HS-LS2-7
Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
- Plants
Electric shocks act like vaccines to protect plants from viruses
To protect crops against viruses in their home country of Taiwan, two teens invented a novel approach to fight blights.
- Chemistry
Let’s learn about cellulose
The world’s most abundant natural polymer is finding all kinds of new uses, in everything from ice cream to construction.
- Chemistry
Ponds made to control floods can spew climate-warming gases, study finds
Younger stormwater ponds can release more carbon in gases than they absorb, a study finds. That could aggravate global warming.
- Science & Society
Explainer: What is an endangered species?
Threats such as climate change and habitat loss can put species at risk of going extinct. Different words describe that risk.
- Animals
Bees and butterflies struggle to find flowers in polluted air
Emissions from cars and trucks make it harder for insects to find flowers. That in turn reduces flower visits and pollination, a new study finds.
- Animals
Living mysteries: Why teeny-weeny tardigrades are tough as nails
Tardigrades often live in cool, damp moss. Their cushy life has somehow prepared them to survive the lethal radiation of outer space.
- Ecosystems
Recycling a climate-warming gas could make ‘greener’ farmed fish
Instead of warming the climate, methane gas can be collected to help farmers. Along the way, it may also save some fish.
- Animals
Explainer: What is an invasive species?
These foreign organisms hitchhike, spread widely and stir up trouble in native ecosystems.
- Animals
Rewilding returns lost species to strengthen ecosystems
Restoring the missing species can help undo human-caused problems by aiding forests, slowing climate change and reducing wildfires.
- Animals
As the tropics warm, some birds are shrinking
Migratory birds are getting smaller as temperatures climb, studies had showed. New evidence shows dozens of tropical, nonmigratory species are, too.
- Chemistry
A new way to make plastics could keep them from littering the seas
Borrowing from genetics, scientists are creating plastics that will degrade. They can even choose how quickly these materials break down.
- 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.
