All Stories
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A toy to visualize the body’s electricity
A hands-on way to let kids experiment with neuroscience placed second in the first annual Science, Play and Research Kit contest.
- Brain
Loneliness can breed disease
Everyone experiences loneliness from time to time. But when allowed to persist, loneliness can damage your health and steal years from your life.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: Tips for overcoming loneliness
This assortment of tips can help overcome loneliness. The approach focuses on changing — for the better — those ways in which you and others interact.
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A new grant for young inventors
Lemelson-MIT has a grant that lets high school students flex their design muscles. The new program offers guided instruction for younger students.
- Chemistry
Urine may make Mars travel possible
On Earth, urine is a waste. En route to Mars, it could be a precious renewable commodity: the source of drinking water and energy.
- Science & Society
E-cigarette makers focus on teens
A high-level group of senators and members of the U.S. House of Representatives surveyed makers of e-cigarettes and finds they are targeting youth. They conclude that new federal laws should be created to end practices that could turn teens into nicotine addicts.
- Physics
World’s coolest ‘clock’ is also crazy-accurate
This is the time to beat — the world’s most accurate atomic clock ever. At its heart is a ‘fountain’ of cesium atoms chilled nearly to absolute zero!
- Physics
Explainer: How lasers make ‘optical molasses’
Light can bump an atom. Bump it from several different directions at once and even a fast-moving atom will instantly freeze its motion — and chill it to a temperature of nearly absolute zero.
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Teaching clean energy with the power of wind
A build-your-own wind energy machine can be a fun and inexpensive way to practice engineering and discover the power of wind.
- Microbes
A success for designer life
Synthetic biologists are scientists who create custom organisms in the lab. Their efforts have just taken a big step forward. They have created the first lab-made yeast chromosome. The advance could lead to entirely synthetic organisms customized to produce food, fuel or medicine.
- Physics
Sending student science to space
Two teachers describe how they worked with the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program to get middle-school scientists excited about research and space.
- Physics
Filter lets in only the right light
Scientists have built a light filter that only permits light coming from one desired angle to pass through. Built from alternating layers of transparent materials, it could help minimize the glare in telescopes and cameras or boost the efficiency of solar cells.
