Electricity has become the most important source of energy in the world, yet no one has ever seen an electrical charge, and until this century, it was impossible to isolate and study individual charges of electricity. Electricity is a natural phenomenon that comes about because of the negatively and positively charged particles of matter. These […] Read more

With notoriously bad eyesight, forest elephants tend to follow their trunks, using the appendage as a blind person might use fingertips on a stranger’s face–to identify, visualize, gather clues, communicate. From infancy, elephants entwine their trunks in play, establishing bonds of kinship while storing vital information–from smells and texture to the muscular strength of their […] Read more

Bonding over the mineral-rich mud in the hole at their feet, an older female places her trunk into a juvenile’s mouth. Elephants dig relentlessly with their tusks and trunks in the muck at Dzanga Bai, mining the substrata for salt and other minerals to supplement their diet of leaves, bark, grasses, and fruit […] Read more

A young elephant takes it’s first wobbly steps after birth in the heartland of Kilimanjaro, named after it’s majestic mountain, also the highest peak in all of Africa. This little elephant will enjoy all that the region has to offer, including semi-arid savannas and wetlands, growing up amidst several diverse ecosystems that connect the circle […] Read more

POETRY (1806 – 1861) I I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, […] Read more

With thousands of other desperate Irish Catholic immigrants, Nellie Cashman came to Boston with her mother and sister about 1860. They then moved west, making their home in San Francisco in 1869. It was there that Nellie and her mother contracted mining fever and they soon left for the silver camps of Nevada, stopping in […] Read more

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast, within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Through the years, this gateway to the new […] Read more

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast, within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Through the years, this gateway to the new […] Read more

Yesterday, millions of people were seduced by an offer of love online. Today, the cyber promise was a joke — with a new e-mail offering humor. But for those who responded, the joke was on them. The e-mails contained a destructive computer program — referred to as a worm, which is a type of virus. […] Read more