New Delhi: A new study from Queen Mary University of London has found that the caffeine in your coffee might be doing more than just waking you up—it could be helping your cells age more gracefully.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Microbial Cell this week.
The scientists looked at how caffeine, which is the world’s most widely consumed neuroactive compound, works at the cellular level.
They conducted a test on fission yeast, an organism that shares key cellular systems with humans, and discovered that caffeine activates a system called AMPK, which is a cellular pathway responsible for regulating growth and metabolism in cells.
Basically, when cells are low on energy, AMPK kicks in to help them cope, slowing growth and boosting repair systems. Caffeine helps activate this, thus helping cell growth and ageing.
So, that cup of coffee might not just perk up your brain; it could also be giving your cells a nudge toward healthier ageing.
Cleaner & greener way to extract gold
Flinders University in Australia has come up with a safer and greener way to extract gold not just from ore, but also from e-waste like old computer parts.
A paper published Thursday in the peer-reviewed Nature Sustainability journal by a group of scientists from the field of chemistry, engineering, and physics describes a method of extraction that is non-toxic and requires only cheap materials like salt and water.
Traditionally, gold is extracted using highly toxic chemicals like cyanide or mercury. Cyanide is used to dissolve gold from crushed ore, while small-scale miners use mercury to form gold-mercury amalgams, which are then heated, releasing poisonous vapours as byproducts. These methods pose serious risks to people and the environment, causing mercury pollution and toxic waste.
The new method uses a compound commonly used in water disinfection called trichloroisocyanuric acid, to safely dissolve the gold. It is activated by salt water. The dissolved gold is then captured using a recyclable sulphur-rich polymer. The process is supposed to be clean, reusable, and works on various waste streams.
The team now plans to scale this up and help small miners and recyclers move away from hazardous practices.
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Mammoth ivory or elephant ivory? New way to tell
A new scientific method developed by the University of Hong Kong can differentiate between legal mammoth ivory and illegal elephant ivory.
To protect elephants from extinction, the global sale of elephant ivory is banned; however, mammoth ivory, which comes from ancient remains preserved in permafrost, remains legal.
But the two types of ivory can look very similar, making it easy for traffickers to smuggle illegal elephant ivory disguised as mammoth ivory. Current methods like radiocarbon dating or DNA analysis to differentiate between the two are expensive and slow.
Now, scientists from University of Hong Kong have developed a fast, affordable method using stable isotope analysis to tell them apart.
Isotope analysis is basically the analysis of ratios of different compounds, like hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur in samples. By studying the specific isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen, the researchers found they could reliably distinguish elephant ivory.
This is because hydrogen and oxygen isotopes are traces of the water drunk by these animals, which is different for elephants (mainly from tropical areas), and mammoth (mainly from ancient Siberia).
This new technique is a step towards closing a major loophole in the illegal ivory trade. The peer-reviewed research was published in Frontiers this week.
‘Heartbeats’ underneath Africa signal creation of ocean basin
New research led by scientists at UK’s University of Southampton reveals that Africa is slowly being torn apart by rhythmic pulses of molten rock rising from deep within the Earth. But not to worry, it won’t show results for at least a million years.
Researchers have discovered these mantle surges beneath Ethiopia’s Afar region, and they say it’s helping to form what could eventually become a new ocean basin.
Using volcanic rock samples, advanced modelling, and chemical analyses, researchers found a chemical striping in the mantle plume beneath Afar that provides evidence of this pulsing activity. The findings would help scientists better understand how deep Earth processes like mantle flow are tied to surface events, such as earthquakes, volcanoes and continental rifting.
Published in Nature Geoscience this week, the peer-reviewed study shows that these upwellings of hot mantle rock aren’t steady. They pulse like a beating heart, influenced by the movement of tectonic plates above. Over millions of years, as these plates stretch and thin, they’ll eventually break apart, marking the birth of a new ocean basin.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)