The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2016, Japanese scientists Oda and Hiraga published their discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium capable of breaking down PET plastic into basic nutrients. This finding marked a shift in microbiology's perception, recognizing the potential of microbes to solve pressing environmental issues.

France's Carbios has successfully applied bacterial enzyme technology to recycle PET plastic waste into new plastic products, aligning with the French government's goal of fully recycling plastic packaging by 2025.

2. HIV cases in Amsterdam drop to almost zero after PrEP scheme

According to Dutch AIDS Fund, there were only nine new cases of the virus in Amsterdam in 2022, down from 66 people diagnosed in 2021. The organisation claimed that 128 people were diagnosed with HIV in Amsterdam in 2019, and since 2010, the number of new infections in the Dutch capital has fallen by 95 per cent.

3. Cheap and drinkable water from desalination is finally a reality

In a groundbreaking endeavor, engineers from MIT and China have designed a passive solar desalination system aimed at converting seawater into drinkable water.

The concept, articulated in a study published in the journal Joule, harnesses the dual powers of the sun and the inherent properties of seawater, emulating the ocean’s “thermohaline” circulation on a smaller scale, to evaporate water and leave salt behind.

4. World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.

5. After Decades of Pressure, US Drugmaker J&J Gives Up Patent on Life-Saving TB Drug

In what can be termed a huge development for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients across large parts of the world, bedaquiline maker Johnson and Johnson said on September 30 (Saturday) that it would drop its patent over the drug in 134 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

6. Stranded dolphins rescued from shallow river in Massachusetts

7. ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done but that the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

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dykecostanza

the bait and switch way this is written literally made me laugh out loud

dykecostanza

biden: my new plan guarantees four additional years of free education

kids in high school: holy shit free college?!

biden: oh no two years of pre-school and then two years of college*

*only at select locations, restrictions apply

annalisa-nicole

Okay but pre-school is expensive as hell. Making it free will directly improve the lives of so many families.

gardenianoire

so is community college it will literally cut the cost of college in half or make it free for the people that choose one of the many careers you can get with a two year degree are y'all stupid or just dumb

imgonnakillyourayromano123

do ppl actually not realise how important affordable childcare is to working women???

soozencreates-deactivated202110

Hi, I'm a mum! Pre-pandemic, I was working over forty hours a week, and the entirety of my paycheck went to covering my kid's daycare cost. Daycare and pre school are expensive, so much so that a lot of people quite literally can't afford it, even when working full time.

Having two years of pre-k education covered is absolutely beyond helpful. Parents genuinely want to provide the very best for the kids and having early education covered can go a long way in allowing parents to do just that.

ultranos

Look, I don’t have kids and I am still buried under student loans from college. I absolutely believe free college is necessary.

However.

There is decades worth of evidence that pre-K education is one of the strongest ways of giving kids enduring advantages in K-12 education. A lot of the data comes specifically out of Oklahoma, which does have voluntary universal pre-K (which makes it an excellent case study) and the research shows gains across all racial and socio-economic boundaries. That paper is from 2005. Researchers revisited the kids later to see how persistent these gains were, or if they were drowned out by all the other stuff.

Turns out, the kids who were in pre-K continued to have academic success through middle school (they hadn’t tracked through high school). And just for fun, they also did some projected adult earnings for kids who went through pre-K, as fun benefit-cost analysis of the whole thing. And it looks like the benefits skew disproportionately in favor of the more disadvantaged students.

Community college is great and should be accessible to everybody. But universal pre-K will catch more kids early on to ensure they have a better shot at finishing high school. The evidence screams that it is one of the single most-effective measures in leveling the playing field for all kids, and reducing the generations of privilege baked into the system.

lynati

And Biden’s campaign stance was always two years of free community college, NOT four years at any and all universities. It’s not a bait and switch if it’s the two years of college he previously “promised” us PLUS something new and different that is explained IN THE NEXT / SAME SENTENCE so people wouldn’t get confused and think it meant four years of college.

gayahithwen

The wording of the tweet is a little bit bait-and-switch if you haven't been staying on top of the policy discussions, but even so: this is a really good thing, please don't dismiss all the good that this policy will do just because it's not everything you want it to be.

dragongirlteeth

I feel like this is also a subtle way to encourage going to community colleges for trades rather than four year degrees, which is something that we desperately need since we basically lost most of a generation of skilled tradespeople in the push for "you have to get a four year degree to succeed"

the world if i could go even 24 hours without hearing about taylor swift

me when i log onto www.youtube.con

Guys 2014 is in two months

riippuliitaja

Mitä cybershop yrittää kertoo

jbt7493

its really cool that we discovered glass which is the material that doesnt have any chemical reactions with anything in the universe very useful for doing chemistry due to being able to put things in it to contain chemical reactions and never having it react with the things that are in it due to it being completely and entirely unreactive to every chemical

sabakos

Posts from a 17th century chymist who's about to have their bones dissolved by hydrofluoric acid.

e-102

HYDROFLUORIC ACID MENTION��️

💀🧪

too-many-rats

DICKS OUT FOR HYDROFLUORIC ACID!!!

e-102

NOT A GOOD IDEA!!!!!

LOVE WINS???!?!??!?!

literally obsessed with the design of blobjects

Alexander Eudier. Contemporary Ritual Mask. Ouagadougou

Source

Source

River Lady 💧

How i feel after hanging out and giggling

kalichnikov

Should come any day now

donuttedhole

can I still be goofy with my nipples pierced?

thickness-protection-program

Not if you're brunette

touching grass isn't enough some of you need to experience the magic of live theatre