Researchers from cilia biology and microscopy, as well as primary ciliary dyskinesia clinicians, have written an open letter to Nikon regarding the winning video in their Small World in Motion competition. To read the open letter and find out how to add you name:

Optimē!

Yes, I am horrified. I wonder, do/did they go to the trouble to use the historical IF at the time each paper was published, or admit it's all meaningless and use the most recently made-up value?

I've long had a hunch that "able to do nondestructive photochemistry" is at least as big an influence as transmission through water; <300 does better than >600 but might destroy rather than isomerize a photoreceptor molecule. (data from Segelstein, D., 1981: "The Complex Refractive Index of Water")

yes, but not that far into either the UV or IR. Too blue and you start destroying bonds; too red and you can't excite them.

Bingo! This is the primary reason, I think. Only that range can trigger nondestructive chemical changes in protein-coupled molecules. Same reason fluorescence microscopy uses a similar wavelength range for fluorophores.

If we ever do get to see the original NSWiM grayscale video, I expect it will look more or less like this.

"jiggery-pokery" still has some life too, I reckon

Interesting! It was 193 frames, 1288x720 px when I obtained it; shasum-1 : 1bccd…. I scanned the other 30 hosted entries and found no SynthID watermarks.

I know, and they also swing down into what should be intracellular space?! Here's another one using Grid/Collection stitching (thanks @preibischs.bsky.social !) showing the whole movie.

"Made the cilia wave around, boss"

Yes! I thought it might be because stage movement induced cilia bending, but if this is all in a sealed chamber it's unlikely that such an "inertial" effect would manifest (Life at Low Reynolds Number) -- but then again I don't know the relevant biomechanics of airway cilia well enough to judge.

re:hallucination/fabrication: insofar as there's a difference, I think since they seem to have used one video as a basis and used AI to "enhance" it that it might be the better term? But I'm not really clear on the distinction myself.