Two long-lived species of bats appear to have proteins that are especially resistant to stress, which may explain why they can outlive many other similar-sized mammals.

According to a press release from the FASEB Journal:

[Asish Chaudhuri, a biochemist at the VA Medical Center, in San Antonio] and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.

Previous research covered by Technology Review suggested a similar characteristic underlying the lengthy life span of the naked mole rat, a rodent that can live for up to 30 years, compared to about 3 or 4 years for the average mouse.

The analyses showed that proteins in mole-rat cells are more resistant to unfolding, making them more stable than those of mice. The researchers also found evidence that the cells of mole rats have more efficient mechanisms for getting rid of improperly folded or oxidized proteins . . . The results suggest that naked mole rats can withstand oxidative damage better by keeping their proteins stable and quickly removing unfolded proteins before they can accumulate.

We finally have a hint of what The Droid Works, a stealthy-mode start-up founded by Helen Grenier, one of the cofounders of iRobot, will develop.

The NSF has given The Droid Works a grant worth nearly $100,000 to develop indoor and outdoor unmanned air vehicles. According to the report, the UAVs will be used for emergency response:

Indoor applications would enable the UAVs to respond to emergency situations that involve large steps, closed doors and rough terrain. The NSF grant will be used to develop indoor flight control and safety technology for the UAVs.

Other researchers are developing UAVs and other robots to assist with a rescue or survey an area following a disaster. Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, is leading one effort to use snake-like robots to rescue people trapped beneath rubble. More recently she developed a way to use multiply UAVs to survey an area and locate survivors.

According to most news report, the massive federal energy bill will go to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today--or maybe not (the confusion is typical of the political posturing that has bedeviled the legislation). The bill is an admirable effort to try and control the emissions of greenhouse gases, using a cap-and-trade system that is meant to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. You can be forgiven, however, if you haven't read all of the 1,201 pages. Actually, you can be forgiven if you can't even keep track of who favors the bill and who doesn't (many traditional environment groups back it, but this week Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have both said they oppose it as too weak to address climate change). Today's Washington Post has a good summary.

Perhaps the most interesting and confusing part of the legislation centers on the details of the cap-and-trade program. There is ample reasons to worry that the system, as outlined in the bill, will not be effective in reducing greenhouse gases, and, more specifically, will not be effective in spurring the development of innovative new energy technologies. In the current issue of Technology Review, Peter Fairley, an experienced environment journalist based in Paris looks at how a similar cap-and-trade scheme has been a failure in Europe. Fairley documents how the European Union system has given windfall profits to polluting industries and hasn't spurred any real switch to cleaner energy technologies. The reason for the failure: politics and special-interest groups meddling with the system to such an extent that it could no longer function as designed. Says Fairley:

What is especially disappointing is that even as the Europeans seek to undo many of the features that have made their carbon-trading system weak and dysfunctional, legislators in Washington seem determined to repeat their mistakes.