Bozie the Asian elephant arrived at the National Zoo today on-loan from Baton Rogue. All photos courtesy of the National Zoo

Welcome to DC, Bozie!

The 37-year-old Asian elephant, whose transfer from Baton Rouge Zoo was announced earlier this month, arrived safe and sound at the National Zoo today after traveling in a truck for more than 1,100 miles.

Baton Rogue decided to loan Bozie to another institution recently after her elephant friend, Judy, died of chronic gastrointestinal irritation from arthritis medication in March. Bozie had lived at the Baton Rogue Zoo since 1998, but had to go because female elephants need companionship to stay happy and healthy, said Zoo officials.

Bozie will join the National Zoo’s other three Asian elephants—Ambika, Kandula and Shanti (who, incidentally, lived with Bozie in Sri Lanka at an elephant orphanage before both were transported to North America)—in their newly-renovated Elephant Trails Habitat after she goes into quarantine for a minimum of 30 days, per standard procedure.

The National Zoo is regarded as a leader in elephant research, particularly on Asian elephants (whose population has dropped at least 50 percent over three generations to around 40,000, according to the IUCN Red List), so Bozie should be in good hands with the Zoo’s elephant keepers, nutritionists and veterinarians. To keep her busy mentally and physically, her caretakers will provide her with a variety of enrichment, including bamboo, boomer balls and puzzle feeders.

“Elephants are equally curious and cautious in meeting a new member of the herd,” says the Zoo elephant manager Marie Galloway. “By watching their behavioral cues, we’ll be able to determine their comfort level and can move as quickly or slowly as they see fit. Our goal is for Bozie, Shanthi and Ambika to bond and live together as a herd.”

Bozie taking a shower at the Baton Rogue Zoo

In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers reach the peak of Mount Everest. Listen to Hillary recount the journey in “Interview with Sir Edmund Hillary: Mountain Climbing,” a 1974 interview produced by Smithsonian Folkway Recordings. All photos courtesy of Flickr user agirregabiria

Sixty years ago, on May 29, 1953, mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set foot atop Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. They were the first ever to reach its 29,029-foot peak, and met instant fame upon their return: today their ascent is considered a great achievement of the 20^th century.

In 1974, Hillary, a New Zealander, detailed the perilous climb and his motivations for tackling it on “Interview with Sir Edmund Hillary: Mountain Climbing,” produced by Howard Langer at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The conversation touches topics from Hillary’s preparation for the perilous climb, the thrill of reaching the top and even the abominable snow man (Hillary thought he might have found its tracks while scaling Everest, but later discounted Yeti reports as unreliable).

Below, we’ve transcribed some highlights from the interview and posted an audio sample. You can check out the full interview’s script here, and order the recording here.

Sir Edmund, why do you climb mountains?

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous. I think that the fact that something has a spice of danger about it can often add to its attraction, and to its fascination.

What would you say are the outstanding characteristics of a good mountaineer?

I think that a good mountaineer is usually a sensible mountaineer. He’s a man that realizes the dangers and difficulties involved, but, due to his experience and his technical skill, he’s able to tackle them calmly, with confidence. And yet you know the really good mountaineers that I know never lose that sense o enthusiasm that motivated them when they first started.

I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional, and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

How many men took part in the 1953 Everest Expedition?

On this expedition we had altogether 13 western members of the expedition, and then we had, I think, about 30 permanent high-altitude sherpas—these are men who will be carrying loads to high altitudes for us, and who are all hard, efficient performers. So then, altogether some 600 loads were carried into the Mt. Everest region on the backs of Nepalese porters, so we had 600 men who actually carried loads for 17 days, across country into our climbing region. Altogether, I suppose you could say that almost 700 men were involved in one way or the other. . . . It is a team expedition, and it’s very much in the form of a pyramid effort. . . . The two men who reach the summit are completely dependent on the combined effort of all those involved lower down.

How did you feel when you were going up those last several hundred feet?

I’ve often been asked as to whether I was always confident we were going to reach the summit of Everest. I can say no. Not until we were about 50 feet of the top was I ever completely convinced that we were actually going to reach the summit.

On a mountain like this, although the distances may not be so great, you’re so affected by the restrictions of the altitude that you never really can be completely confident that you’re going to be able to overcome the technical difficulties ahead of you.

And when you finally reached the top, what were your thoughts then?

I think my first thought on reaching the summit—of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally—but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

What was Tensing’s reaction?

Well, Chet Tensing was, I think, on reaching the summit, certainly in many ways more demonstrative than I was. I shook hands with him, rather in British fashion, but this wasn’t enough for Tensing. He threw his arms around my shoulders—we were in oxygen masks and all—and he thumped me on the back and I thumped him on the back, and really it was quite a demonstrative moment. And he certainly was very, very thrilled when we reached the summit of Everest.

The National Air and Space Museum honored the late pioneer astronaut Sally Ride recently with a panel discussion entitled “Sally Ride: How Her Historic Space Mission Opened Doors for Women in Science.”

Ride, who became the first American woman in space aboard Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983, was an outspoken advocate for women scientists and improved science education. Her highly decorated career included two trips and more than 343 hours in space, work at NASA’s headquarters, positions on the committees that investigated the Columbia and Challenger disasters and a professorship at the University of California, San Diego. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, which develops science programs, books and festivals for fourth through eighth grade classrooms.

The panel was broadcasted live on NASA TV from the museum’s “Moving Beyond Earth” gallery and moderated by Tom Costello of NBC News. It featured space and science education luminaries Ellen Ochoa, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center; Rene McCormick, director of Standards and Quality at the National Math and Science Initiative; Linda Billings, professor at George Washington University; Dan Vergano, USA Today science writer; and Margaret Weitekamp, the museum’s curator of space history.

Ride aboard Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. Photo courtesy of Flickr user D Services

The group reflected on Ride’s game-changing influence in a traditionally male-dominated field and her progress in promoting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, as well as some of the hurdles America still must overcome to ensure gender equality in the sciences, such as lingering cultural stereotypes that prevent women from pursuing STEM careers and a lack of mentors to encourage them. A number of studies in recent years have shown that women still remain significantly underrepresented in STEM careers, particularly at higher levels, so the panel focused on the steps that must be taken to interest girls in science at a young age and to retain this interest as they prepare to enter the workforce.

“I think a lot of it is just trying to educate girls on what careers are like in those fields,” says Ochoa, an astronaut herself who followed in Ride’s footsteps as a PhD student at Stanford and believed in the possibility of being an astronaut because of her. “A lot of girls think it’s very much a solitary career. And while there are women scientists and engineers who may work alone in labs, it’s much more common that it’s more of a team effort.”

The panel, from left to right: Rene McCormick, Ellen Ochoa, Tom Costello, Margaret Weitekamp, Dan Vergano and Linda Billings. Photo courtesy of NASA

Ride had such an influence, Ochoa says, because she insisted on consulting her female colleagues when she had to make decisions about accommodating women in space travel instead of answering on her own, giving women a collective voice in the industry. Also, says Ochoa, “She did such a great job on her mission that whether or not women should be assigned to flights was no longer a question. There were still a lot of people who didn’t want to see women flying in space at the time, but they couldn’t point to any good reasons after her flight.”

In the panel’s audience was Tam O’Shaughnessy, Sally Ride Science’s chief operating officer and Ride’s life partner for more than 25 years. O’Shaughnessy launched the science education program with Ride and three other friends, and the group now is expanding their educational outreach by digitizing the books and trainings they have created to make the materials available online. Ride may be gone, O’Shaughnessy says, but “she’s still part of the company. She was our leader for 12 years, and her vision is part of our DNA now.”

Ride died at 61 last July from pancreatic cancer. Earlier this year, the Space Foundation posthumously awarded her its highest honor, the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award.

Learn the history of the Mississippi River and our influence on it in the documentary Troubled Waters: Mississippi River Story, on view at the Anacostia Community Museum this Thursday. Photo courtesy of Flickr user bluepoint951.

Tuesday, May 21: Charles A. Lindbergh Memorial Lecture: Bud Anderson

Aircraft enthusiasts, WWII buffs and anyone who has ever dreamed of flight, unite! WWII fighter pilot Bud Anderson is in the house this evening to talk about his experience in 116 combat missions, and what he has learned from logging more than 7,500 flying hours in more than 130 types of aircraft. If you want a preview of what’s in store, check out his memoir, To Fly and Flight. Free. 8 p.m., with a 7 p.m. screening of the film Fighter Pilot. Air and Space Museum.

Wednesday, May 22: Museum Highlights Tour in Japanese: “I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story”

Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! In celebration, the American History Museum has launched I Want the Wide American Earth, an exhibition that explores how Asian Pacific Americans of diverse cultures have shaped and been shaped by America, from the earliest Asian immigrants centuries ago to modern Asian communities. For a particularly authentic experience of one of the cultures represented, stop by the museum this afternoon and listen to a tour led in Japanese as you peruse the exhibition’s artifacts and stories. Free. 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. American History Museum.

Thursday, May 23: Troubled Waters: Mississippi River Story

The Mississippi River stretches over 2,530 miles from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, which means that once a drop of its waters has completed its journey, it has traveled across the entire country. America’s heartland has had a profound effect on the river, from canal and dam construction projects to pollution. The 2010 documentary Troubled Waters: Mississippi River Story traces our civilization’s effects on the river throughout our nation’s history, and offers some concrete solutions to the river’s troubles. Following the film, education specialist Linda Maxwell will lead a discussion on the the river and what we can do to improve it. Free (for reservations call 202-633-4844). 11 a.m. Anacostia Community Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Landscape designer Margie Ruddick’s “Urban Green Room,” the first permanent living indoor installation, helped her win a National Design Award last week. Photo by Sam Oberlander

“Nature” is probably the last word that comes to mind when most people think about urban design. That’s not the case for landscape designer Margie Ruddick, though. For the past 25 years, she has created parks, gardens and waterfronts that blend ecology with city planning.

In New York City, home to many of her works, Ruddick has transformed Queens Plaza by merging plants, water, wind and sun with the city’s infrastructure, and designed a 2.5-acre park along the Hudson River in Battery Park City out of materials recycled from other parks in the area. Her most recent project took nature indoors at Manhattan’s Bank of America Tower, where she created a winter garden with four tall sculptures made of thousands of ferns, mosses and vines. This “Urban Garden Room” was the first ever permanent installation of a living sculpture.

Last week, Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum announced that Ruddick would be one of this year’s ten recipients of a 2013 National Design Award, hers for landscape architecture. We caught up with her via e-mail after the announcement to ask her about her work. Below, she tells us more about her award-winning “green” approach to design, why it is important and what it will mean for the future of architecture.

For 25 years, Margie Ruddick has designed parks, gardens and waterfronts that blend ecology with city planning. Photo by Jack Ramsdale

What is the idea behind living sculptures in urban design? What effect do they have?

The idea for this space was to allow visitors to feel immersed in nature in a small interior space with severe natural light limitations.  A traditional atrium planting (like the bamboo in the 590 Madison Ave Atrium, formerly the IBM building) would have had little impact, given the small space, plus traditional plantings would have leaned toward the light. (Keep in mind that a fascination with over-sized, topiary sculptures has emerged in the past decade. Jeff Koons‘ “Puppy” is one of his most popular pieces, constantly traveling to enliven public spaces around the world.)  The effect I wanted to have in the Urban Garden Room was to feel as if you have stepped out of the city and into a fern canyon. Visitors report that there is something about the air quality—the humidity and the smell of earth—that automatically makes them feel more relaxed and able to breathe deeply and calmly.

Why are urban green environments important in a city?

OMG!  From ancient Chinese gardens to Vitruvius to Olmsted (and to the present era of urban greening) people have recognized the health impact of green spaces—cleaning air, cooling the earth, etc.—but also the psychological impact.  There are numerous studies finding that parks and green spaces improve mood, focus, and even intelligence.  I think a city without green environments can hardly survive .

How did you get involved in creating these types of environments?

I joined the horticulture work crew of Central Park in 1983 and two years later went to graduate school in landscape architecture.  I was bitten by the bug!

What role do you see green projects playing in architecture in the next 10 years?

More and more architectural proposals integrate “a green element” into buildings and built environments.  Green roofs, wild green terraces – the vision in a lot of architecture journals these days is of nature completely integrated as part of the city and part of architecture, rather than distinguishing between nature and building.  But, a lot of the images look like the architecture has been colonized by wild plantings, and not conceived from the same idea or the same pen.  I do think right now it is something of a fad, and that in ten years the reality of how you actually do this and keep buildings standing up and water-tight will have led to an architecture that doesn’t look as much like something that was left to go to seed, but a tighter and more rigorous integration of green into structure.

Ruddick transformed Queens Plaza by merging plants, water, wind and sun with the city’s infrastructure. Photo courtesy of Flickr user mpstudio123

What obstacles do you have to overcome when creating a living sculpture or an “urban green machine” in the middle of New York City?

The obstacles are huge, for both public streetscapes and private buildings. At Queens Plaza [where "Urban Green Machine" was installed], the design team and client had to navigate between numerous city and state agencies. Bureaucratic coordination is probably the biggest challenge, as well as staging construction in order never to close streets, and then the question of who is going to maintain the landscape and with what funds.  In the case of the Urban Garden Room, the construction and maintenance costs were and are prohibitive, but The Durst Organization decided that they would invest in a signature green space in the city’s first LEED platinum building.  The structural issues, staging issues (to get the sculpture in 13 pieces shipped to New York from Montreal and installed in the building over one weekend), and maintenance issues were enormous.  There were also a lot of plant losses.  The bulk of the sculpture planting is now the two or three most vigorous plants, as a number of plant species did not adjust through a chaotic first season.

What projects are you working on now?

I never know very far ahead what is coming down the pike—I work on a small number of projects at a time, collaborating closely with architects, artists and landscape architects on everything from concept through details.  I am currently working on a housing project in Taiwan, a marine ecology project on Long Island and a water garden for a private residence in Miami—he gamut from planning to finely honed design.  I also have written a book, Wild By Design [forthcoming] that I hope will raise consciousness about landscape, how important it is and how we actually go about working in the field.

What does it mean to you to win a National Design Award?

It has a professional meaning as well as a profound personal relevance.  Professionally, I am really gratified to see that this year’s winners are mostly individuals, doing work that is very particular, in addition to being pioneering.  I think it reflects the rising value the culture gives to creativity, and the art of what we do.  Personally, I grew up visiting the Cooper-Hewitt often, to the galleries and lectures, and there is no telling what I would be without these visits.  There is no institution in America that has done more for designers and design education, so receiving this award is seriously humbling.

Queens Plaza. Photo courtesy of Flickr user mpstudio123

Lillian Gish played a girl haunted by the wind of the western prairies in the 1928 silent film The Wind. On Sunday, see the film set to a live piano concert at the American Art Museum. Photo by Movie-Fan, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Friday May 17: Modern art conservation: palimpsest

What does it take museums to conserve art projects that go beyond a painted picture? Ann Hamilton‘s palimpsest is an installation in the exhibition “Over, Under, Next: Experiments in Mixed Media, 1913-present” that takes up a small room, whose walls are covered in loosely hanging newsprint sheets with handwritten scrawls across them. In the middle is a glass case that contains two heads of cabbage being eaten by 20 snails. This afternoon, Conservator Gwynne Ryan discusses the conservation issues surrounding this challenging artwork. Free. 12:30 p.m. Hirshhorn Museum.

Saturday, May 18: The art of Japanese pouch-books

The Japanese “pouch-book” was a common format used for novels, romances and comedies during the Edo period (1603-1868)—but you can still make one today! Artists from Pyramid Atlantic Art Center are in the Sackler Gallery this afternoon to show you how, with plenty of supplies. You get to take your masterpiece home when you’re done. $15 materials fee. 1 p.m. Sackler Gallery.

Sunday, May 19: The Wind

Two good Sunday afternoon activities: watching movies, listening to music. One great Sunday afternoon activity: both at the same time! This afternoon, in a very special “cineconcert,” composer and pianist Andrew E. Simpson performs a new, original score for The Wind, a silent film classic form 1928. In the movie, Lillian Gish plays an innocent girl who moves to the western prairies and is haunted by the ever-present wind. Free tickets distributed 30 minutes before the film in the G Street Lobby. 3 p.m. American Art Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

This weatherboard-clad slave cabin, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is currently being moved to the Smithsonian Institution from its original location on Edisto Island, South Carolina. Photo courtesy of The National Museum of African American History and Culture

UPDATE: Curator interview reveals more historical information about the cabin.

Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, South Carolina, had more than 170 slaves before the Civil War working in the fields to pick Sea Island cotton. Not much evidence of the slaves’ daily toil exists now, though, except for a couple one-story, dilapidated cabins–the last physical reminders of the brutal and degrading living conditions of the enslaved, as well as an emblem of the strength and endurance of the nearly four million Americans living in bondage by the time of the war.

Today, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) announced the acquisition of one of these 19th-century cabins, which was donated by the Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society last month after they received it from the plantation’s current owners. The cabin will travel to its new home at the Smithsonian to preserve the story it stands for.

Slave cabins are held in other museums and collections around the country. However, NMAAHC focused on acquiring one from Edisto Island, says curator Nancy Bercaw, who is in South Carolina this week to oversee the relocation project, is that the Point of Pines plantation was one of the first places where slaves “self-emancipated” themselves before the Emancipation Proclamation. South Carolina’s coastal islands, Bercaw says, were the earliest territories overtaken by Union troops. Point of Pines became a Union stronghold in 1861, and the African Americans living on the plantation, along with other slaves from around the area who had left their owners, declared themselves free.

Photo courtesy of The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Museum representatives just arrived at the plantation this morning to begin the week-long process of taking the cabin apart, piece by piece, and driving it up to the Washington, DC area. Officials say that every board and nail will be carefully numbered and packaged for shipment. The cabin eventually will be reconstructed inside the African American History and Culture Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2015.

Already, dismantling the cabin and examining the site has revealed details about the plantation’s slave community, says Bercaw. The cabin is now understood to have been part of a larger “slave street,” which consisted of up to 25 similarly small dwellings built in a row along a road. Bercaw and her team are working with Low Country Africana, too, to interview local descendents of the slaves. Their stories will supplement the documentation of the community’s history.

“The Point of Pines slave cabin will help us share the living history of a place and the resilience of the people, who, in the darkest days of slavery, built the cabin, cleared the land, worked in the fields and raised their families there,” says  Bercaw. “The cabin will be one of the jewels of the museum positioned at its center to tell the story of slavery and freedom within its walls.”

Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director, says: “Slavery is one of the most important episodes in American history, but it is often the least understood. By exhibiting this cabin, NMAAHC will ensure that the rich, complex and difficult story of the enslaved will be made accessible for the millions who will visit the museum.”

The cabin will be the focal piece of the museum’s exhibition “Slavery and Freedom,” which examines slavery’s role in shaping America and its lasting impact on African Americans.

The Museum currently is in the early stages of construction, but stop by its recently opened onsite Welcome Center to preview what is to come.

Smithsonian’s annual Garden Fest will be held in the Enid A. Haupt Garden on Tuesday. Come learn about composting and worm farming! Photo by Kevin H., courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Friday, May 10: Garden Fest

How do you relate to the earth? In the garden outside of Smithsonian’s Castle, three African artists each recently completed a land art installation to explore issues of land use, environmental sustainability, hunger and humanity’s role on the planet. The installations are part of Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, a new exhibition at the African Art Museum. Today, in celebration of the exhibition, Smithsonian’s annual Garden Fest will encourage families to consider their place on Earth, too, with art, composting, plant potting, worm farming and more. Role up your sleeves and get your hands dirty! Free. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Enid A. Haupt Garden.

Saturday, May 11: Super Science Saturday: Astronomy

Think you’re a space expert? Seen everything the Air and Space Museum has to offer? Then take a trip out to the Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport, where thousands of aviation and space artifacts that take up too much room to be exhibited on the Mall are on display. On the second Saturday of each month (that’s today!), the museum holds demonstrations and hands-on activities that teach visitors about aviation and space exploration. Today’s theme should whet the space enthusiast’s appetite: Astronomy. Free. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center.

Sunday, May 12: Mendelssohn Piano Trio: Mother’s Day Tribute

Treat mom to some fantastic classical tunes this afternoon, courtesy of the Mendelssohn Piano Trio. The group—violinist Peter Sirotin, pianist Ya-Ting Chang and cellist Fiona Thompson—has played for audiences around the world for more than 15 years, and today will perform music by some of the best female composers. A question-and-answer session will follow the performance. Free tickets available in the G Street lobby beginning 30 minutes before the performance. 3 p.m. to 4:30 pm. American Art Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

The National Zoo’s two giant pandas don’t know how to mate with each other. But thanks to artificial insemination Mei Xiang (L) and Tian Tian (R) have produced two cubs, and a third may be on the way. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

The National Zoo’s two giant pandas have little interest in each other 11 months of the year. Mei Xiang, 15, and Tian Tian, 16, are solitary creatures, happy to spend most of their days chowing down and napping. But March was mating season. For 30 to 45 days, pandas undergo behavioral and physical changes that prepare them for an annual 24- to 72-hour window in which females ovulate, the only time they can conceive.

Just because they are able to mate, though, doesn’t mean they will. Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are what David Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the National Zoo, calls “behaviorally incompetent.”

“Tian Tian tries really hard, and is very diligent in his duties,” he says, “but he’s just not able to pull Mei Xiang into the proper mating position.”

The pair is not alone. Of pandas in the United States today, only two, Gao Gao and Bai Yun at the San Diego Zoo, have been able to breed naturally. Captive pairs have succeeded elsewhere in the world as well—especially in China, the bears’ native home, where the captive population is much higher—but mating difficulties are still common. Panda’s  total population, captive and wild, is about 2,000, so each failed match is a crucial missed opportunity for repopulation.

The species’ future is brighter than these mating difficulties suggest, though. Wildt is part of an international network of American and Chinese specialists—veterinarians, researchers and zookeepers—who have collaborated for years on improving captive panda breeding practices. In recent years, the team has made huge advances in understanding the bears’ biology and behavior, which has inspired new approaches to care that reduce faulty coupling, or even circumvent it.

Their studies are turning the tide. Today, the bears’ captive population is around 350, almost triple what it was 15 years ago.

When Mei Xiang began to ovulate on the last weekend of March, zookeepers closed the David M. Rubenstein Family Giant Panda Habitat to visitors, made sure she and Tian Tian were comfortable, then brought the lustful pair into the same room for the first time since last spring. The two had become rambunctious leading up to the encounter, and spent days staring longingly at one another through the fence that divides their yards. They had hardly touched their bamboo.

Despite the flirtatious fireworks, though—and while it was the seventh year in a row the two had been put together to mate—the two pandas again failed to copulate. As she has in the past, Mei Xiang flopped on her belly like a pancake when she met with Tian Tian—the opposite of good mating posture, which would have her rigid on all fours—and Tian Tian went about his usual routine of stomping around and standing on her, clueless what to do.

After multiple attempts, the keepers ushered the tired pair back to their separate yards.

Panda breeders’ challenge is overcoming unknown variables in the mating process, says Copper Aitken-Palmer, head vet at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “There may be some developmental things that we are doing differently under human care, versus what they’re learning in the wild,” she says. Cubs often stay with their mothers for two or more years in the wild, for instance, so they might learn how to breed by watching or listening. Adults may need to mate with an experienced partner first to learn what to do. It’s hard to know for sure, Aitken-Palmer explains, because wild pandas are incredibly hard to observe in their bamboo-filled habitat in China’s southwestern mountains.

The zoo feeds Tian Tian up to 100 pounds of bamboo each day. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

The National Zoo compensates for its lack of other pandas to mimic these conditions by preparing Mei Xiang and Tian Tian year-round for mating, both the act itself and the steps leading up to and following it. Since Mei Xiang arrived, she has been trained to receive injections, get blood drawn, milk and lie peacefully during ultrasounds, all without a fuss. (She even rubs the ultrasound gel over herself for her keepers.) The Zoo is trying to teach her to pancake onto a raised platform instead of the ground to make herself more accessible to Tian Tian, and also gives Tian Tian strengthening exercises so one day he might learn to pull her upright.

In China, zoos and breeding centers with a greater number of pandas use similar techniques to encourage coupling, and have begun to test the theory that pandas learn from observation by having cubs attend breeding sessions. On rare occasions, some Asian breeding centers have gone so far as to show their bears videos of other pandas mating—yep, panda porn. There’s no concrete evidence it works, though.

(Josh Groban has his own panda mating technique, but its success also hasn’t been confirmed.)

More than behavioral changes, the most significant improvements in breeding techniques have come at the chemical level. Researchers have developed increasingly accurate measurements of female pandas’ hormone levels and vaginal cell changes, and now are able to pinpoint the exact ideal time frame for a panda’s egg to be fertilized. This new-found accuracy not only dictates the best window to put two pandas together in the same room, but also dramatically improves the success of the practice that allows pairs who cannot figure out how to mate to have cubs anyways: artificial insemination.

“Because pandas’ reproductive activity is so infrequent, they don’t have many opportunities for sexual experimentation and figuring it out,” Wildt says. A panda in heat in the wild may mate with a number of males all competing for her, but those in America’s zoos are stuck with the one they’ve got, regardless of sexual compatibility. Artificial insemination is key to panda breeding, he explains, because it has allowed scientists to overstep the hurdle of sexual compatibility entirely. The technique, which deposits collected semen into a female while she is anesthetized, was “very rudimentary” in the early 2000s, in his words, but took off about seven years ago when scientists began to develop effective ways to freeze and store semen for multiple years and craft more precise tools, like tiny catheters that sneak through a female panda’s cervix to place sperm directly into her uterus.

So far in America, six panda cubs have been produced by artificial insemination, including two from Mei Xiang. That’s one more than the number of the country’s naturally conceived cubs—and as Wildt points out, those cubs all come from the same super-compatible couple in San Diego. (No exact data is available for China’s natural vs. artificial breeding stats, Wildt says, because its zoos often follow successful natural mating sessions with artificial inseminations the next day to improve the chances of fertilization.)

Artificial insemination is particularly valuable for America’s pandas, along with all others outside of China’s well-populated breeding centers, because it has the potential to increase genetic diversity, which is essential for maintaining the captive population’s health as it expands. Mei Xiang has been artificially inseminated every year she has failed to mate with Tian Tian since 2005. This year, for the first time, she was inseminated with semen from two males, first with a fresh-frozen combination of Tian Tian’s sperm, and 12 hours later with some of Gao Gao’s semen stirred in as well, shipped frozen from San Diego. “Artificial insemination gives us the opportunity to mix things up in the absence of multiple males,” Aitken-Palmer says.

To strengthen Tian Tian for mating, the National Zoo keeps him active by putting treats around his yard for him to find. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

According to Wildt, the National Zoo will continue to focus on artificial insemination for the foreseeable future. But natural breeding is the ultimate goal for the species, once zoos and breeding centers have large enough panda populations to depend on it, he says. The numbers are headed in the right direction; the bears are back to “self-sustaining,” which means no more giant pandas have to be brought into captivity, and scientists will have them under their care for at least the next 100 years. The Chinese are even beginning to reintroduce pandas into the wild (although with some difficulty).

“It’s really a great success story,” says Aitken-Palmer. “There aren’t many endangered animals we’ve been able to do this with.”

Now, everyone is waiting on Mei Xiang to add to the species’ growing numbers. Her first cub, Tai Shan, came in 2005, and the second, born last summer after years of disappointment, died from underdeveloped lungs after just six days. Another successful birth would help to heal the wounds of last year’s tragedy, says Juan Rodriguez, one of the National Zoo’s panda keepers.

It also would give Mei Xiang and Tian Tian’s Chinese owners a good reason to keep the pair together at the zoo instead of considering a different match, which has been an ongoing discussion.

Bandie Smith, the Zoo’s giant panda curator, says not to hold your breath for news on Mei Xiang’s pregnancy anytime soon. The staff might not know if Mei Xiang is pregnant until a cub pops out. Females build nests and cradle objects each year whether they are pregnant or not (the latter is called a “pseudo-pregnancy”), and the fetuses are so small that they often escape detection in ultrasounds. Pandas experience a phenomenon called delayed implantation, too, in which a fertilized egg floats around for a number of weeks—usually between 90 and 160 days—before implanting in the female’s uterus and beginning a short 40- to 50-day gestation period.

All this means that no one has a very exact idea of when a new cub would arrive—somewhere around mid-August, Smith says.

“Breeding pandas is a very protracted process, and it’s never a guarantee. That’s the frustrating part,” says Rodriguez. “The cool part is that you’re among people who are trying to keep a critically endangered species on the planet. If we can ensure their continuous path to recovery, then our great grandchildren could actually experience pandas in their natural habitat. You can’t beat that.”

Mei Xiang plays in the snow! Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

Bozie will go into quarantine for a minimum of 30 days upon her arrival at the National Zoo, per standard procedure. An expert team of elephant keepers, nutritionists and veterinarians will care for her. Following quarantine, Zoo staff will begin the process of introducing her to females Ambika and Shanthi and male Kandula. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

The National Zoo’s three Asian elephants are about to get a new friend. Today, the Zoo announced the pending arrival of Bozie, a 37-year-old female Asian Elephant who will be on-loan from the Baton Rouge Zoo.

Baton Rogue recently decided to find a new home for Bozie after her last elephant companion, Judy, died of chronic gastrointestinal irritation from arthritis medication in March. Female elephants are social animals, so they are happiest and healthiest when living with others.

Judy had been at the Baton Rogue Zoo since 1974. Bozie, who was born in the wild in Sri Lanka, arrived at Baton Rogue in 1998 after living at other zoos.

The National Zoo has plenty of room to accommodate Bozie, now that the final major phase of its seven-year, $56 million renovation project of its Elephant Trails Habitat was completed in March. The Zoo is regarded as a leader in elephant research, particularly on Asian elephants, which are both less studied and far more endangered than their African relatives. (Around 30,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants are alive today, compared to around 400,000 African ones.)

“One of our major goals is to create an environment where elephants can live as a more natural social unit,” Marie Galloway, elephant manager at the National Zoo, said when the renovations were completed.

We look forward to welcoming Bozie when she arrives, date TBA.

Bozie paints a picture! Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

On Friday, take a tour of “Changing America,” an exhibition that tells the story of America’s push towards racial equality from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Movement. Photo by Cocoabiscuit, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Friday, May 3: Exhibition Tour: Changing America

This year is a big one for celebrating civil rights; 2013 marks both the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, in which Martin Luther King, Jr. told the nation he had a dream of equality. Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, and the March on Washington, 1963 celebrates both momentous events with related historical objects, including the pens Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation and Civil Rights Act, respectively. Today, stop by the exhibition for a tour that explains the various objects’ significance. Free. 2 p.m. African American History Museum.

Saturday, May 4: I Want the Wide American Earth Family Festival

Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! To kick off the month’s celebration of Asian Pacific American culture, as well as to show off its new exhibit I Want the Wide American Earth, the American History Museum has organized arts, crafts and a scavenger hunt today, along with an afternoon of storytelling and spoken word performances. Guests include local writers Wendy Wan-Long Shang (The Great Wall of Lucy), Eugenia Kim (The Calligrapher’s Daughter) and Scott Seligman (The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo) and spoken word extraordinaire Regie Cabico. Free. 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. American History Museum.

Sunday, May 5: Childen’s Day

Keep the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month festivities going! Today, the American Art Museum celebrates Children’s Day, a traditional Korean holiday for kids, with arts and activities inspired by Nam June Paik (1932-2006), an avant-garde musician and installation and video artist whose work is on display in the museum. Kids can play with interactive TV and robot games and go on a scavenger hunt (in case you missed yesterday’s!). Free. 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. American Art Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Kota Ezawa recreates famous moments in history and pop culture with basic animation software. He is visiting the Hirshhorn on Thursday to talk about his art. Photo by Independent Curators International, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Tuesday, April 30: Did an Emperor Kick-Start the Renaissance?

Most of the art of Emperor Frederick II’s court was destroyed after his death, but there is evidence that the Roman ruler, who directed his artists to recreate the splendor of ancient Rome, sparked the Renaissance during his reign in the 13th century. This evening, art historian Louisa Woodville, a teacher at George Mason University, juxtaposes the surviving works of Frederick’s court with those of the proto-Renaissance to make the case for the emperor’s influence. Tickets $25, with member discounts. 6:45 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. Ripley Center.

Wednesday, May 1: Hands-On Family Craft Activities

Most Wednesdays and Saturdays this Summer, the American Indian Museum is offering a hands-on experience of Native culture. Stop by the museum this afternoon to learn how to make a Native craft that you can take home with you. Free. 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Wednesday and Saturdays through August. American Indian Museum.

Thursday, May 2: Meet Artist Kota Ezawa

Japanese-German artist Kota Ezawa recreates famous moments in television, film and art history with rudimentary digital drawing and animation software. Frame by frame, he has covered the Kennedy assassination and O.J. Simposon’s trial to clips from popular movies. This evening, the artist discusses the method behind his approach with a talk on “A History of ‘Poor Animation.’ ” Free. 7 p.m. Hirshhorn Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Celebrate Arbor Day by planting a tree at the Anacostia Community Museum on Friday. Photo by Horia Varian courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Friday, April 26: Arbor Day at the Anacostia Community Museum

Happy Arbor Day! This annual holiday, started by Sterling Morton in 1871, is all about caring for and planting trees. The Anacostia Community Museum is celebrating the occasion with a day-long series of plantings, workshops and hands-on activities for all ages. Learn about the holiday’s history, craft some stick dolls and help save the environment. Free. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Anacostia Community Museum.

Saturday, April 27: My Collection is My Passion

Like collecting things? So do the five panelists in a discussion at Smithsonian’s Craft Show this afternoon—they’re so enthusiastic about collecting, in fact, that they turn the hobby into an art. As collectors of glass, wood, ceramics and other fine crafts, they will talk about the challenges and pleasures of acquiring the objects of their passions. Free. 3 p.m. National Building Museum.

Sunday, April 28: Axelrod String Quartet

The Axelrod String Quartet is back at the American History Museum this evening for the finale of its three-part concert series, which has featured the quartets of Haydn’s Op. 71. Tonight is Op. 71 No. 3, a colorful and energetic piece you can preview here. One hour prior to the show, Kenneth Slowik, SCMS artistic director and recipient of the 2011 Smithsonian Secretary’s Distinguished Research Lecture Award, will give a lecture on Haydn’s music, life and times. $31 general admission, $25 member, $23 senior member (tickets here). 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., with a 6:30 p.m. pre-concert lecture. American History Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Last Monday, April 15, the National Museum of Natural History actually did come to life after hours. Not with mummies or miniature armies, of course, but with a small group of volunteers, a bunch of fancy-looking equipment and two guys at the forefront of museum digitization.

Adam Metallo and Vince Rossi, of the 3D Lab in the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, work with laser scanners to create high resolution, three-dimensional digital models of objects and places around the Smithsonian Institution. Last week, they teamed up with curators at the Natural History Museum for the second of two nights of scanning the Dinosaur Hall, the museum’s iconic galleries that house prehistoric fossils from the ancient seas through the Ice Age. The hall is scheduled to close in 2014 for a ground-up, multi-year renovation, so Metallo and Rossi, dubbed the “Laser Cowboys” by their colleagues, were brought in to capture the hall’s present arrangement before all the fossils are removed.

“The main purpose of 3D scanning an exhibit like this is to have an archive of what an exhibit of this era might have looked,” Metallo says. “This is a documentation for folks in the future to know what a museum experience here was like.”

The scanning has immediate uses as well. With accurate digital 3D models of T-Rex and his friends’ skeletons, curators and designers will have a much easier time envisioning the exhibition’s future iterations and testing out ideas for optimal arrangements. Paleontologists, too, will suddenly have access to fossils anytime, anywhere. “There’s one specimen that’s on display two stories up in the air,” Metallo says. “Now, instead of a researcher having to get up on a scissor lift to look at it, we can just email him the digital model.”

And if digital models aren’t enough, 3D scanning might soon allow anyone interested in fossils to get even closer to the real thing. “We’re seeing a real democratization of 3D printing along with 3D scanning,” says Rossi. “There are apps for iPhones that allow you to use a camera as a 3D scanning device. Pretty much any museum visitor could create a pretty decent model of a museum object, and potentially take that through a 3D printer. There’s still a fair amount of expertise required at the moment, but it’s going to be a lot more user-friendly in the next two or three years.”

In other words, it’s not inconceivable that you could print out your own stegosaurus skeleton for your living room on your home 3D printer someday.

Ultimately, Rossi and Metallo dream of digitizing all 137 million of the objects in the Smithsonian’s collections. Because only two percent of the objects are displayed in the Institution’s museums at any time—and many people never have the chance to see even those in person—precise replicas could be printed and sent to local museums across the country, or viewed digitally on a computer screen anywhere in the world.

As for future of the Dino Hall, Matthew Carrano, the museum’s curator of dinosauria, says his team is still in the early stages of planning exactly how the exhibit will look when it reopens in 2019, but that it definitely will strive to incorporate humans into the dinosaurs’ story. “The biggest thing I hope for in the new hall is that a visitor comes here and is inspired, amazed and interested in the history of life on earth, and understands that this history is still relevant to them today, and to the world today,” he explains. “There are problems we face as human beings that paleontology can help address. Dinosaurs didn’t exist by themselves; they were part of environments and ecosystems just like we are today. And that connection is really important to everything we’re going to show in this hall.”

To learn more about 3D scanning and printing at Smithsonian, check out Metallo and Rossi’s Facebook page, and follow them on twitter @3D_Digi_SI. To learn more about dinosaurs, check out the Natural History Museum’s dinosaur page.

Though modern medicine benefits people far and wide, pockets of the world remain untouched by it. In these isolated areas, people don’t know about amoxicillin, and they don’t live with air filters, daily showers or the power of Purell. Diets there favor starch and fiber, with very few preservatives.

María Gloria Domínguez-Bello, a microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, thinks that the mix of microbes living within and on people in these places—their microbiome—may be close to that of more ancient humans. If so, studying the populations could tell scientists whether today’s war on bacteria has eliminated some helping hands, organisms that once protected us all from allergies and autoimmune diseases.

To find out, Domínguez-Bello and her colleagues journeyed deep into the Amazon rainforest to the isolated village of Checherta, in Peru. There, her team collected DNA samples from villagers’ hands, feet, cheeks and tongue, as well as from air, livestock and work surfaces. By comparing these samples with similar ones collected in three other towns and cities—all in the Amazon, but with varying lifestyles—the team hopes to identify any microbe species that modern medicine may have wiped out.

Aliens Inside Us, a Smithsonian Channel documentary premiering May 4 at 8 p.m. ET, follows the research effort. As the scientists make contact, they also introduce antibiotics that could transform the microbiomes of the people in Checherta. It would be unethical, says Domínguez-Bello, to bring doctors to an area where people suffer from infectious diseases without offering help. “We spoil the very places we go for our study,” she says, ‘but it is unavoidable.”

In the Amazon, María Gloria Domínguez-Bello and her team collected about 1,500 DNA samples to identify any microbe species that modern medicine may have wiped out. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Channel