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Pantry Pests Harbor Plastic-Chomping Bacteria
MTorrice writes In the U.S. alone, consumers discard over 32 million tons of plastic each year, only 9% of which is recycled. Polyethylene is one of the most popular and, unfortunately, persistent types of plastics. Bags, bottles, and packaging made from the polymer accumulate in landfills and oceans across the globe. Scientists have lamented that the material isn't biodegradable because microbes can't chew up the plastic to render it harmless. However, a new study reports the first definitive molecular evidence that two species of bacteria, found in the guts of a common pantry pest, can thrive on polyethylene and break it apart.
Wiggly Woodworms Want Wayward Waste, While We Wonder Why Woodless Worms Won't.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
A new study reports
molecular evidence
Because fuck using URL shorteners when they're unnecessary. It's better to know at least the domain that a link will take you to.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The URLs for the links are also in shortened form, so you can't even tell what the article is about due to the URL.
So your complaining about having to click links to learn more?
No, he's complaining about link shortening / obfuscation. Anyone who's clicked on a shortened link and gotten rickrolled or goatse'd, as well as anyone who's been scammed by short links in emails claiming to be from your bank, has hopefully learned that url-shorteners == bad things can happen.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Excuse me, but could you lose your shit on somebody else's internet? I'll just note that this goes beyond making plastic pieces smaller, since the bacteria are actually digesting it and breaking it down into smaller, simpler, more digestible molecules.
Indeed polyethylene is persistent, but at least this one is not an endocrine disruptor. I just wonder why we do not recycle it more. It looks stupid to spend money cracking crude oil when you can start with already clean polyethylene.
It doesn't turn into small pieces of plastic, it turns it into ~starch.
Polyethelene is (C2H4)nH2, where n is large. In other words, it's a long chain of carbon-hydrogen units.
Sugar and starch, on the other hand, are chains of carbon-hydrogen-OXYGEN units. If the chain is short, it is called a sugar, long chains made are called starches. All animals get their energy from these starches and sugars. Short chains (sugars) are easier to digest than long chains (starches).
So the frustrating thing is that the big differences between plastic and starch (food) is the oxygen atom, and the length - polyethene molecules are even longer than starch. If you add oxygen to plastic and cut the molecules apart, you'd end up with food, except the plastic doesn't allow the oxygen molecule in.
This bacteria does that difficult trick, it forces oxygen atoms in, splitting the molecular chain in the process. After the bacteria does its thing, the result is more like starch than plastic.
At this very early stage, initial testing with this exact microbe didn't immediately dispose of large amounts. That would take more time, more of the bacteria, or a better version of the bacteria.
Semi Hard SF for the win... again. Read this when I was very young.
http://quillandkeyboard.blogsp...
Quote:
Mutant 59 is an excellent example of the British specialty; the quiet catastrophe. By altering one small part of the normal world, removing plastic, Pedler and Davis set into motion a series of events that wreck ever-expanding circles of devastation. As plastic insulation vanishes, wires spark and fires break out. Airliners crash or explode in midair. Submarines vanish. Gas leaks from sealless lines. The entire infrastructure of London literally decays. It's a truly frightening scenario that makes one realise just how the failure of something we take for granted can imperil our entire civilisation.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They don't write like that for clickbait. They write like that because it's easier to read. Newspapers were writing like that even before the Internet.
Back in the days of paper, I wrote for a scientific newsletter. I actually wrote a couple of stories about plastic-digesting bugs. I used to pack as much information as I could into the first 150-200 words, like a journal abstract.
Then I got a freelance assignment to cover a scientific conference for a wire service. I read a few of the wire service's stories, so that I could write in the same style. I was surprised to see that the lead sentence didn't have a lot of details about the name of the microorganism or whatever. They just wrote a short English sentence, as simple as possible, explaining what the story was about.
Then they'd have the specific details further down.
Sure enough, it was easier to read. And it was a little easier to write, too, especially on deadline where I don't have time for a second draft.
I looked around and I saw that most newspapers and trade magazines did it that way.
Yeah, there was an element of suspense to it, but the main purpose was to start out with a simple sentence.
The most demanding writing is for the radio. If somebody is listening to my wire service story on the radio, that lead has to be very simple. I don't want him to say, "Wait -- was that waxworms?" Get to the waxworms later.
I used to read CEN and ES&T, and I knew some of the people who wrote for it. Believe me, they don't need clickbait. They're a professional society magazine, and they're writing for their members, who get it free, but if the members don't read it, the publisher fires the editor and hires a new one. They're desperately trying to give their busy chemist members clearly-written, useful information with no bullshit, and they do a good job.
The tile of the ES&T article is, "Evidence of Polyethylene Biodegradation by Bacterial Strains from the Guts of Plastic-Eating Waxworms." Is that enough for you to chomp on?
Later on, you find out that the insect is Plodia interpunctella, and that the gut bacteria were Enterobacter asburiae YT1 and Bacillus sp. YP1. Do you really want that in the first 250 words?
It is true that if I were writing for bacteriologists, and they were waiting to find out which bacteria, I would put it in the lead. I can hear them saying, "E. asburiae! Who would have guessed?" But for most people, that detail can come later.