Biomining uses engineered microbes to harvest critical minerals
Category: biological – Page 29
Forensic test recovers fingerprints from fired ammunition casings despite intense heat
A pioneering new test that can recover fingerprints from ammunition casing, once thought nearly impossible, has been developed by two Irish scientists.
Dr. Eithne Dempsey, and her recent Ph.D. student Dr. Colm McKeever, of the Department of Chemistry in Ireland’s Maynooth University have developed a unique electrochemical method which can visualize fingerprints on brass casings, even after they have been exposed to the high temperature conditions experienced during gunfire. The study is published in the journal Forensic Chemistry.
For decades, investigators have struggled to recover fingerprints from weapons because any biological trace is usually destroyed by the high temperatures, friction and gas released after a gun is fired. As a result, criminals often abandon their weapons or casings at crime scenes, confident that they leave no fingerprint evidence behind.
Study of the world’s longest-lived person reveals rare genes and good bacteria are among the keys to a long life
What is the secret of supercentenarians? While there is no magical “elixir of life” that allows us to live forever, this incredibly rare group of people who live to be 110 years or older appears to have some biological advantage. To identify the factors that underlie extreme longevity, scientists conducted a comprehensive study of Maria Branyas, who was the world’s oldest verified living person at the time of the study.
Designer Microbes Aid Space Exploration Efforts
Synthetic biology offers a toolkit to engineer microbes capable of surviving in outer space and for biomanufacturing materials to support astronauts on long missions.
Scientific breakthrough leads to ‘fluorescent biological qubit’ — it could mean turning your cells into quantum sensors
Fluorescent proteins, which can be found in a variety of marine organisms, absorb light at one wavelength and emit it at another, longer wavelength; this is, for instance, what gives some jellyfish the ability to glow. As such, they are used by biologists to tag cells through the genetic encoding and in the fusing of proteins.
The researchers found that the fluorophore in these proteins, which enables the immittance of light, can be used as qubits due to their ability to have a metastable triplet state. This is where a molecule absorbs light and transitions into an excited state with two of its highest-energy electrons in a parallel spin. This lasts for a brief period before decaying. In quantum mechanical terms, the molecule is in a superposition of multiple states at once until directly observed or disrupted by an external interference.
Evidence of a spin-liquid state emerges in pressurized oxygen
Oxygen, the colorless and odorless gas that is essential to the survival of humans and other living organisms, is estimated to make up around 21% of Earth’s atmosphere. While the primary properties of oxygen are now well understood, the states that can emerge in it at extreme conditions (e.g., at high pressures) are still under investigation.
Researchers at Shanghai Advanced Research in Physical Sciences (SHARPS), the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in China, the Italian National Institute of Optics of the National Council of Research (CNR-INO), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and University Montpellier carried out a study exploring the properties of a high–pressure phase of solid oxygen, known as epsilon oxygen (ε-O2).
Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, offers the first indirect evidence that a dynamic magnetic state, known as a spin-liquid state, emerges in epsilon oxygen.
