The great museums of the world harbor a secret: They’re home to millions upon millions of natural history specimens that almost never see the light of day. They lie hidden from public view, typically housed behind or above the public...

Stripes are common in our lives. It’s a pretty basic pattern, and easy to take for granted.

As an applied mathematician who studies how patterns form in nature, though, I am wowed by the striped patterns the zebrafish wears across its body and fins.

Take a closer look...

Hurricane Florence, now a tropical depression, has dropped record-setting rainfall on parts of North Carolina. Many river gauges show waterways above flood stage. Flash and long-term flooding, as well as a risk of landslides, are expected...

Cuando caen las primeras gotas de lluvia del verano al suelo caliente y seco, ¿acaso notas el aroma?

Recuerdo muy bien mis primeros años de niñez. Entre mis familiares había unos campesinos que solían decir que anticipaban las tormentas, antes de que...

When hurricanes like Florence make landfall, the first things they hit often are barrier islands – thin ribbons of sand that line the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It’s hard to imagine how these narrow strips can withstand such forces, but in fact, many of...

Hurricane Florence may affect the operations of several of the 16 nuclear reactors located in the Carolinas and Virginia, raising concerns about safety and power outages. Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University...

More children are being held in immigrant detention centers in the U.S. than ever previously recorded, according to The New York Times.

The number of immigrant children in detention has risen to about 12,800, the Times reports, a significant increase from 2,400 in 2017. Here are 4 stories from our archive that will help readers understand some...

Tonight, some 554,000 people in the U.S. will be homeless.

Many of them live on the West Coast, where Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is launching a new fund that plans to fight the problem. Part of the US$2 billion donated by Bezos will be spent “to provide shelter and hunger support to address the...

Rare-earth elements, including neodymium and yttrium, are not actually rare – more common, in fact, in the Earth’s crust than copper and tin. But, because they are scattered widely, and hard to separate from their surrounding ores, mining and refining them is...

I’m an art historian and professor who studies and teaches French Romantic art. So when I was in France this past summer, I made sure to see the Louvre’s retrospective exhibition of French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.

In the galleries, I...