How Anna Coleman Ladd's Masks Changed Disfigured Soldiers' Lives

What could you do to help those fighting in a brutal war? At some points in history, whole nations of individuals have had to ask themselves that question: They've rationed food and supplies, restructured their careers, nursed the wounded soldiers themselves, and even monitored their own everyday speech. During World War I, an American woman named Anna Coleman Ladd used her skills as an artist to change the lives of men disfigured in the war in a profound way. See more

Who Knew a Praying Mantis Could Learn?

We vertebrates think we're so smart, and we are, comparatively speaking. But that doesn't mean other members of the animal kingdom aren't capable of complex learning — even the ones that eat their mates and have eyes that look like fencing masks. New research based on one man's observations on his nightly trip to a rooftop garden to watch a male Asian praying mantis (Hierodula tenuidentata) hunt fish suggests that we might not give invertebrates — at least not praying mantises — the credit they deserve when it comes to complex problem-solving. See More

How Free-Range Parenting Works

Insane Speed Records Are Broken at Bonneville Salt Flats

Antarctica's Spooky Cosmic Rays Might Shatter Physics As We Know It

When scientists launched a science balloon mission called the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) over the continent in 2006, a cosmic ray pinged off one of its instruments. That isn't so strange. Cosmic rays fly from deep space all the time, and ANITA can detect them and measure their energies. But on this occasion, the cosmic ray didn't come from above, it came from below. This high-energy particle had emerged from the ice and traveled upward through the atmosphere. That's not something that cosmic rays are supposed to do. See More >>>