Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Health

China has vowed to build over 50,000 new toilets and refurbish 100,000 more in a bid to improve sanitation for tourists.

Trending Today

China Will Transform 100,000 Toilets for the Sake of Tourism

Officials vow to flush out outmoded commodes

J. Calvin Coffey holds up a model of the mesentery

New Research

Meet Your Newest Organ: The Mesentery

Scientists are calling for an upgrade in classification of this vital gut membrane

According to one group, animals consume eight times more antibiotics than human beings each year.

It Just Got Harder to Give Antibiotics to Farm Animals

New regulations take aim at antibiotic resistance

The journals that scientists consider most prestigious are often in English.

New Research

English Is the Language of Science. That Isn’t Always a Good Thing

How a bias toward English-language science can result in preventable crises, duplicated efforts and lost knowledge

Leah Desrochers, a former employee of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, holds a stranded Kemp's ridley sea turtle.

Why Are Endangered Sea Turtles Showing Up Cold and Seemingly Lifeless on Northeastern Shores?

In the past three decades, scientists have confronted a worsening epidemic of stranded Kemp’s ridley sea turtles

Dyslexia affects up to 17 percent of American schoolchildren. Researchers now believe it may be caused by difficulty in the brain rewiring itself.

New Research

Dyslexia May Be the Brain Struggling to Adapt

The learning disorder may be less a problem with language processing, and more a problem with the brain rewiring itself

Hamblin's new book uses illustrations to help explain how the human body works—and sometimes doesn't work.

The Millennial’s Doctor Releases a Handbook on Bodies

Radiologist and Atlantic editor James Hamblin provides the answers we’d hear “If Our Bodies Could Talk”

Your breath might be bad, but it's also amazing.

New Research

Your Breath Does More Than Repulse—It Can Also Tell Doctors Whether You Have Cancer

An artificial “nose” could be the next tool for diagnosing illnesses from cancer to Crohn’s disease

Violence can spread like an epidemic among impressionable teenagers, according to new research.

New Research

Violence Among Teens Can Spread Like a Disease, Study Finds

Surveys of thousands of American teens add evidence to the theory that violence spreads in communities like a contagion

How do you know when urine too deep?

New Research

Once a Year, Scientific Journals Try to Be Funny. Not Everyone Gets the Joke

Holiday editions add a much-needed dose of humor to boring journal-ese. But is entertaining readers worth the risk of misleading them?

Flickering images can induce seizures in people with epilepsy.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Why Do Flashing Images Cause Seizures?

For people with epilepsy, a flashing screen can be more than a passing annoyance

New Research

The Pokémon GO Craze Had Health Benefits—For a Little While

Though avid players walked about 11 extra minutes per day, the boost only lasted around six weeks

A bonfire of elephant ivory burns in Kenya's Nairobi National Park in July 1989.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Wondering What a Bonfire Does to Your Lungs? We Answer Your Burning Questions

Setting large piles of stuff aflame can have significant environmental and human health impacts

New Research

Caesarean Births Could Be Affecting Human Evolution

But it’s too soon to know for sure

A new study on pilots' mental health suggests the skies may not be that friendly after all.

New Research

Think Your Job Is Depressing? Try Being an Airline Pilot

New study suggests pilots are more depressed than the average American

Students of design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art have prototyped a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands.

This Digital Prosthesis Could Help Amputees Control Computers

Designers are developing a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands, like scroll and click

The Innovative Spirit fy17

This Device Could Revolutionize How Malaria Is Detected Around the World

The Magneto-Optical Detector (MOD) combines magnets and laser light to determine, in less than a minute, if a drop of blood contains malaria parasites

Trending Today

U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for the First Time in 23 Years

While it only decreased by 0.1 percent overall, eight of the top ten causes of death all saw increases in 2015

It isn't pretty, but it made history.

Cool Finds

Someone Paid $46,000 for a Bunch of Mold

Its discovery was an accident, but this scientific sample changed the course of medicine forever

There have been 38 facial transplants worldwide to date. Not all have survived.

Saving Face: How One Pioneering Surgeon Is Pushing the Limits of Facial Transplants

His reconstructed faces have tongues that taste and eyelids that blink. But will they withstand the test of time?

Page 65 of 119