Microbes used to remove toxic compounds from crude oil and tar sands

September 14th, 2009 SYDNEY - Overheating disables bugs that help break down groundwater contaminants under the soil, says a new study. Probing ways of cleaning groundwater, scientists examined how bugs break them down under the soils surface.

September 8th, 2009 LONDON - Microbiologists have used bugs to break down and remove toxic compounds from crude oil and tar sands. Richard Johnson, a microbiology doctoral researcher at the University of Essex, described how by using mixed consortia of bacteria they have achieved complete degradation of specific compounds in only a few days.

August 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A research team led by Indian-origin scientist from North Carolina State University has devised a new technique that can help eliminate foul odour and air pollutants from industrial chicken rendering facilities. Rendering facilities take animal byproducts (e.g., skin, bones, feathers) and process them into useful products such as fertilizer.

August 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have found that naturally occurring organic matter in water and sediment appears to play a key role in helping microbes convert tiny particles of mercury in the environment into a form that is toxic to most living creatures. According to Duke University environmental engineers, this finding is important because it could change the way mercury in the environment is measured and therefore regulated.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A research conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois (U of I) has determined that using electrolyzed water rather than harsh chemicals could be a more effective and environmentally friendly method in the pretreatment of ethanol waste products to produce an acetone-butanol-ethanol fuel mix. When ethanol is produced, distiller's dried grain with solubles (DDGS) is a waste product.

July 14th, 2009 LONDON - In a new research, scientists have determined that early life in the form of microbes may have relied on lightning to cook their dinner. When lightning strikes sand or sediment, the path followed by the bolt can fuse into a glassy tube called a fulgurite.

June 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that new crops would be needed to be grown in the future if carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continue to rise. Global food security in a changing climate depends on the nutritional value and yield of staple food crops.

June 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research in China, scientists have determined that immobilized microbes can break down potentially harmful phthalates, thus proving useful in treating industrial waste water and preventing these materials from entering the environment. Phthalic Acid Esters (PAEs), commonly known as phthalates, are widely used as additives in polymer manufacture as plasticizers.

June 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has found that the highest microbial life on Earth appears to be in South America, around vents near the rim of the Socompa volcano, which sits on the border between Argentina and Chile in the Atacama Desert. The newfound creatures, at a height of almost 19,850 feet (6,050 meters) above sea level, are the highest-altitude microbial communities known, Steve Schmidt, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, told National Geographic News.

June 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at Oregon State University have suggested a new and improved method to test carcinogen risk. They said that trout can be a superior animal model than laboratory rats, and other traditional methods of assessing the risk of carcinogens.

June 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists have identified a new microbe that can gorge themselves on toxic chemicals in petrochemical spillages at industrial sites, by digesting hydrocarbons. As part of the study, Hong-Qi Wang and Yan-Jun Chen College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, working with Bo-Ya Qin of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, have investigated the activity of enzymes from the bacterium Bacillus cereus DQ01, which can digest the hydrocarbon n-hexadecane.

June 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists in the US have come up with a cheap, environmentally friendly way to kill termites and other pests. In their study, they have found that a substance derived from glucose can weaken the insects' immune systems, making them vulnerable to infections from lethal microbes.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An uncharted reservoir of briny liquid, buried under an inland Antarctic glacier, supports unusual microbial life in a place where life is unthinkable. After sampling the outflow from below Taylor Glacier of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, researchers believe that microbes have adapted over the past 1.5 million years to manipulate sulphur and iron compounds to survive, without photosynthesis.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has led to the discovery of unusual microbial life under an inland Antarctic glacier, a place where cold, darkness and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive. The microbes were found in an unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but buried under an inland Antarctic glacier.

April 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Chemical disinfectants used to make water safe to drink react with organic material in it, and yield toxic consequences, say researchers. Michael Plewa, a geneticist at the University of Illinois, points out that disinfection by-products (DBPs) in water are the unintended consequence of water purification.