Science

Diamond has long been regarded as a nonpiezoelectric material. Now, researchers have identified a piezoelectric effect in ultrathin, ultraflexible polycrystalline diamond membranes. Piezoelectric materials produce an electrical response when they are mechanically pressed, bent, or stretched. In the study, the researchers found that the effect in diamond membranes varies with their thickness, with the strongest…

Long before Clyde Tombaugh was searching the skies from an observatory in Arizona, he was a farm boy trying to make sense of the night above his family’s home. The first telescope he owned was bought from Sears, but it soon failed to satisfy him. By 1925, he was building his own instruments, with help…

More than two kilometres beneath the surface of the Pacific, off the coast of Oregon, an active underwater volcano has been hiding one of the strangest landscapes ever mapped on the seafloor. Using robotic vehicles capable of withstanding crushing depths, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have spent more than two decades surveying…

The reintroduction and success of sea otters in British Columbia was a story that initially satisfied everyone including conservationists and the natives. The adorable creatures once occupied much of Canada’s Pacific coast, before the fur trade for their exceptionally dense coats turned into a mass death sentence. But now, their population is threatening the availability…

At a time when laundry was one more task competing with school, travel and family responsibilities, a Kerala schoolgirl began thinking about a surprisingly simple alternative to the washing machine she did not have. Remya, who was studying in the 10th standard, was already spending hours travelling to school each day and helping her twin…

He is 85, known as the father of sociobiology, has been at Harvard for 60 years, and has won a hundred scientific awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Yet what E.O. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, is focused on is a new conservation approach, a new ecological Grail which is a quest to refute conservation sceptics who…

For years, St. John’s wort was treated as a useful medicinal plant in parts of Europe. In northern California, its reputation became very different. The yellow-flowered weed spread across pasture and open land, reducing the value of grazing areas and creating another problem for livestock because animals that consumed enough of it could become dangerously…

When engineers lined canals across the dry American Southwest with concrete, they solved one problem while creating another. The hard surfaces helped stop precious water from disappearing into the soil, but they also stripped away the irregular edges, vegetation and sheltered spaces that aquatic life had used in the old earthen channels. Fish eventually returned,…

Prakhar Purohit. Image Credit: Young Scientists Lab Prakhar Purohit, a student from North Carolina, has earned recognition for a science project with a unique yet simple-sounding idea of ‘making tiny batteries from dirty water.’ His project, titled ‘Tiny Batteries from Dirty Water,’ was selected as the 2026 North Carolina State Merit Winner in the 3M…

A 13-year-old inventor has turned a family emergency into a device designed to help older people who may be alone when they fall. Kevin Tang developed FallGuard after his grandmother suffered a fall at home that resulted in permanent brain damage. The problem became harder to ignore when Tang learned that a friend’s grandfather had…