HS-PS4-5
Communicate technical information about how some technological devices use the principles of wave behavior and wave interactions with matter to transmit and capture information and energy.
- Space
Surviving Mars missions will take planning and lots of innovation
Astronauts that go to Mars will need protection from microgravity and radiation, plus mini-medical devices to diagnose problems and manage emergencies.
- Brain
Confidence can make you miss important information
Being confident can feed a confirmation bias in us, new studies show. This bias can make your brain ignore other people’s ideas and any conflicting information.
- Physics
Understanding light and other forms of energy on the move
Radiation needn’t be scary, especially if it allows us to see our family or use our cell phones. Here’s a guide to light and other types of emitted energy.
- Physics
A contrast between shadows and light can now generate electricity
A new device exploits the contrast between bright spots and shade to produce a current that can power small electronics.
- Brain
Zapping the brain may make it work right again
Sending electrical zaps to electrodes implanted deep in the brain can help people with Parkinson’s disease, depression and even obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Earth
Study appears to rule out volcanic burps as causing dino die-offs
New data on when massive volcanic eruptions happened do not match when the dinosaur mass extinction took place.
- Health & Medicine
Experts rethink need for X-ray shielding of patients
For close to 70 years, workers who perform X-ray scans of the body have been advised to shield sensitive tissues with lead 'aprons.' That may soon stop.
- Materials Science
Here’s how to hide some objects from heat-sensing cameras
A special coating that conceals temperature information from heat-detecting cameras might someday be used as a privacy shield.
- Physics
Here’s how quantum mechanics lets heat cross a vacuum
Heat can move across a vacuum if the span is small enough. As in really, really small. In a new experiment, the gap was only a few hundred nanometers.
- Archaeology
Ancient Egyptian mummy tattoos come to light
A range of markings discovered on female mummies are challenging ideas about tattoo traditions in ancient Egypt.
By Bruce Bower - Brain
Sleep may jumpstart the brain’s power washing system
Waves of fluid wash into the human brain during sleep. That’s good. They just may help clean out toxic proteins.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is ultrasound?
These sound waves, which fall above the range of human hearing, are important in medicine, medical imaging and more.