Smithsonian articles from June 2009

Smithsonian archives from June 2009

Positive thinking: funny-looking cells and an air of expectation.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
June 1, 2009... INGFEI CHEN, who has been writing about science and medicine for the better part of two decades, likes stories about new ideas and new ways of thinking about old problems. So an article in a scientific journal about what she calls some...

Your kind of town.(YOUR SMITHSONIAN.COM)(Spring Ho)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... MY TOWN OF 6,000 PEOPLE is, as we say, an hour from civilization in any direction. This is a good thing, we think, as it allows us to make our own fun and care for our own neighbors. We do not have a movie theater, but we have one of the best...

Greensburg greens.(YOUR SMITHSONIAN.COM)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... This is an example of the American spirit I thought we had lost (right: Greensburg resident Scott Eller and his energy-efficient new house). Thanks for setting an example of how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. --Michael Garlick, of...

Editors' pick.(PHOTO CONTEST)(Photograph)
June 1, 2009... "Within about 30 seconds the cloud was blown away by a gentle west wind." --Anthony Romero, of Camarillo, Calif., on his photograph of a fireman during a training exercise Visit our Web site to submit a photo to our 7th annual contest....

Safety causes rudeness.(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Racers used to treat each other with utmost respect, knowing that missed signals could mean death. Drivers today are no longer shy about bumping competitors out of the way, knowing that injury is not likely. --Janos Wimpffen, of Langley,...

Caption contest.(WHAT ON EARTH?)
June 1, 2009... No kidding, this photograph from the Smithsonian Institution archives depicts an actual event. But we'd still like you to write a caption for it. Please submit your entry by June 12 at Smithsonian.com/caption

Cook vs. Peary.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... Bruce Henderson {"Cook vs. Peary"} makes a convincing case for Cook having been the first to reach the North Pole. Peary comes off badly here. His refusal to transport Cook's belongings from Annoatok, Greenland, not only reflects poorly upon...

Polar controversy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... IF COOK WAS DEPRIVED of glory, consider Fridjtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer and scientist who wrote of his polar experiences in the popular book Farthest North, first published in 1897. Henderson's article credits Cook with being the first...

Who owns fossils?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... I READ THE STORY by Donovan Webster {"The Dino Wars"} with great interest. But what really got my attention was his quotation in "From the Editor." He says, "These fossils belong to all of us." Now suppose you're a South Dakota farmer and gold...

The science of artistic genius.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... IT SEEMS that Donald Olson {"Celestial Sleuth"} has too much time on his hands. All his research and speculation about the circumstances surrounding specific paintings would be better spent on other problems, such as trying to find cures for...

Chili expert not overheated.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... I ENJOY your regular profiles of ecologists, such as Brendan Borrell's story on Joshua Tewksbury and his work on wild chili peppers {"What's So Hot About Chili Peppers?"}. I don't know Dr. Tewksbury personally, but he is painted as a whimsical...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
June 1, 2009... The subject of the photograph on page 59 of the April issue was incorrectly identified as the explorer Robert Peary. It is almost certainly Lewis Lindsay Dyche, according to Dyche biographer William Sharp and Rebecca Schulte, an archivist at...

A secret of flight finally revealed.(WILD THINGS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(animal flight)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... How do birds and flying insects control a turn? According to high-speed video studies of seven species by the universities of Delaware and North Carolina, they flap, say, the right wing more vigorously than the other to start a left turn--then...

The advantage of clones.(WILD THINGS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(termite queens )(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Termite queens from a species in Japan have an unusual way of reproducing: they clone themselves, according to new genetic research from Okayama University and elsewhere. The cloned queens (left: the larger termites) accelerate the colony's...

Why a lizard loses its tail.(WILD THINGS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Lizards on Greek islands with venomous snakes shed their tails more often than lizards on snake-free islands, according to a University of Michigan-led team. It seems the threat of being injected in the tail with venom leads lizards to...

Rise of the octopus.(WILD THINGS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(octopus fossils)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Digging in Lebanon, scientists from the Freie University Berlin and elsewhere unearthed 95-million-year-old octopus fossils--the oldest, most complete specimens of their kind. Typically, a dead octopus doesn't fossilize; lacking a skeleton, it...

Observed.(WILD THINGS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(largemouth bass)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... NAME: The largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides. HOOK ME ONCE: It strikes hard and fights long, and so is prized by anglers. HOOK ME TWICE: An individual bass' likelihood of being caught depends in part on its parentage, say...

Who was that masked man? On assignment at Coney Island, Weegee brought his noir sensibility into broad daylight.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Usher Fellig)
June 1, 2009... AT 70 YEARS OLD AND COUNTING, the Parachute Jump still stands, a ghost of its former self. Built for the world's fair in 1939, the ride known affectionately as Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower has graduated to the status of official landmark. In...

An easy place: a hardscrabble son finds forgiving soil along a stretch of Mobile Bay.(MY KIND OF TOWN FAIRHOPE, ALABAMA)
June 1, 2009... I GREW UP IN THE ALABAMA FOOTHILLS, landlocked by red dirt. My ancestors cussed their lives away in that soil, following a one-crop mule. My mother dragged a cotton sack across it, and my kin slaved in mills made of bricks dug and fired from...

Lincoln login.(From the castle)(Mary Henry's diary regarding Abraham Lincoln)
June 1, 2009... LINCOLN LAY DYING, having been shot ten hours before. He breathed his last, diarist Mary Henry recorded, at 7:30 a.m. on April 15, 1865, with a "faint hardly perceptible motion in his throat.... So still was the room that the ticking of the...

Flights of fancy: in a novel collaboration, curators and filmmakers bring the Wright Flyer and other museum icons to life.(Around the Mall)(scene shooting for "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian")
June 1, 2009... THE WRIGHT FLYER--perhaps the most famous airplane in the world--rests in a place of honor on the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum. In 1903, with Wilbur Wright at the controls, it flew at an altitude of ten feet in Kitty Hawk,...

Q&A.(Around the Mall)(Amy Adams interview)(Interview)
June 1, 2009... Actress AMY ADAMS, 34, has appeared in 25 films and received two Academy Award nominations--most recently for her role as a young nun in 2008's Doubt. In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, she plays Amelia Earhart. Adams spoke with...

What's up.(Around the Mall)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... DIPLOMATIC GESTURES A buffalo horn adorned with gold and precious stones is among the 65 gifts bestowed to 16th- and 17th-century Russian czars by Turkish and Iranian diplomats. At the Sackler Gallery through September 13. SETTLE DOWN...

June anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
June 1, 2009... 20 YEARS AGO CRACKDOWN Seven weeks of protests by students and dissidents to spur democratic reforms in China end in violence June 3 and 4, 1989, when Chinese soldiers open fire on demonstrators gathered in and around Beijing's Tiananmen...

Children of the dust: born overseas to Vietnamese mothers and U.S. servicemen, Amerasians brought hard-won resilience to their new lives in the United States.
June 1, 2009... They grew up as the leftovers of an unpopular war, straddling two worlds but belonging to neither. Most never knew their fathers. Many were abandoned by their mothers at the gates of orphanages. Some were discarded in garbage cans. Schoolmates...

The social brain: does an obscure nerve cell explain what gorillas, elephants, whales--and people--have in common?
June 1, 2009... THERE WAS LITTLE CHANCE OF MISSING THE ELEphant in the room. About a dozen years after Simba died at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, a half-inch slab of her yellowish, wrinkled, basketball-size brain was laid out before John Allman, a neuroscientist...

Road warrior: French amateur archaeologist Bruno Tassan fights to preserve a neglected 2,000-year-old Roman highway in southern France.
June 1, 2009... At first glance, it didn't appear that impressive: a worn limestone pillar, six feet high and two feet wide, standing slightly askew beside a country road near the village of Pelissanne in southern France. "A lot of people pass by without...

The Triumph of Frank Lloyd Wright: the Guggenheim Museum, turning 50 this year, showcases the trailblazer's lifelong mission to elevate American society through architecture.
June 1, 2009... FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S most iconic building was also one of his last. The reinforced-concrete spiral known as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened in New York City 50 years ago, on October 21,1959; six months before, Wright died at the age of...

1934 picturing hard times: an exhibition of depression-era paintings, many by government-supported artists, reminds us how a previous generation weathered economic travails.
June 1, 2009... IN EARLY 1934, THE UNITED STATES was near the depths of what we hope will not go down in history as the First Great Depression. Unemployment was close to 25 percent and even the weather conspired to inflict misery: February was the coldest...

Hola, Buenos Aires: growing numbers of Americans and Europeans are partaking of the complex Argentine capital's unique mix of hipster energy and old-school tradition.
June 1, 2009... WHEN I MOVED HERE, you had to learn how to speak Spanish," says Wendy Gosselin, a translator from Brighton, Michigan, who runs her own business and relocated to Buenos Aires a decade ago. "Now you go into a restaurant and everyone's speaking...

Recovered ground: Gen. George S. Patton's grandson finds his calling in the ashes of his father's journals.(PRESENCE OF MIND)(Essay)
June 1, 2009... IN 1986, the year I turned 21, my father accidentally set fire to our basement. Until then he could often be found down there, in the office he'd carved out for himself in a far corner, smoking a cigar and working on his diaries. He'd been...

Words to remember: Amanda McKittrick Ros predicted she would achieve lasting fame as a novelist. Unfortunately, she did.(THE LAST PAGE)
June 1, 2009... THERE HAS NEVER BEEN a shortage of bad writers. Almost anyone can bang out an atrocious book, but to achieve fame and adulation for it takes a certain kind of genius. In this literary sub-genre, Irish writer Amanda McKittrick Ros reigns...