Episodes
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
Episode 555 - Breaking down toxic fungus and learning to live alongside them
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
Fungal invasions taking over living hosts is the thing of science fiction, but the humble button mushroom is taken steps to start. Often a fungi will specialize in symbiosis, invading or decomposing. But Mycena are starting to adapt to do all three. Humans, plants and fungi are in a complicated relationship where we influence the development of each other. The complex fungal toxin patulin is dangerous for humans, but can be broken down by microbes in soil. What can we learn from soil to fight back against fungal toxins and keep our fruit safe.
- Megumi Mita, Rina Sato, Miho Kakinuma, Hiroyuki Nakagawa, Toshiki Furuya. Isolation and characterization of filamentous fungi capable of degrading the mycotoxin patulin. MicrobiologyOpen, 2023; 12 (4) DOI: 10.1002/mbo3.1373
- Christoffer Bugge Harder, Emily Hesling, Synnøve S. Botnen, Kelsey E. Lorberau, Bálint Dima, Tea von Bonsdorff‐Salminen, Tuula Niskanen, Susan G. Jarvis, Andrew Ouimette, Alison Hester, Erik A. Hobbie, Andy F. S. Taylor, Håvard Kauserud. Mycena species can be opportunist‐generalist plant root invaders. Environmental Microbiology, 2023; 25 (10): 1875 DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.16398
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Episode 553 - E.coli to the rescue and boosting geothermal power
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Monday Oct 09, 2023
E.coli is one of the most studied and versatile bacteria, so how can we make it work for us? Bacteria's ability to generate electricity is well known, but often requires complex conditions. How can we use E.Coli to generate electricity without a complicated setup? Geothermal systems seem to promise unlimited power but sometimes a cold water 'short circuit' ruins the plan. How do you carefully control the efficiency of geothermal power in the extreme temperatures and pressures of the earth?
References:
- Mohammed Mouhib, Melania Reggente, Lin Li, Nils Schuergers, Ardemis A. Boghossian. Extracellular electron transfer pathways to enhance the electroactivity of modified Escherichia coli. Joule, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2023.08.006
- Qitao Zhang, Arash Dahi Taleghani. Autonomous fracture flow tunning to enhance efficiency of fractured geothermal systems. Energy, 2023; 281: 128163 DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.128163
Wednesday Oct 04, 2023
Episode 552 - Talking to plants and how a jellyfish learns
Wednesday Oct 04, 2023
Wednesday Oct 04, 2023
How does a jellyfish manage to see and learn without a large central brain? Like the Scarecrow of Oz, jellyfish are a without a brain but are still able to learn and do great feats. How does the nervous system of a jellyfish learn to dodge and avoid obstacles without a big brain? Plants respond to light, but is it possible to communicate with them about upcoming dangers?
- Jan Bielecki, Sofie Katrine Dam Nielsen, Gösta Nachman, Anders Garm. Associative learning in the box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora. Current Biology, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.056
- Bo Larsen, Roberto Hofmann, Ines S. Camacho, Richard W. Clarke, J Clark Lagarias, Alex R. Jones, Alexander M. Jones. Highlighter: An optogenetic system for high-resolution gene expression control in plants. PLOS Biology, 2023; 21 (9): e3002303 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002303
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Episode 551 - Boosting your immune system to fight back cancer
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Monday Sep 25, 2023
There are many different types of treatments for cancer, all of them with pros and cons. Enhancing our anti cancer toolbox requires careful testing to help reduce side effects. CAR-T takes your immune cells and boosts them to help fight cancer, but can have some pretty nasty side effects. By carefully coating CAR-T cells you can fight back against cancer and limit the chance of a cytokine storm or neurotoxicity .
- Ningqiang Gong, Xuexiang Han, Lulu Xue, Rakan El-Mayta, Ann E. Metzloff, Margaret M. Billingsley, Alex G. Hamilton, Michael J. Mitchell. In situ PEGylation of CAR T cells alleviates cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity. Nature Materials, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01646-6
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Episode 549 - Water infrastructure and Archaeology
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Infrastructure projects and large engineering projects can lead to archaeological discoveries. When you start digging a large sewer network, the last thing you suspect to find is 1,000s of fossils. Large water projects in Auckland managed to discover new species and shed light on New Zealand 3 million years ago. We often think of modern plumbing as being a sign of the modern era, but in ancient China, a community banded together to build their own drainage network.
References:
- Bruce W. Hayward, Thomas F. Stolberger, Nathan Collins, Alan G. Beu, Wilma Blom. A diverse Late Pliocene fossil fauna and its paleoenvironment at Māngere, Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, 2023; 1 DOI: 10.1080/00288306.2023.2243234
- Chunxia Li, Yanpeng Cao, Chi Zhang, Ling Qin, Zhenhua Deng, Yan Chen, Shuzheng Zhu, Wei Li, Junping Yuan, Hai Zhang, Yijie Zhuang. Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia. Nature Water, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s44221-023-00114-4
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Episode 544 - Metals recovering from fatigue
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Cracks in metal can ultimately lead to fatigue failure, but is there a way to unwind the damage? Fatigue failure is a serious problem for everything from bridges to phones so finding a way to tackle it is important. One microcrack can turn into another as a metal fatigues, but what if the cracks could close themselves up again? Can a metal piece itself back together again? Maybe if its in a vacuum.
- Christopher M. Barr, Ta Duong, Daniel C. Bufford, Zachary Milne, Abhilash Molkeri, Nathan M. Heckman, David P. Adams, Ankit Srivastava, Khalid Hattar, Michael J. Demkowicz, Brad L. Boyce. Autonomous healing of fatigue cracks via cold welding. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06223-0
Monday Jul 10, 2023
Episode 542 - Evolving multicellular life in the lab
Monday Jul 10, 2023
Monday Jul 10, 2023
Its a huge leap from a single celled organism to a complex multicellular beast. So how does evolution manage it? You can evolve humble yeast from a single celled organism into a complex interwoven multicellular one. Over 3,000 generations in the lab, the humble yeast was evolved from microscopic to macroscopic with super strength. Grouping together or splitting apart can offer benefits for organisms, but what environmental pressures cause an organism to go one way or the other?
- G. Ozan Bozdag, Seyed Alireza Zamani-Dahaj, Thomas C. Day, Penelope C. Kahn, Anthony J. Burnetti, Dung T. Lac, Kai Tong, Peter L. Conlin, Aishwarya H. Balwani, Eva L. Dyer, Peter J. Yunker, William C. Ratcliff. De novo evolution of macroscopic multicellularity. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06052-1
- Florian van der Ent, Susann Skagseth, Bjarte A. Lund, Jaka Sočan, Julia J. Griese, Bjørn O. Brandsdal, Johan Åqvist. Computational design of the temperature optimum of an enzyme reaction. Science Advances, 2023; 9 (26) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi0963
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Episode 541 - The building blocks chemistry
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Chemistry is complicated but it had to start somewhere. The origins of complex chemistry had to be built up from scratch. How did complex compounds form on early earth. How can we replicate the conditions of early earth and watch complex chemistry develop? Peering into chemical reactions is tricky because they can happen so fast.
- Zhong Yin, Yi-Ping Chang, Tadas Balčiūnas, Yashoj Shakya, Aleksa Djorović, Geoffrey Gaulier, Giuseppe Fazio, Robin Santra, Ludger Inhester, Jean-Pierre Wolf, Hans Jakob Wörner. Femtosecond proton transfer in urea solutions probed by X-ray spectroscopy. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06182-6
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Episode 537 - Better batteries that last even in subzero temperatures
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Batteries power the modern world, but how can we make them more sustainably and last longer. Lithium powers most of our modern batteries but it doesn't cope with the cold. The electrolytes inside lithium ion batteries are powerful but weak when its cold, so what can we use instead? Extracting lithium is carbon intensive and difficult, are there more abundant materials we can use? Calcium based batteries have a higher power density than lithium but finding a suitable electrolyte is a challenge.
- Kazuaki Kisu, Rana Mohtadi, Shin‐ichi Orimo. Calcium Metal Batteries with Long Cycle Life Using a Hydride‐Based Electrolyte and Copper Sulfide Electrode. Advanced Science, 2023; DOI: 10.1002/advs.202301178
- Dong‐Joo Yoo, Qian Liu, Orion Cohen, Minkyu Kim, Kristin A. Persson, Zhengcheng Zhang. Rational Design of Fluorinated Electrolytes for Low Temperature Lithium‐Ion Batteries. Advanced Energy Materials, 2023; DOI: 10.1002/aenm.202204182
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Episode536 - Taking pollution out of the atmosphere
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Humans are filling the atmosphere with more and more pollution. How does it get out of the air and where does it go? For complex pollutants in the atmosphere, having a bit of hydroxide around helps break it down but where does it come from? Hydroxide can spontaneously generate in droplets but it doesn't seem to need sunlight's or photo-chemistry. Spontaneous generation of hydroxide in water droplets helps clean up our atmosphere. Which trees are best at cleaning up the air around them? From conifers to broad leave trees which help keep our air clean the best? C is for conifer, and their leaves and needles help capture pollution out of the air. Broadleaf trees are well...broad and this helps them capture lots of air pollution.
References:
- Kangwei Li, Yunlong Guo, Sergey A. Nizkorodov, Yinon Rudich, Maria Angelaki, Xinke Wang, Taicheng An, Sebastien Perrier, Christian George. Spontaneous dark formation of OH radicals at the interface of aqueous atmospheric droplets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023; 120 (15) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220228120
- H. Pleijel, J. Klingberg, B. Strandberg, H. Sjöman, L. Tarvainen, G. Wallin. Differences in accumulation of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) among eleven broadleaved and conifer tree species. Ecological Indicators, 2022; 145: 109681 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.109681
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Lagrange Point Episode 535 - Trees growing faster during droughts
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Wednesday May 24, 2023
As our climate changes extreme weather events become more common, but what does this mean for ecosystems? Ecosystems and plants that have adapted to on extreme climate, can thrive in another. An adaption that helps you survive in extreme cold can be very helpful when there is a drought. There is a balancing act between choosing when to grow and when to conserve energy. Plants carefully manage their resources in extreme drought and extreme cold.
- Joan Dudney, Andrew M. Latimer, Phillip van Mantgem, Harold Zald, Claire E. Willing, Jonathan C. B. Nesmith, Jennifer Cribbs, Elizabeth Milano. The energy–water limitation threshold explains divergent drought responses in tree growth, needle length, and stable isotope ratios. Global Change Biology, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16740
Friday May 12, 2023
Episode 533 - Bacteria melting ice and changing the planet
Friday May 12, 2023
Friday May 12, 2023
How can tiny bacteria change the entire planet? Greenland is beautiful and covered in glaciers, but they are turning more and more dark and black. Black algae is tinting glaciers in Greenland darker, and causing changes in our climate. The more our climate changes, the easier it is for algae to thrive in glacier runoff and change the colours of the glaciers. Algae can survive in strange locations on earth, what can that teach us about microorganisms across the solar system?
- James A. Bradley, Christopher B. Trivedi, Matthias Winkel, Rey Mourot, Stefanie Lutz, Catherine Larose, Christoph Keuschnig, Eva Doting, Laura Halbach, Athanasios Zervas, Alexandre M. Anesio, Liane G. Benning. Active and dormant microorganisms on glacier surfaces. Geobiology, 2022; 21 (2): 244 DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12535
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Episode 530 - Fully recyclable electronics
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Electronics power the modern world, but they come at a high environmental and energy cost. E-waste a serious problem as many of the elements in modern electronics cannot be easily recycled. Is there a way to produce electronics that are more environmentally friendly? Is it possible to make a circuit board or more simply even a transistor that doesn't rely on silicon? Can you imagine a Silicon Valley without actual silicon? Its possible to make recyclable electronics without silicon and instead relying only on carbon and cellulose. How can you get away from the use of chemicals or high heat in circuit fabrication?
- Nicholas X. Williams, George Bullard, Nathaniel Brooke, Michael J. Therien, Aaron D. Franklin. Printable and recyclable carbon electronics using crystalline nanocellulose dielectrics. Nature Electronics, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00574-0
- Shiheng Lu, Brittany N. Smith, Hope Meikle, Michael J. Therien, Aaron D. Franklin. All-Carbon Thin-Film Transistors Using Water-Only Printing. Nano Letters, 2023; 23 (6): 2100 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04196
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Episode 529 - Listening in on conversations inside your body
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Your body is constantly communicating about what's happening outside and inside of it, but how can we listen in. When your immune system is responding to a virus, or a wound is healing, there are lots of signals to decode if only we could hear them. By amplifying the signals inside your body with special folding DNA and transistors we can understand how our body responds. The brain's neural networks are a treasure trove of information if we're able to blend in and listen. Using a microbot you can get precise information from on inside in the brain rather than relying on external information.
- Xudong Ji, Xuanyi Lin, Jonathan Rivnay. Organic electrochemical transistors as on-site signal amplifiers for electrochemical aptamer-based sensing. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37402-2
- Eunhee Kim, Sungwoong Jeon, Yoon‐Sil Yang, Chaewon Jin, Jin‐young Kim, Yong‐Seok Oh, Jong‐Cheol Rah, Hongsoo Choi. A Neurospheroid‐Based Microrobot for Targeted Neural Connections in a Hippocampal Slice. Advanced Materials, 2023; 35 (13) DOI: 10.1002/adma.202208747
Monday Mar 27, 2023
Episode 527 - Concrete in space from blood, sweat, tears and chips
Monday Mar 27, 2023
Monday Mar 27, 2023
Building a habitat on Mars or the Moon is hard work, but it's a lot easier if you can make your own building materials. Animal blood has historically been used as a binding agent for mortar, so could human blood help on Mars? You can make your own building materials on the Moon or Mars that are far stronger than on earth especially if you add tears and blood. Maybe you don't want to use blood in when building your martian home, but would you sacrifice your potato chips? Potato chips and some extra salt will can make for super strong building materials on the Moon or Mars. Is there ways to enhance the performance of concrete by using other industries waste byproducts? All waste has to be re-used when you're in space, but here on earth using waste water and waste steel can help boost concrete.
- Aled D. Roberts, Nigel S. Scrutton. StarCrete: A starch-based biocomposite for off-world construction. Open Engineering, 2023; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1515/eng-2022-0390
- Aled D. Roberts, Dominic R. Whittall, Rainer Breitling, Eriko Takano, Jonny J. Blaker, Sam Hay, Nigel S. Scrutton. Blood, sweat and tears: extraterrestrial regolith biocomposites with in vivo binders. Materials Today Bio, 2021; 100136 DOI: 10.1016/j.mtbio.2021.100136
- Rajeev Roychand, Biplob Kumar Pramanik, Guomin Zhang, Sujeeva Setunge. Recycling steel slag from municipal wastewater treatment plants into concrete applications – A step towards circular economy. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2020; 152: 104533 DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104533
Monday Mar 20, 2023
Episode 526 - Capturing biological process in action
Monday Mar 20, 2023
Monday Mar 20, 2023
Seeing how something happens makes it much easier to understand. Biological process can be very hard to capture with images or video. Understanding how a protein requires thinking in 3D but to take images of them we often have to 'snap freeze' them in place. How can lasers, ions and quantum mechanics be used to help capture a protein in motion. PCR based diagnostics tests are accurate but require a lot of setup and expertise. Can you make a PCR test more like a point of care test using bio-luminescence.
- Shiny Maity, Brad D. Price, C. Blake Wilson, Arnab Mukherjee, Matthieu Starck, David Parker, Maxwell Z. Wilson, Janet E. Lovett, Songi Han, Mark S. Sherwin. Triggered Functional Dynamics of AsLOV2 by Time‐Resolved Electron Paramagnetic Resonance at High Magnetic Fields. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2023; 62 (13) DOI: 10.1002/anie.202212832
- Harmen J. van der Veer, Eva A. van Aalen, Claire M. S. Michielsen, Eva T. L. Hanckmann, Jeroen Deckers, Marcel M. G. J. van Borren, Jacky Flipse, Anne J. M. Loonen, Joost P. H. Schoeber, Maarten Merkx. Glow-in-the-Dark Infectious Disease Diagnostics Using CRISPR-Cas9-Based Split Luciferase Complementation. ACS Central Science, 2023; DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.2c01467
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Episode 523 - Sinking carbon out of seawater and carbon storage in wood
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Our oceans and waterways are our largest carbon sinks and they're overflowing with CO2. Too much CO2 in our waterways can cause tremendous local damage, but there may be ways to clean that up. Using a cyclic process without messy membranes you can get water to release the CO2 captured inside. Extracting excess CO2 from oceans could be possible with only some clever chemistry cells with no waste byproducts. Now that you've got CO2 out of the ocean, what are you going to do with it? Make it work for you. Carbon sequestration can be more useful than just pumping it into the ground. With the right techniques you can use excess CO2 to improve construction materials.
- Seoni Kim, Michael Nitzsche, Simon B Rufer, Jack R. Lake, Kripa Kiran Varanasi, T. Alan Hatton. Asymmetric chloride-mediated electrochemical process for CO2 removal from oceanwater. Energy & Environmental Science, 2023; DOI: 10.1039/D2EE03804H
- Soumyabrata Roy, Firuz Alam Philip, Eliezer Fernando Oliveira, Gurwinder Singh, Stalin Joseph, Ram Manohar Yadav, Aparna Adumbumkulath, Sakib Hassan, Ali Khater, Xiaowei Wu, Praveen Bollini, Ajayan Vinu, George Shimizu, Pulickel M. Ajayan, Md Golam Kibria, Muhammad M. Rahman. Functional wood for carbon dioxide capture. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2023; 4 (2): 101269 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101269
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Episode 522 - Making hydrogen greenly from Seawater
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Hydrogen comes in all kinds of colours but what does that mean? Hydrogen has a role to play in a decarbonised world as long as we can produce it greenly. It's no good producing green hydrogen if you use up another valuable resource or create another kind of waste. Water water everywhere, but not a drop to electrolyse. Using seawater to make hydrogen has challenges. How can we use the abundant seawater resource to make green energy sources without producing nasty by products?
- Suraj Loomba, Muhammad Waqas Khan, Muhammad Haris, Seyed Mahdi Mousavi, Ali Zavabeti, Kai Xu, Anton Tadich, Lars Thomsen, Christopher F. McConville, Yongxiang Li, Sumeet Walia, Nasir Mahmood. Nitrogen‐Doped Porous Nickel Molybdenum Phosphide Sheets for Efficient Seawater Splitting. Small, 2023; 2207310 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202207310
Monday Jan 16, 2023
Episode 517 - Cute green balls of algae and a changing climate
Monday Jan 16, 2023
Monday Jan 16, 2023
In the northern reaches of Japan in a idyllic lake, cute green balls of algae are battling for survival. It sounds like an anime, but cute green algae balls, Marimo, are battling stellar forces. Too much sunlight can endanger the cute green algae balls, the Marimo. Having too much sunlight can be just as bad for algae as too little. How can brown algae help fight back against climate change? Algae have changed the climate once before, so can they do it again? If you were to quantify the carbon sequestration of algae, would it really make an impact globally?
- Akina Obara, Mari Ogawa, Yoichi Oyama, Yoshihiro Suzuki, Masaru Kono. Effects of High Irradiance and Low Water Temperature on Photoinhibition and Repair of Photosystems in Marimo (Aegagropila linnaei) in Lake Akan, Japan. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2022; 24 (1): 60 DOI: 10.3390/ijms24010060
- Hagen Buck-Wiese, Mona A. Andskog, Nguyen P. Nguyen, Margot Bligh, Eero Asmala, Silvia Vidal-Melgosa, Manuel Liebeke, Camilla Gustafsson, Jan-Hendrik Hehemann. Fucoid brown algae inject fucoidan carbon into the ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 120 (1) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2210561119
Monday Dec 26, 2022
Episode 515 - Do you really need oxygen for oxidation
Monday Dec 26, 2022
Monday Dec 26, 2022
How does chemistry change when you travel to another planet? When it comes to scientific experiments often we can be hampered by our own experience. Just because something is abundant on earth does not meant that it's a universal constant. Out of this world chemistry is hard to get your head around and it requires thinking outside the box. Is it possible to have oxidize minerals without oxygen?
- Kaushik Mitra, Eleanor L. Moreland, Greg J. Ledingham, Jeffrey G. Catalano. Formation of manganese oxides on early Mars due to active halogen cycling. Nature Geoscience, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01094-y