MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.

[MON 06 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 48

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The most troubling thing about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has put the crazy of the Right on full display -- as demonstrated last week in an exchange between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's chief medical advisor, and two Republican Senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky. It started out with Dr. Fauci telling an interviewer:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Paul shot back in a misinformed tweet:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The "natural immunity" meme translates to: The best way to not get the disease is to get the disease. Rand, of course, would deny that was what he meant, but that's how bafflegab works; it can never be pinned down to anything specific.

Cruz, adding his own misinformation, said that Dr. Fauci had lied to Congress about funding "gain of function (GOF)" research at a research lab in Wuhan, and that he should be prosecuted. The reality is that the US funded research into making pathogens that were easier to handle in the lab and so easier to research. It was a question of breeding more docile lab rats, not meaner ones.

In a follow-on interview, Dr. Fauci laughed at Cruz: "I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, Senator?" When asked if the cheap shots were a GOP attempt to deflect attention from Trump's crimes, he replied: "Of course. You have to be asleep not to figure that one out." The bottom line was: "I'm going to be saving lives, and they're going to be lying."

Later, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin accused Dr. Fauci of "fear-mongering" saying he was "overhyping" COVID-19, adding that he had similarly "overhyped" AIDS decades ago. The good doctor was outraged, telling CNN's Jake Tapper:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Tapper replied: "I don't think he does, either."

The Right has done everything they can to obstruct the Biden Administration's efforts to control the pandemic -- to then blame Biden for failing to control it. It's hard to believe that such a preposterous trick is going to work for them over the longer run, since nobody with a clue believes it. Unfortunately, it's hard to say when the bubble will finally pop.

* In other news of the new normal, according to an essay from WASHINGTONPOST.com ("Trump's Lawyers Are Pleading The Fifth -- Congress Can Still Make Them Talk" by Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry, & Joshua Perry, 4 December 2021), the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot is moving right along. While most of the people from the Trump White House have been cooperating, a number of the high-profile players are refusing to.

Steve Bannon, one of the most prominent Trump stooges, has already been indicted on contempt of Congress charges. That's stepped up the pressure on the others, but some are still holding out. Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who allegedly tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, is now claiming the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the 1-6 Committee, and has now been joined by one of Trump's main outside legal advisers, John Eastman.

Previously, Trump stooges had been relying on a dubious "executive privilege" argument, but the indictment of Bannon shows that argument is crumbling, and so they're "pleading the 5th" now. That poses an interesting legal question: do 5th Amendment protections apply to congressional investigations? They're not criminal trials, after all. The answer is that they could lead straight to criminal trials, and so the 5th Amendment still holds.

However, the 5th Amendment is commonly misunderstood, the popular belief that it is a "get out of jail free" card. It is not. Pleading the 5th is a back-to-the-wall tactic, since those who make the plea are giving up the right to speak in their own defense, and have made an effective admission of guilt. There are also some technical problems with Clark pleading the 5th -- but more importantly, the committee could grant him immunity from prosecution for his involvement with the Capitol riot, and then he couldn't plead the 5th any more. If he still refused to talk, then he would be indicted for contempt in his turn.

Giving Clark immunity would not trouble the committee, since he's small fry. Besides, if he implicates himself in crimes he won't go to jail, but he'd still have consequences, for example being disbarred from law practice. In any case, the committee's target is Trump, and they will get to him by turning the human pyramid of enablers propping him up against him. Granting immunity is a powerful lever to that end, giving any Trump stooge a choice between cooperating and getting a PASS, or being indicted and certainly convicted. With each one of them that turns, the pressure on the hold-outs increases.

There's been a lot of complaint about the 1-6 Committee, the claim being that it is slow and ineffective. Slow, yes, but legal due process is like that, and there's no way around it. The case against Trump is the size of a mountain, and it takes time to move a mountain. Ineffective? No. The committee is holding all the good cards, and playing them methodically -- while the Black Hats are only holding jokers.

* My writing efforts suddenly run out of steam about a month ago. I'm not selling many ebooks, there's not much growth, and sales have been particularly slow as of late. I can't give up on it, I've got nothing better to do, but I couldn't see the way forward.

After concentrating on the matter, I started to come up with ideas for what I could do. One thing I considered was Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) ads, but when I doped it out, I realized that I couldn't sell ebooks at $2.99 USD a pop and not lose money with each sale. On further thought, however, I realized that I might be able to buy ads for very cheap with ebooks that don't have any competition. I would use very precise targeting and get a few sales, enough to keep me happy. I thought this over for about two weeks, and with apprehension jumped in to set up an ad campaign.

I immediately found out that this "guerilla" approach to advertising wasn't workable, and that I really would lose money on every ebook I sold. Further thought revealed that it was absurd thinking: if I didn't have competition on keywords for ebook searches, my ebooks would come up high on searches anyway. It was a useful lesson for tailoring the keywords associated with my ebooks.

Oddly, that misadventure snapped me out of my funk, since I didn't have to worry about ads any more. I had another idea, posting to the Medium website, which is a place where people can publish articles and do low-key personal promotion as they do so. Alas, inspection of Medium showed that it is heavily populated by people writing articles on how to use Medium to achieve success as an author. There's something not for real about this. Judging Medium as largely a clickbait forum, I decided against it. [ED: Later, I got to thinking about promoting my writings on Twitter and leveraging off hashtags, but that went nowhere, too -- just as well, since Twitter was about to fall apart.]

* As reported by JANES.com ("Nammo Readies SFRJ For Initial THOR-ER Test-Firing In 2022" by Robin Hughes, 8 December 2021), Norwegian defense manufacturer Nammo is now working toward a flight test in early 2022 of the company's new solid-fuel ramjet (SFRJ) motor with the US Navy's Tactical High-speed Offensive Ramjet for Extended Range (THOR-ER) missile propulsion technology demonstrator.

A solid-fuel ramjet features a solid-fuel plug that is gradually vaporized, to generate a fuel-air mixture that is then burned. Models of the THOR-ER demonstrator suggest it is based on the US Navy Standard SAM, but with a ramjet front end -- very likely related to Nammo's ramjet-powered artillery rounds.

The effort is being conducted in association with the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) -- and it is being funded by the US Navy, US Allied Prototyping Initiative (API), the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, and Nammo.

The THOR-ER program was launched in 2019 as a US-Norwegian collaboration "to co-operatively develop and integrate advancements in solid-fuel ramjet technologies into full-size prototypes that are affordable, attain high-speeds, and achieve extended range, culminating in flight demonstrations in operationally relevant conditions". The effort "will also consider potential US and Norwegian co-production opportunities".

[MON 13 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 49

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Things seem politically and socially in an inconclusive muddle for the time being. There's plenty going on, it's just that nothing seems close to resolution -- with one result that people in general are in a sullen mood.

There are promising signs for those who care to look for them. One place to look is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat who is inclined to challenge his party, indeed seems to almost take glee in it. He makes a lot of people on the Left very angry, such folk often accusing him of being a closet Republican, but that story doesn't hold up well under close inspection.

One cause for the resentment is that Manchin has made it absolutely clear he will never kill the filibuster, the Senate requirement to have a 60-vote majority to pass bills. With the filibuster as it is, the Democrats are dead in the water, Manchin coming across as either clueless or treacherous in ignoring that fact. In reality, Manchin has been for filibuster reform all along. He has said that he won't "weaken" the filibuster, but what does that mean? If the filibuster is made harder to use, is that weakening it or strengthening it? Manchin has his own way of saying things.

The current problems with the filibuster go back a half-century. Before that time, senators could delay the passage of legislation by getting up and talking in relays, with debate cut off only by a vote of 60 or more. As long as the filibuster was in progress, nothing could get done. A "two-track" scheme was devised in 1970 to allow normal Senate business to continue during a filibuster. The end result was that it was easy to simply declare a filibuster, with no need to do anything else. The results were predictable, with use of the filibuster gradually ramping up and creating gridlock.

Manchin is now part of a group of Democrat senators talking filibuster reform with prominent Republicans. They're getting a hearing, one Republican saying: "Most Republicans are willing to entertain ideas from Manchin as long as those ideas don't involve getting rid of the filibuster."

The group also includes Senator Angus Kind (I/ME), Jon Tester (D/MT), and Tim Kaine (D/VA). Kaine said that the members are trying to consider the perspective of the minority party while discussing potential proposals. "If we're in the minority, how would we feel about this? Can we live under this? Would this make the Senate work better for either party under a president of either party?"

A range of options is being discussed, but the most likely choice will be the "talking option", that filibusterers will have to "hold the floor". That in itself would not be a good thing, because then a handful of filibusterers could bring the Senate to a screeching halt for as long as they wanted -- so the other needed change will be that, instead of requiring 60 votes to close debate, it will require 41 to continue. That in effect would require that 41 Republican senators be available for a vote 24:7, which couldn't be maintained for very long. With that change, the filibuster becomes a tactic to extract concessions, instead of stonewalling the opposition party.

The discussions in progress are a bit funny, because Manchin is effectively holding all the ace cards, and the result will be what he chooses it to be. He's already floated this option, and said nothing about any other. I was wondering why he was taking so long to deal with the filibuster, but now it looks like it will happen soon enough. I suspect Manchin wanted to get GOP buy-in for whatever changes are made. Might some Republicans vote for the changes? We'll see. In any case, once the filibuster is under control, we may well hope for more progress in Congress.

[ED: Manchin then came out insisting on the sanctity of the filibuster again. On examination, it appears he wanted to see if he could get a faction of GOP willing to vote in favor of moderate Democrat initiatives; failing that, he would get filibuster reform, with GOP votes. LATER: As it turned out, once the Trump 2.0 Regime arrived, it was good that the filibuster hadn't been abandoned.]

* Incidentally, the talk of Manchin being a "closet Republican" has been complemented by talk of Republicans trying to recruit him. In response, Manchin said:

QUOTE:

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One James Antle, writing in THEWEEK.com, almost laughed at this, pointing out that Manchin knows exactly where he belongs. He wields more power than he's ever had before by controlling the swing vote, he knows that, and he likes it. Becoming an independent would buy him nothing, and as a Republican, he would have diminished influence. Certainly, no Democrats with any sense think that driving him out, and losing their majority, is a good idea.

Indeed, pushing the Democrats towards the center is not a bad idea. FOX News keeps playing up the idea that the Woke Left is really running the Democratic Party; with Manchin calling the shots, that pretense is harder to maintain. Maybe in the 2022 mid-terms, we'll be seeing a lot of "Joe Manchin Democrats" running for office on a center-Left basis.

* I wanted to get into my Internal Revenue Service account, to find out that the IRS is now relying on a secure service named "Id.Me" for access. I was pleased with this; the USA is finally starting to get serious about secure online transactions and the required strong ID to get them going. It did pose a problem, however, in that I don't have a phone service contract for any of my smartphones, instead relying on Google Voice and wi-fi to chat. That's the best solution for me, given that I spend most of my time in the house -- but Id.Me could not use a smartphone without its own number as an ID device.

I was stymied for a little bit, then I notice I could use a FIDO key instead -- a secure ID trinket I could plug into a USB port on a PC. I'd seen FIDO keys before, but never took much notice of them. Now the idea seemed interesting, so I bought one from Amazon.com for $26 USD a few weeks back.

Getting validated by Id.Me is tricky, and I'm still working on that issue. [ED: Id.Me would go into effective lockup a few months later.] In the meantime, I got to wondering if Twitter would use a FIDO key for ID. As mentioned previously, I got booted out of Twitter; I had used my Google Voice number for ID, and Twitter would step on me if I tried to use it again. I poked around a bit, and I found out that Twitter will indeed let me use a FIDO key for ID.

After the FIDO key arrived, I tried it, and got a new Twitter account with no problems: follow the Twitter instructions, plug the key into USB, then press the button on the key when told to do so. Ironically, while I was cleaning up the new account, I found a link in my web browser that got me back into my old account, which seemed to be open and accessible. I thought: Maybe I should blow it away? -- and immediately came back with: DON'T TOUCH IT! I might well jeopardize the new account. If I ignore the old account, Twitter should discard it by next summer. Twitter seems to be in such turmoil trying to create a less permissive environment that my new account is likely to be ignored if I do nothing to attract attention to it.

Incidentally, I was wondering if there were FIDO keys with near-field interfaces for use with a smartphone -- to then find out that the key I had bought also had NF. Duh, the little wireless symbol on the key should have tipped me off. I also decided to buy a second key, so I wouldn't get into trouble if I lost the key I already had.

In a parallel effort, as mentioned previously, I had wanted to get into Medium to find readers by posting short documents -- to conclude that was a dead end. What I really wanted to do, on thinking things out, is post short documents and promote them on Twitter. My first thought was to get a free blog like Weebly to post the articles, but on inspection that turned out to be too much like work. At that point, I remembered that, also as mentioned previously, I had obtained a free BraveNet BBS. I could set up a sub-forum on the BBS and post articles to it. A free BBS is useful as a cheap-&-dirty website. [ED: I tried it, didn't go anywhere.]

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("US Air Force To Install Nuclear Micro-Reactor At Alaskan Base" by David Szondy, 23 October 2021), the US Air Force is installing a nuclear micro-reactor at Eielson Air Force Base (AFB) in Alaska, not far south of Fairbanks. Eielson has a problem in that it's literally powered with coal, with a coal-fired plant providing it with 33.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Coal is of course dirty, but it's also logistically complicated to maintain the supply, and the plant is maintenance-intensive.

Micro-reactors that produce less than 20 MW are similar to the small reactors developed for nuclear submarines. There are differences, in that micro-reactors are factory-built, modular, and do not necessarily require water for cooling. Their small size means that heat dissipates more readily -- there's a higher ratio of surface area to volume -- and so thermal control is not such a problem. The heat can also be distributed to other installations through hot water or steam pipes.

Renewables are less of an option for Eielson, in its near-Arctic environment. The reactor will not require a large staff to operate, and will go into operation in 2027. The military is using the Eielson installation as a test case for using micro-reactors elsewhere.

[MON 20 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 50

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The House Committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot appears to have largely finished their data-gathering phase, and they are now starting to make waves. Last Monday, tough-minded Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney read a set of text messages to and from Mark Meadows that were sent on 6 January, when Meadows was Trump's chief of staff. The most interesting were between Donald Trump JR and Meadows:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The Capitol riot, it seems, was not such a "nothing burger" as Trumpbots have made it out to be. It was also noted that Junior didn't have direct access to his dad. FOX News talking heads texted Meadows as well:

QUOTE:

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These statements contradict what they were saying publicly at the time, for example Ingraham:

QUOTE:

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Blame it on Antifa! Yeah, sure. Adam Schiff, who is clearly organizing the investigation, said the committee also had text messages from Members of Congress, who were left unnamed for the moment. Meadows, having refused to comply with a subpoena, was cited for contempt of Congress in a House vote. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for him to be indicted -- maybe a week or two? We'll see.

The 1-6 Committee understands that Trump is supported by a human pyramid of enablers, and the only way to bring him down is to tear down the pyramid. They're taking on Trump enablers in and out of government, notably those at Fox News. Attacks on the committee from Republicans in authority have been muted -- partly because many GOP, including Mitch McConnell, want to see Trump go down, but also because those who defend Trump are fearful, knowing they're being targeted. The committee is moving along nicely.

Trump is clearly not happy about what is going on, issuing a statement under the title of "45th President of the United States":

QUOTE;

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The Twitter commentary on this suggested Trump is feeling nervous. Of course, Trump saw no irony in his long-running persecution of Hillary Clinton, under the slogan of: "LOCK HER UP!" -- preferring instead to talk wild nonsense. In any case, things are going to get much more interesting in the new year.

* In closely parallel news, the House committee monitoring the Federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic released a report saying that the Trump Administration deliberately undermined the response to the pandemic with measures including the weakening of testing guidance and championing widespread "herd immunity". From emails and other released documents, the committee found that the previous administration ignored warnings about supply shortages, blocked public health officials from speaking publicly, and neglected the pandemic response to focus on the 2020 election. After the election, the focus shifted to the "Big Lie" that the election was stolen.

In one instance, Trump held a roundtable event at the White House in August 2020 with some of herd immunity's top proponents, the meeting having been organized by Scott Atlas, a radiologist who became a special adviser to Trump. In an email to Marc Short, Vice President Pence's chief of staff, former White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx described it as "a fringe group", adding:

QUOTE:

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Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases, told the committee that he was pressured by the White House to publish guidance for faith communities that "softened some very important public health recommendations", such as removing all references to face coverings, a suggestion to suspend choirs, and language related to virtual services.

The report leads to two questions:

• Will the House committee target those in the media, notably FOX News, who have spread pandemic disinformation?
  
  
• Will the committee in the end release a report recommending legal action against Trump?

It would seem that the Trump Administration will have to answer for a course of action, or maybe more accurately inaction, that helped kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. However, although it was monstrous, it's not easy to see that it was illegal. We'll have to wait and see.

* There's been considerable fuss over the fact that American employers have been having trouble finding workers -- and many employees have been quitting their jobs. According to an article from CNN.com ("How Millions Of Jobless Americans Can Afford To Ditch Work" by Allison Morrow and Anneken Tappe, 15 December 2021), the story went around on the Right that these problems were due to the excessive generosity of government aid during the pandemic. Young people were getting by just fine, so they didn't want to get jobs.

Data doesn't bear that out. The critical factor, it turns out, is early retirement. People have quit since the pandemic started for a number of reasons -- layoffs, health worries, child care issues, and various personal issues -- but most of those who don't want to go back to work have simply accelerated their retirements. Recently Nela Richardson -- chief economist of Automatic Data Processing, a US business services organization -- said the strong stock market along with soaring home prices "has given some higher income people options. We already saw a large portion of the Boomer workforce retiring. And they're in a better position now."

The jobs recovery picture is confusing because the unemployment rate is going down, but labor force participation isn't going back up at the same rate. Jared Bernstein -- a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers -- suggested that once "non-prime age" workers, meaning those over 55, are dropped from the metrics, a much clearer picture of how the labor recovery is doing emerges, having stripped out the retirement narrative. About 70% of the people who left the workforce during the pandemic were over 55.

The low unemployment then implies that younger workers are not having problems finding jobs, and are looking for them. Yes, a large of younger workers are quitting jobs, but they are doing so because they feel they have better opportunities, they can be choosy. They're not deadbeats. Aaron Sojourner -- a labor economist and professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management -- commented:

QUOTE:

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Yes, some companies have been raising wages, and some have been offering sign-up bonuses. Those that have taken such measures are better off in hiring than those that haven't, but hiring is still troublesome. Some retired people are starting to return to the workforce, and that's likely to improve as the pandemic gets under control, whenever that will be. However, they may find trying to compete with younger workers for jobs a challenge.

[MON 27 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 51

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Russia is currently massing forces on the borders of Ukraine, leading to fears Russian President Vladimir Putin plans an invasion. As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("No Walkover", 21 December 2021), the difficulty with that scenario is that it is hard to see what Putin could gain that would be worth the cost.

Western military analysts judge that Ukraine's army is better trained and equipped than in 2014, when Russia captured the Crimean Peninsula without a fight, and highly motivated to defend the country's heartland. Ben Hodges -- a retired US lieutenant general now, with the Center for European Policy Analysis -- says:

QUOTE:

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Hodges says that the Russians might push south and west from Ukraine's Donbas region, which is already under the control of pro-Russian forces, to link up to annexed Crimea and the Black Sea. However, even that limited objective would entail high Russian casualties.

Siemon Wezeman -- an arms specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute -- said the ferocity of resistance to any invasion would dwarf anything Russia had faced in previous military operations in Chechnya in the 1990s or in its short war with Georgia in 2008. Wezeman says:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Ukrainian intelligence believes that about 92,000 Russian troops have gathered near its borders, while the US says a force as large as 175,000 could come as early as January. The Russians say they are not menacing Ukraine, saying that they are instead being menaced by Ukraine's growing ties with NATO.

The Ukrainians are clearly outgunned. Russia's army of 280,000 is about twice the size of Ukraine's, and its total armed forces of 900,000 are more than four times greater. Ukraine's current defense budget is only a tenth that of Russia's. The Ukrainians would be hard-pressed to defend themselves from Russian air power, and would be very vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare.

However, Ukrainian forces are indeed highly motivated, and even if they are isolated, they are likely to fight stubbornly. In addition, the Ukrainians could distribute arms to citizens to fight a Russian occupation. Hodges says:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Of course, it is not always clear what Putin is thinking in this matter. The Russians have said they are concerned about Ukraine joining NATO, but they also have misgivings about Ukrainian democratization -- which sets a bad example, so Putin thinks, for his own subjects.

Exactly what the US and Europe will do if Putin really does charge into Ukraine is unclear -- of course, being deliberately kept unclear, to introduce uncertainty into Putin's calculations. The US has supplied light Javelin anti-armor missiles to Ukraine, and it's easy to think given the Ukrainians other, possibly more significant, weapons. It is very likely the Ukrainians are getting immediate access to US satellite intelligence. Stay tuned.

* One Jesse Watters, a Rightbot troll, advocated rhetorical "ambush" tactics to use against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government's chief health expert for the pandemic, saying that his listeners needed to score a "kill shot" on Dr. Fauci, adding that if they did them: "Boom, he is dead."

It was completely obvious from the context that Watters was speaking metaphorically, but he chose the most violent metaphor he could find. Dr. Fauci has been repeatedly threatened and has protection; he suggested that Watters be "fired on the spot", though added that FOX News was unlikely to do so. FOX News officials indeed said that Watters wasn't really advocating violence -- making no apologies for the pointedly vicious choice of words. Nonetheless, FOX Rightbots may be a bit more cautious in their wording in the future, at least assuming that FOX has any capability for embarrassment.

* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Mutant Enzyme Could Vastly Improve Recycling Of Plastic Bottles" by Robert F. Service, 8 April 2020), plastics are troublesome to recycle. Only about a third of discarded plastic bottles are recycled, and the recycled product is low-grade. Researchers have now engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the world's most commonly used plastics, with tens of millions of tonnes produced annually. PET bottles are already recycled in many places, but the recycling is troublesome. One big problem that the plastic is in many different colors, with the resulting melt of a batch being gray or black, limiting the material's usefulness.

The trick is to turn plastics back into feedstocks comparable to the feedstocks from which they were originally derived. To do so, researchers have searched through microbes to find enzymes that break down PET and other plastics. In 2012, researchers at Osaka University found one such enzyme in a compost heap, the enzyme being appropriately named "leaf-branch compost cutinase (LLC)". LLC chops up the PET chain by breaking the bonds between its two building blocks: terephthalate and ethylene glycol. Unfortunately, LLC works slowly, and also degrades in a few days of working at the high temperatures needed to soften plastic for breaking it down.

Two French researchers -- Alain Marty, the chief scientific officer at Carbios, a sustainable plastics company, teamed up with Isabelle Andre, an enzyme engineering expert at the University of Toulouse -- decided to re-engineer LLC to make it more effective and heat-resistant. They began by analyzing the crystal structure of the enzyme, identifying key amino acids at the site where the enzyme binds to the chemical linkers between PET's terephthalate and ethylene glycol groups.

The researchers then defined hundreds of mutant enzymes, changing amino acids at the binding site and adding in heat-stabilizing ones. They mass-produced the mutants in bacteria, and screened them to see which were the best at breaking up PET. After repeating this cycle several times, they came up with an enzyme that was 10,000 times more effective at breaking the PET bond than the original LLC. The improved enzyme was also able to work without breaking down at 72 degrees Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit), which is about the temperature at which PET melts.

The researcher tested the enzyme in a small reactor, finding they could break down 90% of 200 grams of PET in 10 hours. They were able to use the resulting terephthalate and ethylene glycol building blocks to synthesize "fresh" PET. The question remains of whether the process is economically practical, and it doesn't work on other types of plastic, such as polyethylene and polystyrene -- though it does have a big benefit of being indifferent to dyes and other additives in PET products. Carbios is now building a demonstration plant that is expected to recycle hundreds of tons of PET per year.