Tech

It's not easy being a bacterium and constantly having to adapt to whatever your environment throws at you. Dr Robert Endres explains how bacteria rely on their 'memories' to fine-tune their ability to sense food and danger, in his talk at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh today.

The process involved here sounds unwieldy, but is, in fact, quite simple: a material has a 6-fold rotation symmetry if the arrangement of its atoms remains unchanged when it is rotated by 60 degrees – one sixth of a circle. The atoms in metals often order themselves in this way. However, more complicated structures with 5-fold, 8-fold or 10-fold rotation symmetry also exist.

What if all software was open source? Anybody would then be able to add custom features to Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes or any other program. A University of Washington project may make this possible.

"Microsoft and Apple aren't going to open up all their stuff. But they all create programs that put pixels on the screen. And if we can modify those pixels, then we can change the program's apparent behavior," said James Fogarty, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

TORONTO, Ont., March 30, 2010 — One in three South Asian, West Asian or Arab women — one of the fastest growing segments of Canada's population — say they have trouble accessing a doctor to address an urgent health concern or to monitor health problems. The findings, from a new study by researchers at St.

Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles -- such as tractor-trailers, transit buses, and work trucks -- consume about 26 percent of transportation fuel used in the U.S. Congress has charged the U.S. Department of Transportation with developing fuel economy standards for these vehicles, whose fuel consumption currently is not regulated.

What makes some viral infections fatal and others much less severe is largely a mystery. It is thought that a part of the variability can be attributed to differences in how individuals respond to infection.

Professor Michael Katze, presenting at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh today, describes how computer modelling could be a powerful tool to allow treatments to be tailored to individuals. This approach could ultimately prevent future pandemics.

Isoprene is a Jekyll-and-Hyde gas that is capable of both warming and cooling the Earth depending on the prevailing conditions. It is an important industrial gas, necessary for the manufacture of important compounds such as rubber and vitamins, but very little is known about how isoprene is cycled in the environment.

Today, at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh, Dr Terry McGenity reveals the identity of some crucial players in the gas cycle; isoprene-degrading bacteria that are able to intercept the release of isoprene into the atmosphere.

Having a large number of supportive relatives increases the fear of dying among the elderly from ethnic minority groups, suggests research in Postgraduate Medical Journal.

This runs counter to the perception that a network of supportive informal family carers eases the fear of death, say the authors.

And it has important implications for health service provision as fears around death are one of the factors driving the rising numbers of people dying in hospital rather than at home.

"In China, we have a saying," Liu says. "We don't kill the hen to get the eggs." Rather than destroying the cyanobacteria, the group has ingeniously reengineered their genetics, producing mutant strains that continuously secrete fatty acids through their cell walls. The cyanobacteria essentially act like tiny biofuel production facilities.

ATHENS, Ohio (March 29, 2010) — Scientists have discovered the world's smallest superconductor, a sheet of four pairs of molecules less than one nanometer wide. The Ohio University-led study, published Sunday as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, provides the first evidence that nanoscale molecular superconducting wires can be fabricated, which could be used for nanoscale electronic devices and energy applications.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Decreasing or increasing the function of a newly discovered gene in corn may increase vitamin A content and have significant implications for reducing childhood blindness and mortality rates, according to a Purdue University-led study.

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines the potential influence that the business connections between broiler chicken growers may have on the transmission of avian influenza, H5N1. According to the study, the risk of between-farm transmission is significantly greater among farms within the same company group than it is between farms with different company affiliation.

After an extensive period of testing, researchers have launched an Internet portal to showcase the real-time measurement and visualization of energy use on the University of California, San Diego campus.

URBANA – University of Illinois researchers recently identified a new soybean aphid biotype that can multiply on aphid-resistant soybean varieties. Soybean aphids are the No. 1 insect threat to soybean production in the North Central region of the United States.

A Queen's University chemistry professor has invented a special solvent that may make cooking oil production more environmentally friendly.

Philip Jessop, Canada Research Chair in Green Chemistry, has created a solvent that – when combined with carbon dioxide – extracts oil from soybeans. Industries currently make cooking oils using hexane, a cheap, flammable solvent that is a neurotoxin and creates smog. The process also involves distillation, which uses large amounts of energy.