Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover aerospace, astronomy & hosted The Cosmic Controversy Podcast. Photograph showing the cracks in Saturn s moon, Enceladus, ...

Getting microbes to eat plastic is a frequently touted solution to our growing waste problem, but making the approach practical is tricky. A new technique that impregnates plastic with the spores of ...

Bacterial spores – the hardy survival structures formed by certain bacterial species – are proving to be a game changer in the field of engineered living materials (ELMs). These autonomously grown ...

Hundreds of millions of metric tons of plastic are created and discarded every year. The vast majority are petroleum-based, and they do not naturally degrade. Unless plastic is recycled, and very few ...

Solving a riddle that has confounded biologists since bacterial spores - inert, sleeping bacteria - were first described more than 150 years ago, researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered ...

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 ...

The world has a big plastic problem that it's yet to fix. We're trying to reduce our reliance on plastic, but that's seemingly impossible in modern society. The material is too important for our daily ...

While much effort has focused on avoiding anthrax, history has also seen attempts to explore using the bacterial spores to inflict harm. They used to call it “wool sorter’s disease” or “hide-porter’s ...