Fungi are awesome

Plastic-eating fungi found in Amazon may solve landfill problems

Original article in Applied and Environmental Biology by Russel et al. in 2011:
Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi

Photo credit: Sabrina Miso

---

You might like:

I was wondering what mollusks were for...	Gorilla genome sequence	Not worms but  legless amphibians!

To view all the posts of the category "What's new in Science" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Sentence of the day (3)

"The Ideal Postdoc Duration: Get Out Before You Get Old"

Fund in a nice article by Alan Marnett wondering the ideal duration of a postdoc.

To view all the "Sentence of the day" click here

Lamp algae - Pierre Calleja

After the cyborg molluscs, the lamp algae that will save the world!!

Pierre Calleja has invented something truly remarkable—a light powered by algae that absorbs in the air—at the rate of 1 ton PER YEAR, or what a tree absorbs over its entire lifetime! The microalgae streetlamp has the potential to provide significantly cleaner air in urban areas and revolutionize the cityscape.

---

You might like:

I was wondering what mollusks were for...	Gorilla genome sequence	Not worms but  legless amphibians!

To view all the posts of the category "What's new in Science" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

I was wondering what molluscs were for ...

Here is the answer:

Photo credit: JACS

"The dozen or so brown garden snails crawling around the plastic, moss-filled terrarium in Evgeny Katz’s laboratory look normal, but they have a hidden superpower: they produce electricity."

Richard Van Noorden explains the phenomenon in an article in Nature "Cyborg snails power up".

"Molluscs with implanted biofuel cells produce electricity from glucose".

More information: 

RV Noorder Nature "Cyborg snails power up" (2012)

Halámková, L., Halámek, J., Bocharova, V., Szczupak, A., Alfonta, L., & Katz, E. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2012).

Rasmussen, M., Ritzmann, R. E., Lee, F., Pollack, A.J. & Scherson, D. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134,1458–1460 (2012).
Sato, H., Cohen, D. & Maharbiz, M. M. in CMOS Biomicrosystems: Where Electrons Meet Biology (ed. K. Iniewski) (John Wiley and Sons, 2011).
Cinquin, P. et al. PLoS One 5, e10476 (2010).
Mano, N., Mao, F. & Heller, A. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 6588–6594 (2003).

And a bit of humor!

---

You might like:

Gorilla genome sequence	Not worms but  legless amphibians!	Brown bears extinct in Austria

To view all the posts of the category "What's new in Science" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Did you know? Today is ... Hōnen Matsuri

Photo credit: http://www.pottyfactory.com/2009/05/honen-matsuri-festival.html

Hōnen Matsuri (豊年祭 Harvest Festival) is a fertility festival celebrated every year on March 15 in Japan. Hōnen means prosperous yearin Japanese, implying a rich harvest, while a matsuri is a festival. The Hōnen festival and ceremony celebrate the blessings of a bountiful harvest and all manner of prosperity and fertility.

The best known of these festivals takes place in the town of Komaki, just north of Nagoya City. The festival's main features are Shinto priests playing musical instruments, a parade of ceremonially garbed participants, all-you-can-drink sake, and a 280 kg (620 pound), 2.5 meter (96 inch)-long wooden phallus. The wooden phallus is carried from a shrine called Shinmei Sha (in even-numbered years) on a large hill or from Kumano-sha Shrine (in odd-numbered years), to a shrine called Tagata Jinja.

The festival starts with celebration and preparation at 10:00 a.m. at Tagata Jinja, where all sorts of foods and souvenirs (mostly phallus-shaped or related) are sold. Sake is also passed out freely from large wooden barrels. At about 2:00 p.m. everyone gathers at Shinmei Sha for the start of the procession. Shinto priests say prayers and impart blessings on the participants and mikoshi, as well as on the large wooden phallus, which are to be carried along the parade route.

When the procession makes its way down to Tagata Jinja the phallus in its mikoshi is spun furiously before it is set down and more prayers are said. Everyone then gathers in the square outside Tagata Jinja and waits for the mochi nage, at which time the crowd is showered with small rice cakes which are thrown down by the officials from raised platforms. The festival concludes at about 4:30 p.m.

Video of this year festival:

More pictures:

Photo credit: http://www.pbase.com/xerius/image/75721042

Photo credit: http://thejetpacker.com/where-to-travel-in-march-the-worlds-best-and-weirdest-festivals-concerts-and-celebrations/

Photo credit: http://pjwstk2.blogspot.com/2010/04/things-then-and-now-japan-part2.html

Source: wikipedia

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Sentence of the day (2)

"Publish or perish has been replaced by fund or famish"

Fund in an article published in Science March 9:
The Economic Logic of U.S. Science
M Feldman Science 335, 9 March 2012: DOI: 10.1126/science.1217823
Article about this book: How Economics Shapes Science by Paula Stephan Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 383 pp.

To view all the "Sentence of the day" click here

Calls for Marie Curie individual Fellowships IIF, IOF, IEF are now open!

The fellowships IIF, IEF and IOF are now open!
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/people

More information about the fellowships in a previous post here: http://www.become-a-scientist.com/2012/02/marie-curie-fellowship.html

Gorilla genome sequence

Dr Richard Durbin and collaborators reported yesterday (March 7) online in Nature their recent work on Hominid evolution*.

"Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence"

Photo Credit: PLoS Biology Vol. 3/11/2005, e385 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030385 

The authors analyzed gorilla and all extant great ape genera genomes. They revealed that genetic similarities among humans and the apes are more complex than expected.

Abstract

Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human–chimpanzee and human–chimpanzee–gorilla speciation events at approximately 6 and 10 million years ago. In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression. A comparison of protein coding genes reveals approximately 500 genes showing accelerated evolution on each of the gorilla, human and chimpanzee lineages, and evidence for parallel acceleration, particularly of genes involved in hearing. We also compare the western and eastern gorilla species, estimating an average sequence divergence time 1.75 million years ago, but with evidence for more recent genetic exchange and a population bottleneck in the eastern species. The use of the genome sequence in these and future analyses will promote a deeper understanding of great ape biology and evolution.

The article: A Scally et al. 2012 Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence Nature 483, 169–175 (08 March 2012) doi:10.1038/nature10842
Published online 07 March 2012

---

You might like:

Not worms but  legless amphibians!	Brown bears extinct in Austria	Who was Alan Turing?

To view all the posts of the category "What's new in Science" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Sentence of the day (1)

"Overconsumption of anything is harmful, including of water and air"

Fund in an article published today in Nature by RC Cottrell (debating on the danger of sugar consumption):
Sugar: an excess of anything can harm
Richard C. Cottrell Nature 483, 158 (08 March 2012) doi:10.1038/483158dPublished online 07 March 2012

To view all the "Sentence of the day" click here

The postdoc dilemma

An interesting article published online yesterday (March 7) on nature jobs.com

"The postdoc dilemma", by Gaston Small*.

Gaston Small explains how difficult it can be to work 100% on your current postdoc project, while you still have papers (on your desk and on your conscience) of your previous work to write. Indeed, those papers would be useful for your collaborators, including young scientists like yourself, and for your future!

Balancing a career and the obligations of a full-time job can be deceptively difficult, says Gaston Small.

*The article: G Small 2012 The postdoc dilemma. Nature 483, 7388. doi:10.1038/nj7388-235a

---

You might like:

Bad Advice, Not  Young Scientists, Should Hit the Road

Scientist should blog?

Friend or foe?

To view all the posts of the category "Life of a scientist" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Funny stuff again!

Found on FB

---

You might like:

New funny scientific stuff...

Scientist self-parody

How people around us see  our work as scientist (I)

To view all the posts of the category "Scientists and humor" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!

Not worms but legless amphibians!

On February 22, Professor Sathyabhama Das Biju of Delhi University and co-researchers report a new family of amphibians in a journal of the Royal Society of London.

Photo credit: www.frogindia.org, Sathyabhama Das Biju

Since before the age of dinosaurs it has burrowed unbothered beneath the monsoon-soaked soils of remote northeast India — unknown to science and mistaken by villagers as a deadly, miniature snake. Over five years of digging through forest beds in the rain, the team has identified an entirely new family of amphibians — called chikilidae — endemic to the region but with ancient links to Africa.

"We hope when the locals see the name, and their language, being used across the world, they will understand this animal's importance and join in trying to save it," Biju said in an interview with the Associated Press. "India's biodiversity is fast depleting. We are destroying these habitats without mercy."

The caecilians are an order (Gymnophiona) of amphibians that superficially resemble earthworms or snakes. They mostly live hidden in the ground, making them the least familiar order of amphibians. The most recent classification of caecilians divides the Gymnophiona into nearly 200 species and nine families with a 10th caecilian family discovered by SD Biju et al.

Photo credit: www.frogindia.org, Sathyabhama Das Biju

Biju is the head of Systematics Lab. Frogs fascinate Biju. This fascination which started about 25 years back, has only increased with time. Biju's first profession was plant taxonomy. Following his pioneering fieldwork in the Western Ghats, he worked in the Amphibian Evolution Lab, Brussels for his PhD on Indian frogs. Biju is now in University of Delhi and leads a team of young and dynamic researchers. The Systematics Lab, that he initiated and developed, is fully equipped for amphibian research. Biju’s research interests include fieldwork, taxonomy, molecular and morphological systematics, bioacoustics and reproductive biology.

Chikilidae: A new family of legless amphibians

Abstract

The limbless, primarily soil-dwelling and tropical caecilian amphibians (Gymnophiona) comprise the least known order of tetrapods. On the basis of unprecedented extensive fieldwork, we report the discovery of a previously overlooked, ancient lineage and radiation of caecilians from threatened habitats in the underexplored states of northeast India. Molecular phylogenetic analyses of mitogenomic and nuclear DNA sequences, and comparative cranial anatomy indicate an unexpected sister-group relationship with the exclusively African family Herpelidae. Relaxed molecular clock analyses indicate that these lineages diverged in the Early Cretaceous, about 140 Ma. The discovery adds a major branch to the amphibian tree of life and sheds light on both the evolution and biogeography of caecilians and the biotic history of northeast India—an area generally interpreted as a gateway between biodiversity hotspots rather than a distinct biogeographic unit with its own ancient endemics. Because of its distinctive morphology, inferred age and phylogenetic relationships, we recognize the newly discovered caecilian radiation as a new family of modern amphibians.

Sources

. Kamei, R.G., San Mauro, D., Gower, D.J., Van Bocxlaer, I., Sherratt, E., Thomas, A., Babu. S., Bossuyt, S., Wilkinson, M. and Biju, S. D. (2012). "Discovery of a new family of amphibians from northeast India with ancient links to Africa". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: 1-6. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.0150.

. The Associated Press (2011-05-15). "New family of legless amphibians called chikilidae found in India". NY Daily News. Retrieved 2012-02-24.

. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caecilian

---

You might like:

Brown bears extinct  in Austria

Who was Alan Turing?

Hibernatus

To view all the posts of the category "What's new in Science" click here

---

You find the post interesting, funny or useful? Leave a comment!