Society for Science awards $165,000 in microgrants to 38 nonprofits diversifying science and cultivating science literacy societyforscience.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from societyforscience.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
All modern life is composed of cells, from single-celled bacteria to more complex organisms such as humans, which may contain billions or even trillions.
E-Mail
IMAGE: Starting from a liquid alpha hydroxy acid monomer library, drying through heating results in synthesis of polyester polymers, which form a gel-like state. This gel is then rehydrated, resulting in. view more
Credit: Tony Z. Jia
All modern life is composed of cells, from single-celled bacteria to more complex organisms such as humans, which may contain billions or even trillions of cells, but how life came to be cellular remains uncertain. New research led by specially appointed assistant professor Tony Z. Jia at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology, along with colleagues from around the world (Japan, Malaysia, France, Czech Republic, India and the USA), shows that simple chemical compounds known as hydroxy acids, which were likely common on primitive Earth, spontaneously link together and form structures reminiscent of modern cells when dried from solution, as may have happened on or in ancient beaches or puddles. The
E-Mail
IMAGE: Scientists are at the brink of being able to detect ET Life, which was predicted to be difficult decades ago. New techniques suggest there might be clever analytical tricks using. view more
Credit: NASA
Scientists have begun the search for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System in earnest, but such life may be subtly or profoundly different from Earth-life, and methods based on detecting particular molecules as biosignatures may not apply to life with a different evolutionary history. A new study by a joint Japan/US-based team, led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has developed a machine learning technique which assesses complex organic mixtures using mass spectrometry to reliably classify them as biological or abiological.