American Museum of Natural History

Science news! A team of researchers led by the Museum and Columbia University has developed a new tool that can aid in the early detection of COVID-19 variants. The new surveillance tool, which tracks information diversity across genomes, could also be applied more broadly for other emerging viruses. The researchers point to the software’s ability to detect new variants in wastewater as a particularly impactful potential application. “Speed is key to responding to these evolving strains,” added Apurva Narechania, a senior bioinformaticist in the Museum’s Institute for Comparative Genomics and lead author of the study, which is published this week in the journal Genome Research. Learn more about this new software, now on GitHub and freely available to non-commercial entities, in our latest blog post: https://bit.ly/3C3YGry Image: NIAID #newresearch #genomics #museums #stem

As the climate crisis intensifies, how can art raise awareness of its causes and consequences and inspire solutions and action? Join us on Wednesday, November 13, for a conversation with Maya Lin, world-renowned sculptor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Museum President Sean Decatur as they explore the powerful role of art, including Lin’s last memorial, an environmental initiative called What is Missing? For more details and to RSVP, visit: https://bit.ly/3UebMJf #thignstodoinnyc #museums #art #science

🎃 Happy Halloween from your friends at the Museum! Are you ready to roar into the holiday like a T. rex? With 4-ft- (1.2-m-) long jaws and powerful bone-crushing teeth, T. rex was one of the largest and most fearsome carnivores of all time. In fact, this dinosaur could bite with about 7,800 pounds of force (34,500 N)—the equivalent to the weight of three cars! No living animal, and few extinct ones, could rival its bite. T. rex didn’t chop or grind its food; it swallowed chunks whole… Photo: A. Keding / © AMNH #museums #dinosaurs #trex #paleontology #fossils

From October 26 to November 3, the Museum is an early voting site for certain electoral districts in Manhattan. Find your early voting site on the NYC Board of Elections website: https://lnkd.in/dShPBxX Early voters should enter the Museum through the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at 415 Columbus Avenue. Photos: © AMNH #museums #nyc #newyorkcity #earlyvoting

Join us on Wednesday, November 20, for the next Astronomy Live! Hear from John Herrington, PhD, who made history as the first citizen of a federally recognized Native American tribe (Chickasaw Nation) to travel to space in 2002. Commander Herrington will trace his journey on the Space Shuttle Endeavour, share details about his spacewalks, and discuss the "overview effect" and how his view of Earth and climate was transformed by his time in space. For more details and to reserve tickets, visit: https://bit.ly/3YpZ4JB #museums #thingstodoinnyc #astronomy #spaceexploration

How does software development change when users are involved from day one?    This diagram highlights how collaborative #codesign between users and developers can lead to innovative tools that drive critical decision-making in #sustainability policy and #biodiversity conservation planning #WallaceEcoMod.    Discover how CBC Biodiversity Informatics Research Director Mary E. Blair, and colleagues used these methods in their latest paper, featured in BioScience https://lnkd.in/epb-tNt8  

This Fossil Friday, meet the Museum’s mummified hadrosaur—one of the most complete pieces of Mesozoic dinosaur remains ever found! This fossil represents one of the greatest discoveries in the history of paleontology: a rare glimpse at the texture of dinosaur skin. Like the skin on modern birds’ feet, this duck-billed dinosaur’s skin was marked by bumps called tubercles. The tubercles are larger along the animal’s back and sides and smaller around the joints, which needed to be flexible. Visitors can see this fossil up close in the Museum's Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs! Photo: Image no. ptc-7737 © / AMNH Library (Circa 1992) #dinosaurs #paleontology #museums #naturalhistory #fossils

Join us on Wednesday, November 13, for a conversation with Maya Lin, world-renowned sculptor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Museum President Sean Decatur. They'll explore the powerful role of art, including Lin’s last memorial, an environmental initiative called What is Missing? For more details and to RSVP, visit: https://bit.ly/3UebMJf

Research alert! Rebecca Oppenheimer, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics, co-discovered the first brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, in 1995. Since then, there’s been a long-standing mystery: Why does this brown dwarf shine so faintly despite having a significant mass—70 times that of Jupiter? The answer, which is detailed in her latest study with Caltech—out today in the journal Nature Magazine—is that this brown dwarf is actually two objects, orbiting very closely around each other. “These two worlds whipping around each other are actually smaller in radius than Jupiter. They’d look quite strange in our night sky if we had something like them in our own solar system,” Oppenheimer said. The discovery leads to new questions about how tight-knit brown dwarf duos like this one form and suggests that similar systems are likely out there. Read more: https://bit.ly/3UaYzAM Image: K. Miller, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) #newresearch #astronomy #astrophysics #STEM #space

Join us on Wednesday, November 6, for the next SciCafe! Audrey Lin, Gerstner Postdoctoral Scholar in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, Snuneymuxw artist, will discuss the invaluable role of Indigenous knowledge in the genetic study of woolly dogs and their extinction. They'll highlight the essential contributions of Indigenous perspectives to science, illustrated through the historical journey of the woolly dog. SciCafe is 21+ and free with RSVP. For more details and to reserve tickets, visit: https://bit.ly/3Y0QJe8 #museums #thingstodoinnyc #STEM