GEN-ERIC News

For two generations of physicists, it has been a standard belief that the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge. The notion was first put forth in 1947 by Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate noted for his role in developing the first nuclear reactor. But new research by a University of Washington physicist shows the neutron’s charge is not quite as simple as Fermi believed. Using precise data recently gathered at three different laboratories and some new theoretical tools, Gerald A. Miller, a UW physics professor, has found that the neutron has a negative charge both in its inner core and its outer edge, with a positive charge sandwiched in between to make the particle electrically neutral. “Nobody realized this was the case,” Miller said. “It is significant because it is a clear fact of nature that we didn’t know before. Now we know it.” The discovery changes scientific understanding of how neutrons interact with negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. Specifically, it has implications for understanding the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others are the weak force, electromagnetism and gravity).

A 25-year-old man had his eyebrows shaved off on Monday after he was bundled into a car in a bizarre attack in Hong Kong. The victim was waiting to meet a friend on a street corner at 1.30am when a black car pulled up and three men jumped out and grabbed him in Hong Kong’s Shek Kip Mei district, police said. They bundled him into the back of the car, beat him unconscious and when he woke up on a hillside hours later, he found his eyebrows had been shaved off while he was out cold, police said.

Good news for public health: Bioengineering researchers from the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed and patented a nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies. Described in an article appearing online September 16 in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the vaccine delivery platform is a deceptively simple combination of nanotechnology and chemistry that represents a huge advantage over current vaccine methods. This technology may make it possible to vaccinate against diseases like hepatitis and malaria with a single injection. And at an estimated cost of only a dollar a dose, this technology represents a real breakthrough for vaccine efforts in the developing world. A vaccination is an injection of a non-virulent form of a pathogen or molecule from a pathogen (known as an antigen), to which the immune system responds, destroying and then developing a “memory” for the pathogen. Later, when a virulent form of the pathogen comes along, this memory kicks in and the intruder is quickly eradicated. Most vaccines protect against viruses or bacteria, but vaccine techniques are also being explored as a way to kill cancer cells.

Hubbard, Ohio-based NanoLogix, which specializes in industrial microbes, said today that it has coaxed microorganisms to create hydrogen, which in turn was used to generate electricity. The hydrogen powered a 5.5-kilowatt generator. The generator powered multiple strings of 100-watt bulbs. Hydrogen doesn’t power generators directly. Hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell, which strips away electrons that get ultimately fed into an electrical appliance. The hydrogen is harvested from sugars in wastewater, according to the company. The company gets it from a Welch’s jelly plant nearby in Erie, Pa. The process was devised in part by Harry Diz, department chair and professor of environmental engineering at Gannon University and the developer of the NanoLogix bioreactor. The company did not provide specifics on how much sugar and wastewater is needed, what conditions are required to metabolize the sugar, what species of microbes were used, or whether Nutella would have the same effect. Still, an interesting achievement.

“Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”