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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

New Yorkers use an estimated 23 billion plastic bags every year.

New York Says Goodbye to Plastic Bags

A statewide ban prohibiting the distribution of single-use plastic bags went into effect on Sunday

3-D model of Head of Amenhotep III on Sketchfab

Education During Coronavirus

You Can Now Download 1,700 Free 3-D Cultural Heritage Models

A new Sketchfab collection brings models of fossils, artwork and more into the public domain

Ducks can apparently eat up to 200 locusts a day, one Chinese researcher says.

Is a Duck Army Coming for Pakistan’s Locusts? Not So Fast

In the wake of a social media storm, experts question a popular plan to dispatch insect-eating birds from China

Peaceful protestors march down Constitution Avenue and the National Mall on August 28, 1963.

This Virtual Reality Exhibit Brings Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech to Life

“The March” debuts on February 28 at the DuSable Museum in Chicago

Tempestries representing daily high temperatures in Utqiagvik, Alaska, in 1925, 2010, and 2016 (left) and Death Valley, California, in 1950 and 2016 (right)

Art Meets Science

How Knitting Enthusiasts Are Using Their Craft to Visualize Climate Change

In these crafters’ scarves and blankets, rows of color correspond with daily temperature

A 3-D model of Athens' classical acropolis

Virtual Travel

These 3-D Models Offer a Digital Glimpse Into 3,000 Years of Athens’ History

Photographer-animator Dimitris Tsalkanis built the city from scratch and posted it online for free

Researcher Peter Robinson led the team that developed the first app version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Education During Coronavirus

A New App Guides Readers Through Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’

The tool includes a 45-minute audio performance of the work’s General Prologue in Middle English

The Cape coral snake is a venomous species that lives in arid regions of southern Africa.

New Research

The Future of Antivenom May Involve Mini Lab-Grown Snake Glands

The antiquated technique used to produce antivenom requires injecting venom into horses and this new method may someday remove that step from the process

Nesyamun was a priest and scribe whose duties included ritualistic chanting and singing.

Education During Coronavirus

Listen to the Recreated Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

Media outlets have likened the sound to a “brief groan,” a “long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh’”

A yellow box indicates where an AI system found cancer hiding inside breast tissue.

New Research

What Does Google’s Breast Cancer Screening A.I. Actually Do?

The program was slightly better than human radiologists at spotting abnormalities in mammograms

The petite creation measures 10 micrometers long, or roughly a tenth of the diameter of the average human hair.

This Microscopic ‘Gingerbread’ House Is Smaller Than a Human Hair

Although it doesn’t taste great, the silicon house highlights the capabilities of electron microscopy

An artist impression of Cheops, the CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, with an exoplanet system in the background

Three Things to Know About Europe’s New Exoplanet Space Telescope

CHEOPS is the first exoplanet satellite devoted specifically to learning more about the thousands of planets we have already found

An artist's impression of the upcoming ClearSpace-1 robot using its four arms to capture a piece of space debris that was left behind in 2013.

The European Space Agency Is Sending a Robot to Hug Junk Out of Space

The mission, set to launch in 2025, will be the first to remove a piece of debris from Earth’s lower orbit

Trending Today

This Electric Eel Is Shocking Around the Christmas Tree

The Tennessee Aquarium’s internet-famous eel, Miguel Wattson, is powering Christmas lights in the exhibit

William Shakespeare (left) and John Fletcher (right) both contributed to Henry VIII, a new study suggests.

Artificial Intelligence Reveals Second Playwright’s Contributions to Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VIII’

Scholars have long suspected the play, written in 1613, was a collaborative effort. Now, an algorithm has mapped out who wrote what

A New Yorker captured this image of a flooded subway entrance on November 20.

How the New York City Subway Is Preparing for Climate Change

“We’re doing this because climate change is real,” the MTA account wrote on Twitter after a local shared a snapshot of a flooded subway entrance

The scan captures every detail that made the bust so iconic, including Nefertiti’s delicate neck, painted headdress, high cheekbones and sharp eyeliner.

3-D Scans of the Bust of Nefertiti Are Now Available Online

A German museum released the digital data to artist Cosmo Wenman after a hoax heist and lengthy legal battle

The 19-page volume features three original stories, advertisements and a table of contents.

Miniature Manuscript Penned by Teenaged Charlotte Brontë Will Return to Author’s Childhood Home

The tiny volume, one of six created for a series, will now join four surviving counterparts on view at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

The $9,500 digital dress

Designers Are Selling Expensive Clothes That Don’t Exist—and People Are Actually Buying Them

Earlier this year, a digital-only dress sold at auction for $9,500

The lonely rover is heading through Gale Crater to dig around for hints of microbial life.

See Mars’s Eerie Horizon in New Images From Curiosity Rover

Gale Crater—where the image was captured—was likely covered with lakes and rivers of liquid water around three billion years ago, scientists suggest

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