Welcome to my weekly letter, where I share a few noteworthy articles and my own commentary. Without further ado…
Weekly Read
- How to Kill a Zombie Fire (Wired) – with the wildfire season upon us, I figure it’s good to learn about how fire can turn zombies too 🙂 So, zombified fire, aka peat fire, can be taken out by ‘cold-fire’, aka surfactant.
- The Humble Shrub That’s Predicting a Terrible Fire Season (Wired) – the humble shrub that looks like rosemary but without its scent is called ‘chamise.’ Along with wind, and humidity, PG&E uses chamise sampling as the factors to identify areas that are at risk of wildfire. Thank you, cool plants!
- How Food Waste Could Be Turned Into Climate-Friendly Jet Fuel (Wired) – food waste turned landfill produces methane, which is the more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but there may be a way to pipe them through a bacterial digester and a few reactions to render it into jet fuel. It will still produce CO2, but overall it would still be better than methane.
- Hungry, Hungry Microbes in Tree Bark Gobble Up Methane (Wired) – Another story about the battle against methane! In this case, the scientists found out that the bacteria, Methylomonas, helps turn the freshwater wetland trees into methane filters. And potentially they may explore how the bacteria can be used wider to scale up its impact against methane gas.
- Sneaky New Bacteria on the ISS Could Build a Future on Mars (Wired) – just like the title, the article feels very ambivalent. While the bacteria may potentially provide a path to a future on Mars, it is highly uncertain whether that future is human’s or the bateria’s. Why am I thinking of necromorph in the Dead Space series? 😉
Have a nice weekend!
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