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Magazine
In the May 11 & 25 SN: High-tech cricket farming, AI learns from Minecraft, looking for lithium, a new hominid species is named, signs of life in dead pig brains, Cherokee cave texts decoded, water molecules on the moon and more.
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News
A medical mystery reveals a new host for the rat lungworm parasite
07/30/2018 - 17:00 Health, Animals, MicrobesWhen a 78-year-old woman went to a hospital in Guangzhou, China, in November 2012 complaining of a headache, drowsiness and a stiff neck, doctors initially were puzzled. The patient had meningitis, but no signs of bacteria or viruses that can cause the illness. Then a cerebrospinal fluid test revealed she had a high number of white blood cells called eosinophils, a clue that she was fighting a...
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News
How a slime mold near death packs bacteria to feed the next generation
07/27/2018 - 15:35 Microbes, Cells, PhysiologyIn the final frenzy of reproduction and death, social amoebas secrete proteins that help preserve a starter kit of food for its offspring.
Dictyostelium discoideum, a type of slime mold in soil, eats bacteria. Some wild forms of this species essentially farm the microbes, passing them along in spore cases that give the next generation of amoebas the beginnings of a fine local patch of...
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Mystery Solved
Finally, there’s a way to keep syphilis growing in the lab
07/02/2018 - 07:00 Health, Microbiology, MicrobesFor more than a century, scientists have tried to grow Treponema pallidum, the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes syphilis. But the stubborn spirochete has refused to thrive any place outside of a human or rabbit for more than 18 days. That doesn’t give researchers much time to study it.
“I’ve basically spent my entire career watching these organisms die,” says microbiologist Steven...
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It's Alive
How a squishy clam conquers a rock
06/22/2018 - 07:00 Animals, Physiology, MicrobesBurrowing giant clams have perfected the ship-in-a-bottle trick, and the one big thing that scientists convinced themselves couldn’t explain it, actually can.
Tridacna crocea, the smallest of the 10 or so giant clam species, grows a shell that eventually reaches the size of a large fist. Starting as youngsters, the burrowers bore into the stony mass of an Indo-Pacific coral reef,...
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Exhibit
‘Outbreak’ puts the life cycle of an epidemic on display
06/04/2018 - 07:00 Health, Microbes, AnimalsIn 1918, a pandemic of Spanish flu killed as much as 5 percent of the world’s population. A hundred years later, scientists know much more about how to prevent and treat such diseases. But in some ways, the threat of a global outbreak is greater than ever. All it takes is one plane ride for a few localized cases of a disease to become an epidemic.
A new exhibit at the Smithsonian...
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The Science Life
With a little convincing, rats can detect tuberculosis
05/14/2018 - 15:01 Animals, Microbes, HealthWhat do land mines and tuberculosis have in common? Both kill people in developing countries — and both can be sniffed out by rodents that grow up to 3 feet, head to tail.
Since 2000, the international nonprofit APOPO has partnered with Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture to train African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) to pick up the scent of TNT in land mines. By 2016...
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Science Ticker
This plastic-gobbling enzyme just got an upgrade
04/19/2018 - 07:00 Microbes, PollutionJust a few tweaks to a bacterial enzyme make it a lean, mean plastic-destroying machine.
One type of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, is widely used in polyester clothing and disposable bottles and is notoriously persistent in landfills. In 2016, Japanese scientists identified a new species of bacteria, Ideonella sakaiensis, which has a specialized enzyme that can naturally...
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Teaser
A new plastic film glows to flag food contaminated with dangerous microbes
04/17/2018 - 07:00 Materials, Microbes, HealthPathogen detectors built into plastic patches could someday spare you food poisoning.
Carlos Filipe, a chemical engineer at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and colleagues have developed a new kind of flexible film that’s coated in molecules that glow when they touch E. coli cells. This type of sensor also glows in the presence of molecules secreted by E. coli, so the material...
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News in Brief
This material uses energy from ambient light to kill hospital superbugs
04/10/2018 - 07:00 Microbes, Materials, TechnologyPHOENIX — A new material that harnesses the power of ambient light to produce bacteria-killing molecules could help stem the spread of hospital infections, including those with drug-resistant bacteria.
About 1 in 10 patients worldwide get an infection while receiving treatment at a hospital or other health care facility, according to the World Health Organization. “Contaminated hospital...
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News
A new way to make bacteria glow could simplify TB screening
02/28/2018 - 14:03 Microbes, Microbiology, BiomedicineA new molecule that reveals active tuberculosis bacteria in coughed-up mucus and saliva could simplify TB diagnoses and speed up tests for detecting strains of the disease that are resistant to drugs.
This synthetic molecule is a modified version of a sugar that TB bacteria consume to help build their cell walls. The sugar is tagged with a dye that lights up under a fluorescent...