Eyes with refractive error have reduced visual acuity and are rarely found in the wild. Vertebrate eyes possess a visually guided emmetropisation process within the retina which detects the sign of defocus, and regulates eye growth to align the retina at the focal plane of the eye's optical components to avoid the development of refractive error, such as myopia, an increasing problem in humans....

Abundance of the Ommastrephes bartramii winter-spring cohort fluctuated greatly from 1995 to 2004. To understand how abundance was influenced by sea surface conditions, we examined the variations in the proportion of thermal habitats with favourable sea surface temperature (SST). The SST data of both the spawning and feeding grounds were used to calculate the monthly proportion of favourable-SS...

Giant squids (Architeuthis) are a legendary species among the cephalopods. They live in the deep sea and are well known for their enormous body and giant eyes. It has been suggested that their giant eyes are not adapted for the detection of either mates or prey at distance, but rather are best suited for monitoring very large predators, such as sperm whales, at distances exceeding 120 m and at ...

We present a new type of transition-edge sensor for single-photon and macro-molecule detection. In our detector the absorber element is an isolated, passive absorber of extremely low thermal mass, maintained close to, but below, its superconducting–normal transition, and strongly inductively coupled to a SQUID sensor. Incoming particles or photons are sensed in terms of a transient change in th...

Treatment of outer segment membranes from Loligo forbesi with endoprotease-V8 from Staphylococcus aureus results in cleavage of the C-terminal extension of the squid rhodopsin, with accompanying reduction of the apparent molecular weight from 47,000 to 36,000 on sodium dodecyl sulfate/polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Negative-stain electron microscopy of the intact membranes shows that small...

A vector Superconducting QUuntum Interference Device (SQUID} magnetometer wus used to meusure the magnetic fields nssociated with propagation of gustric electrical uctivity. Measurements of the magnetic field vector were consistent with the presumed pattern of current propagation in the gastric musculature. Further studies using two SQUID systems ullowed the first noninvasive determination of t...

Midwater squid respond to overhead illumination by turning on numerous downward-directed photophores; they turn off the photophores when overhead illumination is eliminated. The squid are invisible when the intensity of the photophores matches the intensity of the overhead illumination. These results strongly support the theory of ventral bioluminescent countershading.

its historical range extends along the subtropical coasts of both North and South America with only occasional and temporary appearances at latitudes higher than 40 degrees. The squid feed opportunistically on a broad range of surface and deepwater fish, crustaceans and squid, many of which undertake vertical daily migrations of several hundred metres pursued through these depths by the Humbold...

The majority of cephalopods are thought to have limitations arising from physiology and locomotion that exclude them from shallow, highly variable, euryhaline environments. The brief squid Lolliguncula brevis may be a notable exception because it tolerates low salinities, withstands a wide range of environmental conditions, and swims readily in shallow water. Little is known about the distribut...

I n this issue of PLoS Medicine, Rosen and colleagues [1] present convincing evidence that intracellular communities of Escherichia coli commonly exist and are likely of to be of clinical significance in uncomplicated bacterial cystitis. This novel finding is remarkable in many respects, not the least of which is the circuitous route by which our understanding about bacterial communities has ev...