Meet Amy Homma, the Director of Digital Learning at Art Lab+. Learn how Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has created a dynamic program to […]

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What’s an Asian small-clawed otter’s favorite enrichment toy? Anything it can get its paws on! This species’ dexterous, partially-webbed digits are adept at feeling for […]

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At the 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Armenian participants Mariam Hovhannisyan and Stepan Toroyan—who were recently married—recreated a traditional ceremony on the National Mall, with contributions […]

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In Armenia, the completion of a carpet and cutting it from its loom is a significant rite of passion for young female weavers.

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The partial federal government shutdown is one week old, but economists are still saying that its impact in Southern California and elsewhere will be limited.

Susanne Whatley: Business analyst Mark Lacter, why is that?

Mark Lacter: If you look back on the history of these things, Susanne, you see that the disputes are resolved before too much damage gets done.  As for Southern California, I notice that KPCC's Alice Walton was asking around over the weekend about the shutdown, and most folks gave it a shrug.  The regional economy is just too diversified - and not especially tied to federal employment.  You have about 46,000 federal workers employed in L.A. County in one capacity or another - that's out of a workforce of nearly 5 million.  And, now it appears as if the federal employees who have been furloughed are going to receive their back wages whenever the shutdown finally ends.

Whatley: That still might make things dicey when it comes time to pay the monthly mortgage...

Lacter: ...but at least money will be available before most folks run into serious liquidity issues.  That's what the shutdown really comes down to - inconvenience rather than dislocation.  And, you see this with the various government services affected: the E-Verify website is down - that lets business owners know whether the people they're wanting to hire can work legally in the U.S., which obviously is important.  The Small Business Administration has stopped processing loan applications, and the Federal Housing Administration is reporting delays in its loan processing, which could mean a home buyer might not complete his or her paperwork all that quickly.

Whatley: But, what if this were to go on for months?

Lacter: Well, then it would create problems, but nobody really thinks that's going to happen.  The real issue, not just nationally and regionally - but globally - is the refusal by Congress to raise the debt ceiling.  The deadline is a week from Thursday, and - of course - there's been all sorts of debate about what this would mean for the economy.

Whatley: All right, so what would this mean for the economy?

Lacter: Well, no one knows exactly.  But, then again, no one knows exactly what would happen if you fell out of a airplane without a parachute.  I just wouldn't want to test it out.  And, of course, let's keep in mind that these are manufactured crises - not reflective of anything that's going on with the real economy.  It's certainly not reflective of anything that's going on in L.A., which saw a big jump in payroll jobs for 2012 - actually it was the sharpest increase since 2005, and nearly double the national rate (that's despite an unemployment rate that remains very high in certain parts of Los Angeles).

Whatley: What about some of the big locally based companies?

Lacter: Well, if your company is publicly traded, there's a good chance your shares took a dip these past few days.  Going back to September 18, the Dow has lost almost 700 points, which - percentage-wise - is not very much, but it is reflective of how uneasy Wall Street has become.  Public companies based in the L.A. area are taking it on the chin - Disney, Amgen, Mattel, DirecTV - their stock prices are all down going back to the middle of September.

Whatley: Even so, hasn't this been a good year for the stock market?

Lacter: It has - those local companies are up anywhere from 13 percent 30 percent year to date, and the Dow is up 14 percent year to date.  Of course, the stock price of a company doesn't always match the amount of money it makes, and this year, even before worries about the debt ceiling, the numbers haven't been as good as they should be at this stage of a recovery.  And, that's why there's particular concern about next week.  You do have to wonder whether a default could have ripple effects involving trade, consumer spending, the dollar - who knows what?  Now, it's still a pretty good bet that saner heads will prevail, although there are no guarantees - and again, if worse came to worse, do you really want to be jumping out of that plane?  Guess we'll find out.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Dried specimens of nearly 800 flowering plants were acquired by the Botany Department of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History from the National Botanical Research Institute in Windhoek, Namibia, Africa. The collection includes nearly 160 specimens from the Compositae, or sunflower family.

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Follow botanist Candy Feller of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center as she conducts field work on mangrove ecosystems at Carrie Bow Cay, a Smithsonian field research station in the Caribbean.

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Now, for the first time ever, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are able to track the routes of these creatures by gluing tiny transmitters to the backs of individual bees.

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The Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered. The Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, bringing together species and software experts from across the world. Lean more at www.eol.org

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Now the Global Plants Initiativeis catapulting biodiversity research to a new level by sharing these historic plant collections in a massive online database of high-resolution scans.

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Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation first disappeared and then reappeared during the next quarter-century.

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Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt’s Nile Delta document the region’s ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

The post Fossil pollen used to augment climate record of Egypt’s Nile Delta appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Tucked into the wooded landscape and rolling hills of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., is a new forest. Six months ago, a […]

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On crime scene investigation shows, forensic scientists use remnants of genetic material to solve mysteries in a matter of hours. Researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental […]

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Is it foolish to be optimistic about our environment and its future prospects? Every day, we hear dire warnings about the health of the planet […]

The post The Argument for Environmental Optimism: Opinion by Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A tiny invasive insect from Asia might have an effect on Chesapeake Bay waters. The emerald ash borer is killing millions of ash trees in […]

The post Invasive ash borer found in Smithsonian Environmental Research Center forest; ash deaths may impact Chesapeake waters appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Millions, if not billions, of specimens reside in the world’s natural history collections, but most of these have not been carefully studied, or even looked […]

The post Using digitized Botany specimens, AI excels in simple curatorial tasks appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new aspherical scattering factor formalism has been implemented in the crystallographic least-squares refinement program SHELXL. The formalism relies on Gaussian functions and can optionally complement the independent atom model to take into account the deformation of electron-density distribution due to chemical bonding and lone pairs. Asphericity contributions were derived from the electron density obtained from quantum-chemical density functional theory computations of suitable model compounds that contain particular chemical environments, as defined by the invariom formalism. Thanks to a new algorithm, invariom assignment for refinement in SHELXL is automated. A suitable parameterization for each chemical environment within the new model was achieved by metaheuristics. Figures of merit, precision and accuracy of crystallographic least-squares refinements improve significantly upon using the new model.

One of the essential components of molecular electronic circuits are switching elements that are stable in two different states and can ideally be switched on and off many times. Here, distinct buckminsterfullerenes within a self-assembled monolayer, forming a two-dimensional dodecagonal quasicrystal on a Pt-terminated Pt3Ti(111) surface, are identified to form well separated molecular rotational switching elements. Employing scanning tunneling microscopy, the molecular-orbital appearance of the fullerenes in the quasicrystalline monolayer is resolved. Thus, fullerenes adsorbed on the 36 vertex configuration are identified to exhibit a distinctly increased mobility. In addition, this finding is verified by differential conductance measurements. The rotation of these mobile fullerenes can be triggered frequently by applied voltage pulses, while keeping the neighboring molecules immobile. An extensive analysis reveals that crystallographic and energetic constraints at the molecule/metal interface induce an inequality of the local potentials for the 36 and 32.4.3.4 vertex sites and this accounts for the switching ability of fullerenes on the 36 vertex sites. Consequently, a local area of the 8/3 approximant in the two-dimensional fullerene quasicrystal consists of single rotational switching fullerenes embedded in a matrix of inert molecules. Furthermore, it is deduced that optimization of the intermolecular interactions between neighboring fullerenes hinders the realization of translational periodicity in the fullerene monolayer on the Pt-terminated Pt3Ti(111) surface.

This work considers the scaling properties characterizing the hyperuniformity (or anti-hyperuniformity) of long-wavelength fluctuations in a broad class of one-dimensional substitution tilings. A simple argument is presented which predicts the exponent α governing the scaling of Fourier intensities at small wavenumbers, tilings with α > 0 being hyperuniform, and numerical computations confirm that the predictions are accurate for quasiperiodic tilings, tilings with singular continuous spectra and limit-periodic tilings. Quasiperiodic or singular continuous cases can be constructed with α arbitrarily close to any given value between −1 and 3. Limit-periodic tilings can be constructed with α between −1 and 1 or with Fourier intensities that approach zero faster than any power law.

This free report highlights the main facts, numbers and trends of the Russian ecommerce and e-payments markets in an international perspective.

The new Cross-Border Payments and Commerce Report 2019 – 2020 depicts the major trends driving growth in cross-border payments, cross-border commerce, and marketplaces.

Who’s Who in Payments – Complete Overview of Key Payment Providers encompasses key trends in the payments industry.

Want to understand Brazil's 70 million e-shoppers and its payments industry? The shopping habits of Brazil’s 210 million consumers have their particularities just like other countries, since each country’s payments segment adopts its own means adapted to the local culture.

The GDC Compliance Advisory Board (CAB) provides insight into how to interpret the Strong Consumer Authentication (SCA) mandate described in PSD 2 without jeopardizing data privacy concerns protected by GDPR. 

Experimental electron-density studies based on high-resolution diffraction experiments allow halogen bonds between heavy halogens to be classified. The topological properties of the electron density in Cl⋯Cl contacts vary smoothly as a function of the inter­action distance. The situation is less straightforward for halogen bonds between iodine and small electronegative nucleophiles, such as nitro­gen or oxygen, where the electron density in the bond critical point does not simply increase for shorter distances. The number of successful charge–density studies involving iodine is small, but at least individual examples for three cases have been observed. (a) Very short halogen bonds between electron-rich nucleophiles and heavy halogen atoms resemble three-centre–four-electron bonds, with a rather symmetric heavy halogen and without an appreciable σ hole. (b) For a narrow inter­mediate range of halogen bonds, the asymmetric electronic situation for the heavy halogen with a pronounced σ hole leads to rather low electron density in the (3,−1) critical point of the halogen bond; the properties of this bond critical point cannot fully describe the nature of the associated inter­action. (c) For longer and presumably weaker contacts, the electron density in the halogen bond critical point is only to a minor extent reduced by the presence of the σ hole and hence may be higher than in the aforementioned case. In addition to the electron density and its derived properties, the halogen–carbon bond distance opposite to the σ hole and the Raman frequency for the associated vibration emerge as alternative criteria to gauge the halogen-bond strength. We find exceptionally long C—I distances for tetra­fluoro­diiodo­benzene molecules in cocrystals with short halogen bonds and a significant red shift for their Raman vibrations.

An efficient synthesis of 1-aryl­isochromeno[3,4-d][1,2,3]triazol-5(1H)-ones, involving the diazo­tization of 3-amino-4-aryl­amino-1H-isochromen-1-ones in weakly acidic solution, has been developed and the spectroscopic characterization and crystal structures of four examples are reported. The mol­ecules of 1-phenyl­isochromeno[3,4-d][1,2,3]triazol-5(1H)-one, C15H9N3O2, (I), are linked into sheets by a combination of C—H⋯N and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, while the structures of 1-(2-methyl­phen­yl)isochromeno[3,4-d][1,2,3]triazol-5(1H)-one, C16H11N3O2, (II), and 1-(3-chloro­phen­yl)isochromeno[3,4-d][1,2,3]triazol-5(1H)-one, C15H8ClN3O2, (III), each contain just one hydrogen bond which links the mol­ecules into simple chains, which are further linked into sheets by π-stacking inter­actions in (II) but not in (III). In the structure of 1-(4-chloro­phen­yl)isochromeno[3,4-d][1,2,3]triazol-5(1H)-one, (IV), isomeric with (III), a combination of C—H⋯O and C—H⋯π(arene) hydrogen bonds links the mol­ecules into sheets. When com­pound (II) was exposed to a strong acid in methanol, qu­anti­tative conversion occurred to give the ring-opened transesterification product methyl 2-[4-hy­droxy-1-(2-methyl­phen­yl)-1H-1,2,3-triazol-5-yl]benzoate, C17H15N3O3, (V), where the mol­ecules are linked by paired O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds to form centrosymmetric dimers.

The com­pound poly[2-hy­droxy-N-methyl­ethan-1-aminium [μ3-cyanido-κ3C:C:N-di-μ-cyanido-κ4C:N-dicuprate(I)]], {(C3H10NO)[Cu2(CN)3]}n or [meoenH]Cu2(CN)3, crystallizes in the tetra­gonal space group P43. The structure consists of a three-dimensional (3D) anionic CuICN network with noncoordinated protonated N-methyl­ethano­lamine cations providing charge neutrality. Pairs of cuprophilic Cu atoms are bridged by the C atoms of μ3-cyanide ligands, which link these units into a 43 spiral along the c axis. The spirals are linked together into a 3D anionic network by the two other cyanide groups. The cationic moieties are linked into their own 43 spiral via N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, and the cations inter­act with the 3D network via an unusual pair of N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds to one of the μ2-cyanide groups. Thermogravimetric analysis indicates an initial loss of the base cation and one cyanide as HCN at temperatures in the range 130–250 °C to form CuCN. We show how loss of a specific cyanide group from the 3D CuCN structure could form the linear CuCN structure. Further heating leaves a residue of elemental copper, isolated as the oxide.

Physical quantities in arbitrary dimensional space can be classified into 41 types using three antisymmetries within the framework of Clifford algebra.

A new type of X-ray LLL interferometer, a `hard' interferometer, which has both a base and a `ceiling', is tested for experimental investigations. The tested interferometer has no preliminary uncontrollable moiré and can be used for object and deformation investigations.

Quaternion methods for obtaining solutions to the problem of finding global rotations that optimally align pairs of corresponding lists of 3D spatial and/or orientation data are critically studied. The existence of multiple literatures and historical contexts is pointed out, and the algebraic solutions of the quaternion approach to the classic 3D spatial problem are emphasized. The treatment is extended to novel quaternion-based solutions to the alignment problems for 4D translation and orientation data.

The inversion of X-ray reflectivity to reveal the topography of a one-dimensional interface is evaluated through model calculations.

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