A biology teacher at Tacoma's Washington High School pleaded is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old female student who told authorities about the relationship after the teacher tried to break it off, court documents show. The teacher, identified as Christopher A. McKay, 30, was charged Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court with four counts of sexual misconduct with a minor that allegedly took place over a period of several months. He pleaded not guilty to the charges. According to the case file, McKay was the student's 10th-grade biology teacher in 2012-13. Beginning in 11th grade, the student enrolled in the Running Start program and began hanging out in McKay's classroom to study during his planning period an hour before the start of the school day. A few months later, around March 2014, the two of them began communicating via text message, and the texts gradually became flirtatious, according to court documents. In mid-April 2014, the student told detectives that she and McKay went for a walk at a local park, then returned to a car where they had sex for the first time, court documents show. Over the next nine months, they had sex two or three times a … Continue reading →

A new study has taken a lesson from biology to show how the performance of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries can be improved. A team from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, borrowed a technique that organisms use to build the mineralized tissues that comprise bones, teeth and shell to show how biological molecules can latch onto nanoscale components, locking them into position to help produce high-performing Li-ion battery electrodes. The development of mineralized tissues is helped by specialized peptides, organic molecules made by the cells of living things. These peptides can bind to the particular inorganic molecules required to create that tissue and hold them in place, but can also help create very fine structures with fabricated materials. In this study, presented at the 59th annual meeting of the Biophysical Society held recently in Baltimore, a bi-functional peptide that binds strongly to lithium manganese nickel oxide (LMNO) used in the manufacture of cathodes in high-performance batteries was isolated. The peptide locked onto nanosized particles of LMNO, connecting them to conductive components of a battery electrode, improving both its potential power and stability. Using the phage display approach, more than a billion potential peptides were screened to find one that would … Continue reading →