Word: hydrogen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...force, which is responsible for certain types of radioactivity.) Hypercharge, Fischbach reports in Physical Review Letters, is an extremely weak repulsive force that acts between objects no more than about 600 feet apart and varies in strength from element to element. It is strongest in iron and weakest in hydrogen. Thus, the physicists contend, if an iron ball and, say, a feather were released simultaneously in a vacuum, the iron's repulsive hypercharge would act more strongly than the feather's to counteract the earth's gravity--and the feather would hit first...
...understanding of what individual genes do, no matter where they're from. The challenge, explains Venter, is to identify the genes that allow some microbes to change sunlight into sugars, others to absorb carbon dioxide from the air and still others to transform dead plant matter into clean-burning hydrogen...
...environmental indicators and surprising biology are only part of what makes wholesale gene prospecting so promising. Hydrogen has been touted as a clean-burning replacement for fossil fuels, for example, and, says Patrinos, "there are already bugs out there that produce hydrogen." If gene prospectors could isolate the responsible gene, he explains, and splice it into a common bacterium, just as genetic engineers have done for years with the gene that produces human insulin, "we can duplicate it on industrial scales...
...decade," says Patrinos, "that we will develop a superbug that can make that conversion in a very clean way." Indeed, JGI, in collaboration with the San Diego-based biotech company Diversa, is sequencing communities of bacteria from the guts of termites in an effort to find genes that make hydrogen and ethanol. It's also looking for genes that enable microbes to metabolize radioactive waste...
...party in late May on the tiny, remote Shetland island of Unst, Britain's northernmost inhabited chunk of rock, was a real gas - literally. Islanders bopped to an enthusiastic set of '50s and '60s favorites performed by the Bonxies, perhaps the only rock band powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The electricity that amplified their guitars and keyboard came from a hybrid wind-into-hydrogen system that is part of the world's first community-owned hydrogen production plant, built on this island of 700 inhabitants. "Despite all the hype around the hydrogen economy, there appeared to be very little...