Chris Strachwitz [1931 - 2023] founder of Arhoolie Records, crisscrossed the United States photographing and recording musicians where they played.
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-chris-strachwitz-captured-american-music-where-it-was-made-18098
▻https://48hills.org/2023/11/been-here-done-gone-arhoolie-records-chris-strachwitz-snapped-our-musical-h
►https://seenthis.net/messages/889643
#Chris_Strachwitz #photographie
Les cténophores ou cténaires sont des organismes marins carnivores transparents et à symétrie rotationnelle. Ils sont planctoniques et pélagiques et représentés par près de 150 espèces, répandues dans tous les océans du monde.
Comb Jellies May Be the World’s Oldest Animal Group | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/comb-jellies-may-be-the-worlds-oldest-animal-group-180982209
A new study suggests that ancestors of comb jellies, not sponges, were the first to break off from the common ancestor of all animals
When “Common Scolds” Were Punished With Ducking Stools | Katie Dancey-Downs
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-authorities-dunked-outspoken-women-in-water-180980428
In early modern England, women accused of being “common scolds” were immersed in rivers and lakes while strapped to contraptions known as ducking stools Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Race and America: why data matters | Financial Times
▻https://www.ft.com/content/156f770a-1d77-4f6b-8616-192fb58e3735
When Yeshimabeit Milner was in sixth grade in Miami, Florida she was suspended for three days after talking back to the teacher in a technology class. Milner was devastated — but the episode also led to an epiphany. A few years later, she began to collect data on suspensions in a neighbouring school and found that black children like her were four times more likely to be suspended than white children. This was the beginning of her life as a data activist.
–—
Black students in US nearly four times as likely to be suspended as white students | US education | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/08/us-education-survey-race-student-suspensions-absenteeism
lack students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as white students, according to new federal data.The sweeping bi-annual survey of more than 50 million students by the US Department of Education found that suspensions overall have dramatically decreased by nearly 20% between the 2011-12 and 2013-14 school years.
–---
W.E.B. Du Bois’ Visionary Infographics Come Together for the First Time in Full Color | History | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-in
fter three decades of emancipation, the gains made by African-Americans, those that existed at all, presented a decidedly mixed picture about the state of racial progress in the country. The political obstacles were voluminous, with the failure of Reconstruction still lingering, and Jim Crow institutional racism ascendant. In 1897, the United States Supreme Court would rule in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate was indeed equal. All the while, new generations of African-Americans found ways to uplift themselves, despite discrimination, through grassroots efforts in education, work and community building.
Exploration au scanner 3D de La jeune fille à la perle de Wermeer.
Researchers Reveal Hidden Details in Vermeer’s ’Girl With a Pearl Earring’ | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hague-shares-new-insights-vermeers-girl-pearl-earring-180974775
Le scan lumière visible en 10 milliards de pixel (avec des visualisations 3D de détails) :
▻https://www.micro-pano.com/pearl/index.html
Vidéo explicative (en french globish)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaZYTwmjwU
Scientists Create a Buzz With the First Ever Global Map of Bee Species | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-create-buzz-first-ever-global-map-bee-species-180976348
The map reveals that bee species diversity is highest in dry, treeless ecosystems away from the equator and the poles. (Orr et al. / Current Biology)
Source:
Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution: Current Biology
▻https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(20)31596-7
The Trailblazing French Artist Rosa Bonheur Is Finally Getting the Attention She Deserves
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/redemption-rosa-bonheur-french-artist-180976027
The richest and most famous female artist of 19th-century France, Marie-Rosalie Bonheur lived and worked here at her small Château de By, above the Seine River town of Thomery, for almost 40 years. The atelier is a reflection of her life, frozen in time. Her worn brown leather lace-up boots, matching riding gaiters and umbrella sit on the chair with her artist’s smock. The walls are cluttered with her paintings, animal horns and antlers, a Scottish bagpipe, and taxidermied animals—a small stuffed crocodile, the heads of deer and antelope and of her beloved horse. Stuffed birds sit atop a cupboard, while a stuffed black crow with flapping wings looks as if it is about to take flight.
[…]
Today she is largely forgotten. Mention her name to Parisians and they are likely to evoke the sites in the city named after her—a nightclub-boat on the Seine, a creperie in the Jardin des Tuileries, and a bar-restaurant in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Her chateau is not cited in most guidebooks of the area, even though the vast royal chateau at Fontainebleau, one of the country’s top tourist attractions, is only a few miles away. Her painting Haymaking in the Auvergne, in the Fontainebleau chateau, sits in a room open to the public for only a few hours a month.
Today she is largely forgotten
et pourtant...
Après, faut reconnaître que les scènes de bonheur rural avec des bœufs et des moutons qui respirent le bon air de l’activité agricole, à part pour décorer les salles des mariages des mairies, c’est pas le truc le plus à la mode…
ah ah @b_b ce tableau est vraiment absolument monstrueusement môche, je crois l’avoir vu au musée d’Orsay, il est assez gigantesque pour s’étaler affreusement sur tout un mur alors qu’on ne trouve dans ce musée, par exemple, que quelques œuvres de Camille Claudel.
Je suis pour le mettre à l’envers.
héhé @touti à l’envers ou pas, je ne vois que la terre :)
What Scientists Know About How Children Spread #COVID-19 | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-scientists-know-about-how-children-spread-covid-19-180975396
... the studies to date about COVID-19 and children have been too small or too compromised by factors such as school closings, lack of testing or much smaller community caseloads than the United States.
The Cartographer Who Mapped Out Gotham City | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cartographer-gotham-city-180951594
Gotham City is the perpetually dark comic book metropolis of alleys, asylums, caves, mansions, and of course, Batman. The Dark Knight of DC Comics celebrates his 75th anniversary this year but Gotham didn’t become the hometown of the Caped Crusader until 1940, when Batman co-creator Bill Finger named the city for the first time in Batman No.4. In the early days of comics, cities weren’t much more than rooftop set pieces and vaguely defined skylines, and Batman was ostensibly fighting crime in a generic city with a vague resemblance to New York, but, as Finger has said, “We didn’t call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it.” However, since its inception Gotham has gained an identity as complex and unique as any real American metropolis and is now more closely associated with a single character than any other city in comics. Capital-M Metropolis comes close perhaps, but Superman’s city is nowhere near as interesting as Gotham, in part because Gotham has something that makes it more fully realized and more consistent in its representation than any other fictional city in comics or film: a map.
Gotham City limits were defined in 1998 in preparation for the “No Man’s Land Story” story arc, during which the city was cut off from the United States after nearly being destroyed by a cataclysmic earthquake. It was the comic book version of Escape from New York. However, before DC Comics could destroy Gotham City, there had to be a Gotham City to destroy. Enter artist and illustrator Eliot R. Brown, the cartographer of Gotham.
The Virus Study That Helped Us Understand #COVID-19 | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/virome-manhattan-jeffery-shaman-columbia-covid-19-180975172
“This is, I hate to say, the big one,” he says. “This is the most disruptive thing that we have seen since 1918. I sit back some days and think, ‘I can’t believe we’re dealing with this now.’”
Fathers Recognize Their Babies’ Cries Just as Well as Mothers | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fathers-recognize-their-babies-cries-just-as-well-as-mothers-2350091
It’s often believed that nobody can recognize a baby’s cry as accurately as his or her mother, but a study published today in Nature Communications by a team of French scientists led by Erik Gustafsson of the University de Saint-Etienne found that fathers can do it equally well—if they spend as much time with their offspring as mothers do.
When the researchers split the data along gender lines, they found something interesting. The factor that best predicted which parents were best at identifying their child’s cries was the amount of time the parent spent with their babies, regardless of if they were the mother or father.
Of the 14 fathers who spent an average of 4 or more hours a day with their babies, 13 correctly identified 98% of their total cries (and the outlier still got 90% right). The 29 mothers who spent a comparable amount of time with their children (that is, all the mothers in the study) got the same 98% correct. The remaining 13 fathers who spent less than 4 hours a day with their kids, though, were only able to identify 75% of the cries correctly.
Pour le dossier des justification du #sexisme par la #biologie... ou pas !
Scientists Played Music to Cheese as It Aged. Hip-Hop Produced the Funkiest Flavor
Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hip-hop-and-mozart-improve-flavor-swiss-cheese-180971721
Researchers played nonstop loops of Led Zeppelin, A Tribe Called Quest and Mozart to cheese wheels to find out how sound waves impacted flavor
à l’époque sur big cheese reccords : ▻https://youtu.be/dqeXKyMubo4
@rastapopoulosyeah sté la bonne époque :p
Vous vous rendez compte que, pour l’instant, on a mis plus de rigueur et de respect des méthodes scientifiques à faire écouter différents genres musicaux à des fromages, que l’IHU n’en a dépensé pour savoir si la chloroquine c’est efficace contre Covid-19.
Meet the Bee With a Body That’s Half Male, Half Female
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-bee-body-s-half-male-half-female-180974553
So-called gynandromorphs are rare, but they can teach us a lot about development and evolution
The face of a sweat bee (Megalopta amoena) that is half female (viewer’s left, bee’s right) and half male (viewer’s right, bee’s left) (Chelsey Ritner / Utah State University)
n the spring of 2018, Erin Krichilsky stumbled upon the most baffling bee she’d ever seen.
While the right side of its face sported a stout, rugged jawline trimmed with teeny teeth—characteristics normally found on a female—the left half of the insect’s mug had the delicate, wispy features of a male. A quick skim of the rest of the bee’s body revealed much of the same: a she on the right, a he on the left. It was as if someone had cleaved a male bee and a female bee in two and stitched half of each together.
Peering into the microscope at the 4-millimeter-long insect, Krichilsky—then a research assistant at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama—realized she’d found something extraordinary. “It was this super cool individual that wasn’t anything like what I was used to seeing,” she recalls. “It was a very exciting day.”
This mysterious insect, described recently in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research, was an exceedingly rare gynandromorph—an animal that is anatomically half male, half female—the first one ever identified in the species Megalopta amoena, a type of sweat bee found in Central and South America.
Unlike hermaphrodites, which often outwardly appear male or female but have the reproductive organs of both, gynandromorphs boast entire bodies that are sexual mosaics. Because of their rarity in nature, these sex-split individuals are poorly understood. Still, researchers have documented gynandromorphs in creatures ranging from butterflies and crustaceans to reptiles and birds—all with literally mixed results.
One other Megalopta gynandromorph has shown its face to scientists before: a male-female hybrid in a closely related sweat bee species called Megalopta genalis, identified in 1999. In the two decades since, STRI researchers have collected and analyzed tens of thousands of other bees without uncovering a second example—making the new Megalopta amoena specimen’s recent and serendipitous appearance a welcome encore act, says Krichilsky.
The team didn’t analyze the bee’s genes to confirm its gynandromorph status. But the insect’s asymmetrical anatomy was kind of a dead giveaway, says study author Adam Smith, a biologist at George Washington University.
Generally speaking, bees, wasps and ants—which belong to the group Hymenoptera—live in matriarchal societies in which females “do all the things that make bees interesting,” Smith says. “They collect pollen, build nests, take care of the kids.” As such, evolution has equipped these ladies with traits compatible with their endless list of chores: strong jaws capable of digging into wood; thick, hairy hindlegs that can snare and transport pollen; and a sharp-tipped stinger for defense.
Males, however, “do nothing useful except mate,” Smith says, and have the feeble physique to match.
Though the researchers aren’t sure how exactly this bizarre bee came to be, studies in similar insects might provide some hints. Several years ago, another team of scientists led by University of Sydney bee expert Benjamin Oldroyd analyzed the genes of several honeybee gynandromorphs and found that the male-female hybrids were likely the result of a developmental mishap.
In humans, biological sex is determined by two sex chromosomes—one from mom and one from dad. Inheriting two X’s yields a female, while an X paired with a Y creates a male. But bees do things a little differently. All fertilized eggs, which carry genetic material from a mother and a father, hatch female bees. Unfertilized eggs, however, can still yield offspring: fatherless males that carry only one set of chromosomes from their mothers—half of what’s found in females. Sex, in other words, is determined by the quantity of genetic information in a bee’s cells.
A sweat bee (Megalopta amoena) that is half female (right side of the body) and half male (left side of the body). Females of this species have bigger jaws, thicker and hairier legs and stingers. (Chelsey Ritner / Utah State University)
On very, very rare occasions, a second sperm can sneak its way into an already-fertilized egg—a would-be female—and start copying itself, Oldroyd explains. This creates two asymmetrical lineages that each populate their own half of the growing embryo: One arising from the union of the egg and the first sperm that develops as female, and another, born out solely from the second, freewheeling sperm. Because this second sperm never partners up with its own egg, the chromosome count in its lineage stays low, creating only male cells.
These double fertilization events seem to explain at least some honeybee gynandromorphs, though male-female hybrids in other species can manifest in other ways. Another explanation might involve a cell in a typical female embryo making a mistake while copying itself, generating one female cell and one male cell instead of two female cells. Those new cells would then go on dividing independently, yielding two sexually divergent lines.
Either or neither of these scenarios may have played out in the new Megalopta bee, which has since been immortalized in the STRI’s collections. Without dissecting the specimen and analyzing its genome, researchers can’t tell.
Before the Megalopta bee died, though, Krichilsky and her colleagues decided to perform a different sort of test: tracking its daily sleep cycle. When they plopped the insect in an activity monitor, they found it woke up a little earlier to forage for food than typical males and females of its species.
With only one specimen to study, the team can’t draw firm conclusions about this behavioral quirk. “Maybe it’s weird because it’s a gynandromorph,” Smith says. “Or it’s just weird because it’s weird.”
Still, the team’s findings are notable simply because they include any behavioral data at all, says Sydney Cameron, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who wasn’t involved in the study. Most gynandromorphs are discovered only after they’ve died and been stowed in museum collections, making it impossible to know how they navigated their surroundings and social relationships in life. Though this specimen can’t speak for all gynandromorphs, Cameron says, its actions are interesting to document.
Ehab Abouheif, a biologist at McGill University who wasn’t involved in the study, stresses the importance of not dismissing gynandromorphs as “freaks of nature.” Species can only survive and persist if their populations are diverse. In this light, unusual individuals aren’t errors to be written off—they’re fodder for adaptation.
Many, if not most, gynandromorphs are likely infertile, and probably aren’t founding new species themselves. But developmental changes that blur the anatomical lines between sexes can still drive evolution in other contexts, Smith says. In some parasitic bees, for instance, females have lost many of the usual traits that feminize other species, and can appear almost male.
This sort of sexual fluidity “probably happens more often than we’re aware of” in nature, Krichilsky says. “There are some niches occupied by a more typically female or male. Maybe [some individuals] can occupy something in between, or both—or become a whole new organism.”
Unusual though they are, gynandromorphs “are still bees, just like other bees,” she says. “And we can learn a lot from them.”
#gynandromorphe #abeille #sexe #entomologie #tératologie
cc @sinehebdo
La nature est formidable !
Je l’ajoute à ma compilation d’article sur la #sexualité animale et humaine :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/686795
Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Magazine
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-public-domain-180974263
ulture connoisseurs, rejoice: The Smithsonian Institution is inviting the world to engage with its vast repository of resources like never before.
For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge.
108 000 images libres de droits et en haute résolution sur ▻http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr
À partir du 8 janvier 2020, Paris Musées met en ligne sur son site internet des images d’œuvres sous Licence Ouverte (licence CCØ).
À noter dans le moteur de recherche on peut limiter les résultats aux œuvres “libres de droits”.
en plus le chef de projet s’appelle Philippe Rivière
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-can-now-download-images-100000-artworks-prominent-paris-museums-
Je m’étais dit que c’était de la shameful auto-promo mais non :
Philippe Rivière, head of communication and digital at Paris Musées
The Pioneering Maps of #Alexander_von_Humboldt | History | Smithsonian
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pioneering-maps-alexander-von-humboldt-180973342
The German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most celebrated scientists of the 19th century. In 1869, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, 25,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park to listen to speeches extolling his accomplishments and witness the unveiling of a large bronze bust of Humboldt, who had died ten years earlier. Flags and enormous posters showing Humboldt’s face lined the streets of Manhattan. Similar celebrations took place around the world—in Berlin, Humboldt’s birthplace, 80,000 admirers gathered in the chilly rain to listen to eulogies and songs sung in his honor.
It’s hard to imagine any modern scientist achieving such celebrity, and now, 250 years after his birth, Humboldt himself has largely been forgotten by the general public. But as historian Andrea Wulf wrote in her 2015 biography of Humboldt, The Invention of Nature, his scientific legacy lives on in scores of geographic features and place names, from a glacier in Greenland to a mountain range in Antarctica. (The state of Nevada was almost named Humboldt, Wulf writes.) The Latin names of nearly 300 plants and more than 100 animals pay homage to him, including the aggressive, predatory Humboldt squid, which can grow up to eight feet long and weigh 100 pounds.
The Thibodaux Massacre Left 60 African-Americans Dead and Spelled the End of Unionized Farm Labor in the South for Decades | History | Smithsonian
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thibodaux-massacre-left-60-african-americans-dead-and-spelled-end-un
On November 23, 1887, a mass shooting of African-American farm workers in Louisiana left some 60 dead. Bodies were dumped in unmarked graves while the white press cheered a victory against a fledgling black union. It was one of the bloodiest days in United States labor history, and while statues went up and public places were named for some of those involved, there is no marker of the Thibodaux Massacre.
Récemment sur Seenthis, d’autres massacres racistes de l’histoire des USA, à Tulsa, #Oklahoma (1921) et à Elaine, #Arkansas (1919) :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/795706
►https://seenthis.net/messages/804392
The Untold Story of the Secret Mission to Seize Nazi Map Data | History | Smithsonian
▻https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/untold-story-secret-mission-seize-nazi-map-data-180973317
Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement | Smart News | Smithsonian
►https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204
Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement