This film is from the collections of the Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Clip from silent film, Beautiful Japan (1917-18), by travel-lecturer Benjamin Brodsky. Benten Festival is celebrated on Shiraishi Island. Benten (Benzaiten) is the Goddess of the Sea and one of the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan.
Exquisitely preserved in fossil sediments dating from the Middle Jurassic, the insect, newly named Juracimbrophlebia ginkgofolia, was discovered in 165 million-year-old deposits, as was the ginko-like tree, Yimaia capituliformis, the mimicked plant.
Scops mc callii, or the Western Mottled Owl, a color plate from The Birds of North America, the descriptions of species based chiefly on the collections of the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, 1860 by...
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has been awarded a NASA project to build the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument. TEMPO will measure North American air pollution, from Mexico City to the Canadian tar/oil sands, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, hourly and at high spatial resolution.
Meet Rachel Page, a Smithsonian scientist in Panama who studies frog-eating bats (fringe-lipped bats), among other topics. Her current research focuses on learning and memory in neotropical bats, combining field studies with laboratory experiments to learn about predator cognition and its effects on the evolution of their prey.
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute scientists and collaborators have found that the island scrub-jay’s population on Santa Cruz Island—its only habitat—is significantly smaller than previously believed and that it is therefore at greater risk of extinction....
Deep observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of Cygnus OB2 have been used to detect the X-ray emission from the hot outer atmospheres, or coronas, of young stars in the cluster and to probe how these great star factories form and evolve.
The newest additions at the Reptile Discovery Center at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are eight tentacled snakes, born Oct. 21 to parents that have not produced viable young in the past four years. Tentacled snakes are aquatic,...
Science Spotlight
