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Following is the schedule of events for the day, but before you come you might want to know a little more about us: 
We
have an active Photo
Gallery on the web and have been posting images throughout our
summer. For a peek, visit: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/rtp/students/2004/gallery04.html
Behind-the-Scenes Welcome to Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the most visited natural history museum in the world. We inspire curiosity, discovery, excitement and learning about the natural world through world-class research, collections, exhibitions and education. Opened in 1910, the green-domed museum on the National Mall was the first Smithsonian building constructed exclusively to house the national collections and research facilities. Today it supports a workforce of over 1000 and is the largest Smithsonian museum and research unit, as well as the most visited natural history museum in the world. Each year NMNH scientists disseminate their new knowledge through hundreds of original research publications, as well as through exhibitions, education and training programs, websites, and public lectures. Our areas of study, most often collection based, include various branches of biology, such as entomology (insects), botany (plants), and zoology (animals); anthropology (human studies); mineral sciences (minerals, gems, and rocks); and paleobiology (fossils, including dinosaurs). The rich research tradition of NMNH includes a community of critically important government-agency scientists who work with the museum’s collections side by side with NMNH-funded scientists The NMNH research
collections total over 125 million specimens and artifacts and are by
far the largest in the world. These collections serve as a rich resource
for collection-based research worldwide: some 3.5 million specimens
go out on loan during a year; over 15,000 visitor days are spent in
the collections; and almost 600,000 additional visits are made to collection
data bases available on the Web. The museum welcomes over 6 million visitors a year, and an additional 6 million visitors used our web services in 2003. The Museum’s exhibition and education programs, increasingly tied to the museum’s research on current, topical scientific issues, bring trustworthy, authoritative presentations to a broad public. Whether examining the history and cultures of Africa, describing our earliest mammalian ancestor or the development of Earth’s life forms including dinosaurs on Earth, charting the Vikings’ travels to the New World, or exploring the beauty of rare gemstones, the Museum’s temporary and permanent exhibitions serve to educate, enlighten, and entertain millions of visitors each year. With a growing network of interactive web sites, the Museum is transforming itself into a hub for a national and international learning network, readily accessible to all by way of the Internet. Through its research, collections, education and exhibition programs, NMNH serves as one of the world’s great repositories of scientific and cultural heritage as well as a source of tremendous pride for all Americans. Research
Training Program * Friday, 9 July 2004 * 8:15 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. : NMNH OPEN HOUSE RTP interns from Smithsonian's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site will host an open house for students participating in REU programs at The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Join us for a behind-the-scenes view of NMNH research, the National Collections, and our research facilities. We require advance notification of your visit. So we can plan accordingly, a complete name list of those attending is due Monday, 5 July 04. REU site hosts and coordinators at participating locations should e-mail the list to Mary Sangrey at sangrey.mary@nmnh.si.edu We can accommodate no more than a total of 65 interns. Welcome
interns from
Interns will discuss with Hans the Museums strategic plan, the opportunities identified as well as challenges, and consider NMNH future science directions.
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You're
invited to a special behind-the- scenes Open House
at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
We
will host a short social to get to know everyone and enjoy some light
morning refreshments (donuts, bagels, fruit and juice). Coffee can
be purchased across the hall in the staff cafeteria. We will be providing
pizza for lunch. If you prefer something different, you
may leave your lunch in our refrigerator and any bags you don't wish
to carry with you can be also left in the ARC. During the social you
will: 
Location:
Johnson IMAX Theater
Location:
Anthropology Seminar Room
11:00
a.m.- noon : MORNING
TOUR OPTIONS
Join
Clyde on a guided tour of the cephalopod collection and venture
out to the public exhibit to learn about Clyde's quest to discover
the giant squid. They join Cyndi to see more inverts. Have you
ever seen a worm with fangs? It is it your lifelong dream to be
surrounded by a coral reef? Are you an avid shell collector? If
so, then this is the tour for you!! The Smithsonian's Invertebrate
Zoology collection is one of the largest in the world, consisting
of over 34 million specimens, the Crustacean collection alone
takes more than 6 miles of shelving! Attractions include deep-sea
worms from the geothermal vents, giant arctic crabs, 'brain' corals
ten times the size of any human brain, cannibalistic starfish,
and a whole lot more!! To
learn more visit: 
Jeremy
Jacobs, you'll
journey through the mammal collections. Here you will see the
smallest mammal, specimens of primates, squirrels, bats, and other
assorted goodies. . The National
Museum of Natural History houses one of the most important collections
of mammals in the world. The collection is referenced in the scientific
literature by the acronym USNM, derived from the former name United
States National Museum. With roughly 580,000 voucher specimens,
it is by far the world's largest, nearly twice the size of the
next largest mammal collections. The taxonomic and geographic
scope of the USNM mammal collection spans the globe with especially
strong representation from North America, Central America, northern
South America, Africa, and southeast Asia. To learn more visit:
Mineral
Sciences are a part of our everyday life. Each rock and mineral
has a story to tell. Rocks form the buildings that we live in
and minerals are part of our everyday lives, from computers to
our bathroom. Precious gems, valuable minerals, and fascinating
rocks can all be seen in the Mineral Sciences Department. Research
is conducted on rocks drilled from the deep ocean, rocks erupted
out of volcanoes, minerals that form within the earth from magma
or from metamorphic conditions, and rocks that fall to earth from
outer space as meteorites. For the Mineral Sciences tour, 400,000
specimens in the gem and mineral collection, and 24,000 specimens
of the meteorite collection will be shown for you to examine and
learn what processes formed them. To learn more visit: 
Over
50% of all animal species are insects. The Smithsonian NMNH has
one of the largest insect collections in the world. Research in
the NMNH Department of Entomology is primarily collection based
and systematic involving evolutionary and population biology,
phylogeny, biogeography, bio-diversity, ecology, behavior, and
molecular studies as well as basic taxonomy, comparative, morphology,
and life history. The Department of Entomology is made up of many
people including researchers from USDA, the Smithsonian, and other
agencies. To learn more visit: 
Mark
Farmer (mfarmer@nsf.gov). Mark is
a rotating program officer in the Division of Biological Infrastructure
responsible for three programs, Major Research Instrumentation,
Biological Research Collections, and Field Stations and Marine Labs.
His regular job is as a professor of Cell Biology and Microscopy
Center Director at the University of Georgia (
This
tour begins with a preview of some extraordinary fishes from the
"OH-MY" collection, hosted by Jeff Williams.
Next, the group will move into the collection area, that mainly
includes liquid preserved specimens of fishes, including a Coelacanth
(that you'll get to see!). After the Coelacanth, the group will
view counter stained specimens, including some larval fishes and
their adult counterparts. Research
in the Division of Fishes is directed primarily toward systematic
revisions of species, genera, and families, and the interpretation
of higher classification and biogeography. The Division covers
a broad spectrum of the great diversity of fishes, generally relying
on the vast resources of the national fish collection. The fish
collection, at the National Museum of Natural History, is the
largest in the world, with approximately 540,000 lots (a lot consists
of all specimens of a species from the same time and place) and
about 3.5 million specimens. To learn more visit:
Research
in the NMNH Department of Paleobiology focuses on interdisciplinary
studies of the history of the earth and its biota, and their interactions
through time, including the systematics of
In
the Division of Birds research is oriented toward the evolution,
systematics, biogeography, and ecology of birds. These include
functional anatomy, structural adaptation, phylogeny, distribution
and ecology of neotropical birds, as well as conservation biology
of North American migrants, paleontology, and island avifaunas.
This division also has a feather identification lab which specializes
in identifying bird species using only feather evidence. The aim
of these identifications is to know the species involved in birdstrikes
(bird-aircraft collisions). The Division of Birds houses and maintains
the third largest bird collection in the world with over 600,000
specimens, 53 thousand of them are skeleton specimens and represent
the largest collection of such preparation type specimen. This
division is actively incorporating new specimens through collecting
trips to other countries like Uruguay and Guyana as well as collecting
in the United States. In this tour we will see the great shape,
color and size diversity that characterizes this fascinating vertebrate
group. To learn more visit: 
The
Botany tour begins on the 4th floor, where Greg Mckee will
give us a brief introduction to the herbarium and display some
of the most interesting specimens. At 2:00 p.m., the tour continues
in the Plant Anatomy Laboratory where Stan Yankowski will
demonstrate different techniques used to prepare histology slides.
Visitors joining this tour will have the opportunity to look at
a range of specimens under the scopes. Including 4.6 million collections,
the U.S. National Herbarium was founded in 1848 with the first
collections accessioned from the US Exploring Expedition. Research
in the NMNH Department of Botany focuses on plant systematics
in the broadest sense: taxonomy, nomenclature, comparative anatomy
and morphology, palynology, phylogeny, phytogeography, ecology,
evolutionary theory, and conservation biology. Numerous floristic
studies are under way, while others are aimed at elucidating evolutionary
development, phylogeny, and the broad questions of classification.
Both modern and fossil species of many plant groups, including
the algae, mosses, lichens, ferns, and flowering plants, are currently
being studied. To
learn more visit: 
Speaker:
Dave Hunt, Museum Specialist/Physical Anthropology Collections
Management. B.A. (1980) University of Illinois; M.A. (1983), Ph.D.
(1989) University of Tennessee. Research specialties: human variation,
skeletal biology, forensic anthropology, human mummies of the world,
dermatoglyphics. Science Unit: 
Location:
CAT Scan Lab
Speaker:
From
looking at the artifactual evidence we now have from North America
and from Northeast Asia as well as the physical remains, it's very
clear that we are looking at multiple migrations through a very long
time period - of many different peoples of many different ethnic origins
that came in at different times. Some of these people probably survived,
some of them may have gone back home and some of them probably did
not survive. By studying recently discovered skeletal remains particularly
the DNA and the morphological differences and similarities, we'll
be able to figure out how many groups there were and from where they
came. 
