All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Health & Medicine
Bones: Custom cushioning helps heal a bad break
If the stiff casts encasing broken limbs included an inflatable air bladder instead of a soft lining, costly and painful complications experienced by some patients during healing might be avoided, two teens reported at the 2015 Intel ISEF competition.
- Animals
What’s the buzz? A new mosquito lure
Broadcasting a fake buzz can lure male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes away from females. That could reduce populations of these annoying — and disease-causing — insects, reports a teen at the 2015 Intel ISEF competition.
- Health & Medicine
Vision-ary high tech
New devices are being developed to improve, restore or preserve the vision of people with eye diseases, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration. One device is a telescopic contact lens than can be zoomed with a wink.
- Health & Medicine
When a part makes you whole
New technologies allow medical experts to create remarkably detailed artificial faces. They can help restore the appearance — and the confidence and self-esteem — of patients who have suffered a disfiguring injury or disease.
- Health & Medicine
Teens exhibit a zeal to heal
Broadcom MASTERS is the premier middle school science and engineering competition. Several 2014 finalists showed a flair for biomedicine. These young researchers tackled everything from diagnosing cancer early to alerting drowsy drivers before they fall asleep at the wheel.
- Materials Science
‘Smart’ windows could save energy
Tiny chemical droplets in a liquid sandwiched between panes of glass turn cloudy when they warm up. This will block some sunlight and potentially save on air conditioning bills.
- Earth
Tides may regularly swamp many U.S. cities
As sea levels rise, many cities will begin to experience frequent and extensive flooding at high tides. In some areas — even Washington, D.C. — such flooding could become a weekly headache.
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Finalists named for major teen competition in Washington
Forty teen researchers have been selected to compete in the Intel Science Talent Search. The event — a program of Society for Science & the Public — will take place in Washington, D.C., March 5 to11.
- Fossils
Dinos: Some were ‘marathoners’
The arrangement of major muscles in a duck-billed dinosaur’s legs would have helped them outrun predators such as T. rex, a new analysis suggests.
- Fossils
Tar pit clues provide ice age news
New analyses of insects and mammals trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits point to climate surprises during the last ice age.
- Tech
Wind power is looking up — to the clouds
Placing wind turbines high in the sky could let them harvest power from the faster, more reliable winds found at altitude.
- Fossils
Spiked tail to the rescue!
A stegosaur’s bony ‘armor’ didn’t just fend off a predator’s teeth. The tail spikes could gore attackers, ultimately killing them, fossils now show.
