Researchers at UC Berkeley just gave everybody permission to conk out for a few Zs. They found that an hour-long nap can make you smarter in spades.

The team, lead by assistant professor of psychology Matthew Walker, tested the effects of a nap on 39 healthy people. Everyone in the study took a rigorous learning test. Then half the group took a nap while the other half stayed awake. Later in the day they took another learning test. Those who had stayed up were considerably worse than those who had a snooze.

Walker thinks sleep is needed to clear short-term memory storage to make room for new data. Without sleep, there simply isn’t enough space to learn and store new facts. From a UC Berkeley article:

In the latest study, Walker and his team have broken new ground in discovering that this memory-refreshing process occurs when nappers are engaged in a specific stage of sleep. Electroencephalogram tests, which measure electrical activity in the brain, indicated that this refreshing of memory capacity is related to Stage 2 non-REM sleep, which takes place between deep sleep (non-REM) and the dream state known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Previously, the purpose of this stage was unclear, but the new results offer evidence as to why humans spend at least half their sleeping hours in Stage 2, non-REM, Walker said.

Makes me wonder why we give up nap time after Kindergarden.

Link to UC Berkeley Article

In their quest to transform mild-manered scientists into technology wielding superheroes, researchers at Cornell have created a device that could let them walk on walls.

The device uses the surface tension of water for adhesion. It’s inspired by a beetle that can stick to a leaf with 100 times its own weight. Basically you’ve got a small plate drilled with hundreds of micron-scale holes on top of a water reservoir. Current is applied to the plate via a 9-volt battery, which pushes the water up through the holes to form tiny bumps or droplets of water. The surface tension of those droplets makes the plate stick to virtually any surface. Reverse the current and the droplets retract, breaking adhesion.

It’s remarkably sticky. Researchers estimate that a one-square-inch pad would hold up to 15 pounds of weight.

Uses include shoes and gloves for walking on walls, and roll-out mats to stop bad guys in their tracks.

Link to Cornell Chronicle article

Any scifi fan can tell you that engineering immortal killing machines is never a good idea. Still, the Pentagon’s weird science division, DARPA, wants to bioengineer “synthetic” organisms that can live forever. Oh, unless you flip the built-in and totally reliable DNA kill switch. Riiight.

They’re calling the project BioDesign and its goal is to create organisms that will live indefinitely until you issue a self-destruct-type chemical command. Of course there’s absolutely no chance the organisms will evolve a way to ignore the command, swarm, and devour all life like unstoppable cyber locusts. Nope. Not a chance.

Thankfully, the Pentagon only gave the project $6 million to play around with. It’s doubtful that such a paltry sum would be enough to overturn the most fundamental law of nature: What lives must die. Right?

Link to Wired article

Fungal packing material: EcoCradle

Wood is ancient history. The building material of the future is fungus. Artist and hardcore amateur mycologist Philip Ross is growing super-durable bricks of mycelium that could be used for everything from structural support to insulation.

Ross grows bricks of mycelium—wispy, spongy fungal root systems—in rusty shipping containers on his farm Far West Fungi in the California Bay Area. When dried, the bricks are stronger pound-for-pound than concrete and insulate better than fiberglass insulation.

So far Ross has constructed a single six-foot archway out of the stuff. According to the artist, he ruined several saw blades and metal files shaping the bricks—they’re that tough. He called the structure Mycotectural Alpha and it’s on display in a gallery in Germany.

Ross isn’t alone. A company called Ecovative is building at 10,000-square-foot fungi farm on Green Island, N.Y. They plan to grow a ton of fungi-based building material. Their first commercial product will be a biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam called Ecocradle.

The best thing about mushroom-based building material? Mushrooms munch waste—stuff that’s left over from food crops, like seed husks.

So don’t be surprised if you find fungus-based building material at your local Home Depot in a few years.

Link to Time article

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

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

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