What if you could turn your lawn clippings and potato peels into fuel? It sounds like alchemy, but a research team with the U.S. Department of Energy, of all places, have managed to do it—using bacteria. The Joint BioEnergy Institute (with the D.O.E.) and South San Francisco-based biotech company LS9 have engineered a strain of E. coli that can digest plant waste and turn it directly into biodiesel.
The joint research team added some genes that let the E. coli strain produce enzymes that can break down cellulose, the tough fibrous bits of plants that we usually throw out. The enzymes break cellulose down into sugars, which the bacteria use to make biodiesel.
The bioengineers also tweaked the E. coli to make it put on weight. Normally, the bacteria doesn’t hold on to excess oil, but the new strain packs on the pounds, which increases biodiesel yield considerably.
The team envisions the bacteria being used to turn corn husks, grass clippings, saw dust, wheat stalks, and virtually any plant waste into biodiesel. It’s currently perfecting the strain and hopes to make it commercially available in the near future.
Link to UC Berkeley article
Electric cars don’t spew C02, but they’re not exactly environmentally friendly. Their batteries wear out and could be dumped, leaking all kinds of nasty into the soil. So when Japanese company Eamex says they’ve developed a lithium-ion battery for cars that lasts 20 years, it’s a big deal.
Eamex say they’ve stabilized the electrodes that normally wear out in batteries. That makes their batteries good for 10,000 charge cycles. If true, it’s a huge breakthrough that will make electric cars even more environmentally friendly and cheaper to own for the long term.
Link to Gizmodo article
Link to CrunchGear article
Evolution is one hell of a designer. That’s why scientists at the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) are looking at a sea snail with a super-strong shell to glean new design ideas for body armor.
The snail, called Trochus niloticus or “scaly-foot” snail, lives at the bottom of the Indian ocean near thermal vents that spew sulfurous 14o°F water. The vents, called black or white smokers, fuel a bizarre ecosystem that includes giant tube worms, wicked crabs, and the scaly-foot snail. The snail has a unique three-layered shell unlike any other snail known that can resist a tremendous amount of force. The shell’s outer layer is made of iron sulfite granules. That’s followed by a thick organic layer, then a calcified inner layer. The tri-layered shell can resist long attacks by crabs or other predators looking for a snack.
Scientists at ISN are studying the snail and other armored animals so they can design better body armor for police and troops.
Link to Gizmag article
As an avid Sci-Fi fan, I’ve often wished I could swap DNA with animals to gain their abilities—the speed of a cheetah, the strength of a gorilla, the seal’s ability to hold its breath for 45 minutes. But that’s just a fantasy. Reality is much, much crazier. Scientists have discovered a sea slug that’s stolen DNA and plant cell organelles from algae in order to photosynthesize. For real.
The slug, Elysia chlorotica, gobbles up algae and, through a complex digestive process, nabs chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are the solar power plants of the plant world, cell organelles that use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds. The slug traps these little solar-powered factories in its cells and—this is the crazy part—is able to make them work with its own metabolism. That means the slug has at some point nabbed plant DNA so it can use chloroplasts to effectively photosynthesize. It is part plant.
Of course, the snail isn’t born with chloroplasts, but it’s still amazing. According to scientists at the University of South Florida in Tampa, once the slug has gobbled up some chloroplasts, it can sustain itself with photosynthesis alone. It doesn’t have to eat. At all.
Biologists are calling it one of the freakiest discoveries of the century. Sure, they’ve known for quite a while that bacteria can swap DNA, but this is an animal. Unfortunately, they aren’t sure how the snail was able to grab the DNA necessary to support chloroplasts and photosynthesis, but it opens up a new world of possibilities. So, when can I order a shot of bat DNA so I can have echolocation, huh Science?
Link to Wired article
Wouldn’t it be great if we could suck all the extra C02 out of the atmosphere and turn it back into fuel? Climate change would subside, gas prices would fall, and we’d have a surplus of fuel. Sounds like a dream, but researchers at UCLA might have figured out how to make it a reality.
Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have created a cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, that can turn C02 into a fuel called isobutanol. Like plants, cyanobacteria use sunlight and C02 as an energy source to grow and prosper. The reachers tweaked a few genes in a strain of cyanobacteria to make it absorb more C02, then added some genes from other organisms to make it produce isobutyraldehyde gas. Smush the bacteria and stir the resulting sludge with an inexpensive catalyst and you get isobutanol, a liquid fuel that can be used like gasoline. Plus, the bacteria could be further modified to produce isobutanol directly without a catalyst.
The new strain of cyanobacteria uses energy from sunlight and C02 in the atmosphere to make the fuel. Researchers say they could grow the bacteria in ponds next to fossil fuel power plants to reclaim some of the emitted C02. Of course, there’s nothing stopping them from growing the cyanobacteria all over the place to help reduce greenhouse gas and provide us with ample fuel for our 1967 Camaros.
Link to Gizmag article
Lotus is known for light, simple, and fast cars. But the company’s engineering division has created some of the most innovative automotive technology of the last century. Recently, it helped develop GM’s current superstar economy/performance Ecotec engine, and now it’s building a hyper-efficient, ultra-low-emissions engine codenamed “Omnivore.”
The Omnivore is a direct injection, variable compression, two-stroke engine designed to run on virtually any liquid fuel—gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, ethanol, alcohol, you name it. It uses a “puck” at the top of the combustion chamber to vary compression ratios all the way up to 40:1, or about four times the compression of a standard four-stroke engine. Those super-high compression ratios mean that the Omnivore can achieve combustion without a spark plug in a similar manner to diesel engines. In Omnivore, the air-fuel mixture is squeezed until it explodes. Combustion takes place throughout the mixture simultaneously, which makes for super-clean and efficient combustion. How much more efficient? So far Lotus has managed a 10 percent gain in efficiency (measured in fuel consumption) over current direct-injection four-stroke engines. That may not sound like a lot, but in the engineering world it’s huge. Plus, Lotus hopes to gain even more efficiency as time goes on.
The Omnivore is still in development stages, but Lotus hopes the technology can be refined and put into production in the next decade. Two-stroke engines have long since been banned from automotive duty due to heavy emissions, but with the Omnivore they might see a resurgence.
Link to Autoblog article
Link to Omnivore YouTube video
Chrysler once envisioned a future filled with turbine-powered automobiles capable of screaming down America’s highways at staggering speeds. They even built a few hundred road-ready prototypes. But neither Chrysler nor any other car company ever made turbine cruisers. Capstone MicroTurbine, however, wants to put the whirling engines back on the road in a big way.
The industrial turbine manufacturer has built a plugin turbine-electric supercar, called the CMT-380. The car is driven by powerful electric motors that get their juice from lithium-polymer batteries and a microturbine that spins a generator. The 30kW microturbine/generator is is usually used for power in industrial and military applications. In the CMT-380, it burns diesel or biodiesel and gives the car a 500-mile range. Plus, it’s ultra-low-emissions rated and burns cleaner than many modern gas-engined cars.
The car is no slouch either. Capstone say it’s capable of reaching 60mph in 3.9 seconds and can hit 150mph. It’s also pretty good looking. The CMT-380 is built on a slick Factory Five Racing GTM kit, which resembles a Ford GT40 crossed with a Jaguar XJ220.
The CTM-380 is meant to show what the Capstone microturbine can do in an automobile and may see limited production if it generates enough interest. It’s an interesting concept—turbines are a great choice for power generation in a hybrid because they’re efficient when they spin at a constant speed. They can also run on almost any liquid fuel that has a high enough octane.
Link to Gizmag article
Seems like they’re injecting everything with glow-y jellyfish genes nowadays. The latest victims of the glow-in-the-dark craze are prairie voles.
Scientists injected a jellyfish gene that makes a fluorescent protein into vole embryos. When the embryos grew into itty-bitty baby voles, they glowed. Even better, the voles were able to pass the glow gene down to their offspring.
Link to ScienceDaily article
As if hot dogs weren’t disgusting enough—now we can grow them in a vat of nutrient-rich goo under fluorescent lights. A team of scientists from the Netherlands, hell-bent on grossing out the known world, have grown a hunk of pork in their lab, without a pig.
The team took muscle cells from a live pig and, hold your lunch, plopped them in a solution made from the blood of animal fetuses. The cells multiplied and clumped together, producing what the scientists describe as “a soggy form of pork.”
Before the meat hits the market, scientists will need to figure out how to toughen it up and maybe even mix in some tasty vat-grown pork fat.
Scientists estimate that the fake meat could cut tons of carbon—livestock is one of the largest producers of carbon dioxide worldwide. The grown meat would also be safe for vegetarians as no animals would be harmed in its production. But the question remains: Will vegetarians eat vat-grown pork from a tube?
Link to Gizmag article
More than 2.5 million people are afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis. It’s a nasty disease, one that slowly eats away the brain and nervous system. Thankfully, there are many treatments to lessen its effects, but there is no cure. Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni, however, thinks he may have found one.
When Zamboni’s wife was diagnosed with MS, he dove into every piece of research he could find. While searching some old medical texts, he found some research that suggested MS is caused by buildup of iron in the brain. The theory goes something like this: Iron blocks blood vessels, which then rupture. Blood and immune cells flow into the spinal-cerebral fluid. Immune cells attack the nervous system, triggering MS. After reading this, Zamboni did a few tests on his wife and other MS patients. He found an excess buildup of iron in nearly every case.
Zamboni immediately ordered a simple surgery to clear the iron blockage from two of his wife’s main arteries (the ones leading to the brain). Within days of the procedure, there was marked improvement.
The doctor went on to try the procedure on 65 other MS patients. Seventy three percent of them are completely free of symptoms two years after the treatment.
More studies are underway, but the quick procedure could improve the lives of millions.
Link to Gizmag article
