Word: smithsonian
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Lining the Mall are the Smithsonian museums, which are crowded, fascinating and, best of all, free. The two biggies are the National Gallery of Art and the Air and Space Museum...
Kirshner and his three co-workers, John P. Hughes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA), Stephen R. Heathcote from the Cerro Tololo Observatory and Frank Winkler from Middlebury College, published these findings in the January 5 issue of Nature magazine. The cover of the famous periodical shows a picture created by Kirshner portraying his theory of the double supernova explosions in Puppis...
...Astronomical Roots), a program taught in 18 schools in 13 states. STAR is based on the premise that books are abysmal tools for learning science. "It's impossible to understand an astronomy diagram without using three dimensions at proper scale," says Irwin Shapiro, the irrepressible director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and the man who dreamed up STAR six years ago. "High school science textbooks are impossible. They are dense with concepts and jargon. No one understands what's going on." Adds Kenneth Mirvis, who writes STAR course materials: "This is not a curriculum...
...sustain itself. If a park or protected area is too small to support some of its animal and plant life, the ecosystem will decline even with protection. As yet, no one knows the minimum critical size of a rain forest, but in 1979 Thomas Lovejoy, now at the Smithsonian Institution, set up a 20-year experiment with the cooperation of the Brazilian government to determine just that for the Amazon region. Among the findings: the smaller the forest, the faster the decline of insects, birds and mammals...
...than at any time in human history," said Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Ecosystems will not be able to adjust so quickly, he said, "and the faster things change, the more likely it is that the impact will be negative." Warned Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution: "There will be no winners in this game of ecological chairs, for it will be fundamentally disruptive and destabilizing, and we can anticipate hordes of environmental refugees dwarfing the numbers of the Dust Bowl era or the boat people...