Nonno prepares sample of Varroa mite DNA and RNA

Hiroki Sawada, age 23, is a first year PhD student at OIST, who has received a Softbank scholarship.

Honeybees are generalists, and so can pollinate many different species of plants, including about 90 different crops, including apple, peppers, coffee, almonds and cotton.

The Varroa mite parasitizes young honeybee larvae. The red female mite is fully developed, with a hardened insect cuticle, while the male mite remains small and transparent.

Under quantum conditions a single atom can be in two places at once, i.e. in superposition with itself. These images show the superposition of an atom from two different perspectives. The red smears (right image) or peaks (left image) indicate that there is a 100% probability an atom is present in that position at the given time. The two blue peaks at the front of the left image or smears at the back of the right image indicate a single atom is 50% present in one position and 50% in another position at the same given time. These graphs are visual translations of equations in quantum theory. Images created by Thomas Fogarty, a graduate student from University College Cork in Ireland currently working in the Quantum Systems Unit.  

Shivani and Kazumi, another author on the paper, in the lab where they developed the technique.