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For mouthless, lungless bacteria, breathing is a bit more complicated than it is for humans. We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; Geobacter — a ubiquitous, groundwater-dwelling genus of bacteria — swallow up organic waste and "exhale" electrons, generating a tiny electric current in the process. Those waste electrons always need somewhere to go (usually into a plentiful underground mineral like iron oxide), and Geobacter have an unconventional tool to make sure they get there. "Geobacter breathe through what is essentially a giant snorkel, hundreds of times their size," That "snorkel" is called a nanowire. Though these tiny, conductive filaments...

ChaeaSoccer-ball–shaped carbon nanoparticles called buckyballs may keep water flowing through filters, new research shows. As water passes through treatment plants, communities of bacteria called biofilms sometimes stay behind and gum up the works, a harmful process known as biofouling. Biofouling costs the United States billions of dollars each year in equipment damage, contamination, energy loss and medical costs stemming from bad water, according to the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman...

Three years ago, a team of scientists rocked the paleontology world by reporting that they'd recovered flexible tissue resembling blood vessels from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur fossil... Subsequent analyses by many of the same scientists -- including Mary H. Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh -- indicated that the fossil contained small bits of collagen, a fiber-forming protein that's the largest non-mineral component of bone... Schweitzer and her colleagues, of course, take issue with the new findings. "There really isn't a lot new here, although I really welcome that someone is attempting to look at and repeat...