Wednesday, April 18, 2018

April 18, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"A US-China Trade War?"--China Uncensored (10 min.)
A look at the current war of words between the U.S. and China over trade, background and possible ramifications. He also discusses that, as an export nation, China has much more to lose.


         Scientists from Britain's University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory "tweaked" the structure of the naturally occurring enzyme after they found that it was helping a bacteria to break down, or digest, plastic used to make bottles.
             "We've made an improved version of the enzyme better than the natural one already," said John McGeehan, a professor at Portsmouth who co-led the work. "That's really exciting because that means that there's potential to optimize the enzyme even further."
               The engineered enzyme could in future help in the fight against pollution caused by plastics, which can persist for hundreds of years in the environment and currently pollute large areas of land and sea worldwide.
                 The team of scientists is now working on improving the enzyme further to see if they can make it capable of breaking down plastics on an industrial scale. Their initial goal had been simply to understand the enzyme's structure.

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