Uncategorized
- Tech
Designing robots to help in a disaster
Ideally, robots could take over for human crews in disaster zones. But seemingly simple tasks, such as walking, communicating and staying powered up, still pose big challenges.
- Earth
Studying a volcano in a war zone
New isotope analyses offer bad news for the people of Goma, a burgeoning city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Mount Nyiragongo may be more dangerous than expected.
- Archaeology
Magnetism paved way for excavation without digging
In the 1960s, archaeologists used a new technique to locate and map a submerged Greek city without digging.
- Earth
Exhibit lays out principles for disaster-resistant structures
The National Building Museum’s ‘Designing for Disaster’ exhibit showcases the science and engineering of making disaster-resistant infrastructure.
- Life
Tadpole eye transplant shows new way to grow nerves
Wiring replacement organs into the body may be as easy as discharging a biological battery, new experiments with tadpoles suggest.
- Health & Medicine
Children can suffer emotional wounds in a disaster
Natural disasters and terrorist attacks have taught researchers that a subset of children may face long-term problems. Parent reactions and how quickly life returns to normal can make a difference.
- Physics
Assaulting ink drops for science
A pulse of laser light obliterates a free-falling ink drop in an image from the American Physical Society’s 2014 Gallery of Fluid Motion competition. The work may help engineers build the next generation of computer chips.
- Science & Society
‘Race Unmasked’ explores science’s racial past, present
Eugenics is far behind us, but a health historian sees few reasons to believe science is postracial.
- Planetary Science
Comet lander’s exploration cut short
The comet lander Philae made history with its touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, but a series of small hiccups prevented the robot from recharging its batteries, giving it only about 57 hours to explore the alien world.
- Earth
Earth’s most abundant mineral finally has a name
Bridgmanite, the planet’s most common mineral, christened after traces found in 1879 meteorite.
- Health & Medicine
Turning the immune system on cancer
A new class of drugs uncloaks tumors in some patients, awakening home-grown cells to fight several cancer types.
- Animals
Vulture guts are filled with noxious bacteria
Vultures’ guts are chock-full of bacteria that sicken other creatures.
