
Jets of bacteria carry microscopic cargo - vo2maxer
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-jets-bacteria-microscopic-cargo.html
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pazimzadeh
I study bacteria swimming in mucus and I don't understand what the main
takeaway of this paper is. Can someone translate the math speak to something a
mere mortal can understand?

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jonplackett
This seems really cool. What could it be used for though?

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macewindu
bacteria carrying magnets could generate current could generate power?

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laumars
The speed at which that cargo was moving makes me question whether this could
ever be scaled up enough to generate a non-negligible amount of power, let
alone enough to solve any particular power requirements we currently have.

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TeMPOraL
What about power requirements we don't currently have? Ideas like these might
become useful for building technology that interacts with building blocks of
life in a different way than a bulk process (like lithography).

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laumars
I don't think it's a failure of imagination on my part. It's just we already
have a variety of technologies available that cover the low end of the power
generation and using bacteria in this way would never compete with what is
already out there.

That's not to say there isn't practical applications to this research. I just
can't see power generation being one of them.

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whatshisface
> _The way we do that experimentally is to put the bacteria inside a liquid
> crystal._

> _but this capability of the drug delivery by bacteria, this is something
> new._

Step one: replace the patient's blood with calculator display juice.

Step two: Liquid-crystal guided drug delivery.

