“A team of researchers…has constructed for the first time a synthetic cellulosome in yeast which is much more ethanol-tolerant than the bacteria in which these structures are normally found.

The yeast cellulosome could enable efficient one-step consolidated bioprocessing by maximizing the catalytic efficiency of cellulosic hydrolysis with simultaneous fermentation. The process of using these engineered yeasts can potentially make the production of bioethanol from biomass more efficient and economical….” Full Slice

“The first all-sky maps developed by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, the initial mission to examine the global interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, suggest that the galactic magnetic fields had a far greater impact on Earth’s history than previously conceived, and the future of our planet and others may depend, in part, on how the galactic magnetic fields change with time.

“The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with emissions not resembling any of the current theories or models of this never-before-seen region,”…” Full Slice

fractal globules
float through tabular cell fogs
graceful ballots cast

“…The researchers’ spectroscopic study suggests that graphene grows in the form of tiny islands built of concentric rings of carbon atoms. The islands are strongly bonded to the iridium surface at their perimeters, but are not bonded to the iridium at their centers, which causes them to bulge upward in the middle to form minuscule geodesic domes. By adjusting the conditions as the carbon is deposited on the iridium, the researchers could vary the size of the carbon domes from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers across….” Full Slice

“…”Cells cleverly separate the most active genes into their own special neighborhood, to make it easier for proteins and other regulators to reach them,”…at a finer scale, the genome adopts an unusual organization known in mathematics as a “fractal.” The specific architecture the scientists found, called a “fractal globule,” enables the cell to pack DNA incredibly tightly …”Nature’s devised a stunningly elegant solution to storing information — a super-dense, knot-free structure,”…” Full Slice

“…While the focus of the present work is in the microwave regime, in conventional optics, light reflections present a major roadblock to light-driven circuits reaching the same level of sophistication as widely used microelectronic circuits. A variety of practical applications, such as optical isolation and optical information storage, could potentially benefit from the novel and unparalleled one-way photonic behavior observed by the…team. Numerous applications that require strong interactions between light and matter could also gain from such an efficiency boost.” Full Slice

“The first demonstration of a renewable method for hydrogen production from wastewater using a microbial electrolysis system is underway…The refrigerator-sized hydrogen generator will take winery wastewater, and using bacteria and a small amount of electrical energy, convert the organic material into hydrogen…”This is a demonstration to prove we can continuously generate renewable hydrogen and to study the engineering factors affecting the system performance,”…”The hydrogen produced will be vented except for a small amount that will be used in a hydrogen fuel cell.”…” Full Slice