All Stories
- Animals
How do elephants eat cereal? With a pinch
Elephant trunks can grab everything from whole trees to cereal bits. To pick up fine grains, they press, then pinch.
- Climate
A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources
How will climate change affect you most? Check your kitchen sink.
- Climate
Explainer: Earth’s water is all connected in one vast cycle
Water on Earth is connected in an endless loop called the water cycle.
- Computing
These young researchers take aim at sports
Three Broadcom MASTERS finalists invented sports-related devices. They illustrate that young inventors can find inspiration anywhere, even at work and play.
- Animals
Bees stopped buzzing during the Great American Eclipse
A rare study of bees during a total solar eclipse finds that the insects buzzed around as usual — until the darkness of totality arrived.
- Chemistry
Some plastics learn to repair themselves
A new material can fix its own scratches and small cracks. One day, it also may make self-healing paints and plastics possible.
- Math
Scientists Say: Statistical significance
Statistical significance is a phrase that describes how often a scientific difference might occur by accident.
- Brain
Zaps to spinal cord help paralyzed people walk
Sending electrical pulses to the spinal cord can help paralyzed people learn to walk again, new tests show.
- Genetics
Scientist reports first gene editing of humans
A Chinese researcher claims to have edited the DNA of human embryos. Babies from those embryos were born this month, and the news kicked off a firestorm of controversy.
- Earth
New ways to clean up polluted sources of drinking water
Some 21 million people in the United States may get drinking water from sources that are polluted. Some new water treatments promise to greatly lower costs or tackle formerly hard-to-remove pollutants.
- Chemistry
Six things that shouldn’t pollute your drinking water
These are why drinking untreated water can be harmful. But keep in mind, today’s water-treatment plants still won’t remove all of these.
- Chemistry
Explainer: How is water cleaned up for drinking
Unless you’re drinking well water, city folks typically get drinking water that has been treated in a water-treatment plant. Here’s what that means.
