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Panda cub born at National Zoo to Mei Xiang
Mei Xiang (may-SHONG), the National Zoo’s female giant panda, gave birth to a cub Sunday, Sept. 16, at 10:46 p.m. National Zoo staff can hear the cub but have not yet seen it as Mei Xiang has built a...
View ArticleNew panda cub dies at National Zoo
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo community mourns the loss of the giant panda cub born Sunday, Sept. 16. Panda keepers and volunteers heard a distress vocalization from the mother, Mei Xiang, at 9:17...
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Chandra X-ray Observatory shows Milky Way is surrounded by halo of hot gas
Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to find evidence our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded in an enormous halo of hot gas that extends for hundreds of thousands of light years. The...
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First of seven mirrors completed for Giant Magellan Telescope
Scientists at the University of Arizona and in California have completed the most challenging large astronomical mirror ever made. For the past several years, a group of optical scientists and...
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Climate change may alter amphibian evolution
Most of the more than 6,000 species of frogs in the world lay their eggs in water. But many tropical frogs lay their eggs out of water. This behavior protects the eggs from aquatic predators, such as...
View ArticleSmithsonian launches Global Marine Biodiversity Project with $10 million...
The Smithsonian announced today, Oct.25, that it will launch a major long-term project to study coastal marine biodiversity and ecosystems around the globe. The project is made possible by a $10...
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Galactic thief: “I would have gotten away with it but for those meddling...
One of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way almost got away with theft. However, new simulations convicted the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) of stealing stars from its neighbor, the Small Magellanic...
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Cygnus OB2: Probing a nearby stellar cradle
The Milky Way and other galaxies in the universe harbor many young star clusters and associations that each contain hundreds to thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars. The star...
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New count reveals scrub-jay on Santa Cruz Island is among rarest bird species...
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute scientists and collaborators have found that the island scrub-jay’s population on Santa Cruz Island—its only habitat—is significantly smaller than previously...
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Today’s domestic turkeys are genetically distinct from wild ancestors
No Thanksgiving dinner is complete without roast turkey. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that consumers cook and eat more than 45 million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Very few Americans,...
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NASA Funds Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory instrument to track North...
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has been awarded a NASA project to build the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument. TEMPO will be the first space-based instrument...
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Insect mimic of ginko-like leaf discovered 165 million years after its...
A new species of hangingfly with wings that perfectly mimic the multi-lobed leaf of an ancient ginkgo-like tree has been discovered in China by scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of...
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Female “spidernaut” settles into new home at Smithsonian’s Insect Zoo
The new Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson, had only been on the job for 26 days when he got an urgent message about a special mission: retrieve the world’s first...
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Two Andean bear cubs born Dec. 13 at National Zoo
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo is celebrating the birth of two Andean bear cubs born in the early morning of Dec. 13 to 6-year-old Billie Jean. The first cub was born around 12:01 a.m. and the second...
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Panama’s slime molds get attention from Arkansas University grad student
From the first time she saw pictures of slime molds, Laura Walker was immediately intrigued. “They are so cool and so pretty,” said Walker, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas working...
View ArticleWarming climate unlikely to cause near-term extinction of ancient Amazon...
A new genetic analysis has revealed that many Amazon tree species are likely to survive human-caused climate warming in the coming century, contrary to previous findings that temperature increases...
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First of seven mirrors completed for Giant Magellan Telescope
Scientists at the University of Arizona and in California have completed the most challenging large astronomical mirror ever made. For the past several years, a group of optical scientists and...
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Scientists discover long-beaked echidna may not be a thing of the past in...
The western long-beaked echidna, one of the world’s five egg-laying species of mammal, became extinct in Australia thousands of years ago…or did it? Smithsonian scientists and colleagues have found...
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Wild ginseng in steep decline in Maryland, survey reveals: Q&A with...
After centuries of harvesting in Maryland, wild ginseng is becoming harder and harder to find. Today, a pound of North American wild ginseng roots (Panax quinquefolius) can bring as much as $1,000....
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First detailed sex video of deep-sea squid resolves long-standing mysteries...
Undaunted by the bright lights of the remote controlled sub filming their activity some 1,400 meters down in the Gulf of Mexico, the two deep-sea squid (species: Pholidoteuthis adami) maintained their...
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