An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days. This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental Read more…
PayPal is shuttering its San Francisco office as it evaluates its global office footprint. Multiple sources say the payments giant is closing its San Francisco office on 425 Market St. which housed its Xoom business unit. PayPal acquired Xoom, which is focused on online money transfer technology and services, in Read more…
Social media platform Mastodon, often seen as an alternative to Twitter, gained nearly 30,000 new users on the day that Elon Musk bought Twitter. On Tuesday a Mastodon domain became unresponsive. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s CEO, later told Motherboard in an email that there were performance issues. “I’m sorry I couldn’t Read more…
The Central African Republic (CAR) has approved Bitcoin as legal tender — just the second country to do so. CAR is one of the world’s poorest countries, but is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium. It has been wracked by conflict for decades and is a close Russian ally, with Read more…
Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications. These “nucleobases” — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of Read more…
The common perception that nearly everyone in America seemed to have acquired the Omicron variant last winter may not have been far from the truth. By February 2022, nearly 60 percent of the population had been infected with the coronavirus, almost double the proportion seen in December 2021, according to Read more…
Maine is closer to launching its space program after Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill to create the Maine Space Port, a law aimed at growing the state’s aerospace industry. Mills signed the bill into law on April 19, creating a public-private partnership that would build launch sites, data networks Read more…