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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Serbian scientists have been experimenting with mealworms as a way to break down polystyrene. Larisa Ilijin, a principal research fellow at Belgrade's Institute for Biology, said the scientists had discovered that mealworms can digest various plastics, including polystyrene, which is used in packaging, insulation and food containers. In the project endorsed by the government and the United Nations' agency for international development, UNDP, and other international donors, they have been including the polystyrene in the regular food of the larval form of the yellow mealworm beetle, or Tenebrio molitor. They habitually eat more or less anything, but need the training to eat the plastic products. "We have larvae that have been adapted over a long time to biodegrade plastic, to be as efficient as possible in the process," Ilijin told Reuters. She said the bacteria living in their guts break down the plastic into carbon dioxide and water, and showed no evidence of leaving microplastic residue in their innards or faeces. The work builds on similar research projects in the U.S. and Africa. [...] The institute has given Belgrade-based Belinda Animals several containers of the mealworms. It is now breeding them and hoping to attract a network of similar farms. "When breaking down 1 kg of Styrofoam, larvae emit one to two grams of carbon dioxide ... If we incinerate it ... (Styrofoam) emits over 4,000 times more," owner Boris Vasiljev said. He also envisages the larvae being used as animal feed, should it reach a large commercial scale. The use of mealworms is still in its infancy, Ilijin said, as Serbia still needs to adopt regulations that would allow the use and sale of insect products for animal fodder. "Styrofoam takes over 500 years to decompose in nature ... this would be one of the good ways for solving the problem of plastic waste in nature," Ilijin said.

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Donald Trump was handed another blow on Wednesday when a federal judge denied his administration's attempts to release grand jury testimony from the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The Daily Mail revealed last week that the criminology student turned quadruple killer has not been having an easy time settling into his new home inside the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

The lives of vulnerable people are being put at risk by firms selling personal alarms that soon won't work, experts have warned.

Great Firewall took out all traffic to port 443 at a time Beijing didn't have an obvious need to keep its netizens in the dark

China cut itself off from much of the global internet for just over an hour on Wednesday.…

Amanda Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in their first trial of killing Meredith but after another round of flip-flop verdicts, they were ultimately exonerated.

Kirsten Dunst was spotted enjoying a smoke break outside a cafe in Los Angeles on Monday.

Qualified mechanic Daniel Burton, 27, was discovered unresponsive and trapped under his Audi A3, at his partner's home in Skewen, Neath Port Talbot, on January 22.

Pauline Richards, known as Miss KFC, died last month aged 74 and worked almost every role at the branch in Taunton, Somerset - from cleaner to cashier to team leader.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has paused hiring in its artificial intelligence division after bringing on more than 50 researchers and engineers. "All that's happening here is some basic organizational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises," a spokesperson for Meta said in an emailed statement to Reuters. Over the last few months, Meta has been offering AI researchers salaries that dwarf those of the Manhattan Project and the Space Race. The company recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5 million per year), with potentially $100 million in the first year alone. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly also offered an unnamed AI engineer $1 billion in compensation to be paid out over several years.

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Customers said they were 'outraged' after it was revealed the supermarket's popular deal will increase on Thursday.

The language-teaching app has been accused of letting gender ideology 'infect' its translation exercises in a German lesson.

Qais Al-Aswad, 26, committed the attacks along the same bike path in Horley, Surrey over a three week period as cycled home from his job at a car wash.

Shocking footage has emerged of a helpless schoolboy being threatened, hit and thrown around a train carriage by an adult - as fellow passengers appeared too terrified to intervene.

It is perfect for layering or wearing on its own

According to the Rumson Borough Police Department, the crash was serious enough that two people in the vehicle were taken to the hospital.

Southport triple killer Axel Rudakubana has won back privileges, including a TV and an enhanced weekly spending budget, amid claims guards are 'bribing' him to behave.

Redmond doesn't bother informing customers about some security fixes

UPDATED  Microsoft has chosen not to tell customers about a recently patched vulnerability in M365 Copilot.…

Sachia Vickery sent shockwaves through the sport as she revealed she's making a fortune with saucy content on the platform.

A new review of nearly 700 studies on portable air cleaners found that over 90% of them were tested in empty spaces, not on people, leaving major gaps in evidence about whether these devices actually prevent infections or if they might even cause harm by releasing chemicals like ozone or formaldehyde. The Conversation reports: Many respiratory viruses, such as COVID-19 and influenza, can spread through indoor air. Technologies such as HEPA filters, ultraviolet light and special ventilation designs -- collectively known as engineering infection controls -- are intended to clean indoor air and prevent viruses and other disease-causing pathogens from spreading. Along with our colleagues across three academic institutions and two government science agencies, we identified and analyzed every research study evaluating the effectiveness of these technologies published from the 1920s through 2023 -- 672 of them in total. These studies assessed performance in three main ways: Some measured whether the interventions reduced infections in people; others used animals such as guinea pigs or mice; and the rest took air samples to determine whether the devices reduced the number of small particles or microbes in the air. Only about 8% of the studies tested effectiveness on people, while over 90% tested the devices in unoccupied spaces. We found substantial variation across different technologies. For example, 44 studies examined an air cleaning process called photocatalytic oxidation, which produces chemicals that kill microbes, but only one of those tested whether the technology prevented infections in people. Another 35 studies evaluated plasma-based technologies for killing microbes, and none involved human participants. We also found 43 studies on filters incorporating nanomaterials designed to both capture and kill microbes -- again, none included human testing.

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