The Atchafalaya Basin (dark green in this satellite image, with the Atchafalaya River running through its center) is almost a million acres of bottomland woods and swamp.

Saving Atchafalaya

A more than 70-year effort to “control” America’s largest river basin swamp is threatening the Cajun culture that thrives on it

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Ouch!

A new finding that fish feel pain has set off a tortured debate about the ethics of angling

The hall combines natural history with state-of-the-art technology.

New Hall on the Mall

A dazzling exhibition space celebrates mammalian diversity through re-creations of habitats on four continents

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Hooked on Aging

Our writer tries to just say no to getting older

Terrestrial creatures (a forest crab in a defensive pose) were not easily confined for photographing.

Portraits in the Wild

In an unexplored region of Africa’s Atlantic coast, an innovative photographer captures Gabon’s bountiful wildlife

Neuroscientist Eugene Aserinsky attaches electrodes to his son, Armond, who was a frequent subject in his early sleep studies

The Stubborn Scientist Who Unraveled A Mystery of the Night

Fifty years ago, Eugene Aserinksy discovered rapid eye movement and changed the way we think about sleep and dreaming

Cattle suffocated by carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos

Defusing Africa’s Killer Lakes

In a remote region of Cameroon, an international team of scientists takes extraordinary steps to prevent the recurrence of a deadly natural disaster

Chemical structure of the Penicillin core

Eureka!

Accident and serendipity played their parts in the inventions of penicillin, the World Wide Web and the Segway super scooter

Navy dolphin K-Dog sports a "pinger" device that allows him to be tracked underwater.

Uncle Sam’s Dolphins

In the Iraq war, highly trained cetaceans helped U.S. forces clear mines in Umm Qasr’s harbor

Six weeks after authorities said SARS had broken out in Asia, CDC scientists in Atlanta identified a coronavirus as the culprit.

Stopping a Scourge

No one knows if SARS will strike again. But researchers’ speedy work halting the epidemic makes a compelling case study of how to combat a deadly virus

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Talking to Horses

Stanford Addison uses intuition, compassion and persistence to “break” wild horses

Having logged thousands of hours observing chimpanzees and other apes, Frans de Waal (left, at his Atlanta field station) argues that primates, including humans and bonobos, are more cooperative and less ruthless than once thought.

Rethinking Primate Aggression

Researcher Frans de Waal shows that apes (and humans) get along better than we thought

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park Big Cypress Bend boardwalk

Fakahatchee Ghosts

But no exorcisms, please these rare orchids are the stars of a hit movie and a best-selling book

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To Touch the Heavens

Noreen Grice has given the visually impaired a feel for the universe

Tidal wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay

Baywatch

Smithsonian scientists’ study of the Chesapeake may benefit a wider world

Legal challenges from environmental groups over a two-year period stymied the efforts of ranger Kate Klein (a mile from her station) to thin a forest tract by commercial logging. A catastrophic fire broke out just days after she prepared a final rebuttal.

Fire Fight

With forests burning, U.S. officials are clashing with environmentalists over how best to reduce the risk of catastrophic blazes

"Among dung beetles, for instance, the smallest sneaker males relentlessly attempt to slip into tunnels where females are sequestered while Mr. Big, the guarding male, is looking the other way."

Close Encounters of the Sneaky Kind

When it comes to mating, the brawny guy is supposed to get the girl, but biologists are finding that small, stealthy suitors do just fine

"I had a bunch of birds that had died of encephalitis at the same time people had encephalitis," says Tracey McNamara (in her Bronx apartment), a veterinary pathologist formerly at the Bronx Zoo. She helped link the virus to the 1999 epidemic.

On the Trail of the West Nile Virus

Some scientists race to develop vaccines against the scourge while others probe the possible lingering effects of the mosquito-borne infection

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, National Museum of American History.

Here’s Looking at You, Kids

For three decades, the fluoroscope was a shoe salesman’s best friend

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Lighthouse of the Skies

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory probes the universe for the unimaginable

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