Kids News - Articles for Grades 10-10

On August 11, 2020, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made history by announcing California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for the upcoming election. Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is the first African American woman on a major party ticket and only the fourth woman in US history to run for vice president. She is also the first person of Asian descent to appear on a presidential ticket....

Stephen Wamukota, a nine-year-old from Mukwa village in Western Kenya, is making headlines worldwide for his ingenious hand washing machine. The young boy came up with the idea after watching village residents, who do not have easy access to running water, struggle to find an effective way to wash their hands to avoid spreading and contracting COVID-19....

Summer 2020 has been exciting for stargazers. They have been treated to a once-in-a-lifetime visit from comet NEOWISE and had the rare opportunity to observe five planets and a full moon simultaneously, among other celestial events. Now, to top it all off, come the Perseids — the biggest and most spectacular meteor showers of the year....

SpaceX's first-ever passenger flight to the International Space Station (ISS) ended successfully on August 2, 2020, when Crew Dragon Endeavour splashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. After a series of safety checks, the recovery teams unlocked the capsule's hatch and quickly whisked the spacecraft's precious cargo — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — to shore. During their total 64 days in space, the astronaut duo completed 1,024 orbits around Earth and traveled 27,147,284 miles....

The lack of clues left behind by ancient Americans has made it difficult for researchers to pinpoint precisely when humans first arrived on the continent. However, it has always been believed to be about 13,000 years ago, just as the world was thawing from the last ice age. Now, evidence from the Chiquihuite Cave in Zacatecas, Central Mexico, seems to suggest that prehistoric humans may have been living in North America as early as 30,000 years ago....

Male birds typically sing the same tunes as the rest of their species because an unrecognizable song defeats the two primary reasons for their crooning — to establish and defend their territory and to attract mates. While the songs, which are passed down from generation to generation, may vary slightly by region, any new compositions are typically limited to the local environment. However, for reasons unknown to scientists, white-throated sparrows across Canada are abandoning their classic song for a catchy new tune "written" by their peers in British Columbia....

Scattered across the ocean bed, and often hidden from the human eye, are hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of "blue holes." The massive underwater sinkholes, which host a diverse biological community — ranging from coral to sponges to sharks to sea turtles — were formed thousands of years ago when groundwater dissolved karst, a type of porous limestone rock found on ocean floors....

American civil rights leader and U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-GA) passed away on July 17, 2020, following a seven-month battle with pancreatic cancer. The 80-year-old dedicated his life to building what he called "The Beloved Community" in America — first as a civil rights leader and then as a lawmaker advocating, for reforms on issues from gun control to health care....

Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to create "glow-in-the-dark" plants. However, none of the approaches — which included infusing plants with nanoparticles of the luciferins and enzymes needed for the phenomenon to occur, or incorporating them with bacterial bioluminescence genes – proved feasible....