Category Uncategorized

Sima Baghbanzadeh et al. Geometry, Supertransfer, and Optimality in the Light Harvesting of Purple Bacteria, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.6b01779

In its billions of years on earth, plant life has become super-efficient at using light – and now it’s showing how it does it. A quantum – minuscule – examination of chlorophyll within certain purple bacteria shows an exceptionally efficient geometric arrangement for light harvesting, say scientists from The University of Queensland and Iran’s Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences. UQ’s Dr Ivan Kassal, said the bacteria used “quantum coherence” – particles’ wave-like properties – to harvest light during photosynthesis.

“Inside, the bacteria’s chlorophyll molecules – which collect en...

This artist’s rendition shows how a proposed laser-fluorescence instrument could operate on Mars. Credits: NASA

A sensing technique that the U.S. military currently uses to remotely monitor the air to detect potentially life-threatening chemicals, toxins, and pathogens has inspired a new instrument that could “sniff” for life on Mars and other targets in the solar system—the Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, or BILI. Branimir Blagojevic, a NASA technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, formerly worked for a company that developed the sensor...

Illustration of air showers from high-energy cosmic rays. Credit: Pieter Kuiper

An international team of physicists has developed a pioneering approach to using Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) – the highest energy particles in nature since the Big Bang – to study particle interactions far beyond the reach of human-made accelerators. The work makes use of UHECR measurements by the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) in Argentina, which has been recording UHECR data for about a decade.

The study may also point to the emergence of some new, not-yet-understood physical phenomenon at an order-of-magnitude higher energy than can be accessed with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the Higgs particle was discovered...

A microscopic image of a mouse lymph node. Credit: Image courtesy of Kazuhiro Suzuki

Researchers in Japan have discovered that the adrenergic nervous system controls when white blood cells circulate through the body, boosting the immune response by retaining T and B cells in lymph nodes at the time of day when they are most likely to encounter foreign antigens. On their way around the body, T and B cells pass through lymph nodes, where specialized cells may present them with antigens from bacteria or other pathogens. The T and B cells then reenter the bloodstream in search of these pathogens so that they can kill them. Previous studies have suggested that number of T and B cells present in the bloodstream varies over the course of the day.

Kazuhiro Suzuki and colleagues from the WPI Immuno...