Uncategorized
- Chemistry
Explainer: What are polymers?
Polymers, whether natural or artificial, are big molecules made by linking up smaller repeating chemical units. The most common “backbones” for polymers are chains of carbon or silicon, each of which can bond to four other atoms.
- Health & Medicine
Social media: What’s not to like?
Social media can help teens connect with friends and family. Sometimes, however, it may leave them feeling depressed or isolated.
- Science & Society
Social networks can learn about you through your friends
Social networks can gather information from users that let them create “shadow profiles” of others — even people not on the network.
- Plants
Cool Job: Rethinking how plants hunt for water
Studies probing the very beginnings of root development may have important implications for growing food in a world where the climate is changing.
- Brain
Could Zika become a cancer treatment?
The same virus that provoked fear over causing birth defects, last year, may have a beneficial alter ego. Scientists find it may kill cells destined to form deadly brain tumors.
- Computing
Scientists Say: Radar
This is a system used to detect objects large and small. It works by sending out radio waves and waiting for them to bounce back.
- Chemistry
Specially coated fabric could turn a shirt into a shield
Specially treated fabrics offer a new kind of defense against chemical attacks. It could protect troops — and people living in war-torn nations where chemical weapons may be used.
- Health & Medicine
Good germs lurk in gross places
What do poop, dog drool and snot have in common? Though disgusting, they all carry microbes that can help keep people healthy.
- Chemistry
Super-chilled imaging technique brings its developers the Nobel Prize in chemistry
Three men who helped develop a super-high-resolution imaging technique for proteins, viruses and more received the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
- Earth
Air pollution takes a toll on solar energy
Air pollution can rob the light needed for solar panels to make electricity. In India and China, the percent solar energy losses can reach double digits.
- Physics
Trio wins physics Nobel for detecting gravity waves
The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics went to three physicists for helping figure out how to search for ripples in spacetime — which launched a new field of astronomy.
- Animals
To become Australians, these spiders crossed an ocean
The ancestors of a species of trapdoor spider must have survived a journey from Africa, a new genetic analysis finds.
