How Drones Are Being Used to Battle Wildfires

A fire crew fighting a large blaze in Yosemite National Park lose contact with their command. Their only hope of survival is an aerial drone

Though the new method can't produce these large sparklers yet, it may be an important part of future diamond production.

New Research

Weird New Type of Carbon Is Harder (and Brighter) Than Diamond

Dubbed Q-carbon, the material is magnetic, emits a soft glow and can be used to grow diamonds faster and cheaper than ever before

Programming organisms in the Ginkgo Bioworks Foundry

A Boston Biotech Company Is Engineering New Smells

A team at Ginkgo Bioworks is designing organisms that emit specific scents and flavors

New Mapping Technology Helps Arctic Communities “Keep on Top” of Sea Ice Changes

Buoys are being deployed in the bays of Labrador, Canada, with sensors that track ice thickness, to stop Inuit from breaking through

A dry boat dock sits in Huntington Lake after the water receded, in the High Sierra, California. The state is in its fifth year of drought, and more and more, California is turning to Australia—which endured a ten-year drought earlier this century—for solutions.

Age of Humans

What Can Australia Teach California About Drought?

With the Golden State entering its fifth year of drought, people are looking Down Under for solutions

A woman uses the Qylatron at Levi's Stadium.

Is This Machine the Future of Airport Security?

The Qylatron, used daily at San Francisco’s Levi’s Stadium, promises better, faster security screening

What do you think this thingamabobber does?

Holiday Gift Guide

Nine Gifts for Gadget Lovers

From a connected kitchen scale to a “Coolbox,” these products make perfect presents for the technophiles in your life

Fried insects, anyone?

Five Ways to Start Eating Insects

The idea may be hard to swallow, but crickets and mealworms will likely be part of our sustainable food future

Five Ways to Reinvent Traditional Thanksgiving Dishes

Why have plain old pumpkin pie when you could be eating a pumpkin-filled chocolate balloon?

Army ants really know how to take the road less travelled.

New Research

Army Ants Act Like Algorithms to Make Deliveries More Efficient

The marauding ants know just where to place living bridges to create shortcuts without sacrificing their food-gathering prowess

Med School Students Can Play “Operation” With These Synthetic Cadavers

Florida company SynDaver is making life-like organs and bodies. But, as teaching models, are they as helpful as the real thing?

This Pump Could Make Blood Transfusions Safer and Cheaper in the Developing World

The Hemafuse gives doctors a sterile way to suction, filter and retransfuse patients’ blood in places without electricity

The latest Li-Fi prototype

What Is Li-Fi, and Will It Replace Wi-Fi?

Mobile communications professor Harald Haas has theorized about using LED bulbs to transmit data for years. Now, the technology is a reality.

An 1877 mousetrap called “The Delusion.” Directions read “Put as large a piece of cheese you can crowd into the box…”

The Unceasing American Quest to Build a Better Mousetrap

There has always been some truth to the apocryphal Emerson quote

Scientists reconfigured a magnetic resonance scanner to capture a woman and her baby.

Why I Captured This MRI of a Mother and Child

A venerable symbol of human love, as you’ve never seen it before

RoboBees Can Fly and Swim. What’s Next? Laser Vision

Swarms of robotic bees, capable of seeing, may soon be able to monitor pollution and traffic, or scan the struts of bridges

Cataract of the human eye

This Chemical Compound Could Melt Away Cataracts

Eye drops made from “compound 29” have been shown to reduce cataracts in mice. Researchers hope the same will hold true for humans.

Round Table

Why Does America Prize Creativity and Invention?

Our politics encourage it, there’s a high tolerance of failure, and we idealize the lone inventor

American Ingenuity Awards

This Wildly Creative Art Project Transformed an Ugly Interstate Into a 2,400-Mile-Long Visual Masterpiece

Zoe Crosher and Shamim Momin are behind the effort to turn the classic American eyesore into true art

Left: Alan Stern holds a 2005 Hubble image of the Pluto system on January 19, 2006, two hours after the successful launch of the New Horizons probe. Right: A triumphant Stern holds a full-frame image of Pluto, taken just hours before the New Horizons probe reached its closest point to Pluto.

American Ingenuity Awards

How Alan Stern Brought Pluto to Earth

The scientist behind NASA’s New Horizons mission gave cheering earthlings their first close-up view of the dwarf planet

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