Heavy drinking can cause brain changes that make you want to drink more.

How a Genetically Engineered Virus Could Help the Brain Fight Alcohol Cravings

Heavy drinking can change the brain to make cravings worse. Can gene therapy change it back?

Ask Smithsonian: What’s the Longest You Can Hold Your Breath?

A dive into the science shows it is possible to override the system

A rare book depicting the sea monk by Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) in the Smithsonian Libraries dates to 1554.

Renaissance Europe Was Horrified by Reports of a Sea Monster That Looked Like a Monk Wearing Fish Scales

Something fishy this way comes

Prehistoric Kickboxing Killer Turkeys

Unlike Jurassic Park’s lizard-like creatures, real raptors had feathers and looked a lot more like their closest relatives — birds

In her new book, the acclaimed Thunder & Lightning: Weather, Past, Present and Future, Lauren Redniss is intrigued by how people have coped with, survived, or failed in extreme weather situations.

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How the 2016 MacArthur Genius Award Recipient Lauren Redniss Is Rethinking Biography

The visual biographer of Marie and Pierre Curie turns to her next subject, weather, lightning and climate change

Yes, Spiders Eat Spiders

Portia spiders, known for their remarkable intelligence, have some of the most astonishing hunting skills in the arthropod community

Stegosaurus and Ceratosaurus are among one of the most successful groups ever to have evolved.

Celebrate Dino Month With Three New Dinosaur Books

From PhDs to 4th graders, something for everyone

This golden goodness relies on a mathematical concept known as the silver ratio.

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Using Math to Build the Ultimate Taffy Machine

A mathematician dives into taffy-pulling patents to achieve optimum confection creation

In search of distinctly American beer hops.

Wacky, Wonderful, Wild Hops Could Transform the Watered-Down Beer Industry

The diversity of hops reflects a diversity of tastes and traditions that are part of an extraordinary evolution in beer

Pan Am promoted its "First Moon Flights" Club on radio and TV after the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, saying that "fares are not fully resolved, and may be out of this world."

I Was a Card-Carrying Member of the “First Moon Flights” Club

My card is now a historical museum artifact, but I’ll never give up my dream to fly to the Moon

Mangroves are rich and biodiverse coastal ecosystems that flood and emerge with the tides. Now villagers are burning these trees to better their lives.

Madagascar’s Mangroves: The Ultimate Giving Trees

Locals already use the trees for food, fuel and building materials. Now they’re burning them to make lime clay

Six Places on Earth That Scientists Say Look Like Other Planets

The eerie resemblance these locales have to Mars and beyond has attracted researchers for years

Wild Inside the National Zoo: The Future of Maned Wolves

After three years of being paired, maned wolves Echo and Zayda produce two new pups at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

Wild capuchins make stone tools, but don't know how to use them.

Wild Monkeys Unintentionally Make Stone Age Tools, But Don’t See the Point

Scientists observe a “unique” human behavior in wild animals

Zak van Biljon photographed Kennedy Lake in British Columbia using infrared film.

Art Meets Science

Looking at Nature Through Infrared Film Will Have You Seeing Red

See the world on a whole different spectrum

To make Tumor Paint, Jim Olson's team extracts molecules from the deathstalker scorpion (Leiurus quinquestriatus).

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How Scorpion Venom Is Helping Doctors Treat Cancer

When injected into the body, Tumor Paint lights up cancers. The drug could lead to a new class of therapeutics

Anthropologists have long debated the origins of human violence.

Can Resource Scarcity Really Explain a History of Human Violence?

Data from thousands of California burial sites suggests that a lack of resources causes violence. But that conclusion may be too simplistic

I just want to get this purr-fect.

Fur Real: Scientists Have Obsessed Over Cats for Centuries

Ten of the best feline-focused studies shed light on our relationship with these vampire-hunting, sexy-bodied killers

Just look at that vampiric cutie.

How Bats Ping On the Wing—And Look Cute Doing It

Researchers reveal how bats turn echolocation signals into a 3-D image of moving prey

From top left, clockwise: male orangequit; female tungara frog; purple mort bleu butterfly; sunflower; red coral; Galapagos marine iguana

Big Data Just Got Bigger as IBM’s Watson Meets the Encyclopedia of Life

An NSF grant marries one of the world’s largest online biological archives with IBM’s cognitive computing and Georgia Tech’s moduling and simulation

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