Lagrange Point

Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge, but the solution may come from the natural predator of bacteria. Bacterial infections can be nasty, but you can engineer a phage to help better identify and treat them. Knowing exactly which bacteria is causing problems can help doctors target treatment more precisely and tailor antibiotic courses. Using bacteriophages  you can quickly identify and then eliminate common types of bacterial infections.

1. Jiemin Du, Susanne Meile, Jasmin Baggenstos, Tobias Jäggi, Pietro Piffaretti, Laura Hunold, Cassandra I. Matter, Lorenz Leitner, Thomas M. Kessler, Martin J. Loessner, Samuel Kilcher, Matthew Dunne. Enhancing bacteriophage therapeutics through in situ production and release of heterologous antimicrobial effectors. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39612-0

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.

1. 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

Getting an accurate picture of someone's health or vital signs is essential in medicine, but hard to physically do without wires. Invasive health monitoring systems can't provide insights into 'everyday' scenarios. Trying to assess someone's posture, gait and rehabilitation is hard if they're wired into a harness. Smart Pants using fibre optics can help rehabilitation by fully understanding the problem points in high detail. Non-contact monitoring of breathing and other vital signs is important in a hospital setting to reduce risk, but camera based solutions are too variable. How can you 'remove the wires' in a hospital setting? By using LiDAR and RF radar. 

1. Leticia Avellar, Anselmo Frizera, Arnaldo Leal-Junior. POF Smart Pants: a fully portable optical fiber-integrated smart textile for remote monitoring of lower limb biomechanics. Biomedical Optics Express, 2023; 14 (7): 3689 DOI: 10.1364/BOE.492796

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? 

1. 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

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. 

The universe scaling work of the NANOGrav team stands on the shoulders of giants to understand giants lurking in our universe. Huge decade spanning scientific projects like NANOGrav are built of ideas and concepts which we can trace back to earlier pioneers. NANOGrav relies on Pulsars to map the universe but the discovery of them can be traced back to one key woman, Jocelyn Bell Burnell. This week we dive into the discovery of Pulsars and how they have been used to make a new way of looking at the universe. Finding a periodic signal in the noise can be helpful but a whole universe them of them can widen our understanding. 

Weather in space, can seem far away but it's dazzling effects come with some danger. Aurora localised entirely around a satellite can cause a steamy situation for communications. Analysing space weather can lead to better designed satellites capable of withstanding 1-100 year solar storms. It's a balancing act when protecting satellites from solar weather, too much and too little protection can lead to disaster. Meteor showers are beautiful but how do you get one without an icey comet? The only way to get an asteroid to make a lovely meteor shower unfortunately involves a violent collision or big explosion. 

1. Nigel P. Meredith, Thomas E. Cayton, Michael D. Cayton, Richard B. Horne. Extreme Relativistic Electron Fluxes in GPS Orbit: Analysis of NS41 BDD‐IIR Data. Space Weather, 2023; 21 (6) DOI: 10.1029/2023SW003436

When a volcano erupts we're used to imagining damage from lava, ash and even tsunamis. So why were satellites taken out? The colossal eruptions at Hunga-Tonga in 2022 caused pressure waves that caused damage 1000s of km away and even to satellites. Satellites, long distance radio and GPS all rely on the ionosphere, but large eruptions can wreck havoc and cause disruptions. When a pressure wave spreads out from a volcanic eruption, we can also get similar disruptions to the ionosphere. Sometimes even before shock wave hits. The way our ionosphere protects and responds to stellar radiation can be influenced by big events down here on Earth.

1. Atsuki Shinbori, Takuya Sori, Yuichi Otsuka, Michi Nishioka, Septi Perwitasari, Takuo Tsuda, Atsushi Kumamoto, Fuminori Tsuchiya, Shoya Matsuda, Yoshiya Kasahara, Ayako Matsuoka, Satoko Nakamura, Yoshizumi Miyoshi, Iku Shinohara. Generation of equatorial plasma bubble after the 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption. Scientific Reports, 2023; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33603-3

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.

1. 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

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:

1. 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