The fossils of 3.4-billion-year-old microbes that used sulfur compounds for energy have been found in rocks from Western Australia, reports a paper published in Nature Geoscience.  David Wacey,…

Thousands of tons of toxic mercury are released into the environment each year and much of it ends up in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, - and then enters the food chain,…

Researchers searching for new ways to make hydrogen a viable part of our energy future have a new place to look; a natural example of a living hydrogen-powered 'fuel cell'. During a recent…

Creating sperm or egg cells in the laboratory has been tried several times in the past few years. The reasons for this range from a better understanding of the fundamentals of the reproductive…

More bizarre news out of Florida. What do you think this has in common with this? If you answered, "they both look really disturbing," then I can't disagree. But the more pertinent answer is that…

Our own body is covered with entire (albeit tiny) ecosystems. Incredible numbers of bacterial strains live in and on the human body. And the belly button seems to be a place extraordinarily rich in…

Lasers (acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) were invented roughly half a century ago, and in that time, they have found their way to industry, medicine, all kinds of…

While shopping earlier today, I came across these:   Many of you will, I expect, have heard of the recent E.Coli outbreak in Germany.  Today, we learn from BBC news German tests link bean…

Think you can't live without caffeine?  Some bacteria can live on caffeine.   Previous studies discovered caffeine-degrading bacteria, but new research one goes a step further and…

Preliminary data from DNA sequencing performed in cooperation with the University Hospital Muenster, Germany, on the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM) strongly suggests that the bacterium at the root…