Carrots: Good for your eyes, and for degradable polymers

Carrots come in a rainbow of bright colors—red, orange, yellow and purplish black—because of compounds called carotenoids. They help support eye health by reacting with potentially harmful UV light. Interestingly, the molecular structures of carotenoids, such as β-carotene, are similar to the building blocks of some polymers. Now, researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society have incorporated a compound derived from β-carotene into a polymer that's fully degradable.