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Cell size is an important variable in the study of cellular growth, metabolism, and the cell cycle. The large size of Amoeba proteus and the ease with which it can be collected and cultured have made it a star in biology education—and it was a model for research on cell biology before the introduction of molecular genetic methods. Measuring the cytoplasmic density of a single amoeba without modern instrumentation seems like a difficult task, but this was done with supreme accuracy in the 1940s. The solution was based on the familiar Cartesian diver that is used to demonstrate Archimedes's principle. It required the fabrication of a tiny diver that would respond to the additional mass of a cell. Experiments using this method allowed investigators to study changes in size and density associated with feeding, starvation, and cell division. This research is an illustration of the ingenuity of cell biologists in the pre-molecular genetic era of their field, which is often overlooked by contemporary scientists. The consideration of the mass, density, and buoyancy of free-living amoebas encourages a new hypothesis about the evolution of testate amoebas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Numerous studies have investigated the importance of visual clarity in simulated athletic performance and, surprisingly, have observed that several sports-related tasks are resilient to low-tomoderate levels of retinal defocus. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of myopic defocus on baseball batting performance, as well as the influence of gender, preferred hand, refractive error, and previous baseball experience. Methods: Thirty visually normal (visual acuity at least 20/20, stereoacuity better than 50 arc seconds of stereoacuity) young-adult participants were pitched 20 baseballs from a pitching machine under four conditions in a randomized order: plano (control), +1.00 D, +2.00 D, and +3.00 D. All participants were tested under binocular viewing conditions, with their habitual distance correction in place. Two independent observers graded the batting performance via a quality-of-contact score. Results: Batting performance was significantly reduced under +2.00 D and +3.00 D conditions, but not under the +1.00 D condition. The overall effect of retinal defocus was significant (F = 9.137, p < 0.001). Previous baseball experience yielded a statistically significant difference in performance, but neither refractive error, hand, order, nor gender significantly influenced performance. A high linear correlation between both observers was found (R2 = 0.99). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that baseball batting performance was resilient to low levels of retinal defocus for amateur baseball players. The threshold level of myopic defocus where performance declined appears to be lower for baseball than for other simulated sportsrelated activities in the literature, including golf putting, cricket batting, and basketball free throws, suggesting that the influence of myopic defocus on athletic performance is likely task-dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]