Curio Cabinet

They’re turning greenhouse gases into rocky masses. A London-based startup has developed a device that can not only reduce emissions from cargo ships, but turn them into something useful. Cargo ships, as efficient as they are in some ways, still produce an enormous amount of emissions. In fact, they account for roughly three percent of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. Reducing their emissions even a little could have a big environmental impact, and there have been efforts to develop wind-based technology to reduce fuel consumption as well as alternative fuel. In the case of the startup Seabound, their approach is to scrub as much of the carbon from cargo ship exhaust as possible. Their device is the shape and size of a standard shipping container and can be retrofitted onto existing ships. Once in place, it’s filled with quicklime pellets which soak up carbon from the ship’s exhaust. By the time the exhaust makes it out to the atmosphere, 78 percent of the carbon and 90 percent of the sulfur is removed from it. The process also converts quicklime back into limestone, sequestering the carbon.
 
Similar carbon scrubbing technology is already in use in some factories, so the concept is sound, but there are some downsides. The most common method of quicklime production involves heating limestone to high temperatures, which releases carbon from the limestone and creates emissions from the energy required to heat it. There are greener methods to produce quicklime, but supply is highly limited for the time being. In addition, the process requires an enormous quantity of quicklime, reducing the overall cargo capacity of the ships. Meanwhile, some critics believe that such devices might delay the development and adoption of alternatives that could lead to net zero emissions for the shipping industry. It’s not easy charting a course for a greener future.

 
[Image description: A gray limestone formation in grass photographed from above.] Credit & copyright: Northernhenge, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Getting rid of plastic is a pain, but what if it was a painkiller? According to a paper published in Nature Chemistry, scientists at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. have genetically engineered a strain of E. coli that is capable of breaking down plastic and turning it into acetaminophen. It sounds outlandish, but it’s not as crazy as it seems. The E. coli in question isn’t the same type that makes people ill. This strain is capable of carrying out a chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement. It’s a phenomenon that has never been observed in nature before, and until now was only seen in harsh laboratory conditions previously thought to be incompatible with life. Yet, when chemists added polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a type of plastic commonly used in food packaging, into a culture of their specially-engineered E. coli, the bacteria used a Lossen rearrangement to turn plastic molecules into acetaminophen.
 
Also known as paracetamol, Acetaminophen is an over-the-counter painkiller that most people have taken at some point, though they might not know that it, too, is a petroleum derivative. Just as it takes a lengthy process to turn crude oil into helpful pills, researchers had to take several steps to get their E coli to produce something useful. First, they took E. coli that could turn PET into para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), and added genes from mushrooms and soil bacteria that could turn PABA into acetaminophen. The result was a strain of E. coli that could create acetaminophen from PET in less than 24 hours. That’s one headache solved!

 
[Image description: Plastic bottles and other plastic trash in a yellow waste bin.] Credit & copyright: Hyena, Wikimedia Commons. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Hyena. This applies worldwide.

Beware the pharaoh’s… cure? A deadly fungus that once “cursed” those who entered the tomb of King Tutankhamun has been engineered into a treatment for cancer by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. When a team of archaeologists opened up King Tutankhamun’s fabled tomb back in 1922, they couldn’t have known about the terrible fate they had been dealt. One by one, those who entered the tomb died from an unknown illness. Then, in the 1970s, a similar string of tragedies befell those who entered the 15th century tomb of King Casimir IV in Poland. One such incident might have been dismissed as an unfortunate accident, but two meant that there was something else at play. Despite speculation about ancient curses, the likely culprit was found to be a fungus called Aspergillus flavus. It’s capable of producing spores that can stay alive seemingly indefinitely, and the spores contain toxins that are deadly when inhaled by humans. As they say, though, it’s the dose that makes the poison. In this case, the proper dose can instead be a cure. Researchers studying the deadly toxins within the fungal spores found a class of compounds called RiPPs (ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides) which are capable of killing cancer cells. Moreover, the compounds seem to be able to target only cancer cells without affecting healthy ones. That’s a huge improvement over conventional treatments like chemotherapy, which can harm a variety of healthy cells as much as they harm cancer. Another interesting fact is that the compounds can be enhanced by combining them with lipid molecules like those found in royal jelly (the special honey that is fed exclusively to queen bees), making it easier for them to pass through cell membranes. Fungus and honey coming together to cure cancer? Sounds like a sweet (and savory) deal.

 
[Image description: A petri dish containing a culture of the fungus Aspergillus flavus against a black background. The fungus appears as a white-ish circle.] Credit & copyright: CDC Public Health Image Library, Dr. Hardin. This image is in the public domain and thus free of any copyright restrictions.

Who would have ever thought that the prey would have something to thank the predators for? Researchers at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands have published a paper in Science Advances showing how predators drive the evolution of their prey. The experiment involved guppies, chosen for their quick reproduction cycles, living in an enclosed environment. Researchers selectively introduced and removed predators from the controlled environment and observed how the guppies adapted. As expected, the presence of predators influenced the natural selection within the guppy population, but to a surprising degree. Within just three generations, the guppies responded by changing both their rate of reproduction and their body size. More specifically, the female guppies began reproducing earlier in life and produced more offspring. Meanwhile, the males’ bodies changed to improve their agility with shorter tails and smaller reproductive organs. Overall, the guppies grew smaller with each generation. The experiment influenced the evolution of the guppies purely with predation pressure, meaning that there was no sexual selection taking place at all. In the wild, female guppies are more likely to breed with colorful males, but such features were not affected during the experiment. The researchers were therefore able to determine exactly which physical features evolved due to predation pressure, and which ones were the result of other factors. While we already knew that predation is a major driver of evolution, this experiment surprised researchers by showing just how quickly it can cause change. Those are some speedy guppies.

[Image description: A colorful guppy fish against green aquatic plants.] Credit & copyright: 5snake5, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
 

Here’s a look at everything, near and far. Astronomers at the newly-operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory just released the first batch of images from the state-of-the-art facility, and it’s revealing new things about the solar system while giving a clearer view of the greater universe. Named after American astronomer Dr. Vera C. Rubin, the observatory was designed to push the boundaries of what is possible with ground-based telescopes. That’s fitting, considering that Rubin herself pushed the envelope of astrophysics during her lifetime. Her most significant achievement was finding unequivocal evidence for the existence of dark matter.
 
Located in Cerro Pachón in Chile, the Rubin Observatory is equipped with the largest camera ever built and is capable of capturing images at 3,200-megapixels. Its main purpose—for now—is to take a survey of the sky continuously for the next ten years. Its decade-long mission is off to a strong start with an initial batch of images featuring distant galaxies and Milky Way stars in unprecedented clarity. Its first ten hours of observation alone revealed 2,104 asteroids within the Solar System that have never been seen before (thankfully, none of them are on their way to crash into Earth anytime soon). When all is said and done, the observatory will gather around 500 petabytes worth of images, a veritable treasure trove of space imagery. It also has one other purpose. Its ability to observe dim and distant objects could prove useful in the search for the fabled “Planet Nine,” which (if it exists) orbits the sun every 10,000 to 20,000 years. It seems that the more you can see, the more there is to find out.

 
[Image description: A starry night sky with a line of dark trees in the foreground.] Credit & copyright: tommy haugsveen, Pexels