Sugar turns plastics biodegradable [Nature Science Update]

All sorts of ifs, ands, or buts. Sounds like they are adding sugar crosslinks that bacterial enzymes can degrade. The inability to break down crosslinks in plastics is a large road block to degradation. And, how to you make sure that nothing gets to the plastic BEFORE you are ready. I'd hate to get a polystyrene cup full of coffee that was already degrading.  11:37:14 PM    

Knowledge management is key to business [elearningpost]

A nice little article. I love this:

The popularly held view that risk is always a negative to be avoided isn't necessarily true or sensible.

5:19:24 PM    

Tailor-made sugar coated proteins manufactured in novel E. coli system [EurekAlert!]

This is pretty nice. Glycosylation is an extremely important process that we do not fully understand yet. Many proteins are produced in finickymammalian cells rather than more malleable bacteria because they require glycosylation to work. Now we just nned to see if the type of glycosylation seen in the bacterial system resembles what is required for human proteins. This will be nice to follow.  5:15:20 PM