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Amazon may be coming to a garden near you.

Amazon Now Has a Patent For a “Garden Service”

The massive online retailer might recommend recipes and tools based on pictures of your plot

What's a dinosaur, anyways? The answer is in the evolutionary tree.

Ask Smithsonian

What Makes a Dinosaur a Dinosaur?

The question may sound like a “duh,” but it gets to the heart of how we categorize and define nature

Tagliavini is attracted to the time of Filippo Lippi, famously said by Robert Browning to “paint the soul.”

An Extravagant New Tribute to the Rise of Portraiture 600 Years Ago

The artist takes 21st century technology and culture to a 15th century aesthetic

Viewers are invited to sprawl on the carpeted floor and look up.

People Are Lying on the Floor To See this Dazzling Ceiling Puzzle

The work pays homage to the vaulted domes, ornate Italianate arches and Art Deco geometric forms of nine of the nation’s historic ceilings

There’s a Giant Warehouse Full of Product Launches That Failed

Not open to the public, this expansive archive schools marketers in the art of pitchmanship

The Ten Best History Books of 2017

From presidential biographies to a look at the long rise of fake news, these picks will surely interest history buffs

An apiarist tends to beehives at Hastings Urban Farm in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Can Honeybees Monitor Pollution?

The tiny pollinators are useful sentinels of what’s going on in an ecosystem, and might just be environmentalists’ best asset

Graduate Fernando Yazzie after the ceremony at Navajo Technical University.

The Importance of Graduating in the Navajo Way

Education in traditional knowledge, as well as global issues, form the foundation of this Navajo Nation university

Bentley found "each snowflake is as different from its fellows as human beings are from each other."

The Man Who Revealed the Hidden Structure of Falling Snowflakes

Beginning in the 1880s, amateur photographer Wilson A. Bentley considered the endlessly varied crystals “miracles of beauty”

Hurricane Maria, September 2017

Turning Hurricane Data Into Music

Can listening to storms help us understand them better? A meteorologist and a music technologist think so

Aziz Ansari

American Ingenuity Awards

An Update on Past Ingenuity Award Winners

Where are they now?

With a low cost attachment, Joshua Broder can upgrade a 2D ultrasound machine to 3D.

How a Wii Handset Inspired a Low-Cost 3D Ultrasound

After playing games with his son, a Duke physician invented a medical tool that could put ultrasound imaging in the hands of more doctors

Jane Goodall reaches out to touch hands with Flint, the first infant born at Gombe after her arrival.

New Jane Goodall Documentary Is Most Intimate Portrait Yet, Says Jane Goodall

The famed chimp researcher didn’t want yet another documentary made about her. Jane changed her mind

The film (with Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross) is still subversive, though in different ways.

When ‘The Graduate’ Opened 50 Years Ago, It Changed Hollywood (and America) Forever

The movie about a young man struggling to find his way in the world mesmerized the nation when it debuted

Gold plating sheathes most of C-3PO’s costume. Later films included variations such as a red arm.

How Anthony Daniels Gives C-3PO an Unlikely Dash of Humanity

The fussy but brave “protocol droid” plays the role of the Greek chorus in the Star Wars franchise

For the first time, scientists have created near-perfect cubic zirconia replicas of the diamond in its previous forms. From left to right: the original brought from India, King Louis XIV’s “French Blue” and the Hope Diamond.

Now There Are Near-Perfect Copies of the Hope Diamond

Scientists created cubic zirconia replicas of the historic gem’s previous forms—the original brought from India and the famous “French Blue”

The Ten Best Science Books of 2017

These books not only inspired awe and wonder—they helped us better understand the machinations of our world

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