Geobacter can clean up uranium but a new study documenting how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals could mean a big benefit for contaminated sites in the future.

Identifying the Geobacters' conductive pili (nanowires - hair-like appendages found on the outside of Geobacters) as doing the bulk of the work is a new revelation. The nanowires also shield Geobacter and allow the bacteria to thrive in a toxic environment.

A new study about the impact of various food waste disposal systems says putting it into a garbage disposer results in lower global warming potential than putting it in the trash and sending it to a landfill.

It was an interesting question for a third date, and the first thing my (now ex-) boyfriend and I disagreed on.  I said “cheap oil” and he answered “water.”

Our difference of opinion was largely a product of our upbringings.  I was raised on thunderstorms and flooded basements back East, while he grew up amid droughts and “water wars” in California.

Months after we parted ways, I was reminded of that conversation as I drove through California’s Central Valley, past billboards plastered with water propaganda and tractors shadowed by dust clouds.