Once again, laziness pays off. When microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen and his team were studying marine sediments, they got a little sloppy about cleaning their beakers. But after letting samples sit around in the lab for a few weeks, they began to see weird chemical patterns in them that you just wouldn’t expect. As they saw changes in the surface of the mud quickly trigger other changes down below, the scientists came upon a startling idea: that the bacteria in the top layer and those deep down were somehow electrically linked. Their paper appears this week in Nature.
Specifically, Nielsen saw that hydrogen sulfide buried below the sediment’s surface (the stuff that makes it smell bad) was oxidizing and changing color. One problem, though: That shouldn’t be happening. Below the sediment surface there is plenty of hydrogen sulfide and carbon for bacteria to consume via oxidation, or removing electrons [Scientific American]. But the reaction can’t be sustained without access to dissolved oxygen, which carries away electrons produced by the reaction, and in these samples the oxygen was all up at the sediment’s surface. So the researchers hypothesize that the buried bacteria form a conductive chain to ferry the electrons up to the surface.
Four decades later, the Murchison meteorite is still full of surprises. When this extraterrestrial hunk fell to Earth near its namesake town in Australia in 1969, people managed to salvage more than 200 pounds of it. And now a new analysis of the meteorite, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that it could hold millions of carbon-containing compounds. Researchers say the findings provide insight into the complex chemistry present when the chunk of space-rock formed, back when our solar system was young.
Back in 1969, researchers found amino acids and many other molecules in the carbon-rich rock. Many researchers have analyzed the chondritic meteorite for amino acids and other possible precursors to life, because some theories hold that life on Earth began with the delivery of prebiotic organic compounds from space via asteroids or comets [Scientific American]. But scanning techniques have advanced since then, so the new team used tools like ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometry to take a fresh look at the meteorite.
When it comes to a sperm fertilizing an egg, it all comes down to speed and timing. If the sperm starts swimming at top speed too soon, it will die before it reaches the egg. But if it swims too slowly then it won’t get to its destination in time. Now, scientists have discovered a system in the sperm that acts like a gas pedal, causing the sperm to swim faster as it gets closer to the egg. The findings were published in the February issue of Cell.
Researchers already knew that the speed of a sperm depends on its pH, or its internal acidity levels. The less acidic and more alkline it is, the faster it swims. They also knew that a sperm doesn’t sprint at top speed for its entire trip through a woman’s reproductive tract. It travels relatively slowly for the first part of its journey, and then gets lodged in the sticky folds of the fallopian tubes, resting until another, still unknown signal raises their pH again. This initiates their final race to the egg. “It’s a tough job for a sperm — when it’s deposited it has to travel a long distance to the egg sites,” [said Dejian Ren, who was not involved in the new study]. “This process has been known for many decades, but how it actually happens remained a mystery” [The Scientist].
Scientists say that a thousand-year quest–one that you probably didn’t even know about–has accidentally come to an end. Painters and fabric makers can rest easy because Mas Subramanian and his research team at Oregon State University have created a near-perfect blue pigment. Blue pigments of the past have often been expensive (ultramarine blue was made from the gemstone lapis lazuli, ground up), poisonous (cobalt blue is a possible carcinogen and Prussian blue, another well-known pigment, can leach cyanide) or apt to fade (many of the organic ones fall apart when exposed to acid or heat) [The New York Times].
The new pigment popped up when the researchers were mixing manganese oxide, which is black, with other chemicals and then heating them up to high temperatures to study their electronic properties. One day, Subramanian was poking around in his lab when he noticed a graduate student removing a sample from the furnace that was brilliant blue.
The 2,000-degree-Fahrenheit furnace created a crystal structure that allowed the manganese ions to absorb red and green wavelengths of light while reflecting blue wavelengths. White yttrium oxide and pale yellow indium oxide are also required to stabilize the crystal structure. Subramanian said the pigment is safe, but far from cheap, since indium is quite costly, so they are trying to substitute cheaper oxides for indium. “Basically, this was an accidental discovery,” said Subramanian. “We were exploring manganese oxides for some interesting electronic properties they have, something that can be both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic at the same time. Our work had nothing to do with looking for a pigment” [UPI]. Regardless, their research appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
It’s been a bad month for chemicals and masculinity. Last week 80beats covered the discomforting link found between the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), which is found in any number of consumer products, and erectile dysfunction. Now the villains are phthalates, chemicals used to make plastics softer and more flexible. A new study in the International Journal of Andrology has raised a storm of concern that prenatal exposure to these chemicals could make boys less masculine in their play preferences.
Phthalates, which block the activity of male hormones such as androgens, could be altering masculine brain development, according to Shanna H. Swan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead author of the new report [Los Angeles Times]. To test whether that link extended into behavior, Swan’s team tested women for phthalate levels midway through their pregnancy and then checked back in on the children four to seven years later.
The researchers asked parents to report their children’s patterns of play, but they knew they also had to separate any potential phthalate effect from the “nuture ” side of question. To determine how parental views might sway behavior, parents completed a survey that included questions such as, “What would you do if you had a boy who preferred toys that girls usually play with?” They were asked to respond with whether they would support or discourage such behavior, and how strongly [TIME].
The nose knows when you’ve walked into a library or archive populated by books of a certain age: The distinctive musty smell of the old paper fills the halls and reading rooms. Now, for a study in Analytical Chemistry, a research team has analyzed the chemicals that combine to form the “old book smell,” and says that one day a book’s odor could tell scholars a lot about the tome’s history.
The international research team, led by Matija Strlic from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage, describes that smell as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness. This unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents,” they wrote in the journal article [BBC News]. The smell is a result of volatile organic compounds that are released as the paper ages.
After watching conservators smell the paper while investigating old books, Strlic applied a “sniff test” based on gas chromotography-mass spectrometry to sort out the chemicals mingling in the odors of 72 older documents. The researchers identified 15 organic compounds that made good markers to track the condition of books [Scientific American]. The system isn’t ready for librarians or conservators yet, but Strlic says he envisions a hand-held model they could use to analyze the age of a book, or what materials constitute its pages and binding, in a noninvasive way. Currently, age-testing a book usually requires snipping off pieces for testing.
The sooner the better, because books aren’t forever. Paper produced until about 1850 was made to last for millenniums. The development of new wood-pulping techniques in the middle of the 19th century and the use of rosin sizing reduced the longevity of paper. The acidity of paper made with these techniques causes them to degrade more quickly than the older papers — or newer ones made with different methods after 1990 [Wired.com].
Cracking open a cold can of Coke and taking a bubbling swig will have your taste buds dancing—and now scientists know why. A new study shows that cells in taste buds that respond to sour stimuli also seem to be the ones responsible for tasting the carbonation’s fizz [NPR].The fact that we can taste the carbon dioxide in a fizzing soda has previously puzzled scientists, since the human tongue is usually thought to only sense five flavors—bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami (also called savory). However, the new study, published in Science, shows that the sour taste buds have an enzyme that interacts with carbon dioxide, so it’s not the bursting bubbles that you taste, it’s the C02 itself.
The researchers discovered this tricky bit of chemistry by studying mice. They gave the animals sips of club soda or a little buzz of carbon dioxide gas and recorded how the tongue signaled the sensation to the brain. Both soda and the gas produced similar sensations. But when they tested mice bred to have no sour taste buds, the brain never got its sensory alert. Further probing uncovered the enzyme responsible [AP]. The mechanism should be the same in humans, according to the scientists.
A new surface coating could mean the end of roach traps as we know them. The plastic-like material, called a polyimide resin, is like a Slip ‘n Slide for the normally sure-footed roaches. Insects naturally secrete a fluid that’s an emulsion of oily and watery liquids that helps them stick to almost any surface. The scientists’ polyimide coating absorbs the watery part, cutting bugs’ friction on vertical surfaces by about 40 percent [Popular Science].
In an experiment, a rod with an apple on top was painted with a number of different chemicals, including the polyimide resin. Scientists observed roaches climbing to reach the apple, and measured the friction between the roaches feet and the rod. They found that roaches effortlessly shimmied up rods coated in PTFE, a non-stick coating commonly found on cooking pans. But when the rods were covered in polyimide resin, the creatures lost their grip [New Scientist].
Two American men and an Israeli woman have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for work that probed the structure of the ribosome, the cell’s protein factory. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath worked separately to understand one of life’s core processes: the method by which ribosomes translate genetic code into proteins, the building blocks of all organisms.
Their work revealed what ribosomes, which produce proteins that control the chemistry in all living organisms, look like and how they function at the atomic level. The Laureates also created three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome, research that has been used to develop new anti-infective medicines [Bloomberg].
Scientists have found another reason why the fizz in a glass of champagne is so important: Besides tickling the tongue and pleasing the eye, the bubbles also release aromatic compounds that they’ve dragged up from the liquid in the glass. A new study found that concentrations of certain chemical compounds are higher in the air just above the glass than in the actual champagne.
Wine expert Jamie Goode comments: “In the past, we thought that the carbon dioxide in the bubbles just gave the wine an acidic bite and a little tingle on the tongue, but this study shows that it is much more than this” [BBC News]. Smelling the chemical compounds enhances the overall flavor of the champagne, researchers say.
With a lot of skillful maneuverings, a team of researchers have finally found a way to image a molecule. The portrait of pentacene, an organic molecule consisting of five benzene rings, shows off the chemical bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms.
It may seem a somewhat surprising first, since atoms have been imaged for decades. The earliest pictures of individual atoms were captured in the 1970s by blasting a target – typically a chunk of metal – with a beam of electrons, a technique known as transmission electron microscopy (TEM)…. But strange though it might seem, imaging larger molecules at the same level of detail has not been possible – atoms are robust enough to withstand existing tools, but the structures of molecules are not [New Scientist].
In the new study, published in Science, researchers used an atomic force microscope to image the molecule in unprecedented resolution. The measurement requires extremes of precision. In order to avoid the effects of stray gas molecules bounding around, or the general atomic-scale jiggling that room-temperature objects experience, the whole setup has to be kept under high vacuum and at blisteringly cold temperatures [BBC News]; 5 Kelvin, to be exact. Rather than relying on an optical system to produce pictures, atomic force microscopes use a probe that narrows to an atomic-scale tip, and measures the forces of attraction between the tip and the molecule’s components.
Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, might sound like a humorous substance. But here’s a sobering fact: The chemical now poses the largest man-made threat to the ozone layer, according to a study published in Science. Environmental policies, which have focused on controlling emissions of compounds such as CFCs, have largely ignored nitrous oxide. CFC levels have been falling since the 1989 adoption of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer… Meanwhile, nitrous oxide levels have been climbing as a result of increased emissions from agricultural fertilizers, biomass burning and animal waste [Nature News].
Researchers used a model to compare the potential of various gases, including laughing gas, to deplete the ozone layer, compared to a compound called CClF3, a substance with one of the greatest potentials for destroying the ozone. They found that although the threat that nitrous oxide poses to ozone is small compared to CClF3, the large-scale emissions of laughing gas mean it is the most significant of the ozone-depleting substances emitted by human-related activities today…. “This is the first time someone has dealt with nitrous oxide in isolation like this,” says atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon. “It’s one of those things that has simply been overlooked” [Nature News].
A humble marine worm may hold the key to mending bones that have been shattered: a strong adhesive that the worm uses to build its shell, and which hardens despite the worm’s watery habitat. Sandcastle worms, Phragmatopoma californica, dwell in the intertidal zone where they construct a tubelike shell by gluing together bits of sand, broken shells and other mineral debris. The glue is secreted from a special gland and hardens in less than 30 seconds underwater, forming a leatherlike consistency over several hours [Science News].
Medical engineer Russell Stewart has been working on a synthetic glue modeled on the worm’s adhesive. He thinks the worm-inspired glue could be just the thing for piecing together the small fragments of bone that result from complex breaks that must be glued within the wet environment of the body. “There’s lots of synthetic adhesives in widespread use for other things, [but] there’s no adhesives used for deep tissue repair,” Stewart said. Current remedies are primarily mechanical fixes, such as screws, pins, and plates, which can be an inefficient method for repairing highly fractured bones [The Scientist].
In chunks of rock quarried from a Russian mountain range, physicists have found perfect “quasicrystals,” a type of material that researchers previously thought could only be created in a lab. Quasicrystals display ordered arrangements and symmetries but are not periodic—that is, they are not defined by a single unit cell (such as a cube) that simply repeats itself in three dimensions [Scientific American]. Instead, quasicrystals have two different geometric structures that alternate, and that are organized in ways which create complex patterns and symmetries. When such a pattern is laid out in two-dimensions, the resulting design is often called Penrose tiling.
Quasicrystals were first created in the lab in 1984, and physicist Paul Steinhardt, a coauthor of the current study, says the hunt for naturally occurring quasicrystals began about 10 years ago. “The latest issue surrounding quasicrystals has been could nature ever make them? … When we make them in the lab we try very hard to make perfect quasicrystals, but nature has no such goal” [Discovery News]. The researchers put out a call to mineralogists around the world, asking them to send in likely rock samples for testing.
Using a fancy piece of chemistry equipment to study the chemical composition of wine, European researchers have one-upped the sophisticated palates of wine connoisseurs. The researchers used ultra high resolution mass spectrometry to sort through all the chemical compounds present in wines that had been aged in oak barrels, and found that for each wine, they could determine which French forest the oak was cut from. No other approach – analytical or sensory – has been able to significantly discriminate wines according to the species or the origin of the oak used for the barrels before, they say [Chemistry World].
The findings could prove useful to wine connoisseurs and historians, the researchers said, concluding that their findings produced “chemical representations of the way such noble nectar can shape, on the (tongue) of the wine taster, some of the outlines of the scene of its birth” [AP]. Similar analyses could also be used to detect wine fraud, the researchers noted.
80beats is DISCOVER's news aggregator, weaving together the choicest tidbits from the best articles on the day's most compelling topics.
80beats is written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. This team darts through each day's science news faster than the ruby-throated hummingbird that beats its wings 80 times per second. Send ideas, tips, suggestions, and complaints to [azeeberg at discovermagazine dot com].
Once again, laziness pays off. When microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen and his team were studying marine sediments, they got a little sloppy about cleaning their beakers. But after letting samples sit around in the lab for a few weeks, they began to see weird chemical patterns in them that you just wouldn’t expect. As they saw changes in the surface of the mud quickly trigger other changes down below, the scientists came upon a startling idea: that the bacteria in the top layer and those deep down were somehow electrically linked. Their paper appears this week in Nature.
Four decades later, the Murchison meteorite is still full of surprises. When this extraterrestrial hunk fell to Earth near its namesake town in Australia in 1969, people managed to salvage more than 200 pounds of it. And now a new analysis of the meteorite, 
When it comes to a sperm fertilizing an egg, it all comes down to speed and timing. If the sperm starts swimming at top speed too soon, it will die before it reaches the egg. But if it swims too slowly then it won’t get to its destination in time.
Scientists say that a thousand-year quest–one that you probably didn’t even know about–has accidentally come to an end. Painters and fabric makers can rest easy because Mas Subramanian and his research team at Oregon State University have created a near-perfect blue pigment. 
It’s been a bad month for chemicals and masculinity. Last week 
The nose knows when you’ve walked into a library or archive populated by books of a certain age: The distinctive musty smell of the old paper fills the halls and reading rooms. Now, for a 
Cracking open a cold can of Coke and taking a bubbling swig will have your 
Two American men and an Israeli woman have won the 
Scientists have found another reason why the fizz in a glass of 
With a lot of skillful maneuverings, a team of researchers have finally found a way to image a molecule. The portrait of pentacene, an organic molecule consisting of five benzene rings, shows off the chemical bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms.
Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, might sound like a humorous substance. But here’s a sobering fact: The chemical now poses the largest man-made threat to the ozone layer, according to a 
A humble marine worm may hold the key to mending bones that have been shattered: a strong adhesive that the worm uses to build its shell, and which hardens despite the worm’s watery habitat. Sandcastle worms, Phragmatopoma californica, dwell in the intertidal zone where they construct a tubelike shell by gluing together bits of sand, broken shells and other mineral debris. The glue is secreted from a special gland and hardens in less than 30 seconds underwater, forming a leatherlike consistency over several hours [
In chunks of rock quarried from a Russian mountain range, physicists have found perfect “quasicrystals,” a type of material that researchers previously thought could only be created in a lab. Quasicrystals display ordered arrangements and symmetries but are not periodic—that is, they are not defined by a single unit cell (such as a cube) that simply repeats itself in three dimensions [
Using a fancy piece of chemistry equipment to study the chemical composition of 
