MS-ESS3-3
Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
- Ecosystems
Leaky sewer pipes pollute urban streams and bays with drugs
Scientists find that leaking sewer pipes around Baltimore, Md., spew thousands of doses of medicines into the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways.
- Materials Science
Analyze This: Hardened wood can make sharp steak knives
Researchers treated wood to make it hard and dense. Out of it, they carved sharp knives and nails that could substitute for ones made of steel.
- Chemistry
Scientists find a ‘greener’ way to make jeans blue
When coated onto jeans, a plant-based polymer reduces water and cuts the amount of toxic chemicals needed.
- Chemistry
Everyday plastics can pollute, leaching thousands of chemicals
Plastic bags and containers leach potentially toxic chemicals into both food and water, but researchers yet don’t know how they might affect health.
- Chemistry
Chemists win Nobel Prize for faster, cleaner way of making molecules
Both scientists independently came up with new process — asymmetric organocatalysis. That name may be a mouthful, but it’s not that hard to understand.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Tiny swimming robots may help clean up a microplastics mess
Big problem, tiny solution. Researchers in the Czech Republic have designed swimming robots that can help collect and break down microplastics.
- Tech
Let’s learn about artificial intelligence
Computers are getting smarter all the time. At some tasks, they can even outsmart people.
- Climate
Warming cities may see more rain — and frequent flooding
Scientists are seeking to understand why and how to mop up excess precipitation.
- Climate
Explainer: Urban heat islands and how to cool them
Cities transform landscapes covered in plants to ones covered in heat-absorbing asphalt and concrete. But ways exist to cool these urban heat islands.
- Climate
Stores and malls buy into ponds and rain gardens for flood control
An extra bonus: These rainy-day ponds clean up that dirty water running off parking lots.
- Environment
Let’s learn about plastic pollution
The world is cluttered with plastic waste. All that junk kills animals far and wide.
