Credits: Image: Christine Daniloff, MIT
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In recent years, scientists have developed many strains of engineered bacteria that can be used as sensors to detect environmental contaminants such as heavy metals. If deployed in the natural environment, these sensors could help scientists track how pollutant levels change over time, over a wide geographic area.
MIT engineers have now devised a way to make this kind of deployment safer, by encasing bacterial sensors in a tough hydrogel shell that prevents them from escaping into the environment and potentially spreading modified genes to other organisms.
“Right now there are a lot of whole-cell biosensors being developed, but applying them in the real world is a challenge because we don’t want any genetically modified organisms to be able to exchange genetic material with wild-type microbes,” says MIT graduate student Tzu-Chieh Tang, one of the lead authors of the new stu
Maritime Activity Reports, Inc. April 1, 2021 Mooring retrieved on board the Svalbard (photo credit: Daniel Fatnes of the Norwegian Coast Guard)
Who do you call when you need a job done on short notice, in total darkness, under 100-percent ice cover, thousands of meters at the bottom of the sea? In the case of the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), you call your friends in Norway.
That is exactly what the Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral Lorin C. Selby did when he enlisted the help of the Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker and offshore patrol vessel, the
CGV Svalbard, to retrieve oceanographic moorings containing irreplaceable data.
DCSTEM recognizes Kattoum, Ruhl-Whittle, Agarwal as Faculty Excellence Winners No Comments
The UA Little Rock Donaghey College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) has selected its 2021 Faculty Excellence winners.
“The committee would like to extend our deepest congratulations to the three DCSTEM Faculty Excellence Winners,” said Dr. Rene Shroat-Lewis, chair of the awards selection committee. “We were humbled reading each nominee packet that clearly showed their dedication and persistence in their respective category. This is certainly a reflection of not only hard work, but UA Little Rock’s strong commitment to providing an environment conducive to excellence in research, teaching, and service.”
Can robots operate effectively underwater? Sea stars may hold the answer
March 17, 2021USC
If you’ve ever watched
Planet Earth, you know the ocean is a wild place to live. The water is teeming with different ecosystems and organisms varying in complexity from an erudite octopus to a sea star. Unexpectedly, it is the sea star, a simple organism characterized by a decentralized nervous system, that offers insights into advanced adaptation to hydrodynamic forces the forces created by water flow.
Researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering found that sea star body shapes enable them to effectively stay attached to surfaces under extreme hydrodynamic loads. The researchers, including the Henry Salvatori Early Career Chair in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Mitul Luhar and doctoral student Mark Hermes, found sea stars create a “downforce” due to their shape. This means that instead of being lifted by the flow forces, the sea stars are pushed downward toward the
Humans disturbing whales and dolphins may stop them eating enough to keep calves alive, say researchers
Updated: 06/02/2021, 1:14 pm
The research was published in Conservation Physiology from Aberdeen University.
New research from Aberdeen scientists has revealed dolphins and whales may not have enough energy to eat properly to keep their calves alive if they are disturbed by human activities.
The research by Aberdeen University and the Technical University of Denmark shows that the way energy is handled by sea mammals has radically changed.
It has also found that the metabolic changes that allowed whales and dolphins to adapt to their aquatic lifestyle have implications on how we should assess the impact of human activities on their conservation.