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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

The NYPL's Insta Novels are available via Instagram.

Fall Down the Rabbit Hole With the New York Public Library’s Instagram Version of Classic Tales

Featured texts include ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

Upturned under mysterious circumstances, the flagship vessel sank to its undersea grave with roughly 500 innocents—and one ship dog, a mutt dubbed Hatch—trapped within

New Nanotech Returns Henry VIII’s Favorite Warship to Its Former Glory

Researchers used tiny magnetic particles to remove the iron ions responsible for the wooden vessel’s decay

Obvious' "Portrait of Edmond Belamy" exceeded expectations at Thursday's sale

Art Meets Science

Christie’s Will Be the First Auction House to Sell Art Made by Artificial Intelligence

Christie’s will sell the work from Paris-based art collective Obvious, which created ‘Portrait of Edmond Belamy’ with the machine-learning algorithm GAN

If you stick to a diet of kale, brussels sprouts and similarly leafy greens, your salivary proteins will eventually adapt to their bitter taste

There’s a Scientific Explanation for Why Adults Are More Likely to Tolerate Leafy Greens

Just eat your veggies: Salivary proteins adapt to bitter tastes, making them more palatable over time

In August 2016, a lightning strike killed more than 300 reindeers. Now, their decaying carcasses are spurring the landscape's revitalization

What the Deaths of More Than 300 Reindeer Teach Us About the Circle of Life

In an isolated corner of Norwegian plateau, carcasses of reindeer felled by lightning are spawning new plant life

Slow-moving clumps of bacteria form the darker regions of the portrait, while fast-moving, spaced-out bacteria form the lighter regions

Art Meets Science

Light-Reactive Bacteria Create Miniature ‘Mona Lisa’ Replica

Researchers transformed swimming bacteria into replica of the da Vinci masterpiece, morphing likenesses of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin

Child participants doubted themselves and looked to their robot counterparts for guidance

Children Are Susceptible to Robot Peer Pressure, Study Suggests

When robots provided incorrect answers in social conformity test, children tended to follow their lead

View the Uffizi’s Ancient Treasures From Afar, in 3D

A new website has digitized 300 objects from the Florence gallery’s Greek and Roman collection

This science is poppin’

Popcorn-Powered Robots? Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!

In an attempt to harness the power of pop, researchers went against the grain to push the boundaries of this staple starch

To create her dazzle camouflage design, Auerbach used a process known as marbling, or swirling pools of ink on paper to generate fluid patterns

Art Meets Science

NYC Fireboat Rebranded in Vibrant Dazzle Camouflage to Commemorate WWI

Vessels cloaked in clashing colors, patterns attempted to confuse U-boat commanders by distorting their perception of a ship’s speed, size and location

"Wheat Field with Cypresses," based on Vincent van Gogh

Art Meets Science

This Is What Robotic Art Looks Like in 2018

The 2018 RobotArt competition fielded more than 100 submissions entered by 19 teams from all over the world

A look inside the VR experience

Take a VR Tour of an Egyptian Queen’s Elaborate Tomb

The resting place of Queen Nefertari, the favorite wife of Ramses II, is largely closed to visitors, but it can now be explored virtually

Obscured by tarnish and miscellaneous defacements, the plates offered no trace of the images they had once held

Art Meets Science

Particle Accelerator Reveals Hidden Faces in Damaged 19th-Century Daguerreotype Portraits

Using an experimental X-ray fluorescence process, researchers mapped contours of the plates and produced digital copies of images previously lost to time

The two surviving northern white rhinos, a mother and daughter, are both infertile

New Research

With Hybrid Embryo, Scientists Are One Step Closer to Saving the Northern White Rhino

Hybrid embryos were created using northern rhinos’ frozen sperm, southern rhinos’ eggs

Koala populations are expected to drop by 50 percent over the next 20 years

New Research

Newly Mapped Koala Genome Unlocks Secrets of Marsupial’s Diet, Susceptibility to Chlamydia

The cuddly creatures can survive on a diet of high-toxin eucalyptus leaves thanks to detoxifying genes

Fabergé Silver Elephant Automaton Royal Collection Trust

Automata History Comes Alive in the ‘Marvellous Mechanical Museum’

The new exhibition at Compton Verney features a Fabergé elephant with swinging trunk and a gigantic kinetic sculpture by Rowland Emett

Cool Finds

New Evidence Smashes Assumptions of Crushing Death for Pompeii Skeleton

Researchers found the intact skull of the skeleton that made headlines for being pinned beneath a giant stone block

The goal, Ruth Jarman says, is to “transcend the data so that it becomes something else"

Art Meets Science

‘HALO’ Makes Art Out of Subatomic Particle Collisions at Art Basel

The site-specific installation by British artist duo Semiconductor revisits the universe’s first moments

Researchers examined 400 photographs and 100 paintings dating between 1500 and 2015

Art Meets Science

Why Artists Have so Much Trouble Painting Lightning

A new study compares painted versus photographed depictions of lightning bolts’ offshooting branches

Recordings are available via Soundcloud and the Google Arts & Culture platform

How to Hear the Met’s Historic Instruments’ Singular Sounds

New audio recordings by the museum feature roughly 40 instruments, from Ming dynasty lute to the world’s oldest surviving piano

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