I bet you didnt know that

mzungu

New Home wrote: »

Pft. Candie is so mean. I bet next she'll fabricate some story as there not being such a thing as the Tooth Fairy.

Or Santa!

Could you imagine?

Added spoiler tags!

New Home

Good thinking!

Capt'n Midnight

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

But he's buried in Jerpoint Abbey.

badtoro

Candie wrote: »

I should probably have put a warning on that too, it is upsetting. I tend to just post whatever occurs to me that I think is interesting, upsetting or not.

Or maybe I should just think twice about what I post more.

You're grand, we'll get over it 😉

I think I'll limit myself to things like the biggest ball of twine, seems like I'm unsettling people too much which absolutely isn't my intention.

steddyeddy

JRant wrote: »

Nature always finds a way.

It does indeed and it's pretty fast evolution considering PET has only been in the environment for 70 years.

Next we will try to engineer tjem to work at 70 degrees. At that temperature the plastic will be close to an amorphous state and easier to digest.

New Home

There are other bacteria (like Burkholderia Cepacia, for instance) that are used "eat" oil spills in the ocean.

Ipso

steddyeddy wrote: »

Ideonella sakaiensis is a strain of bacteria discovered in a PET plastics recycling plant in Japan. After incubating this bacteria with some PET film they found that it could fully digest a thin plastic bottle in about six weeks. In other words it was digesting and metabolising the plastic as a carbon source.

This is the first time a bacteria was found to be able to digest, metabolise and grow solely on a man made PET plastics, the strongest and most abundant of all plastic. This is significant as by 2050 it's estimated that there'll be more plastic in the ocean by mass than fish.

Ideonella does that by excreting an enzyme called PETase. This enzyme has likely evolved from enzymes called cutinases which break down cutin, a waxy polyester that forms the cuticle of the plant. Both cutin and PET are polyesters (contain lots of ester bonds) and the gene sequence for both enzymes are extremely similar. Below is a picture of the effects the enzyme has when incubated with plastic (from left to right of the top images is plastic without the enzyme, with the enzyme and with an engineered version of the enzyme).

Are there any by products from digesting PET?

Capt'n Midnight

Pseudomonas bacteria can use chlorinated hydrcarbons as a fuel and carbon source.

In other words they can grow in Dettol.

steddyeddy

New Home wrote: »

There are other bacteria (like Burkholderia Cepacia, for instance) that are used "eat" oil spills in the ocean.

And Ideonella, which digests plastic is in the same order as Capacia, the order Burkholderiales.

This is an order of bacteria famous for being able to digest and metabolise diverse classes of compounds.

steddyeddy

Ipso wrote: »

Are there any by products from digesting PET?

Yes indeed. These are terephthalic acid, bis-hydroxyethyl terephthalic acid and mono-hydroxyethyl-terephthalic acid.

The bacteria is most interested in terephthalic acid which it transports into itself following enzymatic digestion of the plastic.

Even more interesting is that terephthalic acid (TPA) is one of the building blocks used by chemists to make the plastic in the first place! In other words this opens a route to true recycling.

More interesting again is that terephthalic acid is derived from the oxidation of p-Xylene by oxygen in air. p-Xylene itself is a petroleum product. So PET, an oil product can potentially be converted back into the originol oil product and be used for energy production.

New Home

IIRC, Burkholderia Cepacia can also contaminate disinfectant such as iodine povidone and clorexidine. It can "hide" in the condensation under lids/stoppers/etc of many things (e.g. catheters, feeding tubes, etc.) even after they've been through an autoclave.

EDIT: It can also be found on onions!


I must brush up on Clostridium Difficile and post it here - hospital-acquired infections aren't limited to "good old" MRSA.

Carry

Candie wrote: »

I think I'll limit myself to things like the biggest ball of twine, seems like I'm unsettling people too much which absolutely isn't my intention.

No, don't please. Balls of twine are boring, unless you find some information that they are used as a torture instrument (entwining some poor enemy into a ball and rolling them down Croagh Patrick, the stony part of it - I read too many thrillers, sorry).

I prefer your shocking news, they are kind of wake-up calls, reminders that the world out there is full of cruelty and creepy stuff. Not that we know that already but I think the ordinary human mind tends to ignore it.

Keep going with unsettling people

Your eyelash mites had the positive effect that I washed furiously all my eye make-up brushes and threw away older mascaras.
See, you did some good

steddyeddy

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Pseudomonas bacteria can use chlorinated hydrcarbons as a fuel and carbon source.

In other words they can grow in Dettol.

And an engineered version of Pseudomonas is the first bacteria to be patented!

New Home

:eek:

steddyeddy

New Home wrote: »

IIRC, Burkholderia Cepacia can also contaminate disinfectant such as iodine povidone and clorexidine. It can "hide" in the condensation under lids/stoppers/etc of many things (e.g. catheters, feeding tubes, etc.) even after they've been through an autoclave.

EDIT: It can also be found on onions!


I must freshen up on Clostridium Difficile and post it here - hospital-acquired infections aren't limited to "good old" MRSA.

Jesus scary ba$tards! Please post about it here. It's an area I've limited experience with but find very interesting.

cdeb

steddyeddy wrote: »

And an engineered version of Pseudomonas is the first bacteria to be patented!

The singular is bacterium.

New Home

Did they identify only one single bacterium, then?

mzungu

A duel between three people is called a truel.

pleas advice

mzungu wrote: »

A duel between three people is called a truel.

pop quiz, hot shot

blinding

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Pseudomonas bacteria can use chlorinated hydrcarbons as a fuel and carbon source.

In other words they can grow in Dettol.

steddyeddy wrote: »

And Ideonella, which digests plastic is in the same order as Capacia, the order Burkholderiales.

This is an order of bacteria famous for being able to digest and metabolise diverse classes of compounds.

Are we just here as fuel for bacteria and have just being getting carried away with our own importance again as usual .

Squall Leonhart

The Michelin Man, first introduced in 1894, has a name, it's Bibendum!

the purple tin

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

The Michelin Man, first introduced in 1894, has a name, it's Bibendum!

The iconic Monopoly Man's real name is Rich Uncle Pennybags.


The character was inspired by the american tycoon JP Morgan.

gozunda

Robert Emmet was one of seventeen children.
The Irish rebellion of 1803 which he led, lasted less than one day. He has been the subject of over 40 biographies and is reputed to be buried in one of 10 different locations around Ireland. His body has yet to be been found.

Muahahaha

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

The Michelin Man, first introduced in 1894, has a name, it's Bibendum!

The same Michelin Man inspired Irish born modernist architect and designer Eileen Gray to create the Bibendum chair



Back in 2009 another Eileen Gray designed chair (The Dragon Chair) sold at auction for $25m. This is a world record price paid for a piece of furniture and AFAIK it still stands today. The Dragon Chair had been bought origionally in 1972 by French fashion icon Yves St.Laurent. However it is believed that when an original Bibendum chair comes up for auction it will smash the current record. It is not known how many originals are in existance but thought to be less than 10.

Eileen Gray herself had a very colourful life. She was born and bred in Wexford then moved to London then to Paris. She was bi-sexual and had relationships with several famous French artists and designers in 1920s Paris. Her self designed house E1027 was built in the south of France in 1929 and is considered today to be far ahead of its time and an inspiration to thousands of modern architects since. The house has just been restored and opened to vistors for the first time this year. http://www.e1027.org/ Inside there is graffiti on the walls by Le Corbusier (considered the father of modern architecture). Le Corbusier is understood to have done this graffiti in a rage at Eileen Gray as he was madly in love with her but the feelings were not returned. The graffiti is considered to be an artwork in itself and depicts lots of nude images.


Eileen Gray died in 1976 and is buried in Pere Lachaise cemetary in Paris, the same place that Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and a host of French artists are buried. However her grave is unmarked because her family forgot to pay the license fee.

There is a permanent exhibition of Eileen Gray and her works on display in the National Muesum at Collins Barracks, its well worth a look

New Home

I think "Bibendum" means "To Drink" in Latin (which you mustn't do when you drive).

New Home

I've just come across a YT video where it was suggested that the margins in a page weren't originally put there just to make the page look good or to add annotations, but because if rodents got at the book/copy they'd chew through the margins instead of the text.

Esel

New Home wrote: »

I think "Bibendum" means "To Drink" in Latin (which you mustn't do when you drive).

The associated Michelin motto/phrase is 'Nunc Est Bibendum'.

SimonTemplar

The person who edited Lawrence of Arabia (1962) also edited 50 Shades of Grey (2015).

Her name was Anne V. Coates and she died a few months ago aged 92.

Ten of Swords

GEBCO (the international organization that maps the ocean floors) named several geographic features of the Rockall Plateau (part of the Rockall Basin, a deep water trench several hundred kilometers off the North West coast of Ireland) after locations in the works of JRR Tolkien.

There are areas of the plateau now officially called Edoras, Eriador, Fangorn, Gondor, Isengard, Lorien and Rohan

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/gazetteer/