A very good morning my friends!

Another Saturday, another ‘Dump’ waiting….

Locally–Temps have been milder for a few days…..we have days a couple of days of light rain thanx to a tropical wave just off the Coast….a welcome relief from the extreme temps.

Plastics in the environment has gotten a lot off press lately (will it continue….who knows)….there has been a few developments that some say will change things……(we will see)….

Plastic is really hard to recycle, despite repeated assurances from manufacturers that it’s possible, and most of it just ends up in landfills. And the stuff that does get recycled decreases in quality during the process.

Figuring out a way to effectively recycle plastic without degrading its quality would be an extraordinary feat. And now, it seems that a group of scientists in Switzerland may have cracked the code using some clever chemistry.

In a new paper for the journal Nature Chemical Engineering, researchers at ETH Zurich detailed a process in which they break apart the chemical bonds in long polymer chains that make up plastic into smaller molecules.

These resulting molecules can serve as base ingredients for more products, such as jet fuel or more plastics, without losing quality.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/recycle-plastic-system

If that is not of any interest maybe this will snap your griddle…..

Despite the planet’s growing plastic pollution crisis, petroleum-based polymers have become an integral part of modern life. They make cars and airplanes lighter and more energy efficient. They constitute a core material of modern medicine by helping to keep equipment sterile, deliver medicines and build prosthetics, among many other things. And they are a critical component of the wiring and hardware that underlies our technology-driven civilization.

The trouble is, when they outlive their usefulness, they become waste and end up polluting our oceans, rivers, soils and bodies.

But new research from a team of chemists at UC Berkeley suggests a glimmer of hope when it comes to the thorny problem of recycling plastics — one that may allow us to have our cake, and potentially take a very small bite, too.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-03/has-a-uc-berkeley-lab-found-a-solution-to-plastic-recycling

And still more ‘promising’ research….

A radical new process “vaporizes” plastic bags and bottles to help make recycled materials.

American scientists say the innovative chemical procedure turns ubiquitous waste items into hydrocarbon “building blocks” for new plastics.

They explained that the process works “equally well” with the two dominant types of consumer plastic waste: polyethylene, the component of most single-use plastic bags, and polypropylene, the stuff of hard plastics, from microwavable dishes to luggage.

According to the findings published in the journal Science, it also efficiently degrades a mix of the two types of plastics.

Innovative Process ‘Vaporizes’ Plastic Waste Into Building Blocks For New Plastics‌‌

There have been many promises and yet the problem remains…..

How about a privately owned city?

Before Rachel Corbett could set foot in Próspera, she had to sign an “agreement of coexistence”—thereby “binding myself to 4,202 pages of rules,” any violation of which would be handled by an arbitration center operated by three retired Arizona judges. In a lengthy piece for the New York Times, Corbett explains what she found in the experimental town, which is located off Honduras and was founded in 2017 by a Delaware-based company that has backing from VC funds tied to the likes of Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Marc Andreessen. “Built in a semiautonomous jurisdiction known as a ZEDE (a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development), Próspera is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation.

he light regulation is particularly apparent when it comes to medicine. Corbett describes one financial backer who had his Tesla key implanted into his hand via a chip. Her piece is complex: She places Próspera within the much larger collection of the special economic zones and the far smaller group of charter cities that exist across the world. She highlights criticism that Próspera has taken shape as a “an example of corporate monarchy, where yacht-owning CEOs exploit land and labor in a poor country.” Indeed, fears that Próspera would subsume nearby land has led many people and politicians in Honduras to sour on the project; two years ago, the government yanked some of its privileges and put up some financing roadblocks. Próspera responded by filing a nearly $11 billion suit against the country with a World Bank Tribunal; it’s unresolved. (Read the fascinating article in full.)

Why not?  Everything these days is about finding ways to find the magic equation for more and more profits.

Speaking of making profits….have you ever looked up at the night sky and said ‘sure would like some sunshine’?

A provocative startup claims it will soon let people buy spots of sunlight reflected with a giant satellite mirror — but there are still a lot of outstanding questions about how (and whether) the whole thing will actually work.

As Mashable reports, the Reflect Orbital startup has begun taking applications to “reserve a spot of light,” promoting the offering with a demonstration video posted to X-formerly-Twitter.

In the demo, former SpaceX intern and startup cofounder Ben Nowack is shown using an app outside in the dark that seems to control the location of the company’s sunlight-reflecting mirrors. As he selects the spot where he stands, the area around him is suddenly illuminated as if by stadium lights.

Both Mashable and a reader note on another tweet featuring Nowack’s video note that it’s unclear how the video was filmed, and whether it’s a simulation of Reflect Orbital’s light-peddling service or what.

And unfortunately, there’s even more opacity surrounding the startup.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-space-mirror-sunlight-night

Keeping with the sciencey stuff…..did you see the photos of the North Carolina beach home that floated by changing zip codes as it went?  Beach erosion is becoming a major problem….now there is a plan….

Beaches are disappearing because of climate change and coastal erosion. This poses a risk to coastal communities across the world. Now, scientists may have an unconventional solution: zapping the waterfronts with electricity. The method could create a strong natural barrier against erosion and offer protection without chemicals or infrastructure changes.

Half of the world’s beaches could disappear by 2100 because of sea-level rise, more intense storms and changing wind patterns and ocean currents. This poses a threat to both coastal communities as well as the coastal marine ecosystem including coral reefs. To combat the demise of beaches, a group of scientists have proposed using electricity to shock beaches into immobility. “By applying a mild electric stimulation to marine soils, we systematically and mechanistically proved that it is possible to cement them by turning naturally dissolved minerals in seawater into solid mineral binders,” Alessandro Rotta Loria, lead author of a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, said in a statement.

https://theweek.com/environment/electricity-beaches-ecosystem

Interesting plan but will it work as the water levels get higher?  We shall see.

Finally, do you eat Doritos?

You know that orangy residue that gets all opver your fingers….well you will not believe what it can be used for….

To many consumers, “Yellow No. 5” is best known as the food dye that adds an orange-yellow tinge to snacks and drinks like Doritos, Gatorade, and M&Ms. To a team from Stanford, however, tartrazine, the chemical found in that dye, recently served as a window into living creatures’ bodies, effectively making the skin of mice transparent.

• The experiment: For their study published Friday in the journal Science, the researchers rubbed a tartrazine solution onto various parts of lab mice, including their stomachs, scalps, and hind legs, reports the Washington Post. In just minutes, the mice’s skin turned “temporarily into a living window, revealing branching blood vessels, muscle fibers, and contractions of the gut,” per the Post. “You could see through the mouse,” says Adam Wax of the National Science Foundation, which helped fund the study. “I’ve been working in optics for 30 years, and I thought that result was jaw-dropping.”
• The science behind it: The paper notes that the process behind the seeming “magic” of the researchers’ experiment is similar to that used in HG Wells’ Invisible Man, in which a scientist creates a serum that shifts how the body’s cells refract light. In this case, the Stanford researchers discovered that a piece of raw chicken soaked in the light-absorbing food dye solution started turning clear, and that transparency increased the more tartrazine was added.
• Trying it on the mice: That’s when they began applying the solution to the mice’s skin, at which point “the tartrazine reduced the amount of refraction, the light scattered less, and the tissue appeared clear,” offering a view of the rodents’ internal organs, per the Post. After the experiment was through, the tartrazine dye was cleaned off the mice, with “minimal systemic toxicity” left behind.
• Applications: So how can this technique be tapped in more helpful ways? Study co-author Guosong Hong says it can be used for everything from nonintrusively diagnosing tumors and observing brain activity to helping expedite tattoo removal, per the Post. The technique has yet to be tested on humans, with certain ethical hurdles to overcome before that can happen. The Economist notes that human skin is also 10 times as thick as that of mice, which adds another challenge.

Now that is my top story of the day. 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those that regularly follow and comment here on IST…your patronage is much appreciated.

That brings an end to this “Dump”…..enjoy your weekend and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”