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Palmyra, Syria

Looters Are Selling Artifacts to Fund War in Syria

War zones are dangerous places, for both people and cultural heritage

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The World Beard And Moustache Championships: Where the Competition Gets Hairy

Last Saturday, more than 100 mustachioed and bearded participants gathered in Wittersdorf, a town in eastern France, to strut their scruff at the 2012 European World Beard and M0ustache Championships

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Track a Great White Shark from Your Computer

Where in the world are Genie and Mary Lee? Two tagged great whites are teaching us about how these giant fish live in the deep

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To the Bat Cave!

One conservation group, the Nature Conservancy, has decided to take action against white nose syndrome by setting up a refugee bat cave

Facebook Zero works on all these phones.

Facebook Snuck Into the World of Basic Cell Phones And Took Over

How Facebook is reaching those without smart phones

High School Students Hit a Forty Year Low on the SAT Reading Section

Over 50 percent of test takers scored below the level that would indicate college success, and scores from every racial group but one (Asian) declined

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Sao Paulo Traffic Jams Extend 112 Miles, On Average

With so much time spent in cars, it’s inevitable that life events like meeting your future spouse occur there, too

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There’s a Reason It’s Called Global Warming: European Emissions Rise From Imported American Coal

US carbon dioxide emissions go down, but European emissions go up, as coal is traded worldwide

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If We Had Followed This Plan, We’d Be Living on Mars By Now

If you think Curiosity is exciting, imagine where we could have been if someone had put these guys in charge

A screenshot from the app.

New iPad App Lets You Noodle Around Einstein’s Noggin

iPad app sees Einstein’s autopsied brain digitized

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Next Year, We Start to Run Out of Bacon

This year’s US drought is rippling through globalized agriculture. Next on the chopping block? Bacon

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Tsunami Debris Is Just Now Arriving at Hawaii’s Coast

A dock 30-by-50 feet long, with Japanese writing on it, was found floating off the coast of Hawaii, around the same time that a plastic blue bin (a seafood storage container in its past life) became the first confirmed piece of tsunami debris to reach Hawaii. Authorities have not confirmed whether or not the dock was […]

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NIH Sends Almost One-Fifth of Its Research Chimpanzees Into Retirement

The National Institutes of Health has retired 110 chimpanzees of a total of 563

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The End of Balloons

With helium reserves running low, some scientists are calling for drastic measures, including the reduction of balloon use

Are Science Museums Going Extinct?

Will science museums survive when the topics they cover are invisible or impossibly far away?

Any large gathering of people, such as this one for Hajj in 2008, has the potential to facilitate the transfer of disease.

Just Before the Hajj, Two Patients Contract SARS-Like Virus

A new coronavirus has been spotted in Saudi Arabia

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Here’s What Space Shuttle Endeavour Looked at While You Looked at Space Shuttle Endeavour

Here’s what Endeavour saw during its #Spottheshuttle tour

How the Record for Hottest Temperature Ever Was Refuted

A scanning electron microscope image of the ancient tooth, and the location of the beeswax filling.

6,500-Year Old Beeswax May Be Oldest Known Dental Filling

From the archives of an Italian museum, researchers may have found the oldest dental filling

America’s Issues with Voter Turnout Stretch Back More Than 200 Years

Since before the Revolutionary War, America has struggled with low voter turnout

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