Bumblebees solve a puzzle no one taught them
A challenge long thought to separate humans and a few clever vertebrates from the rest of the animal kingdom has a new and unlikely contender:…
Author: The Smart Reader Staff
Briefs and quick reads selected and edited by The Smart Reader's editorial team.
Why your chatbot costs so little
The price of AI has nothing to do with how hard the question is. A chatbot charges the same for a birthday poem as for…
Face paint that can read your heartbeat
The colorful tiger painted on a patient’s arm isn’t a temporary tattoo — it’s a working medical sensor. Engineers at Penn State University have developed…
The Founding Father’s English farmhouse
The man whose signature anchors the U.S. Constitution came from a family that began in a Tudor farmhouse in the English Midlands — a house…
The silent danger of heating season
As furnaces switch back on for the year, so does the risk of a poison no one can see or smell. Carbon monoxide is colorless…
How Texas lost a 10-foot giraffe for two weeks
It is not easy to hide a giraffe. Gracie, who stands 10 feet tall and weighs at least 1,200 pounds, managed it for nearly two…
Bowling together: Why work is more than a paycheck
Ask someone what a lifetime of work gave them, and notice how rarely they begin with the money. They start with people. The lunch table…
IBM’s worst day, brought to you by the AI boom
On July 14, IBM had the worst day in its history. Its stock fell about 25 percent and roughly $69 billion in value vanished in…
The submarine that attacked New York — in 1776
The first submarine attack in history did not involve steel, engines, or torpedoes. It involved a hand-cranked wooden barrel, a single exhausted volunteer, and a…
Meet Jimothy, the raccoon shaped like a little ball
When Kiana Hall spotted something waddling across a Seattle field, she thought she was looking at “an orb with really long legs.” Then it turned…