Today is Saturday and another news dump and it is the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor….please take a moment and think about those that lost their lives on that fateful day and the thousands that fought and died to end the tyranny of World War Two.

Locally–Mississippi had an earthquake on Thanksgiving….

Mississippi isn’t exactly known for earthquakes, so when one measuring 2.5 occurred on Nov. 28 south of Canton at the Ross Barnett Reservoir, it got a lot of attention. But events like this aren’t as unusual in Mississippi as one might think.

“Most of them are not felt,” said James Starnes of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality‘s Office of Geology. “It’s rare for someone to feel a Mississippi earthquake.

“It was a mild earthquake. The other earthquakes that have been centered on this fault have been around the 2 to 3 range. The ones in the 2 range don’t seem to be felt.”

Not earth shaking (no pun intended) but odd for my region.

Personally–I finally got the dreaded news….I will be starting my radiation treatments come Monday.  I am not sure how the treatments will effect me….but I will keep posting if possible.

Shall we move on to the all important Dump?

Every year there seems to be some idiot that feels he is a master chef and wants to fry a turkey….and every year that same idiot burns down his house….it appears that stump jumpers are not the only idiots….

A $3 million home went up in flames in Connecticut, and authorities blame it on an attempt to deep-fry a Thanksgiving turkey in a garage, reports CT Insider. The blaze started on Thanksgiving Day in Weston, reports News12. “There was a party going on at the house,” says John Pokorny, chief of the volunteer fire department there. “When we arrived, the garage and the room above the garage were completely involved.”

The fire quickly spread to the adjoining residence of at least 10,000 square feet, where about 25 people were gathered for the holiday. All got out safely, but the home was destroyed. One key to safety when deep-frying a turkey: Do it outside, notes the National Turkey Foundation. And a word to the wise from the Weston fire chief: “You just have to be really careful because it can all go bad really quickly.”

Personally I prefer my turkey roasted….to say I am not a fan of fried turkey would be an understatement.

Now for some environmental news…..

We hear daily all the things that corporations are doing to help the plastic problem…..but one company is not faking it anymore….Coca-Cola…..

One of the world’s top contributors to plastic pollution has backed away from its reduction and reuse goals, saying it’s complicated—a move that has sparked criticism from environment organizations. Days before the global summit on reducing plastic use began, the Coca-Cola Co. took down the pledge it made in 2022 to, among other steps, reach a level of 25% of its drinks sold in refillable or returnable containers by 2030, the Guardian reports. The company announced Monday that it will focus more on using recycled materials instead of cutting virgin and single-use plastic.

Coca-Cola is facing “challenges that are complex” in adjusting its voluntary sustainability goals, the company said. A spokesperson told the Washington Post that the company did not reduce the use of virgin plastic between 2020 and 2023 because of its growth. Coca-Cola’s sustainability report said it sold 14% of its product in reusable packaging last year. A recent study traced 11% of global plastic pollution to Coca-Cola. The company was represented at the plastics summit last week in South Korea.

The organization Break Free From Plastic was critical, pointing out that it’s now six straight years that the company has been the world’s No. 1 plastic polluter and that its audit shows an increase for 2023, per Yahoo Tech. “Coke’s latest move is a masterclass in greenwashing,” an official with the group said. An official at Oceana, another nonprofit, said: “Coca-Cola has a responsibility to take real ownership over the waste and pollution it creates. Instead, it is kicking the plastic bottle down the road and into the sea again.”

Who will join the trend?  After all we have a climate denier soon to be in the White House.

Keeping with the plastic thing…..

Hopes were high for the UN summit last week to settle on a landmark global treaty to address plastic pollution. As it often goes with politics, those hopes were dashed when the negotiations ended without a deal. A key reason the talks didn’t reach fruition was the refusal by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich nations to accept limits on plastic production.

Yet, that is one of four key policies we need to reduce plastic pollution, according to researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara. Their research shows that these policies could eliminate 91 percent of the world’s plastic waste and almost a third of the related carbon emissions by 2050.

Without any policies in place, mismanaged plastic waste is set to double to 121 million metric tons in that time period, the researchers calculated.

The world creates over 350 million metric tons of plastic waste a year at present. Much of this is mismanaged, and ends up in our soils, waters, and air. In 2021, we mismanaged 68 million metric tons of plastic waste, according to a UCSB press release. Around 10 million tons of the waste finds its way into the oceans, where it can harm marine life in many ways.

The four policies that the UCSB researchers outline in their paper published in the journal Science include: capping plastic production at 2020 levels; requiring that new products be made with 40 percent postconsumer recycled plastic; a small fee on plastic packaging; and investing significantly in waste management, especially in lower-income parts of the world.

These four policies could end plastic pollution by 2050

Then I read of yet another ‘miracle’ device to help control plastic waste….

Scientists have uncovered a surprising way to combat plastic waste. According to a recent article from The Conversation, posted at Phys.org, researchers at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology have discovered an insect in Kenya with the ability to break down plastic pollution. 

Kenyan lesser mealworm larvae have the capability to consume polystyrene (commonly known as Styrofoam), joining the small group of plastic-eating insects and organisms. Per the article, the mealworm larva is the first species native to Africa that’s been identified with this ability. 

Published in Scientific Reports, the study shows that the mealworm — the larval form of the Alphitobius diaperinus darkling beetle in Kenya — can chew through polystyrene. The researchers also examined the larvae’s gut bacteria to identify the specific bacteria that help break down the plastic once it’s ingested. They found that host bacteria in the larvae’s gut supports the plastic degradation process. 

Scientists discover insect with major appetite for plastic — here’s how it could help clean up landfills

Is this going to be yet another ‘miracle’ cure that we never hear about again?

Dementia is becoming a major problem and research has found a few things that they can work with…..

A new research consortium has found not only that brain fungi or bacteria can cause some dementia cases, but also that for some patients, the damage can even be reversed.

One of the main drivers behind this discovery, pharmaceutical rep-turned-researcher Nikki Schultek told the Guardian that she also suffered from dementia caused by fungi.

Nearly a decade ago, the North Carolina-based business school graduate suddenly developed debilitating cognitive symptoms. In her early 30s at the time, Schultek was terrified she wouldn’t live long enough to see her children, then just three and five years old, grow up.

After being tested for multiple sclerosis, the young mother and her doctors eventually figured out what was going on: she had concurring chronic infections from the Lyme disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi — and one of them had reached her brain.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/dementia-alzheimers-bacteria-fungus

Some interesting news from the tech world…..

According to recent estimates, there are nearly 7 billion smartphones in the world. With many tech companies avidly hoping you’ll upgrade your pocket computer annually ad nauseum, that means a lot of electronic waste (e-waste) in landfills leaking toxic chemicals detrimental to human and environmental health. And that’s only smartphones. The U.N. estimates that in 2022, the world produced 62 billion kilograms of e-waste—an 82 percent increase from just a decade earlier.

While other industries have started transitioning toward biodegradable products, electronics is more complicated, as it often relies on rare earth metals that produce toxic waste But now, the industry may be turning over a new leaf… literally. An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) in Germany, have leveraged the quasi-fractal lignocellulose structures—essentially the veiny scaffolding of a leaf—in leaves to create biodegradable polymer films. In other words, they’ve made leaf-based electronics, or “leaftronics,” as the researchers called it. The details of this process were published in the journal Science Advances in November.

“We were surprised to find that these natural quasi-fractal lignocellulose skeletons not only support living cells in nature, but can also hold solution-processable polymers together, even at relatively high temperatures where these polymers should begin flowing,” TU Dresden’s Hans Kleemann, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a63071095/leaftronics-e-waste/

That does it for me on this first full weekend in December.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and as always…..Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”