Archive | materials science

Digital technology allows Alexander Graham Bell’s 1880s disc recordings to be played again

Digital technology allows Alexander Graham Bell’s 1880s disc recordings to be played again

In 2011, scholars from three institutions—National Museum of American History Curators Carlene Stephens and Shari Stout, Library of Congress Digital Conversion Specialist Peter Alyea and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Scientists Carl Haber and Earl Cornell—came together in a newly designed preservation laboratory at the Library of Congress to recover sound from those recordings made more than 100 years ago. [...more]

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Siemens donates SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner to National Museum of Natural History

Siemens donates SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner to National Museum of Natural History

With the gift of a Siemens SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner from Siemens Healthcare, Smithsonian researchers are acquiring information about museum objects that is fundamentally changing the way scientists examine specimens [...more]

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Video: Zen and the art of fine art conservation: Behind the scenes in the Freer Gallery’s art conservation lab

Video: Zen and the art of fine art conservation: Behind the scenes in the Freer Gallery’s art conservation lab

What's possibly the most calming yet nerve-racking job in the world? Come behind the scenes of the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art to find out! [...more]

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New technique for dating silk developed by Smithsonian conservation team

New technique for dating silk developed by Smithsonian conservation team

Now, for the first time scientists at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute have developed a fast and reliable method to date silk. [...more]

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Unlocking the mysteries of Jefferson’s bible with high-tech analysis and microscopic testing

Unlocking the mysteries of Jefferson’s bible with high-tech analysis and microscopic testing

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, more commonly known as the Jefferson bible, is a volume created by Thomas Jefferson containing passages he chose from the four Gospels of the New Testament. Jefferson cut these passages out and pasted them on to blank pieces of paper which were then bound into a book. [...] [...more]

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Digitization project brings ancient Near Eastern inscriptions into 21st Century

Digitization project brings ancient Near Eastern inscriptions into 21st Century

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives announces a new 3-D digital resource that will enable scholars and the public to learn more about the ancient Near East through a unique group of pressed-paper molds called squeezes. [...more]

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After a bulldozer unearthed five statues in Ain Ghazal, Jordan in 1984, Smithsonian conservators carefully restore these otherworldy figures

After a bulldozer unearthed five statues in Ain Ghazal, Jordan in 1984, Smithsonian conservators carefully restore these otherworldy figures

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Smithsonian Digital Repository Now Contains 10,000 Items

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. [...more]

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This fossil represents a new genus and species of extinct aneuretopsychid, Jeholopsyche liaoningensis, recently described in a paper in the journal ZooKeys by Conrad Labandeira of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Dong Ren and ChungKun Shih of the College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing. The aneuretopsychidae are a family of long-proboscid insects that lived in Asia from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The paper documents the first formal record of fossil Aneuretopsychidae in China. The new fossils reveal previously unknown and detailed structure of the mouthparts, antennae, head, thorax, legs and abdomen of this distinctive insect lineage.

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