There is little doubt that human activity is affecting planet Earth, but just how much? And is it all negative? Rick Potts is the director […]

The post Smithsonian anthropologist Rick Potts answers questions about the Anthropocene appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

These striking images of six insect heads and mouthparts were drawn from fossils by Conrad Labandeira, Curator of Fossil Arthropods (insects and related animals) at […]

The post Prehistoric mouthparts appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center has just launched a new series of 15 short educational videos titled “Ecosystems on the Edge,” which mainly focus on […]

The post “Ecosystems on the Edge” on Youtube appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are celebrating the birth of a female Przewalski’s (Cha-VAL-skee) horse—the first to be born via artificial insemination. The […]

The post First wild horse species born from artificial insemination at Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

To download the free e-book Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age, by G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian, […]

The post Smithsonian secretary on the future of museums, libraries and archives appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

It is one of the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom but what its owner seeks is no pungent bed of roses, in fact […]

The post Study shows turkey vulture is doubly blessed with acute vision and sense of smell appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

An international team of astronomers has discovered the first Earth-mass planet that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star. KOI-314c is the lightest […]

The post Newfound planet is Earth-mass but gassy appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

After years of sleuthing for clues about where and when pantherine felids (“big cats”) originated, a Smithsonian scientist and an international team of researchers are […]

The post Smithsonian scientist confirms missing link in big cat evolution appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute rung in 2014 with the hatching of the most endangered species in its collection—a Micronesian kingfisher—Jan. 1. The chick, whose […]

The post Micronesian kingfisher chick hatches at the National Zoo’s Conservation Biology Institute appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The galaxy known as M87 has a fastball that would be the envy of any baseball pitcher. It has thrown an entire star cluster toward […]

The post Star cluster thrown out of its galaxy appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The practice of selectively fishing male blue crabs in the Chesapeake—intended to give females a chance to reproduce—may have a hidden cost. A Bay without […]

The post With too few males, blue crab population may be put at risk appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds. By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for […]

The post Finding ET by searching for alien air pollution appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand […]

The post Biological fallout of shale-gas production still largely unknown appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

What is a planet? For generations of kids the answer was easy. A big ball of rock or gas that orbited our Sun, and there […]

The post Is Pluto a planet? The votes are in appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In the wild, wide milk chocolate-brown stripes adorn the beautiful smooth, white shells of the chambered nautilus, a deep-diving mollusk from the Indo-Pacific Ocean. But […]

The post Nautilus shell deformity puzzles scientists appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

1. Some male spiders just want to be eaten Black widows are known for cannibalizing their mates, but this doesn’t actually happen all the time. […]

The post Eight strange but true spider facts appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The genomes of modern birds tell a story of how they emerged and evolved after the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years […]

The post International team maps ‘big bang’ of bird evolution appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) may have detected the dusty hallmarks of an entire family of Pluto-size objects swarming around an adolescent […]

The post Swarms of Pluto-size objects kick up dust around adolescent star appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Eaten raw and thinly sliced, the dark-red belly meat of the Pacific bluefin tuna is highly prized—and priced—for its rich oily flavor by sashimi and […]

The post Desire for Pacific bluefin puts fish on red list of threatened species appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new DNA study of ancient corn kernels and cobs from archaeological sites across North America has settled a long debate as to exactly where […]

The post Corn entered Southwest U.S. first along highland route, DNA shows appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Giant pandas. Grizzlies. Polar bears. You’ve probably heard a lot about these bear species, but what about Andean bears? To the Quechua and Aymara, the […]

The post 6 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Andean Bears appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

An international team of researchers from the United States and Germany have discovered a key missing link in the evolutionary history of turtles. The new […]

The post Key Link in Turtle Evolution discovered appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Size isn’t the only thing that’s small about the pygmy sloth―its population is too. But scientists at the Smithsonian say things may be looking up […]

The post Study reveals more Pygmy Sloths, But There Still Aren’t Many appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The odds of being attacked and castrated by a variety of parasitic flatworms increases for marine horn snails the farther they are found from the […]

The post Parasitic flatworms flout global biodiversity patterns appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

From patterns etched into the skin of an ancient mummy to the colorful designs that adorn people today, tattoos are not just skin deep; they […]

The post Tattoos: Telling Stories in the Flesh. Q&A with Lars Krutak appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

New fossils found in Northeastern China have revealed a remarkable evolutionary coincidence: an extinct group of insects known as Kalligrammatid lacewings (Order Neuroptera) share an […]

The post Remarkable butterfly look-alike lived 50 million years before butterflies appeared appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A social media celebrity was born last week when the bright lights and camera of NOAA’s remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer zoomed in on a […]

The post Ghost octopod shows how little we know about deep-sea life appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Nocturnal, solitary and fiercely territorial the adult Egyptian pigmy shrew—one of the smallest mammals on earth—weighs just 7 grams. French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire first […]

The post Sacred shrew mummies reveal species distribution in ancient Egypt appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The results are in, 2016 is going to be a good year for blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. An iconic figure embedded in the […]

The post Smithsonian Expert Urges Caution, Patience on Blue Crab Recovery appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…and you know the rest, probably even if you’re not a huge fan of […]

The post Five things only a conservator would know about the USS Enterprise appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

 The distant planet GJ 1132b intrigued astronomers when it was discovered last year. Located just 39 light-years from Earth, it might have an atmosphere despite […]

The post Venus-like Exoplanet Might Have Oxygen Atmosphere, But Not Life appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen […]

The post The Milky Way’s blowout bash 6 million years ago! appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

For the first time in 25 years, primate staff at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are celebrating the birth of a male Bornean orangutan. He was […]

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Amid efforts to restore native oyster populations on the West Coast, how are oysters expected to fare under climate change in the decades and centuries […]

The post Climate Change May Benefit Native Oysters, but There’s a Catch appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Whales from both poles migrate long distances to breed in tropical waters. Smithsonian scientist Hector M. Guzman and Fernando Félix at the Salinas Whale Museum […]

The post Whale tagging in Southeast Pacific provides data for species protection appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Fetching close to $1,500 per pound, ivory ranks fourth in black-market traded items just behind illegal drugs, weapons, and humans. Governments across the globe are […]

The post New technique may help authorities quickly ID real and fake ivory products appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Sometimes there’s just no telling what will turn up at the local market. Fish biologist Jeff Williams of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History […]

The post Surprise: Distinctive new surgeonfish species makes an improbable debut appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new project using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes allows people to navigate through real data of the remains of an […]

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Every day, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics depend on computers to help them solve the mysteries of the universe, just as they did […]

The post Underpaid women “computers” mapped the universe in the 19th century appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In the early 20th century, Canada geese were considered endangered in the U.S. So in the 1950s and 1960s, birds from the Midwest were released […]

The post Study of bacteria inside guts of wild Canada geese shows greater danger than earlier studies exposed appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Smithsonian scientists have joined NASA and other organizations this summer to do something incredible: launch a spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, into space and have […]

The post A solar probe is on its way to touch the sun. The Smithsonian built the tool that will measure the sun without melting appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Leucocyte common antigen-related protein (LAR) is a post-synaptic type I transmembrane receptor protein that is important for neuronal functionality and is genetically coupled to neuronal disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To understand the molecular function of LAR, structural and biochemical studies of protein fragments derived from the ectodomain of human LAR have been performed. The crystal structure of a fragment encompassing the first four FNIII domains (LARFN1–4) showed a characteristic L shape. SAXS data suggested limited flexibility within LARFN1–4, while rigid-body refinement of the SAXS data using the X-ray-derived atomic model showed a smaller angle between the domains defining the L shape compared with the crystal structure. The capabilities of the individual LAR fragments to interact with heparin was examined using microscale thermophoresis and heparin-affinity chromatography. The results showed that the three N-terminal immunoglobulin domains (LARIg1–3) and the four C-terminal FNIII domains (LARFN5–8) both bound heparin, while LARFN1–4 did not. The low-molecular-weight heparin drug Innohep induced a shift in hydrodynamic volume as assessed by size-exclusion chromatography of LARIg1–3 and LARFN5–8, while the chemically defined pentameric heparin drug Arixtra did not. Together, the presented results suggest the presence of an additional heparin-binding site in human LAR.

As command module pilot for the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971, Al Worden spent six days orbiting the moon, including three days completely alone, the most isolated human in existence. In Falling to Earth, Worden tells for the first time the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career.

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A selection of fascinating facts about fishes from the new book "Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide"

The post Five funky and 5 fun facts about fishes appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.