Hamsters seem to have a more optimistic outlook when they have access to creature comforts.

New Research

Hamsters Are Optimists When They Live in Comfy Cages

Pet hamsters that enjoy habitats full of toys and fluffy bedding make more upbeat decisions than those in stark enclosures

How much do you know about your kidneys?

Top Five Myths About Human Kidneys

From limiting alcohol consumption to detoxing, many misconceptions circulate about how to keep your kidneys healthy

Scientists have for the first time identified the four people buried in Jamestown's first church. They are (from left) minister Robert Hunt, Sir Ferdinando Wainman, Captain Gabriel Archer and Captain William West.

New Jamestown Discovery Reveals the Identities of Four Prominent Settlers

The findings by Smithsonian scientists dig up the dynamics of daily life in the first permanent British settlement in the colonies

Elephants are complex communicators.

Age of Humans

How Elephants and Songbirds Are Helping Humans Communicate

In this Generation Anthropocene podcast, social animals show scientists how to trace our evolution and improve interactions

The small, bright yellow dots are lipid cells within subcutaneous fat tissue, which can be used as natural lasers.

New Research

Living Cells Armed With Tiny Lasers May Help Fight Disease

The biological light sources may one day help researchers see deeper into the body’s microscopic workings

Even if they make a list, neurotic people may need to check it twice.

New Research

Being Neurotic Makes It Harder for You to Remember Things

Brain scans suggest that certain personality types are wired to have better memories

A section of the digitally unwrapped Ein Gedi scroll, bearing text from Leviticus.

1,500-Year-Old Text Has Been Digitally Resurrected From a Hebrew Scroll

Special software helped reveal the words on a burned scroll found inside a holy ark near the Dead Sea

America’s Road Trip: Route 66’s Most Fascinating Museums

Take a drive on Route 66 and encounter the wonders of the road

Tick-tock goes the clock.

New Research

Can Sound Explain a 350-Year-Old Clock Mystery?

Lab experiments suggest that a strange synchronization of pendulum clocks observed in the 1600s can be chalked up to acoustic energy

The Milky Way and moon illuminate a lone tree in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

An Astronomer’s Paradise, Chile May Be the Best Place on Earth to Enjoy a Starry Sky

Chile’s northern coast offers an ideal star-gazing environment with its lack of precipitation, clear skies and low-to-zero light pollution

Boa constrictors seem to deliver death not through suffocation, but by cutting off blood flow to the heart and brain.

New Research

Boa Constrictors Kill By Stopping Blood Circulation

The popular belief that boas and other constricting snakes deal death by suffocation seems to be a flawed assumption

A veteran visits the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1988.

New Research

Over a Quarter-Million Vietnam War Veterans Still Have PTSD

Forty years after the war’s end, twice as many vets with combat-related PTSD are getting worse as those who are improving

Ensuring a bountiful harvest will require some ingenuity.

Anthropocene

How Will We Feed 9 Billion People on Earth of the Future?

This week’s Generation Anthropocene reveals how seeds on ice and poisonous tubers may offer hope for food security

Brazil's Surui people, like the man pictured above, share ancestry with indigenous Australians, new evidence suggests.

New Research

A DNA Search for the First Americans Links Amazon Groups to Indigenous Australians

The new genetic analysis takes aim at the theory that just one founding group settled the Americas

A natural gas flare burns over a fracking site in the Bakken Oil Fields of northwestern North Dakota.

Anthropocene

Recession, Not Fracking, Drove a Drop in U.S. Carbon Emissions

The switch from coal to natural gas played only a small role in the recent carbon dioxide decline

Scientists Connect Monkey Brains and Boost Their Thinking Power

Researchers at Duke University have enhanced the mind power of monkeys and rats by linking their brains together

Brain-to-brain interfaces may soon be a therapeutic technique.

New Research

Linking Multiple Minds Could Help Damaged Brains Heal

Monkeys and rats hooked up as “brainets” may lead to innovative treatments for Parkinson’s, paralysis and more

Smithsonian Takes a Giant Step with Its First Kickstarter Campaign to Fund the Conservation of Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit

On the 46th anniversary of the historic moonwalk, the spacesuit that made it possible is headed to the conservation lab

Mission operations manager Alice Bowman shares the real secret behind the Pluto flyby in December 2014.

These Pictures Give a Rare Glimpse Into the Heart of the Pluto Flyby

Spanning the full 9.5 years of the mission to date, the images by Michael Soluri capture the people behind the epic close encounter

An illustration shows the process of cell division, which involves chromosome pairs swapping some of their genetic data.

New Research

Human Sex Chromosomes Are Sloppy DNA Swappers

The genetic bundles that code for males and females can get a little messy when they trade pieces during cell division

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