Most families rely on leftovers as a practical way to save time and reduce waste. Reheating yesterday's dinner feels harmless enough, but certain foods undergo troubling transformations when exposed ...

"Remove the Kapton tape and activate the battery." "But captain, these batteries must be 100 years old!" "They'll work, trust me." That may sound like a scene from a Star Trek rerun, but it could ...

Scientists have demonstrated a creative solution to plastic pollution, one of our most pressing environmental problems. Plastic was embedded with spores of plastic-eating bacteria that are activated ...

(Nanowerk News) Bacterial spores are one of nature’s most resilient organisms. These tiny, seed-like structures form when bacteria enter a dormant state to survive unfavorable conditions. They can ...

Researchers led by a team at the University of California San Diego have developed a biodegradable form of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) that could help reduce the plastic industry’s environmental ...

One reason plastic waste persists in the environment is because there’s not much that can eat it. The chemical structure of most polymers is stable and different enough from existing food sources that ...

Bacterial spores can survive for years, even centuries, without nutrients, resisting heat, UV radiation, and antibiotics. How inert, sleeping bacteria -- or spores -- spring back to life has been a ...

Strips of plain TPU (top) and "living" TPU (bottom) at different stages of decomposition over five months of being in compost. A new type of bioplastic could help reduce the plastic industry’s ...