If the kids are out of school and missing homework, or you're tired of them playing Fortnite, here are seven fun projects they can get involved with courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

1. Use on-the-go science tools to explore the world around you (all ages)

Foldscopes are paper microscopes that give you a deeper look at the world around you. Peer at the cell structure in an onion's skin, examine a human hair or look at the busy microbial world of pond scum.



2. Become a citizen scientist and help collect and analyze data for scientific research (all ages).

Soft robotics is a newer field, so no one is quite sure what to do with them, but sturdy softness could be useful in homes and workplaces where traditional robots could cause injury. Since they are squishy, they could be tools for disaster response.

For now, they may play basketball. Or at least pick one up. Maybe eventually they will be a delightful companion that can still get down to business like Baymax from the Big Hero 6 cartoon and comics. 

A vegetarian diet is promoted as beneficial to heart health and even the environment in more advocacy-based studies, but as its popularity has grown images of thin beautiful people are being supplanted by reality of just as many obese people as in a conventional diet.

A vegetarian diet can't perform miracles, it's still about calories. 

Your ears enjoy music but your heart may also benefit, according to a new study presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session.

Patients with early post-infarction angina, episodes of chest pain after a heart attack, reported 
significantly lower levels of anxiety and pain if they listened to music for 30 minutes a day. While that's hard to pin down biologically, 700,000 people survive a heart attack just in the U.S. each year and roughly 1 in 9 heart attack survivors experience subsequent episodes of chest pain and anxiety within the first 48 hours, so whatever works to reduce that.

We haven't had a widespread flu problem since 2018. Yet despite it only being 2020, some insist this year's coronavirus must be the product of government scientists, though some also suggest it was the result of 5G cellular service in Wuhan. Then China claimed it might be the U.S.

What is the truth?

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan is the product of natural evolution, finds an analysis of genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses published today.

Stegosaurs are among the most recognizable dinosaurs because they left a lasting impression, including on a Scottish island.

Analysis of footprints show stegosaur roamed the Isle of Skye about 170 million years ago. it wasn't an isle then, it was a long-lost island in the Atlantic, and the site on the north-east coast was at the time a mudflat on the edge of a shallow lagoon. It contains a mixture of footprints, which means dinosaurs on Skye were more diverse than known.