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Bacterial wires explain enigmatic electric currents in the seabed: Each one of these 'cable bacteria' contains a bundle of insulated wires that conduct an electric current from one end to the other. Cable bacteria explain electric currents in the seabed Electricity and seawater are usually a bad mix.

WOW!!!! don't want to even imagine what we do to these with the trailing fishing boats that sweep through sea beds with large masses .... "Our experiments showed that the electric connections in the seabed must be solid structures built by bacteria," says PhD student Christian Pfeffer, Aarhus University. He could interrupt the electric currents by pulling a thin wire horizontally through the seafloor. Just as when an excavator cuts our electric cables. In microscopes, scientists found a hitherto unknown type of long, multi-cellular bacteria that was always present when scientists measured the electric currents. "The incredible idea that these bacteria should be electric cables really fell into place when, inside the bacteria, we saw wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane," says Nils Risgaard-Petersen, Aarhus University. Kilometers of living cables The bacterium is one hundred times thinner than a hair and the whole bacterium functions as an electric cable with a number of insulated wires within it. Quite similar to the electric cables we know from our daily lives. "Such unique insulated biological wires seem simple but with incredible complexity at nanoscale," says PhD student Jie Song, Aarhus University, who used nanotools to map the electrical properties of the cable bacteria. In an undisturbed seabed more than tens of thousands kilometers cable bacteria live under a single square meter seabed. The ability to conduct an electric current gives cable bacteria such large benefits that it conquers much of the energy from decomposition processes in the seabed. Unlike all other known forms of life, cable bacteria maintain an efficient combustion down in the oxygen-free part of the seabed. It only requires that one end of the individual reaches the oxygen which the seawater provides to the top millimeters of the seabed. The combustion is a transfer of the electrons of the food to oxygen which the bacterial inner wires manage over centimeter-long distances. However, s

Pulses of light comprising around 100,000 entangled photons have been created by physicists in Germany and Russia. 

On March 28, ATV-3, named Edoardo Amaldi, docked with the ISS. Astronauts on the station took this unbelievable picture of it as it approached

More pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/ ATV docking is a bit further down the photostream.

From Garretson ... À bit tendentious but nice read ...

actually its nice - perhaps without true patriotic/military backup lots of great things will never happen!

The more money they spend on this the less they spend on destruction and killing :-) so yes, most welcome ...

Interesting Thoughts ...

good discussion on the replicability/reproducibility of scientific results (also a nice example of how to do it right... in bioinformatics at least)

"Given that for both craft electricity is supplied by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTGs) powered by the heat given off by the radioactive decay of plutonium - an energy source that decays exponentially with time - Turyshev and others suggested that the extra acceleration could be caused by thermal radiation being emitted from the craft in a preferred direction. "

This is the first time that significant pair production has been demonstrated in a structure that can be electrically self-pumped and which can form the basis for passive optical circuitry, bringing us markedly closer to complete integration of quantum optical technologies.

Very interesting article on use of neuro drugs in military ...

"One of the leading theories describing how the most energetic cosmic rays are produced may need a rethink in light of a new study by physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. The team had set out to detect the extremely energetic neutrinos that are expected to be produced alongside high-energy cosmic rays in the violent explosions that mark the deaths of massive stars - but after looking at hundreds of these explosions, no such neutrinos have been found. "

" This isn't Camilla's first adventure. The chicken has also flown on a NASA T-38 training jet, traveled onboard a helium balloon to the stratosphere over Louisiana, visited the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, and visited hundreds of elementary students in classrooms around the country. " Pretty impressive Camilla ! Congratulations :)

For a Few Dollars More ... Except for this debatable purpose, this challenge seems interesting. They've made a presentation at ESTEC one month ago about that topic : http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTEC.pdf By the way, KISS is a funny name for a space institute.

Researchers in the US have built a new type of solar cell that emits light as well as absorbs it, making it the most efficient solar cell ever developed. The efficiency of their prototype cell allows it to convert 28.6% of the Sun's energy into electricity.

well, the text is at best misleading ... the most efficient solar cells are well over 35% and approach the 40s with concentration! what they have done is to increase the limit of a single junction cell it seems to me ... still, nteresting though from text most details on how this was done are missing ... paper is not yet published, correct?

I learn of it in a workshop few weaks ago. It's on GaAs and I think that the key theoretical aspects are explained here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.1603

"Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the very forefront of open research".

Julius von Bismarck is only 28 years old, but his artistic resume is already several pages long. He's currently taking time off from school to be the new artist in residence at CERN ? the world's biggest particle physics research facility, home of the Large Hadron Collider.

Perhaps a new role for the ACT!?

very good idea - one that already Andrés had way back and a few years ago I was in contact with a group in Amsterdam who was interested but it never materialised ... any good recommendations? this Bismark guy seems to be a nice chap to have around in the office according to the photo on the site: long beard, a bottle of wine in the office and steering out of the window in search for ideas ... give the ugly office he might even want to swap it with our nice semi open space! :-)

you are late ...

"…the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas." Should that be bed reading for all aCT members? :)