Smithsonian articles from May 2010

Smithsonian archives from May 2010

Model moralist: Wayne Wheeler had a mission.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
May 1, 2010... SINCE HANDING IN HIS pencil five years ago as the New York Times' first public editor, Daniel Okrent has turned to the past. His 2003 book on Rockefeller Center was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in history; his latest effort, Last Call: The Rise and...

Early humanity.(Homo erectus)(Quotation)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... "These faces say to me--we are ancient, with our own animal nobility and our own primal intelligence." --Ann Stanton of Maclean, Australia, on "A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces," about busts (right: Homo erectus) created for the Museum of...

Editors' pick.(PHOTO CONTEST)
May 1, 2010... "I wanted to capture the feeling of motion and sense of scale of being atop the ride. This image stood out because of the vibrant colors with the blue sky and clouds." --Alan Penner, of Goleta, California, on his 2008 photograph taken at the...

Change agents.(climate change)(Quotation)
May 1, 2010... Whatever your political views on global warming may be, it is hard to ignore the accounts of those who are experiencing climate change firsthand. --Cleve Gray, of Bethesda, Maryland, on "Barrow, Alaska: Ground Zero for Climate Change" ...

Your kind of town.(Ridgecrest, California)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA RIDGECREST is a gem tucked away at the base of the Sierra Nevada in the high desert (above: Little Petroglyph Canyon, on the nearby China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station). A fairly young community (c. 1940), it is just...

Sum of her parts: Frances Benjamin Johnston's self-portraits show a woman who could play contrasting roles.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Biography)
May 1, 2010... FRANCES BENJAMIN JOHNSTON made her name as a photographer in the 1890s, taking portraits of the political elite in Washington, D.C.--society hostesses such as Phoebe Hearst, and the wives of President Grover Cleveland's cabinet members. At the...

Primordial fear.(WILD THINGS)(Crocodylus anthropophagus)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... Paleontologists working in Tanzania discovered fossilized bones of a two-million-year-old horned crocodile. Early humans such as Homo habilis lived in the area then, and the 16-foot croc--related to modern Nile crocodiles (above)--would have...

Night or day?(WILD THINGS)(reindeers have no sunlight-sensitive biological clocks)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... Many animals, plants and even bacteria have internal, sunlight-sensitive biological clocks that help them know when to eat and sleep. But now scientists working in Norway say reindeer lack such a clock, a first for mammals: they have no daily...

Going the distance.(WILD THINGS)(West Nile virus)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... When West Nile virus surged across the United States between 2001 and 2004, infected migratory birds were blamed for the disease's rapid expansion. Now Johns Hopkins researchers say mosquitoes themselves, which transmit the virus to animals they...

Bloom of warmth.(WILD THINGS)(Helleborus foetidus blooms in winter)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... In winter, when most vegetation has recoiled into the earth, the plant Helleborus foetidus begins to bloom. How does it stand the cold? Scientists with the Spanish National Research Council found that strains of yeast living in the flowers'...

Observed.(WILD THINGS)(Asian elephants)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... NAME: The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). WALKS: With at least two, and sometimes three, feet on the ground at the same time, according to a new study of the animal's gait at different speeds. RUNS: Not really, say the researchers, who...

Coldblooded rescue: researchers are saving the world's most endangered sea turtles by degrees.(PHENOMENON)
May 1, 2010... CAPE COD BAY churns as a frigid gust flicks froth into the air and the surf claws at the beach. I find a tangle of black seaweed on the sand, lift a handful of the wet mess and glimpse the lines of a shell. I grab more seaweed and uncover what...

Antarctica!(FROM THE CASTLE)(expedition by G. Wayne Clough)
May 1, 2010... PENGUINS WATCHED US as we waited in our "big reds" (expedition parkas) to board a plane for a three-hour flight from McMurdo Research Station to the South Pole. In 1908-09, explorer Ernest Shackleton needed 73 days to travel from near McMurdo to...

The sight of music: 3-D imaging reveals how instrument makers might recreate the sound of a stradivarius.(BEHIND THE SCENES)(violin makers)
May 1, 2010... AS AN 8-YEAR-OLD BOY in Denmark, Bruno Frohlich wanted to be a musician. He became a church organist's assistant, yearning to create the haunting sound that poured from the instrument's pipes. But Frohlich soon became more interested in how...

Snail mail: a letter that took two years to reach its destination evokes the hazards of the Pony Express.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
May 1, 2010... IN 1860, AN ILL-FATED Pony Express rider, whose name has been lost to history was crossing the trackless wastes of Nevada when he vanished, likely killed by Indians. Two years later, in May 1862, the mail pouch from that doomed mission, still...

Q & A.(INTERVIEW)(dentist Barron Hall)(Interview)
May 1, 2010... When keepers at the National Zoo noticed that Kigali, a 15-year-old female western lowland gorilla, had a fractured tooth, they called in veterinary dentist BARRON HALL, of the Animal Dental Clinic in Vienna, Virginia. He spoke with the...

What's up: visionary designers.(EDITOR'S PICKS)(Editorial)(Brief article)(Calendar)
May 1, 2010... In 1996, Joshua Silver invented Adaptive Eyeglasses (right) with syringes of fluid that allow the world's poor to inexpensively adjust lens prescriptions. See how designers address social and environmental issues in "Why Design Now?" starting...

Thar she blows.(30 YEARS AGO)(Mount St. Helens errupts)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... When an earthquake shakes Washington's Mount St. Helens on May 18,1980, it explodes with a blast that takes 1,314 feet off the volcano's top and shoots ash 80,000 feet into the air. The nine-hour eruption--which kills 57 people and levels 230...

Gas panic!(100 YEARS AGO)(Halley's comet's gas trail)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... The approach of Halley's comet--and the Earth's passage through its tail--causes a commotion in May 1910. As sales of telescopes boom, widespread panic, fueled by yellow journalism speculation about the poison gas in the tail, prompts everything...

Beaming up.(50 YEARS AGO)(invention of lasers)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... American physicist Theodore Maiman, 33, demonstrates the first optical laser at Hughes Research Labs in California, May 16, 1960. Racing many other labs to develop a working laser, a possibility predicted two years before, Maiman uses a...

Counterproductive.(50 YEARS AGO)(approval of the first oral contraceptive, Enovid)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... The Food and Drug Administration approves Enovid, the first contraceptive pill, on May 9, 1960. Previously marketed for menstrual disorders, the progestin/estrogen combination drug had been tested in Puerto Rico, Haiti and Mexico, since laws in...

Four dead in Ohio.(40 YEARS AGO)(Kent State University students)(Brief article)
May 1, 2010... At Kent State University, a weekend of confrontation between the Ohio National Guard and campus crowds protesting the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia turns tragic on Monday, May 4, 1970, when, to disperse a rally, 28 guardsmen open...

Making memories: does your memory play tricks on you? New research may explain why--and even help some people make peace with their past.
May 1, 2010... Sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Montreal on a sunny morning, Karim Nader recalls the day eight years earlier when two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He lights a cigarette and waves his hands in the air to sketch the...

Danger ahead: Africa's wildebeest migration pits a million thundering animals against a gantlet of perils, even--some experts fear--climate change.
May 1, 2010... When the grass turns brittle and the streams run dry, the wildebeests grow restless. Milling in uneasy circles, scanning the horizon, sniffing the air for distant scents, the shaggy animals move slowly north, looking for the rains that bring new...

Road taken: a venerable Vermont byway offers an unparalleled access to old New England, from wandering moose to Robert Frost's hideaway cabin.(Travel narrative)
May 1, 2010... THE ROBERT FROST CABIN LIES TEN MILES WEST of Route 100, near the midway point in the road's 216-mile ramble through valleys, woods and farmlands between Massachusetts and Canada. Although I had driven to Vermont many times to ski, I had always...

Garden of a golden age: Filoli--a lavish early 20th-century estate that is the last of its kind--harks back to when San Francisco's richest families built to dazzle.(DESTINATION AMERICA)
May 1, 2010... IN 1917, WILLIAM BOWERS BOURN II AND HIS wife, Agnes, stepped across the threshold of the Georgian manor he had built 30 miles south of San Francisco. Bourn, heir to California's Empire Mine gold fortune, had sited the estate on 654 acres and...

The soul of Memphis: despite setbacks, the Mississippi River city has held onto its rollicking blues joints, smokin' barbecue and welcoming, can-do soirit.(Travel narrative)
May 1, 2010... LOOK UP ALMOST ANYWHERE IN DOWNTOWN MEMPHIS, and you might spot a small white birdhouse perched atop a tall metal pole--a chalet here, a pagoda there. The little aviaries add a touch of whimsy to a town that has known its share of trouble....

Mark Twain in love: a chance encounter on a New Orleans dock in 1858 haunted the writer to his dying day 100 years ago.(Biography)
May 1, 2010... ON AN EMPYREAL SPRING EVENING in 1858, with the oleander in bloom upriver and early jasmine scenting the wind, the steersman for the Mississippi steamboat Pennsylvania, a bookish 22-year-old named Sam Clemens, guided the massive packet into the...

Will Work for brain scans: your dream job--part-time zombie? Candle consultant?--is only a click away.(THE LAST PAGE)(jobs in Craigslist)
May 1, 2010... YOU KNOW THOSE DAYS when your income no longer quite equals your outgo? Or when a friend suddenly discovers that Bangalore is not a party treat, but the new home in southern India of what used to be his career? That's when I turn for comfort to...