Science News for Kids

Science News for Kids

Publication of the Society for Science & the Public

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Cool Jobs: People with a taste for chemistry

Chemists contribute to food flavorings, fuel extraction and everything in between

Going for a walk in the woods may lead to an aha! moment. Many people figure out creative, new ways to solve problems by allowing their minds to wander.

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How creativity powers science

Some of the best ideas come not from poring over the facts but from a walk in the woods

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Young scientists, inventors and mathematicians score big

Cancer sensor, a better way to search tweets, and quantum teleportation are among research highlights at a global high-school-science competition

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Caecilians: The other amphibian

Legless creatures live secretive, strange existences underground and underwater

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Cool Jobs: Wide world of robots

The machines can help with everything from surgery to disaster response

Science in Society

Intel ISEF

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Intel ISEF, the world’s largest international pre-college science competition, recently concluded. Find out more about the winning projects and relive the event.

In the News

A comb jelly is a small animal with tentacles that lives in the ocean. Scientists have found a population of comb jellies that contains only young jellies, no adults. Credit: Cornelia Jaspers

Jelly babies. Read More

These icebergs in Greenland probably broke off the floating end of a glacier. Scientists study such ice formations to learn about climate change. Credit: Ian Joughin/University of Washington

Slowing ice flows. Read More

This computer simulation gives some idea of what might happen when a star gets too close to a black hole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU/UCS

Black hole’s big gulp. Read More

Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old freshman from Crownsville, Md., invented a blood-test technique to detect pancreatic cancer. Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

Speedy cancer detector. Read More

Heartbeat data sent to a cell phone by Wong’s device are almost exactly like those recorded in a hospital or a doctor’s office. Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

Phoning in heartbeats. Read More

These circles seem to squiggle perhaps because of blinks and tiny eye movements called microsaccades, say scientists in a new study. Credit: Akiyoshi Kitaoka

Seeing swirling snakes. Read More

$Scientists have found that when albatrosses forage for food, their flight path looks like a mathematical pattern called a fractal. Credit: Coedekoven/SWFSC/NOAA$

Math for hungry birds. Read More

Adam Noble, a 12th-grader from Lakefield, Canada, has developed a process to remove nanosilver, a potentially harmful pollutant, from waste water. Credit: Patrick Thornton / SSP

Nanosilver, away!. Read More

Fawzi Al-Mitwalli (left) and Nour Maraqa have developed a low-cost, solar-powered desert cooler that can prevent spoilage of fruits and vegetables for more than a week. Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

Chillin’ in the desert. Read More

Shiza Gulab (left) and Mahnoor Hassan from Peshawar, Pakistan, are part of a team that developed a nutrient-rich, granola-like food supplement for livestock. Team member Bushra Shahed (not pictured) was unable to attend the Pittsburgh event. Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

Granola bars for cows. Read More

The Skid Lid Helmet Helper, a cap-like liner (far right) made of 1-centimeter-thick strips filled with a gel-like material, may absorb as much as 97 percent of the energy of an impact, Longcroft’s tests suggest.

Helmet helper. Read More

A newly discovered bacterium has pearl-like lumps inside. Credit: CNRS, K. Benzerara & S. Borensztajn

Stony bacteria. Read More

Kids skateboard and play Frisbee in Seattle’s Gas Works Park. Recent studies of neighborhoods in Seattle and San Diego found that children’s proximity to parks and supermarkets influenced obesity. Credit: Emily Krieger

Obesity linked to location. Read More

A blue cloud of dark, or invisible, matter surrounds the swirl of the Milky Way galaxy in this illustration. A new study suggests our galaxy’s dark matter may have a shape other than a sphere. Credit: L. Calçada/ESO

Dark matter search turns up empty. Read More

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DNA, RNA…and XNA?. Read More

This baboon participated in a new study that found the monkeys could tell real words from nonsense strings of letters. Credit: J. Fagot

Baboons detect bogus words. Read More

The green balls in this illustration of an airway represent the virus that causes the common cold. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller/NSF

Switching cough off. Read More

A new study found that a truffle’s DNA plays a key role in determining its distinctive smell. Credit: Richard Splivallo

Sniffing out truffle scent. Read More

Two large earthquakes, with magnitudes of 8.6 and 8.2, struck off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on April 11. Unlike the magnitude 9.1 quake that struck the region in December 2004, these tremors did not trigger a deadly tsunami. Credit: ©2012 Cnes/Spot Image, Image © 2012 TerraMetrics, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, adapted by T. Dubé

Big quake, little destruction. Read More

This artist’s drawing shows what the newly discovered feathered dinos — the larger species with yellow on their snouts — might have looked like. Credit: Brian Choo

Fluffysaurus. Read More

Martian dustdevil

Martian devil. Read More

Mother and daughter baboons, like the ones shown here, form strong bonds. Credit: Joan Silk, UCLA

Animal buddies. Read More

Scientists study the energetic echoes of the Big Bang to learn more about the size and shape of the universe. Credit: E.M. Huff; SDSS-III; South Pole Telescope. Graphic by Zosia Rostomian.

‘Ruler’ to measure space. Read More

Caption: Scientists found eight toe bones in Ethiopia that belonged to a 3.4-million year-old human ancestor that could walk and climb trees. Credit: Y. Haile-Selassie/The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Old relative steps down. Read More

People in Venice, nicknamed the “City of Water,” use long boats called gondolas to navigate the city’s canals. Credit: Central Intelligence Agency

The sinking city. Read More

Becoming human. Read More

Caption: This iceberg is floating in a fjord in Greenland; it probably broke off an ice shelf.

Flipping icebergs. Read More

Water’s worldwide travels. Read More

This Triceratops skull is on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Credit: etee/Flickr

Dino drama. Read More

The blue glow in the sole of this shoe shows a chemical reaction at work. Credit: H. T. Baytekin and B. Baytekin

Squeeze power. Read More

Twist and shake. Read More

An ancient five-toed fossil discovered in Scotland is the oldest and smallest foot ever discovered. Credit: J. Clack

Early toehold on land. Read More

Ancient flower blooms again. Read More

Too fast to be true. Read More

Each of these shark denticles is about the thickness of one sheet of paper or a strand of hair. Credit: George Lauder

Speedy sharkskin. Read More

Caption: Scientists recently recorded the sounds of the deep and picked up noises from humpback whales, shown here near the surface. Credit: NOAA

Fishy chatter. Read More

Losing control over sugar. Read More

When a volcano erupts, it shoots ash and debris into the air. This material can stay airborne, reflecting sunlight and temporarily cooling the Earth. Now, scientists say a series of volcanic eruptions centuries ago may have started a cooling period known as the Little Ice Age. Credit: Cyrus Read/AVO/USGS When a volcano erupts, it shoots ash and debris into the air. This material can stay airborne, reflecting sunlight and temporarily cooling the Earth. Now, scientists say a series of volcanic eruptions centuries ago may have started a cooling period known as the Little Ice Age. Credit: Cyrus Read/AVO/USGS

Sudden big chill. Read More

Surprise ions. Read More

Costs of missing sleep. Read More

Taylor Wilson, 17, an Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2011 finalist, explains his project to the president. Credit: White House

Science at the White House. Read More

When softball-sized meteorites smash into the moon, they create bright flashes of light, researchers recently discovered. The origin of the light flashes has perplexed scientists for years. Credit: NASA

Moon twinkles. Read More

Killing a bacterial killer. Read More

In a new study, babies watched videos of a woman speaking — in Spanish, a foreign language, and in English — and scientists watched the babies. The experiment found that before they speak, babies learn to lip-read. Credit: Florida Atlantic Univ.

Lip-reading babies. Read More

Mapping the invisible. Read More

Climate coolers. Read More

President Obama playing basketball

The brain behind the game. Read More

Eyes from ions. Read More

Water, water, not everywhere. Read More

Glowing, gutsy hitchhikers. Read More

Fins as early legs. Read More

New dangers from bird flu. Read More

Distant ‘Goldilocks’ world. Read More

Genes tell old story. Read More

Surprisingly hardy flu germs. Read More

One big animal family. Read More

Europa’s watery underworld. Read More

Rats’ caffeine brain boost. Read More

Dirty clouds change rainfall. Read More

After a massive star explodes, it sends out a powerful wave of energy and matter. In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of a supernova shock wave moving from left to right through space. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), W. Blair (JHU) and D. Malin (David Malin Images), NASA

A shock to the solar system. Read More