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Some ancient people were amazingly advanced. Scientists know this because they’ve studied civilizations like the Maya. More than 2,000 years ago, the Maya people of North and Central America built large cities with palaces and pyramids. They were successful farmers. They even studied the planets and came up with an accurate calendar. But a new discovery reveals that the Maya civilization was even more sophisticated than anyone realized. Scientists have learned that the Maya had a system of interconnecting roads. 

“[The roads are] the world’s first superhighway system,” Richard Hansen, a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University, told CNN.

A group of eighth graders came up with creative solutions to help family and friends who were facing challenges. And they used their engineering skills to do it. Teacher Mark Bolt calls this “engineering with empathy.”

Engineering with Empathy is a unit in Bolt’s engineering class at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, Virginia. Empathy is the ability to notice and share in the feelings of others. Bolt says that engineers, who use science, math, and tools to come up with solutions to problems, need empathy.

“Engineers need to understand their users’ needs, and put themselves in the users’ shoes, in order to then build an effective solution,” Bolt explained in an article on the Fairfax County Public Schools website.

Bolt’s students did exactly this. Aasritha Duriseti saw her grandmother struggling to open a bottle cap and made a bottle opener that’s easy to grip. Roman Moreno-Hines noticed that his grandfather, who has arthritis, has trouble holding a coffee cup. He invented a robotic “third thumb” that holds onto the bottom of a mug.

Engineers go through a process to create, test, and then improve their inventions. When Rishab Nanduri made a back brace to help ease his dad’s back pain, his classmates suggested he improve it by adding foam material that could massage the wearer’s muscles.

According to the Washington Post, each device was adjusted several times as it was developed. Bolt says that when things don’t work as planned, it’s an opportunity to learn.

“If we want to do better, we have to have a chance to fail,” the teacher told the Washington Post.

Check out the slideshow to see some of the students’ inventions.

Benjamin Mack-Jackson wants people’s stories to be heard. In the summer of 2022, the 20-year-old Rollins College student traveled to Ukraine to document the stories of the people experiencing the war there. Nineteen of the photos he took are now part of an exhibit called Relentless Courage: Ukraine and the World at War, at the Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida.

The weary faces and shelled-out buildings in Mack-Jackson’s images document a nation that has persevered through terrible loss. Soldiers are shown, as well as refugees—people forced to leave Ukraine for their own safety and security. When the photos first went on display, in February 2023, it had been about one year since Russia had invaded Ukraine, igniting the war that continues to this day. Mack-Jackson says it’s important for people around the world not to forget this conflict and others.

“These are people just like you and I that are fighting and dying every single day,” he told WESH News in Orlando.

In February 1945, a group of American soldiers arrived in Birmingham, England, to begin serving in World War II. These soldiers were trailblazers. For one thing, they were all women at a time when the United States had only recently started to allow women to serve in the military. Also, the soldiers were Black. The 6888th Battalion (also known as the “Six Triple Eight”) overcame racism, sexism, and poor living conditions to play a vital role in the war. 

At the time, women in the U.S. Army served in a noncombat branch that had been created in 1942. Originally called the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), it later became the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). About 6,500 Black soldiers were allowed in the WAC, but they had to sleep and eat separately from the white soldiers. At first, Black members of the WAC were told they would never be allowed to go overseas, where the war was taking place. But civil rights organizations pressured the government to change its policy. In late 1944, the 6888th was formed.

When they arrived in England in the winter of 1945, the members of the 6888th were sent to warehouses that were filled with letters and packages addressed to U.S. soldiers. Because of a shortage of postal workers, the mail had been piling up for months. The 6888th was told to sort the mail and see that each piece got to its recipient. 

It was a monumental task, and not just because some letters and packages had vague addresses such as “John Smith, U.S. Army.” The warehouses were dark and lacked heat. Old packages of baked treats had been raided by rats. While off duty, the women faced racism and sexism from within the Army. Banned from living or eating with white soldiers, the members of the 6888th were required to use their own—poorly heated—facilities. 

The Army didn’t show much confidence in the battalion’s commander, Major Charity Adams, who was a Black woman. At one point, a white general told her that he was going to send a white officer to tell her how to run the 6888th. She responded, “Over my dead body, sir.” 

Major Adams and her battalion proved more than able to do their jobs. They set up a tracking system that allowed them to sort 65,000 pieces of mail per shift. The job was supposed to take six months. They finished in three months. The battalion was so successful that they were sent to France, where more warehouses of mail awaited them. Because of the 6888th, millions of soldiers received mail from their loved ones, an important part of keeping morale high during the war. But more than that, the success of the 6888th proved a point—that Black women were just as capable and hard working as white men.

The battalion’s accomplishments helped convince the U.S. government to make the armed forces fairer and more inclusive. In 1948, U.S. president Harry Truman signed legislation that ended racial segregation in the military. And, over time, additional laws were passed to allow female soldiers to take on new roles.

When Amina Luqman-Dawson set out to write a novel, she wanted to share a part of history that’s rarely told. That novel, Freewater, is now the winner of the 2023 Newbery Medal, which is given every January to the best book for children or young teens published the previous year. 

In Freewater, which takes place in the early 1800s, 12-year-old Homer and his younger sister, Ada, escape from enslavement and make their way to a place in Virginia called the Great Dismal Swamp. There, they find a village called Freewater, which was founded by other people who had escaped enslavement.

Google and Microsoft Bing are competing to be your favorite search engine. In February 2023, both Google and Microsoft unveiled the latest in search engine technology. It’s powered by artificial intelligence (AI). But is it any better than the search engines we’ve been using?

Tech companies say AI search engines are better than regular search engines because they can handle more complicated searches. If you ask a regular search engine, “What’s the first day of spring?” or “Who was the president of the United States in 1882?” it will tell you the answer. That’s because the answer is clear. But if you ask, “How do I make a cake without eggs?” it can only provide a list of websites that may be related to your question.

AI search engines are designed to be different. In a recent demonstration, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, showed how the new AI-powered Bing search engine handles the cake question. The engine goes beyond providing the usual listing of websites, adding a list of tips and suggestions for how to make a cake without eggs. This was just one example Mehdi used to show how AI search engines can provide more useful information than search engines without AI.

Google’s AI search engine has similar capabilities.

“New generative AI features will help us organize complex information and multiple viewpoints right in search results,” said Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan in a recent demonstration.

But critics say these search engines aren’t perfect. According to the Associated Press (AP), the technology sometimes produces answers that are inaccurate or just plain weird. AP reporters tested Bing by asking it to tell them the most important thing that had happened in sports in the previous 24 hours. The search engine responded with a summary of the 2023 Super Bowl, America’s biggest football game of the year. The problem was, the 2023 Super Bowl hadn’t happened yet!

So AI search engines appear to have some serious bugs that need to be worked out. Some people blame the glitches on the fact that companies are rushing to be the first to release the latest tech.

Despite the problems, Google and Microsoft both want users to trust their tech to give them the Internet’s best answers.

A robot that can turn from solid to liquid and back to solid again has scientists excited for the future. The technology used to create the shape-shifting robot could allow scientists to build devices that can get into hard-to-reach places.

Scientists in the United States and China built the robot using a metal called gallium, which they embedded with tiny magnetic particles. Gallium has a melting point of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), which is low compared to other metals. Scientists can melt the robot into liquid by exposing the embedded particles to an alternating magnetic field. This creates electricity, which heats the metal. Scientists can then cool the metal to make it solid again. The magnetic particles also allow scientists to move the robot by putting external magnets near it.

Scientists have built plenty of robots from either hard or soft materials. But hard robots can’t always get into tight spots, while soft robots can be difficult to control. A shape-shifting robot is flexible when liquid but sturdy when solid. 

Scientists did several tests to determine what the robot could do. A video of one test shows the robot escaping from behind “prison bars.” In the video, the robot melts down, gets through the bars, and returns to a solid on the other side. In another test, scientists put a ball in a model of a human stomach and used the robot to remove the ball. The solid robot reached the ball, melted down, and wrapped itself around the ball. Then it became solid again and carried the ball out of the stomach. This test suggests that robots like these might be useful for removing harmful objects from the human body.

The technology could be used in many ways, but scientists are especially enthusiastic about its potential in the medical field.

When Michael Platt was 6 years old, he heard about the March on Washington. The march, which took place in 1963, was the setting of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Michael learned about how King dedicated his life to fighting poverty and inequality. Now 17 years old, Michael is on his own mission to fight inequality. He’s using his talents as a baker to do it.

For four years, Michael has had his own company—Michaels Desserts. For every dessert the company sells, it donates one dessert to a person who is homeless. (Michael says there’s no apostrophe in the company’s name because he bakes for others, not for himself.) Through his company, Michael also started P.L.L.A.T.E., an organization that works to increase access to food for people who otherwise might not be able to afford it.

“People who are small can solve big problems,” Michael said during a speech he gave in 2019. “People underestimate the power of kids in general. They certainly underestimate our power to do something about big problems.” 

In 2022, Michael expanded his reach by releasing a cookbook titled Michaels Desserts: Sweets for a Cause. The cookbook includes recipes for cakes, pies, tarts, and breads. There’s also a variety of cupcakes, each one named for an inspirational activist. Names include Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Malala Yousafzai.

In a recent interview at a Washington, D.C., public library, Michael expressed a hope that his cookbook would spur more people to help others.

“I hope that it inspires people to just use something that they’re interested in to give back to their community,” he said.

A sword that has been in storage at a museum for about 100 years and thought to be a replica (copy) of an ancient weapon is actually the real thing. Experts at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, say the sword dates back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age.

The Field Museum purchased the 3-foot (0.9 meter) sword from the Hungarian National Museum in the 1920s. The sword had been discovered in the Danube River in Hungary in 1920. In that part of the world, at the time the sword was used, weapons and armor were often thrown into rivers. According to William Parkinson, curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, this was most likely done after a battle to symbolize that the two sides had made a peace agreement.

The sword was made during the Bronze Age, which lasted from before 3000 BCE to about 1000 BCE in that region. (The start and end dates of the Bronze Age were different in different parts of the world.) The Bronze Age is when humans figured out how to make metal tools. Before the Bronze Age, tools had been made of stone. 

Despite the sword’s importance, the Field Museum believed it was a fake until recently. The mistake wasn’t discovered until the museum started preparing for a new exhibit called “First Kings of Europe.” Hungarian archaeologists who were visiting to help with the preparations asked to see the sword and then decided to verify whether it truly was a replica. Along with a chemist who works at the museum, the archaeologists looked at the chemical makeup of the sword and compared it to other Bronze Age swords. There was very little difference. Archaeologists concluded that the sword is real.

Cats can be cuddly, but generally, they’re pretty independent. Unlike dogs, who seem to watch their humans’ every move, cats often do their own thing. Researchers wondered whether cats listen when humans speak. The answer, according to a 2022 study, seems to be yes and no.

Researchers in France studied 16 cats to see how they responded to two types of speech. The first was cat-directed speech (CDS), which describes how humans talk to their cats. The second was adult-directed speech (ADS), which describes how human adults talk to each other.

In the study, researchers played recordings of the cats’ owners and of strangers. In some of the recordings, the person was using CDS, which is sort of like a high-pitched, sweet tone that people often use when talking to pets. In other recordings, the person used ADS, which is deeper in tone. The cats reacted much more strongly when they heard their owners’ voices, as opposed to strangers’ voices, particularly if they heard their name. The cats also responded strongly when they heard CDS. Cats didn’t react strongly when they heard ADS.

Researchers say this suggests that cats do recognize their owners’ voices—and they pay attention when their human family members are talking to them. But when human family members talk to each other, cats don’t really listen.