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Home / News / Tags / bacteria
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Bacteria are extremely small organisms, and in many cases, they consist of only a few cells. There are species that only have a single cell, and therefore keeping it intact is a major priority. Over the course of their evolution, the organisms have set up a clever and ingenious defense mechanism against aggressive ox... |
21 November 2009
04:49 GMT |
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Leaf-cutter ants are arguably among the most amazing living things in the entire world. They are mostly renowned for their ability to grow fungus “gardens” and also for the fact that they can carry chunks of leaves that are several times their body size and weight. Now, scientists have found yet another r... |
20 November 2009
01:17 GMT |
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Experts at the Tel Aviv University (TAU) Department of Biomedical Engineering recently announced the development of a new type of wound dressing, designed primarily to benefit severe burn-trauma victims. In spite of the doctors' best efforts, a large number of people – nearly 70 percent of all patients &nd... |
18 November 2009
06:43 GMT |
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Scientists at the Yale University have recently developed a new method of observing how immune-system cells track invading bacteria, before finally catching up with them, and beginning a confrontation. In a paper published in the November 15 advanced online issue of the respected scientific journal Nature Methods, th... |
17 November 2009
15:31 GMT |
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Bacteria are the most helpful and the most harmful organisms for the human body in the world today. While the thousands of species in our guts keep us healthy, and help us digest food, other species, just as numerous, can cause us significant damage, and even death. Therefore, knowing how these microorganisms functio... |
9 November 2009
14:31 GMT |
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Scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder (UCB) have recently developed a new model to explain how bacteria are distributed across the human body, which may bring forth a new wave of understanding of how the microorganisms either live with us in symbiosis, or cause us significant damage. The team has also m... |
6 November 2009
09:06 GMT |
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Over recent years, scientists have made numerous, new discoveries in the field of microbiology and bacterial research, and one of the most important finds has been the fact that the microorganisms that cause chronic lung infections “speak” with each other. This communication is devastating for the human b... |
2 November 2009
03:50 GMT |
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As experts begin to probe the issues raised by a potential trip to Mars in more depth, they start realizing that the actual flight itself and the problems related to constructing a proper vehicle to get there and back are only minor, in comparison to other issues. One of the problems is how nearly two years of co... |
30 October 2009
08:23 GMT |
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Scientists have recently developed a new method of destroying a class of parasitic worms, which is so hard to kill, that it has spread to a point where it inhabits all the people in several African villages. The tiny invaders are so well adapted to everything one gets to throw at them, that they seem to survive all a... |
29 October 2009
09:41 GMT |
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Bacteria are widely known for their amazing ability to withstand conditions that could kill an average person over a short period of time. Among these microorganisms, the strongest and toughest is Deinococcus radiodurans. It is able to endure very high temperatures, it can survive scorching drought conditions or the ... |
20 October 2009
08:47 GMT |
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Experts at the University of Rome, in Italy, proposed last year that small-scale motors might be powered by bacteria, an idea that caught on well in the scientific community, and spawned a number of follow-up studies. The physicists say that, in principle, if you attach self-propelling bacteria to a cog, then the mic... |
19 October 2009
18:31 GMT |
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Scientists were recently able to determine precisely how bacteria repaired their own RNA. This is the second such mechanism identified in any living thing, with the first having been found some time ago, in the T4 phage, a virus that attacks bacteria. The find was made by a team of scientists from the University of I... |
13 October 2009
05:58 GMT |
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Developing countries, through their very nature, have very poor healthcare systems and coverage, therefore a large number of people dies from conditions that would merely inconvenience people in the developed world. Pneumonia is a good example of such a disease. In its basic forms, it is easily treated with antibioti... |
6 October 2009
03:07 GMT |
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The Ancient Egyptian mummy known as Irtyersenu caused quite a stir in England in 1825, when Dr. Augustus Bozzi Granville, the expert who performed the first autopsy on the remains, concluded that the woman had died of ovarian cancer. The finds were presented to the Royal Society of London, and caused quite a bit of e... |
30 September 2009
06:49 GMT |
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Experts at the Yale University have for the first time ever observed the motions of the common Escherichia Coli (E. coli) bacteria in a liquid. They determined that the microorganism moves in a kayak paddle-like motion, a find that could help further the field of pathogen study. Details of their research were publish... |
26 September 2009
05:23 GMT |
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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that approximately 40,000 US citizens contract salmonella every year, primarily from unwashed food. The bacterium can do some serious damage inside the body, and outbreaks are not at all uncommon. Against it, many pharmaceutical companies have attempted... |
24 September 2009
03:01 GMT |
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As we pointed out earlier, the state of the “war” between microorganisms and humans is getting increasingly worrying for our species. In spite of being more complex in make-up than bacteria – or maybe because of that –, we cannot adapt very fast to their mutations, and our immune systems just ... |
22 September 2009
02:55 GMT |
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According to a new study conducted by researchers in the United States, showering can make you sick. The new research, which focused on how clean shower heads were, determined that at least a third of them were infected with dangerous bacteria that could cause serious medical conditions. The largest threat comes from... |
15 September 2009
14:01 GMT |
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The human body is, indeed, one of the most mysterious and best put together constructs in the world, but its amazing complexity and functions must not lead people to believe that it is the work of a higher power. For example, Intelligent Design (ID) proponents have said for a long time that one of their main argument... |
28 August 2009
05:55 GMT |
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While the probability of an asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out all life on the planet is fairly slim, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be prepared and know our chances. Researchers became curious as to what kind of organisms could potentially survive a global mass extinction event, in which all forms o... |
25 August 2009
10:13 GMT |
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Diabetes is a severe disorder, which is characterized by insufficient insulin production in the body, or the inability for the hormone to be properly absorbed. This results in high levels of glucose (sugars) in the blood, which lead to severe complications, including blindness, vascular disease, and death, to name bu... |
25 August 2009
03:28 GMT |
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The human appendix, a blind-ended tube connected to the cecum, was believed to be just a useless evolutionary remnant, which served no practical purpose, for a long time. That was until two years ago, when researchers finally managed to discover that the location served as a safe-haven for good bacteria, which repopu... |
21 August 2009
09:01 GMT |
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Leading researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, have recently devised an ingenious way of breaking a bacterium species' invincibility myth, which held that the organisms could not be genetically modified in the laboratory. The method they devised and demo... |
21 August 2009
06:05 GMT |
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The ability that cacti have, of growing directly through even the most hardened rocks on the desert floor, has amazed people since the earliest days. Their ability to drill into some of the hardest types of soil has left many speechless, and researchers have been hungry to learn how. By focusing their efforts on seve... |
20 August 2009
14:41 GMT |
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According to a new, extensive study of fossils left behind by microorganisms living billions of years ago, when life first appeared, it would seem that early life not only replicated and multiplied, as first believed, but that it was also united to form the basis for the appearance of the most developed organisms in ... |
20 August 2009
02:57 GMT |
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Silver-treated antibacterial bandages are nothing new in hospitals around the world, but, while the chemical indeed kills most of the pathogens, it also harms certain cells in the patients' skins, which are necessary in order for the healing process to go as fast as possible. This happens on account of the large... |
19 August 2009
20:41 GMT |
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After centuries in which meningitis was free to wreak havoc among small children and the elderly, researchers from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have finally managed to discover how the bacteria causing the disease move fr... |
19 August 2009
03:58 GMT |
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Bacteria are known around the world for their amazing abilities to withstand even the harshest conditions our planet has to offer. They have been found living under miles of ice, near hydrothermal vents, and in volcano craters, and some species have evolved to have such an effect on our bodies, that we cannot live wi... |
18 August 2009
15:41 GMT |
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Bacteria are the longest living organisms on Earth, estimated to have appeared around 3 billion years ago, long before anything else inhabited the surface or the oceans. They have remarkable adaptation skills, and are in fact the only group of living things that can survive virtually anywhere, from hydrothermal vents... |
6 August 2009
07:03 GMT |
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Heavily injured patients in hospitals around the world all have a common enemy in their precarious condition, namely bacterial agents. Strains of microorganisms such as the MRSA can easily invade a person with a weakened immune system, and cause widespread internal damage, or even death. In their struggle to hinder t... |
28 July 2009
16:11 GMT |
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Weighing any and all types of atoms individually has been a long-standing goal in science, and now efforts done by experts from the University of Melbourne, in Australia, have brought these attempts one nano-step closer to success. In their studies of gold nanoparticles of highly uniform shapes and sizes, the investi... |
27 July 2009
10:32 GMT |
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Bioengineering is one of the most promising fields of science today, because it has the ability to transform all organisms into better, more efficient versions of themselves. Genomes are read via high-throughput sequencing at a speed of a few million DNA letters or bases per hour, but, when it comes to tinkering with... |
27 July 2009
05:09 GMT |
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Engineers have recently unveiled a plan that a few years back might have seemed like a joke – to build a wall to mark the spread of the Sahara desert, so that the dunes stop spreading over yet-unaffected ground. The problem appears all over the Saharan borders, as fields and families are being displaced by the ... |
24 July 2009
10:58 GMT |
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A team of faculty members and undergraduate students from two universities in the United States has recently demonstrated clearly that computing within living bacterial cells is a distinct possibility, and, moreover, has managed to prove the concept in real-life. The “bacterial computers” showed the remar... |
24 July 2009
04:06 GMT |
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Most people use the cameras on their cell phones to capture instant moments while out with their families, or to photograph fun times with their pets. But experts from the University of California, in Berkeley, have other plans with their mobile phones. Their newly developed technology, CellScope, allows for average ... |
22 July 2009
05:39 GMT |
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Detecting bacteria using existing techniques in the laboratory at this point takes at least two days to perform. The samples are first enriched, then separated, identified and counted, and the entire process just takes up a lot of resources and time. With the help of a new biosensor, this type of analysis may soon be... |
20 July 2009
14:01 GMT |
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Since our planet was first created some 4.5 billion years ago, numerous things had to fall in place for life to appear. And when it did, it apparently not only spread, but broke out with incredible power and energy. Of course, there were hitches along the road, some of them major (five clearly established extinction ... |
9 July 2009
09:32 GMT |
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Many of the potential advantages and applications of nanotechnology are, in some way or the other, related to the fact that they can act inside places regular-sized molecules cannot reach. But that action is entirely dependent on the ability of nanoparticles to self-assemble or self-combine into larger, more efficien... |
9 July 2009
05:32 GMT |
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For a long time, researchers have been puzzled at how bacteria communicate with the outside world and with each other, given the fact that they have no specialized organs for this task. Scientists studying the microorganisms have determined that they use secreted chemicals, which they then disperse around them, to un... |
7 July 2009
05:47 GMT |
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Most often, when bacteria create nasty infections inside human hosts, they defend themselves against antibiotics and the immune system via a coat of slimy proteins, known as a biofilm. These biofilms are notoriously hard to destroy, and, if they occur on implanted prosthetic devices, they are most often destroyed by ... |
1 July 2009
06:12 GMT |
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One of the main dangers plaguing all sorts of medical tools, devices and human implants at this point comes from a bacterium known as Staphylococcus epidermidis. Opportunistic by nature, the organism regularly lives on our skins, and is as harmless as it comes. However, when it hitches rides inside us via needles... |
27 June 2009
06:30 GMT |
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Researchers from the University of California in Davis (UCD) said as far back as 1951 that the use of powerful antibiotics as growth-promoting hormones in livestock meant for human consumption increased the incidence of antibiotic-resistant coliform bacteria, which could pose a very real threat to us. They gave the s... |
17 June 2009
05:14 GMT |
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The scientific theory that holds that bacteria in clouds may be, to some extent, responsible for rain formation has drawn immense criticism from the scientific community when it first appeared, a good 25 years ago. Ever since, a small number of researchers have continued their investigations into this belief, and the... |
15 June 2009
18:41 GMT |
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In their search for life on other planets, researchers are always hindered by a single fact – they don't know what life in other planetary conditions than those of the Earth may look like. Different pressure and atmospheric surroundings may affect the development of even the most basic forms of life on exo... |
15 June 2009
03:47 GMT |
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Oil spills are among the most devastating disasters brought about by humans that can appear on the surface of the planet, as evidenced by the catastrophic wreak of the Exxon Valdez carrier, which affected thousands of square miles, and killed an impressive number of marine animals and birds. Decades after the acciden... |
12 June 2009
06:35 GMT |
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When thinking of plasma, the first thing that comes to mind is temperature. A whole lot of it, in fact. Millions of degrees are required to turn gas into this state, and experts at the University of Southern California now want to use it on our teeth. They recently created a new plasma tool, which uses the matter to ... |
11 June 2009
03:43 GMT |
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As some homeowners can attest to, termite infestation is one of the worst things that could happen to the place, other than floods, earthquakes and wildfires. The insects are insanely hard to get rid of, and can bring structures a few thousand times their size down in a matter of months. In their nests, which are dam... |
10 June 2009
02:35 GMT |
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Biologists and bioengineers working in the field of making antibiotics-resistant infections a thing of the past have scored a major breakthrough recently, when they have managed to develop a synthetic DNA binding compound. The substance is able to combine with the DNA of pathogens such as bacteria and kills them with... |
9 June 2009
10:34 GMT |
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Sediments that researchers found underneath the Pacific Ocean proved to be more than just mud. Inside it, experts found a new type of bacteria that is apparently able to tie down heavy metals, and thus may hold the key to creating more effective water cleaning agents. If the studies are successful, then it could be a... |
5 June 2009
09:01 GMT |
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A new scientific study, conducted by a NASA researcher, reveals the fact that microbes able to withstand the harsh conditions of the Earth's most challenging climates are no match for Martian habitats. In simulations conducted in the laboratory, where conditions on the surface of the Red Planet were mimicked to ... |
5 June 2009
03:03 GMT |
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