Terroir is the term for the unique blend of a vineyard’s soils, water and climate that impacts the flavor and quality of wine. These unique microbial inputs are key to regional wine fermentations.

A new study from UC Davis, MicroTrek, Inc. and Constellation Brands Inc. offers evidence that grapes and the wines they produce are also the product of an unseen but fairly predictable microbial terroir, itself shaped by the climate and geography of the region, vineyard and even individual vine.

Results from DNA sequencing revealed that there are patterns in the fungal and bacterial communities that inhabit the surface of wine grapes, and these patterns are influenced by vineyard environmental conditions. 

Trials are often as partially showmanship along with the facts - both attorneys are trying to pick jurors who are most likely to go their way.

Moral outrage may be a secret weapon. The last time you were morally outraged you probably felt felt angry, but did you also feel disgust? Consider how you might feel in a court of law after watching a video of a heinous crime. 

Separate teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets, the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of these signatures on multiple worlds.

The five planets - WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b - are hot Jupiters, massive worlds that orbit close to their stars. The strengths of their water signatures varied. WASP-17b, a planet with an especially puffed-up atmosphere, and HD209458b had the strongest signals. The signatures for the other three planets, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b, also are consistent with water.

Extraction using hydraulic fracturing - fracking - has made North America the world's largest producer of oil and gas, while US CO2 emissions from energy have dropped back to early 1990s levels and the most offensive producer, coal, has been pushed back to 1980s levels. Despite those benefits, there have endless protests from environmentalists that fracking is worse for pollution. 

Does drilling for natural gas really cause pollution levels to skyrocket, the way activists claim? 

Thermionic conversion to heat energy, such as light from the sun or heat from burned fossil fuels, can mean very high efficiency, and because of its promise has been researched for over 50 years with little success.

That may soon change, thanks to a new design, dubbed a thermoelectronic generator, described in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

Modern science has made it possible to synthesize increasingly targeted drugs but Ma Nature is not out of it yet - it just took science to discover what nature could do. Pyridomycin, a substance produced by non-pathogenic soil bacteria, has been found to be a potent antibiotic against a related strain of bacteria that cause tuberculosis. 

The
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
scientists who discovered this property now have a better understanding of how its complex, three-dimensional structure allows it to act simultaneously on two parts of a key enzyme in the tuberculosis bacillus, and in doing so, dramatically reduce the risk that the bacteria will develop multiple resistances.