The Prototype: Scientists Turn Paper Into Plastic

Only 9.5% of plastics manufactured in 2022 were made from recycled materials, according to a new study published this week. Meanwhile, plastic continues to pile up in landfills–and ecosystems–around the world.

But help is on the way. A team of engineers and scientists across Japan have developed a new plastic alternative derived from paper. It’s clear, it’s moldable and could be used to make items like cups, straws and packaging.

Better still–it’s biodegradable. The scientists who produced it tested it in different environments and found that even in the deep ocean–where biodegradable materials can last for a while–it was gone after about a year. Their findings were published this week in the journal Science Advances.

If production of the material can be scaled, it could turn out to be an ideal replacement for single use plastics like coffee lids, water bottles and drinking straws. (It doesn’t get soggy like paper straws–they checked). And unlike many kinds of plastics, it can be recycled.

Stay tuned.

$3 Million Breakthrough Prize Awarded To CERN Experiments

The thousands of researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, were awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics last week. The award is being divided among the four major research groups working on the Large Hadron Collider. It’s financed by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, founded by Yuri and Julia Milner, as well as from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Priscilla Chan; Google cofounder Sergey Brin and 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki.

Since the Large Hadron Collider was completed in 2008, it’s made a number of discoveries, most notably that of the Higgs boson, the particle that gives other fundamental particles their mass. CERN continues to use the LHC to this day by taking advantage of its high energies to investigate things like quark-gluon plasma, which was present in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.

Physicist Vincenzo Vagnoni accepted the award on behalf of the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment, which is trying to determine why matter exists at all and wasn’t eliminated by anti-matter at the beginning of the universe by studying a particle called the beauty quark. The experiment produces roughly four terabytes of data a day, he told me, which has made advances in computation and machine learning essential to its progress. (Fun fact, CERN still utilizes a great deal of magnetic tape for data storage because it’s both durable and inexpensive.)

Vagnoni said that CERN being recognized for the Breakthrough Prize “was totally unexpected” and that he was particularly happy it was awarded to all scientists on the project, not just a few leaders. “Our collaborations are made by thousands of people all over the world,” he said. "We work with people with very different languages and cultures–the U.S., Russia, China, everywhere–but when we work together, we talk the same language and we perfectly understand each other. All of the problems we have in other competitive areas disappear.”

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: HOLOGRAMS YOU CAN GRAB

Imagine walking up to a three-dimensional image and fully interacting with it–just as though you were on the holodeck on Star Trek. Okay, we’re not quite there yet, but researchers at the Public University of Navarra in Spain have brought us one step closer: they’ve created holograms that can be “grabbed”—that is, manipulated with a user's fingers without the need for external controllers or VR glasses. Their research paper was published in the open archive HAL, and you can check out a pretty cool video presentation of how the technology works here.

FINAL FRONTIER: A VOLATILE QUARTER FOR COMMERCIAL SPACE

Most of the gains in space-related stocks that surged after President Trump’s election win were erased in the first quarter of 2025, according to a new report from venture firm Space Capital. Smaller space startups are also struggling, and face further risk of shrinking or delayed payments on government contracts. The overall environment has the potential to “slow markedly, consolidating market power among well-funded incumbents like SpaceX.” The news isn’t all bad–the report notes that over $4.3 billion was invested into space companies in the first quarter and that alternative launch providers to SpaceX, like Blue Origin, could make the industry more competitive.

WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK

President Trump said earlier this week that he plans to enact broad tariffs on foreign-made pharmaceuticals. I talked to CEOs, analysts and investors about what that means for the industry. (tl;dr - More expensive drugs and less innovation in the industry.)

In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, colleague Amy Feldman and I looked at the Breakthrough Prize winners for life sciences, AI for clinical decision making, stem cells for fertility treatments and more.

SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS

This week, Forbes released its annual list of the top 50 AI startups, which includes model builders like OpenAI and Anthropic, but also companies making products for enterprise tasks like Writer and infrastructure providers like Crusoe.

Engineers from MIT created an insect-sized robot that can jump, enabling it to navigate more difficult terrain. This could be helpful in a variety of applications, such as finding people in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

There may be an alternative to man-made “forever chemicals” (PFAS) soon, which are useful for a wide variety of applications but are also health hazards. A new paper published this week outlines a chemical approach that could enable the creation of non-toxic substitutes.

A new startup, Remedy Scientific, emerged from stealth this week with $11 million in investment funding, which it’s using to develop automated technology that can quickly eradicate PFAS from contaminated sites.

You might soon be able to chew gum and fight infectious disease at the same time, thanks to new research that found adding antiviral compounds to gum can reduce the numbers of viruses in the mouth to the point where it’s hard for diseases to spread.

Medical AIs make decisions based on socioeconomic factors, not just medical necessity, according to a new study which found that large language models suggested better care for wealthy patients and more basic–and sometimes even unnecessary–care for Black or LGBT patients, despite the fact that the experimenters presented the exact same clinical information every time.

PRO SCIENCE TIP: LET YOUR MIND WANDER (SOMETIMES)

It’s fairly obvious that when you’re working on something that requires you to pay attention and think critically–you should. But when you’re doing something that requires you to learn more passively, through repetition, or habit–let your mind loose! That’s the finding of a new study published this week, which studied participants while they completed a set of quick reaction tasks in which they had to hit an arrow key in the corresponding direction of what appeared on screen (think a simple version of a game like Guitar Hero) while their brain waves were monitored. But the arrows didn’t appear on screen completely at random–there was a pattern buried within them, and the researchers found that those who let their minds wander were better at picking up on it than those who were more focused.

WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK

I’ve been greatly enjoying Mid-Century Modern on Hulu. It’s something of a spin on Golden Girls, featuring three “gay gentlemen of a certain age” choosing to live together in Palm Springs. There’s nothing particularly innovative here–but that’s okay because its execution of the classic sitcom format is near perfect. It’s no surprise that Nathan Lane and Nathan Lee Graham are fantastic but having never seen Matt Bomer in a comedy before I was pleasantly surprised at how funny he is. Give it a shot.

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