2 . Run by Society for Science, Regeneron Science Talent Search is a premier science and math competition for high-school seniors. One of the winners of this year is 17-year-oldE than Wong, who tries to improve existing technology. His focus: airplanes.

Nearly all planes have a tail. The tail keeps the plane’s nose from suddenly changing direction during a turn. The structure adds stability but weighs the plane down. Tailless-designed airplane wings could serve the same function as the tail, as well as cutting the environmental cost of air travel. But there’s a catch. Those wings must twist(弯曲) in a very precise way that makes them hard to produce.

Ethan became fascinated by this kind of airplane design when he saw a video of NASA’s Prandtl-D aircraft gliding gracefully through the air without a tail. “I just thought that was really cool,” says Ethan. He wondered if he could find a simpler way to achieve the same tailless flight.

“Essentially what I did was just trial and error,” Ethan says. Using a computer model of an airplane wing, he adjusted the angle of twist along the wing until it could achieve tailless flight. Usually, such a wing requires a continuous distribution of wing twist. But he could achieve a similar effect with wings that had just a few sections of twist. “It’s super easy to make,” Ethan says.

In his garage, Ethan built model airplanes using rubber materials and packing tape totes this design. “Seeing the plane in the air was pretty cool,” Ethan says. “It just flew really, really well.”

Lighter, more efficient planes could open the door to other air travel innovations. “It’s been a long-term goal of mine to build a solar plane that can fly through the day powered by solar panels on its wings,” Ethan says. “It is absolutely possible for a really efficient plane.”

To other teens who have big engineering ideas to explore, Ethan always says, “Don’t ever give up.” Even when some machinery feels impossible to understand, it help store member that the world’s greatest inventors are only human, too. “Also, just make sure you love whatever you do,” Ethan adds. “That’ll make pursuing everything a lot easier.”

3 . Scientists regularly make vital new discoveries, but few can claim to have invented an entirely new field of science. Chemist Carolyn Bertozzi is one of them. Her discovery of biorthogonal chemistry (生物正交化学) in 2003 created a brand-new discipline of scientific investigation, which has enabled countless advances in medical science and led to a far greater understanding of biology at a molecular (分子的) level. On October 5, Bertozzi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with two other professors. She is also the only woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in science this year, after an all-male line-up in 2021.

Bertozzi was the middle daughter of an MIT physics professor and a secretary. Few predicted that Bertozzi would be the most famous person in the family. While her academic performance was not bad in high school, she was fond of playing soccer. She end ed up being admitted to Harvard University. Despite her talent in soccer, she found it too time-consuming and quit the sport to devote herself to academics.

But before becoming a rock star scientist, Bertozzi almost became an actual rock star. When she started at Harvard, she was tempted to major in music. That idea was “unpopular” with her parents, and she was timid about defying them. Instead, she chose the premed (医学预科的) track that included classes in math and sciences, and declared herself a biology major at the end of her first year of college.

Her interest in music did not completely fall by the wayside, however. Bertozzi played keyboards and sang backup vocals for a hair metal band. Bertozzi, however, did not play with the band for long. Once the band’s practices and performances conflicted with her labs and classes, there was only one outcome.

Plus, she’d soon have organic chemistry to think about a course which is infamous for weeding out pre-meds. Without any clear career ambitions up to that point, Bertozzi had been thinking about possibly becoming a doctor when, in her sophomore year (大二学年), she suddenly fell so head over heels in love with her chemistry course that she couldn’t tear herself away from her textbooks long enough to go out on Saturday nights. A torture to many was pure pleasure for her. Bertozzi changed her major from biology to chemistry a year later.

Bertozzi has sometimes joked about her having missed out on her chance to follow Morello to LosAngeles. “I didn’t get on that bus, and my playing is now limited to ‘The Wheel's on the Bus Go Round,’ I’m waiting for my sons to get old enough to appreciate 1980s heavy metal!”

Tu Youyou     1     (award) the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin,     2     led to the development of new drugs and eventually saved the lives of millions. When thanking the Committee for the honor, she said it was not only     3     (encourage) for all scientists in China, but also recognition of the two kinds of wisdom     4     (integrate) together.