Megan Gambino

Megan Gambino

 

Megan Gambino is a senior web editor for Smithsonian magazine.

Amager Resource Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Under construction. This power plant, which turns household waste into electricity, is the cleanest in the world. "Normally, you want to be as far away from the power plant as possible because of the toxins, but in this case you literally have fresh mountain air on the roof of the building. Since we have snow in Denmark, but we don't have hills, we made the roof into a big ski slope," Ingels explains. The chimney puffs a giant steam ring each time a ton of carbon dioxide is emitted.

Designing Buildings For Hot Climates, Cold Ones and Everything in Between

A decade's worth of sustainable projects by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm, BIG, are now on display at the National Building Museum

SIRUM has facilitated the redistribution of 1 million pills to safety-net clinics to help serve about 20,000 patients in need.

Three Stanford Graduates Are Matching Unused Prescriptions With Patients Who Need Them

Unopened drugs—billions of dollars worth—are trashed in this country each year. What if they instead went to the 50 million who can't afford them?

Cholera Belt, Dodd & Monk, Albert Mill, Canal Street, Congleton, Cheshire, 1882. With little understood about the disease, there were many bogus treatments and preventative measures against cholera. "The cholera belt seems like the most unlikely protection," writes Halls. "However, it was believed that a chilled body could cause disease, and that keeping the stomach and abdomen warm could protect against bowel complaints."

10 Victorian Inventions That Never Quite Took Off

Flops from a "knife and fork cleaner" to a "cholera belt" provide a curious look at life in 19th century England

(Clockwise from top left) Katrin Macmillan, Ashutosh Saxena, Richard Lunt and Horace Luke are hard at work on exciting new projects.

Eight Innovators to Watch in 2015

From food science and robotics to solar tech and sustainable architecture, these folks are poised to do big things

Olympian and airman Louis Zamperini crouches in his starting position on a B-18 bomber.

"Unbroken"'s Louis Zamperini Crashed Into the Pacific on May 27, 1943. Here is the Missing Air Crew Report

The National Archives holds a record with details of the downing of the former Olympian's B-24 bomber that left him lost at sea for 47 days

"Joe" and "Josephine" inThe Measure of Man posters, authored by Henry Dreyfuss, designed by Alvin R. Tilley, 1969

The Smithsonian Design Museum Tells the Story of User-Centered Design Through 120 Beautiful Products

A thermostat, a wheelchair, a prosthetic arm and razors are all a part of "Beautiful Users," now on display in New York City

The first crop for Local Roots Farms to grow is lettuce.

Turning Shipping Containers Into Urban Farms

In a clever recycling experiment, the startup Local Roots Farms is growing organic, hydroponic produce in America's food deserts

This year, the Solar Cloth Company unveiled the world's first solar fabric tensile structure parking lot in Cambridge, UK.

A Football Stadium Covered in This Solar Cloth Could Power a Small Town

Perry Carroll, founder of the Solar Cloth Company, has integrated super-thin photovoltaics into flexible fabric

One hour of walk time with a pair of EnSoles, designed by Hahna Alexander (inset), provides 2.5 hours of talk time on a smartphone.

Generating Power One Step At a Time

The Pittsburgh-based startup SolePower is developing an insole that collects kinetic energy as you walk to power your mobile phone

The Rubbee electric drive turns your bike into an e-bike.

Eight Tech Gifts for Early Adopters

From a personal drone and a 3D printer to sleep and sport performance trackers, these gadgets will please the technophiles in your life

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John Smith Coined the Term New England on This 1616 Map

After Jamestown, Smith pushed the English to settle the northeast, identifying Plymouth as a suitable harbor four years before the Pilgrims landed there

The Smithsonian Celebrates American Invention at This Weekend's Innovation Festival

How do you bring an idea to life? The inventors of new technologies will share their stories at a two-day event at the National Air and Space Museum

The trope of the beautiful witch was popular between 1905 and 1915.

Women of the Early 1900s Rallied Behind Beautiful, Wartless Witches

Women looking to work, vote and marry whomever they wanted turned the Halloween icon into a powerful symbol

"Today we can use light to create an artificial sun on Earth, if only for a split-second," writes Steven Johnson. Here, Vaughn Draggoo examines a test site for light-induced nuclear fusion at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California.

The World Is What It Is Today Because of These Six Innovations

In a new book, Steven Johnson describes the many technologies that glass, refrigeration and other fundamental inventions have made possible

Vice-grips Fossil (detail), 2014, wood, oil paint, polyurethane, pigment, marble dust, cast plastic.

What Will We Leave in the Fossil Record?

Artist Erik Hagen considers the remnants of modern human life that may be found in rock strata millions of years from now

Secretive Victorian Artists Made These Intricate Patterns Out of Algae

A new documentary profiles Klaus Kemp, the sole practicioner of a quirky art form that is invisible to the naked eye

The oaten pipes hydroid (Tubularia indivisa) is a small colonial predator native to the North Atlantic.

College Students Studied These Mail-Order Sea Creatures in the Late 1800s

Restored glass models of marine invertebrates, made by artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, are on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Warren Harding's affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips carried on for 15 years, up through the time when he served as a U.S. senator.

Warren Harding’s Love Letters Finally Give Us Something to Remember Him For

Locked away for 50 years, the secret correspondence reveals a steamy relationship between the future president and his mistress

Jessica Rath sculpts paragon and roma tomatoes from life.

These Sculptures of Giant Tomatoes Are Ripe For the Picking

What physical traits do humans find desirable? Artist Jessica Rath looks in her grocery store's produce section for answers

Two-headed smooth-hound (Mustelus)

A Two-Headed Shark and Other X-Rayed Beauties at the Smithsonian

Sandra Raredon's x-rays of fish specimens are critical records for scientists studying various species. And, as works of art, they are breathtaking

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