One of the most important long-term projects to impact the video game industry is going on at the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of […]

The post Preserving the stories of Video Game Pioneers appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Get a quick tutorial on how to upload a story about your local culture and experiences to the Smithsonian’s storytelling website, located www.museumonmainstreet.org Museum on […]

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Explore a “day in the life” of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art and home to one of the […]

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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art is the first institution to acquire the deeply personal and visually mesmerizing video projections “Invocation: The Severance of […]

The post Chuchu: The Severance of Ties and Invocation appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Smithsonian staff gathered on Thursday, June 1 outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture to show their support and listen to Director […]

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More than 154 million treasures fill the Smithsonian’s vaults, but where public view ends, Sidedoor begins. With the help of biologists, artists, historians, archaeologists, zookeepers […]

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The circus is coming to the Smithsonian! The Big Top went up on the National Mall this week in preparation for the 2017 Smithsonian Folklife […]

The post Folklife Festival Big Top Rises in D.C. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Watch this video before the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017!

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From lunch counters to bus boycotts, the African American fight for integration and equality touched every aspect of life. What you may not be familiar […]

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Timelapse video of Flight operations aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower brought to you by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

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The storage and flux of terrestrial carbon (C) is one of the most uncertain components of the global C budget and detailed quantification of forest […]

The post Remote sensing of a Smithsonian forest with airborne LiDAR appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

  Frances Glessner Lee created dollhouses with dead dolls. Her creations are now on exhibit at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The post The dollhouses of death that changed forensic science appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Internationally renowned artist Mark Bradford will debut one of his largest works to date with “Pickett’s Charge,” a monumental new commission that spans nearly 400 […]

The post Mark Bradford: Pickett’s Charge at the Hirshhorn Museum appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

New on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings: This official music video is for “Ripest of Apples” by Anna & Elizabeth, from the new album ‘The Invisible Comes […]

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 When Emma Lawton was 29 she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. As a graphic designer, drawing is a huge part of her life but […]

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Monday, April 30 marks planetary geologist Dr. Ellen Stofan’s first day as the new John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National Air and Space […]

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White-faced capuchin monkeys in Panama’s Coiba National Park habitually use hammer-and-anvil stones to break hermit crab shells, snail shells, coconuts and other food items, according […]

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This animation tells a Cheyenne story of how the Big Dipper came to be when a girl and her loyal brothers escape from a bison. […]

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Businesses are cutting back on hours to avoid having to provide health care coverage under the new Affordable Care Act.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, who's affected here?

Mark Lacter: Thirty hours a week is the magic number for workers to be considered full time under the new law.  If a business has 50 or more full-time employees, health care coverage has to be provided.  Except that a lot business owners say that the additional cost is going to be a financial killer, so instead, some of them have been cutting back hours to below that 30-hour threshold.  More than 200,000 Californians are at risk of losing hours from the health care law - that according to one study.

Julian: What kinds of businesses are doing this?

Lacter: Restaurant chains have received much of the attention, but the city of Long Beach, as an example, is going to reduce hours for a couple of hundred of its workers.  And, last week came word that the L.A.-based clothing chain Forever 21 will cut some of its full-time employees to a maximum 29-and-a-half hours a week, and classify them as part time.  That touched off an outcry on the Internet - people were saying that Forever 21 was being unfair and greedy - though the company says that only a small number of employees are affected, and that its decision has nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.  There's really no way to know - Forever 21 is a private company, which means it's not obligated to disclose a whole lot.  What we do know is that those people will be losing their health care coverage.

Julian: And, the ultimate impact on businesses and workers?

Lacter: Steve, you're looking at several years before the picture becomes clear.  Here in California, workers not eligible for health care through their employer can get their own individual coverage, and if their income levels are not over a certain amount, they'd be eligible for Medicaid.  And, let's not forget many businesses already provide coverage for their employees.  So, lots of rhetoric - but, not many conclusions to draw from, which does make you wonder why so many business owners are unwilling to at least give this thing a chance.  Just doesn't seem to be much generosity of spirit for their workers, not to mention any recognition that if people can go to a doctor instead of an emergency room we'd probably all be better off.

Julian: Health care is far from the only controversy for Forever 21, true?

Lacter: In some ways, it's one of the biggest Southern California success stories.  Don Chang emigrated here in 1981 from Korea at the age of 18, opened his first store in Highland Park three years later (it was called Fashion 21), and he never looked back.  Today, revenues are approaching $4 billion.  But, the guy must have some pretty hefty legal bills because his company has been accused of all kinds of workplace violations.  The lawsuits alleged that workers preparing items for the Forever 21 stores didn't receive overtime, that they didn't get required work breaks, that they received substandard wages, and that they worked in dirty and unsafe conditions - sweatshop conditions, essentially.

Julian: Are most of their claims settled out of court?  You don't hear much about them.

Lacter: They are, which means there's usually a minimal amount of media coverage.  If a privately held company decides to keep quiet by not releasing financial results or other operational information, there's not likely to be much of a story - unlike what happens with a company like Apple, which is always under scrutiny.  Sometimes, plaintiffs will try to organize class-action suits, but that's extremely tough when you're dealing with low-wage workers who are often very reluctant to get involved because of their legal status.  And, let's not forget that Forever 21 - like any low-cost retailer - is simply catering to the demand for cheap, stylish clothes that are made as quickly as possible.

Julian: I guess you can't make that happen when wages and benefits are appreciably higher than your competition.

Lacter: The next time you walk into a Forever 21 store and wonder how prices can be so reasonable, that's how.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

When you look at fast growing private companies in the U.S., you need look no further than a small city next to Los Angeles International Airport.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, tell us about the company that's based in El Segundo.

Mark Lacter: It's called Fuhu, Steve - that might ring a bell with some parents because Fuhu is the maker of the Nabi.  The Nabi is an Android tablet for kids, and it's a very cool device that mimics a lot of the capabilities of regular tablet, including the ability to play games and get onto the Web (with controls that parents are able to set up).  Last year, they sold 1.2 million Nabis, and that helped push the El Segundo company to the very top of Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing businesses.  That's number one on a list of 5,000 companies, with a three-year growth rate of 42,148 percent.  Or, to put it another way, company revenue was $279,000 in 2009; it was almost $118 million in 2012.  Now, by the standards of an Apple or a Samsung, those are still not huge numbers -

Julian: - and maybe that explains why there's been relatively little media coverage of this company.

Lacter: It might also explain why local tech companies in general get short shrift.  Many of them are quite successful, but they're often on the small side, and they're also privately held as opposed to publicly-traded on a stock exchange.  That's one big difference from Silicon Valley, which has so many huge public corporations: Apple, Intel, HP.  L.A. County has only six Fortune 500 companies, and not a single one devoted solely to technology.  In Silicon Valley, there are 22 in the Fortune 500.

Julian: And yet, the L.A. economy has more than held its own without those large corporations.

Lacter: Matter of fact, the accounting firm PriceWaterhouse studied more than two dozen cities around the world to determine where it was easiest to do business (that's based on factors like access to labor), and what they found - somewhat surprisingly - was that L.A. ranked ahead of both San Francisco and Tokyo.  And, you can see evidence of that with the increase in venture capital money coming into all parts of L.A.  Now, it's important to keep an eye on all these up-and-coming companies because these businesses are helping generate higher-wage jobs.  And, for an area with a still-high unemployment rate - still over 10 percent in some places -- that's a big deal.

Julian: Speaking of companies, does anyone want to buy the L.A. Times?

Lacter: The answer is yes - most recently, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, Mark Walter, said he was interested in both the Times and the Chicago Tribune (though there's no way to know whether there are actual discussions taking place).  You also have several local groups, including one that involves billionaire Eli Broad, that have been interested to one degree or another.  But what was thought would be a fairly straightforward auction process has turned enormously complicated.  It's now to the point where the Tribune board has decided spin off the papers into a separate business, and that process will take until next year to complete and could preclude any sales for quite some time after that.

Julian: So, it's Limbo-land for the Times for who knows how long.

Lacter: Steve, it's not that Tribune really wants to keep the newspapers.  But, selling them off presents huge tax implications.  Also, there are assets that the potential buyers thought would be part of the package - assets that include real estate - that Tribune wants to hold onto.  So, what's left to sell are just the newspapers themselves, and frankly, they're among the least valuable properties.

Julian: Now, last week came word that the billionaire Koch brothers, who were believed to be interested in the Tribune properties, decided not to pursue a deal...

Lacter: ...that's right, they don't consider the Times or the other dailies to be economically viable.  You might recall a bit of an outcry over the prospect of having the Kochs, who are staunch conservatives, becoming the owners of these papers.  So, they're out of the picture.  But for the L.A. Times, it's really the worst of all worlds: no new owner and no vision for recasting the paper, at least in the near term.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

If searches from a browser's address bar and possibly search engines are being redirected through the site https://searchpowerapp.com/, then you most likely have a browser extension or addon installed that is causing these redirects. Some extension will cause all of the searches from your browser's address bar to redirect through https://searchpowerapp.com/, which eventually redirects to Yahoo.com.

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The Windows Defender Browser Protection tech support scam is a fake web site alert that states that Windows Defender Browser Extension detected someone to hack your bank account.

This article was published first at Remove the Windows Defender Browser Protection Tech Support Scam

If searches from a browser's address bar and possibly search engines are being redirected through the site https://vitosc.xyz/, then you most likely have a browser extension or addon installed that is causing these redirects. Some extension will cause all of the searches from your browser's address bar to redirect to https://vitosc.xyz/.

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Dried specimens of nearly 800 flowering plants were acquired by the Botany Department of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History from the National Botanical Research Institute in Windhoek, Namibia, Africa. The collection includes nearly 160 specimens from the Compositae, or sunflower family.

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The Weeping Goldsmith, written as a first-person narrative, follows Botanist John Kress through nine years as he surveys Myanmar’s teak forests, bamboo thickets, timber plantations, rivers and mangroves to document its incredible botanical biodiversity.

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Follow botanist Candy Feller of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center as she conducts field work on mangrove ecosystems at Carrie Bow Cay, a Smithsonian field research station in the Caribbean.

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“Our guide celebrates the beauty of some of the most attractive inhabitants of Panama’s undersea realm and provides an indispensable, easy-to-use tool for their identification,” say the Littlers.

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Latinus 9333 is the Latin translation of the so-called Tacuinum sanitatis, a medieval handbook on wellness written in Arabic by the 11th-century physician ibn Butlan. It deals with factors influencing human health: from the air, the environment and food, to physical exercise and sexual activity.

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Since its doors first opened in 1910, the National Museum of Natural History has inspired curiosity and learning about the natural world and our place […]

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Flowers are usually associated with butterflies, but not the Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia grandiflora). This deciduous vine, native to Brazil, has large flowers that emit an odor of decaying flesh, which attracts flies and beetles.

The post Video: Smithsonian horticulturalist Janet Draper discusses the pollination of the pelican flower appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Recent analysis using DNA sequencing of ancient Roman pills found aboard a ship that sank in Italy’s Gulf of Baratti between 140 -120 B.C, has revealed that the medicines consist of material from simple garden plants, namely carrot, radish, parsley, celery, wild onion and cabbage.

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Nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today’s levels.

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The discovery of starch granules in the calculus on Neandertal teeth provides direct evidence that they made sophisticated, thoughtful food choices and ate more nutrient-rich plants, for example date palms, legumes and grains such as barley.

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Now the Global Plants Initiativeis catapulting biodiversity research to a new level by sharing these historic plant collections in a massive online database of high-resolution scans.

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The scientists staked out dozens of the gingers night and day while the plants flowered, but no long-proboscid pollinator ever appeared. Climate change, they surmised, was responsible for the loss of this highly specialized and now, perhaps forever unknown insect.

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Smithsonian plant physiologist Bert Drake has studied one wetland's response to climate change for more than two decades. He gives a tour of the field experiment and explains some of the findings.

The post On the Chesapeake Bay, Smithsonian plant physiologist Bert Drake has been studying one wetland’s response to climate change for more than two decades. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

W. Atlee Burpee & Company Seed Co., 1898 The seed trade catalogs document the history of the seed and agricultural business in the United States; […]

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A team of scientists, including several from the Smithsonian Institution, discovered that leaves of flowering plants in the world's first rainforests had more veins per unit area than leaves ever had before.

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Nutmeg-loving toucans wearing GPS transmitters recently helped a team of scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama address an age-old problem in plant ecology: accurately estimating seed dispersal.

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A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms leading to a release of stored soil carbon.

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