If you’ve ever cooked with someone, you know it requires coordination. One person chops this. The other mixes that. Sometimes, you might hand each other ingredients or tools when you’d like something done. But how might a robot handle this type of teamwork? A recent study offers some clues. Artificial intelligence, or AI, watched people…
Many of us don’t get as much sleep as we should. We might stay up late talking to friends or scrolling through our phones. We pull all-nighters to finish important projects. And sometimes we have to wake up too early for school or work. But in a perfect world, humans would lay down for an…
The sun is the closest star to Earth. That gives all Earthlings, especially astronomers, a front-row seat to its activities. One of the most striking features of the sun’s activity is what astronomers call the solar cycle. This is an epic rise and fall in the sun’s level of activity that repeats every 11 years…
Corona (noun, “Koh-ROH-nuh”) The corona is the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere. The sun’s visible surface is called its photosphere. Just above that lies a thin layer of the solar atmosphere called the chromosphere. And surrounding that is the corona — a wispy haze of charged gas, or plasma. The sun’s messy magnetic field…
Objective: Find out if plants can reduce the amount of soil that is eroded from a hill due to rainfall Areas of science: Environmental engineering, geology, plant biology, environmental science Difficulty: Medium intermediate Time required: 2–4 weeks Prerequisites: None Material availability: Readily available Cost: $20–$50 Safety: No issues Credits: Ben Finio, PhD, Science Buddies (this…
In the sun-drenched mountains of southern Spain, one type of thistle seems to have built-in air conditioning. The flowers of this plant — Carlina corymbose — stay cooler than the hot air around them. Ecologist Carlos Herrera reports they are, on average, about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler. But during the hottest part…
I have a confession. Every time I sat down to work on this article, I got distracted. The dogs wanted attention, so I petted them. My phone would ding when a text came in, so I got up to check. I was tired, so I took a nap. And I might have gotten sucked into…
When times get tough, tiny tardigrades have a special way to ride it out. They go into a dormant state. But it hasn’t been clear how these critters turn that superpower on and off. Now, researchers have an answer: A molecular sensor tells tardigrades it’s time to toughen up. Tardigrades are microscopic, eight-legged animals. Also…
Neutrinos are extra hard to spot. These subatomic particles have almost no mass, making them especially difficult to find and study. If only neutrino detectors could grow on trees, thought Steven Prohira. Or — could they? In fact, he now proposes, forests might indeed be used one day to spot ultra-high-energy neutrinos. Trees could act…
Bionic (adjective, “By-AHN-ick”) The word “bionic” describes technology is either inspired by nature or works with a mix of biological and synthetic parts. Imagine a person who’s lost a hand getting a high-tech prosthetic, or artificial, hand. This prosthesis comes with sensory pads that can link to the person’s nervous system. That allows the person…
Autism is a neurotype, meaning “brain type.” The term describes how the nervous system — especially the brain — has developed in some people. It affects how they see, hear, feel and interact with the world. The formal name for this lifelong condition is autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. However, some experts, including many autistic…
Across the globe, precious natural stores of underground freshwater have been shrinking. In nearly one-third of these aquifers, that loss has been speeding up over the last couple of decades. That’s the finding of a new study in the Jan. 25 Nature. Humans have been drawing water out of aquifers faster than rainfall can replace…
