The team members went through a process of incrementally determining what elements and molecules the bacterial strain could grow on. They already knew it could use oxygen, so they tested other combinations in the lab. When oxygen was absent, RSW1 could process hydrogen gas and elemental sulfur—chemicals it would find spewing from a volcanic vent—and create hydrogen sulfide as a product. Yet while the cells were technically alive in this state, they didn’t grow or replicate. They were making a small amount of energy—just enough to stay alive, nothing more. “The cell was just sitting there spinning its wheels without getting any real metabolic or biomass gain out of it,” Boyd said.

Then the team added oxygen back into the mix. As expected, the bacteria grew faster. But, to the researchers’ surprise, RSW1 also still produced hydrogen sulfide gas, as if it were anaerobically respiring. In fact, the bacteria seemed to be breathing both aerobically and anaerobically at once, and benefiting from the energy of both processes. This double respiration went further than the earlier reports: The cell wasn’t just producing sulfide in the presence of oxygen but was also performing both conflicting processes at the same time. Bacteria simply shouldn’t be able to do that.

“That set us down this path of ‘OK, what the heck’s really going on here?’” Boyd said.

Breathing Two Ways

RSW1 appears to have a hybrid metabolism, running an anaerobic sulfur-based mode at the same time it runs an aerobic one using oxygen.

“For an organism to be able to bridge both those metabolisms is very unique,” said Ranjani Murali, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved in the research. Normally when anaerobic organisms are exposed to oxygen, damaging molecules known as reactive oxygen compounds create stress, she said. “For that not to happen is really interesting.”

In the thermal spring Roadside West (left) in Yellowstone National Park, researchers isolated an unusual microbe from the gray-colored biofilm (right).

Photograph: Eric Boyd; Quanta Magazine

In the thermal spring Roadside West (left) in Yellowstone National Park, researchers isolated an unusual microbe from the gray-colored biofilm (right).Photograph: Eric Boyd; Quanta Magazine

Boyd’s team observed that the bacteria grew best when running both metabolisms simultaneously. It may be an advantage in its unique environment: Oxygen isn’t evenly distributed in hot springs like those where RSW1 lives. In constantly changing conditions, where you could be bathed in oxygen one moment only for it to disappear, hedging one’s metabolic bets might be a highly adaptive trait.

Other microbes have been observed breathing two ways at once: anaerobically with nitrate and aerobically with oxygen. But those processes use entirely different chemical pathways, and when paired together, they tend to present an energetic cost to the microbes. In contrast, RSW1’s hybrid sulfur/oxygen metabolism bolsters the cells instead of dragging them down.

This kind of dual respiration may have evaded detection until now because it was considered impossible. “You have really no reason to look” for something like this, Boyd said. Additionally, oxygen and sulfide react with each other quickly; unless you were watching for sulfide as a byproduct, you might miss it entirely, he added.

It’s possible, in fact, that microbes with dual metabolisms are widespread, Murali said. She pointed to the many habitats and organisms that exist at tenuous gradients between oxygen-rich and oxygen-free areas. One example is in submerged sediments, which can harbor cable bacteria. These elongated microbes orient themselves in such a way that one end of their bodies can use aerobic respiration in oxygenated water while the other end is buried deep in anoxic sediment and uses anaerobic respiration. Cable bacteria thrive in their precarious partition by physically separating their aerobic and anaerobic processes. But RSW1 appears to multitask while tumbling around in the roiling spring.

It’s still unknown how RSW1 bacteria manage to protect their anaerobic machinery from oxygen. Murali speculated that the cells might create chemical supercomplexes within themselves that can surround, isolate and “scavenge” oxygen, she said—using it up quickly once they encounter it so there is no chance for the gas to interfere with the sulfur-based breathing.

RSW1 and any other microbes that have dual metabolism make intriguing models for how microbial life may have evolved during the Great Oxygenation Event, Boyd said. “That must have been a quite chaotic time for microbes on the planet,” he said. As a slow drip of oxygen filtered into the atmosphere and sea, any life-form that could handle an occasional brush with the new, poisonous gas—or even use it to its energetic benefit—may have been at an advantage. In that time of transition, two metabolisms may have been better than one.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

Trouble is brewing for the Digital Services Act (DSA), the landmark European law governing big tech platforms. On August 21, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), sent a scathing letter to a number of tech giants, including Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. The letter’s subject: the European Digital Services Act cannot be applied if it jeopardizes freedom of expression and, above all, the safety of US citizens.

The opening of the letter—signed by FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson—features a prominent reference to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, namely freedom of speech: “Online platforms have become central to public debate, and the pervasive online censorship in recent years has outraged the American people. Not only have Americans been censored and banned from platforms for expressing opinions and beliefs not shared by a small Silicon Valley elite, but the previous administration actively worked to encourage such censorship.”

The Trump Administration’s Lunge

The Trump administration intends to reverse course, and it is in this direction that the attack on “foreign powers,” the European Union and in the United Kingdom, and in particular on the Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Act, begins. The letter also indirectly references GDPR, the European regulation on the protection of personal data, whose measures are “aimed at imposing censorship and weakening end-to-end encryption” with the result of a weakening of Americans’ freedoms, according to the letter.

Privacy and End-to-End Encryption: The Issues on the Table

In the letter, the US Antitrust Authority specifically asked the 13 companies to report “how they intend to comply with incorrect international regulatory requirements” (the deadline for scheduling a meeting was set for August 28) and recalled their “obligations towards American consumers under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices” that could distort the market or compromise safety.

And it is precisely on the security front, and especially on the adoption of end-to-end encryption, that the FTC calls big tech companies to order: “Companies that promise that their service is secure or encrypted, but fail to use end-to-end encryption where appropriate, may deceive consumers who reasonably expect this level of privacy.” Furthermore, “certain circumstances may require the use of end-to-end encryption, and failure to implement such measures may constitute an unfair practice.” The weakening of encryption or other security measures to comply with laws or requests from a foreign government may therefore violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the document states.

What Happens in Case of Disputes and Interference

In a tweet on X, Ferguson wrote flatly that “if companies censor Americans or weaken privacy and communications security at the request of a foreign power, I will not hesitate to enforce the law.”

“In a global society like the one we live in, overlaps and interferences between different legal systems are natural. Just think of those, in the opposite direction, between European privacy legislation and the famous American Cloud Act,” Guido Scorza, a member of the Italian Data Protection Authority, told WIRED. Scorza believes that in the event of significant discrepancies, “it will be up to the US government and the European Commission to identify corrective measures capable of guaranteeing the sovereignty, including digital, of each country.”

This article originally appeared on Wired Italy and has been translated from Italian.

Sun-baked Morocco, grappling with its worst drought in decades, has launched a pilot project aimed at slowing water evaporation while simultaneously generating green energy using floating solar panels.

At a major reservoir near the northern city of Tangier, thousands of so-called “floatovoltaic” panels protect the water’s surface from the blazing sun and absorb its light to generate electricity.

Authorities plan to power the neighboring Tanger Med port complex with the resulting energy, and if it proves a success, the technology could have far wider implications for the North African kingdom.

According to official figures, Morocco’s water reserves lost the equivalent of more than 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day to evaporation between October 2022 and September 2023.

Over that same period, temperatures averaged 1.8C higher than normal, meaning water evaporated at a higher rate.

Alongside other factors like declining rainfall, this has reduced reservoirs nationwide to about one-third of their capacity.

Water ministry official Yassine Wahbi said the Tangier reservoir loses around 3,000 cubic meters a day to evaporation, but that figure more than doubles in the hot summer months.

The floating photovoltaic panels can help cut evaporation by about 30%, he said.

The water ministry has said the floating panels represent “an important gain in a context of increasingly scarce water resources”, even if the evaporation they stop is, for now, relatively marginal.

Assessment studies are underway for another two similar projects in Oued El Makhazine, at one of Morocco’s largest dams in the north, and in Lalla Takerkoust near Marrakesh.

Similar technology is being tested in France, Indonesia and Thailand, while China already operates some of the world’s largest floating solar farms.

‘Pioneering’

Since the Moroccan pilot program began late last year, more than 400 floating platforms supporting several thousand panels have been installed.

The government wants more, planning to reach 22,000 panels that would cover about 10 hectares at the 123-hectare Tangier reservoir.

Once completed, the system would generate roughly 13 megawatts of electricity—enough to power the Tanger Med complex.

Authorities also have plans to plant trees along the banks of the reservoir to reduce winds, believed to exacerbate evaporation.

Climate science professor Mohammed-Said Karrouk called it a “pioneering” project.

He noted, however, that the reservoir is too large and its surface too irregular to cover completely with floating panels, which could be damaged with fluctuating water levels.

Official data shows water reserves fed by rainfall have fallen by nearly 75% in the past decade compared with the 1980s, dropping from an annual average of 18 billion cubic meters to only five.

Morocco has so far mainly relied on desalination to combat shortages, producing about 320 million cubic meters of potable water a year.

Authorities aim to expand production to 1.7 billion cubic meters yearly by 2030.

Karrouk said an urgent priority should be transferring surplus water from northern dams to regions in central and southern Morocco that are more impacted by the years-long drought.

The kingdom already has a system dubbed the “water highway”—a 67-kilometer canal linking the Sebou basin to the capital Rabat—with plans to expand the network to other dams.

© 2025 AFP