In the age before plastic surgery, masks were the best option for veterans with faces scarred by war. The end results, however, were somewhat uncanny.

Probiotics are a hot topic--and big business--these days. But do they really work?

Remembering an early academic effort to define sexual orientation and gender identity as variable natural phenomena, rather than moral matters.

Huge monuments to national pride are regaining popularity. One scholar suggests this might also indicate a larger cultural shift.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was an adventuring naturalist who named 2,700 genera and wrote about evolution before Darwin. Why has he been forgotten?

After World War I, policymakers seriously considered the idea of setting up farming colonies for returning veterans.

One bioethics scholar wonders if modern medicine is in danger of pathologizing what are painful, but normal, human experiences.

Spider silk is as strong as steel and as light as a feather, but attempts to industrialize its production have gotten stuck, so to speak.

For some species of octopus, reproducing is a lonely act that ends in death.

A linguist explains why we get so distracted by the fiery language of politics, while ignoring urgent information reported by scientists.