MS-ETS1-1
Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
- Animals
A new drug mix helps frogs regrow amputated legs
The treatment helped frogs grow working limbs useful for swimming, standing and kicking. It’ll be a while before people can do that.
- Physics
Analyze This: Masks cut the distance that spit droplets fly
Both cloth masks and surgical masks reduced the distance spit traveled from a person talking or coughing by at least half, compared with no mask.
- Space
Explainer: Telescopes see light — and sometimes ancient history
Different kinds of telescopes on Earth and in space help us to see all wavelengths of light. Some can even peer billions of years back in time.
- Materials Science
Analyze This: This material for 3-D printing is made by microbes
Bacteria with tweaked genes pump out proteins that can be used in a 3-D printer. With microbes in the mix, the living ink can make drugs or suck up chemicals.
- Chemistry
Could reusable ‘jelly ice’ cubes replace regular ice?
These hydrogel “jelly ice cubes” are made mostly of gelatin and water. They won’t melt, even when thawed, and may provide new food cooling options.
- Environment
A new way to make plastics could keep them from littering the seas
Borrowing from genetics, scientists are creating plastics that will degrade. They can even choose how quickly these materials break down.
- Tech
Someday soon, smartwatches may know you’re sick before you do
Such an early detection of flu-like infections could tell you when to avoid others to limit the spread of disease.
- Tech
Easy for you, tough for a robot
Robots still can’t do many things that we find easy. Can engineers reduce how klutzy robots are and boost their common sense?
- Physics
Future cars may offer personal sound zones — no earphones needed
Zones that offer each passenger personal listening are closer to reality. A new design improves performance by adapting to the conditions in your car.
- Humans
Researchers role-played as Neandertals to learn how they hunted birds
By pretending to be Neandertals, researchers show that the ancient hominids likely had the skills to hunt crowlike birds called choughs.
- Tech
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
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.
