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Smart News / Smart News Science

Pandamonium

Panda Habitat Is Severely Fragmented, Placing Pandas at Risk

Despite recent habitat improvements, roads and development are isolating panda populations

Scientists drilled under the waters around New Zealand to find evidence of a lost continent

“Lost Continent” Rises Again With New Expedition

Zealandia sank beneath ocean tens of millions of years ago, but scientists are pulling up remnants of it to study how it used to be

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Wolf Pups Spotted Near Rome for the First Time in Decades

The animals were once hunted to the brink of extinction, but are now recovering

A comparison of the man's brain activity before and after he had vagus nerve stimulation.

New Research

Experimental Treatment Partially Awakens Man in Vegetative State

Scientists are hopeful but cautious about the initial results of the test

An artist's impression of ripples in the fabric of space-time formed from the collision of two black holes.

Scientists Detect Fourth Gravitational Wave, Homing in on an Ancient Black Hole Collision

By triangulating measurements, scientists could soon detect these once elusive energy bursts on a weekly basis with greater precision than ever before

New Research

Botanic Gardens May Be Endangered Species’ Best Bet

Survey shows the institutions preserve one third of Earth’s plant life and 40 percent of endangered plant species

This plant-eating dino joins the ranks of official California state insignia.

Meet California’s New State Dinosaur

The herbivorous creature last tromped across the state roughly 66 million years ago

Massive Iceberg Breaks Off From Antarctic Glacier

The chunk of ice is roughly four times the size of Manhattan

A horsehair worm seen in its adult state, in which it lives only to breed

Cool Finds

This Jumble of Writhing Sticks Is Actually a Bizarre Parasite

Observed flailing around in Taiwan, this so-called ‘alien’ turns out to be a horsehair worm

Jennifer Zetlan who plays Rhoda in "Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt"

Family Travel

Watch a Dinosaur Opera at New York’s American Museum of Natural History

Sink your teeth into the family friendly “Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt”

Guillaume Rondelet was an early anatomist who founded his own dissecting theater, which was a thing people did in the sixteenth century.

A Sixteenth-Century Hot Date Might Include a Trip to the Dissecting Theater

Anatomy theaters were an early site for science as spectacle

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a more modern form of IVF.

In Vitro Fertilization Was Once As Controversial As Gene Editing is Today

The scientists who pioneered it were regarded as pariahs, even within their own universities

Easter Island's famed statues could be remnants of a populous civilization

Lots of Sweet Potatoes Could’ve Made Easter Island a Bustling Place

A new agricultural analysis of the island finds that the crop could have supported more than 17,000 people

NASA Dedicates New Facility to Katherine Johnson, the Pioneering Mathematician of ‘Hidden Figures’

‘I think they’re crazy,’ the 99-year-old jokingly said of the honor

Artist's impression of 288P

New Research

Hubble Spots Strange Pair of Space Rocks in the Night Sky

The duo, dubbed 288P, may help scientists better understand asteroid evolution

Family Travel

Check Out This Awesome Trilobite Corn Maze

The elaborate Wisconsin maze honors the state’s geologic history

An illustration envisioning how the satellite OSIRIS-REx will collect rocks from the asteroid Bennu

How a Satellite Just Used Earth Like a Slingshot

On its way to study an asteroid for clues about the origins of life, OSIRIS-REx got a little boost from Earth’s gravity

"You're talking about little me?!"

Four Incredible Facts About Sea Otters

We thought you otter know these

A woolly rhinoceros painted by a prehistoric artist on the wall of Chauvet cave in France

New Research

Why Some Woolly Rhinos Grew Ribs on Their Necks

These misplaced ribs don’t grow unless something unusual is going on in the gene pool

The wings of a normal and CRISPR-edited Sara Longwing butterfly show how disabling a single gene can change the patterns

New Research

Scientists Identify the Genes That Paint Butterfly Wings

Using genetic editing, scientists isolated just two genes that play a major role in making butterfly wings as pretty as they are

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