Amsterdam’s Canals by Bacterial Light

Italian architect Carlo Morsiani would like to take Amsterdam’s canals from dark, dank and filled with old bikes, to brilliant, blue, and presumably still filled with old bikes. Morsiani recently proposed adding bioluminescent members of Photobacterium to the city’s waterways. With the canals stocked with motion-sensitive bacteria, any passing boats or accidental swimmers would leave a hazy blue trail in their wake.

The idea is not entirely untenable – bioluminescent organisms congregate in such density in Vieques, Puerto Rico, that the bay has become a tourist attraction. Since these tropical organisms produce only weak light, Morsiani has a lot of genetic modification to work out before these bacteria can adjust to life in Europe. Add glowing canals to buildings coated with Photobacterium and transgenic streetlight trees, and we might never have to change a lightbulb again.

Story via The Pop-Up City.

Bacteria Inspire New Magnetic Hard Drive

Certain types of bacteria can navigate using magnetic nanoparticles as tiny compasses. Researchers at the University of Leeds have extracted the protein that controls this process and applied it to computing. Typical hard drives use use “granular computing”, while this new method relies on bit-pattern media, where each miniscule magnetic square on a surface can store one bit.

The team is close to recreating the data density of modern hard drives, and hope eventually to be able to store one terabyte of date per square inch – more advanced than any existing hard drive. According to Sarah Stanilan, who lead the research, “We’re using and abusing nature because it’s had billions of years to do all of its experiments through evolution, so there is almost no point in us starting from scratch.”

Photo via Downhilldom. Story via New Scientist.

Regrowing Bones with Silk

Time to add another superpower to insect silk, which already includes bulletproof skin and implantable microelectronics. Recent research indicates that silk may be an ideal candidate for creating strong, flexible scaffolding for re-growing bones. Scientists used a chemical process to break silk strands down into nano-scale fibers that were used to reinforce a silk protein scaffold. By mimicking the natural roughness and stiffness of bone, this biodegradable structure helps to encourage vigorous bone growth. While certain biomaterials are at the center of research into bone regeneration, few of these existing materials can match silk’s toughness, especially in load-bearing grafts.

First “Farm”aceuticals Grown in Carrots

The United States Food and Drug Administration recently approved Elelyso, the first drug to be grown in genetically modified plant cells. Produced in carrot cells, this drug helps to treat the symptoms of Gaucher disease, a genetic disorder that causes bruising, anemia and low blood platelets.

Israeli scientists were able to insert a gene that codes for a human enzyme into carrot cells, causing the cells to produce the same protein that Gaucher patients lack. This new method should help prevent drug shortages that have affected Gaucher sufferers in the past, as well as being cheaper and less prone to infection than animal cells. Soon mothers may be telling their children to eat carrots, not just for better eyesight, but for better health across the board.

Story via Nature. Photo via Flickr user Loose Ends

The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Suicidal?

At Next Nature, we often argue that “our image of nature as static, balanced and harmonious is naive and up for reconsideration.” Paleontologist Peter J. Ward happens to agree. In a challenge to the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that all life functions as nurturing, super-organismal “mother”, Ward argues that life on earth has a death wish that would do Freud proud.

Ward claims that, contrary to popular images of cataclysmic asteroids and volcanoes, most mass extinctions on earth were set in motion by microbes.  2.4 billion years ago, microscopic cyanobacteria emerged newly equipped with photosynthesis and triggered the Great Oxygenation Event. While great for aerobic organisms, it was fatal news for anaerobic life, which had up until then had free reign over the planet. The sudden release of oxygen is also likely what set off the Huronian Glaciation, a deadly “snowball earth” that kept the planet locked in ice for 300 million years.

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In the Future, We Will Mine for Plastic

Peak oil, the point when petroleum extraction is at its maximum, may have already occurred sometime in the last few years. Not only affecting whether we drive a Humvee or not, engineer Debbia Chachra reminds us that peak oil also means peak plastic.

Not limited to water bottles and cheap toys, plastic is vital to medicine, industry, agriculture, and transportation. From the soles of your shoes to the carpeting in your house, it’s harder to find an object that doesn’t incorporate petrochemicals than one that does. “Plastic,” Chachra writes, “is so ubiquitous that it’s almost invisible.”

Plastic’s durability means that it winds up everywhere, welcome or not: In the bellies of albatross, in giant trash vortexes in the pacific, on beaches and in our blood. Although certain microbes may eventually evolve to eat plastic, the truth is that most of our plastic waste is going to stick around  for thousands of years.

This resistance to degradation, Chachra argues, is a hidden asset. Millions of tons of petroplastic are buried in landfills, waiting for the day when the cost of excavating them becomes less than the cost of squeezing the last drops oil from the ground. Although we may develop workable alternatives, petroplastic’s killer combo of persistence, moldability, and sterilizability will make it valuable for centuries to come.

Chachra envisions a future where “cool, slick petroplastics will become a repository of warm nostalgia. I like to imagine the Brooklyn-hipsters-of-the-future, on their rooftops, using vodka and bitter almond oil to make artisanal polyethylene.”

Humans Caused Mass Extinctions Before There Were Even Humans

Humans and other hominids have a reputation for bringing about mass extinctions. Homo erectus has been blamed for the disappearance of many African carnivores, our ancestors likely caused the Pleistocene extinctions, and modern humans are currently embroiled in the midst of the sixth great extinction event.

New evidence indicates that hominids have been causing significant extinctions far earlier than ever thought. Australopithecus afarensis, of Lucy fame, has been implicated in the disappearance of 23 species of carnivores that prowled Africa around 2 million years ago. Omnivores and small to mid-sized carnivores all bowed out at the same time tool-using A. afarensis showed up, leaving only hyper-specialized carnivores such as lions and hyenas.

Lars Werdelin, of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, theorizes that Australopithecines were such efficient scavengers that they knocked out any species that relied on part-time carcass theft. Groups of A. afarensis with stone tools likely were enough to scare away civets or large, predatory otters that competed for meat. This finding is all the more the remarkable becuase Australopithecines’ brains and bodies were only slighter larger than those of modern chimpanzees. Human-style social living and tool use, it seems, have made us top competitors from the beginning.

Rotund Rats, Fat Cats and Chubby Chimps

It’s nothing new that humanity is getting chubbier by the day. What’s surprising is that we’re bringing our animals along for the ride. A meta-analysis of animal weight has revealed that, over the last several decades, creatures as diverse as feral rats and laboratory primates have been getting fatter.

For some of the species in the study, these trends have obvious causes. Dogs and cats are moving less and watching more tv, just like their owners. ‘Synanthropes’, animals like pigeons and rats that live in association with human communities, are thriving on dumpsters filled with our calorie-dense discards. Without natural predators keep them on their toes, it makes sense that city rats living on fatty, sugary foods will turn into the rodent equivalents of Howard Taft.

It’s harder to explain weight gain in lab animals. Creatures used in research settings like chimpanzees, macaques and vervets all live in controlled environments where they’re insulted from the charms of Krispy Kreme and HBO. These zaftig animals typify the complex state of obesity science. One day obesity is reducible to maxims – “eat less, exercise more” – while the next it balloons outwards to encompass hidden factors like viruses, thrifty genes, drifty genes, and chemical obesogens.

Yes, There Is Now a TV Channel Just for Dogs

DogTV, a new TV channel available in the US, offers 24/7 programming for the modern dog. There’s busy streets, computer-animated moths and frolicking, cross-breed hounds. The channel promises to relax anxious dogs and to entertain bored ones.

DogTV may be saying more about our relationship with our dogs than it does about the dogs themselves. We’ve transfered civilization’s discontents onto our pets. Dogs have gotten depressed and fat along with their owners. They spend much of their lives indoors and inactive. And now, just like us, they can chill in front of the tube as a surrogate for ‘real life’.

For more mutt-friendly videos, check out DogTV’s YouTube channel.

Creating the World’s Cutest Fruit

Just like corn, bananas, and essentially any other plant we cultivate, the Cutie mandarin is the result of a concerted effort to produce an ideal food. Mandarin oranges come from wild orange trees that grew in India, possibly as long as three millennia ago. Introduced to the West in the 19th century, the mandarin has since been carefully bred, even irradiated, to bring tasty new mutations to market.

The Cutie’s peel comes off like zipper. The fruit is small, seedless, and sugar-sweet. Gone is the hassle of wrangling with a tough peel, or spitting out pips with every bite. The Cutie is, in fact, about as close to a candy bar as a fruit can get. There’s even a saccharine marketing campaign to go along with them: Cuties are made for kids.

The mandarin’s perfection, however, dispenses with a relationship that’s as old as flowering plants. Like all citrus, Cuties produce seeds when they’re pollinated. To produce a dependable snack, Cutie growers must protect their orchards from bees and other pollinators via nets, physical isolation, or other means. Effectively fencing out bees from huge sources of nectar, this widespread farming practice may be a contributing factor to hive collapse. Developers of the Tango, another mandarin variety, have bypassed this issue by producing a completely sterile fruit.

Via Smithsonian Magazine.

A Space-Faring Backup for Earth’s Biota

Elon Musk, the chief executive of spacecraft company SpaceX, believes we need to reinvigorate popular interest in space colonization, not just to boldly go where no man has gone before, but to save life from extinction. In an interview with Nature, Musk asserts that “I think we need planetary redundancy to protect against the unlikely possibility of natural or man-made Armageddon.” He joins recent pleas from physicist Steven Hawking and science journalist William Burrows, who have both argued that the only way to save Earth is to leave it.

While it sounds far-out, there’s nothing more practical than spreading copies of Earth’s life and cultures through the universe. As meteors, global glaciations, and a certain bipedal species of ape have shown, Earth is exquisitely vulnerable to catastrophe. We already have terrestrial storage for life’s diversity, including San Diego’s Frozen Zoo, and the Svalbard Seed Vault, which has 400,000 seed samples of food crops. A backup in orbit, on the moon, or on a new planet is the next logical step.

Image via Atlas Obscura.

Real Vanilla is Natural, But Natural Vanilla is Fake

What most gourmands would define as “real” and “natural” vanilla flavoring is simple: Vanilla beans steeped in alcohol. But vanillin, the chemical responsible for vanilla’s taste and flavor, is a far more complicated beast. Chemically identical to real vanilla, artificial vanilla can be made from clove oil, pine bark, coal tar, bran, even cow dung. Until fairly recently, the chemical lignin, derived from wood pulp, was the most common way of synthesizing vanillin. Most artificial vanilla is now derived from guaiacol, a chemical derived from creosote or Guaiacum flowers.

The United States Food and Drug Administration has thrown a hint of confusion (and a note of lychee) into the cut-and-dry definitions of “real” and “fake” vanilla. Any flavor derived from edible sources can be labeled a natural flavor. Therefore, vanillin made from bacterial fermentation of corn or rice bran is a “natural” vanilla flavor – just not “real” vanilla flavor. However, vanillin made from cow dung, while natural in all senses, is not legally “natural”, because dung normally isn’t a source of food.

If this legalese has given you a headache, try some real/natural/artificial vanilla aromatherapy. Most people prefer the fake stuff anyway, if they can even taste the difference at all.

Via Edible Geography.

A Computer that Nods and Waves When You Do

Ever wish you could express yourself better over Skype? Tired of being a disconnected head-in-a-box? A team at Stanford University has rigged a Mac computer screen to shake its screen when you shake your head, to nod, and to track other people’s movements around the room. An added robotic arm can make gestures more emphatic, or knock on the table for attention. These fairly simple hacks had a noticeable effect on participants – they rated the remote interactions to be “more friendly, less dominant, and more involved.” Someday, full-body physical avatars could facilitate teleconferencing, and help keep you out of morning traffic.

Via New Scientist.

Artificial Islands for a Tsunami-Proof Japan

Keiichiro Sako of Sako Architects has proposed constructing giant, drum-shaped islands on dry land as a means to protect residents of Tohoku from future tsunamis. The elevated disks come equipped with renewable energy sources in case of emergency, and gates that automatically close after a tsunami warning. While one town is already making a move to install an “island”, the cost and culture may prove prohibitive for wide-scale implementation. With a price tag of 20 billion yen, and a futuristic look, residents of conservation coastal towns may not appreciate the design.

Via Pruned and New Scientist.

Bunny Doesn’t Grow on Trees

Having trouble getting the kids to eat their fruits and vegetables? Try turning their 5-a-day into a trendy, collectible toy. We’ve seen Buddha fruit and square watermelons before, but never anything with as much vinyl-art cache as I Like to Eat, a custom Labbit toy by Motorboat.

Peculiar image of the week. Thanks to Jeremyriad for the heads-up.

Watch Out Whales, Humans Want Your Krill

Krill, those tiny members of the ocean’s planktonic community, have an importance disproportionate to their size. They are a vital food for whales, penguins and increasingly, humans. Demand for krill-based animal feed and 0mega-3 fatty acids is leading to a “gold rush” in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica.

Harvesting krill is the outcome of a decades-long trend of “fishing down the food web“. After humans decimated large oceanic organisms like tuna and swordfish, global fisheries have turned to smaller and less desirable species. Lobster, for instance, was once fed to prisoners, while cod was once so plentiful it was used as fertilizer. Now, fisheries are increasingly snapping up ‘bait fish’ like anchovies, mackerel and menhaden. The fact that commercial fishermen are now turning to krill, even jellyfish, indicates we may be scooping up the last and least tasty fish in the sea.

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The Sound of Silence? An Aircraft Engine.

Silence is a thing of the past. Just as no place has been left untouched by climate change, there is no place on earth that is not ‘polluted’ by the sounds of planes, ships, and cars. In Alaska’s Denali State Park, as true a ‘wilderness’ as any other, the sound of an airplane engine can be heard around 80 times each day. In the ocean, marine mammals fight to be heard above the sound of  and military sonar and ships’ propellers. Whales and dolphins that live on shipping lanes exhibit elevated stress hormones. Songbirds, such as these robins, have adapted to sing louder to compete with traffic, or have switched to singing at night when the human population is asleep.

The last of the auditory wilderness disappeared in 1949. Scientists are now concerned that the sounds animals rely on for survival – the skitter of a prey species hidden in its burrow, the snaps and croaks of a coral reef – are being drowned out in the cacophony of the Anthropocene.

Adorably Endangered Kitten Born to Domestic Cat Surrogate

“Crystal”, an endangered black-footed cat, was recently born to a domestic cat surrogate at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species. The birth was achieved using a previously frozen embryo, marking the first successful implementation of this method for this species. Last year, the center also pioneered the first in-vitro fertilization of black-footed cats. First mice, now cats, maybe Neanderthals next.

Story via the Times Picayune.