Latest news with #ScienceforAll
The Hindu
03-07-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Science for All: Moondust is less harmful than earth's dust — but don't take a deep breath
(This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) You wake up, brush, shower, dress up, grab breakfast, put on your shoes, and step out. It's a new morning and the sun is up, so you take a deep breath — and the city air serves you a gross reminder of why it's become a terrible idea to take deep breaths. Suddenly you're coughing, tearing up, and sneezing. Your nose rapidly becomes blocked. This is perhaps the least of what city dust does to the human body. The particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres, or PM2.5, in particular has been linked to a variety of medical conditions, including those affecting newborns and reducing human lifespan. Unfortunately for you, even if you move to a moon base in future, you'd be ill-advised to take a deep breath of your cabin's air if it has moondust suspended in it. According to a study published recently in Life Sciences in Space Research, moondust is less harmful than the particulate matter we frequently encounter on the earth. However, both our urban dust and moondust seem capable of damaging certain lung cells. The study's authors, from institutes in Macquarie Park, Sydney, and Ultimo in Australia, used two laboratory-generated versions of lunar dust — called LMS-1 and LHS-1, mimicking dust from the moon's mare and highland regions, respectively — in their experiments. During NASA's Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, astronauts complained of lunar dust sticking to their spacesuits and irritating their eyes and lungs. Lunar dust is statically charged, so it tends to stick to surfaces the same way a balloon rubbed against hair will cling to a wall right after. The researchers used two groups of cells to represent the bronchial and the alveolar parts of human lungs. The bronchi transport air into the lungs while the alveoli are the sacs where the air exchanges oxygen with the blood. The researchers found that large particles from both LMS-1 and LHS-1 moondust were toxic and inflammatory only at extremely high concentrations. The smaller particles in both dust types that a human could breathe deep into the lungs were found to be less toxic to bronchial cells than PM2.5 particles on the earth are known to be. This said, both the moondust simulants and earth dust caused alveolar cells to die. The study is important because space agencies like NASA in the U.S. and CNSA in China are planning to send astronauts to the moon. NASA's Artemis II mission is currently scheduled for 2026 and will carry four astronauts in a lunar flyby mission as an early step to 'long-term return' to the natural satellite. In future, as the human population on the moon builds up, both engineers designing and operating lunar habitats and medical workers expected to attend to the people inhabiting them will gain by understanding how moondust affects the human body. From the Science pages Question Corner How does the material of a string affect an instrument's sound? Find out here Flora and fauna
The Hindu
26-06-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Science for all: New research opens doors to upcycling plastic waste into paracetamol
(This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have found a way to make a classic lab reaction, called the Lossen rearrangement, happen safely inside living Escherichia coli cells — thus opening a potential new path to recycling plastic waste into valuable products. The team started with a bacterium that couldn't make para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), a small molecule every cell needs to build DNA. When the mutant strain was given PABA, it grew. Without it, the strain was stalled. Researchers fed the cells a synthetic compound, simply called 1, that would release PABA only if a Lossen rearrangement reaction took place. After 72 hours at 37 degrees C, the bacteria cultures turned cloudy, proving the reaction, and therefore PABA production, had taken place inside the flask. The cloudiness test allowed the authors to track chemistry and cell health at the same time. The reaction worked even when the researchers added no metal catalyst. They were able to figure out with more tests that ordinary phosphate ions, which are present in most cell media and inside cells themselves, quietly catalysed the rearrangement reaction. High-performance liquid-chromatography measurements revealed that active, growing cells sped up the reaction up even more. The team also found that none of the tested substrates harmed cell growth at realistic concentrations, meaning they were not toxic to the bacteria. Compound 1 was easy to make from terephthalic acid, which is the basic unit of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) soda bottles. This means the Lossen rearrangement reaction happening inside the bacteria could consume (a form of) plastic to produce a different, newly useful compound. The researchers shredded a used bottle, hydrolysed it to terephthalic acid, and converted that into PET-1. The mutant E. coli strain grew just as well on PET-1 as on the lab-grade material, directly linking plastic-waste upcycling to biomass production and hinting at future bioremediation strategies. Because the rescued cells stayed healthy, the team next checked whether they could perform additional tasks while the Lossen rearrangement reaction ticked on in the background. Indeed, cultures containing Compound 1 smoothly reduced dimethyl maleate and keto-acrylates to their saturated products using native bacterial enzymes — proof that abiotic and biotic chemistries could cooperate in one setting. Finally, the authors built a two-enzyme genetic pathway: a fungal hydroxylase turned PABA into 4-aminophenol while a bacterial N-acetyl-transferase capped it with an acetyl group to yield paracetamol, the highly popular pain-relieving drug. In fact, the researchers were able to convert up to 92% of PET-1 into paracetamol in one simple brew. From the Science pages Question Corner Why is the El Niño so hard to predict? Find out here Flora and fauna
The Hindu
20-06-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Science for All: Krill don't have jet lag, thanks to their circadian rhythm
(This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) Krill (Euphausia superba) are transparent marine organisms. Each krill is the size of a matchbox but they travel the open seas in swarms of several thousands. They are prey to millions of seals, penguins, and whales in the Southern Ocean, a rapidly warming water body whose temperature has significant effects on tropical rainfall. All organisms have an internal clock called the circadian rhythm that syncs with the day/night cycle. If the natural cycle is interrupted, so is the rhythm. This is why you have jet lag. Yet krill have been found to have a circadian rhythm that ticks on even when their days and nights are distorted. Researchers from Germany and the U.K. recently reported this finding in eLife. Every day, krill move to the surface of the ocean and back down to feed and fend off predators. This collective swimming is called diel vertical migration (DVM). They tend to move towards the surface at night and to the depths during the day. The study took a closer look at the mechanism that drives DVM. 'We know that krill move up and down in the water column each day which also has important implications on nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration, but we don't know what mechanism governs this behaviour. This study sheds light on that, and will help us better understand and conserve this incredible species,' Matthew Savoca, a research scientist at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University and who wasn't involved in the study, said. In 2024, the team developed a device called Activity Monitor for Aquatic Zooplankter (AMAZE). It's an observation incubator with 80-cm-long acrylic glass columns. Laser light is passed through the columns. When krill swim through them, they interrupt the laser light, which a detector records to track the krill's movement. For the experiment, the researchers collected krill from the Bransfield Strait and the South Orkney Islands located about 800 km and 1,250 km southeast, respectively, from the bottom tip of South America. They divided the samples into two groups. The first was immediately transferred to AMAZE, which simulated the natural durations of day and night around the islands. Some days were short (5.5 hours) and others much longer (15 hours). Then the krill were placed in complete darkness for 4-8 days. The scientists observed the second group of kill in their natural conditions using hydroacoustics, then they were moved to AMAZE and kept in darkness. Researchers studied the second group in conditions corresponding to the four seasons. Krill's DVM activity increased towards the night and decreased during morning hours. Notably, the scientists found that when DVM began or ended was fixed to daytime and nighttime whenever they happened, rather than to particular hours of the day. In fact the krill maintained the same DVM patterns even in complete darkness. If the days were long, the krill fed for fewer hours. And if nights were longer, they fed for longer and in phases. As krill move across the ocean via currents, they influence the lives of many other creatures around them. Lukas Hüppe, a doctoral researcher at the University of Würzburg in Germany and coauthor of the study, expressed optimism about the findings' implications for the Southern Ocean ecosystem, which centres around this species. 'The findings provide novel insights into the mechanistic underpinnings of daily and seasonal timing in Antarctic krill, a marine pelagic key species, endemic to a high-latitude region,' the researchers wrote in their paper. 'Mechanistic studies are a prerequisite for understanding how krill adapt to their specific environment and their flexibility in responding to environmental changes.' Manaswini Vijayakumar is interning with The Hindu. From the Science pages Question Corner What is synthetic aperture radar? Find out here Flora and fauna
