Plastic’s drawbacks are well-documented: it’s made from crude oil, it’s troublesome to recycle, the rising tide of waste clogs our landfills, littering our waterways and endangering wildlife, and its microparticles make their way into our food, our bodies, and our brains.
At the University of Auckland in New Zealand, rats paralyzed by spinal cord injuries are walking again, thanks to a tiny control box they wear like a backpack.
Flesh-eating maggots are chewing their way across Mexico and southern Texas. To fight them, the U.S. government is preparing to breed billions of flies and scatter them from airplanes across the affected landscape.