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Dr. Pierre Comizzoli, one of the two Smithsonian scientists to receive the Presidential Award, at work in the lab. Photo courtesy Smithsonian's National Zoo

Earlier this week, President Obama announced the recipients of the annual Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Among those honored were two scientists who have conducted innovative research at the Smithsonian Institution: Dr. Justin Kasper, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Dr. Pierre Comizzoli, a biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI).

The award is the highest honor the government confers on scientists in the early stages of their careers, and is given to researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

“I’m very honored to receive this,” says Comizzoli, who was nominated through his work with the National Institutes of Health. Throughout his career, he has been involved in researching reproductive biology within a variety of species, including domestic cats, cheetahs, deer and frogs. His current research seeks to find new ways to preserve eggs and sperm without freezing.

“The project I’m working on now is exploring drying techniques, so you can keep your samples at an ambient room temperature, instead of storing them in liquid nitrogen,” he says. “It’s way more flexible, and way less expensive. And in some parts of the world, liquid nitrogen is just not available.”

Comizzoli’s work is mainly intended to preserve animal sperm and eggs as a tool for species conservation. “It’s really important to preserve the fertility of any individuals from a rare population,” he says. “If the genomes of those animals are still available to be mixed in the current population, you can preserve the genetic diversity.”

But many are excited about the potential of this research to assist in human fertility, as well. “Fertility preservation is used a lot in human reproductive medicine, for people who need to preserve their fertility before any medical treatments that are detrimental to the reproductive tissue,” Comizzoli says. “We have this fantastic opportunity at the SCBI of working with many different species and generating this huge database of comparative data, that is then extremely useful for human reproductive medicine.”

Dr. Kasper studies the transfer of energy in astrophysical objects, including the solar corona and solar wind. He received the award for his current work on the Solar Probe Plus, which will be humankind’s first mission to send a probe to the sun’s outer atmosphere.

Kasper’s research has helped with the design of SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons) an instrument that will provide scientists with information on how the solar corona and upper atmosphere are heated. “I am honored to have received this recognition and encouragement to pursue the mysteries of our sun,” Kasper said in a press release. “By flying a spacecraft through the upper atmosphere of the sun, we will expose the fundamental physics responsible for the million-degree corona and help understand and forecast space weather.”

Meet Pili and Damini, pictured here with their mother Shama. Photo Credit: Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo

On the stormy night of June 17,  as thunder and lightning surrounded the National Zoo, two red panda cubs were born. Last week, as part of a voting contest, they received their names. The twin cubs are now known as Pili and Damini, which mean “clap of thunder” in Chinese and “lightning” in Nepalese, respectively. Their births and successful rearing bring the Zoo’s total population of red pandas to five.

“There are about 10,000 red pandas in the wild, but there are only about 2,500 that are breeding, so they are an endangered species,” says Stacey Tabellario, a keeper at the Zoo. Working with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, where two other red panda cubs were born earlier in the summer, the Zoo has had a breeding program in place for the species for decades.

One of the red panda cubs born at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Photo by Mehgan Murphy

“Their name, ‘panda,’ just like the giant panda, actually means bamboo,” Tabellario says. “Their diet is around 80 percent bamboo, and the rest is filled with fruit. They might occasionally catch a bird or eat mushrooms.”

Because the species is native to the mountainous environment of Nepal and China, she says, “They’re very fuzzy, and they don’t bear warm weather well at all. They love the snow, and when they’re out in the snow they actually have fur on their paws so they can walk around on snow and ice without getting cold feet.”

Breeding and caring for the quickly growing cubs has presented new challenges for the Zoo staff. Initially, keepers gave them a wide berth so as not to upset them or their nursing mother, Shama. “After they got a little bit more comfortable with us, we were able to go in, examine them, and get their weight,” says Tallie Wiles, another keeper at the Zoo. “And then when we had the hurricane, we had to move all of them inside into the giant panda enclosure.”

The cubs, now more than four months old and in good health, have recently started venturing out of their den, giving Zoo visitors a great opportunity to see the young animals. “They have just started coming out on exhibit a lot, so the public is getting a great look at them,” Wiles says. Through the Zoo’s red panda webcam, observers can go online to see what the pandas are up to, day or night.

The red panda adults typically breed once annually. “Normally, we see a lot of breeding behaviors. Last year, it was about a week where they were just going crazy—chasing each other, playing, and we saw a lot of breeding attempts,” says Wiles. A cub was born last year, but didn’t survive infancy, which is common for the species.

This year, Zoo staff were less confident that the pandas had successfully conceived, because they saw breeding behaviors from the animals for just one day. The pandas, though, picked the right day to mate. “The one day that we saw breeding happened to be February 14th: Valentine’s day,” Tabellario says.

This year's People's Design Award nominees. Courtesy of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Every fall, I look forward to the time when the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum hosts its People’s Design Award contest. For this aspect of its larger National Design Awards program, the museum invites the public to nominate an object by uploading an image of it or to vote for an existing nominee that, in their opinion, constitutes good design.

Polls opened this week, and as I write, there are already 66 nominees. Up for debate are the usual throwback designs. One this year is the Ford Model T. And, of course, there are some shoe-ins, like the iPad 2. But, otherwise, the ballot is a real smorgasbord. Cuboro Marble Run puts the Marbleworks of my childhood to shame, in the way it encourages kids to think more mechanically. I hadn’t yet seen Puma’s Clever Little Bag, a reusable bag that the shoe company is now using in place of a cardboard shoebox. Speaking of shoes (a shoe took the prize in 2007), the nominated Mojito Shoe is so artistically abstract it is almost unrecognizable as a shoe. Even WordPress, the publishing platform we use for this blog, is part of the mix.

As I see it, the ballot always becomes this neat, crowd-sourced catalog of the interests and priorities of today’s consumers. And, in its light, we consumers look quite good—fun, eco-friendly, socially-conscious and artistic!

Voting continues until 6 p.m. EST on October 17, and the winner will be announced October 20 at the National Design Awards gala at Pier Sixty in New York City. The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will offer free admission and public programs during National Design Week, which runs October 15-23.

Andy Warhol, "Shadows," 1978-79. Dia Art Foundation. Copyright 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bill Jacobson.

As of this month, all 102 paintings from Warhol’s 1978-79 series, Shadows, are on display together for the very first time at the Hirshhorn Museum. Hung edge-to-edge, the series extends an impressive 450 feet around the museum’s curved, second-floor gallery. It really is a sight to behold.

Here, Evelyn Hankins, associate curator at the Hirshhorn, talks about the making of Shadows and what it meant in the context of Warhol’s career, as well as what goes into displaying it.

Why haven’t all 102 canvases been shown together until now?

The number of paintings you install is dependent upon the architecture of the space where you are showing them. It requires 450 linear feet to have 102 paintings, and so I think it has been just a matter of not having the space. When the show was originally installed in Soho in 1979, the Heiner Freidrich Gallery showed 83. My understanding is that most of them were in the gallery, but then there were some in the office as well.

How was the series made?

It was made in Warhol’s Factory. With a lot of Warhol’s work, you don’t know how involved he actually was, because he had his assistants and the whole idea of the Factory was that there was no single hand. Warhol claimed at one point that the shadows were just shadows in his office, and someone else has claimed that they used a maquette to cast them. Each of the canvases are painted with sponge mop in a brightly-colored acrylic paint. Then, the shadow image is silk screened on top, primarily in black. There are a couple in silver. They are negatives and positives.

Who decides the order of the paintings?

It is a predetermined order. My understanding is the first 83 follow the installation at the Heiner Freidrich Gallery and then the rest have been determined by Dia Art Foundation. [Shadows is on loan from Dia.]

In 1978 and ’79, Warhol was thinking of it as an installation that changes, that takes the form of the architecture, of the space around it, and thus changes with each iteration. But as with all of our works, we try to adhere to the artist’s wishes and work within the spirit of the artist’s intentions.

Did Warhol ever comment on what inspired the piece?

He published, in New York Magazine, a statement as much about the opening as it as about the Shadows. He played them down. I think what’s important about the Shadows though is that they are abstractions. For artists coming of age in the late 1950s and 1960s, there was this incredible weight of the influence and power of abstract expressionism. Artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still were about this direct outpouring of psychoanalytic, unconscious energy onto the canvas. It was about pure abstraction and this very close relationship between the artist and the paint on the canvas, this indelible, undeniable relationship between the two. And Warhol upended that with pop art. He didn’t paint the paintings himself. The subject matter was banal subject matter found in the everyday world. So for him to turn to abstraction, I think, reflects larger changes in the art world as a whole. The Shadows are among a group of works in the 1970s, where Warhol began to explore abstraction, which is something he would pursue until his death in the 1980s. So it is this real shift for him, in terms of subject matter.

“Andy Warhol: Shadows,” on display through January 15, is part of “Warhol On the Mall,” a fall celebration of the artist organized in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art. “Andy Warhol: Headlines” is on exhibition at the National Gallery through January 2.

The Hirshhorn is hosting several related events, including a lecture series, an After Hours event and a film screening. For more about the exhibition, read: “Bringing Andy Warhol’s Shadows to the Hirshhorn.”

See the documentary "Columbus Day Legacy" this Saturday at the American Indian Museum. Photo courtesy museum

Friday, September 30 Treasures at the Museum

Treasures at the Museum, by Deborra Richardson, chief archivist of the American History Museum, is a chapter book that introduces children to archives through the imaginative journey of the characters Robbie and Brittany. On Friday, come meet the author and have a copy of the book autographed. A terrific gift idea for children in grades K-4, this book is sure entice young readers to the preservation of history. Free. 2 to 4 p.m. American History Museum, Archives Center, 1st Floor West

Saturday, October 1 Did Columbus Discover America?

As Columbus Day approaches, learn more about the holiday by watching Columbus Day Legacy, a thought-provoking documentary that examines  the complex issues of free speech, historical interpretation and American identity beneath the surface of this national holiday.  Free. The film is screened 12:30 and 3:30 daily, except Wednesdays, during October. National Museum of American Indian, Rasmuson Theater

Sunday, October 2 Portrait Discovery

Experience the Portrait Gallery in a whole new way through a Portrait Discovery Kit. This family-friendly interactive activity involves seek-and-find cards, self-portrait pads, portrait detective guides and other materials. Upon receiving a kit, a museum educator will show you how to use the self-guided tour to learn about the subjects of the portraits and make the gallery come alive. Free. Kits are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Education Center, Room E151, 1st Floor, South. 1 to 4 p.m. National Portrait Gallery