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A satellite image of North America taken on August 25, 2020. Smoke from wildfires can be seen rising from California and Hurricane Laura can be seen heading toward Louisiana and eastern Texas as the remnants of Marco swirl over the Southeast.

NOAA’s Weather Forecasting System Just Got a Major Update

The new version of the Global Forecast System could give Americans in the path of a hurricane an additional 36 hours to prepare compared to the old model

The imported parrots and scarlet macaws were mummified between 1100 and 1450 A.D.

Cool Finds

Mummified Parrots Found in Chile Suggest Vast Pre-Hispanic Trade Network

People in South America likely kept the birds as exotic pets whose feathers were prized for their use in headdresses and hats

The Archive of Healing lists traditional remedies, procedures and practices from all seven continents.

How a New Digital Archive Preserves—and Protects—Indigenous Folk Medicine

UCLA’s database features hundreds of thousands of entries detailing traditional healing practices

Bears with intensifying symptoms either die or are require euthanasia. Those that survive require lifetime treatments and can't return to the wild.

A Puzzling Brain Disease Is Killing Black Bears in the Western United States

Some animals showing signs of a neurological disorder had brain inflammation, but the cause is still unknown

The warriors were buried with several layers of feather bedding.

Cool Finds

These Iron Age Swedish Warriors Were Laid to Rest on Luxurious Feather Bedding

Researchers say the various types of bird feathers used may hold symbolic significance

Alice Neel, Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd, 1970

How Alice Neel’s Revolutionary Portraits Put People First

A new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art features 100 of the American artist’s paintings, drawings and watercolors

A tiny, aphid-like whitefly sitting on a leaf.

New Research

This Insect Has Plant DNA in Its Genome

Whiteflies have a gene only found in plants that appears to allow the tiny insects to withstand plants’ chemical defenses

By the time sauteur d’Alfort rabbits are a few months old, they learn how to walk on their front paws to accommodate their uncoordinated back legs.

New Research

Thanks to a Genetic Mutation, These French Rabbits Prefer Handstands to Bunny Hops

The unusually acrobatic sauteur d’Alfort rabbits were first discovered in France in 1935

Previously, the public only had access to about 30,000 listings of works in the Louvre’s collections.

You Can Now Explore the Louvre’s Entire Collection Online

A new digital database features 480,000 works from the Paris museum’s holdings

For nearly a week, salvage teams worked on freeing the beached vessel using a schedule dictated by when low tides and high tides would hit.

The Colossal Container Ship Stuck in the Suez Canal Has Been Freed

With the help of high tides, tugboats were finally able to yank the vessel loose

AstraZeneca's vaccine is approved for use in over 20 countries.

Why U.S. Approval of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Is Taking So Long

An unprecedented public exchange with a data review board is the latest of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine’s hurdles

Retouched composite image of the mural and its surroundings

Cool Finds

3,200-Year-Old Mural of Knife-Wielding Spider God Found in Peru

Local farmers accidentally destroyed 60 percent of the shrine complex that houses the ancient Cupisnique painting

Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun and husband of Nefertiti, ruled Egypt between roughly 1353 and 1336 B.C.

Art Meets Science

Is This the Face of King Tut’s Father, Pharaoh Akhenaten?

New 3-D reconstruction visualizes what KV55, a mummy long thought to be the ancient Egyptian ruler, may have looked like

After five weeks of development, a human brain organoid (left) is roughly twice the size of those from a chimpanzee (top right) and a gorilla (bottom right).

New Research

Experiments Find Gene Key to the Human Brain’s Large Size

The single gene identified by the study may be what makes human brains three times larger than our closest great ape relatives at birth

Gloria Steinem in her Upper East Side apartment

Virtual Travel

Take a Virtual Tour of Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem’s Historic Manhattan Apartment

In honor of her 87th birthday, the speaker and activist is (digitally) welcoming visitors into her home

"Active sleep" only lasted 40 seconds but cycled after 30 to 40 minutes of "quiet sleep". These patterns are similar pattern to how mammals experience rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Like Humans and Mammals, Octopuses May Have Two Stages of Sleep

Scientists do not know if octopuses dream in color, but they do change color while sleeping

The site of the rabbit burrow has apparently been occupied by different groups over the millennia.

Cool Finds

Burrowing Bunnies in Wales Unearth Trove of Prehistoric Artifacts

Rabbits on Skokholm Island discovered Stone Age tools and fragments of a Bronze Age cremation urn

Damages wrought by climate change and deforestation have transformed the Amazon rainforest. New research suggests the changes to this icon of the natural world caused by human activity may mean the Amazon now emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs.

New Research

The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs

Climate change and deforestation have transformed the ecosystem into a net source of planet-warming gases instead of a carbon sink

Bald eagle populations have been steadily recovering since their all-time low in the 1960s when fewer than 500 nesting pairs were left.

Planet Positive

Why Bald Eagle Populations Soared in the Last Decade

In 1963, only 417 breeding pairs remained, but 71,400 active couples were recorded as of 2019

This recreated wooden building resembles one that may have housed enslaved people on John Dickinson's Dover, Delaware, plantation.

Graves of Enslaved People Discovered on Founding Father’s Delaware Plantation

A signee of the U.S. Constitution, John Dickinson enslaved as many as 59 men, women and children at one time

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