Neural network tracking approach

The Crown-of-Thorns starfish were left in an aquatic Y-shaped maze overnight (on top). In one of the smaller branches (bottom left on the left-hand tank and bottom right on the right-hand tank) scientists added water collected around starfish aggregations from inside an aquarium, suspecting they communicate through water-borne signals to gather in huge populations during spawning events. The COTS can be seen moving towards these specific locations, suggesting the animal reacts to molecules induced by another COTS. 

Octopus bimaculoides, also known as the Californian two-spot octopus, crawling an aquarium wall Video: Z. Yan Wang, University of Chicago

Many people came to the OIST Science Festival 2017 to enjoy the world of science.

The researchers used DNA to stick hydrogel blocks together in different ways, allowing them to self-assemble into structures and self-sort by color. This video was used in the press release, "Scientists build organized structures of gel blocks using matching powers of DNA".

The video of one of the experiments shows the two different strains of E. coli bacteria forming the lane-like patterns within the first 10 hours. The recording runs for 40 hours but the experiment lasted 80 hours. This video appeared in the article “Striking lane-like patterns found in bacteria populations”.