How 3D technology is used at the Smithsonian to create world class exhibits!

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Eastern Meadowlark (Photo by Gerrit Vyn)

The report card is in for the state of the birds in the USA. So how did we do? Certainly not an A+ or even a B, but that means there is room for improvement! What did the scientists find and how can we help? Read on.

Hawaii is the bird extinction capital of the world.

Hawaii is a paradise…of bird extinction. No place on Earth has had more bird extinctions since human settlement than the American tropical island state. Ten species of bird have gone extinct in the last 40 years and now the State of the Birds report has placed all of the native birds left, just 31 species, on the North American Bird Conservation Initiative watch list.

The lower Kalalau Valley, Koke’e State Park, Kauai, Hawaii (Photo: Alex Schwab)

So why did these birds disappear? Introduced predators like mongoose, cats and rats have played a big part. The mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in the mid-19th century in an attempt to control the large rat population in the sugarcane fields. However, since then the mongoose population has grown to large numbers without controlling the rat population. Instead these stealthy hunters decided to target much easier prey, ground nesting birds. But all is not lost as the people of Hawaii are fighting back, using predator proof-fences to keep these non-native predators away from the birds.

Feral mongoose on the island of O’ahu, Hawaii. (Photo by J.N. Stuart)

Keep Mr. Whiskers inside and save 2.4 billion birds!

We all love our little fur-babies but no matter how well-fed he is, it can be hard for Mr. Whiskers to suppress his wild side. You can help your feline friend stay on a no-bird diet by simply keeping him indoors. With an estimated 2.4 billion birds killed by cats in the U.S. each year, taking away the temptation to stray from his cat kibble diet is the biggest impact you can make on saving our native birds.

Grumpy Cat (Photo by imgflip.com)

You can storm proof your home by saving bird habitat!

You never know when another Superstorm Sandy is around the corner, but if you have a bird sanctuary nearby you might breathe a little easier. Coastal wetlands offer the best resilience to rising waters, something that coastal birds such as the endangered piping plover desperately need. Require more convincing? Talk to the residents of New Jersey! They were certainly grateful to coastal preserves for holding back the sea surge and floodwaters that threatened their homes in 2012.

Piping plover chicks (Photo: Kaiti Titherington, USFWS)

Hedwig’s family is getting smaller.

Many northern birds commonly visit the lower 48 states each year to migrate through or spend the winter. The most famous of these, the snowy owl, a species made legendary by the Harry Potter series, shift south across our borders only every few years. Scientists believe shrinking populations of snowy owl and other northern species may reflect changing climatic conditions in the Arctic. Many species are in steep decline and international efforts are underway to foster cross-border research and conservation to stop the widespread decline of our northern birds.

Put it in the trash can! Our floating garbage is killing our seabirds.

Giant patches of garbage floating out in the Pacific Ocean are not only an eyesore but also a deathtrap for many of our seabirds. In one study, more than 90 percent of northern fulmars found dead on beaches had plastic in their stomachs. When scientists looked inside the birds, they found consumer grade plastics like toothbrushes and bottle caps instead of the fish, squid and plankton they usually feed on. Don’t let your garbage become a chocking hazard for birds, put it in the trash can!

This albatross died filled with plastic items it had swallowed. (Photo by Chris Jordan)

#SOTB14

By Micaela Jemison 

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Today the Smithsonian launches its Transcription Center website to the public. The website is designed to leverage the power of crowds to help the Smithsonian unlock the content inside thousands of digitized images of documents, such as handwritten Civil War journals, personal letters from famous artists, 100-year-old botany specimen labels and examples of early American currency.

A tray of bumble bees from the National Museum of Natural History’s bee collection awaits digitization. The museum is digitizing all 45,000 specimens in its collection and using virtual volunteers to help transcribe important data found on each specimen’s tag. This data will help scientists studying declining bee populations in North America

The Smithsonian has already produced digital images for millions of objects, specimens and documents in its collection. Many of the digitized documents are handwritten or have text that computers cannot easily decipher. Transcription by humans is the only way to make the text of these items searchable, which will open them up for endless opportunities for research and discovery.

“We are thrilled to invite the public to be our partners in the creation of knowledge to help open our resources for professional and casual researchers to make new discoveries,” said Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough. “For years, the vast resources of the Smithsonian were powered by the pen; they can now be powered by the pixel.”

The Smithsonian’s collection is so vast that transcribing its content using its own staff could take decades. By harnessing the power of online volunteers that goal can become a reality. During the past year of beta testing with nearly 1,000 volunteers, the Transcription Center completed more than 13,000 pages of transcription. In one instance—transcribing the personal correspondence of members of the Monuments Men held in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art collection—49 volunteers finished the 200-page project in just one week. By some estimates, the volunteers are completing in a couple of days what it would take the Smithsonian months to complete without their help. Once a document is done, the work is reviewed by another volunteer before it is certified for accuracy by a Smithsonian expert.

Projects selected for transcription during the beta-test phase were chosen due to high demand from scientists, researchers and enthusiasts for certain items that presented accessibility challenges. For example, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has one of the world’s largest bumble bee collections—nearly 45,000 specimens. Information about each bee, such as where it was collected and when it was collected, is extremely valuable to scientists studying the rapid decline of bee populations during the past few decades. The only way to obtain this information before digitization and transcription would be for a scientist to come to the museum and read each tiny, handwritten label (often as small as 3 millimeters by 7 millimeters) and record the information. Now, with the information digitized and transcribed, scientists anywhere in the world can understand more about the population history of the bumble bee and its recent population decline. The bumble bee transcription project is currently one of the highlighted projects on the site.

Curators at the Archives Center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History chose to contribute the diary of Earl Shaffer, the first man to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. Hiking enthusiasts, naturalists and other researchers frequently consult this now fragile document. Once the diary was digitized and uploaded to the Transcription Center, members of the online Reddit community devoted to the trail promoted the project. As a result, all 121 pages were transcribed in two weeks. The diary is now available for download, allowing the public to read, study and search for key words or landmarks and reducing the need for researchers to handle the delicate artifact.

How to Volunteer

Volunteers can register online today to help the Smithsonian transcribe a variety of projects relating to art, history, culture and science, including:

For art lovers: Handwritten personal letters of artists from the Archives of American Art
Read and transcribe personal letters from artists such as Mary Cassatt, Grandma Moses and Claes Oldenburg. Transcriptions of these letters will be part of the Archives forthcoming book The Art of Handwriting. In an age of emails, texts and tweets, when handwritten letters have ceased to be a primary mode of person-to-person communication, this book will explore what can be learned from the handwriting of artists.

For armchair archeologists: Field reports from Langdon Warner
Langdon Warner was an American archeologist and art historian who specialized in East Asian art. He was also one of the Monuments Men who worked to protect monuments and cultural treasures in Japan during World War II. A professor at Harvard and Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard’s Fogg Museum, he is reputed to be one of the models for Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones.

For bird lovers: Observation notebooks of James Eike
James Eike was a Virginia bird watcher who kept impeccably detailed field observations of birds and the weather nearly every day from 1960 to 1983 near his home in Northern Virginia. In addition to being an important resource for ecologists, it also includes tidbits of cultural events from that time, including the 1969 moon landing.

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Eight conservation biologists from various organizations and institutions have found that shale-gas extraction in the United States has vastly outpaced scientists’ understanding of the industry’s environmental impact. Each gas well can act as a source of air, water, noise and light pollution that—individually and collectively—can interfere with wild animal health, habitats and reproduction. Of particular concern is the fluid and wastewater associated with hydraulic fracturing, a technique that releases natural gas from shale by breaking the rock up with a high-pressure blend of water, sand and other chemicals. Image of Wyoming’s Jonah Field, a major site of shale development. (Photo courtesy of Ecoflight.)

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 industry’s effects on nature and wildlife, according to a report in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

As gas extraction continues to vastly outpace scientific examination, a team of eight conservation biologists from various organizations and institutions, including Princeton University and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, concluded that determining the environmental impact of gas-drilling sites—such as chemical contamination from spills, well-casing failures and other accidents—must be a top research priority.

With shale-gas production projected to surge during the next 30 years, the authors call on scientists, industry representatives and policymakers to cooperate on determining—and minimizing—the damage inflicted on the natural world by gas operations such as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” A major environmental concern, hydraulic fracturing releases natural gas from shale by breaking the rock up with a high-pressure blend of water, sand and other chemicals, which can include carcinogens and radioactive substances.

“We can’t let shale development outpace our understanding of its environmental impacts,” said co-author Morgan Tingley, a postdoctoral research associate in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

“The past has taught us that environmental impacts of large-scale development and resource extraction, whether coal plants, large dams or biofuel monocultures, are more than the sum of their parts,” Tingley said.

The researchers found that there are significant “knowledge gaps” when it comes to direct and quantifiable evidence of how the natural world responds to shale-gas operations. A major impediment to research has been the lack of accessible and reliable information on spills, wastewater disposal and the composition of fracturing fluids. Of the 24 American states with active shale-gas reservoirs, only five — Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas — maintain public records of spills and accidents, the researchers report.

“The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s website is one of the best sources of publicly available information on shale-gas spills and accidents in the nation. Even so, gas companies failed to report more than one-third of spills in the last year,” said first author Sara Souther, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“How many more unreported spills occurred, but were not detected during well inspections?” Souther asked. “We need accurate data on the release of fracturing chemicals into the environment before we can understand impacts to plants and animals.”

One of the greatest threats to animal and plant life identified in the study is the impact of rapid and widespread shale development, which has disproportionately affected rural and natural areas. A single gas well results in the clearance of 3.7 to 7.6 acres (1.5 to 3.1 hectares) of vegetation, and each well contributes to a collective mass of air, water, noise and light pollution that has or can interfere with wild animal health, habitats and reproduction, the researchers report.

“If you look down on a heavily ‘fracked’ landscape, you see a web of well pads, access roads and pipelines that create islands out of what was, in some cases, contiguous habitat,” Souther said. “What are the combined effects of numerous wells and their supporting infrastructure on wide-ranging or sensitive species, like the pronghorn antelope or the hellbender salamander?”

The chemical makeup of fracturing fluid and wastewater is often unknown. The authors reviewed chemical-disclosure statements for 150 wells in three of the top gas-producing states and found that an average of two out of every three wells were fractured with at least one undisclosed chemical. The exact effect of fracturing fluid on natural water systems as well as drinking water supplies remains unclear even though improper wastewater disposal and pollution-prevention measures are among the top state-recorded violations at drilling sites, the researchers found.

“Some of the wells in the chemical disclosure registry were fractured with fluid containing 20 or more undisclosed chemicals,” said senior author Kimberly Terrell, a researcher at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “This is an arbitrary and inconsistent standard of chemical disclosure.”

The paper’s co-authors also include researchers from the University of Bucharest in Romania, Colorado State University, the University of Washington, and the Society for Conservation Biology.

The work was supported by the David H. Smith Fellowship program administered by the Society for Conservation Biology and funded by the Cedar Tree Foundation; and by a Policy Fellowship from the Wilburforce Foundation to the Society for Conservation Biology.

–from Princeton Journal Watch, by Morgan Kelly

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Investigators from Rock County, Wisconsin, are one step closer to solving the mystery surrounding the death of an unknown teenager thanks to Smithsonian scientists.

Artist’s sketch issued by the Rock County Coroner’s Office showing what John Clinton Doe may have looked like at age 16.

Christine France, a physical scientist at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, was asked to help pinpoint the region where a white male whose skeletal remains were discovered in 1995 on the bank of Turtle Creek near Clinton, Wis., may have grown up. Police estimate John Clinton Doe, so named because he was found near Clinton, was about 18 years old and had been dead for about one year before his remains were discovered by hunters. He was wearing only one Nike Air sneaker and a T-shirt bearing the logo from the English rock band Venom. France was asked by Wisconsin police “to analyze the stable isotope values in the femur bone from the unidentified individual,” she says.

Oxygen isotope values embedded in bones can indicate the geographical region where a person lived. Harnessing the power of stable isotope analysis, France was able to help police narrow their search to a teenager who likely once lived in Wisconsin, Michigan or Minnesota. While the cause of his death remains undetermined, investigators believe this new information will greatly assist in identifying the boy and hopefully resolving the case. Police have already assembled a long list of missing persons who have been ruled out as this individual.

Finding clues in the isotopes

Isotopes are variants of a particular chemical element. While all the isotopes of a given element, like oxygen, have the same number of protons in each atom, the number of neutrons differs between them. This changing number of neutrons alters the atom weight of each isotope allowing France to calculate an isotope ratio value based on the combinations of atoms of differing weight. “We created a fine powder from a sample of the individual’s femur bone. This allowed us to extract the oxygen isotopes from the bone by separating them into their different weights using our stable isotope mass spectrometer,” France said.

Christine France analyzing samples on a mass spectrometer at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute in Suitland, Md. (Photo by Melvin Wachowiak, Jr.)

Many different combinations of oxygen isotopes exist in our environment and our bodies. These variations found in the bones can help scientists identify a likely geographic location from which the individual came, based on known variations in oxygen isotopes found in drinking water.

“Water from different parts of the world, including regions within North America, have distinct oxygen isotope signatures,” France explains. “When humans drink, the water is directly incorporated into their bones. By comparing the oxygen isotope value found within the bones with an iso-map–an online website database that contains drinking water values from around the world–we can estimate the most likely geographical area the individual has been in the last 10 to 20 years.”

Jack Friess, Rock County Deputy Coroner, inspects a femur at the Rock County Coroner’s Office from which samples were taken and sent to the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute for analysis. (Image courtesy Rock County Coroner’s Office)

Oxygen isotopes are not the only elemental tools in France’s scientific toolbox when it comes to discovering the historic background of human remains. Isotopes of carbon and nitrogen also can reveal information about the diet and demographics of an individual. These indicators, however, are not as useful for modern forensic cases.

Carbon, nitrogen

“We have found that carbon and nitrogen are good predictors of race and social class in historic populations, such as those from the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries” France explains. “The types of food people ate back then were much more tightly correlated with their location and culture. Now we eat a very global diet and buy products made from all over the world, which lessens the strength of these signals in modern cases.”

Christine France working with bone samples in her laboratory at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. (Photo by Melvin Wachowiak, Jr.)

Although called upon every now and then to help police with modern mysteries, France and her colleagues specialize in developing techniques to assist archeological investigations. In their work to find the best bone isotope indicators for region of origin, racial identity and social class, France and her colleague Douglas Owsley found that these techniques can give us insight into key moments of our history. Owsley is a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

For example, “In studying military populations from the U.S. Civil War,” France explains, “we found groups of individuals who fought for the Union with isotopes that indicate they originated from the South. These were likely people who moved away from their home and decided to fight for the other side. We also saw the same for groups of Confederate soldiers. We have always known that this did occur, but where there is little or no record of these foot soldiers, isotope values can give us a hint of who these people may have been and where they might have come from.”

While investigators may never be able to put a name to some historic or modern day human remains, scientific techniques like stable isotope analysis now allows them to get a better understanding of a person’s background, which could result in a better chance of solving the mystery.

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A research team from the Smithsonian and Arizona State University have developed a new, non-destructive method using spectroscopic analysis to help unravel the complex chemistry of bird feather pigments.

Conventional methods of examining the pigments in bird plumage require destroying the feathers. This restricts the ability to study feathers from endangered species and in museum specimens. Now Raman spectroscopy has been enlisted as a nondestructive process to detect the spectral bands of light scattered by a feather and predict the most abundant type of carotenoid pigment in that feather.

Northern cardinal. Most of the bright feathers that we see flying around us, like the red feathers of a cardinal, are colored with a mixture of carotenoid pigments. Birds extract carotenoids from food and deposit them directly into their feathers.

“Most of the bright feathers that we see flying around us, like the red feathers of a cardinal or the yellow feathers of a goldfinch, are colored with a mixture of carotenoid pigments,” explains Daniel Thomas, a fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and lead author of a recent paper in the scientific journal Analytical Methods.

Familiar examples include beta-carotene, which gives the orange color to carrots, and zeaxanthin, the yellow color of corn. Birds extract carotenoids from food and deposit them directly into their feathers, like the pink astaxanthin from brine shrimp that flamingos use to make their feathers pink.

“Birds also process dietary carotenoids through biochemical pathways that alter them into new, modified carotenoids having dramatically different colors,” Thomas explains. Cotingas, for example, is a group of South American birds that eat fruit containing a yellow carotenoid pigment that they modify into a new purple carotenoid displayed in their feathers.

“Any one feather can contain a complex mixture of carotenoids, with each type of carotenoid in that mixture having a dietary origin or a physiological origin,” Thomas adds. “This means carotenoid-pigmented feathers actually contain very interesting information about the habitat, physiology and evolutionary history of a bird.”

Some of the New Zealand and Australian bird specimens from the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that were used in the study.

The brilliant coloration of a carotenoid compound, which varies widely in bird feathers, is also responsible for producing a vivid Raman spectrum. To learn which specific molecules are in a feather the scientists shine a laser beam, an intense monochromatic light source, on a feather sample, then capture the inelastically scattered light that comes back, explains Odile Madden, a materials scientist at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute and co-author of the paper. “When struck with a laser the bonds in the molecule of that sample vibrate, and in order to do that they will siphon specific quantities of energy from some of the photons in that laser.”

By measuring the difference in energy between the original laser light and the light scattered back after striking the sample, Raman spectroscopy reveals the most abundant molecules in a feather. “In many cases, bond vibrations of specific molecules have already been recorded,” Madden says. “So by matching our values to the previously recorded values we have a reasonable idea of what bond is being probed.”

The conventional method for extracting this information, a process called liquid chromatography, involved chemically draining the color out of a feather, and destroying it. Now, “using Raman spectroscopy and multivariate statistics, we can access this information without sample destruction, which gives us access to precious bird specimens that have never before had their feather pigments analyzed,” Thomas explains.

As part of their study the team tested this new method on specimens of the Petroica songbird from Oceana in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History. “These small songbirds are very brightly colored in Australia, with vivid red, orange or pink breast feathers,” Thomas explains. “In New Zealand however, the Petroica species have very muted colors, light yellow, gray or black.”

“When we studied the carotenoid pigments in the Australian birds with orange and red feathers, we discovered that they were likely making these pigments out of yellow pigments in their food. Some of the New Zealand species display these same yellow pigments, but no longer modify them to be orange or red. So, evidence from this new technique has informed us that the yellow to red or yellow to orange modification has probably been lost from the New Zealand species of Petroica.”

Why did New Zealand species of Petroica stop being red? “This is something we plan on looking into, but it almost certainly is because there was a cost associated with displaying red pigments,” Thomas says. “Whatever this cost is, the Australian species  is paying it today.”

In addition to Thomas and Madden, co-authors of this new study include ornithologist Helen James of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Kevin McGraw of Arizona State University.

Article link:

“Non-destructive descriptions of carotenoids in feathers using Raman spectroscopy,” Analytical Methods, 2014; by Daniel B. Thomas, Kevin J. McGraw,  Helen F. James and Odile Madden.

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Authoritative, intelligent and always accompanied by a young assistant, television’s Mr. Wizard brought science to America’s kids from the 1950s through 1980s with experiments using household items like eggs, balloons and coffee cans. While many may remember him from his 1980s program on Nickelodeon, Mr. Wizard’s career spanned decades. Now an important piece of Mr. Wizard has come to the Smithsonian.

This month a trove of personal papers, files and other items belonging to the late Don Herbert—Mr. Wizard—was acquired by the Archives Center of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The materials, a donation from Herbert’s daughter and son-in-law, Kristen and Tom Nikosey, will be conserved and organized by the Smithsonian’s Archives Center and are permanently available to researchers interested in Mr. Wizard and his place in American history. “The Mr. Wizard collection reveals how Herbert planned meticulously to share science with the rest of the country through children. His shows were aimed at children to really get them interested in science, and it worked,” Smithsonian Archivist Craig Orr explains.

Donald Jeffry Herbert (1917-2007) was creator and host of “Watch Mr. Wizard” (1951-1965), “Mr. Wizard,” (1971-1972) and “Mr. Wizard’s World” (1983-1990), popular television programs for children that demonstrated and explained basic principles of science and technology. “In the early 1950s Herbert used the relatively new medium of television to spread the word about science and capture imaginations,” Orr says.  “Mr. Wizard introduced a lot of people to science in an entertaining, informative way.”

Don Herbert, with a young assistant, exhibiting an example of “Living Animal Fossils” on “Mr. Wizard” in 1971.

Cool and always calm, “Watch Mr. Wizard” flickered into America’s living rooms at a critical time when science was driving many aspects of people’s lives. “The atom bomb had been developed and deployed in 1945, about six years before Mr. Wizard went on the air,” Orr says. “America was in a science race with the Soviet Union. When Sputnik, the first satellite, was launched it scared the heck out of everybody in America. People worried if we were scientifically prepared to keep up with the Russians.” Herbert’s TV show helped assuage some of those fears and went on to spark many new scientific careers. Part of Mr. Wizard’s appeal was that he never addressed a TV audience, but talked to a young boy or girl assistant whom he hosted in his studio. “This show was aimed at children but it wasn’t talking down to them, it wasn’t made all fun and giggles,” Orr says.

“As with other TV shows at the time—say Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett—Mr. Wizard had his own fan clubs,” Orr continues. “Instead of just wearing coonskin caps, kids around the country would gather and recreate experiments they had seen on TV. It was really a hands-on experience.”

Herbert’s collection at the National Museum of American History consists of material that documents his entire career as a science educator from 1951 through the mid-1980s. At its core are some six cubic feet of more than 500 files prepared for “Watch Mr. Wizard” that document the meticulous care and preparation Herbert put into each episode. Each file—one per episode—contains Herbert’s notes for the show; the day’s script; black and white photographs taken during rehearsals to plan the experiment; diagrams on graph paper of where he and his young assistants would stand and move; and notes about technical needs, such as lighting and equipment. (The original 1-inch films and kinescopes of the show were deposited with the UCLA Film and Television Archives several years ago.)

Herbert’s files also contain his research notes on the science being demonstrated. “Herbert prided himself on his scientific acumen and consulted with academics to ensure he got it right,” Orr says.

Many of Herbert’s other educational activities are equally well-documented. There are scripts for radio science shows he produced in Chicago in 1946 and1947, before he hit it big with Mr. Wizard; storyboards and film reels of the “Progress Reports” he did for the General Electric Theater; and notebooks and files relating to the 1983-1990 revival of his show on Nickelodeon, among other materials. Herbert’s papers and personal files are important to the National Museum of American History, in part, because of his relevance to other disciplines at the museum: the Physical Sciences and Chemistry collections; the Division of Medicine and Science; and the Division of Work and Industry.

“The American History Museum was originally founded as the National Museum of History and Technology. For the first 25 years our core collections were the history of technology, and technology is basically science based, so there is a strong interest in science in this museum. We don’t just collect inventions and gadgets but also information on how those things impact the wider American culture and American society,” Orr explains. –by John Barrat

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Click photo to take a tour of the 1903 Wright Flyer with Smithsonian X 3D Explorer. The Smithsonian X 3D Collection features objects from the Smithsonian that highlight different applications of 3-D capture and printing, as well as digital delivery methods for 3-D data in research, education and conservation.

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Hot spots of mercury pollution in aquatic sediments and soils can contaminate local food webs and threaten ecosystems, but cleaning them up can be expensive and destructive. Researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and University of Maryland, Baltimore County have found a new low-cost, nonhazardous way to reduce the risk of exposure: using charcoal to trap it in the soil.

Researcher Upal Ghosh spreads SediMite, a mixture containing activated carbon, onto a marsh. An activated carbon mixture, like this one, can make mercury stick to it instead of seeping into water or the food web. The alternative—digging up the soil—could devastate the ecosystem. (Photo by Cynthia Gilmour, SERC)

Mercury-contaminated “Superfund sites” contain some of the highest levels of mercury pollution in the U.S., a legacy of the many industrial uses of liquid mercury. But despite the threat, there are few available technologies to decrease the risk, short of digging up the sediments and burying them in landfills—an expensive process that can cause significant ecological damage.

In a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Cynthia Gilmour (SERC), Upal Ghosh (UMBC) and their colleagues show that adding activated carbon, a form of charcoal processed to increase its ability to bind chemicals, can significantly reduce mercury exposure in these highly contaminated sites. With funding and support from several industry and federal partners, the team tested the technology in the laboratory with mercury-contaminated sediments from four locations: a river, a freshwater lake and two brackish creeks. To reduce the harm from mercury, the sorbents also had to decrease the amount of methylmercury taken up by worms.

“Methylmercury is more toxic and more easily passed up food webs than inorganic mercury,” said Gilmour, the lead author on the study. “Unfortunately, methylmercury is produced from mercury contamination by natural bacteria. To make contaminated sites safe again, we need to reduce the amount of methylmercury that gets into animals.”

Carbon pellets sprinkled on the surface of a mercury contaminated marsh binds to inorganic mercury in the soil and significantly reduces the amount of methylmercury produced by natural bacteria. (Photo by Upal Ghosh)

Added at only 5 percent of the mass of surface sediments, activated carbon reduced methylmercury uptake by sediment-dwelling worms by up to 90 percent. “This technology provides a new approach for remediation of mercury-contaminated soils—one that minimizes damage to contaminated ecosystems, and may significantly reduce costs relative to digging or dredging,” said Ghosh, co-author on the study. Activated carbon can be spread on the surface of a contaminated sediment or soil, without physical disturbance, and left in place to mix into the sediment surface. Called “in-situ remediation,” the use of sorbents like activated carbon has been proven to reduce the uptake of several other toxic pollutants. However, this is the first time activated carbon had been tested for mercury-contaminated soils.

The research group is now testing its effectiveness in the field at several Superfund sites across the country. If successful in the field, this approach of treating soil with activated carbon may be able to reduce the risk of mercury exposure in polluted sites and subsequent contamination of food webs. –Kristen Minogue, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

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In June, Odile Madden, materials scientist at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, was a participant on a 6-day interdisciplinary expedition to a number of beaches southwest of Seward, Alaska where she experienced first-hand the marine debris and plastic pollution in this remote region. (Places visited included the Kenai Peninsula, Afognak Island, Shuyak Island, and Katmai National Park.)  Expedition GYRE, as the trip was called, hosted an international group of artists, scientists and educators to observe, document and collect marine debris from Alaska’s beaches.

NPS Park Ranger and environmental scientist Mike Fitzgerald and GYRE team member and Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute materials scientist Odile Madden remove bags and bags and bags of fishing net from what was once a pristine beach in Alaska. (Photo (c) Kip Evans GYRE)

Here, Madden answers a few questions about her journey and what she experienced for Smithsonian Science.

Q: What was Expedition GYRE’s aim?

Madden: To bring together people from different disciplines to observe the plastic marine debris problem, discuss it, explore it together and raise the awareness and dialogue about plastic in the ocean. It was organized by the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska Sea Life Center and our work will culminate in an exhibition at the Anchorage Museum opening in February. It will be mainly an art exhibition peppered with science exploring plastic in the environment.  It will deal with issues such as entanglement, floating nets and fishing gear that entangle and drown marine animals; bite-sized floating pieces—made from polyethylene and polypropylene—that are chemically inert and don’t break down in a marine animals’ digestive systems, which can cause blockage and death; and toxicity, plastics that contain harmful compounds such as phthalates and heavy metals which can leach out into the environment and build up in the food chain.

Q. What was your part in the Expedition?

Madden: First of all, as a materials scientist who studies the long term stability of polymeric materials I was there looking at the problem from the point of view of the plastic. Normally most research in this area is done from the point of view of its impact. I took along a portable laser-based Raman spectrometer and an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. The Raman spectrometer can reveal what polymers and additives a plastic is made from. The X-ray device can show us what elements are present.

When we talk about plastic pollution we attribute evil feelings, an evil character to it. But plastic is not evil, it is stuff that we make, we prioritize how to use it, we demand it. So the idea that plastic pollution is evil doesn’t lend itself to solutions. We need to begin to understand the plastics we use, to identify the material we are creating, decide what we don’t like about it and then work towards a solution.

Odile Madden with a collection of plastic buoys, fishing floats and fuel containers found on the shore of Alaska’s Blue Fox Island. The big white object on the right is a Japanese styrofoam buoy. Huge numbers of these styrofoam buoys have washed up on Alaskan shores since the 2011 tsunami, Madden says. The styrofoam buoys break apart, first into large fragments, and then smaller and smaller into tiny individual balls. Animals peck at the fragments and can easily ingest them. Light weight and static prone, the styrofoam balls are very hard to clean up. (Photo (c) Kip Evans GYRE)

Q. Can you give an example?

Madden:  Yes. On your trip we found two abandonned plastic fishing floats, one was dark green the other light blue, but both performed the same function. The green one contained a small amount of lead and was made of polyethylene. The light blue one was made of polyvinylchloride, (PVC), and we found that its plastic was full of lead. This showed there is a better alternative, you don’t need the lead (a toxic heavy metal) or PVC (which tends to include potentially toxic additives) in a plastic float so why make them from these materials?

Q. You saw a lot of fishing nets and gear on your voyage?

Madden: Yes, we saw a lot of nets washed up on beaches that were huge, massive. Derelict fishing nets are a big problem in Alaska. Although a new net may cost tens of thousands of dollars they are often cut loose or abandoned by fishing ships to float in the ocean. Drifting, they continue catching and entangling animals, and not just fish.

GYRE team member and atist Pam Longobardi collects fishing floats for an installation. (Photo (c) Kip Evans GYRE)

Once on the beach the nets get tangled in and wrapped around logs and other large pieces of flotsam and jetsam, so they are very difficult to extricate. Once extricated, however, they cannot be easily gotten rid of. Landfills won’t take them and they cost money to dispose of.

One GYRE team member, Dave Gaudet with the Alaska Marine Stewardship Foundation, is working to trace fishing nets and other fishing equipment back to their owners. It’s a tough job because this stuff is not coming from Alaska but from all over…  Asian, U.S. and other fishing operations thousands of miles out beyond the gulf. We began looking into getting chemical signatures from the nets using X-ray and Raman spectrometry and also using museum/art history provenance techniques, asking questions such as: What colors are the nets? What do their knots look like? How many fibers do the nets have and what diameter are the fibers? Gaudet had already been asking many of these questions himself, using a deductive reasoning process that I was interested to find was very similar to the processes I use in museum work.

Compiled together, all of this information may help trace these washed-up nets back to their owners and allow some kind of enforcement for abandoned nets.

Q. What other stuff was washed up?

Madden: Many other types of fishing gear, buoys, packaging, bottle caps, boxes of foam packaging, like the Styrofoam used to pack a television, and a lot of what I call unnecessary consumer items spilled from container ships. For example, we saw lots of those little red plastic flowers used on humming-bird feeders virtually everywhere. Also on every beach there were black fly-swatters with logos of American sports teams on them. During the trip we met several Alaskan residents who headed coastal cleanup projects and/or were artists. Each had a full bucket of the fly-swatters in their personal debris collection. They also had buckets of mini foam sport balls, fishing floats, etc. I brought home seven fly-swatters of my own.

These things really showed me that we [Americans] are the market for these plastics that are coming mostly from Asia. It got me thinking more now about the plastics I use. Do I really need them? How long am I really going to use items I buy?

A discarded fishing net tangled in a washed-up log at Gore Point. (Photo (c) Kip Evans GYRE)

At Hallo Bay on Katmai National Park, we participated in a beach clean-up and eventually hauled four tons of plastic trash to our boat that had been collected by National Park Service rangers along a 9-kilometer stretch of beach the week before.

Q. Is recycling all this plastic a possibility?

Madden: Many plastics break down very slowly in the environment.  Eventually objects can break apart into tiny micro-plastic particles which are virtually impossible to filter out of the environment, so recycling micro-plastics is practically impossible. We talked a lot about recycling the larger items but it’s not so easy to recycle ocean plastic because we expect it must be made immediately into something else. And this stuff has long been out in the sun, in salty water and is covered in slime, marine organisms and dirt. So you’ve potentially got a material that is going to produce an inferior product.

GYRE team members Nick Mallos, left, and Pam Longobardi, right, with Howard Ferren, GYRE expedition leader and the Director of Conservation at the Alaska Sea Life Center, heft away a bundle of packing straps that are terribly harmful and are often fatal to marine life. (Photo (c) Kip Evans GYRE)

One obvious solution is to stop this stuff from getting into the water initially, aggregating it, having a better system for aggregating it so that it can be reused at some point but not get into the ocean. I personally think that if we could accumulate it somewhere so it doesn’t have to be used right away, we’d then have that as a resource. Basic oversimplified economic theory would say that if you have a resource someone will come along and find a use for it.

For me visiting Alaska was a kind of “nature reset” because it is so vast and clean. Living near waterways like Sligo Creek or the Anacostia River that can be choked with plastic and a fair amount of other garbage, you begin to expect to see it and accept it. Getting back to Alaska where it is clean and vast you see that plastic is out of place. My first few days back it was more difficult to accept what I call the fouling of the urban environment.

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What can you do to bring some of the Smithsonian’s 137 million objects to life? Put them in 3-D!

This is a full-time job for two of the Smithsonian’s very own “laser cowboys,” Vince Rossi and Adam Metallo, who work in the Smithsonian’s 3D Digitization Program Office. They work hard to document, in very high three-dimensional detail, many of the institution’s many priceless and important collections so that the objects are available for research, education and general interest.

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Recent spectroscopic analysis of macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus) crest feathers and king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) neck feathers have shown they contain a yellow pigment that is chemically distinct from all other molecules known to give color to feathers. “Penguins use the yellow pigment to attract mates and we strongly suspect that the yellow molecule is synthesized internally,” explains Daniel Thomas, a fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and lead author of the study recently published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

The vibrant yellow pigments found in the crest feathers of the macaroni penguin are chemically distinct from the five known classes of avian plumage pigments. This feather is in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Daniel Thomas)

Using Raman spectroscopy Thomas and colleagues identified part of the molecular structure of this new pigment and hope to completely describe it in the near future. “At its very essence” explains Thomas, “Raman spectroscopy is a study of the way light and matter interact, and very specific interactions tell us about the chemistry of a sample.” The penguin pigment “is distinct from any of the five known classes of avian plumage pigmentation and represents a new sixth class of feather pigment,” Thomas says. “As far as we are aware, the molecule is unlike any of the yellow pigments found in a penguin’s diet.”

In birds, most yellow, red and orange plumage colors are easily linked to diet, Thomas explains. “Canaries are yellow because they eat seeds, fruits and insects that contain yellow carotenoid pigments. Canaries that eat a carotenoid-free diet have white feathers.”

Macaroni penguins, Hannah Point, Livingston Island, Antarctic Peninsula (Photo by Jerzy Strzelecki)

Parrots however are an exception. The red, orange and yellow pigments in the feathers of parrots, are synthesized internally and are not dependent on diet, Thomas says. Penguins can now be added to the list with parrots of birds that internally synthesize yellow feather pigments.

Although the yellow penguin pigment has only recently been discovered to have unique properties, it is by no means new, Thomas points out. “Very likely it has been made by penguins for more than 13 million years, and was possibly displayed by the extinct South American penguin Madrynornis mirandus”.

Co-authors of the paper “Vibrational spectroscopic analysis of unique yellow feather pigments in penguins,” with Thomas, include Helen James of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Odile Madden of the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute; Cushla McGoverin of Temple University; and Kevin McGraw of Arizona State University. –John Barrat

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For more than a half-century, a six-foot tall granite cube and obelisk with a 150 to 200 pound marble slab insert marked the grave of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Following damage to the original monument and a government campaign to replace it, the original tombstone, including the marble slab, was presented to the University of Missouri, located in Columbia, Mo.

Thomas Jefferson’s original grave marker. The marker, which has been stored at Missouri University for the past 130 years, will be restored by the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute.

Missouri University was the first public university in the Louisiana Purchase Territory that Jefferson had been instrumental in acquiring, and university officials supported a curriculum and concept of higher education similar to those of Jefferson. In fact, the University of Missouri was modeled from the University of Virginia.

The tombstone was officially dedicated at Missouri University on July 4, 1885, and the marble slab was stored in the university’s Academic Hall until the building burned in 1892. The marble slab has been in the current administrative building, Jesse Hall, since it opened in 1895.

Now, nearly 130 years after the university received the marker, university officials and officials at the Smithsonian Institution are transporting the marble slab, which contains the original epitaph written by Jefferson himself, to the Smithsonian for extensive restoration.

Jefferson wrote a detailed description of his grave marker as well as the inscription.

“It’s irresistible. Thomas Jefferson himself wrote what he wanted written on the stone. Scholars find it interesting that he left out the fact that he was president, among other accomplishments,” said Carol Grissom, senior objects conservator at the Museum Conservation Institute, a conservation research laboratory that serves the entire Smithsonian. Grissom is leading the restoration project

“Could the dead feel any interest in Monuments (sic) or other remembrances of them,” Jefferson wrote. He continued, saying that he would prefer a “plain die or cube . . . surmounted by an Obelisk. (sic)”

Jefferson also dictated the words on the marble slab:

Here was buried

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of American Independence

Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom

& Father of the University of Virginia

“Jefferson was a major proponent of public higher education,” said Kee Groshong, vice chancellor for administrative services emeritus. “The university made a case to his family that this would be an ideal place to display his original grave marker. We believe we should take care of it and display it for everyone to see and enjoy because it is a very interesting piece of history.”

Once at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, Grissom and her team will remove the plaque from a wooden box that it has been stored in since the 1890s. The restoration team will analyze the piece first to determine exactly why the stone is deteriorating. Grissom said that the top 1/8 inch of the plaque is separating in places and the corners seem to be disintegrating.

“We will examine some samples using the scanning electron microscope and conduct other analyses,” Grissom said. “We also know that the stone was previously broken, so we might try to take it apart first to get a better look at the internal damage. We’re also interested to identify where the stone came from — was it something that was imported, domestic or local? The information is historically significant, but it could also affect the treatment of the stone.”

It is anticipated that the project will take at least a year to complete. Following the restoration, the stone will be returned to Missouri University, where it will be displayed permanently.  –Christian Basi, Missouri University News Bureau

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“The Age of Plastic: Ingenuity + Responsibility” a public Smithsonian Symposium that will take an uncommon look at the most common of materials. On Thursday, June 7 and Friday, June 8 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., leading experts in the fields of art conservation, technology, food, wildlife  reproduction and other fields will gather to discuss plastic and   its significance, impact and how to document and preserve its history. For a full list of speakers and schedule of events click here. This image shows an albatross that died filled with plastic items it had swallowed. (Photo by Chris Jordan)

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