Science news of the day thread.

[rainbow]

Well, I kind of have that problem (being very fat), and I don't have diabetes yet... I'm trying to limit my intake, but must admit it's hard to do... I'm in very deep depression, and food and booze are the only pleasures I have.

Try women and song.

[Svartalf]

If I had women, I'd be feeling like singing and might have less time to overeat

[Brian Peacock]

BIGGEST bacterium ever discovered shakes our view of the single-celled world

We usually think of bacteria as organisms so small they can be seen only through a microscope. But scientists discovered a giant white bacterium lurking on rotting leaves in the brackish waters of a red mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles.

It’s so large it can be seen easily with the naked eye. But size isn’t the only astonishing trait of this long, filamentous microbe; it has a more complex structure than any other bacterium previously discovered, and, unlike most, it stores its DNA in tidy little packets.



Previously discovered giant bacteria, some of which can also form centimetres-long filaments, are composed of hundreds to thousands of cells. But the newfound bacteria, which is roughly the shape and the size of an eyelash, is a single bacterial cell. “Realising that a filamentous bacteria of that size is actually just a single bacterium was an aha moment,” says Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who led the research, in an interview with National Geographic.

The scientists have named the microbe Thiomargarita magnifica for its size and the pearl-like beads of sulphur found inside the cell. T. magnifica is not only more than a thousand times bigger than a typical bacterium, it’s also longer than many multicellular animals such as fruit flies. In a news conference Vollard said that “Discovering this bacterium is like encountering a human being that will be as tall as Mount Everest.” ...

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/sc ... lled-world

[macdoc]

FEBRUARY 3, 2021
The Arctic Ocean was covered by a shelf ice and filled with freshwater
by Alfred Wegener Institute

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-arctic-oc ... water.html

explains a few things

[rainbow]

BIGGEST bacterium ever discovered shakes our view of the single-celled world

We usually think of bacteria as organisms so small they can be seen only through a microscope. But scientists discovered a giant white bacterium lurking on rotting leaves in the brackish waters of a red mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles.

It’s so large it can be seen easily with the naked eye. But size isn’t the only astonishing trait of this long, filamentous microbe; it has a more complex structure than any other bacterium previously discovered, and, unlike most, it stores its DNA in tidy little packets.



Previously discovered giant bacteria, some of which can also form centimetres-long filaments, are composed of hundreds to thousands of cells. But the newfound bacteria, which is roughly the shape and the size of an eyelash, is a single bacterial cell. “Realising that a filamentous bacteria of that size is actually just a single bacterium was an aha moment,” says Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who led the research, in an interview with National Geographic.

The scientists have named the microbe Thiomargarita magnifica for its size and the pearl-like beads of sulphur found inside the cell. T. magnifica is not only more than a thousand times bigger than a typical bacterium, it’s also longer than many multicellular animals such as fruit flies. In a news conference Vollard said that “Discovering this bacterium is like encountering a human being that will be as tall as Mount Everest.” ...

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/sc ... lled-world

The new Overlords.

“They are way more complex in terms of biochemistry. They can fix carbon, they can use sugars, they can grow on all kinds of substrates, they can communicate, they can do signalling, all kinds of complex mechanisms, they are also capable of social behaviour, and some of them have complex life cycles. So, it is not true that bacteria are simple, and eukaryotes are complex.”

[Brian Peacock]

I for one welcome our bacilluseum overlords.

[macdoc]

Yum

You think you know about MSG? It’s time to separate fact from fallacy

who knew
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-ins ... es-2768446

[rainbow]

Yum

You think you know about MSG? It’s time to separate fact from fallacy

who knew
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-ins ... es-2768446

It's just an amino acid, like glyphosate. Completely harmless.

[Svartalf]

Well, even if there's less than in table salt, it's sodium rich, so not to be used in excess

[Brian Peacock]

Very good as a varnish thickener.

[Svartalf]

I grant, I did not even know this could have non food uses.

[rainbow]

Well, even if there's less than in table salt, it's sodium rich, so not to be used in excess

If that bothers you use the potassium or ammonium salt - the work as well for the flavour enhancement effect.


...this

Calcium diglutamate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Calcium diglutamate, sometimes abbreviated CDG and also called calcium glutamate, is a compound with formula Ca(C5H8NO4)2. It is a calcium acid salt of glutamic acid. CDG is a flavor enhancer (E number E623)—it is the calcium analog of monosodium glutamate (MSG). Because the glutamate is the actual flavor-enhancer, CDG has the same flavor-enhancing properties as MSG but without the increased sodium content.[1] As a soluble source of calcium ions, this chemical is also used as a first-aid treatment for exposure to hydrofluoric acid.[2]

[macdoc]

howizit ...the only guy to win TWO Nobels in physics I've never heard of ???!!!

He had worked at the University of Illinois–Urbana from the time he left Bell Labs, in 1951, until then. A good deal of his subsequent research at Illinois had focused on the phenomenon of superconductivity. In other words, he and several colleagues explained the reasons why some substances, at very cold temperatures, can conduct electricity without any resistance. Their ideas took shape in a formidable tract that merged theoretical physics with complex mathematics. In 1972, Bardeen was awarded a second Nobel Prize in Physics for the work. He is the world’s only physicist to have such a distinction

. ….wow....one of innumerable insights into our modern connected world courtesy Bell Labs.

Excellent read

[macdoc]

damn - what a great time to be an astronomer - that Webb is a BEAST

[macdoc]

Interesting approach

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/202 ... e-air.html