Poetic Justice: Filter Takes Machinery from Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria to Remove Antibiotics From Water
The world is awash in antibiotics. We take them to fight off the bacteria that mean to colonize us. We feed them to animals to prevent the outbreak of disease in densely packed factory-farming operations. Even many of our cleaning and body care products, controversially, now contain them.
But many antibiotics don’t get fully metabolized within humans or animals and, through excretion, find their way into waste and surface waters. It’s a major environmental concern whose full ecological implications still aren’t clear.
And the problem creates a vicious cycle. Evolution gives our microbial adversaries the strategic advantage—the ability to adapt to our weapons and render them harmless. So we engage in a microscopic arms race, battering increasing numbers of antibiotic-resistant bugs with more and more drug compounds to keep them at bay.
So you could call it a small case of poetic justice when researchers figure out how to use the cellular machinery that renders some bacteria drug-resistant to reclaim antibiotics from contaminated water.
May 22nd, 2013
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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists are developing an electrode with lots of surface area to efficiently purify water. This image, taken at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, shows what is called polypyrrole conductive polymer-coated carbon nanotubes grown on a carbon fiber. They say that these coated nanotubes could be used as an electrochemically switched ion-exchange electrode for water purification. Conductive polypyrrole is also being investigated for use in fuel cells, sensors and electronics. Larger image available here.
May 21st, 2013
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Robotic Fire Ants May Lead the March Into Future Search and Rescue Missions
For those unfortunate enough to be trapped in a caved-in mine or under the rubble of a collapsed building, the chance of being rescued largely depends upon trained humans and dogs. The equipment they may be outfitted with—thermal imaging sensors, carbon dioxide detectors and flexible video cameras—may also provide some limited help.
But those buried too deeply for searchers to detect them must put all hope of rescue upon the slim possibility that first responders uncover them by chance. For this reason, researchers are trying to develop search and rescue robots that could vastly improve the odds for victims trapped underground.
“The dream and goal in this field is to turn a robot into a multifunctional device capable of moving everywhere,” says Daniel Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We’re seeking inspiration for how teams of little robots could self-organize to create structures that allow them to efficiently and effectively move around in nasty environments.”
May 21st, 2013
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Laser sintering is 3-D printing on steroids. The process is another form of additive manufacturing that shoots laser beams at metal powders to fuse particles together. As the powder bed is lowered, a new layer of particles is put on and then fused onto the emerging shape below it, slowly building up metal components and prototypes. The process, being employed by GE to make jet engine parts, produces little waste and allows for bespoke component designs on demand. See the video here.
May 20th, 2013
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