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Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
- Tech
This battery stretches without losing oomph
Engineers have made a durable lithium-ion battery that can stretch to 150 percent of its original length. One day it could power wearable electronics.
- Tech
This door handle kills germs
A high-tech door handle may cut down on disease transmission, say its teen developers. The system is powered by simply opening and closing the door.
- Space
Collecting trash in space
Space junk threatens satellites that cost millions of dollars. But one teen has come up with an idea to collect and dispose of that orbiting trash.
- Earth
Keeping roofs cooler to cut energy costs
Cool it! A cheap paint-on coating for roofing shingles could help reduce a home’s heating bills and might even trim urban ozone levels, a teen shows.
- Tech
Teens want to make windshield wipers obsolete
Windshield wipers often can’t keep up with the rain. High-intensity air sprays might one day take their place, according to research by two teens.
- Tech
Stepping out with a smarter cane
Many older people trip and fall on uneven ground. A Colorado teen has designed a ‘smart’ cane to help seniors avoid dangerous obstacles.
- 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.
- Chemistry
Cool Jobs: Saving precious objects
Museum conservators are experts at protecting and restoring precious objects. Along with art or history, many also have studied chemistry, physics, archaeology or other scientific fields.
- Materials Science
Cool Jobs: Big future for super small science
Scientists using nanotechnology grow super-small but very useful tubes with walls no more than a few carbon atoms thick. Find out why as we meet three scientists behind this huge new movement in nanoscience.
- Agriculture
Ditching farm pollution — literally
An Indiana project shows how fighting fertilizer runoff can save farmers money, protect wild habitats and prevent harmful algae blooms.
- Planets
Mini-sats: The trick to spying Earth-bound asteroids?
NASA is supposed to begin nonstop screening by 2020 for all asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Some astronomers now think the only way to affordably meet that deadline is by using mini-satellites
- Computing
3-D Recycling: Grind, melt, print!
A new 2-in-1 desktop machine quickly recycles plastic trash into low-cost 3-D printer ‘ink’ at the push of a button.
