Remote arsenic assessment – A topic I’ve come back to again and again since I first covered for The Guardian the breaking news of arsenic contaminated tubewells on the Indian sub-continent in 1995. Now, an informatics approach to surface data could allow geologists and environmental scientists to identify regions of the world where people are at risk of exposure to arsenic in their drinking water without the need for widespread sampling to be undertaken. More…
Listening to tomographic tales – Researchers in the USA and The Netherlands have pieced together a picture of the most exquisite of molecular machines using electron-microscopic tomography. The team has for the first time obtained a three-dimensional structure of the gossamer-like filament of proteins found within the inner ear that gives us our sense of hearing and balance. More…
Atmospheric NMR – Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been used to study the kinetics of atmospheric pollutants in the gas phase for the first time. The method provides an empirical correlation between the atmospheric lifetimes of atmospheric pollutants and their relative reaction rates with chloro radicals at ambient temperatures. Read on…
Ebola spiked – An X-ray structure of the surface spike of the Ebola virus could explain how this lethal pathogen infects human cells and may help researchers devise preventative measures to stop the virus spreading during an outbreak. Full story…