All Stories by Dan Garisto
- Physics
Sound ways — literally — to move and filter things
New technologies use sound waves to move and levitate objects. It’s not magic — it’s acoustophoresis.
- Tech
This bionic mushroom makes electricity
What do you get when you combine fungi, graphene, 3-D printing and photosynthetic bacteria? A mushroom that makes electricity.
- Health & Medicine
Silver nanoparticles help fight brain-eating amoebas
Nanotechnology may be — quite literally — a silver bullet for these microscopic monsters.
- Science & Society
New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch
Smoke alarms are intended to wake people at signs of a house fire. But standard alarms don’t wake kids as well as a new type that issues warnings in mom’s voice, new data show.
- Plants
The plant world has some true speed demons
Some plants can fling, snap and hop at dizzying speeds. Such botanical gymnastics gives lie to the idea that all plants are slow, boring stick-in-the-muds.
- Oceans
Ocean heat waves are on the rise — and killing coral
Ocean heat waves are becoming hotter and more frequent. And one can be blamed for the 2016 coral deaths on the Great Barrier Reef.
- Health & Medicine
Owww! World’s hottest chili leads to days of severe headaches
A man ate one of the hottest peppers in the world. About a minute later, his head began pounding. See why they didn’t permanently disappear for days!
- Animals
In a colony, king penguins act like a liquid
Is this a living liquid? King penguins move around within their colonies, clearing out some space, and then refilling it. That behavior resembles a liquid, scientists conclude.
- Life
Inked mice hint at how tattoos live on
Tattooed mice challenge our current understanding of how tattoos stay in humans.
- Materials Science
New device makes water give up its sounds
A new device can dramatically boost the ability of people above the water’s surface to hear what’s going on below.
- Earth
Pollution from new technologies threatens astronomy
Pollution from new technologies will make it harder to observe the night sky, astronomers say.
