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Articles

Small lungs made out of felt, infused with the DNA from killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria.

Art Meets Science

An Artist Dyes Clothes and Quilts With Tuberculosis and Staph Bacteria

Anna Dumitriu combines bacteria and textile design to explore our relationship with microorganisms

What is Garry Kasparov’s Next Move?

The great chess champion brings his knowledge to the games of Sochi, global politics and computer intelligence

The XStat is designed so that as many as 97 tiny sponges can be injected into open wounds to stop bleeding in seconds.

Tech Watch

An Injectable Bandage Can Stop Heavy Bleeding in 15 Seconds

A new technology developed for the military has the potenial to save soldiers from fatal gunshot wounds

"I began to wonder," says Smithsonian researcher Dolores Piperno, who studies the ancestor of the corn plant, "what did the plants actually look like between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago? Did they look the same?"

To Decode the Mystery of Corn, Smithsonian Scientists Recreate Earth as it Was 10,000 Years Ago

As part of a groundbreaking study, researchers built a greenhouse “time machine”

Winter Olympics

Winter Olympians From the Smithsonian Vaults

From the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, a team of former champions, heroes and icons

Photos: Traffic Lights Illuminate the Night

Photographer Lucas Zimmermann puts his lens on the beauty of fog lit by the mundane

New Research

Myth Debunked: Wind Farms Don’t Alter the Climate

A model indicates that doubling Europe’s number of wind turbines would have a negligible effect on temperature and precipitation

A damaged Olympic Symbol from the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Winter Olympics

Sarajevo’s Abandoned Olympic Sites

Haunting images of a war-torn Winter Olympic venue

The Tabby can be customized using different blueprints downloadable online.

Tech Watch

This Car Can Be Assembled In Less Than An Hour

The team behind the OSVehicle project has developed an open-source vehicle that’s easy to build and fully customizable

Tadasu Ohe’s RIPPLE is inspired by the moment of water and is part of larger series that also includes WAVE and SURF.

Customized Pasta Shapes as Designed by You or Even an Architect

Coming soon to a table near you: print-on-demand pasta

Zach Lund, a former Olympian and head driving coach for the U.S. bobsled team, films an athlete training in Lake Placid, N.Y. for the Sochi Olympics using Ubersense, an app that allows for real-time video analysis.

Winter Olympics

How Technology is Changing the Way Athletes Train

Apps like Ubersense and AMPSports bring run-by-run data to skiers, bobsledders and other competitors

New Research

A Scientific Explanation of How Marijuana Causes the Munchies

THC appears to increase our sensitivity to scents and flavors by using naturally occurring neural networks to convince the brain that it’s starving

The Milky Way over Crater Lake, Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.

Virtual Travel

Take a Photo Tour Through Oregon’s Rugged Landscapes

Travel through Oregon’s scenic backcountry with our reader-submitted photos

Do you want to be an Olympics superfan? Turn watching the games into a two-screen experience.

Winter Olympics

The Best Ways to Follow the 2014 Olympic Games

Not in Sochi? Not a problem. Stay connected with these apps and social media-lites

Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S. perform during the ice dance free dance at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Nice, France, on March 29, 2012.

Winter Olympics

Why Reality TV May Bring Team USA Its First Gold in Ice Dancing

Amy Henderson, curator of the Smithsonian’s “Dancing the Dream” exhibition, chronicles the meteoric rise of a dazzling sport once considered vulgar

Lieutenant Daniel J. Kern and Karl Sieber examining a panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, 1945.

The Path of the Monuments Men Through Europe

Chart the course the Monuments Men took to safeguard Europe’s treasures during World War II

Walker Hancock, Lamont Moore, George Stout and two unidentified soldiers in Marburg, Germany, June 1945.

Austria

The True Story of the Monuments Men

Without the work of these curators and professors, tens of thousands of priceless works of art would have been lost to the world forever

American Cool at the National Portrait Gallery

Join curators Frank Goodyear and Joel Dinerstein in a sneak peek of their new show

The mountaineers leave the aul.

Winter Olympics

150 Years Ago, Sochi Was the Site of a Horrific Ethnic Cleansing

Czar Alexander II may have freed the serfs, but his war against the stateless people of the Caucasus cannot be ignored

UK-based startup Xeros has created a washing machine that allegedly leaves clothes cleaner while using 72 percent less water.

Tech Watch

This Washing Machine Could Be the Next Game-Changing Appliance

An innovative system that uses stain-sucking plastic beads translates to big savings

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