Smart News

Alice Neel, Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd, 1970

How Alice Neel's Revolutionary Portraits Put People First

A new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art features 100 of the American artist's paintings, drawings and watercolors

A tiny, aphid-like whitefly sitting on a leaf.

New Research

This Insect Has Plant DNA in Its Genome

Whiteflies have a gene only found in plants that appears to allow the tiny insects to withstand plants’ chemical defenses

By the time sauteur d’Alfort rabbits are a few months old, they learn how to walk on their front paws to accommodate their uncoordinated back legs.

New Research

Thanks to a Genetic Mutation, These French Rabbits Prefer Handstands to Bunny Hops

The unusually acrobatic sauteur d’Alfort rabbits were first discovered in France in 1935

Previously, the public only had access to about 30,000 listings of works in the Louvre’s collections.

You Can Now Explore the Louvre's Entire Collection Online

A new digital database features 480,000 works from the Paris museum's holdings

For nearly a week, salvage teams worked on freeing the beached vessel using a schedule dictated by when low tides and high tides would hit.

The Colossal Container Ship Stuck in the Suez Canal Has Been Freed

With the help of high tides, tugboats were finally able to yank the vessel loose

AstraZeneca's vaccine is approved for use in over 20 countries.

Why U.S. Approval of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Is Taking So Long

An unprecedented public exchange with a data review board is the latest of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine’s hurdles

Retouched composite image of the mural and its surroundings

Cool Finds

3,200-Year-Old Mural of Knife-Wielding Spider God Found in Peru

Local farmers accidentally destroyed 60 percent of the shrine complex that houses the ancient Cupisnique painting

Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun and husband of Nefertiti, ruled Egypt between roughly 1353 and 1336 B.C.

Art Meets Science

Is This the Face of King Tut's Father, Pharaoh Akhenaten?

New 3-D reconstruction visualizes what KV55, a mummy long thought to be the ancient Egyptian ruler, may have looked like

After five weeks of development, a human brain organoid (left) is roughly twice the size of those from a chimpanzee (top right) and a gorilla (bottom right).

New Research

Experiments Find Gene Key to the Human Brain's Large Size

The single gene identified by the study may be what makes human brains three times larger than our closest great ape relatives at birth

Gloria Steinem in her Upper East Side apartment

Virtual Travel

Take a Virtual Tour of Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem's Historic Manhattan Apartment

In honor of her 87th birthday, the speaker and activist is (digitally) welcoming visitors into her home

"Active sleep" only lasted 40 seconds but cycled after 30 to 40 minutes of "quiet sleep". These patterns are similar pattern to how mammals experience rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Like Humans and Mammals, Octopuses May Have Two Stages of Sleep

Scientists do not know if octopuses dream in color, but they do change color while sleeping

The site of the rabbit burrow has apparently been occupied by different groups over the millennia.

Cool Finds

Burrowing Bunnies in Wales Unearth Trove of Prehistoric Artifacts

Rabbits on Skokholm Island discovered Stone Age tools and fragments of a Bronze Age cremation urn

Damages wrought by climate change and deforestation have transformed the Amazon rainforest. New research suggests the changes to this icon of the natural world caused by human activity may mean the Amazon now emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs.

New Research

The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs

Climate change and deforestation have transformed the ecosystem into a net source of planet-warming gases instead of a carbon sink

Bald eagle populations have been steadily recovering since their all-time low in the 1960s when fewer than 500 nesting pairs were left.

Planet Positive

Why Bald Eagle Populations Soared in the Last Decade

In 1963, only 417 breeding pairs remained, but 71,400 active couples were recorded as of 2019

This recreated wooden building resembles one that may have housed enslaved people on John Dickinson's Dover, Delaware, plantation.

Graves of Enslaved People Discovered on Founding Father's Delaware Plantation

A signee of the U.S. Constitution, John Dickinson enslaved as many as 59 men, women and children at one time

Candida Alvarez's Estoy Bien (2017) provided the inspiration for the title of a new exhibition at El Museo del Barrio.

How a Sweeping Survey in NYC Redefines What It Means to Make 'Latinx' Art

A new triennial at El Museo del Barrio features a wide range of works by 42 artists and collectives

Hawai'i's location in the subtropical Pacific makes it susceptible to northeast trade winds that bring infrequent rain showers with clear skies in-between that create optimal rainbow viewing conditions.

Hawai'i Is Officially the Best Place on Earth to See Rainbows, According to Science

The geographic location and topography of the islands create beautiful views

A 300-thread count sari woven out of a hybrid Dhaka muslin thread

How Modern Researchers Are Trying to Recreate a Long-Lost Fabric

Dhaka muslin was immensely popular for millennia, but the secrets of its creation faded from memory by the early 20th century

The juvenile walrus spent two days resting in Pembrokeshire, Wales before returning to sea.

How Did This Walrus Get to Wales?

The same walrus might have stopped briefly in Denmark and Ireland

L to R: Anna, the eldest van Gogh sister; Elisabeth, or Lies; and Willemien, the youngest, who was better known as Wil

New Book Details the Lives of Vincent van Gogh's Sisters Through Their Letters

The missives reveal that the Impressionist artist's family paid for his younger sibling's medical care by selling 17 of his paintings

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