Future food systems must provide more food produced on less land with fewer greenhouse gas emissions if the goal is to keep planetary boundaries within safe zones. The valorisation of agricultural and industrial by-products by insects is an increasingly investigated strategy, because it can help to address resource scarcities and related environmental issues. Thus, insects for food and feed have gained increasing attention as a sustainable protein production strategy in circular food systems lately. In this article, we provide an overview on by-products, which have already been fed to T. molitor (mealworms), a common edible insect species. In addition, we investigate other by-products in Austria, which can be suitable substrates for T. molitor farming. We also provide an overview and discuss different perspectives on T. molitor and link it with the circular economy concept. We identify several future research fields, such as more comprehensive feeding trials with other by-products, feeding trials with mealworms over several generations, and the development of a standardized framework for insect rearing trials. In addition, we argue that due to their ability to convert organic by-products from agricultural and industrial processes into biomass in an efficient way, T. molitor can contribute towards resource-efficient and circular food and feed production. However, several hurdles, such as legal frameworks, need to be adapted, and further research is needed to fully reap the benefits of mealworm farming.

We report on a 3-year-old male, born at 34 weeks of gestation, with marked pre- and postnatal overgrowth, birth weight of 6,600 g, length of 61 cm, and head circumference of 38.5 cm. A striking phenotype was recorded at birth, which became more evident during the follow-up period. He had macrobrachycephaly, facial abnormalities, small thoracic cage, long trunk, deformed spine, rhizomelia, large hands and feets, absent subcutaneous fat, small umbilical hernia, inguinal hernias, and large joints with mild contractures. Hypoglycemic episodes and obstructive apnea complicated the neonatal period. During follow-up, overgrowth continued with a height of 146 cm (+11.65 SDS) and a weight of 39 kg (BMI 18.3 kg/m(2)) at 3.5 years. Endocrinological work-up disclosed extremely low levels of growth hormone, insulin-like growth factors, and insulin. What makes our patient unique is the association of marked prenatal overgrowth; unusual phenotype; skeletal dysplasia caused by accelerated endochondral ossification resulting in cartilage hyperplasia of the skull base and spine, and postnatal gigantism; and complete absence of subcutaneous fat. Other well-known overgrowth syndromes were excluded. We hypothesize that autocrine/paracrine growth factors could be the cause of excessive endochondral ossification. Alternately, activating mutations in transcription factors involved in both growth and endocrine/metabolic homeostasis could be responsible for this unusual phenotype.

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A transparent non-facetted/non-facetted peritectic system was used for in-situ studies of peritectic growth morphologies above and below the limit of constitutional undercooling. For a hypo-peritectic alloy with near peritectic composition an oscillatory growth mode was found for velocities in the cellular/dendritic regime. It is demonstrated that the co-existence of two distinct cellular/dendritic solid/liquid interfaces which try to reach stable growth conditions causes this oscillations. Additionally, it is shown that on reducing the withdrawal speed the two distinct interfaces arrange into an isothermal coupled peritectic growth mode.

Up to date very few organic substances have been reported that show a non-faceted/non-faceted (nf/nf) peritectic phase diagram in a temperature range suitable for direct observation in a micro Bridgman furnace setup. Sturz et al. [1] and Barrio et al. [2] studied the peritectic phase diagram for the organic model alloy TRIS (Tris(hydroxymenthyl)aminomethane) - NPG (Neopentylglycol). The phase diagram is based on thermal analysis by means of DSC measurements [1, 2] and evaluation of lattice parameters measured with x-ray diffractometry [2]. In the current work we present investigations on the system TRIS – NPG that have been obtained by optical investigations of directional solidification in a micro Bridgman-furnace with various initial alloy concentrations and pulling rates in a fixed temperature gradient. The phase diagram [1, 2] was confirmed by direct comparison of DSC measurements and optical investigations. Furthermore we present in situ observations of solidification in the peritectic region. They show a solidification behavior that was clearly distinguishable from the solidification in hyper- and hypoperitectic regions of the phase diagram.