Engineering Design
- Animals
Picture This: Plesiosaurs swam like penguins
A computer model suggests plesiosaurs — ancient marine reptiles — swam like penguins, using front flippers for power and back flippers for steering.
- Microbes
Powered by poop and pee?
Scientists are developing methods to not only remove human waste from wastewater, but also to harness the energy hidden within it.
- Chemistry
Olive oil untangles plastic
Vegetable oils can make plastic fibers stronger. And the process is safer and better for the environment than other detanglers.
- Health & Medicine
Cool Jobs: Researchers on the run
Researchers are taking running to extremes, from Olympic lizards to treadmills in space. The goal is to learn how athletes of all kinds can stay healthier.
- Fossils
Predatory dinos were truly big-mouths
Large meat-eating dinosaurs could open their mouths wide to grab big prey. Vegetarians would have had a more limited gape, a new study suggests.
- Climate
Concerns about Earth’s fever
Burning fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up, causing weather patterns to change, sea levels to rise and diseases to spread.
- Animals
Profile: A human touch for animals
Temple Grandin uses her own autism to understand how animals think. The animal scientist is famous for fostering the humane treatment of livestock.
- Environment
Wildlife forensics turns to eDNA
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, tells biologists what species have been around — even when they’re out of sight or have temporarily moved on.
- Physics
Boom! Sounding out the enemy
Armistice Day marked the end of the Great War. But what arguably won the war was acoustics — the science of sound. It allowed Allied troops to home in on and rout the enemy.
- Chemistry
Some air pollutants seep through skin
The skin is the body’s largest organ. And it can let in as much or more of certain air pollutants than enter through the lungs, a new study finds.
- Physics
Einstein taught us: It’s all ‘relative’
One hundred years ago, a German physicist shared some math he had been working on. In short order, his theory of relativity would revise forever how people viewed the universe.
- Microbes
Slime cities
Biofilms are like tiny cities of bacteria — some harmless, others destructive. Scientists are learning how to keep these microscopic metropolises under control.
