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Articles

The dream of a gold miner—a nugget so big it can be handled like a small marble.

Hunting for Gold in the Amazonian Jungle

The author joins two American fortune-seekers on a gold-panning outing at the confluence of the Negro and Paute rivers

Portion of the cover of the February 1989 issue of Life magazine

In 1989, ‘Life’ Magazine Said Goodbye To Video Stores, Mailmen and Pennies…

In 1989, “Life” magazine predicted that, by the year 2000, many staples of modern American life might find themselves on the scrapheap of history

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Nitpicking the Lice Genome to Track Humanity’s Past Footsteps

Lice DNA collected around the planet sheds light on the parasite’s long history with our ancestors, a new study shows

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From Pyenson Lab: When Is a Museum Specimen the Real Deal?

Can you tell the difference between a replica and the real thing? Does it matter? A curator at Natural History talks about copies, 3-D printing and museums

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Video: This Stretchable Battery Could Power the Next Generation of Wearable Gadgets

Durable and rechargeable, the new battery can be stretched to 300 percent of its size and still provide power

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Small Satellites—Some the Size of Postage Stamps—Are Transforming How Scientists Conduct Space-based Research

A new fleet of nanosatellites is zooming through space

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What Makes These Avocados Different From All Others?

The spectrum of the fruit here is almost as varied as the people who grow them, and for avo advocates, Ecuador is an excellent place to go tasting

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The American Plan to Build Nuclear Power Plants in the Ocean

This ill-advised scheme would have put gigantic barges just off the Atlantic coast? Where would it have started? New Jersey, of course

The AirWaves mask by Frog Shanghai

How to Survive China’s Pollution Problem: Masks and Bubbles

The air quality in China’s biggest cities is famously atrocious, but designers think they may have found a way to combat the issue

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Snakes in a Frame: Mark Laita’s Stunning Photographs of Slithering Beasts

In his new book, Serpentine, Mark Laita captures the colors, textures and sinuous forms of a variety of snake species

Actress Louise Brooks with bob and bee-stung lips, 1920s

The History of the Flapper, Part 4: Emboldened by the Bob

New short haircuts announced the wearers’ break from tradition and boosted the hairdressing industry

From a chain of Los Angeles drive-ins in the 1940s, “good food is good health.”

10 Vintage Menus That Are a Feast for the Eyes, If Not the Stomach

From the late-19th century to the 1970s, restaurants had one surefire way of standing out

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The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor

Vivian Gordon was a reputed prostitute and blackmailer—but her murder led to the downfall of New York Mayor Jimmy Walker

George crawls into a pneumatic tube which will transport him to Mr. Spacely’s office (1963)

George Jetson Navigates a Series of Tubes

Travel by pneumatic tubes? The idea was seriously considered in the 1960s

Women from Gee’s Bend work on a quilt during the 2005 ONB Magic City Art Connection in Birmingham, Alabama’s Linn Park.

A River Bend Community Set To Music: Gees Bend Jazz Symphony

Artists are making sweet music using history and museum collections as inspiration

On Wednesday, legendary Taiko drummer Kenny Endo performs a mix of traditional Japanese music and original jazz with Japanese flute player and drummer Kaoru Watanabe.

Events February 26-28: A Garden Scavenger Hunt, Japanese Flute and Drums and Author Taylor Branch

This week, get active in Smithsonian’s gardens, jam out to jazz on traditional Japanese instruments and meet the author of The King Years

The challenge is to figure out how all that wiring works.

Mapping How the Brain Thinks

The White House wants to fund a huge project that would allow scientists to see, in real time, how a brain does its work

High temperatures and high levels of humidity reduce the human body’s ability to do work.

Climate Change is Reducing Our Ability to Get Work Done

Increased temperature and humidity have already limited humankind’s overall capacity for physical work—and it will only get worse in the future

The human heart

Growing New Hearts Without Using Embryonic Stem Cells

A different type of stem cell—one used in asexual reproduction—can create new heart muscle tissue without raising ethical questions, new studies show

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Artificial Wetland Uses Bacteria to Clean Pharmaceuticals From Sewage

By harnessing bacteria to do the heavy lifting, a way to clean pharmaceuticals from waste water

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