Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Chemistry

These deficiencies are just the starting point for much bigger problems.

New Research

Climate Change Could Lead to Nutrient Deficiency for Hundreds of Millions

Carbon dioxide decreases zinc, iron and protein in food crops, which could add millions of people to the billions who don’t get enough nutrition

Biobot Analytics is tracking the use of opioids, neighborhood by neighborhood, by analyzing the sewage in Cary, North Carolina.

Sewage May Hold the Key to Tracking Opioid Abuse

Public health managers are hoping to pinpoint how and when people abuse drugs in order to prevent deaths

New Research

Ancient Mayan Clearcutting Still Impacts Carbon in Soil Today

Even 1,000 years after a forest regrows, the soil beneath still won’t hold as much carbon as it once could, a new study suggests

FOG (fats, oils and greases) in various stages of treatment

Turning Fatbergs Into Biofuel

Researchers have developed a new method for recycling greasy sewer blockages into green fuel

Extreme weather events likely had severe consequences, depleting harvests and weakening humans and livestock alike

Animal Fat Found in Clay Pottery Reveals How Ancient People Adapted to Drought

Neolithic farmers switched from cattle to goat herding, abandoned communal dwellings for smaller households to adjust to new climate

Do you smell something, Bob?

New Research

Ocean Acidification Is Frying Fish’s Sense of Smell

By the end of the century, the ocean is predicted to become two-and-a-half times more acidic, which is bad news for sea life.

Elephants relax at the Jejane watering hole, with no bees in sight.

New Research

How the Scent of Angry Bees Could Protect Elephants

A new study shows elephants fear bee pheromones, and this fact could keep the pachyderms out of crops

Noctilucent clouds.

New Research

Climate Change Is Responsible for These Rare High-Latitude Clouds

A study shows that methane emissions are responsible for the increase of noctilucent clouds, which glow eerily at night

Is there hope for B.O.?

Will a New Discovery About Body Odor Lead to Better Deodorants?

Biologists now understand a key part of the molecular process that results in body odor—and deodorants might just be able to disrupt it

New Research

Pink Was the First Color of Life on Earth

Researchers have found bright pink pigments in 1.1 billion year old fossils of cyanobacteria drilled in West Africa

New Research

Our Galaxy Is Really Greasy and Smells Like Moth Balls

A new study estimates that a quarter to half the carbon in interstellar space is in the form of greasy aliphatic carbon

Installing the water harvester

This Device Pulls Water Out of Desert Air

A new water harvester can extract water from extremely dry air, using only solar energy

Prototype of one of the magnets that will be used in the upgraded Large Hadron Collider.

Trending Today

The Large Hadron Collider Is Getting A Huge Power Boost

A multi-year upgrade will lead to up to 10 times the collisions, and perhaps the discovery of mysterious new particles

Among the colorful characters immortalized in the colorless daguerreotype medium are (clockwise from upper left): writer Henry Thoreau, Seneca leader Blacksnake, Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, mental health crusader Dorothea Dix, showmen P.T. Barnum and Tom Thumb, and actress Charlotte Cushman.

How Daguerreotype Photography Reflected a Changing America

The National Portrait Gallery brings the eerie power of a historic medium into focus

New Research

How a Copper Coin Mummified a Baby’s Hand

The preemie was buried in a jar in an medieval cemetery with a coin to “pay” for passage into heaven

How to Calculate the Danger of a Toxic Chemical to the Public

The risk of any toxin depends on the dose, how it spreads, and how it enters the body

The Nazi atomic effort relied on work done in this remote lab.

How a Sneak Attack By Norway’s Skiing Soldiers Deprived the Nazis of the Atomic Bomb

Seventy-five years ago, in Operation Gunnerside, a stealthy group of commandos took out a crucial Nazi chemical plant

At La Pasiega in Spain, the scalariform, or ladder shape, composed of red horizontal and vertical lines (center left) dates to older than 64,000 years.

New Research

Were Neanderthals the Earliest Cave Artists? New Research in Spain Points to the Possibility

Archaeologists pushed back the date of cave paintings at three sites to 65,000 years ago—20,000 years before the arrival of humans in Europe

Material scientist Liangbing Hu (left) holds wood stronger than titanium and tougher than steel after a two-step process. Mechanical engineer Teng Li (right) holds an untreated block of the same wood.

New Research

New Super Wood Beats Metals in Feats of Strength

A new method combining chemical, pressure and heat treatments can create ultra-dense material that is stronger than steel

Perhaps all this little bug needs is a few good swats.

New Research

Swatting May Teach Mosquitoes to Avoid Your Scent

Though it won’t work for all species, Aedes aegypti mosquitos seem to have a memory for near-death experiences

Page 13 of 24