On the radar

The pick of the science news

Bubbling over

Dublin’s Science Gallery at Trinity College is getting in a lather for its new exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow and explores bubbles, foams and physics.

“Bubble is an exhibition where we ask our visitors – young and old – to get their hands wet in our Lather Lab,” said the gallery’s director Dr Michael John Gorman. “For example how long can you make a bubble last? Can you make a bubble to cover yourself?”

Developed in collaboration with Trinity physicists and featuring interactive elements, installations and artworks, Bubble runs at the gallery on Pearse Street until September 25th. See sciencegallery.com

Phone-o-scope

A mobile phone that doubles as a microscope could help improve the diagnosis of blood and infectious disease in remote and developing regions of the world.

Researchers in California kitted out a camera-enabled mobile phone with a high-resolution microscope attachment and demonstrated its ability to capture images of malaria parasites and sickle cells in blood smears, and TB-causing bacteria in sputum samples.

A mobile phone microscopy system “could help alleviate the problems of inadequate access to clinical microscopy in developing and rural areas”, wrote researchers in the journal PLoS One.

Genetic barcoding

Scientists have singled out two regions of DNA that could be used to catalogue the world’s plants through genetic “barcoding”. The technique, which uses very short genetic sequences standard parts of the genome, has already been used to identify over 60,000 animals, and this week the consensus sequences for plants are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Barcoding provides an efficient means by which we can discover the many undescribed species that exist on earth,” says Spencer Barrett from the University of Toronto, who was on the 52-strong scientific team that chose the plant DNA stretches.

By numbers

50

The expected percentage increase by 2050 of forest area burned by wildfires in the United States, according to climate research at the University of Leeds

260 million

The estimated number of years ago that vertebrate species first started living in trees, according to a study at Chicago’s Field Museum