nitrogen tagged posts

Astronauts could someday benefit from recycling human waste on long space trips using a yeast and  a carbon fixing cyanobacteria or algae
Credit: American Chemical Society

Imagine you’re on your way to Mars, and you lose a crucial tool during a spacewalk. Not to worry, you’ll simply re-enter your spacecraft and use some microorganisms to convert your urine and exhaled CO2 into chemicals to make a new one. That’s one of the ultimate goals of scientists who are developing ways to make long space trips feasible. Astronauts can’t take a lot of spare parts into space because every extra ounce adds to the cost of fuel needed to escape Earth’s gravity...

Highlights • Gut microbes show a dichotomy in ecological strategy for access to nitrogen • Beneficial microbes are overrepresented in the endogenous N source guild • Diets that reduce availability of dietary N to microbes promote healthy aging • Diet impact on host-microbiome interaction can be simplified for modeling

Scientists are one step closer to understanding the link between different diet strategies and gut health, with new research presenting the first general principles for how diet impacts the microbiota. Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that the availability of intestinal nitrogen to microbes in the gut plays a key role in regulating interactions between gut microbes and their host animal.

“This research really lays the groundwork for future modellin...

IMAGE1: The latest spectra from New Horizons Ralph instrument reveal abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto. “We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light,” …In one of the visually dark equatorial patches, the methane ice has shallower infrared absorptions indicative of a different texture. “The spectrum appears as if the ice is less diluted in N…or that it has a different texture in that area.”

IMAGE2: New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise – a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet above the surface of the icy body...