Tim Barribeau, Author at Gizmodo

Motion sensitive taps are havens for disease

The Johns Hopkins Hospital recently changed a number of their old-fashioned, manually-controlled faucets for fancy new motion-sensitive ones that you didn’t have to touch at all. They immediately saw a spike in Legionella – a potentially deadly kind of bacteria that can cause pneumonia. The hospital took samples of the water from 20 of the…

io9 Tim Barribeau Apr 1

In event of a ricin attack, reach for bleach

If a bioterrorist attack ever does happen, ricin is widely regarded as the weapon of choice. Comparatively cheap and easy to get, there’s no known antidote to the toxin. But in the event of an attack, common household bleach may be the best way to clean up. A recent report compared the effectiveness of bleach…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 29

“Bacterial dirigibles” bring us a steambiopunk disease-fighting future

Despite sounding like something you might think up in the final days of NaNoWriMo, bacterial dirigibles could be the next generation of disease fighters. Rather than creating a drug in a lab to be used as medicine, this new research proposes a way of repurposing bacteria as attack blimps against diseases. The bacteria are engineered…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 29

An artificial leaf and a gallon of water could generate enough energy to power your house for a day

The artificial leaf has been a target of solar research for years — an object that creates fuel sources out of sunlight, mimicking photosynthesis. But this solar energy breakthrough has always been thwarted by the need for rare components… until now. New research out of MIT has created an artificial leaf that’s not only cheap…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 28

Nano-bricks could give us better food packaging

By creating a new coating for plastic out of clay, scientists have found a way to keep our food fresh, longer. The substance is a thin film of sodium montmorillonite, and when added as a coating to your everyday plastic food wrapper, it’s significantly stronger and dramatically reduces the transmission of oxygen — preserving the…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 28

“The most delicious fruit known to men” has been bioengineered to be even better

One of the reasons bananas enjoy their rampant popularity is that the kinds you buy in stores are hideously mutated versions of the original, bred to not have the inedible seeds their wild brethren so proudly display. Thanks to new research we may soon be seeing other fruit making the transition to seedlessness, and filling…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 18

The worst statistics in the world

In an article published in the Cochrane Review, researchers have shown that people don’t really understand statistics. That’s not news, but now we have proof that our poor grasp of stats can be bad for our health. Statistics have a huge influence on a how effective people think drugs are – except, of course, it’s…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 18

A bad job is just as damaging to your mental health as unemployment

Being unemployed is generally regarded as detrimental to your mental health, with the prevailing wisdom being that gainful employment will fix you right up. Unfortunately, according to research published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a crappy job can be just as bad — if not worse — than unemployment. Analyzing more than 7,000 working-age Australians…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 16

Carnivorous plants capture prey with subsecond speed

Lacking any sort of nervous system, how do carnivorous plants like the aquatic bladderworts move with enough speed and purpose to catch their prey? These waterbound bug eaters are covered in tiny bladders which they’ve squeezed all the water out of, leaving them with an internal pressure lower than outside. When triggered by passing larvae…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 11

Why the Gulf oil spill is polluting our skies

The Gulf oil spill was an ecological disaster of unmitigated proportions — but some scientific good may come from it. As a side effect of this horrific incident, for the first time scientists have been able to observe how the oil becomes an aerosol, transferring from the sea to the air in an unspoiled environment.…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 11

What are the most aggressive ants in the world?

When groups of red wood ants interact and fight, the smaller groups fight harder and take more casualties. Ants are one of the few non-human animals that engages in close-contact group battles, and how they fight is directly linked to the makeup of that group. In a study published this week by the Royal Society,…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 11

Elephants learn to cooperate, begin plotting our downfall

Just like the intelligent, trunk-nosed mulefa in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, elephants are capable of cooperating in situations where more than one prehensile limb is required. In a series of experiments (pictured here), scientists observed elephants pulling on opposite ends of a rope, cooperating to slide food toward them. Not only did they…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 10

Making nanomaterials just got a lot easier

Graphene is pretty cool stuff. It’s the foundation of a lot of nanomaterials, and when it’s only a single atom thick, it can stretch eternally in two dimensions. When it’s more than one atom thick it behaves very differently, becoming graphite (which you often find in pencils). We already know a pretty easy way to…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 4

Ibuprofen can protect against Parkinson’s (and hangovers)

Want to keep your brain in tip top condition for the Singularity? New research shows those who regularly take ibuprofen might be protecting themselves from Parkinson’s disease. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed more than 125,000 patients, and found that those who used the drug two or more times a week had…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 3

New evidence that life on Earth came from space

Meteors may have seeded the planet with life-giving ammonia. New research adds more weight to the claim that the lifeless Earth may have been helped in the right direction by a stray asteroid. Carbon-containing meteorites found in the Antarctic have nitrogen locked away inside them. And when these meteorites are treated with heat, pressure and…

io9 Tim Barribeau Mar 2

The strange story of how skinning your knees could give you cancer

It’s been known for a while that certain injuries can cause cancers, but the reasons why are still foggy. Now, new research shows at least part of the answer when it comes to skin cancer. Follicular stem cells, associated with the spots on your skin that grow hair, are generally dormant. But when you get…

io9 Tim Barribeau Feb 18

Want to know if a man is fertile? Check his bones.

For gentlemen only: Your fertility may be dictated by your skeleton. New research in mice has shown that there’s a very strong link between the bone hormone osteocalcin, and the production of testosterone. Male mice with low levels of osteocalcin had small and infrequent litters compared to those with higher amounts of the hormone (lower…

io9 Tim Barribeau Feb 18

600 million-year-old fossils reveal catastrophic oxygen loss on ancient Earth

635 million years ago, almost the entire planet was a frozen ball of ice. And yet mere tens of millions of years later a population explosion happened deep underwater in South China, preceding the better-known Cambrian explosion by a significant time period. In these oxygen-free waters, more than 3,000 fossils of 15 species of seaweeds…

io9 Tim Barribeau Feb 17

Cocaine changes the way your entire genome works

More than just a hell of a drug, cocaine can alter your genome — potentially for a very long time. It hits the part of your brain associated with reward, and changes the way genomes in this region behave. Essentially, it takes over gene regulation activity from another, naturally occurring protein in the brain. This…

io9 Tim Barribeau Feb 11

Scientists discover weird material that expands when poked

Using a new method of observing microscopic changes in a material’s behavior, scientists have spotted very cool properties in a water-methanol compound called methanol monohydrate. These crystals get smaller when warmed, but when you apply pressure to them (i.e., poke them), they expand outwards. This material is thought to be a major component of the…

io9 Tim Barribeau Feb 11

Tim Barribeau

Motion sensitive taps are havens for disease

In event of a ricin attack, reach for bleach

“Bacterial dirigibles” bring us a steambiopunk disease-fighting future

An artificial leaf and a gallon of water could generate enough energy to power your house for a day

Nano-bricks could give us better food packaging

“The most delicious fruit known to men” has been bioengineered to be even better

The worst statistics in the world

A bad job is just as damaging to your mental health as unemployment

Carnivorous plants capture prey with subsecond speed

Why the Gulf oil spill is polluting our skies

What are the most aggressive ants in the world?

Elephants learn to cooperate, begin plotting our downfall

Making nanomaterials just got a lot easier

Ibuprofen can protect against Parkinson’s (and hangovers)

New evidence that life on Earth came from space

The strange story of how skinning your knees could give you cancer

Want to know if a man is fertile? Check his bones.

600 million-year-old fossils reveal catastrophic oxygen loss on ancient Earth

Cocaine changes the way your entire genome works

Scientists discover weird material that expands when poked

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