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A team of the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have discovered a microbial battery in the North Sea off the Coast at Oostende. "By producing electricity, these bacteria extract energy from the sea floor," says prof. Filip Meysman. "It is the first time that such a biological battery has been found in nature. Perhaps, in ten years, a smart phone will be powered by tiny conductive bacterial wires." These bacteria seem to be common all over the world.
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Living Battery Discovered in North Sea
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 02 2014, @07:30AM
Where's the link to the article the quote comes from?
Also: capital p for Prof, "bacteria" not "bacterias" (one of which is quoted, which is why I wanted to see the article)
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday April 02 2014, @07:37AM
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:15AM
Blasted colonials!
(Score: 4, Informative) by nightsky30 on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:33AM
First I've heard of this! I thought it was just bacteria. Though perhaps it was like fish(singular), fish(plural), and fishes(multiple types of fish).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:13AM
Looking at the Wiktionary page for "bacteria", I find that in the US this word has two meanings:
1. Plural (singluar: bacterium), several microbes
2. Singular (plural: bacterias), meaning a certain type of bacteria.
So it's obviously similar to "people", which may be plural (the people in this room are waiting, except for one person) or a singular noun (the people of France is only one of several peoples in Europe).
So from this I conclude that "bacterias are generating electricity" is correct if there are at least two types of bacteria doing this, while "bacteria are generating electricity" is already correct if there are at least two individual bacteria doing that, no matter whether they are of the same type or not.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, the above is all derived from (my understanding of) the Wiktionary article.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:01AM
As a native English speaker I would advise that I've never heard "people is" used in that way. "The people of France is" sounds like an error to my ears. I'd say "The people of France are only one of several peoples in Europe."
Google offers "my people live in West Virginia" despite listing that sense as singular, so I guess it's one of those exceptions that we all love.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:26AM
Source: http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/ full/ismej201441a.html [nature.com] and http://www.xpats.com/bacteria-found-north-sea-prod uce-electricity [xpats.com]
(Score: 2) by Koen on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:41PM
I translated the quote from Dutch, the source is here:
http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/992/Wetenschap/articl e/detail/1837346/2014/04/01/Levende-batterij-ontde kt-in-de-Noordzee.dhtml [demorgen.be].
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Koen on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:49PM
And the website of the team which made the discovery (the link was removed from my submission by the editor) is here:
http://www.microbial-electricity.eu/ [microbial-electricity.eu].
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:18AM
They probably thought it was tentacle porn.