The bacterium Clostridium difficile causes antibiotic-related diarrhoea and is a growing problem in the hospital environment and elsewhere
The post The first crystal structure of Cysteine protease from Clostridium difficile has been published on Technology Org.
To celebrate 25 years (1990-2015) of exploring the Universe from low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope's cameras were used to revisit its most iconic image. The result is this sharper, wider view of the region dubbed the Pillars of Creation, first imaged by Hubble in 1995. Stars are forming deep inside the towering structures. The light-years long columns of cold gas and dust are some 6,500 light-years distant in M16, the Eagle Nebula, toward the constellation Serpens. Sculpted and eroded by the energetic ultraviolet light and powerful winds from M16's cluster of young, massive stars, the cosmic pillars themselves are destined for destruction. But the turbulent environment of star formation within M16, whose spectacular details are captured in this Hubble visible-light snapshot, is likely similar to the environment that formed our own Sun. Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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The traditional picture of Vikings is one of boatloads of hairy men pillaging their way along the coasts of Europe. Though true to some degree, this stereotype has more recently been tempered with the appreciation of Vikings as explorers and settlers, founding colonies from the Black Sea to Canada.
Left out of this picture are Viking women, but with the results of state-of-the-art DNA sequencing techniques, geneticists from Norway and Sweden have provided a picture of the Viking world that reveals women traveled to settle in far-off places. This appears to be true of born-and-bred Norsewomen as well as those from the lands where vikings traveled.
The study, published by the Royal Society, sequenced DNA from 45 Viking-age skeletons. This was mitochondrial or mtDNA which, unlike most DNA, is passed down from mother to child with no input from the father. Unless there's a mutation, children have identical mtDNA to their mothers, their mother’s mothers, and so on. If you go back far enough, every person who has ever lived falls somewhere on a single, branching, maternal family tree.
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A University of Tokyo research group led by Associate Professor Yuichiro Kato at the Graduate School of Engineering
The post Efficient optical coupling of single carbon nanotubes to photonic crystals has been published on Technology Org.
An odd, iridescent material that’s puzzled physicists for decades turns out to be an exotic state of matter
The post 45-year physics mystery shows a path to quantum transistors has been published on Technology Org.
