ENG: Scientists are exploring a solar-powered method for turning plastic waste into useful fuels and chemicals. This research responds to two urgent global problems: the growing amount of plastic pollution and the need for cleaner energy sources. A recent study led by Xiao Lu from the University of Adelaide shows that discarded plastics can be treated as a valuable resource because they contain large amounts of carbon and hydrogen.
ENG: At the scale of a bacterium, water is not a light, easy medium but a thick and resistant world, almost like tar, so an early single-celled organism that needed food had to solve the problem of movement before it could search, escape, or survive. Over immense periods of evolution, bacteria developed the flagellar motor, a tiny molecular machine that spins a tail-like flagellum hundreds of times per second and allows the cell to move through water many times its own length in a single second. When the motor turns in one direction, the bacterium swims forward, and when it reverses, the cell tumbles, changes orientation, and begins moving again along a new path.
