Grade 8 student's antibiotics work earns science fair gold

Abstract:

This project is about isolation of filamentous bacteria from soil and experimented how they are useful to humans. We isolated 10 bacteria and tested for bacterial killing activity and protease enzyme production. Four isolates were killing test bacteria, the chemical produced from this isolate can be further developed as an antibiotic. Few isolates were also found producing protease enzyme, can be used in detergent industries.

A P.E.I. national science fair winner has found that some micro-organisms in soil can help fight against two common infections.

Shruthi Bandi of Queen Charlotte School in Charlottetown won gold at the Canada-Wide Science Fair for her project on antibiotics. (Lindsay Carroll)

Shruthi Bandi, a grade 8 student from Queen Charlotte Intermediate, recently won gold in the junior division of the national science fair. Bandi tested a number of bacteria found in soil against Staph infections and Candida infections, and found some to be effective at fighting them.

"Everyone thinks micro-organisms are bad and they cause diseases, but I wanted to prove that micro-organisms are actually really good and they help fight diseases," said Bandi.

"I found that one of my isolates was able to fight against Staphylococcus aureus and two of my other isolates were able to fight against Candida albicans. I want to continue this experiment further because the results are really intriguing. So it would be cool to develop a drug or medicine that could fight against Staphylococcus aureus."

The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus causes what is commonly known as a staph infection. Candida albicans is a yeast infection.

Bandi also took home $4,000 along with her gold medal from the National science fair.

Scientists have confirmed today that Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, has a watery ocean

Earth is not the only orb with oceans. In 2005 Cassini, an American spacecraft, saw plumes of water shooting into space from cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons (see picture).

Courtesy NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Enceladus is the sixth-largest of the moons of Saturn, with a mean radius of 252 km (156 miles). In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft spotted what appeared to be plumes of water shooting into space from cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus. The only reasonable explanation would be that the moon has an ocean of liquid water under the ice. Now, a team led by Luciano Iess of theUniversity of Rome confirmed that the ocean exists, and also showed that, like Earth’s, it doesn’t cover the entire surface.

But how could a salty liquid ocean exist, under ice, in Saturn’s area – so far away from the Sun? The likely cause is gravity: as the moon moves around Saturn, tidal forces from the planet and the other moons flex and bend the core of the planet, creating friction – therefore heat. This melts the ice, maintaining a liquid ocean.

Gravitational measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft revealed that a 10km-deep ocean of water, larger than Lake Superior, lurks beneath the icy surface of Enceladus at the moon’s south pole; the liquid ocean reduces the volume of the southern hemisphere, so judging by the larger volume of the northern hemisphere, it’s likely that the ocean can only be found in the southern areas.

David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said the body of water was so large it “may extend halfway or more towards the equator in every direction. It might even extend all the way to the north.”

So what does this mean? Is it far fetched to think that Enceladus could host life? No, not really. There are clear indications that it is habitable – the temperature is right, you get liquid water, and you get some important chemical elements for life, so Enceladus might be the perfect place to look for life (probably microscopic life).

“The question is what conditions do you need to form life and, of course, we don’t know what temperature the ocean is today, nor do we know what it was back in the geological past. But it’s conceivable that it was warm enough, with circulation of water coming from the silicate core as well, to allow life to form even if today that ocean is maintained by antifreeze and is slightly below the freezing point,” said Jonathan Lunine, a member of the team at Cornell University in New York. The antifreeze in question is salt, which reduces the temperature at which water freezes.

Enceladus is not the only moon which sports a liquid water the ice: we’ve written several articles about Europa, a moon of Saturn, and how promising it is. Europa has a more extensive, global ocean under the surface – it is regarded by many as the most likely place to host life in our solar system (bar Earth). But Enceladus also has researchers rubbing their hands due to its vapour plumesfrom the south pole which also contain organic molecules – possible, but not clear signs of life.

To me, the next step here is to establish permanent satellites around Europa and Enceladus, and gather as much geological information as possible, and in time (why not?) land a rover there. The main problem, is, of course, the funding.

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California, said:

“There are now several lines of evidence – the geysers, the plume chemistry, and now gravity – that indicate a substantial body of liquid water. For astrobiology this is confirmation of what we expected and is good news. My one view is that Enceladus should be the priority.”

An artist’s impression of the interior of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Credits: Nasa/JPL-Caltech.

Dr Iess describes, in a paper in Science, how his team mapped Enceladus’s gravity by tracking Cassini’s orbit. The moon’s southern hemisphere is less massive than it would be were there no ocean, but its northern hemisphere is not. So the ocean covers only the southern part of the moon.

Reference: Underground Ocean Makes This Saturn Moon a Top Bet for Extraterrestrial Life
                    Scientists have confirmed today that Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, has a watery ocean

'Pawn Star' Rick Harrison On His 'Deals And Steals'

Two years ago, a man walked into the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas with a pair of diamond earrings.

Pawn dealer Rick Harrison asked him the typical questions — Where did you get it? Where is the receipt? — and the man readily answered. Harrison filled out the required paperwork and paid the man $40,000 for his merchandise.

The very next day, Harrison found out the earrings were stolen. The victim got her earrings back and the criminal was prosecuted. Harrison, meanwhile, was out $40,000.

"It's the cost of doing business," Harrison says. "That's the way I look at it. ... And Las Vegas is a crazy town at times. There's a lot of high-end things I get. So you have to know about ... really large diamonds, really expensive watches. ... So it's a lot different than most places."

Harrison, a second-generation pawn shop owner, is one of the stars of The History Channel's reality series Pawn Stars. The show follows Harrison, his father, Richard, his son Big Hoss and his son's friend Chumlee as they meet and haggle with customers who bring in all sorts of objects to sell and pawn. Harrison and his relatives assess the value of the objects — and try to determine whether or not they're fake — before offering their customers a collateral loan or money for their merchandise.

Harrison's new memoir, License to Pawn, details how he became an expert in, among other things, spotting fake Rolexes (he sees at least one a day), customer relations, human behavior, antiques and economics — all through running his 24-hour-a-day pawn business over the past 30 years.

LICENSE TO PAWN: DEALS, STEALS, AND MY LIFE AT THE GOLD & SILVER
BY RICK HARRISON AND TIM KEOWN
HARDCOVER, 272 PAGES
HYPERION
LIST PRICE: $23.99

Read An Excerpt

How Pawn Shops Work

Pawn shops, Harrison says, have been around for thousands of years and are among the oldest forms of banking. The way it works is simple: Customers provide a personal item as collateral to receive a loan from a pawn broker, who can then sell the product if the customer doesn't pay back the loan plus interest in a set amount of time.

"Say you have a wedding band," Harrison says. "You bring the wedding band in[to] my store. I offer you $100 and you accept it. I give you the $100, plus a pawn ticket. You have 120 days to come back in my pawn shop and pick up your merchandise and pay me my money back."

"If you come back in 30 days, you give me $115. I hand you the ring back and everything's good in the world. Now, if you don't pay me back," he says, "I end up keeping the merchandise and I put it in my showcase for sale. Nothing goes on your credit report. No one chases you down to break any legs or anything like that. You just simply have lost your merchandise. It's that simple."

The average loan for a piece of personal property, Harrison says, is around $50. And most pawn shops also charge a service fee and then tack on interest — which can vary between 10 percent and 20 percent a month.

"So if you get a $50 loan, it's going to cost you $7.50 for the first month and $5 after that," he says. "It's a lot less money than if you go to one of these payday loan places, or if you bounce a check, for that matter."

But Harrison must be careful — balancing his loans with how much the merchandise is actually worth, and how much he can receive if the merchandise is then resold. He has become an expert at assessing the value of Gibson guitars, Rolex watches, diamonds — as well as regular household items like drills, cameras and home electronics. And making sure goods aren't stolen is always an issue.

"Most people don't realize how regulated the pawn industry is, especially where I'm at in Nevada," he says. "When I take something in pawn or I buy something, I just don't take [an] ID. I take their driver's license number, their height, their weight, their eye color, their build. I turn that into the local police department, and then I also turn it into Homeland Security. It's part of the Patriot Act, and that goes to a central database online across the United States that checks for stolen items."

Doing Business

The best nights for business, Harrison says, are fight nights, when hundreds of thousands of fans flood Las Vegas to bet on boxing.

"Someone has to lose," he says. "I don't know what it is about fight fans. They always bet more than they can afford to lose."

Sometimes after fights, he says, fans line up down the block around his store waiting to trade in their jewelry for cash.

And who buys the jewelry from Harrison? Pimps — and there's a good reason why. "When you get arrested for pandering, they take your cash — because the cash was obtained illegally — but they don't take away your jewelry," Harrison explains. "And a pimp knows that if he buys jewelry in a pawn shop, if [he] brings it back to a pawn shop and gets a loan against it, [they'll] always get half of what you paid for it — as opposed to buying it in a jewelry store, when [they] don't know what [they're] going to get. So, when they get arrested, they will always have someone bring their jewelry down to me. I will loan them half of what they paid for it — and that's their bail money."

But pimps aren't Harrison's only customers — he has a series of regulars, including gamblers, billionaires and men trying to impress their dates. But the people on his TV show, he says, are generally those trying to sell — not pawn — their goods.

"The people pawning goods never want to be on the show," he says. "And the reason behind that is because when people are pawning something, they're getting a loan and have to admit they're broke. ... When people are selling something, it's a financial transaction and it's just perceived differently."

And his advice for would-be negotiators? Stay friendly, never stay in love with anything, and never set the first price.

"You're negotiating against yourself," he says. "You don't want to offer someone $1,000 for something, if you ask them what they'd pay for it, and they might have said $500. ... And if it's in your head that you're going to buy this no matter what, you've already lost. There's no real negotiating going on. You've completely capitulated if you're going to get it no matter what."