NASA’s Preventative Measures Against Potential Martian Pathogens Although the risk is small that threatening organisms will make their way to Earth via the Martian rock samples currently being collected, NASA is taking precautions. These samples—set to arrive in the 2030s—will first be held in a receiving facility that’s “capable of safely containing the most dangerous pathogens known to science,” that also “prevents substances on Earth …
While walking her dog on the picturesque Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, high school teacher Lisa St Coeur Cormier came across something sticking out of the sand. What she discovered turned out to be extremely rare fossils (including the spine, skull and ribcage) of an unidentified animal that is believed to be 300 million years old—meaning it predates the earliest dinosaurs by 100 million …
A Battery Powered by Bacteria and Sweat Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have engineered a bacteria-based battery that can produce power from human sweat. The key to their innovation is bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacteria that can produce electricity and has been used to explore microbial batteries. However, its need to be fed a constant diet has limited its functionality. To get around …
