An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” describes the creation of a semi-synthetic organism. A team at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, California, led by Floyd Romesberg created a bacterium of the Escherichia coli family with a modified genome that contains two artificial nucleotides in addition to the four existing in the DNA.
An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” describes a way to activate the superconducting properties of graphene. A team of researchers from St John’s College at Cambridge University found a way to activate those properties that exist as potential but had remained hidden. The most interesting thing is that graphene can become a superconductor at room temperature.
The novel “The Devil’s Nebula” by Eric Brown was published for the first time in 2012. It’s the first book of the Weird Space series.
Ed Carew is the commander of an old starship and along with his pilot Lania and his engineer Jeb lives at the limits of the Expansion’s laws. He was hired to retrieve a precious work of art in a museum abandoned on a planet now part of the Vetch aliens’ space but in fact was also paid to do something else.
The mission gets greatly complicated by the presence of Vetch but especially when Ed Carew and his crew leave the planet and are intercepted by Expansion starships. The three of them are captured and sentenced to death for various crimes committed in the course of their lives and to stop their execution must agree to carry out a dangerous mission.
In recent days at the 25th Plant and Animal Genome Conference held in San Diego the details of the sequencing of the DNA of arabica coffee – species Coffea arabica – were presented. Among the species of coffee it’s the dominant one making up about 70% of the drink’s production. A team of researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) made the first public sequencing in order to contribute to improving its quality and develop varieties adapted to climate change.
An article published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” describes a research on the climate consequences of the impact caused by the large asteroid that struck the Earth about 66 million years ago. A team of researchers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) created computer models to simulate these events and concluded that the atmospheric dispersion of sulfuric acid droplets may have darkened the planet’s skies resulting in the surface cooling.
