April 2019 News Wire

Interesting stories about science and technology for April 2019.

Bees have brains for basic math, study finds

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-bees-brains-basic-math.html

Building on their finding honeybees understand the concept of zero, Australian and French researchers discovered bees can perform addition and subtraction. The small brains of bees can manage numbers and rules. They can recognize colors as symbolic representations of addition and subtraction then use this information to solve problems.

Video games could be a short-term answer to science’s gender problem

https://theconversation.com/video-games-could-be-a-short-term-answer-to-sciences-gender-problem-105328

A woman who grew up loving to play Zelda and Mario wondered if her love of games led to her love of physics and engineering in school. She discovered many girls who play lots of video games go on to complete a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) undergraduate degree than non-gamers.

Girls who played nine plus hours of video games a week were 3.3 times more likely to study STEM. This accounted for their socio-economic background, ethnicity, past performance and how good they felt they were at their chosen subject. Video game-playing boys, meanwhile, were only 1.5 times as likely to take up a STEM degree.

Eight science apps that turn your phone into a laboratory

https://www.popsci.com/best-science-apps

If you have a smartphone, there are a number of apps you can download to do science. And some apps, like eBird and NASA Globe Observer, let you participate in actual scientific research. Other apps like Star Walk and The Elements teach you more about the natural world.

3D Printing with Light

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00410-8

Until now, 3D printers create objects building one layer on top of another layer. Researchers have figured out a completely different way to print objects with light. The light turns liquid resign into a solid. Watch this video in Nature magazine to see how it’s done.

Author

  • Tim Slavin

    Tim is an award-winning writer and technologist who enjoys teaching tech to non-technical people. He has many years experience with web sites and applications in business, technical, and creative roles. He and his wife have two kids, now teenagers, who are mad about video games.

Also In The April 2019 Issue

Use SketchUp to create this fascinating mathematical pattern that appears everywhere in nature.

Learn about the STEAM star’s amazing journey onto Mythbusters Junior and beyond.

What’s the best way to choose a classroom lunch? Or the best way to elect a leader? The answer isn’t so simple.

Keep your passwords at the tip of your fingers, or maybe at the back of your eyes!

Bring your coding skills and your desserts to new levels in this simple Python coding activity.

Learn about the shiny new technology that allows us to be connected like never before.

Squares, checkerboards, and hollow boxes… what pattens can you imagine in Python?

A fun, DIY electronics project that’ll keep you from bumping around in the dark!

Use your favourite block language to animate this fascinatingly odd game.

Can we make a computer using only three simple rules?

How science and tech led to an exciting discovery in one of the most dangerous areas of space.

How did video games become popular before the internet? It’s all about shareware, floppy disks, and human cleverness!

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Interesting stories about science and technology for April 2019.

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