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Cullinan Blue Diamond Necklace

The Cullinan Blue Diamond Necklace, featuring a bow motif with nine sparkling and extremely rare blue diamonds, recently joined the National Gem Collection in the […]

The post Cullinan Blue Diamond Necklace appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.




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Smithsonian Digital Repository Now Contains 10,000 Items

The Smithsonian Research Online program recently surpassed the mark of 10,000 publications in the Digital Repository. This collection of digital publications by Smithsonian staff represents a broad review of research done by researchers at the Institution.

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Smithsonian hydrologist discovers that rainfall has dried up Panama’s drinking water

To understand the long-term effects of a prolonged tropical storm in the Panama Canal watershed, Robert Stallard, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Armando Ubeda, the LightHawk Mesoamerica program manager, organized four flights over the watershed to create a digital map of landslide scars.

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500 carats of rough diamonds donated to Natural History Museum

More than 500 carats of rough diamonds were recently donated to the Department of Mineral Sciences of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum by Jewlers Mutual Insurance Co. of Neenah, Wis.

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Q&A: Smithsonian volcanologist Richard Wunderman answers questions about the Aug. 23, East Coast earthquake

Richard Wunderman is managing editor of the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network and a geologist in the Division of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian’s […]

The post Q&A: Smithsonian volcanologist Richard Wunderman answers questions about the Aug. 23, East Coast earthquake appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.




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A hot new island has just surfaced in the Red Sea. What’s going on? Smithsonian scientists explain.

The new island visible in the satellite photograph is the top of a giant shield volcano located on the rift axis in the Red Sea where the continental plates of Africa and Arabia are pulling apart.

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Magnificent Dom Pedro aquamarine to go on view in the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum

The National Museum of Natural History will permanently display the Dom Pedro Aquamarine, which is the largest single piece of cut-gem aquamarine in the world, beginning Dec. 6.

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Diamonds are a planet’s best friend? In the early universe, perhaps

Could the universe’s earliest stars have formed planets, and if so, what might they have looked like? That was the question Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics […]

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NASA, Smithsonian renew hunt for Antarctic meteorites

NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian recently renewed their agreement to search for, collect and curate Antarctic meteorites in a partnership known as […]

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Colossal diamond’s eerie glow earns it a fiery name

Several weeks before it went on display in mid-November at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, minerals curator Jeff Post stood in the museum’s […]

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Microplastics in our environment: A conversation with Odile Madden, Smithsonian plastics scientist

Odile Madden knows a lot about plastic. A materials scientist with the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, she has spent the past eight years studying plastics […]

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Scientists race to find genetic clues as malaria decimates rare Hawaiian honeycreepers

As average annual temperatures increase, mosquitoes have also been on the move—up the mountains of the Hawaiian islands. Once a refuge for native birds susceptible […]

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A new method for in situ structural investigations of nano-sized amorphous and crystalline materials using mixed-flow reactors

Structural investigations of amorphous and nanocrystalline phases forming in solution are historically challenging. Few methods are capable of in situ atomic structural analysis and rigorous control of the system. A mixed-flow reactor (MFR) is used for total X-ray scattering experiments to examine the short- and long-range structure of phases in situ with pair distribution function (PDF) analysis. The adaptable experimental setup enables data collection for a range of different system chemistries, initial supersaturations and residence times. The age of the sample during analysis is controlled by adjusting the flow rate. Faster rates allow for younger samples to be examined, but if flow is too fast not enough data are acquired to average out excess signal noise. Slower flow rates form older samples, but at very slow speeds particles settle and block flow, clogging the system. Proper background collection and subtraction is critical for data optimization. Overall, this MFR method is an ideal scheme for analyzing the in situ structures of phases that form during crystal growth in solution. As a proof of concept, high-resolution total X-ray scattering data of amorphous and crystalline calcium phosphates and amorphous calcium carbonate were collected for PDF analysis.




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The transformation matrices (distortion, orientation, correspondence), their continuous forms and their variants. Corrigenda

Appendices B4 and B5 of Cayron [Acta Cryst. (2019), A75, 411–437] contain equations involving the point group and the metric tensor in which the equality symbol should be substituted by the inclusion symbol.




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Bayesian machine learning improves single-wavelength anomalous diffraction phasing

Single-wavelength X-ray anomalous diffraction (SAD) is a frequently employed technique to solve the phase problem in X-ray crystallography. The precision and accuracy of recovered anomalous differences are crucial for determining the correct phases. Continuous rotation (CR) and inverse-beam geometry (IBG) anomalous data collection methods have been performed on tetragonal lysozyme and monoclinic survivin crystals and analysis carried out of how correlated the pairs of Friedel's reflections are after scaling. A multivariate Bayesian model for estimating anomalous differences was tested, which takes into account the correlation between pairs of intensity observations and incorporates the a priori knowledge about the positivity of intensity. The CR and IBG data collection methods resulted in positive correlation between I(+) and I(−) observations, indicating that the anomalous difference dominates between these observations, rather than different levels of radiation damage. An alternative pairing method based on near simultaneously observed Bijvoet's pairs displayed lower correlation and it was unsuccessful for recovering useful anomalous differences when using the multivariate Bayesian model. In contrast, multivariate Bayesian treatment of Friedel's pairs improved the initial phasing of the two tested crystal systems and the two data collection methods.




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Elastic propagation of fast electron vortices through amorphous materials

This work studies the elastic scattering behavior of electron vortices when propagating through amorphous samples. A formulation of the multislice approach in cylindrical coordinates is used to theoretically investigate the redistribution of intensity between different angular momentum components due to scattering. To corroborate and elaborate on our theoretical results, extensive numerical simulations are performed on three model systems (Si3N4, Fe0.8B0.2, Pt) for a wide variety of experimental parameters to quantify the purity of the vortices, the net angular momentum transfer, and the variability of the results with respect to the random relative position between the electron beam and the scattering atoms. These results will help scientists to further improve the creation of electron vortices and enhance applications involving them.




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An efficient method for indexing grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction data of epitaxially grown thin films

Crystal structure identification of thin organic films entails a number of technical and methodological challenges. In particular, if molecular crystals are epitaxially grown on single-crystalline substrates a complex scenario of multiple preferred orientations of the adsorbate, several symmetry-related in-plane alignments and the occurrence of unknown polymorphs is frequently observed. In theory, the parameters of the reduced unit cell and its orientation can simply be obtained from the matrix of three linearly independent reciprocal-space vectors. However, if the sample exhibits unit cells in various orientations and/or with different lattice parameters, it is necessary to assign all experimentally obtained reflections to their associated individual origin. In the present work, an effective algorithm is described to accomplish this task in order to determine the unit-cell parameters of complex systems comprising different orientations and polymorphs. This method is applied to a polycrystalline thin film of the conjugated organic material 6,13-pentacene­quinone (PQ) epitaxially grown on an Ag(111) surface. All reciprocal vectors can be allocated to unit cells of the same lattice constants but grown in various orientations [sixfold rotational symmetry for the contact planes (102) and (102)]. The as-determined unit cell is identical to that reported in a previous study determined for a fibre-textured PQ film. Preliminary results further indicate that the algorithm is especially effective in analysing epitaxially grown crystallites not only for various orientations, but also if different polymorphs are present in the film.




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A clouded leopard cub, a Przewalski’s horse and a red panda cub were all recently born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo

As you read here
In a 24-hour-period between July 9 and 10, 2009 a clouded leopard cub, a Przewalski's horse, and a red panda cub were all born at Smithsonian's National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia.

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Flesh Eating beetles help prepare skeletons for study at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum

John Ososky, preparator in the Osteology Laboratory at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., explains how skeletons of animal specimens are prepared for exhibtion and for study—with the assistance of nearly 1 million flesh-eating beetles.

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Antarctic Treaty Summit, Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 2009, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.

"The Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance" will be convened at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3 2009. More information on this event can be found at the Web site: www.atsummit50.aq/

To assess legacy lessons about managing nearly 10% of the Earth "for peaceful purposes only"

Find out how you can be involved:

www.atsummit50.aq

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Smithsonian team examines African remains from a colonial burial site in Maryland

Forensic anthropologists from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History discover African remains at a Colonial burial site in Maryland. Follow them as they study the remains, reconstruct the face and body, and share what they learn about the African experience in the Chesapeake in the 1600s.

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Smithsonian geophysicist Bruce Campbell explains his work of making a detailed radar map of the Moon

Bruce Campbell, of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, is at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W. Va., to make a radar map of the Moon.

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The science of panda cubs at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

When animal care staff at the Smithsonian's National Zoo need to know when to breed their pandas or when to expect a cub they turn to the Endocrine (Hormones) Research Lab at the Zoo's Front Royal, Va. facility.

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Smithsonian volcanologist Rick Wunderman talks about volcanos and the recent eruptions in Iceland

Rick Wunderman of the Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History talks about the current volcanic activity in Iceland.

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Meet Our Scientist: Dr. JoGayle Howard of the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park

Dr. JoGayle Howard of the Smithsonian's National Zoo discusses her work to breed and study one of the world's most endangered cats, the clouded leopard. More about the National Zoo's work to save clouded leopards: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/SCBI/ReproductiveScience/ConsEn...
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/support/annualappeal/cloudedleo... ... (more info)

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Smithsonian entomologist Gary Hevel gives information and advice about stinkbugs in your home

Here come the stinkbugs...With the cooler temperatures of fall the brown marmorated stinkbug begins a determined quest to find a warm place to spend the winter. Crowding around window screens and searching for other ways to get inside, homeowners in the United States will share their indoor living space this winter with millions of brown marmorated stinkbugs. In this video Gary Hevel, an entomolgist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, shares some information about these interesting creatures, as well as some advice about how to deal with those that inevitably gain entry to your home.

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Scientists at a new National Zoo laboratory use DNA to diagnose illnesses and discover new species of animals

Researchers at the Smithsonian's National Zoo's new genetics lab use animal DNA to diagnose new diseases, discover new species help in conservation efforts and solve mysteries.

The post Scientists at a new National Zoo laboratory use DNA to diagnose illnesses and discover new species of animals appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.




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Meet Our Scientist–Helen James dives into dormant Hawaiian volcanoes to find bird fossils

Smithsonian Scientist Helen James dives into dormant Hawaiian volcanoes to find bird fossils. Her work to identify these species (some new species, some extinct) helps us learn about the past--specifically, how humans might have caused the extinction of certain bird species.

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Meet our Scientist: Brian Gratwicke, Amphibian Avenger

Join National Zoo Conservation Biologist Brian Gratwicke in his work to save Panama's amphibians from extinction. You can also catch up on his dispatches from the field on the Panamanian Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project's blog: http://amphibianrescue.org/

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Device at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center examines how phytoplankton would react if the ozone layer vanished

The post Device at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center examines how phytoplankton would react if the ozone layer vanished appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.





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Many years of research are celebrated in the December 2010 birth of two cheetah cubs at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

The post Many years of research are celebrated in the December 2010 birth of two cheetah cubs at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.





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National Zoo veterinarian Katharine Hope is in charge of the health of 2,000 animals from 400 different species.

National Zoo Veterinarian Katharine Hope treats about 2,000 animals from 400 different species. She and her colleagues care for a variety of animals, from small baby flamingos to adult Asian elephants, so there's no such thing as an average day.

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Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New York State Museum, discusses a new Smithsonian Website for sharing camera-trap images of wild animals

The post Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New York State Museum, discusses a new Smithsonian Website for sharing camera-trap images of wild animals appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.






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Smithsonian geologist Liz Cottrell talks about what it takes to be a scientist.

Which is more important for a career as a scientist, good grades in math or a strong sense of adventure? Hear what Smithsonian geologist Liz Cottrell has to say as she recounts her own school years and the steps that led to a career she can't imagine ever giving up.

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Smithsonian biologist Rachel Collin visits the Universidad Austral de Chile to collect special snails for her research.

In 2010 Dr. Rachel Collin visited her colleagues at the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia to collect some very special snails for her research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama.

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