Planet's loneliest bug revealed

This micrograph shows the bacteria (image by permission of scientists)

A bug which lives entirely on its own and survives without oxygen in complete darkness underground has been discovered in South Africa.

Desulforudis audaxviator, or bold traveller as it is known in English, relies on water, hydrogen and sulphate for its energy.

Because it gets by without oxygen, it could offer clues as to whether life exists on other planets.

The loneliest living species known to science was found inside a gold mine.

The rod-shaped bacterium was found 2.8km (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the Earth in the Mponeng mine near Johannesburg, living in complete isolation, total darkness and 60C (140F) heat.

The find represents the first known ecosystem with a single biological species, scientists say.

It was identified in DNA extracted from water-filled cracks in the mine.

Dr Dylan Chivian of California's Berkley National Laboratory, who is part of the team that made the discovery, explained its significance.

"Early Earth and other planets didn't have a lot of oxygen on them, so life has evolved to use oxygen in order to get its energy," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"You know, if we ever discover life on other planets, it may very well be that they live without oxygen and instead potentially use chemicals like sulphate to get their energy."

The bug's name is partially based on a sentence in Latin from Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth: "Descende, Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges", which translates as "Descend, Bold Traveller, and attain the centre of the Earth".

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Gecko-like glue is said to be stickiest yet

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By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new type of dry glue designed to mimic gecko feet is 10 times stickier than the gravity-defying lizards, and three times stickier than other gecko-inspired glues, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"It's the stickiest dry glue yet," said Liming Dai of the University of Dayton, who reported on the glue in the journal Science.

A 1-inch (2.5-cm) square of the adhesive can support the weight of a 220-pound (100-kg) man climbing up a vertical surface, but it can be easily lifted and reapplied, an ideal material for, say, a Spider-Man suit.

"That is not real. What we do is real," said Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, referring to the comic book superhero's wall-climbing prowess.

Aside from helping people walk up walls, the glue could be used in electrical components without the need for soldering, Wang and Dai said in a telephone interview.

And because it is dry, it could be used at very low temperatures as in space, where more conventional glues lose their grip.

Like other gecko-inspired glues, the new glue uses a carpet of carbon nanotubes, thin filaments of carbon molecules. But attached to the ends of these filaments are curly strands of carbon that expand the surface area of the glue's gripping action.

This design matches the structure of real gecko feet, which have microscopic hairs that branch off in different directions.

"Our sticky glue has a force 10 times that of gecko feet and three times more than previous sticky glues trying to mimic the gecko feet," said Dai, who also worked with teams from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory near Dayton and the University of Akron to develop the glue.

Dai said the design is meant to maximize the effect of atomic-scale attractive forces known as van der Waals forces. When the curly part of the tubes are pressed onto a surface, the tubes become aligned with the surface, forming a strong bond. But, when lifted at an angle, this bond is broken.

Wang uses the analogy of having a foot stuck in mud. If you pull straight up, the foot stays stuck, but if you slowly peel the foot away, the bond is broken.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand)

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GE builds an OLED printer, hopes to challenge light bulbs in 2010

by Samuel Axon

Maybe the incandescent light bulb has been sitting in its socket-shaped throne for too many years -- GE thinks so, anyway. GE R&D guys have produced a machine that prints OLED materials newspaper-style onto 8-inch sheets of metal foil in hopes that the sheets -- which can be pinned to just about any surface -- will start the process of home lighting biz regime change in 2010. Picture, if you will, wallpaper or window blinds that provide soft, diffused lighting for the living room after dark -- no need for special fixtures, just a wall plug. OLED lighting isn't yet cost-efficient for the average consumer, but GE hopes that will change soon. In the meantime, expect to see these sheets in a trip-out Flaming Lips concert in the somewhat-near future.

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