The true identity of the protein found in the crystals reported by Bondoc et al. [(2019), Acta Cryst. F75, 646–651] is given.

The crystal structure of MgCoGa2 (magnesium cobalt digallide) was solved by direct methods and refined in two space groups as P21/c (standard choice) and P21/n (non-standard choice). The refined lattice parameters for the standard choice are a = 5.1505 (2), b = 7.2571 (2), c = 8.0264 (3) Å and β = 125.571 (3)°, and for the non-standard choice are a = 5.1505 (2), b = 7.2571 (2), c = 6.5464 (2) Å and β = 94.217 (3)°. All parameters for MgCoGa2 refined to R1 = 0.027 and wR2 = 0.042 using 594 reflections. The crystal structure peculiarities of this compound are discussed. Particular attention has been given to relationships with other similar structures, such as YPd2Si and Fe3C. Crystallographic analysis, together with linear muffin-tin orbital electronic structure calculations, reveals the presence of three-dimensional polyatomic nets with partial covalent bonding between the Ga atoms.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has opened a new Public Observatory that contains a 16-inch, 3,000-pound Boller and Chivens telescope, on loan from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Through this powerful telescope, museum visitors can now observe the sun (with a special filter), the moon and the brighter stars and planets, such as Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, during daylight hours. Funding for the project was provided by the National Science Foundation.

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A major new exhibition hall dedicated to the discovery and understanding of human origins will open next year at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History: The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins

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The John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950-2000, was among 35 documentary heritage items of exceptional value added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2009.

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It is one of the largest and most productive estuaries in the world, yet dramatic changes are in store for the Chesapeake Bay in coming […]

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Birds do it. Bees do it. And in a laboratory in northern California, scientists using bumblebees recently figured out the best way to measure it--vertical lift!

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Based on decades of cutting-edge research, the 15,000-square-foot Hall of Human Origins offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of human evolution spelling out how defining characteristics of the human species have evolved during millions of years in response to a changing world.

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The new study suggests that echolocation calls also serve a social function--bats listen to the ultrasonic calls of other bats to identify roost mates, bats of the same species, members of the opposite sex and intruders to their territory.

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It seems the stuff of science fiction, but astronomers have found a real-life “Death Star” that shredded a rocky planet and is swallowing the dusty remains.

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Discoveries of three new from species in Panama lead to hope that project researchers can save these animals from a deadly fungus killing frogs worldwide and the fear that many species will go extinct before scientists even know they exist.

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The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope has discovered an asteroid about 150 feet in diameter that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October.

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Should global warming cause sea levels to rise as predicted in coming decades, thousands of archaeological sites in coastal areas around the world will be lost to erosion. With no hope of saving all of these sites, three archaeologists—Leslie Reeder of Southern Methodist University, Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon and Torben Rick from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History—have issued a call to action for scientists to assess the sites most at risk around the world.

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A roundup of recent articles featuring spiders, bats and rats....

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Although the La Loma tree frog, Hyloscirtus colymba, is notoriously difficult to care for in captivity, the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project is the first to successfully breed this species.

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Bats living in the dense urban area of Panama City, the scientists learned, represent just a small fraction of the roughly 25 species of high-flying insectivorous bats found in Panama’s rainforests.

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Smithsonian scientists report fledgling catbirds in suburban habitats are at their most vulnerable stage of life, with almost 80 percent killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Almost half of the deaths were connected to domestic cats.

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Meet Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This newly unveiled bust by artist John Gurche is now on view in the the Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

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“Our results support the idea that environmental conditions on tropical non-breeding areas can influence the departure time for spring migration,” said Colin Studds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and lead author of the study.

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The National Zoo has received a breeding pair of Asian small-clawed otters at Asia Trail for the first time. Mac, a three-year-old male from the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Wash., and Smidge, a five-year-old female from the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, arrived in April and are now in their exhibit.

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Some--birds called wire-tailed manakins, residents of tropical forests in the Americas--are cooperators as well as competitors. They cooperate, forming alliances for a common cause.

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A new genetic study by a team of Cuban and American researchers confirms that American crocodiles are hybridizing with wild populations of critically endangered Cuban crocodiles, which may cause a population decline of this species found only in the Cuban Archipelago.

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A new study shows that the desert tortoise, thought to be a single species for the last 150 years, is in fact two separate and distinct species, based on DNA evidence and biological and geographical distinctions.

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Gray whales survived many cycles of global cooling and warming over the past few million years, likely by exploiting a more varied diet than they do today, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution paleontologists.

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The far-out planet, named 55 Cancri e, is twice as big as Earth and nearly nine times more massive. It is most likely composed of rocky material, similar to Earth, supplemented with light elements such as water and hydrogen gas. Scientists estimate the planet’s surface is much hotter than ours: close to 2,700 degrees Celsius.

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In 2011, scholars from three institutions—National Museum of American History Curators Carlene Stephens and Shari Stout, Library of Congress Digital Conversion Specialist Peter Alyea and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Scientists Carl Haber and Earl Cornell—came together in a newly designed preservation laboratory at the Library of Congress to recover sound from those recordings made more than 100 years ago.

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Small monkey groups may win territorial disputes against larger groups because some members of the larger, invading groups avoid aggressive encounters.

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For the last 1,000 days the Infrared Array Camera, aboard NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, has been operating continuously to probe the universe from its most distant regions to our local solar neighborhood.

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The National Museum of Natural History will construct a new dinosaur exhibition hall made possible by a $35 million donation from David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries and philanthropist.

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Researchers led by David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute and David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has inferred an unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.

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Coral reefs worldwide are being destroyed by changes in ocean temperature and chemistry faster than at any time since the last reef crisis 55 million years ago, thousands of marine scientists warned from the International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia.

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“Ignition Sequence,” 1968, Vincent Cavallaro, oil on canvas. The power of the ignition and launch sequence of a NASA rocket is portrayed in an abstract […]

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What scientists found was that the domestic turkey that ends up on the dinner table exhibits less genetic variation than its ancestral wild counterparts, which were first domesticated in 800 B.C..

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A specimen recently pulled from deep in the southwest Atlantic may represent a new species of squid, say scientist who have studied the animal’s unusual morphology. But then again, it may not…

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Domestic cats in the United States kill some 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals each year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks […]

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Small migratory male birds that winter in a stressful environment age faster than those that winter in a high-quality habitat, according to research stemming from […]

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The uplift of the Isthmus of Panama 2.6 million years ago formed a land-bridge that has long thought to be the crucial step in the […]

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Marmosets on track for obesity appeared to be more efficient in their feeding behavior. “Although all animals consumed the same amount of liquid, the ones […]

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Recent spectroscopic analysis of macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus) crest feathers and king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) neck feathers have shown they contain a yellow pigment that […]

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The National Museum of Natural History announced this summer that it has reached a 50-year loan agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to […]

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  This image is a close-up of the skull of the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as the Wankel T. rex which was installed in front […]

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For scientists who study non-insect invertebrates, the sheer diversity of these odd and fascinating creatures is both intoxicating and daunting. Occupying niches in habitats the […]

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The largest fully preserved great ape collection in the world is about to make its online debut.

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Two worlds orbiting a distant star are about to become a snack of cosmic proportions. Astronomers have announced that the planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c will […]

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In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand […]

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Stars form when gravity pulls together material within giant clouds of gas and dust. But gravity isn’t the only force at work. Both turbulence and […]

The post As Stars Form, Magnetic Fields Influence Regions Big and Small appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Scientists examining the stomach contents of invasive lionfish caught on the inner barrier reef of Belize have discovered that nearly half of the diet of […]

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When it’s time for a meal of katydids, bats use their ears. When hunting and eating male katydids, different bat species locate their prey by […]

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