Word: smithsonian
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...Showing that they're black hadn't been done before. It's a fundamental property of black holes," said Michael R. Garcia, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics...
...clone's birth, other wildlife researchers express doubts about the project's conservation claims and think the wrong message is being sent. "We do not believe that cloning has any relevance to the routine management and conservation of endangered species," says David Wildt, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. Instead, Wildt favors low-tech methods, like the artificial insemination used to breed the endangered black-footed ferret, which is now being reintroduced to the American West. "Our laboratory works all over the world with the rarest of species," he says...
Many of MacCready's daydreams involved nature's largest flying creation, the pterodactyl, which disappeared with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In 1986 a MacCready-inspired, wing-flapping, computer-brained, radio-controlled and astonishingly realistic pterodactyl was photographed as it swept over Death Valley, Calif., for the Smithsonian Institution's IMAX film On the Wing. Today his Gossamer Condor hangs alongside the Wright Brothers' Flyer and Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, which also includes the Gossamer Albatross and the pterodactyl in its permanent collection...
Turning his eyes earthward, and in consort with General Motors, MacCready conceived the Sunraycer, a solar-powered electric car that averaged 41 m.p.h. in a 1,867-mile race across Australia, finishing two days ahead of its nearest competitor. It too became part of the Smithsonian's collection and was the forerunner of the AeroVironment-designed Impact, an experimental GM battery-powered electric car that in turn evolved into the electric EV-1 auto, which GM is leasing to customers in California and Arizona...
This is a breakthrough of astronomical proportions. Whereas for years scientists have had only one Hubble-quality telescope, they will soon have access to more than a dozen. "What's been happening in the telescope game," says John Huchra, a veteran observer and a professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "is incredible...