Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

The remains of an exploded White Dwarf star

King Philip IV of Spain makes a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’s looking good for a 400 year old monarch!

Have you checked out the Smithsonian’s fantastic website and videos of Women in Science?

How NASA creates those amazing Hubble photographs.

Facebook helps scientists identify nearly 5,000 species of fish!

Dung beetles have favorite flavors of poop!

A fun (I know, whoda thunk it?) and complete chart on different levels of radiation in the world.

The New York Times strongly criticized The Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, “Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains,” and The Brooklyn Museum responds.

A gorgeous photo and explanation of an exploding star.

NASA’s looking for smart high school students. One could be you!

Hans Rosling argues that the greatest invention of the industrial revolution is the washing machine, because it sparked a revolution of literacy. A fantastic video.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

"Home of Mrs. American Horse" by John C.H. Grahill

The Sonic hedgehog gene is responsible for polydactylism in Hemingway cats. Obviously.

America’s oldest known wild bird is a new mama!

John C.H. Grabill’s beautiful and poignant photographs of the American West are now available to the public.

Think you can write a hexapod (6-legged animal) haiku? You have until March 20th to submit you entry to NC State University’s Insect Museum!

New archaeological sites being found using Google Earth.

I wish this Carl Sagan Astronom O’s cereal was real.

A new henge has been found next to Stonehenge.

A beautiful article on the origins of animals.

It turns out, a child couldn’t have painted that.

A 10,000 year-old human skull and mastodon remains were found in an underwater cave.

Excavating a giant anthill.

The harvester ant colonies we have in Colorado look pretty impressive, too.

The physics of prune-y fingers.

What if you could live in a museum?

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

Out of Context pulls out single sentences from scientific papers.

When they come across a dead fish, they snuggle their sinewy bodies down into its cavities and stay there, writhing blissfully.

Is the world entering a new geologic epoch? Perhaps. Some scientists are arguing that the era we live in now should be called the Anthropocene, due to the extreme influence of human actions on the environment and climate.

This mosaic of the biodiversity of Mo’orea really is infinite. Start clicking and see how deep you can get.

Do you look like the most typical person in the world? What about one of the average faces of women in 40 different countries?

Think that oysters are the only mollusks that make pearls? It looks like nautaloids may have been making them 400 million years ago.

Half a dodo was found in a museum drawer. It makes you wonder what might still be hiding in our own museum collection…

Artists reconstruct a new picture of Otzi, the Iceman, based on new genetic information of humans 5,000 years ago.

And The History Teachers sing about Otzi to the tune of The Beatles “Taxman.”

Some of the nicest ten minutes you can spend – listening to David Attenborough’s Life Stories podcasts.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

A set of mystery false teeth

Scientists are developing a common language that will let dolphins and humans communicate with each other.

Seaweed may Earth’s oldest plant.

Do you know who these enameled and filigree gold false teeth belonged to? If you do, there’s a reward for $500. And even if you don’t, a good enough made-up story could still win you some money.

A new dinosaur has been given the nickname “Thunder Thighs.”

Are you smarter than an 8th grader? Probably. Are you smarter than an 8th grader from 1895? Maybe not…

How far is the Moon from the Earth?

Beautiful photographs of a trip around the world looking at human affects on climate change and biodiversity loss.

Timelapse video of wild animals consuming an elephant.

New photographs of the Moon.

Scientists hope to recover Amelia Earhart’s DNA from envelops she liked more than 70 years ago.

Who came first, the walking cactus or the arthropod?

The Oklahoma House voted down a bill that would have allowed teachers to elect not to teach evolution

Science can create the illusion that you have three arms. And you’ll believe it!

Robots train for the world’s first full robot-marathon.

A hedgehog-like mammal uses its quills to communicate.

An 11,500-year-old house is uncovered in Alaska, along with the oldest human remains yet discovered in northern North America.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Cultural Interpretation

A false toe found on the mummy Tabaketenmut

The Chevron Corp. has been ordered to pay at least $8.6 billion in restitution for its pollution of the Amazon.

It’s imaginary…for now…but what if bees worked for the police?

The Montana State Legislature introduces a bill on global warming that describes the climate change as “beneficial.”

How much money would it take to catalog all the remaining unknown organisms on Earth? Over $200 billion U.S.

Speaking of cataloging all life on Earth, have you heard about the Barcode of Life Project?

Some of van Gogh’s vibrant yellows are turning brown. The reason? A chemical reaction never before seen in paint.

An essay on the importance (and irresponsibility) of the language used to describe and discuss “undiscovered” tribes.

Check out Myrmecos, the blog of biologist and wildlife photographer Alex Wild.

You eat over 100 trillion genes every day. Yum!

Some Egyptian mummies have false toes – and it looks like they worked when the people were alive.

And ancient Homo sapiens had spring-loaded heels.

And Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, appears to have moved more like modern humans than we once thought.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

Calcite crystal invisibility

Last Sunday, two spacecrafts’ journey to the Sun that’s taken over five years was completed. For the first time in history, we can see images of the entire Sun.

A new species of psuedoscorpion, Cryptogreagris steinmanni, has been discovered in Colorado.

Did you ever wonder what microorganisms have a comfy and cozy home in your bellybutton? The North Caroline Museum of Natural Sciences gives you a peek!

Documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog, famous for Grizzly Man, has a new film opening in March: Cave of Forgotten Dreams. For the film Herzog was granted unprecedented permission to film inside Chavet Cave, the site of the world’s oldest known cave paintings.

A New York Times editorial piece on the history of the idea of extinction.

The terrible notion that a piece of God’s creation could be swept off the face of the Earth only became a reality on January 21, 1796, and it was a body blow to Western orthodoxy.

Almost all of your hugs last 3 seconds, no matter where you’re from, or how much you like or dislike the person you’re hugging.

A potato by any other name… An international team of scientists has created a guide to the over 600 scientific names used to describe only 4 species of potato.

A new whale hybrid has been discovered in the Arctic.

Speaking of hybrid animals, do you know about the pizzly bear?

A prehistoric toolkit found in the United Arab Emirates has been dated to be 125,000 years old, over 55,000 years before modern humans were thought to have migrated out of North Africa.

Invisibility crystals are making the fantasy of invisibility cloaks a reality.

Dr. Seuss would be proud. Scientists have shown that a non-Newtonian fluid like Seuss’s “oobleck” could have plugged the Macando oil well.

Have you seen the museum’s own “oobleck” in action?

An elegant and eloquent letter to Congress on the state of climate change.

From the Archive: Vertical Files Online!

by Lesley Drayton, Curator, Local History Archive

Did you know that one of the treasure troves in the Fort Collins Local History Archive is the collection of over 3,800 vertical files available to folks like you who are curious about local history?  These many file folders have been assembled over a long period of time and are continually expanded by Archive staff and volunteers. They cover a wide range of topics and are some of the most requested items by researchers interested in local history.

Check out our “Miles O’ Files”

The Subject Files are handy packets of information containing newspaper clippings, student papers, government reports, and more. They are a great place to start researching local topics like the sugar beet industry or neighborhood schools.

The Biographical Files contain clippings and reports on individuals and families from Fort Collins history. Some files include family histories created by researchers and donated to the Archive.

The Ephemera Files are organized by subject and surnames and include fragile primary source materials like calling cards, original advertising, pamphlets, receipts, and building abstracts.

In the past, the contents of these files were only available for perusal by visiting the Local History Archive in person, but Archive volunteers have embarked on a scanning project to put the key contents of some of the most popular vertical files online. Please note that these online resources are for educational use only and may not be duplicated or re-published.

Check out our first foray into virtual vertical files with the “Auntie” Elizabeth Stone Collection.

More files are being scanned for research purposes, including information on the Fort Collins Trolley, Annie the Railroad Dog, and the Virginia Dale Stage Station. Stay tuned for more online resources to make your journey into Fort Collins history easier than ever!

And be sure to visit the Fort Collins History Connection to explore the research collections and exhibits already online.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Interpretation

"Moora," the reconstruction ofa 2,600 year old girl

June Medford, a CSU biologist, is designing plants that can detect and react to the chemicals used to make explosives.

This Superbowl Sunday, members of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and the Milwaukee Art Museum will have more riding on the game than just town pride: each museum has put up a painting as a wager.

Jonathan Blaustein’s photo essay explores how much food you can get for a dollar.

Farrah Fawcett’s famous red swimsuit is going to the Smithsonian.

The National Archives discovers  that the date on a document signed by Abraham Lincoln was deliberately changed.

Have you seen the old Coronet instructional short films from the 1940s through the 1970s? Classics include “Social Courtesy,” “Dating: Do’s and Don’ts,” “How Honest are You?” and “I Want to be a Secretary.” Watch them at Archive.org.

Google launches “Street Views” of museums.

A sweet story of a family and their ant farm.

Check out this video of Montreal’s pop-up Museum of Possibilities.

Has your home been hit by the huge snowstorm that’s covered 30 states. Check out these images of the storm from space.

The favorite food of a new subspecies of pitcher plant isn’t insects, it’s bat poop.

The 2,600 year-old skull of a teenage girl has been reconstructed.

A small asteroid is passing close by Earth today.

Egyptian citizens work to protect Cairo’s cultural resources.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Cultural Interpretation

Arc Attack

 

An interview about the new Native Arts exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. In this exhibit, the focus shifts away from an encyclopedic representation of Native art to a look at the career of one artist.

A 19th century house in France that was sealed up for 100 years has now been opened as a museum.

John Scapes spent thirty years creating a replica of a 1895 Chicago “Main Street” in his basement.

A little jelly called the “Pink Meanie” is so different from other jellies that scientists have created a whole new Family – Drymonematidae – to classify it.

Paleontologists have found the first “one-fingered” dinosaur.

If you really want to, research now shows you can go up to 15 months without washing your jeans and not have any serious health risks. If you really want to…

The Artful Amoeba compares the British and American versions of Life, and I have to say I agree with her conclusions.

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the astronomy inaccuracies in Titanic, and how he got James Cameron to re-edit the night sky.

The performance group Arc Attack performs the Dr. Who theme using two giant Tesla coils.

Film editor and sound engineer Walter Murch explains, using physics, biology and evolution(!), why 3-D movies make our brains work too hard.

Colorado State University is developing video cameras that work like the human brain.

Friday Quick Links

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Cultural Interpretation

Have you read the book Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania and Other States That Never Made It? It’s a great book, and is now even better because it’s a YouTube channel all about the almost-history of Lost Dakota, Deseret, Lincoln and more.

An inventor has designed a new amusement park ride called “Rings of Saturn.” I get queasy just watching the model!

Curious about what would Celtic beer have tasted like 2,550 years ago? Archaeobotanist Hans-Peter Stika of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart has found evidence of how it was made.

Scientists have figured out how to impose mind-control on nematodes using lasers.

Looking for food in Siberia? 19th century indigenous nomads raided rodent caches for stores of seeds, nuts, roots and bulbs (and the occasional rodent).

Want to study physics through the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics? Well you can, and for free!

Amoebas may be the world’s smallest farmers (note: these amoebas are commonly known as slime molds, making slime molds good at both farming and urban planning).

Evidence of the oldest domesticated dogs in North America has been found…in ancient human poop.