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Science / Mind & Body

A new focus of hospitals is keeping you from ending up here.

How Hospitals are Trying to Keep You Out of the Hospital

With a big boost from supercomputers, hospitals are shifting more of their focus to identifying people who need their help staying healthy

Blizzident is similar to a mouth-guard, but it is lined with rows of bristles.

Checking the Claim: A 3-D Printed Toothbrush That Cleans Your Mouth in Six Seconds

A startup has developed a custom-fit tool that can brush the entire surface of your teeth all at once

Artist Nickolay Lamm’s depiction of a polar-grizzly hybrid

What Would a Cross Between a Polar Bear and a Grizzly Really Look Like?

As climate changes and Arctic sea ice melts, species shift habitats and may interbreed. Lamm digitally manipulates photographs to imagine these hybrids

Research in mice shows that heavy drinking triggers cellular changes that interfere with bone formation.

Why Binge Drinking Makes You More Likely to Break Your Bones

Research in mice shows that heavy drinking triggers cellular changes that interfere with bone formation

What is appropriate Google Glass behavior?

Will Google Glass Make Us Better People? Or Just Creepy?

Some think wearable tech is just the thing to help us break bad habits, others that it will let us invade privacy like never before

The computing power of an infant's brain still astounds.

Sleeping Babies Can Sense When Mommy and Daddy Are Fighting

The infant brain is even more impressionable than previously thought

These Tattoos Honor Lost, Not-So-Loved Species

To overcome how people tend to care only about cute endangered animals, Samantha Dempsey designed and distributed temporary tattoos of ugly extinct species

School girls line up to receive vaccinations between classes.

How Humankind Got Ahead of Infectious Disease

With polio on the verge of eradication, a career immunologist explains the medical marvel of vaccination and the pioneers who made it possible

Oceanographer Gareth Lawson, who studies pteropods, was able to identify Kavanagh’s sculptures to species, such as this Limacina helicina.

The Gorgeous Shapes of Sea Butterflies

Cornelia Kavanagh’s sculptures magnify tiny sea butterflies—ocean acidification’s unlikely mascots—hundreds of times

Eating Breakfast Probably Won’t Help You Lose Weight

As much as researchers themselves want to believe that breakfast helps people lose weight or keep it off, the evidence is far from conclusive

President Barack Obama is left-handed, as well as at least six former presidents.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Why Are Some People Left-Handed?

Being a righty or a lefty could be linked to variations in a network of genes that influence right or left asymmetries in the body and brain

New research shows that a molecule in Szechuan peppers activates your cells’ touch receptors, making them feel like they’ve been vibrated rapidly.

Why Szechuan Peppers Make Your Lips Go Numb

Research shows that a molecule in the peppers activates your cells’ touch receptors, making them feel like they’ve been rapidly vibrated

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This Next-Generation Bug Spray Could Make You Invisible to Mosquitoes

Researchers are analyzing chemicals naturally present on human skin that disrupt mosquitoes’ ability to smell us

Blackboard Jungle

Crossing the Line Between Art and Science

New York artist Steve Miller melds the computer models and scientific notes of a Nobel-winning biochemist into a series of paintings now on display in D.C.

When the heart’s electrical system fails, death is imminent.

Why Does Cardiac Arrest Often Strike in the Morning?

Studies show that the amount of a specific molecule in human hearts fluctuates on a daily cycle, helping to explain the decades-old observation

A colorized microscopic image of a viral particle of the Ebola virus. The virus, which scientists believe originates in non-human primates, causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease in humans, monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees.

Cracking the Code of the Human Genome

A Minimum of 320,000 Mammalian Viruses Await Discovery

If we invested just $1.4 billion, we could discover 85 percent of all mammalian viruses, potentially lessening the impact of the next emerging disease

Valley of the Reclining Woman

Carl Warner’s Mountains Are Made of Elbows and Knees

The British photographer creates convincing landscapes—deserts and rocky scenes—by piecing together photos of nude models

Much like bats and dolphins, some people have developed the ability to analyze bouncing sound waves to generate a picture of their environment.

How Human Echolocation Allows People to See Without Using Their Eyes

Mimicking bats and dolphins, some people have developed the ability to analyze bouncing sound waves to generate a picture of their environment

Optical art

These Patterns Move, But It’s All an Illusion

What happens when your eyes and brain don’t agree?

About the only use modern humans have for their urine is in health screenings. But preindustrial workers built entire industries based on the scientific properties of pee.

From Gunpowder to Teeth Whitener: The Science Behind Historic Uses of Urine

Preindustrial workers built huge industries based on the liquid’s cleaning power and corrosiveness—and the staler the pee, the better

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