Bacteria that feed on air have been discovered. Free Technical Library News

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Bacteria that feed on air discovered

18.08.2020

Scientists at the University of New South Wales have discovered bacteria in Antarctic soils that not only breathe air, but also feed on it. A new study has shown that these microbes are quite common. Genetic analysis has shown the presence of bacteria in the three coldest regions of the planet - the Arctic, Antarctic and Tibetan Plateau.

Because these bacteria have so far been found in very low nutrient environments, they likely play a key role in fueling life around.

There are entire ecosystems that rely on this new process of carbon fixation by microbes, where they use the energy they get from inhaling atmospheric hydrogen gas to turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbon for their own growth.

The bacteria found oxidize hydrogen from the air, triggering a series of reactions that turn atmospheric carbon into living tissue. They can be eaten by other life forms. This process occurs simultaneously with photosynthesis when conditions change, for example, during the polar winter, when there is no light. This process probably occurs in cold deserts around the world, but has so far gone unnoticed.

The diet of bacteria that directly removes carbon from the atmosphere, and the fact that they can be quite abundant, makes the microorganism a potential greenhouse gas sink.

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Trust depends on the voice 19.10.2017

A lot of things can be said about a person by the voice - in fact, quite recently we wrote that the voice betrays our emotions to a greater extent than facial expressions. To trust or not to trust a person, we also decide by his voice. In a new article published in PLoS ONE, the same authors describe how a voice must be to be believed.

Scientists at Princeton University have investigated what exactly makes us believe that the speaker can be dealt with: timbre, intonation, or something else. The researchers "assembled" a synthetic voice, focusing on the parameters of real voices from earlier experiments, and the parameters of the synthetic voice could be changed. In the current experiment, 500 people participated: a mechanical voice greeted them by saying "hello", and the listener had to evaluate how trustworthy the voice was.

It turned out that the key property here is melodiousness, that is, intonation must change, even within such a short word as "hello": the voice must first rise up, then fall, and then rise again. If the participants in the experiment heard a monotonous voice with an even pitch, they considered it not at all credible.

Simply put, if you want the interlocutor to trust you, you need to speak more vividly, avoid a flat, inexpressive sound. Another parameter is the overall pitch of the voice sounds: it turns out that high voices are more trusted than low voices. The reason for this may be rooted in some ancient instincts: in many animals, low growls and generally low sounds mean a threat, while high exclamations usually mean a playful mood and an invitation to frolic.

In the future, the authors of the work are going to repeat these experiments, but with a model of the female voice, as well as with the participation of people from different cultures and ethnic groups. Given the fact that gadgets and robots around us are increasingly beginning to speak in human voices, such studies will certainly be of interest to those who develop a variety of applications, from navigators to some kind of assistant in learning a foreign language.

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