Illustris TNG is a theoretical astrophysics project that created the most detailed simulation of the universe to date, and it turns out that black holes influence the distribution of dark matter. Read the rest

Model and former basketball player Ekaterina Lisina of Russia boasts the Guinness World Record for World's Longest Legs (female). The 29-year-old stands a total of 6'8.77" and her legs each measure 52 inches (the left one is a tad longer). Read the rest

Australian artist Joshua Smith makes models of run-down everyday things like dumpsters, but they have such detail and craftsmanship that they are truly remarkable. Read the rest

This video featuring Viktoria Odintsova is probably not adhering to local occupational safety regs. If the photo below gets your palms sweating, you may want to skip the video above. Read the rest

Starting with an off-the-shelf model of a VW microbus, Hernandez Dreamphography creates Inner Trip, a diorama of a weathered VW on a wintry field. Read the rest

Check out this astonishing workmanship by mulletsaurus, who hand-painted The Black Knight from Kingdom Death. Here's the blank for comparison: Read the rest

You've probably seen this caveat pretty often: Just because a study that uses mice as subjects produces a specific result, doesn't mean you'd get the same result using human subjects. Mice are handy research animals, but they aren't perfect analogues to humans. A mouse study is a stepping stone towards better evidence. It is something we do because there are potentially useful ideas that we should not try out on humans first. But mouse studies should not count as incontrovertible proof of anything.

Usually, when that caveat comes up, the person giving it is talking about fundamental differences between mouse biology and human biology. For instance, a mouse might only need one copy of a genetic factor to grow normally. Meanwhile, a human needs to have both copies or risk altered sexual development.

But there are other problems with mice, problems that have more to do with how we select, breed, and raise mouse models. In a fascinating three-part series on Slate.com, Daniel Engber looks at how we undermine the usefulness of our own lab mice, and the risks we take when we do so.

If you put a rat on a limited feeding schedule—depriving it of food every other day—and then blocked off one of its cerebral arteries to induce a stroke, its brain damage would be greatly reduced. The same held for mice that had been engineered to develop something like Parkinson's disease: Take away their food, and their brains stayed healthier.

But Mattson wasn't so quick to prescribe his stern feeding schedule to the crowd in Atlanta.