The Eyes of Flies

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A new study has revealed that flies' eyes can move. The discovery was made by Gabby Maimen and his co-authors in Nature. They used a combination of microscopes and cameras to look at the fly's eye muscles. Gaby tells us why they were so interested in seeing if this is true for other arthropods.

00:46 How flies can move their eyes (a little)

It's long been assumed flies’ eyes don’t move, and so to alter their gaze they need to move their heads. Now, researchers have shown that this isn’t quite true and that fruit flies can actually move their retinas using a specific set of muscles, which may allow them to perceive depth. The team also hope that this movement may provide a window into some of the flies’ internal processes.

Research article: Fenk et al.

08:54 Research Highlights

How the 80-year-old wreck of a sunken warship is influencing ocean microbes, and tracing an epilepsy-related gene variant back to a single person from 800 years ago.

Research Highlight: A ship sunk during the Second World War still stirs up the seabed

Research Highlight: Families on three continents inherited their epilepsy from a single person

11:11 Calls to mandate militaries’ emissions reporting

The eyes of the world will be focused on the UN’s upcoming COP27 conference to see what governments will pledge to do to reduce global emissions. But there’s one sector of countries’ carbon outputs that remains something of a mystery: the emissions of their militaries. We speak to Oliver Belcher, one of a group of researchers who have written a Comment article for Nature, calling for better reporting and greater accountability for these military emissions.

Comment: Decarbonize the military — mandate emissions reporting

19:07 Briefing Chat

We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time: efforts from Middle East countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions while still supplying fossil fuels; the upcoming demise of NASA’s InSight spacecraft; and new estimates for how long bacteria could survive on Mars.

Nature News: The Middle East is going green — while supplying oil to others

Nature News: NASA spacecraft records epic ‘marsquakes’ as it prepares to die

New Scientist: Bacteria could survive just under Mars's surface for 280 million years

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