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Articles

A Harvard Student’s App Could Bring 911 Into the Future

With just one click, RapidSOS sends GPS and medical information to emergency dispatchers

Vampire Healing: Young Blood Can Mend Old Broken Bones

It’s old blood, not old bones, that makes fracture healing difficult among the elderly

CellScope automatically detects and quantifies infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood.

This Smartphone Microscope Uses Video to Spot Moving Parasites

A team of Berkeley bioengineers has created CellScope, a mobile phone attachment that can quickly test blood for tropical diseases

Still from Coca-Cola advertisement

American History Museum Scholar on the History of the “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” Advertisement

The commercial that closed out the series finale of “Mad Men,” explained

A map of the Dupont Underground site.

Urban Explorations

A Long-Forgotten, Underground Tunnel in D.C. Is Finally Getting Some Fresh Air

The 75,000-square-foot space underneath the city’s Dupont Circle will become an impressive new art space

Watch As a Real-Life Hoverboard Whirs to Life

At Smithsonian magazine’s Future is Here festival, a few lucky attendees got to take a ride

Meet the Prize-Winning Spiders From the British Tarantula Society’s Annual Competition

Now in its 30th year, the arachnid-equivalent of the Westminster Dog Show showcases the strange beauty of an eight-legged obsession

Mt. St. Helens, National Volcanic Monument State Park, Washington state.

Where You Can Still See Signs of the Mt. St. Helens Eruption

More than four decades after Mt. St. Helens blew its top, the landscape is full of stark reminders

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Best Space Photos of the Week

Dark Globs, a Salty Moon and More of This Week’s Stellar Wonders

Mysterious star clusters and Europa in a can feature in our picks for this week’s best space images

University of Vermont engineering student Joseph Maser gazes down at the prototype of the inflatable airlock for space stations and vehicles that he and three other students built.

Made by College Seniors, These Seven Products Give Us a Glimpse Into the Future

Engineering students at universities across the country took these projects from sketch to reality in one year

A skull at Bolivia's Fiesta de las Ñatitas.

New Photo Book Explores Places the Dead Don’t Rest

From mossy burial caves to bone-filled churches, photographer Paul Koudounaris spent a dozen years documenting sites where the living and dead interact

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Ask Smithsonian: How Many Rings Does Saturn Have?

The age, origin and purpose of Saturn’s rings have mystified scientists since the days of Galileo

How Food Truck Parks Are Making America More Like Southeast Asia

Pushing for nutritious options, as public officials in Singapore are doing, could boost the health of cities and their residents

Data from satellites and sensors show the Pacific Ocean conditions in March 2015, including an increase in warm waters (shown in red). The warming has strengthened since then, prompting agencies to declare 2015 an El Niño year.

Anthropocene

El Niño Is Here, But It Can’t Help Parched California (For Now)

Three national agencies have confirmed that the natural phenomenon has arrived, but not in time to bring much-needed rains in the West

An artist's vision of a brilliant quasar at the core of a young galaxy.

Think Big

Rare Quartet of Quasars Found in the Early Universe

The quirky set of extremely bright black holes challenges theories for how the cosmos reached its current structure

Anthropocene

Is This Plan to Combat Climate Change Insane or Insanely Genius?

Harvard physicist David Keith wants to use two jets and one million tons of sulfur dioxide a year to halt global warming

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, in his New York City Studio in 1940, is at work on the painting Upside Down Table and Mask, currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Meet the Iconic Japanese-American Artist Whose Work Hasn’t Been Exhibited in Decades

A reexamination of the inventive artist, who blended American and Japanese traditions, brings rarely seen works from around the world to the Smithsonian

A trap-jaw ant opens its massive mandibles.

New Research

Watch These Ants Hurl Themselves Out of Death Traps With Their Mouths

At least one trap-jaw ant species has coopted its exceptionally strong mandibles to escape its nemesis, the ferocious antlion

Swedish designer Sighten Harrgard and his fiancee model a unisex belted jacket and scarf with wide-legged double-knit trousers—March 1969.

How His’n’Her Ponchos Became A Thing: A History Of Unisex Fashion

“Unisex” was rarely used before the fashion trend hit it big in the late 1960s

The Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center is the first museum in the world to employ the newest laser technology in its IMAX Theater. Its super sharp 4K laser system encased in two perfectly calibrated fridge-sized projectors is enhanced with a new 12 channel sound system with a sub-bass.

How the Big Screen IMAX Experience Just Took a Quantum Leap Forward

The Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center Airbus Theater is among the first to receive a cutting-edge technology makeover

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