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Science / Mind & Body

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

The pigeon will see you now.

New Research

Pigeons Can Spot Breast Cancer in Medical Images

After just a few weeks of training, the brainy birds rivaled human levels of accuracy in their diagnoses

Ask Smithsonian

Ask Smithsonian: What Is a Freckle?

Those adorable and charming spots splayed across the nose and cheeks might also be an indicator of sun damage

Seasonal affective disorder can cause people to feel isolated and hopeless.

New Research

Talking Is the Latest Tool for Battling Seasonal Depression

A large-scale study suggests that talk therapy may have longer-lasting benefits than light boxes for treating wintertime blues

Five Things We’ve Learned About Fear Since Last Halloween

Including why screams get our brain’s attention and why a drop of “love hormone” in our nose could make us less fearful

Live near a cemetery? Better check your drinking water.

Arsenic and Old Graves: Civil War-Era Cemeteries May Be Leaking Toxins

The poisonous element, once used in embalming fluids, could be contaminating drinking water as corpses rot

When a walk in the park is your worst nightmare.

New Research

Why Do Humans Have Allergies? Parasite Infections May Be the Trigger

Protein analysis suggests that antibodies that evolved to fight parasites might be turning their focus to otherwise harmless agents

An artist's rendering shows an acoustic hologram trapping a particle over a levitation device.

New Research

This Acoustic Tractor Beam Can Levitate Small Objects With Sound

The device allows researchers to float and manipulate targets with just a single array of ultrasound emitters

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Ask Smithsonian: Is the World Due for Another Massive Plague Outbreak?

It is highly unlikely, experts say, but a plague-based bioterror assault is another matter

This Bronze Age skull is from the Yamnaya culture, which later developed into the Afanasievo culture of Central Asia, one of the peoples that carried early strains of plague.

New Research

Plague Was Infecting Humans 3,300 Years Earlier Than Thought

DNA from Bronze Age victims helped pinpoint mutations that allowed the disease to go from localized illness to deadly pandemic

Scientists Are Working on a Pill That Just Might Replace Exercise

The idea is to create a drug that mimics the molecular changes exercise causes in the body. But it’s no small challenge

The Rise of DIY Genetic Testing

Some people are skipping the doctor’s office and using the internet to order and interpret their own DNA tests

A relative unknown, Werner Forssmann won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the cardiac catheter. Some of his equally qualified peers have not been as fortunate.

How Not to Win a Nobel Prize

A search through the Nobel archives shows how the history of the famous prize is filled with near misses and flukes

Rampant miscommunication in medicine due to language barriers compromises patient safety and quality of care while widening existing health disparities.

The Innovative Spirit

Millions of Americans Are Getting Lost in Translation During Hospital Visits

Miscommunication due to language barriers is a growing health care issue, and technologies to aid interpretation are racing to keep up

Can you resist the temptation of a midnight snack?

New Research

Americans Are Eating Later, and That May Contribute to Weight Troubles

Our bodies didn’t evolve to handle midnight pizzas

Microbial clouds give new meaning to the term "personal space."

New Research

You Produce a Microbial Cloud That Can Act Like an Invisible Fingerprint

The unique cloud follows you wherever you go—and could ID you in a crowd

Innovative Spirit Health Care

Six Ways Electrical Brain Stimulation Could Be Used in the Future

Scientists are exploring how mild electrical shocks can treat, and perhaps even change, brains

Smog glows in the sunset in Shanghai, China.

Age of Humans

Air Pollution Kills More Than 3 Million People Every Year

Fine particulates and ozone have been linked to deaths from heart disease, stroke and lung cancer around the globe

An illustration of the dengue virus, which is transmitted by mosquito bites.

A Single Protein Is the Root of Dengue’s Virulence

But researchers who found the culprit say it could be a clue in developing a vaccine for the mosquito-borne virus

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