Microbes drove Earth's mineral evolution

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

A comprehensive history of Earth's mineral wealth concludes that without life, many raw materials wouldn't exist. In the early interstellar medium, scientists say, there were about twelve minerals. The planetary formation process upped this to around sixty. The addition of water (itself a mineral) allows for more different kinds of reactions and the mineral count jumps into the hundreds

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Mars iron is ideal for building future bases

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 1 week (space.newscientist.com)

FUTURE colonizers of Mars needn't worry about lugging materials from Earth to build their bases - the most widely used building material on Earth, steel, could be manufactured on the Red Planet.

The rover Opportunity has found elemental iron - a key ingredient of steel - peppered across the Martian surface as a result of collisions with iron-rich meteorites. The dry conditions and lack of atmospheric oxygen mean that the stuff has not rusted, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio

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Trade Center Dig Exposes Ice Age Landscape

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 2 weeks (www.time.com)

Crews excavating the World Trade Center site this summer for the foundations of a new skyscraper have uncovered features carved into the bedrock by glaciers about 20,000 years ago, including a forty-foot-deep pothole

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Micronutrients in HIV-positive persons receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy

athena submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.ajcn.org)

In HIV-infected persons, low serum concentrations of vitamins and minerals, termed micronutrients, are associated with an increased risk of HIV disease progression and mortality.

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