#billion year Lego clock

[drethelin]

It’s silly but I love this thing and I kinda want one

[guiltygearconfessions]

I saw someone make a billion year clock out of legos and I think Asuka would do that

-

[jkottke]

This guy made a solar-powered clock out of Lego that will keep time for a billion years. "This is a) an extremely accessible explanation of how clocks work, b) the nerdiest thing ever, and c) I love it so much."

[laughingsquid]

A Solar-Powered Billion-Year Mechanical LEGO Clock

[justleesoohyuk]

Lee Soo Hyuk WKOREA September 2019 Interview [ENG translation]

translation by : justleesoohyuk

WKOREA

W: It’s been a long time. What did you spend your days doing?

LSH: I spent most of my time at home so I rarely went outside. In recent months I have been cast in a new film and ready to shoot. As I went through this period of time, I became more greedy and passionate about acting. I soon wanted to go to (or be in) the movies. I’m lucky to have joined Yoo Ha’s new work. Yoo Ha is famous for showing a new side of actors who are already somewhat familiar with the public.

W: I’m curious about the story behind the casting.

LSH: First of all, let me tell you a sad story. I didn’t know much about myself until the audition (laughs), but I was shocked for a while (about landing the role) since I started out as a model for over 10 years. I thought that as I grow older and work more and more, I will show various faces to the public. I want to be a good actor. 

W: The film Pipeline is a story about thieves who steal oil hidden in underground tunnels and dream of turning their lives around. You play a wealthy man who plans to steal tens of billions of dollars?

LSH: This film is based on a true story that happened in Korea. Gunwoo is a person who has personal pain and strives to achieve any purpose. In the drama High School King, I worked with (Seo) In Guk, I’m having fun working with him again after a long time. He (Seo In Guk) was cast first, but he must have said something good about me. I thought (knew) I was able to do it.

W: By the way, I think I saw the white shirt and jeans that you’re wearing today in the first script reading.

LSH: I have about five sets of the same clothes at home. If you like something, buy a lot of it. Now is an age where classic is better than trend.

W: What items would you choose if you could only have three in your closet? 

LSH: Jeans, white shirts, is that enough do you think? That’s not enough (laughs) 

W: As a model turned actor, you’ve passed the glamorous initial point

LSH: I feel like I’ve become a comfortable and stable person since the moment I was given the spotlight as an actor from being a model. For the past two years I had a mediocre and quiet life. It’s time to look at me. When I debuted at 17 years old and worked hard, I didn’t have enough time to think about myself. In fact, talking about myself in the third person is a bit embarrassing. (laughs) what is lee soo hyuk? It was a time when I was thinking about new things and wondering why, why do you like me sometimes? I wanted to express my gratitude and apologies to my fans at the same time. I want to show you a great growth.

W: In the early days, if you look at your filmography, there were a lot of close to fantasy and unrealistic characters such as The Boy from Ipanema and Gwi from Scholar who walks the Night. Then Choi Gun Wook in Lucky Romance and Kwon Duk-bong in The Man Living in our House were characters who were close to reality that could fit somewhere in a neighborhood. Was there a moment of worry about changing your acting spectrum?

LSH: In those days, I wanted to play an ordinary role, but when I think about it, I think it’s a good image for me. Valid Love began to be popular with people, followed by Lucky Romance and High School King. I’m young but I still feel impatient as an actor. I want to be remembered as an experienced actor to the public through various roles.

W: Do you have a role that you’ve wanted to play?

LSH: I’ve been talking about it for 5 years but I haven’t done it yet. I ask the directors every time (laughs) I want to represent the current state of young people in their 20s and 30s in current times. but im too old to take it right now.

W: I’ve working around the clock all year, but have there ever been points you’ve struggled as an actor? 

LSH: I remember the time when I read over the drama Valid love. Han Ji-Seung directed both drama and film. We filmed many conversations with each other It was focused on delicately catching even the slightest trembling of the hands or eyes. [aka the focus was on close up details and responses as opposed to simply acting in mid shots]

W: Are you also eager to change up or overthrow your unique image? 

LSH: The door is always open to change. Director Yoo Ha watched my roles closely, such as the drama Local Hero, which I come out as acting comfortably in. It is best to be able to act in many different ways. 

W: There seems to be quite a lot of change in your physique compared with your model days. 

LSH: When I worked as a model, I was the representing the exhausted thin image. I had no choice, I had to keep my body thin. At that time, it was a plus, and at some point I wanted to broaden my character and gain weight and start exercising. Even if I stay still, my body is not in the same state it was. I think people’s expectations are high, so they work hard. I also like to eat delicious food as per usual (laughs).

W: What kind of man is Soo Hyuk in reality? For example, do you work hard to save? do household chores such as cleaning and laundry, or enjoy meals?

LSH: All you have to do is buy the things you’ve mentioned, saving is going to be a little bit harder (laughs). 

W: You like to assemble things like robots, radio controlled cars and plastic model airplanes? It’s surprising to me.

LSH: I like to make something when i’m home alone. I enjoy building Lego. I also liked sculpting when I went to an atelier a while ago. I like things you do with your hands. 

W: A close fellow actor said ‘he is smart and seems to have a very high IQ, well organised, and not cooler than expected and very compassionate. I remember everything while pretending not to listen. Not really ordinary and there are many surprises. Has a style and examines like A type but the blood type is AB. I was evaluating Lee Soo Hyuk’.  Is there anything you want to correct/refute? 

LSH: what is Young Kwang’s account number? (laughs) I’d like to buy him a meal after a long time. I am grateful, I wont argue.

W: Do you meet (Young Kwang) often?

LSH: I’ve known him since my model days. We meet to exercise and play games. The other day I was forced to play basketball at my Hyung’s place (laughs) He is one year older than me so I just say ‘Hyung’ but we spend time together like friends. He is also in the middle of film shooting but i thank him for helping me in the last two years. He’s a good friend and companion for the rest of my life.

W: You run a private Instagram. I am curious about the 17 photos on it. 

LSH: There isn’t much (laughs) I can show you now. I am not good at taking original photographs. I post or delete weather photos, and fashion, news. etc. I’m following my account but its just a quick way to see and study news.

W: I’ve heard that you usually watch movies eagerly as if you are studying.

LSH: I love the site of IMDB. It’s an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database, and all the movies, directors, and actors around the world are clearly organised. When I watch a movie, I tend to look mainly at the director’s filmography, but when someone comes in, I often look for his work. I can talk endlessly about my favorite movies. Nowadays, Netflix seems to have great documentaries and excellent shooting techniques. When watching a movie, you should look at shooting techniques and colors.

W: When I search ‘Lee Soo Hyuk’ on YouTube, the words ‘exciting video’ are automatically suggested. When do you feel the excitement of someone, when is it the best time to do your job well? 

LSH: Isn’t it the best time to do your job well? Or you can look at your family and friends. When a man or woman looks the most wonderful, look around and do your job well it seems to be. [this question confused me a bit so if anyone can give a better translation for this question let me know]

W: There are actors who expand through directing or producing like Lee Yun-seok, Moon So-ri, Ha Jung-woo, and Lee Jung-jae. Do you want to challenge the realm beyond acting someday? 

LSH: I said I wanted to produce a film not knowing much about it because I was younger (laughs), acting is much more difficult than i thought before when i didn’t know anything (when he was younger). The more you know, the harder it is. The reason is that it is the most fun thing to go to the shoot. I’ve loved movies since my childhood. Even if I don’t necessarily appear so as an actor, getting involved in making good movies is always something I’ve wanted to do and a goal in my life.

                                                     - - - - - - - - - -

source of original korean text

!! do not repost without translation credit : ©

[jimintomystery]

This video uses Lego gears to demonstrate the principles of a gear train.  The motor rotates 375 times per second.  By fitting it with an 8-tooth gear, which turns a 24-tooth gear, the resulting mechanical advantage is 24 / 8, or 3 to 1.  The second gear moves 3 times slower, but with 3 times the rotational force.

This principle makes it possible to design a gear train where some of the gears turn once per second, once per minute, and once per hour, forming a sort of Lego clock.

But it’s possible to go even further.  With a total of 186 gears, this video demonstrates how to amplify the mechanical advantage all the way to 1.034e+100.  This number is just over 1 googol, which can be written as a 1 followed by 100 zeroes, or ten billion to the tenth power.

The final gear in this demonstration is calculated to rotate once every 5.2434e+91 years.  I suspect the math may be wrong here.  To get the time in seconds, we’d divide the mechanical advantage by the motor’s rotations per second: 1.034e+100 / 375 = 2.757e+97.  To convert to years, we must divide by the number of seconds in a year (31,557,600).  I believe the author of the video mistakenly used the number of minutes in a year (525,960).  If I’m right, the correct time for a full rotation is 8.737e+89 years. 

Not that it makes much difference--by the time the final gear makes its first “tick,” there won’t be anything left in the universe but black holes.

[berniesrevolution]

In the beginning there was… well, I don’t know what there was. But then there was a tremendous explosion. Then, for a few hundred million years, there was nothing of much interest. After that, stars and galaxies began to form, and they were fascinating and beautiful, but nobody was there to notice. Billions and billions of years went by, until a molecular cloud happened to collapse, inadvertently giving us the Sun, moon, asteroids, etc. Our humble planet Earth formed by accident, and for billions more years it was wet and gassy, with little to recommend it save some bacteria here and there. Then plants emerged, then all of a sudden there were animals—weird ones—and they lived and they died and they evolved steadily into dinosaurs, who met an unfortunate fate, then very recently we showed up, looking something of a mess, and our ancestors struggled to stay alive, and they fashioned tools and they built little dwellings and they made do and then died, and then the next batch did the same, and they learned to farm, and they learned to build, and slowly something quite impressive emerged. (They were also often killed or enslaved, or did the killing and enslaving.) They built civilizations and they discovered math and they gave birth to Socrates and then they murdered Socrates for asking too many questions. And they fumbled along and tried to figure things out, and they mostly failed, but they learned how to fill their bellies and minds, and they discovered their incredible potential, building printing presses and cotton gins and hundred-story buildings and gigantic ships that sometimes sank. Together, based on what those before them had learned, they invented steam trains and then pickup trucks and then jet airplanes and then television game shows and then internet pornography and then six different kinds of poop emoji pool float. And all through the process people fell in love, and were torn apart, and worked their asses off, and watched their children screw up or do well, and went on adventures, and played with Legos, and built too many cars and clogged the roads but refused to carpool so they got stuck in traffic and it served them right, and did monstrously cruel things, and tamed a lot of diseases, and ate a lot of tacos, and petted a lot of animals, and treated the planet in highly irresponsible and ungrateful ways, and just generally acted out a stunningly violent, heartwarming, infuriating, inspiring collective drama on an inconceivable scale.

And what I refuse to believe is that all of this was just the buildup to Donald Trump being given the power to end all human life, neoliberal capitalism devouring the earth, Elon Musk buying all of outer space, and everyone eventually ending up working as a drone in an Amazon warehouse until the planet boils or eventually the sun explodes. That cannot possibly be the end of history. Surely not. No. That isn’t how this story goes. That would be a tale told by an idiot, signifying fuck all. I would want my money back. Zero stars. Liked the plot but that ending was garbage.

Yet this is the direction a lot of people seem to believe we’re heading in, and I don’t think they’re wrong. I mean the first thing already happened: the United States gave the world’s most selfish and ignorant man control of its 4,018 nuclear weapons. He’s joked about making himself president for life. Monopolistic corporations are steadily wrapping their tentacles around every part of the economy. There should be hardly any doubt that the U.S. in particular is one major terrorist event away from a frightening concentration of power in the hands of a single unstable person, if you’re not already frightened by the whole nuclear weapons thing.

This makes a lot of people I know feel hopeless and uncertain. They see people with no qualifications except wealth being put in charge, and see Jeff Bezos building a 42 million dollar clock in the desert while his workers pee in bottles because they can’t take bathroom breaks. They see their fate in the hands of grotesque individuals who could not care less about anyone but themselves, and many ask themselves the question that Navy veteran Seth King asked himself when he found himself in the “revolving door of bodies” known as the Amazon fulfillment warehouse: “If this is the best life is going to get why am I even still here?” Every year, in the United States alone, 40,000 people take their own lives because they cannot find a satisfactory answer to that question.

From one perspective it’s strange that that should be the case, because we’ve come so far and done so much as a species, and as George Orwell put it, the Earth is a raft sailing through space, fully stocked with enough provisions for everyone. And yet, history is a record of brutality on an unthinkable scale. Chattel slavery was ended only just recently, and the century that brought us Motown records and the Golden Gate Bridge was, for hundreds of millions of people, also a machine of death creating pile upon pile of corpses. For a few decades, it’s been comparatively peaceful, but only because the world’s great powers keep civilization-ending missiles pointed at each other, and one false move could destroy everything. Oh, and let’s not even talk about climate catastrophe. (Living in New Orleans, I cannot bear to contemplate it.)

How can anyone have hope when Donald Trump is the president? How can anyone have dreams about the Star Trek future, in which we all go on adventures through space together in a spirit of equality and shared purpose? The resurgence of “nationalism” spells absolute doom; nationalism is one of the silliest and most destructive imaginable ideas. Silly because nobody, looking at human beings in the context of the Universe, can think national distinctions worth worrying about. (Even Reagan admitted that existing global conflicts would seem trivial if the aliens showed up.) “Most destructive” because nationalism operates like a purpose-built empathy inhibitor, making other humans seem less and less like ourselves and thus making it easy to distrust, detest, or destroy them. Nationalism makes it possible to put on a uniform, strut around, and denounce the enemies who will destroy our culture and way of life, without realizing how ridiculous you look to the Universe.

(Continue Reading)

[ntrending]

Scientists are making progress with better plastic-eating bacteria

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/scientists-are-making-progress-with-better-plastic-eating-bacteria/

Scientists are making progress with better plastic-eating bacteria

Rise of the plastic eaters. (Brian Klutch/)

Molecular biologist Christopher Johnson was schmoozing at a party not long ago, talking with another guest about his research, as scientists often do. Johnson works on breaking down plastics, which tend to be highly resistant to such things.

The woman he was speak­ing with at this particular pre-­wedding soiree replied that she felt overwhelmed—­hopeless—about the whole situation: how we can’t seem to stop using plastics, how they crowd landfills, how their microparticles permeate the oceans.

Overwhelmed, Johnson thought. Hopeless.

“I’m a world away from that perspective,” Johnson says, ­recalling his reaction.

That’s because plastics aren’t just happening to Johnson. He’s happening to them. Johnson is a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and this past year, he and his colleagues created a biological enzyme that can chew efficiently through throwaway plastics like those that make water bottles and soap containers. The team is optimistic they can engineer a world where humans keep using this overabundant material—without winding up literally or figuratively overwhelmed by it. In that world, as part of a broader, robust recycling system, microorganisms will digest polymers into their chemical components so they can turn a profit as new and better products.

Currently, recycling doesn’t actually turn plastic into anything, chemically speaking: It just grinds the waste into smaller pieces, like shredding paper into strips. Manufacturers then reconstitute those pieces into lower-quality plastic. In bio-based recycling, as those in the field call it, plastic-eating organisms give you back the building blocks to make new materials and, eventually, goods.

Johnson’s group, in particular, captured the public’s imagination because its discovery was accidental and made for a great story. Skeptics feared the effort might backfire—that rogue GMO chompers might start gobbling the wrong polymers. Like the dashboard of your car. As you’re driving. It’s an extremely remote possibility but not completely misguided.

Scientists have new hope that nature might hold a solution for our most problematic polymers. (Brian Klutch/)

All that plastic trash, after all, is itself an unintended consequence. The synthetic material began, in part, as a substitute for ivory to save ele­phants from slaughter. But that innovation also brought us to where we are today: overwhelmed and hopeless. The amount of plastic that humans produce every year—more than 300 million tons—weighs about five times that of all ­people put together.

We use most of our modern polymers just once: in water bottles, shampoo bottles, milk bottles, chip bags, grocery bags, coffee stirrers. Every year, nearly 9 million tons of the litter ends up offshore. You’ve probably heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: an area in the ocean’s northern half where swirling currents congregate all that refuse. But did you know that by 2050, the high seas could sport more plastic than fish?

Civilization isn’t doing a great job of cleaning up after itself, partly, Johnson and his team believe, because there’s never been a great economic incentive to. But if you can take those plastic building blocks and assemble them into something more valuable than the ­original—such as auto parts, wind turbines, or even surfboards—you can change recycling’s calculus. Companies can do well for themselves by doing good for the world.

———

Much of the accidental enzyme team works at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. The campus nudges against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which slope up quickly out of nothingness into 14,000-foot peaks. Solar panels occupy the roofs of nearly all of the buildings. Inside the Field Test Laboratory Building, where the group works, a ROYGBIV spectrum of utility pipes runs along ceilings and walls. Labs full of refrigerators, incubators, and high-powered microscopes hum behind card-access entryways. And, in a small meeting room on the ground floor, a matrix of screens backlights four scientists.

They, along with colleagues in Florida, England, and Brazil, form a kind of dream team for this particular bio-based recycling research: Nicholas Rorrer creates polymers. Gregg Beckham tries to figure out how bacterial and fungal chemicals break down compounds such as cellulose, the main ingredient in plant-cell walls and many veggies. Bryon Donohoe studies how ­cells with polymer-eating enzymes work. Johnson engineers new kinds of cells that secrete those enzymes. Those areas of expertise are each key to exploring how bacteria indulge an appetite for plastic—and how to manipulate them into being better snackers.

On one of the screens behind them, an enzyme skates along a close-up of cellulose, chewing off individual strands and spitting them back out as blocks of sugar—the ultimate drive-through eating experience. This simulation, the scientists say, is the same way a polymer meets its match.

The crew first learned of the concept when the March 2016 issue of Science magazine brought news that researchers in Japan had discovered a strange species of bacteria in samples of soil near a bottle recycling plant in the city of Sakai. It could chomp through polyethylene tere­phtha­late, commonly known as PET, which manufacturers widely use to make plastic bottles and containers. A team led by Kenji Miyamoto, a bioscientist at Keio University, found that the organism squirted out an enzyme, which they dubbed PETase, that stripped the polymer into chemical pieces. They called this amazing organism Ideonella sakaiensis, after its home city. Still, not to diss Ideonella, but it didn’t work fast enough: Given six weeks and tropical temps, it could eat through a film of PET. Not exactly the stuff of efficient recycling plants. Plus, getting it to grow required some careful care and feeding.

Soon after the journal article appeared, Beckham found himself in England, having a beer with University of Portsmouth’s John McGeehan, a colleague in cellulose research and an expert at mapping the structures of tiny enzymes. They began to brainstorm how to combine forces to better understand how PETase digests PET. After all, their work already looked at how the natural degrades the natural—for example, how bacteria and fungi use enzymes to digest cellulose. Maybe that work could help them understand how the natural breaks down the synthetic.

After their brainstorming pint, the two recruited Johnson, Donohoe, and Rorrer, as well as another colleague in Florida, Lee Woodcock, whose sophisticated computer models simulate how cellular chemicals work. Then, they got started.

First, the team needed to understand how PETase breaks down its chosen plastic. The molecules in a polymer are like connected Lego bricks that can just pull apart. For PET, PETase is the puller. But to understand how PETase could grab onto and torque the plastic’s molecules, the team needed enough of the enzyme to be able to map it.

That’s where Johnson’s cellular expertise came in. Working with an outside ­company, they synthesized the gene that produces PETase so it could later be slipped into E. coli, a single-celled organism that is quick and easy to grow in a lab. He sent the genetic code across the pond to McGeehan’s lab. There, the mutant food-poisoner had some grub and began pumping out PETase.

McGeehan schlepped the PETase enzyme to a facility with a super-powerful X-ray microscope that uses light 10 billion times stronger than the sun to probe samples and create ­atomic-​scale pictures. Inside the exotic microscope, supercooled magnets guided the X-rays until the scientists could see PETase itself—and not just its goo-​­making effects.

The enzyme, to the untrained eye, resembles the love child of a sea sponge and a human brain. Or, if you are a very lucky biologist, it looks almost exactly like cutinase, the puller for cutin, a waxy polymer that coats many plants. Cutinase has a narrow U-shaped pit that notches into cutin just so. PETase has the same U, just wider, kind of like a cutinase in a fun-house mirror. The PETase U notches into PET, like the two sides of a BFF necklace.

This is a no-brainer, Beckham thought at the time: The enzyme, he reasoned, initially evolved to eat cutin, and clearly had adapted in the presence of so much trash to have a new favorite food.

The form, function, and evolutionary idea in hand, the team submitted their paper for publication in October 2017. But the origin story—their most beloved part—was problematic. “One of our reviewers said, ‘No, you have to show that,’” Beckham recalls.

<em>Ideonella sakaiensis</em> is just one organism that can use plastic as fuel. (Brian Klutch/)

This is going to be a crap activity, he imagined. It seemed so obvious that cutinase had Darwined its way into PETase. But to show how that had happened, they would have to wind back the evolutionary clock, shrinking the wide PETase U back to a wee cutinase U, and in the process, they thought, making it unable, or at least less able, to chew plastic. Then they would reverse course, turning the cutinase back into PETase, showing how one became the other.

Beckham would have to eat (and digest) those words.

———

The team began the first half of the experiment, turning PETase back into cutinase, in late 2017. First, they tweaked the DNA that makes the enzyme PETase. Specifically, they mutated two amino acids so their replacements pinched into a U, creating an enzyme that was closer to cutinase. For his part, ­Rorrer—the polymer guy—began to harvest bottles from colleagues, including staff favorites such as Diet Pepsi and Diet Dr Pepper. (Today, the refuse still lines the top of his cubicle.) He used a standard office hole puncher to snip out circles. He then placed those in close quarters with versions of the modified enzyme, expecting he’d come back to find it making minimal progress, if any.

But that’s not what happened. When Rorrer returned four days later, he found the hacked enzyme was not only working, but it was eating about 30 percent more than the PETase from the Sakai recycling plant. The team members began to doubt themselves. Maybe I mislabeled the samples, Rorrer thought. Donohoe, the cell-breakdown specialist, suspected they’d mixed up the samples. They repeated the experiment two more times but kept getting the same outcome: The new enzyme had a good appetite. Donohoe recalls, “I’m like, ‘I guess we have to believe it, even though I don’t know how to.'”

The result still left open whether PETase had morphed from cutinase in the “oh, of course” way the team had surmised. But the unexpected outcome is still good news: It means they can improve what evolution hath already wrought. “Nature hasn’t necessarily found the ultimate solution,” Beckham, the chemical engineer, says.

When they announced the discovery in April 2018, people latched on to its oopsiness. John McGeehan got a Goop award from Gwyneth Paltrow’s pseudoscience wellness brand. He tried to reject it, but there is no rejecting Gwyneth Paltrow. But for this group, being famous wasn’t enough. And improving PETase a little wasn’t either. “There’s probably room here to make it a heck of a lot better,” Beckham says.

———

Ideonella sakaiensis, turns out, is far from the only organism that can use plastic waste as fuel. “Bacteria probably do just evolve to eat things all around them,” says genetic engineer Johnson. Biologists have known for decades that existing enzymes, such as the so-​called esterases that microbes and fungi spit out, can break down PET and nylon.

Plastics floating in Lake Zurich carry four organisms primed to eat polyurethane. In the ocean, investigators in India have discovered bacterial species that can degrade polyvinyl alcohol, which water­proofs paper. Another group found a fungus whose cutinase also munches PET. None of these, though, can feast fast enough at scale to be useful to industry—yet. With more than 300 million tons of plastic produced every year, organisms would need to churn through around 906,000 tons on all days ending in “y” to get the job done. Taking four days to dissolve the surface of a Diet Dr Pepper bottle isn’t fast enough.

In its own search for better polymer eaters, the dream team recently recruited new players from Montana State University who study extremophiles boiling in the brightly colored pools of Yellowstone. ­Selfie-​­snapping tourists throw a lot of trash into those hot springs. At temperatures like these—­sometimes more than 400 ­degrees—​­plastic melts.

To a bacterium, munching overheated junk is like taking speed: Everything happens a lot faster. If the scientists can find an extremophile, or engineer one, that likes it hot and eats PET, then they’re one step closer to a process that works fast enough to be useful in the real world.

In that scenario, a future recycling plant would heat or dice up the plastic, then throw it in a big pot of hot water and sprinkle in some PETase (or other hungry enzyme). That would produce a soup of polysyllabic ingredients: terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, the stuff that companies can spin into stronger, higher-value polymers.

First, though, they need a better enzyme. “Life will find a way,” Beckham says, smiling as he paraphrases Jurassic Park. Still, nature could use an assist. So the team starts by exploiting evolution’s secret: random mutation. Sometimes new genetic code makes the organism better suited for its environment, and the microbe lives to pass that wonkiness to its offspring. In the lab, though, we can accelerate evolution by, say, feeding the would-be plastic-eaters only PET. If they don’t sit down to dinner, they starve.

The team is also trying to create new life by injecting the PETase gene into bacteria that is less picky than Ideonella. Beckham pulls up an unpublished paper and scrolls to before-and-after pictures. After four days in a test tube with a new mutant, a bit of hole-punched plastic is what he calls “a soupy mix of crap.” “Crap,” here, is ­chewed-​up plastic parts.

The effort, in other words, is working. As Beckham looks at his pictures, he laughs and recalls a link people sent him when the team’s first paper came out. It pointed to a 1971 book called Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters. In the tale, a ­polymer-​­dissolving virus takes over—killing spacecraft, crashing planes, sinking submarines, and generally causing uncontrollable chaos as it destroys seemingly all the plastic in the world.

Nonfictional researchers plan for their engineered organisms to stay in the lab, in tubes, and, eventually, in industrial processes. Such organisms might even already exist on the outside, having evolved the old-fashioned way. Remember, the world has bacteria that eat lots of other things we love: metal, bread, cheese, our own skin. And we’re all still here, nibbling bread and cheese, sitting on metal chairs. Given an eons-long head start, the microbes have not yet managed to take over. So, unless nature gets remarkably better remarkably fast (it took something like 50 years to make the inefficient version of PETase), or a rogue actor stages a coup, no bitsy beasts will be gutting your Walmart kayak anytime soon.

Beckham does give more credence to a concern that carbon, spit out during digestion, eventually becomes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. But any addition would be dwarfed by gases from other industries. His group wants neither a bio-warmed world nor one without plastics.

Instead, they aim to create a real economic incentive for reclaiming most polymers. Right now, what comes out the recycling end is just PET with weaker bonds: It’s challenging to make another bottle out of it, and it’s worth about 75 percent of what the original plastic was. It goes into textiles or carpets. Those usually wind up in landfills.

Biologically breaking down plastic, though, produces components that can become the precursors to pricey materials like Kevlar, which sells for two or three times as much as recycled PET and goes into stress-​­resistant products like snowboards. These materials give companies a cash-​based reason to reclaim plastic. Innovators might even use them to build flightier aircraft, more-­efficient cars, and hardy, lightweight stuff we ­haven’t thought of yet. Stuff that maybe does its part to reduce ­greenhouse-​gas emissions.

This world won’t exist tomorrow, or next year. But it’s a foreseeable future, synthesized through the dream team’s microbes, or others’, and whatever nature brings to the polymer picnic table. If they succeed, we’ll be able coexist with plastics, not atop of a heap of them.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2019 Make It Last issue of Popular Science.

Written By Sarah Scoles

[documentarynews]

The Best Documentaries on Netflix

The Bleeding Edge (2018) – “The Bleeding Edge” exposes the sordid underbelly of the medical device market that convinces approximately 70 million Americans yearly that they need some kind of apparatus implanted into their body. The multi-billion dollar industry does some good, but a whole lot of harm, shilling products and procedures that, in many cases, haven’t even been properly tested. Revealing the complicity between the medical device industry and the community of healthcare practitioners and even the FDA, who refused to be interviewed for the film, “The Bleeding Edge” offers, if nothing else, a good reason to take better care of yourself.

13th (2016) – A searing work from director Ava DuVernay, “13th” shines a Klieg light on a twisted interpretation of the Constitution’s 13th amendment. It turns out the amendment that abolished slavery included a loophole. It actually permits the practice of slavery in certain contexts, including while in prison confinement. Taken together with the fact that American prisons are overwhelmingly populated by African-American men, it might be a good idea to have a notepad next to you as you watch this film to take down choice phrases for inclusion in a strongly worded letter to your elected officials.

The Toys That Made Us (2018) – While this docuseries will most definitely revive some beloved memories of playing with Legos and G.I. Joes, “The Toys That Made Us” builds some very non-schmaltzy nuance around those memories by telling you how, why, and by whom those toys were made. He-Man and Battle Cat were invented by a marketing team on the verge of a breakdown; Barbie was based on a German comic strip. It’s a great way to beef up your nostalgia with some meaningful nerdery. It’s like watching Saturday morning cartoons, except it will make you feel smarter.

The Trader (Sovdagari) (2018) - Clocking in at just 25 minutes, this portrait of daily life in the Republic of Georgia might be the shortest distance between entitlement and gratitude you’ll encounter all year. “The Trader” follows Gela, an old man who scavenges his neighborhood for potatoes, the principal currency of his poverty-stricken community, and trades them for other necessities. A winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s short film jury award for non-fiction in 2018, this documentary will at least get your mind off all the things you don’t have; at best, it may inspire you to share more with those in need.

Icarus (2017) – Thrilling, funny, and completely unpredictable, “Icarus” had an award-winning debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, wowed audiences around the world, and took home an Oscar. The film starts off as one of those personal experimentation docs in which filmmaker Bryan Fogel goes all Morgan Spurlock in the competitive cycling world. In other words, he shoots himself full of performance-enhancing drugs. That would have been interesting enough, but then Fogel stumbles across Grigory Rodchenkov, the guy who oversees the state-sanctioned doping program for the Russian Olympic team. In other words, you go from personal experiment to inside sports to political conspiracy exposé, all in just two very quick hours.

See the rest of the list at The Manual.

https://www.themanual.com/culture/best-documentaries-on-netflix-right-now/

[minecraftplushtoys-blog]

Just How Lego Developed Into a Global Brand

The following huge jump in production for Lego was the Lego figure in 1974. Since 1974 billions of Lego figures have been produced varying from Walt Disney Characters to Lego clocks.

With the business aiming to burglarize new markets and also make new toys the price of components went through the roof.

In 2005 Lego had actually begun to obtain their item right once more. Developers were additionally informed to function with makes to guidance on how the price of layout would certainly affect profits.

Lego might appear obsoleted by present day state-of-the-art playthings, but it continuouslies grow by dealing with today's preferred motifs. For instance in 2004 Lego introduced Lego manufacturing facility where any individual can create as well as build their very own Lego model and have it published to their house.

Lego additionally signed up with pressures with Lucas Arts for a posting offer for video games which has given the firm a brand-new lease of life. Lego celebrity Battles 2 sold 1.1 million systems in its very first week of release.

If you look through any type of kid's plaything breast you will certainly find pieces of Lego. The multi coloured bricks have actually preserved their popularity considering that their introduction over 50 years ago. In 2000 Lego won a prominent award 'Toy of the Century' by Ton of money Magazine along with by the British Plaything Retailers Association. It defeated Action Male, Barbie as well as other popular playthings.

The actual trouble was the brand-new layouts were not preferred with the kids. The Lego city line, when among their most profitable businesses lines had gone down to just 3 percent of the business's total earnings.

The Lego group's origins started in 1932 when Ole Kirk Christiansen began making toys from wood for kids. It took until 1958 for the Lego block as we know it today to be developed. The Minecraft plush toys were basic and also sturdy; therefore they were perfect for youngsters to play with. The plastic brick can be collaborated making a wall surface or various other forms which youngsters can conveniently build or uncouple. For many years the layout has barely altered and also today's blocks could still be interlocked with the bricks created in 1958.

Why Lego has come to be so popular is primarily due to that Lego can be developed right into many shapes that the only limitation is the extent of a youngster's imagination. The blocks are so flexible that Lego has actually calculated that 6, eight-stud bricks can be prepared in 915,103,763 different ways.

Lego bricks today are manufactured in the firm's major manufacturing facility in Denmark. The bricks are created so exactly that the firm claims for each million bricks made just 18 are defective and eliminated.

After the initial blocks were generated Christiansen's boy and also follower to the Lego group, developed Lego Duplo in the early 1960's for smaller sized youngsters. This made it easier for more youthful youngsters to hold the bricks as they were much larger.

Worse still Lego released a youngsters's TV collection, a field they understood little concerning. The show was foreseeable and generally a sales pitch. It just lasted two periods on fox network and when the program ended sales figures dropped.

In the very early 2000's Lego was struggling to make an effect in the toy market it when had. They were very similar to other toy manufacturers.

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Leading Coayu Specialist in Billion Shopping Centre

Being a Geek Mom doesn't imply that I am a clean mommy - certainly not as clean as I must be. I've those offdays where I worry possibly a passerby or the mailman might find . It really is tough enough to grab the filthy clothes, the Lego , the Cheerios, and the football cards; I'm anticipated to /or cleaner each day and sweep also?

Not when I possess the Coayu BL800 Vacuum Cleaning Robot here to assist.

The Coayu BL800 may be the newest in Coayu extended navy of robotic assistants. Created for those of you with dust and overwhelming dust, the Coayu BL800 packs 5 sorts cleaning a new brush style, program, also it mops too!

That Coayu BL800 has greater airflow, so that you wont need to clear it out and dual-layer filters. Hooray for additional loafing time! Additional functions includes a Lithium Ion Battery, Touchpad LCD Screen, and Ultra-High Energy 1200 Missouri Asia Nidec suction motor (used in iRobot and Neato Robotics), and undoubtedly, the choices to schedule the robot to operate on particular period.

I used to be fortunate to get the Coayu BL800 to get a review, and kid was I excited - and type of lazy. In expectation of experiencing this small man (my boy called it Hero) come to get a visit, we did not machine our livingroom for approximately weekly. To put it differently, it had been an ordinary week. With my man and that I, your pet dog, and a 6-year-old all making messes over a daily basis, He went to have a tough row to hoe - or at least vacuum.

Inside the container, the Coayu BL800 comes with an additional filter (which they suggest you change every 2 months), only a little pick to assist clear the machineis brushes (asneeded), the Car Digital Wall device, and asking choices that I Will look into in one minute.

The organization says to cost the system up overnight prior to the first use. I did only a little longer for a whole of 36 hours, than that. In the end, my filth went anywhere and that I needed this factor to become willing to perform! Additionally it is proposed that you just retain the Coayu BL800 when not being used, charging. That seems like recommended anyway; when messes will appear, you never learn.

So far as asking, you will find two choices. The Coayu BL800 features a small homebase that it loves to nestle into, which plugs into the wall via a detachable cord. You can even cut the middleman out and connect the Coayu BL800 right utilizing the same cable. The reputation of the Clear key along with the system will let you learn if the Coayu BL800 is (virtually) able to spin. You're ready to go whenever you observe strong green.

The Coayu BL800, nevertheless, doesn't always work alone. In the box, you will find a bit bit that looks as being similar to a flask. That is not reassuring one to consume; oahu is the Car Digital Wall product. The Virtual Wall will create an invisible buffer the Coayu BL800 won't mix, while switched on. Do not wish canine to be bothered by the Coayu BL800? Make use of the Virtual Wall. Have flowers which you do not need the Coayu BL800 bumping into? Utilize the Virtual Wall. Is the Coayu BL800 operating nearby the top of steps? Please, use the Online Wall!

You'll need to take several of those D batteries out of your baby's toys to utilize the Online Wall. It requires two of these. Also, you have to show the Digital Wall on at the start of the Coayu BL800is routine.

The Coayu BL800 also delivers alternatives for washing schedules and rounds, so that when you arenot about to supervise it could clean alone. Occasionally, the Coayu BL800 can get found a piece of furniture, on some blinds, or a flyswatter, in my own scenario. It's important to really have the ground away from clutter, if you're planning to utilize this choice. Otherwise, it truly is hugely valuable and even better to program. The time Coayu BL800 's other controls and all are situated right on the surface of the system. Programming this point must be a breeze knowing how-to set an electronic clock.

Honestly, I simply wished to get washing. And so I plopped the Coayu BL800 in the floor, pressed on the Clear button's middle, and down He went.

The Coayu BL800 features a crazy cleaning cycle. It is likened by me to having my 6-year-old do the cleaning. Heis here, he's there, and heis kind of noisy concerning the whole matter. Nevertheless, Coayu BL800 is way more comprehensive. This gadget has many minor brushes to help get-up the substance, the pet hair as well as the particles that become part of your everyday routine.

There were plenty of times when I wanted to shout, No, come over here!However, the Coayu BL800 has an approach to its chaos. It will ultimately get to many of crannies and your nooks if you only let the matter proceed. It was able to clean my audio around / movie holder along with the hearth using its comb that was tiny scraping these out difficult-to- . It's a career that always requires taking apart my Dyson and employing devices that are many.

. Due to the measurement, you can find locations where its brushes and the Coayu BL800 simply wont accomplish. Nevertheless, support is definitely loved. Our day or two together with the product were most likely the clearest my-home has been around a while. Possibly my man claimed he was surprised at how well our floor was washed by the Coayu BL800. The collection-it-and-overlook-it function makes it easy to vacuum regions that are larger over a daily schedule. In the end, if you can not be troubled to impose the device and force one-button, you will not be helped by any quantity of robotic maids.

Before I overlook, the Coayu BL800 does while it vacuums cleaning also. This can be a key dealbreaker since many of the automatic vacuums in the market for me personally, be it Neato Robotics or iRobot, they cannot have a mopping purpose included in the robot itself. The iRobot includes a separate devoted cleaning software that will be the Braava, which doesn't do cleaning to the other hand. The Coayu BL800 handles my problems both with a single purchase.

Will be the Coayu BL800 essential? Well, yes. At RM1950, he is very economical, cheap mind you. I will definitely recommend this to relatives my loved ones and friends. This is actually the finest investment they will actually produce. It's a great deal more cost effective compared to employing a full period domestic tool!

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Last week in Tech: The text message turns 25 years old

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Last week in Tech: The text message turns 25 years old

It’s crazy to think that text messages—the SMS staples of our collective social lives—have only been around for a quarter century. It was December 3rd, 1992 when the first true text traveled from a computer to a mobile device belonging to Richard Jarvis, the director of Vodaphone. If you’re ever on Jeopardy, it will probably pay off to know that the first text sent said, “Merry Christmas.” Here’s the rest of the stories you may have missed last week in your post-Thanksgiving haze.

Drop the top

The LA auto show didn’t bring with it any industry shakeups, but BMW showed off a convertible version of its electric i8 roadster, which is looking rather slick with a little taken off the top. Expect to pay about $150,000 for the privilege of letting it blow your hair back.

AI matchmaker

Tinder is rolling out a new feature in New York and LA called Super Likeable, which rolls out profiles it thinks match your tastes and personalities. It’s using AI to figure out who might be a match because robots are even replacing nagging phone calls from our parents to set us up on dates with people we don’t know.

Augmented Lego reality

Lego AR Studio is an app designed to bring augmented reality to its plastic brick creations. The tech is built on Apple’s ARKit platform and will include introductory sets like a train, a police station, and some Ninjago sets. This could be a real boon, especially for kids with bad imaginations like mine. My “multi-colored rectangles” never really captured the Lego magic.

The fastest smartphone camera around

The new Samsung W2018 flip phone isn’t headed for the USA just yet, but it does take the title of “fastest cameras lens on a smartphone,” at least for now. It has the biggest aperture at around f/1.5, which makes very little practical difference for when you’re taking pictures, but hey—a superlative is a superlative.

The world’s most boring video game goes VR

Desert Bus is an impossibly boring video game with no real point. It simulates the endless, tedious drive from Tucson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV. Literally nothing happens, and now there’s a version you can experience in virtual reality. The game itself has turned into something of a meme, and has even spawned marathon stream sessions, often for charity.

Bitcoin billions

Bitcoin officially crossed the $11,000 mark, which technically means the Winklevoss twins have more than a billion dollars in the digital currency. Of course, the taxman has also started calling on some Bitcoin big dogs, so it will be interesting to see where things go from here.

Kickstarter: Elevate the alarm

Circa is a dedicated alarm clock that packs lots of very popular current sleep tech into one attractive box. The clock itself has a built-in, customizable touchscreen display, as well as a sound system with two speakers and a passive bass radiator. It comes with a sensor that goes under your mattress to track your movements and determine the best time during your sleep cycle to wake you up. It can also send you reminders when it’s time to go to bed, so you can totally ignore them and keep right on watching Netflix until an irresponsible time. You can pre-order from Kickstarter for about $210.

Just browsing

You can now get Microsoft’s Edge browser on iOS and Android devices. The replacement for the burning train wreck that was Internet Explorer lets Windows users take advantage of features like cross-platform browsing that starts on the PC and continues on mobile. I have enjoyed using Edge more than I thought I would. The healing process is happening.

Written By Stan Horaczek