Lifeboat Foundation

In the first billion years, there was no oxygen on Earth. Life developed in an anoxic environment. Early bacteria probably obtained their energy by breaking down various substances by means of fermentation. However, there also seems to have been a kind of “oxygen-free respiration.” This was suggested by studies on primordial microbes that are still found in anoxic habitats today.

“We already saw ten years ago that there are genes in these microbes that perhaps encode for a primordial respiration enzyme. Since then, we—as well as other groups worldwide—have attempted to prove the existence of this respiratory enzyme and to isolate it. For a long time unsuccessfully because the complex was too fragile and fell apart at each attempt to isolate it from the membrane. We found the fragments, but were unable to piece them together again,” explains Professor Volker Müller from the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Bioenergetics at Goethe University.

Through hard work and perseverance, his doctoral researchers Martin Kuhns and Dragan Trifunovic then achieved a breakthrough in two successive doctoral theses. “In our desperation, we at some point took a heat-loving bacterium, Thermotoga maritima, which grows at temperatures between 60 and 90°C,” explains Trifunovic, who will shortly complete his doctorate. “Thermotoga also contains Rnf genes, and we hoped that the Rnf enzyme in this bacterium would be a bit more stable. Over the years, we then managed to develop a method for isolating the entire Rnf enzyme from the membrane of these bacteria.”

O,.o well then anything could be a computer even a mushroom or a rock :3.

A complex process can modify non-magnetic oxide materials in such a way to make them magnetic. The basis for this new phenomenon is controlled layer-by-layer growth of each material. An international research team with researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) reported on their unexpected findings in the journal Nature Communications.

In solid-state physics, oxide layers only a few nanometres thick are known to form a so-called two-dimensional electron gas. These thin layers, separated from one another, are transparent and electrically insulating materials. However, when one thin layer grows on top of the other, a conductive area forms under certain conditions at the interface, which has a metallic shine. “Normally this system remains non-magnetic,” says Professor Ingrid Mertig from the Institute of Physics at MLU. The research team has succeeded in controlling conditions during layer growth so that vacancies are created in the atomic layers near the interface. These are later filled in by other atoms from adjoining atomic layers.

Continue reading “Researchers show how to make non-magnetic materials magnetic” »

The Army is developing a system to allow autonomous ground robots to communicate with soldiers through natural conversations — and, in time, learn to respond to soldier instructions no matter how informal or potentially crass they may be.

Researchers from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, working in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, have developed a new capability that allows conversational dialogue between soldiers and autonomous systems.

After decades of landers, probes, and rovers, NASA is ready to take to the skies.

Each August brings nights lit up by up to 100 shooting stars and fireballs per hour.

A new map shows what the red planet would look like if 71 percent of its surface area was covered with water — around the same proportion as Earth.

tech2 News Staff Aug 07, 2020 13:06:46 IST

While new cases of the novel Coronavirus are still popping up in China, the country is facing yet another potentially contagious viral infection. This time, it’s jumping from ticks to people.

According to a report by Global Times, cases of the Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (SFTS) virus first appeared in April and since then more than 37 people in East China’s Jiangsu Province have contracted with the virus and 23 people were found infected in East China’s Anhui Province. As of 6 August, around seven people have died from the infection.

Great interview with planetary scientist Isaac Smith, an expert on Mars polar science at York University in Toronto. Well worth a listen.

Three spacecraft are currently en route to Mars, but none will visit the poles. Yet Mars’ poles drive much of the Martian climate. And their understanding is key to deciphering what might have been happening on the Red planet some 3.5 billion years ago when it had lakes, deltas, rivers, and perhaps even transient oceans. I’m very pleased to welcome planetary scientist Isaac B. Smith of York University in Toronto — an expert on Mars polar science and exploration — to discuss the need for a Martian polar lander as well as a broader look at Mars science.

An intriguing new study, from a team of Swiss researchers, has revealed neural activity during REM sleep in a particular region of the brain known to affect appetite and feeding behaviors significantly influences waking eating patterns.

Despite a hefty volume of robust study, REM sleep is still a mysterious and unique sleep phase. Named after the rapid eye movements that occur in all mammals during this sleep phase, it has also been referred to as paradoxical sleep, due to the strange similarity in brain activity between waking states and REM sleep.

The new research homed in on a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. This tiny brain region, found in all mammals, is known to play a fundamental role in food intake, compulsive behavior, and a number of other physiological processes.