Black is the New Green

Posted on August 27, 2010May 28, 2020 by admin

Conservation Magazine, August 27, 2010

Win-win solutions can be hard to come by. But if Cornell University soil scientist Johannes Lehmann is right, there may be a way to lower our emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, save millions of people’s lives, and significantly boost the productivity of the world’s farms—all at the same time. And, most remarkably, his strategy is based on a deceptively simple technology invented 8,000 years ago.

Lehmann’s idea starts with organic leftovers that people normally burn or leave to rot—forest brush, corn husks, nutshells, and even chicken manure. When this stuff decays or goes up in smoke, it releases vast amounts of heat-trapping carbon into the atmosphere.

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Timothy Lu

Posted on August 25, 2010July 18, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

MIT Technology Review, August 25, 2010

Link

At Harvard Medical School, many of Timothy Lu’s patients were being attacked by carpets of microbial goo. They had “really bad infections,” Lu says. “Patients with cystic fibrosis, people getting infections in their catheters. All caused by biofilms.”

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Malaria, Sea Grapes, and Kidney Stones: A Tale of Parasites Lost

Posted on August 24, 2010July 18, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

If you’re looking for a gang of vicious killers, look no further than the Apicomplexans. These single-celled protozoans cause death and destruction across the animal kingdom. They infect everything from butterflies to people. Their diseases include Texas Cattle Fever, toxoplasmosis, and the scourge that makes Plasmodium the baddest Apicomplexan of them all, malaria. Continue reading “Malaria, Sea Grapes, and Kidney Stones: A Tale of Parasites Lost” →

Podcasts: Microbe Time and Minimal Life

Posted on August 19, 2010July 18, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

I’ve got two podcasts at Meet the Scientist to tell you about.

The first is a conversation with Nancy Moran, a Yale biologist who studies microbes that become essential to the survival of their hosts. In some cases, these symbionts lose just about all their DNA except for the genes that they use to be useful to their host–leading to the smallest genomes in nature.

The second is a conversation with Susan Golden of UCSD on the subject of time. We humans have a body clock, of course, but so do some bacteria. Why does a microbe need to know the time of day, when its lifespan can be far shorter? That would be like our body clock running a cycle of 1,000 years. Listen to find out.

My new brain column: Snapping neurons

Posted on August 18, 2010July 18, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

My new column about the brain has just gone up on the Discover web site. In it, I take a look at what happens when our brains get stretched, smushed, and otherwise injured. Brains don’t break like bones or rip like skin. Their injuries lurk down in the realm of molecules. And perhaps that’s where scientists will find a way to treat brain injuries. Check it out.