Tag Archives: recycle

Tiny acts of microbe justice help reveal how nature fights freeloaders

The idea of everyone in a community pitching in is so universal that even bacteria have a system to prevent the layabouts of their kind from enjoying the fruit of others’ hard work, Princeton University researchers have discovered.

Groups of the bacteria Vibrio cholerae deny loafers their unjust desserts by keeping the food generated by the community’s productive members away from V. cholerae that attempt to live on others’ leftover nutrients, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology. The researchers found that individual bacteria produce a thick coating around themselves to prevent nutrients from drifting over to the undeserving. Alternatively, the natural flow of fluids over the surface of bacterial communities can wash away excess food before the freeloaders can indulge. (more…)

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New Advance in Biofuel Production

Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop Enzyme-free Ionic Liquid Pre-treatment

Advanced biofuels – liquid fuels synthesized from the sugars in cellulosic biomass – offer a clean, green and renewable alternative to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Bringing the costs of producing these advanced biofuels down to competitive levels with petrofuels, however, is a major challenge. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a bioenergy research center led by Berkeley Lab, have taken another step towards meeting this challenge with the development of a new technique for pre-treating cellulosic biomass with ionic liquids – salts that are liquids rather than crystals at room temperature. This new technique requires none of the expensive enzymes used in previous ionic liquid pretreatments, and makes it easier to recover fuel sugars and recycle the ionic liquid. (more…)

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Digital Media vs. Print Media

When you wake up in the morning, what’s one of the first things that you do? Do you head outside to pick the paper off the stoop, or do you hop online to see the latest news bits from overnight? Well, people still do both, but digital media is quickly becoming a very popular option.

Up-to-date Information

Sure, the newspaper tells you what is going on “now” in the general sense; however, the Internet can literally give you a play by play as a story is unfolding. People choose digital media because they can find out what is happening at that exact moment. Furthermore, they don’t have to wait for the newspaper to come; they can log on to the web at any time via a computer or smart phone. (more…)

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