Engineering Design
- Health & Medicine
Some young adults will volunteer to get COVID-19 for science
Researchers will soon give some healthy people the new coronavirus. Their young volunteers have agreed to get sick to speed coronavirus research.
- Chemistry
Extreme pressure? Diamonds can take it
Diamond retains its structure even at extreme pressures, which could reveal how carbon behaves in the cores of some exoplanets.
- Math
Scientists Say: Outlier
Data points often fall within a normal range. When one data point sticks out a lot, it might be an outlier.
- Life
A robot made with a Venus flytrap can grab fragile objects
Scientists have “borrowed” the hair-trigger leaves of Venus flytraps to make a gentle grabber that can be controlled by a cellphone app.
- Brain
New technology can get inside your head. Are you ready?
New technologies aim to listen to — and maybe even change — your brain activity. But just because scientists can do this, should they?
- Animals
Newfound technique allows some tree snakes to climb wide trees
When a tree is too wide to climb, brown tree snakes use a lasso-like trick to slowly ascend up to snacks.
- Physics
Scientists Say: Piezoelectric
Piezoelectric materials produce an electric voltage when they are bent or squished. This can let us harvest electricity from movement.
- Health & Medicine
Five questions about COVID-19 vaccine trials in teens, answered
Scientists are now testing COVID-19 vaccines in teens. Why do teens need a separate trial? And what would happen? We’ve got answers.
- Physics
Physicists have clocked the shortest time span ever
The experiment revealed how long it takes light to cross a hydrogen molecule: just a couple hundred zeptoseconds.
- Environment
Unmasking the pandemic’s pollution problem
Discarding all the materials people use to protect themselves from COVID-19 has created a growing environmental problem.
- Physics
What did you say? Fabric masks can really muffle voices
Some types of face masks muffle speech more than others — something that teachers should take into account.
- Agriculture
Dew collector brings water to thirsty plants
This invention grabs water from the air at night. All it needs is the sun’s warmth the next day to release that moisture to growing plants.
