Audience: Middle and High School Students Polyacrylamide hydrogel disks. Photo by Sci News If you’ve seen news regarding biomedical engineering lately, you might’ve heard about hydrogels! These tools have been creating waves in the scientific world for enhancing things such as drug delivery and wound healing. Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer chains with three-dimensional (3D) network structures, which can absorb relatively large amounts of fluid Think of Jell-O and related sweet, wiggly...

Audience: Middle and High School Students A warm cup of the newly-popular matcha latte—someone’s pick-me-up to start the day or a sweet treat to end one. But is it as great as everyone says it is? Photo by Jason Leung from Unsplash . What is matcha, the new green phenomenon taking over social media and neighborhood cafes alike? A high-quality green tea cultivated from the tea plant known as Camellia sinensis grown in regions of Japan, matcha has recently taken social media and cafes by...

Audience: Middle and High School Students Did you know melanoma rates have increased in the last 3 decades? Photo by Lawrence Krowdeed from Unsplash . It’s a beautiful summer day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the UV is 10. Is it… the perfect day to tan?? If you’re like me, you enjoy being out in the sun, soaking up the precious vitamin D, and basking in its golden goodness whenever you can. Maybe you love tanning, the action of using the sun or other artificial resources to...