Explore the Cosmos at Home
From studying light pollution to growing tomato seeds that have flown in orbit, these citizen science projects can help you and your kids enjoy the cosmos at home.
Search Results for: shelf life
Blogs and Videos
Our Resident Bloggers SciStarter Blog Video Partners Science with Sophie with Sophie Shrand Shelf Life from the American Museum of Natural History It’s Okay to Be Smart with Dr. Joe Hansen Eons from PBS Digital Studios Simon’s Cat Logic from the makers of Simon’s Cat
An Evolutionary Approach to Conserving Plant Habitats
By Mackenzie Myers (@thetiniestnail) To conserve plant habitats, a traditional approach to biodiversity—species richness, or saving as many species as possible—might not be the most effective route. Instead, vulnerable landscapes might be better served by a quality-over-quantity mindset, a recent paper from a team of UC Berkeley scientists suggests. Think of going into a grocery store. On a budget and with limited cooking time, shoppers probably don’t buy the first dozen random ingredients they see on the shelf. Rather, they find it more practical to shop deliberately, perhaps by looking…
When There Were Squid Shells
Ancient squid had shells, but now they don’t. How did that happen and why? Find out in this video about squid shells, from PBS Eons.
Language Detectives
Where did the Uto-Aztecan language originate? An interdisciplinary research project looked at a set of 100 words to understand the sound sequences of this language. Watch this video to see how an anthropologist and a computational biologist carried out this research. This is another in the Shelf Life series from the American Museum of Natural History. Museum curators Peter Whiteley, an anthropologist, and Ward Wheeler, a computational biologist, joined forces to trace the evolution of Native American languages by applying gene-sequencing methods to historical linguistics. I became fascinated by the idea…
Bioelectronic “Nose” Sniffs Out Rotten Food
Does that food smell rotten? Researchers have developed a way to detect rotten food odors that are too faint for the human nose. By Emily Rhode One whiff of spoiled meat is usually enough to let us know that we should definitely not eat it. But what about those leftovers that have been in the refrigerator for a few days and still smell ok? We could throw them away out of an abundance of caution, but that becomes an expensive and wasteful practice. Or we could cross our fingers and…
Which Dinosaur Gave Rise to Tyrannosaurus Rex?
What dinosaur was the ancestor of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex? Which dinosaur gave rise to this famous lineage?
What Is a Biobank?
What is a biobank? And why do scientists collect human tissue for research? Dr. Cathy Seiler, who manages a biobank, explains.
Dinosaur Fossils of Ghost Ranch
In more than a century of fossil collecting, paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History have unearthed fossils from every corner of the globe. But there are some sites so fruitful in dinosaur fossils that they are visited again and again by the Museum’s fossil hunters, with each generation turning up new and unexpected finds. One of those sites is New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch, home to four quarries that paleontologists from the Museum have excavated for decades. The remains of animals from the Triassic era, including dinosaurs, reptiles, and…
Language Detectives of the Americas
Shelf Life: The Language Detectives This episode of the Shelf Life video series details how two curators at the American Museum of Natural History, Peter Whiteley and Ward Wheeler, have been working to trace the evolution of Native American languages. From the American Museum of Natural History The researchers focused on the Uto-Aztecan family of languages, which have been spoken in Central and North America for millennia. Languages from this group were used in the bustling streets of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan—a city larger than 16th-century London—and spoken by nomadic…