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#61

Science / Re: "Just One Word: Microplast...

Last post by Recusant - August 26, 2026, 10:43:00 PM

Not searching for it, but of course the folks who've been working on the basic biotech see the possibilities of turning plastic into something that life can work with.  The cookies are transparently a gimmick to get eyes on their project.

#62

Science / Re: "Just One Word: Microplast...

Last post by Dark Lightning - August 25, 2026, 05:22:06 PM

That's a lot smarter than printing "food". Sometimes people get so wrapped up in a process that they miss a prime opportunity.

#63

Science / Re: "Just One Word: Microplast...

Last post by billy rubin - August 25, 2026, 04:22:56 PM

my 22 year old son found this, and th efirst thing he said was, why dont they use the technology to make fertilizer instead?

#64

Science / Re: "Just One Word: Microplast...

Last post by Recusant - August 25, 2026, 03:45:11 AM

. . .  Or we could just start eating it (after some engineered yeast has transformed it). 

"Scientists Just Made A Cookie Out of Recycled Plastic 'Slurry'. Welcome to 2026" | ScienceAlert

Would you eat a cookie that was made from plastic?

Technically, we're all ingesting an ungodly amount of plastic already, in the form of micro- and nanoscopic particles in our food.

But now, researchers from Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale are trying to get us to eat the stuff on purpose.

It takes the form of cookies they call µBites, which, if you know your scientific notation symbols, is pronounced "microbites".

They may sound even less appetizing than all the bugs we might have to eat in the future, but these cookies have undergone a whole lot of processing to make them (theoretically) safe to eat, nutritious, and hopefully tasty.

The research started as part of NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge, and the team has just presented it at a symposium organized by the American Chemical Society.

"Converting (biodegradable) food-grade plastic into food is feasible," Lahiru Jayakody, microbiologist at SIU, told ScienceAlert.

"The µBites system is a tunable and portable device that integrates all necessary components... These units could be deployed in submarines or disaster relief vehicles to produce on-demand, on-site food.

"The process is particularly suited for using carbon waste in extreme environments such as deserts, the Arctic, or the Antarctic to make food – and yes, potentially one day on Mars or the lunar surface."

[Continues . . .]

Symposium poster board overview (quoted in full):

With billions of people experiencing hunger in 2025 and unable to afford a healthy diet, food insecurity remains a critical global challenge. "µBites", originally developed for the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge, represents a novel way of producing nutritious food by converting plastic and plant waste into edible, protein-rich supplements.

Beyond space travel, µBites could offer a promising solution to address both food shortage and plastic pollution simultaneously. We have previously demonstrated the successful 3D printing of edible, µBites protein cookies using plastic-derived substrates and yeast biomass. In this study, we demonstrate the enhancement of flavor, aroma, and color of these cookies using naturally produced ingredients by safe-to-eat yeast strains, Saccharomyces boulardii, S. cerevisiae, and Rhodosporidium toruloides.

We engineered S. cerevisiae to produce vanillin, the compound that is responsible for vanilla flavor and aroma, from ferulic acid. Adaptive laboratory evolution of R. toruloides enhanced its utilization of ethylene glycol as a carbon source to produce β-carotene, a vitamin A precursor. We demonstrated the production of these ingredients from waste biomass and plastic-derived substrates and combined with the yeast-derived protein to produce nutritionally enhanced 3D-printed "µBites".

This project's outcomes will revolutionize the production of next-generation microbially derived food ingredients from waste organic carbon, contributing to a circular economy of plastics.

#65

Social Issues and Causes / Re: Internet "Third Places"

Last post by Dark Lightning - August 23, 2026, 05:30:11 PM

I frequent several forums- mostly wood working, wood carving, metal working, truck (I have a '70 Chevrolet 3/4 ton) and shooting. By and large they have good groups of people. I do have a FB account to keep up with my eldest son, who is in the Air Force. He gets around a bit. I also communicate with a few friends, but probably spend 10 minutes max per day.

#66

Social Issues and Causes / Internet "Third Places"

Last post by Recusant - August 23, 2026, 04:33:45 PM

This site is a relic of an earlier stage in the evolution of the internet, a gathering place for people to socialize and chat. The social media behemoths that eventually sucked most of the life out of many discussion boards have in turn become a parody of their former selves. It's about the money these days. The article below puts forward some glimmer of hope.

"The internet is losing its third places" | Salon

When you're looking at a thread of social media bots sharing the same five replies to AI-generated slapfights between anthropomorphic fruits, it can be hard to remember the internet used to be a lively place. Enthusiastic message boards, blogs dedicated to any niche you could find in any hobby, news and culture websites as renowned for sharp commenters as their stable of writers. This was a time when your blogroll was nearly as important as your friend list, a period where a well-curated feed on Google Reader (RIP) denoted good taste as much as a co-sign from the arbiter of taste Derek Guy does today.

The web never quite reached the global utopian vision of its 1990s early adopters, but for about two decades it was a good hang. Like a neighborhood bar or a bowling alley, the internet was a place you could reliably go to have fun and occasionally learn something from semi-strangers who shared your interests. The internet was rife with what sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third places," a space separate from home and work that encouraged social interaction and bred cohesion in communities.

"Third places remain upbeat because of the limited way in which the participants are related. Most of the regulars in a third place have a unique and special status with regard to one another," Oldenburg wrote in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place." "It is special in that such people have neither the blandness of strangers nor that other kind of blandness, which takes zest out of relationships between even the most favorably matched people when too much time is spent together, when too much is known, too many problems are shared, and too much is taken for granted."

Oldenburg was pushing back against restrictive zoning and suburbanization, arguing that fully residential neighborhoods weakened the societal fabric of the United States. For a time, the internet did put a Band-Aid on this problem, bringing isolated communities together and providing the sort of crosstalk they couldn't hear on the abandoned sidewalks of gated developments.

At the risk of dating myself even more than I already have, I had a few websites that I visited daily from the family room of my suburban home. Often I'd sign on to read the takes of sharp commenters over the writers who provided the digital parlor.

In the same way I'll now swing through my local bar or corner coffee shop to see who's around, back then I'd find time every day after school to give the forums and comment sections a once-over. I'd scroll down and take in a guerilla column from a reader with an unprintable name and profile picture of a crudely drawn yellow Pokemon with a phallus for a nose. A bit farther down, I'd find the poster who spoke only in comments lifted from forums about the mallcore metal act Avenged Sevenfold. Heading over to the Gawker network of websites — prior to its Peter Thiel-backed demolition — I'd find what the nation's bored lawyers had to say about news from the worlds of gossip, pro sports (Deadspin) and sci-fi (i09). While never quite as gratifying or grounding as a true third place you had to physically visit, these online hubs were the closest thing to cafes and churches that the infrastructure of the internet could offer.

[Continues . . .]

#67

Politics / Re: Duke of Bullshit: "The" Do...

Last post by billy rubin - August 22, 2026, 06:50:18 PM

just to say that is calling his mental state into question, let alone acting on it.

the reporter called this a "confusing response." they need to stop sanewashing the guy. he is simply going senile as we watch.

#68

Politics / Re: Duke of Bullshit: "The" Do...

Last post by Recusant - August 22, 2026, 03:10:28 AM

Send in the troops to deal with the bond market!  The felon president's contact with reality is fleeting.

#69

Religion / Re: Who Would Have Thought?

Last post by billy rubin - August 20, 2026, 05:17:07 AM

an honorary american

[Abstract:]

#70

Science / Re: DARPA calls for antibiotic...

Last post by Recusant - August 19, 2026, 05:58:02 AM

You can do some serious thread necromancy on this site. 

Actual nanobots, interacting with bacteria. They redirect light to move and steer. Scientists use lasers to manipulate them. The paper is from this past March, but the pop-science article just popped up.

"Tiny robots powered by light can hunt down and collect bacteria" | ScienceDaily

Robots small enough to operate in the microbial world could give scientists a new way to directly handle objects that are impossible to manipulate by hand. These tiny machines are around 50 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, bringing researchers closer to the long-pursued goal of interacting directly with the microscopic world.

That capability could be especially useful for biological materials in water, including individual cells and bacteria. Precisely controlling and moving objects at this scale has been a persistent challenge. The newly developed nanorobots show that it is already possible to collect bacteria, transport them, and release them at selected locations.

One of the biggest obstacles in developing machines this small is finding an effective way to propel and control them. At Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), a research team led by Professor Bert Hecht has been developing a solution that uses the recoil produced by individual photons to move microscopic devices known as microdrones.

The devices contain as many as four plasmonic nanoantennas. These antennas absorb light with a particular color and helicity, then emit that light in a specific direction. Redirecting each photon creates a tiny recoil force, similar in principle to the recoil produced when a bullet is fired. Because the microdrones have so little mass, those extremely small forces can generate substantial acceleration and speed.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"A nanoscale robotic cleaner" | Nature Communications

Abstract:

Photon-recoil–based actuation enables maneuvering of micro- and nanoscale objects without beam steering or tight focusing, mitigating system complexity and photodamage. Recent light-driven microdrones achieved full control in two dimensions using multiple laser fields; however, for many applications, sacrificing degrees of freedom allows substantial miniaturization and improved propulsion efficiency.

Here, we demonstrate sub-micrometer nanorobots actuated by a plasmonic directional antenna that simultaneously provides propulsion force and orientation control. The nanorobots reach propulsion speeds up to 50 μm/s [50 thousandths of a millimeter per second], with their motion direction intrinsically locked perpendicular to the linear polarization axis.

Circularly polarized light pulses lift the resulting twofold orientational degeneracy through spin–momentum transfer. Using opto-thermophoretic forces, nanorobots efficiently capture, transport, reversibly assemble, and release bacteria. By sequencing linear and circular polarization states, they execute complex, high-precision trajectories to systematically sweep defined regions, functioning as light-driven robotic cleaners. This work expands the capabilities of nanorobots for biological manipulation and high-speed, localized sensing.