Month: September 2017

Nikon, one of the leading manufacturers of microscopes, also hosts an annual microscopy competition (and you can use any company's microscopes to enter). We've shared some of our favorite images with you in years past, since they've been every bit as artistic as good photography and, in many cases, reveal important details about the natural world—details that we'd otherwise never be able to appreciate.

Most people will only get exposed to microscopy during high school biology, which is typically the realm of static slices of long-dead organisms, permanently pressed onto a glass side. But history's first use of a microscope back in the 1600s involved watching living microbes flitting across the field of view. Microscopy doesn't have to be static; in fact, the element of time can be incredibly informative.

And advancements in technology mean that we can do some amazing things with living samples, including labelling them in a rainbow of fluorescent colors, automating long time-lapse recordings, and more. And movies can tell us things that wouldn't be possible to learn otherwise, like the process by which a material deforms and breaks, the coordination of cell divisions and migrations that assemble an embryo, and more.

Enlarge / Close-up of cables and LED lights in the data center of T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. (credit: Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images)

The Justice Department is demanding that a federal judge sanction Google for failing to abide by court orders to turn over data tied to 22 e-mail accounts. "Google's conduct here amounts to a willful and contemptuous disregard of various court orders," the government wrote (PDF) in a legal filing to US District Judge Richard Seeborg of California.

The government added in its Wednesday brief:

Google is entitled to have its own view of the law and to press that view before a court of competent jurisdiction. However, when faced with a valid court order, Google, like any other person or entity, must either comply with such an order or face consequences severe enough to deter willful noncompliance. The issue before this court is what sanction is sufficient to achieve that goal.

Google said it wasn't complying with the order because it was on appeal. Google also said it was following precedent from a New York-based federal appellate court that ruled Microsoft doesn't have to comply with a valid US warrant for data if the information is stored on overseas servers. Google is appealing the California warrant to the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on the same grounds. However, neither Seeborg nor the 9th Circuit is bound by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision— which the government has appealed to the US Supreme Court. (The US circuit courts of appeal are not bound to follow rulings by their sister circuits, but they all must obey precedent from the Supreme Court.)

Enlarge / Nichelle Nichols (left, who played Lt. Uhura in The Original Series) and Sonequa Martin-Green (First Officer Michael Burnham) attend the premiere of CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery at The Cinerama Dome on September 19, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (credit: Todd Williamson / Getty Images News)

Get yourself to a viewscreen: Sunday, September 24, 8:30pm ET is the moment that Star Trek fans have spent years waiting for.

The first episode of Star Trek: Discovery will broadcast on traditional television (your local CBS station) as a way to kickstart the series before it moves over entirely to CBS All Access, the company’s nearly-three-year-old paid online video service.

According to CBS, after the first broadcast of Episode 1 airs (“The Vulcan Hello”), the first two episodes will be made available on CBS All Access. A one-week trial is free, otherwise the service costs $6 per month or $10 per month with an ad-free version. All Access is available on all mobile platforms, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, and more.

Enlarge / In Spettacolo, literally this town's whole world is a stage. (credit: Jeff Malmberg, Chris Shellen)

The early moments of Spettacolo, the latest documentary from the team behind the acclaimed 2010 work Marwencol, may cause travel lust. As the film gets underway, old brick buildings serve as a backdrop for European architecture and vistas, practically begging viewers to hop on Airbnb, HomeAway, or some similar service just to survey the current options.

But like the unflinching Marwencol—a critically adored film that details the work of artist Mark Hogancamp, who suffered brain damage after being jumped in a bar and then created a 1/6th-scale backyard model of a WWII town as a form of self-therapy—Spettacolo wants to take its audience well beyond this surface. By the end of this charming but philosophical film—which debuts theatrically this month and recently screened at the Toronto International Film Festival—viewers may find themselves thinking twice about that next dream Airbnb rental.

Tradition via chance

Set in tiny Monticchiello in the Tuscany region of Italy, Spettacolo focuses on the Teatro Povero di Monticchiello (the Poor Theater). For 50 years, this town (population: 136) has staged a communal play that a majority of Monticchiello’s residents typically participate in. Don’t mistake this for your run-of-the-mill community theater production of Grease, though. The annual play in Monticchiello stands as part art, part therapy, part pleading Facebook wall post: rather than perform an existing work, every year residents hold town meetings to formulate a story about their current lives to produce and perform.