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Tools

Because cooking chores often fall to women, they are among the primary victims of smoke-related illnesses.

Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix it?

Pollutants from crude stoves are responsible for many deaths – a D.C.-based NGO has a solution

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Photos: A Last Look at Fall

Before the weather turns cold, take one last walk in the woods with these beautiful autumn photos submitted by our readers

Frustrated by human error, mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage designed a machine to perform mathematical functions and automatically print the results.

Booting Up a Computer Pioneer’s 200-Year-Old Design

Charles Babbage, the grandfather of the computer, envisioned a calculating machine that was never built, until now

A horse touted as being from the Tang dynasty, but with only one genuine part in the unglazed underside.

Forensic Science for Antiques

Revealing art secrets—and exposing forgeries

Winslow Homer

Beneath the Surface

A high-tech investigation helps explain Winslow Homer’s staying power

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Hot Idea

Christina Galitsky’s energy-efficient cookstove makes life a little easier for Darfur’s refugees

In the Persian Gulf, authorities are concerned about terrorism as well as piracy. Coalition vessels (the Coast Guard cutter Aquidneck, behind Coast Guardsman Zachary Coone) patrol exclusion zones around Iraq's Al Basrah and Khawr Al Amaya terminals, where tankers take on millions of barrels of oil daily.

The Pirate Hunters

As buccanneering is back with a vengeance, stepped-up law enforcement and high-tech tools work to help protect shipping on the high seas

Marine archaeologists rescued the shipwrecked H.L. Hunley (above, a computer rendering) in August 2000 more than 135 years after it sank during the Civil War.

Saving Our Shipwrecks

New technologies are aiding the search for one Civil War submarine, and the conservation of another

Sometime after 1938, a forger, perhaps oblivious to the document's historic nature, tried to boost its value by painting Byzantine-style illuminations on a few of its pages.

Reading Between the Lines

Scientists with high-tech tools are deciphering lost writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes

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Tool Time

The fragments now rest in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Old World, High Tech

An ancient Greek calendar was ahead of its time

The compass has a symbolic importance transcending its utility.

Useful Gadget

The legendary explorers carried destiny on their expedition. But they could not have fulfilled is without this unprepossessing device

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Tools as Art

Welcome to the Hechinger Collection, where hammers are brittle, saws never get old and wrenches mimic baby birds

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