Word: smithsonian
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...burning of the Amazon could have dramatic effects on global weather patterns -- for example, heightening the warming trend that may result from the greenhouse effect. "The Amazon is a library for life sciences, the world's greatest pharmaceutical laboratory and a flywheel of climate," says Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution. "It's a matter of global destiny...
Perhaps indicative of modern Japanese attitudes is a question posed by a member of the Japanese contingent to a Smithsonian Institution symposium on the ethics of whaling. The representative asked how a whale differed from a mosquito, not to argue that both should receive protection but that both are expendable. "The Japanese don't seem to accept the concept of sustainable development," contends conservationist McManus, "((the idea)) that there can be a middle ground between total exploitation or total protection...
...space because there is no air or other medium to carry them. So when the waves reach the surface of the sun from below, they bounce back into the interior, where the greater heat bends them toward the surface again. The result, says astronomer Robert Noyes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is a "sun ringing like a bell, but not one that is being struck by a clapper. Rather, it is vibrating somewhat like a bell suspended in a sandstorm, continuously struck by tiny grains of sand...
...TIMUR AND THE PRINCELY VISION: PERSIAN ART AND CULTURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington. The reigns of the legendary warlord Timur (known as Tamerlane in the West) and his successors produced some of Islam's finest paintings, ceramics, carvings and other works, all richly sampled here. Through July...
...asteroid orbits the sun, but it takes about 380 days to do so, instead of 365. When the asteroid passes by again next April, it will probably be at a safer distance from the earth. The next time earthlings need to worry, says astronomer Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory, who calculated the orbit based on Holt's observations, is 2015. "If our figures are correct," he says, "the asteroid will have made 25 orbits to earth's 26, and we will meet again...