Must be a "Yo Mama" joke in there somewhere.

Kombucha cultures make excellent sustainable water filters, study finds



The refreshing kombucha tea that's all the rage these days among certain global demographics might also hold the key to affordable, environmentally sustainable living membranes for water filtration, according to a recent paper published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS ES&T Water. Experiments by researchers at Montana Technological University (MTU) and Arizona State University (ASU) showed that membranes grown from kombucha cultures were better at preventing the formation of biofilms—a significant challenge in water filtration—than current commercial membranes.

As we've reported previously, you need three basic ingredients to make kombucha. Just combine tea and sugar with a kombucha culture known as a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). The culture is also known as the "mother," tea mushroom, tea fungus, or Manchurian mushroom. (Kombucha tea is believed to have originated in Manchuria, China, or possibly Russia.)

Whatever you call it, it's basically akin to a sourdough starter. A SCOBY is a firm, gel-like collection of cellulose fiber (biofilm), courtesy of the active bacteria in the culture creating the perfect breeding ground for yeast and bacteria. Dissolve the sugar in non-chlorinated boiling water, then steep some tea leaves of your choice in the hot sugar-water before discarding them.

Once the tea cools, add the SCOBY and pour the whole thing into a sterilized beaker or jar. Then cover the beaker or jar with a paper towel or cheesecloth to keep out insects, let it sit for two to three weeks, and voila! You have your own homebrewed kombucha. A new "daughter" SCOBY will be floating right at the top of the liquid (technically known in this form as a pellicle).

Beyond its popularity as a beverage, kombucha holds promise as a useful biomaterial. For instance, scientists at MIT and Imperial College London last year created new kinds of tough "living materials" out of SCOBYs that could one day be used as biosensors. These materials could help purify water or detect damage to "smart" packing materials. The scientists couldn't use the wild yeasts typically used in kombucha because the yeasts are difficult to modify genetically. Instead, the researchers used lab-grown yeast, specifically a strain called Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer's yeast. They combined the brewer's yeast with a bacteria called Komagataeibacter rhaeticus (which can create a lot of cellulose) to create their "mother" SCOBY.

Gang Chen was arrested a year ago on charges of hiding his links to China. The charges were dismissed, but he said the damage — to him, and to American science — has lingered.

Physicists Detect Exotic Particles in Quark-Gluon Plasma


Physicists from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have detected about 100 particles of a type known as X(3872) in quark-gluon plasma, an environment that they hope will illuminate the particles’ as-yet unknown structure.

“The basic building blocks of matter are the neutron and the proton, each of which are made from three tightly bound quarks,” said MIT’s Dr. Yen-Jie Lee.

“For years we had thought that for some reason, nature had chosen to produce particles made only from two or three quarks.”

“Only recently have we begun to see signs of exotic tetraquarks — particles made from a rare combination of four quarks.”

“We suspect that X(3872) is either a compact tetraquark or an entirely new kind of molecule made from not atoms but two loosely bound mesons — subatomic particles that themselves are made from two quarks.”

X(3872) was first discovered in 2003 by the Belle experiment, a particle collider in Japan that smashes together high-energy electrons and positrons.

Within this environment, however, the rare particles decayed too quickly for physicists to examine their structure in detail.

It has been hypothesized that X(3872) and other exotic particles might be better illuminated in quark-gluon plasma.

“Theoretically speaking, there are so many quarks and gluons in the plasma that the production of X particles should be enhanced,” Dr. Lee said.

“But people thought it would be too difficult to search for them because there are so many other particles produced in this quark soup.”

Dr. Seuss-like spires whipped into formation by icy winds along the shore in Lake Michigan have caught the eye of nature photographers—and fed the fancy of fans on social media.

The nearly-annual phenomenon is similar to the one that creates 50-foot tall spires called hoodoos in the Utah desert, but these temporary ice hoodoos are anywhere from 3 to 20 inches high.

The ancient, intimate relationship between trees and fungi, from fairy toadstools to technicolour mushrooms

You may be familiar with the red toadstool with white spots, which are often the homes of fairies in children's stories. These toadstools are also a small part of grander magical story: they are striking examples of mycorrhizas.

Mycorrhizas (pronounced my-cor-rye-zas) is the name for fungi associated with the root systems of many plants including trees, shrubs, groundcovers and grasses. These relationships are mutually symbiotic, which means both members benefit.

Fungi have a deeply ancient evolutionary origin, and colonized land with the first plants around 500 million years ago to form these partnerships. We humans often underestimate their importance to the ecosystems that have shaped life on earth.

So let's take a closer look at how this relationship works and why it's so important for Australian ecosystems.

Doug Olson was thrilled a month after his treatment when a bone marrow biopsy showed he had no more cancer cells.

His doctors were happy, too, of course, but were less convinced that the experimental therapy they'd given him would prove effective long-term.

"We did not think this would be a curative therapy at all," said Dr. Carl June, the University of Pennsylvania researcher who helped develop the method of triggering the patient's own immune system to fight cancer.

But more than a decade later, Olson, now of Pleasanton, California, still has no signs of the leukemia that otherwise would have killed him long ago.

Now, June and his colleagues said in a news conference Tuesday that they're ready to use the C-word: cure.