ScienceIQ.com

Potassium Iodide To The Rescue

Since the end of the Cold War, the focus of the nuclear threat has changed from hostile countries to terrorist cells. What should we do if terrorists set off a dirty bomb in a populated area, or sabotage a nuclear power plant? Some say the first thing we should do is grab a bottle of potassium iodide (KI). But that depends. First, about the KI. ...

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PotassiumIodide
Geology

What Are The Key Ingredients For An Avalanche?

All that is necessary for an avalanche is a mass of snow and a slope for it to slide down. For example, have you ever noticed the snowpack on a car windshield after a snowfall? While the temperature ... Continue reading

Avalanche
Geology

Fossil Energy - The Basics

Contrary to what many people believe, fossil fuels are not the remains of dead dinosaurs. In fact, most of the fossil fuels we find today were formed millions of years before the first dinosaurs. ... Continue reading

FossilEnergyTheBasics
Chemistry

Catalysts

Chemical reactions are interactions between atoms and molecules that result in a change in their relative arrangements and interconnections. The reaction affects only individual atoms and molecules, ... Continue reading

Catalysts
Engineering

Big Boom

They sound like thunder, but they're not. They're sonic booms, concentrated blasts of sound waves created as vehicles travel faster than the speed of sound. To understand how the booms are created, ... Continue reading

BigBoom

Resistance is NOT Futile!

ResistanceisNOTFutileMaybe if you are a Star Trek heroine up against the Borg, 'resistance is futile.' But if you are a germ that makes people sick, resistance - to antibiotics - is not futile at all.

When penicillin began to be widely used over fifty years ago, it could kill most of the bacteria that made us sick. Such bacteria are called 'pathogens,' to distinguish them from the many bacteria that are harmless or even useful. Nowadays, many pathogens are 'resistant' to a lot of the antibiotics we use to combat them. They have evolved the ability to fight off the effects of the drugs, so the drugs cannot cure you. This can be very dangerous in hospitals, where drug-resistant pathogens can spread rapidly and kill many people.

How can bacteria evolve drug resistance so quickly? The genes for drug resistance are usually not carried as part of the regular chromosome, but on extra rings of DNA called plasmids. These can be passed on to the bacterial cell's descendants, and can also sometimes be passed around to any other bacteria that happen to be in the area, even those of other species. If a drug kills all the susceptible bacteria, any few that are resistant will be free to multiply without competition and take over the population. So we are involved in an 'arms race' between biologists and chemists inventing new antibiotics, and pathogens inventing new ways to resist them.