gold

While the term "gold prospector" still evokes the image of a weathered frontiersman biting into a rock, advances in biology have now created a prospector that more closely resembles E. coli than a grizzled Forty-Niner. By modifying a bacterium that finds gold toxic, Frank Reith, a geologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, has created a microbe with an eye for gold that would put Deadwood's George Hearst to shame.

Patients of the future may take a deep breath, and then huff a sigh of relief -- no lung cancer detected.

Such a cancer breathalyzer test could come from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where scientists have used gold nanoparticles to build sensors that detect compounds on the breath of lung-cancer patients.

Gold has long represented a safe haven for nervous investors, and the latest financial meltdown has again borne witness to skyrocketing gold prices. Now a German company hopes to capitalize on public distrust of banks by putting real, solid gold bars into those sweaty hands via vending machines, the first of which was just installed in Frankfurt Airport. Right next to the iPod machine.

When most people think of gold, they think of Fort Knox, or a phat set of grillz. The exceptionally nerdy -- like some people at popsci.com -- automatically recall gold's atomic number of 79. But no one suspected gold's role as nature's nanotechnological answer for purifying air, except for a team of researchers from the Queensland University of Technology.

On Wednesday, the BBC reported that millions of dollars in gold at the central bank of Ethiopia has turned out to be fake: What were supposed to be bars of solid gold turned out to be nothing more than gold-plated steel. They tried to sell the stuff to South Africa and it was sent back when the South Africans noticed this little problem.

Dept.: Gray Matter
Element: Gold
Project: Gilding
Cost: $60
Time: One hour
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