The world's smallest movie "A Boy and his Atom" has been made! By moving atoms, IBM researches have managed to create a short film purely out of moving atoms around at a magnification of 100 million using a scanning-tunneling microscope. Truly brilliant!

More about how this was done:

http://allthingsd.com/20130430/meet-ibms-boy-and-his-atom-stars-of-the-smallest-movie-ever-made/?mod=atd_homepage_carousel

And for a video showing the short film, click here

...

Titin is the largest known naturally occurring protein and is composed of 34,350 amino acids. It is also known as connectin and is abundant in striated muscle. Though it is 189,819 letters long, its status as the longest word in the English language is debatable, given that it is a technical word not found in the dictionary. ...

A dolphin with a severe spinal deformity was adopted by a group of sperm whales. Friendly interactions between whales and dolphins had not been observed prior to this discovery in 2011. Researchers speculate that the dolphin was separated its original group either by an inability to keep up or it may have been ostracized.

Dolphins are social creatures, so it makes sense why one who is alone would seek out a new slower-moving group. It is unclear what the whales gained from the relationship, though many of the whales did return affectionate rubs from the dolphin. ...

The arctic fox population on Mednyi Island in the Bering Sea has declined to just 100 individuals over the past 40 years, and a new study has found out why. It's likely due to mercury pollution in seabirds and fish, not infectious disease, as previously thought. This is important, say the researchers, because we eat marine food too, so we should stop and think about how much pollution is going into our Arctic waters.

More than thirty species of ant have a caste known as 'honeypot ants'. These essentially act as living pantries for other ants in the colony. They consume large quantities of food until the abdomen is incredibly engorged. When worker ants lack other food sources, honeypot ants simply regurgitate out nutrients for them to eat.

In some parts of the world, eating honeypot ants is viewed as a sweet delicacy.

In the Amazon rainforest salt is a highly sought after commodity. Tears are full of salt, so these butterflies are literally drinking the turtles tears to get the vital mineral.

This is a fairly common sight in the Amazon, and it's not restricted to butterflies.

At our home, we use the plastic bags we get from grocery shopping to store garbage. Technically, we are putting them to good use, but they are still a wasteful invention, and something needs to be done to prevent problems like this .

Overhunting is one reason for wildlife population decline, but do these animals even know what we’re doing to them? New research suggests that they do. Woolly monkeys in the Amazon were observed to react differently to people in their territory, depending on the behavior of the human.

In areas where hunting is heavy, humans gathering food or performing research do not elicit much of a response from the monkeys. Hunters, however, result in the monkeys becoming very quiet and motionless. In quieter areas where human contact is less frequent, the monkeys are more wary of the researchers and gatherers. This indicates that the monkeys are behaving based on experience.

The long term advantage of this behavior is uncertain. Woolly monkeys are highl ...

Meet the fruit dove. These colourful, frugivorous doves are found in forests and woodlands in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Males and females of many fruit dove species look very different. For example, the female Many-coloured Fruit Dove shares the male’s crimson crown and deep pink undertail feathers, but is otherwise green, whereas the male has a crimson on the upper back and has areas of yellow, olive, cinnamon, and grey.

By manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, the behavior of crystal growth can be controlled, creating precisely tailored structures – “flowers” at the scale of microns – that bloom in a beaker.

Though these minuscule sculptures don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, they “bloom” from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves one molecule at a time.

The precipitation of the crystals depends on a reaction of compounds that are diffusing through a liquid solution. The crystals grow toward or away from certain chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. The conditions of the reaction dictate whether the structure resembles broad, radiating leaves, a thi ...

As cubs a lion, a tiger, and a bear had been owned by a drug dealer who did not properly care for them. The bear’s harness grew into his skin because the owner did not alter it as the animal grew. They had been abused and neglected early in life, but were finally rescued. The bear's harness was surgically removed.

After they had been taken in by an animal sanctuary in Georgia, the staff tried to separate them due to obvious concerns that the three large predators would fight. During the trial of separation, the animals were uncooperative and behaved poorly. Once reunited, the three calmed down and were well behaved.

Twelve years later, the three friends spend their days playing, cuddling, and eating together. There are no plans to separate th ...

Did you know -- On the average there are over one hundred thousand strands of hair on a young adult. Blondes average about 140,000 strands, brunettes average 108,000 and redheads average 90,000.

Schizophrenia has a variety of causes and a spectrum of severity of symptoms. Geneticists were able to cause schizophrenia-like symptoms by over-expressing Neuregulin-1 (NRG1). Scientists discovered that these mice not only had nearly the same symptoms as humans with schizophrenia, but they even develop the symptoms at the same stage in life. Geneticists have been able to modify the expression of NRG1 in adult mice, bringing it down to appropriate levels. This caused schizophrenia-like symptoms in these mice to disappear and behavior returned to normal. ...

Makes sense, doesn't it?

If you have a house centipede crawling around on your floors, you’re in luck! These little guys feed on pests such as termites, cockroaches, spiders, and ants to keep your home’s biodiversity to a minimum. Adult centipedes have 15 pairs of legs that help it achieve top speeds of 0.4 meters per second. To mate, centipedes become acquainted through the touching of antennae, and the male deposits sperm onto the ground, which the female then uses to fertilize her eggs.

The greater sage grouse is found in the western parts of the United States and Canada. When mating season is upon the birds, males and females meet at breeding locations known as leks. The males strut around, inflating and deflating the air sacs in their chests to impress the females.

It's estimated that one in every two million American lobsters are blue. The genetic mutation causes the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein, which combines with a red carotenoid molecule already present to form a blue complex. This gives the lobster its coloration.

Only six blue lobsters have ever been recorded as caught alive. They're all in aquariums today.

Some species of woodpecker have amazing tongues. It is covered in small hooks that allow it to ensnare insect larvae from a piece of wood. The tongue is approximately three times the length of the beak, allowing it to capture evasive prey. It is so long, it has to fork at the back of the throat and wrap around the woodpecker’s skull when retracted.

After the tsunami in 2004, an orphaned baby hippo was found stranded on a coral reef off the coast of Kenya. He was brought to a wildlife sanctuary, but couldn’t be put with the other hippos because the oldest male may have viewed him as a threat and killed him.

The hippo, named Owen, was put in with a 130-year-old tortoise named Mzee. Owen was desperate for a mother figure and immediately took to Mzee. In the coming months, the two became inseparable. They snuggled together and even tried to communicate. While hippos are known for being social, the same is not true for tortoises.

Workers at the sanctuary feared for Mzee’s safety as Owen continued to grow. They were separated in 2007 and a young female hippo named Cleo provided companions ...

The wrinkle-faced bat is found in some regions of Central and South America. If you’re worried about this coming after you in the night, don’t be. It feeds only on fruit, preferring juicier, overripe mangos and bananas. Actually, it’s quite helpful to humans because it pollinates crops.