FAVORITE IMAGES OF THE WEEK - 5

NASA/Joshua Stevens

The West Coast has been hit bad this week with torrential rain and snowfall. This .gif shows the precipitation, which is measured every 30 minutes, from Jan. 7 through Jan. 10. It's intense; California’s Mammoth Mountain received some 133 inches.

Rebecca Saxe, Atsushi Takahashi and Ben Deen / Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT / Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT

A new study out this week found that infants as young as four months old understand and process faces like adults do. The authors say that this suggests that the visual cortex in our brain is already highly structured and formed by the time we are born.

Apple

This week 10 years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the very first iPhone—a device that forever changed how we use and design mobile phones. Here’s what Twitter users thought about the device when the concept was brand new.

NASA

Obama On Mars

Though President Obama’s time as leader of the U.S. is coming to an end, his efforts can still be recognized in places as distant as Mars. This image, of the Curiosity rover’s deck (taken by one of its own cameras on its 44th Martian day on the red planet) contains the signatures of the outgoing president and his VP, Joe Biden.

USGS

Red Listed

The rusty-patched bumblebee just became the first bee species in the continental United States to join the endangered species list. According to the Fish and Wildlife service, the population has decreased by 87 percent since the 1990s. This decline is likely due to a combination of factors, including habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use.