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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

All of these images were created by the neural networks

New Research

AI Project Produces New Styles of Art

Researchers let two neural networks critique each other to create the images

Today's Girl Scouts, tomorrow's cybersleuths.

Cool Finds

New Badges Will Make Today’s Girl Scouts Tomorrow’s Cybersleuths

Camping and cookie sales are just the tip of the iceberg for modern scouts

Now you see it...

Cool Finds

Celebrate the Eclipse With a Color-Shifting Stamp

Your next letter just got more celestial

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna shot her own mirror selfie in 1913. The picture,taken five years before she was killed, shows a young woman of 13 looking herself in the eye, stabilizing the camera on a chair in front of a mirror.

Take a Peep at This Gallery of Historic Selfies

People have been photographing themselves almost since the dawn of the technology

Trending Today

Renewables Generated Ten Percent of U.S. Energy In March

Longer days, stronger wind and reduced electricity demand helped green energy break double digits for the first time

Canada

Canada’s New Two-Dollar Coins Glow in the Dark

The two-dollar coins celebrate the nation’s 150th anniversary and include a scene with Northern Lights that really glow

Although scientific discoveries about blood started happening in the seventeeth century, blood transfusions are (mostly) a twentieth-century thing.

350 Years Ago, A Doctor Performed the First Human Blood Transfusion. A Sheep Was Involved

Early scientists thought that the perceived qualities of an animal—a lamb’s purity, for instance—could be transmitted to humans in blood form

One concern about wind turbines is that they are noisy, but the Department of Energy notes that at a distance of 750 feet, they make about as much noise as a household fridge.

Two Myths and One Truth About Wind Turbines

From the cost of turbines to one U.S. senator’s suggestion that “wind is a finite resource”

Trending Today

Art Installation Recreates the Smell of Cities Around the World

The Pollution Pod project emphasizes the unequal air quality divide between rich and poor cities

In the war years, Greyhounds were crowded with travelers, leading planners to look at a new technology: helicopters.

In a Fit of 1940s Optimism, Greyhound Proposed a Fleet of Helicopter Buses

“Greyhound Skyways” would have turned major cities into bustling helicopter hubs

Pasteur took blood samples from a cow, a sheep and a horse who had died of anthrax.

How Sheep’s Blood Helped Disprove This Wacky Nineteenth-Century Theory of Illness

Scientists didn’t understand that bacteria caused disease, but then enter Louis Pasteur

The dachshund leaps down with his prize.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

In 1913, One Gluttonous Pupper Changed the Course of Animation History

Years before “Steamboat Willie,” this animated dog hammed it up onscreen

Compare two paintings of zebras with new IIIF functionality.

Cool Finds

This Tool Makes it Easy to Compare Art From Different Museums

IIIF frees images from the confines of individual websites

Some of the 3,000 commemorative letters sent in the first Postal Department rocket mail are still around. Some made it into the National Postal Museum's collection.

Mail Delivery By Rocket Never Took Off

Although the Postmaster General was on board with the idea of missile mail, the Navy was ultimately less interested

Black soldier fly larvae

Trending Today

Got Food Waste? Get Some Maggots

In just a few hours, these tiny crawlers can eat more than their weight in food

The floating solar power station in Anhui province

Trending Today

China Turns On the World’s Largest Floating Solar Farm

Floating on a lake over a collapsed coal mine, the power station in Anhui province can produce 40 megawatts of energy

Trending Today

Abused Animals in Connecticut Get Their Own Legal Advocates

Last week, for the first time, a lawyer testified in court on behalf of abused pit bulls

Paratroopers from the 1st Allied Airborne land in Holland during Operations Market Garden, September 1944.

Meet the Daredevil Parachutist Who Tested the First Nylon Parachute 75 Years Ago

Adeline Gray was just 24, but she was already an experienced parachutist and a trained pilot

The interior of the 1876 Glaciarium

The First Artificial Skating Rinks Looked Pretty But Smelled Terrible

Before the technology to reliably freeze water existed, the first rinks used pig fat and salts

Recent research found that fully one third of humanity can't see the Milky Way because of light pollution

Is Light Pollution Really Pollution?

As countries grow richer, light pollution gets worse–but some are fighting to change that

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