Engineering Design
- Animals
Picking a better porch light
Lights can vary in brightness and ‘color’ — even those that are sold as white. A new study tested which lights attracted the most bugs.
- Health & Medicine
Flexible electronics track sweat
A flexible, wireless health monitor that can wrap around the wrist tracks temperature and analyzes sweat to detect signs of too much water loss.
- Physics
Explainer: What are gravitational waves?
Albert Einstein had predicted that large catastrophes, like colliding black holes, should produce tiny ripples in the fabric of space. In 2016, scientists reported finally detecting them
- Physics
How to catch a gravity wave
Physicists have just announced finding gravity waves. The phenomenon was predicted a century ago by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Here’s what it took to detect the waves.
- Animals
Picture This: Plesiosaurs swam like penguins
A computer model suggests plesiosaurs — ancient marine reptiles — swam like penguins, using front flippers for power and back flippers for steering.
- Microbes
Powered by poop and pee?
Scientists are developing methods to not only remove human waste from wastewater, but also to harness the energy hidden within it.
- Chemistry
Olive oil untangles plastic
Vegetable oils can make plastic fibers stronger. And the process is safer and better for the environment than other detanglers.
- Health & Medicine
Cool Jobs: Researchers on the run
Researchers are taking running to extremes, from Olympic lizards to treadmills in space. The goal is to learn how athletes of all kinds can stay healthier.
- Fossils
Predatory dinos were truly big-mouths
Large meat-eating dinosaurs could open their mouths wide to grab big prey. Vegetarians would have had a more limited gape, a new study suggests.
- Climate
Concerns about Earth’s fever
Burning fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up, causing weather patterns to change, sea levels to rise and diseases to spread.
- Agriculture
Profile: A human touch for animals
Temple Grandin uses her own autism to understand how animals think. The animal scientist is famous for fostering the humane treatment of livestock.
- Environment
Wildlife forensics turns to eDNA
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, tells biologists what species have been around — even when they’re out of sight or have temporarily moved on.
