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Salt

Mark Kurlansky on the Cultural Importance of Salt

Salt, it may be useful to know, cures a zombie

Body suits are allowing paralyzed people to stand and move.

The Rise of the Bionic Human

New technology is allowing the paralyzed to walk and the blind to see. And it’s becoming a smaller leap from repairing bodies to enhancing them

A new study indicates 3.6 percent of American adults are prone to sleepwalking, but scientists still don't understand what causes the phenomenon.

The Science of Sleepwalking

A new study indicates that a surprisingly high number of us are prone to sleepwalking. Should you wake a sleepwalker?

A speculative restoration of Australia's Cretaceous ceratosaur

Fragmentary Clue Reveals Australia’s First Ceratosaur

An isolated bone shows that Cretaceous Australia had an even richer mix of predatory dinosaurs

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For the Love of Film Blogathon III: The White Shadow and Streaming Restored Films Online

Casablanca streaming live on Facebook tonight and read about the opportunity to view a recently restored version of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s first films

A diagram of visitor movement in the American Art and Furniture gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art

What a Physics Student Can Teach Us About How Visitors Walk Through a Museum

By sketching the movements of people at the Cleveland Art Museum, Andrew Oriani laid the groundwork for some deep insights into how art is appreciated

Ai WeiWei's "Fragments" is now on display at the Sackler Gallery.

Past and Present Clash in Ai WeiWei’s “Fragments”

“Fragments,” the second of three Ai WeiWei exhibitions this year, opens at the Sackler Gallery

Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates with ponies

Sacrifice Amid the Ice: Facing Facts on the Scott Expedition

Captain Lawrence Oates wrote that if Robert Scott’s team didn’t win the race to the South Pole, “we shall come home with our tails between our legs”

Someone painted this rhinoceros on a wall in France's Chauvet Cave about 30,000 years ago.

The Top Four Candidates for Europe’s Oldest Work of Art

The discovery of 37,000-year-old cave art showing female genitalia adds to the list of contenders

A Tyrannosaurus stands over the remains of an abandoned mini-golf course.

Dinosaur Sighting: Tyrannosaurus Golf

Dinosaurs probably wouldn’t have been very good at mini-golf—imagine a Carnotaurus with a putter—but they make for excellent fairway decor

For the traveler to India: film and literary preparation

The Great Books and Movies to Read and Watch Before Visiting India

A list of some of the best books and films about the subcontinent to take in before you go

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky, available through booksellers on May 8

Clarence Birdseye, the Man Behind Modern Frozen Food

I spoke with author Mark Kurlansky about the quirky inventor who changed the way we eat

At 100 Euros for 100 grams, these French black truffles had better not be from China.

Truffle Trouble in Europe: The Invader Without Flavor

If it looks like a black truffle, and if it cost you $1,500 a pound like a black truffle—-it may actually be a worthless Chinese truffle

It its collection, the National Museum of American History has a fallout shelter, exhumed from a yard in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

How a Fallout Shelter Ended up at the American History Museum

Curator Larry Bird tells of the adventure—from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Washington, D.C.

A slime mold is used to design an efficient U.S. interstate system.

If the Interstate System Were Designed by a Slime Mold

How a brainless, single-celled organism created a startlingly efficient route map for U.S. highways

A sculpture of Torosaurus—or, according to some, a mature Triceratops—outside Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Dear Media, Leave My Dinosaurs Alone

Lazy journalists and unscrupulous documentary creators have demonstrated that they just can’t play nice with Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and kin

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Eating Invasive Species to Stop Them?

The “if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” strategy for controlling exotic species could backfire, a new analysis warns

Careers of the future as illustrated by Cy DeCosse for the 1982 book, The Kids Whole Future Catalog

Jobs of the Future: How Accurate Were the Soothsayers of 1982 At Predicting Today’s Top Careers?

College graduates take note: Your dream career as a robot psychologist or nasal technologist is just around the corner

Drylands design students walking a ditch in the Embudo Valley

Designing Democracy Around a Ditch

How a ditch irrigation system in the arid Southwest became the backbone of local democracy

Sliders served at last year's ZooFari benefit

Events May 15-17: Words, Earth and Aloha, merengue and méringue, and ZooFari

This week, watch a documentary about Hawaiian music, enjoy a performance of Dominican merengue and Haitian méringue, and chow down at ZooFari

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