Engineering Design
- Brain
Ask the experts: How to create a top-notch science fair project
Five finalists in the Broadcom MASTERS middle-school competition reveal how they created nationally competitive projects.
- Animals
Bacteria make ‘spider silk’ that’s stronger than steel
Part spider silk, the material is better than what some spiders make. Researchers think it might make the basis for surgical threads or unusually strong fabrics.
- Brain
It doesn’t take a concussion for head hits to harm young brains
Most head impacts while playing football do not cause concussions. Yet even lesser impacts take a toll in young athletes, scans of their brains show.
- Agriculture
Potty-trained cows could help reduce pollution
About a dozen calves have been trained to pee in a stall. Toilet training cows on a large scale could cut down on pollution, scientists say.
- Tech
Will you learn better from reading on screen or on paper?
Some studies find students don’t learn as well by reading on screens as from paper. But that's not always true. Here’s how to make the most of reading in either format.
- Animals
What biologists call a species is becoming more than just a name
The tree of life — evolution — has been reshaping how scientists name and classify organisms. Some want naming to reflect evolutionary groups even more.
- Chemistry
Chemists win Nobel Prize for faster, cleaner way of making molecules
Both scientists independently came up with new process — asymmetric organocatalysis. That name may be a mouthful, but it’s not that hard to understand.
- Brain
A sense of touch could upgrade virtual reality, prosthetics and more
Scientists and engineers are trying to add touch to online shopping, virtual doctor appointments and artificial limbs.
- Climate
Research on climate and more brings trio the 2021 physics Nobel Prize
Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann pioneered work on simulations of Earth’s climate. Giorgio Parisi probed complex materials.
- Brain
A 2021 Nobel goes for discovering how our body reads touch sensations
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian found nerve-cell sensors for temperature, pain and pressure.
- Animals
Analyze This: Some female hummingbirds go undercover
Some female white-necked jacobin hummingbirds boast bright blue colors similar to males. That may help females blend in to avoid attacks.
- Ecosystems
Cheatgrass thrives on the well-lit urban night scene
Middle-grade campers team up with ecologists at Denver University to show that streetlights boost the growth of a reviled invasive species.
