Science Art: Cafeteria virion by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics ViralZone.
It looks like a D20 wrapped in iguana leather and filled with caramel and chocolate sprinkles. It’s actually a rheavirus, also known as cafeteriavirus. It’s […]
microbiology
Cavity-killing breakthrough uses strep-fighting molecule.
SciTech Daily reports on scientists from Israel and China who have discovered a molecule nicknamed DIM that reduces biofilms that cause dental plaque by 90%. […]
Volcanic bacteria can eat CO2. Lots of it, and fast.
The Guardian introduces us to a new group of cyanobacteria that live in volcanic hot springs in Italy and America’s Rocky Mountains and that feast […]
Nebraska researcher identifies the first known virus-eating organism.
EurekAlert presents the findings of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s John DeLong, who has found the first known virovore – a microorganism that feeds on viruses: […]
Good friendships make a healthier gut biome (in monkeys, at least).
Phys.org passes along research led by Dr. Katerina Johnson of Oxford and Dr. Karli Watson of UC Boulder, who found that the more social a […]
A mother’s diet can affect children’s – and grandchildren’s – behavior.
The Scientist reports on mice fed a high-fat diet, whose children and grandchildren still felt the effects in social behavior and overall health: High-fat diets […]
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria discovered in Antarctica. The question is: Will they stay there?
Reuters enlightens a pandemic-weary world with news of a discovery of new life in the icy wastes of Antarctica. Unfortunately, the Chilean scientists study the […]
“Difficult” bacteria has chainmail to protect it from antibiotics.
Science News reveals the secret that makes Clostridium difficile infections so tough to treat – an outer barrier called “the S layer” that protects the […]
Living robots – “xenobots” – can reproduce themselves.
Science News is not panicking at all about the prospect of robots that can replicate copies of themselves that can then replicate copies of themselves: […]
Planning for a funeral on Mars.
Discover magazine discusses an unusual problem we haven’t had to face yet. How will Mars colonists handle their first funerals in an environment where human […]
We can grow brain tissue in a $5 microchip. (And it’s reusable.)
New Scientist reveals the cost of building a brain from scratch has just gone way, WAY down: The device, dubbed a “microfluidic bioreactor”, is a […]
“Xenobots” are tiny robots made from living cells – self-healing swarms that can form bodies… and memories.
Eurekalert introduces the next generation of living robots. Tufts University biologists and computer scientists have created a second generation of tiny, biological machines they’re calling […]
Science Art: Coronavirus spike protein structure, by David Veesler, University of Washington,2016
Click to embiggen This is not an alien forest. It is also not a picture of the COVID19 virus. It’s an illustration from 2016 of […]
Science Art: Hefezellen
An image of yeast, originally made by NASA (though the context is now unclear, since the web page Wikimedia Commons sourced the photo from no […]
Scientists have woken up 100-million-year-old microbes.
BBC is not intimidating us all with news that researchers with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology have treated a colony of dormant […]