the worm spread. Today, attacks which spread through contaminated links on Facebook and Twitter are common. Links to videos would prompt users to download a new version of their video player – actually a worm that infected their computer, which earned money by stealing bank details. This sort of attack has become increasingly common. 'The Facebook system doesn't really filter malicious postings,' says Tom Beale, an security expert who works preventing cyber attacks at Vigilante Bespoke. 'Your only defence is thinking, "Would they really post that?" The 'Koobface' gang, which distributed malicious software via fake links on Facebook, are said to be 'adult' webmasters from St Petersburg in Russia. Their network of compromised PCs was estimated to be earning $1 million a year, by siphoning off bank details. But despite Facebook taking the unusual step of publishing addresses, office details and even photographs of the alleged criminals, none has ever been prosecuted. Hydraq - 2010 Damage: Possibly billions in stolen corporate secrets Motivation: Corporate espionage 'Hydraq wasn't the first time malware was used for industrial espionage, but as recent events have made clear, it was also not the last,' says Kevin Haley, Norton's director of security response. The Hydraq Trojan appeared on computers owned by Google employees in China, and stole information including details from human rights activists. It was widely thought to have been part of a state-sponsored attack on Western businesses. Twenty companies were reportedly targeted in the same attack. Google said it was hit by a 'highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure'. Part of it was aimed at the Gmail accounts of 'Chinese human rights activists'. Google withdrew its search business from China shortly afterwards. Stuxnet - 2010 Damage: Attack on Iranian nuclear plant Motivation: Cyber warfare The Stuxnet worm appeared in computer equipment in Iran's Busehr nuclear plant. It was a warning that computer viruses could cause very real damage. The worm was so sophisticated that it is thought to have required at least six months to create, and required the resources of a nation state. Many defence commentators have pointed the finger at America and Israel. Security companies suspect that the cyber weapon is just one of a family of similar attacks – and that several have not been detected yet. Stuxnet was designed to make centrifuges at the plant spin out of control, damaging them beyond repair - it was built to spread to relatively unsophisticated industrial computer systems, carried on USB sticks or infected laptops. Many plants are still controlled by similar networked equipment. |
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