Science

The white pine known as Tree 103 had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.

Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today.

Corporate deregulation has long curtailed OSHA’s power to safeguard workers.

Access to information only goes so far to explain the curious link between secrets and those who tell them.

The past provides a key lesson to minimize the damage from the omicron surge.

Plastic production just keeps expanding, and now is becoming a driving cause of climate change.

Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?

On the nineteenth-century artists and thinkers who pictured a future of abundance powered by steam.

We all can thank a 19th century Boston-born cookbook author and domestic science pioneer for revolutionizing the way recipes are replicated at home.

The ivory-billed woodpecker hasn't been seen for decades. The government is ready to declare it extinct—but at what cost?

Fifty years later, the legacy of the National Cancer Act illustrates the need for a broad approach.

Did Ancestral Puebloans watch the skies from Mesa Verde's Sun Temple? Solving its mysteries requires overcoming archaeology’s troubled past.

Counting both uninfected and infected people helps us better understand a pandemic.

The maternal health intervention from a century ago that worked.

In moving away from fossil fuels, some in aviation are thinking of bringing back helium-assisted flight.

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

Museums construct knowledge by constructing objects—literally.

Ryan White’s story both reinforced and challenged assumptions about the disease.

The challenges of 536 CE, including cold temperatures and volcanic fallout, prompted a flourishing of Ancestral Pueblo society.

A blinking cursor follows us everywhere in the digital world, but who invented it and why?

Tens of thousands of sick and injured soldiers became addicted.

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.

How a bloody gun duel between two doctors in Transylvania sparked a frenzy of outrage—and helped create the American Medical Association.

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.

In 1741, the Royal Academy of Sciences held a contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results show how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.

Scientific research and historical accounts can help us identify and dissect the threat of ‘coercive persuasion.’

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way.

The statesman was embarrassed by the mishap—no doubt a murder most fowl.

On the origins, use, and abuse of mugshots.

A friend of Henry David Thoreau, Ellen Sewall Osgood's pursuit of her scientific passion illuminates the limits and possibilities placed on the era's women.