Visuals: Unit 9
Animations
- Biofilm Growth
- Growth of a biofilm of the bacteria Bacillis subtilis over four days.
- Bragg Peak
- When energetic protons enter tissue, they release most of their energy as they come to rest. Damage to nearby organs and structures can be minimized.
- Chemotaxis
- A population of slime-mold cells forms an aggregate in response to a signaling molecule.
- Cyclotron
- At the center of a cyclotron, a charged particle travels through a magnetic field that curves its path into a spiral and out of the cyclotron at a high speed.
- DNA Helix Animation
- The double helix.
- Random Motion
- Random motion of gas molecules—bottom up.
- Rotational Entropy
- Rotational entropy is related to the number of possible ways particles can be arranged in a structure. The greater the number, the greater the entropy.
- Vibrational Entropy
- There are different kinds of entropy. Vibrational entropy describes the number of ways that a structure can flex or vibrate without breaking.
- Virus Self-Assembly
- In some viruses the capsid appears to be completely self-assembled. Understanding capsid self-assembly could present new ways to fight disease.
Photographs
- Bacterial Photo
- The left panel shows the projected image of students and professors who participated in the project, and the right panel shows the bacterial photo.
- Brainbow
- Rainbow images showing individual neurons fluorescing in different colors. By tracking the neurons through stacks of slices, we can follow each neuron's complex branching structure to create the treelike structures.
- Darwin's Finches
- The variation in Galapagos finches inspired Charles Darwin's thinking on evolution, but may evolve too fast for his theory.
- Egg
- A chicken egg. Is it alive or dead?
- Gage, Phineas
- In 1848, a steel rod shot through the left cheek the Phineas Gage and exited through the top of his head. Gage never lost consciousness and lived another 13 years.
- Glass
- As a glass cools, the viscosity increases so rapidly that the atoms get frozen in a disordered state.
- Hummingbird
- Ruby-throated hummingbird
- Polarized Light Through Corn Syrup
- As polarized light passes through corn syrup, which is full of right-handed sugar molecules, its plane of polarization is rotated.
- Rubik's Cube
- A Rubik's Cube is a familiar example of a hierarchical distribution of states.
- Shark Cartilage
- Cartilage from the fin of the Mako shark.
- Wake Vortex
- Colored smoke marks the hydrodynamic flow around an aircraft, an emergent phenomenon.
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Graphics
- Binding Site Logo
- This sequence logo is a compact way of displaying information contained in a piece of genetic material.
- Complex Adaptive Behavior
- A schematic view of what constitutes a complex adaptive system.
- Computer Schematic
- Schematic of a modern digital computer.
- DNA Configurations
- The DNA double helix, in three of its possible configurations.
- Energy Landscape
- Here, we see two possible paths across an energy landscape strewn with local minima.
- Enzymes
- The enzyme on the left has a much easier time reading DNA than the enzyme on the right due to structural details that are difficult to predict from first principles.
- Fitness Landscape
- Natural selection can be viewed as movement on a fitness landscape.
- Frustrated Spin System
- This simple system of three spins is frustrated, and has no clear ground state.
- Myoglobin
- The structure of myoglobin (left) and the form it actually takes in space (right).
- Natural Selection
- Sewall Wright sketched the path different populations might take on the fitness landscape.
- Prion Structures
- Two possible conformations of a prion protein: on the left as a beta sheet; on the right as an alpha helix.
- Protein Folding Funnel
- A schematic of how minimizing the free energy of a molecule could lead to protein folding.
- Repressilator
- The circuit diagram (top), bacterial population (center), and plot of the dynamics (bottom) of the repressilator, an example of a simple synthetic biological network.
- RNA
- The chemical structure of RNA (left), and the form the folded molecule takes (right).
- RNA and DNA
- Molecules of life: RNA (left) and DNA (right).
- Traveling Salesman Problem
- An optimal travelling salesman problem (TSP) tour through Germany's 15 largest cities. It is the shortest among 43,589,145,600 possible tours visiting each city exactly once.
- Turing Test
- Player C is trying to determine which player—A or B—is a computer and which is a human.
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