What this research is about is the origin of plants, which are indeed one of the most important forms of life, but the origin of plants is distant by billions of years from the origin of life and it is even distant by billions of years from the origin of phototrophy (frequently, but not really correctly, called "photosynthesis", i.e. the extraction of energy from solar light).
The ancestor of red algae and green algae (the terrestrial plants are descended from green algae) has been created by the hybridization through symbiosis between a unicellular eukaryote (i.e. nucleated cell) and a cyanobacterium, a.k.a. blue-green alga.
As explained in TFA, Paulinella is the second case of such a symbiosis between a nucleated cell and a cyanobacterium, which happened relatively recently, unlike the symbiosis from the origin of plants, which happened about a billion and a half years ago.
Because Paulinella and its internal symbionts have not been modified so profoundly by symbiosis like the red algae or green algae, it can provide information about how the early stages of the hybridization happened, eventually allowing a better understanding of how plants function.
I found it reassuring that sketching what you see down the microscope is still part of a scientific practice. Also the 'fresh eyes' could perhaps point the way to a more collegiate organisation of research.
There are stories of companies asking their employees to bring back soil and water samples from wherever the employees go on vacation.
The idea is that this is a somewhat random sampling of locations that the company wouldn't have thought of on their own. Plus, it's possible that one of the samples has some novel chemical or biological compound that could lead to a breakthrough discovery.
She actually made some specific recommendations on the microscopy sub-reddit but they're a bit pricier ($425+). (scroll to last comment by Jay211TF):
https://www.reddit.com/r/microscopy/comments/1dhagyr/entry_l...
How can they say this without providing more background?
a few hundred bucks
able to look at microbes
also able to look at less micro level stuff, like maybe the thing i'm trying to solder or fix
is it wrong to solicit comments/recommendations here?
If I were you, I would probably buy a normal microscope that supports a microscope camera attachment, instead of specifically looking for USB microscope. There is a lot of misleading marketing around USB microscopes, a lot of them are literally just doing digital zooming in (I have a 30€ "1000x" microscope from Amazon which is nice for soldering and such things, but these fake microscopes appear even at higher price ranges). Treat anything >1000x for light-based microscopes as a red flag.
Great reporting - reading this NYT article gives me a little bit of the excitement that I normally only get from reading Quanta Magazine.
This seems unsupported. More likely is it's happened a large number of times, but has only established a lineage a handful of times.
wtf is happening to internet these days...
"The team — brought together, in part, by disruptions and despair over the Trump administration’s freezes to federal science funding — then made an exciting discovery."
Apparently this is the new way of life for Scientists under the Trump regime.
Sad.
Nytimes can't help itself. love it.
I don’t know, that goes a little above and beyond IMO. One typically doesn’t do science in a house-type setting, for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.
The jugs are sealed. We can't see any "overflowing" buckets. Looking at some water samples under a microscope is not really that messy.
For some reason this is a commonplace in the UK.
Yeah....
someone should inform the orange POTUS of this: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/did-donald-trump-j...
Also, cells can have scales? Amazing.
Even in the budget industry, your nightly utility usage comes close to $10, consumables are $3+.
Hotel stays are typically taxed higher than typical sales tax.
Once you add that in, real estate taxes, and any corporate taxes - you're getting close to the $50 price point...
That's before you factor in the cost of maintaining the building, or the financing to buy the building itself (or any profit).
Are we supposed to live in a world where everyone's entitled to be able to stay in hotel rooms for 1 hour of minimum wage labor? Because, until we have far more automation, I don't see how that makes any possible sense.
My standards for hotel rooms on road trips are quite low and I will call the crappy motels to avoid the bloated .com booking rates and it’s not very often I find even 1 star hotels under $80/day after taxes.
80$ might seem like a lot of money if you're making 60k a year as a biologist. If you're in a field where profit is the reason you work 80$ is peanuts.
I expect the vast majority of motel patrons are additionally paying a rent/mortgage for their main habitation.