According to a New York Times article, it took a citywide fund-raising effort for The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to raise the $68 million needed to keep a Thomas Eakins masterpiece - The Gross Clinic in the city. "The painting is widely considered to be among the greatest convases in American art".

Though Eakins' fame is "almost entirely posthumous and he was little known and admired in his native city" during his life time, but in Lawrence Goldstone's debut The Anatomy of Deception, Eakins is front and center in this highly readable, intriguing and historically well-researched forensic thriller. Also depicted are the real-life characters such as William Osler (the Father of Modern Medicine), famed surgeon William Stewart Halsted and the vibrant social scene of Philadelphia 1889.

Historical mystery readers, especially those of Caleb Carr and Matthew Pearl will find much to like here.

Did you feel the earthquake this morning (Friday, April 18) at about 5:45 a.m.? The epicenter was in Illinois but some Ann Arborites who were up that early felt some weird vibrations. Adding to that weirdness was my discovery that on April 18, 1906, the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake hit, and because of resulting fires, most of the city burned to the ground. That quake measured 8.3 on the Richter scale and was felt from Southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and as far east as central Nevada. Scientists later determined that the San Andreas Fault had moved about 23 feet. To learn more about earthquakes, check out the Library's books and dvds.

On April 11, 1633, Gallilco Galilei was put on trial by the Inquisition for his preposterous claim, originally stated by Copernicus that the Earth revolved around the Sun. When Galileo wrote a book titled, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he angered Pope Urban VIII who contended that any theory not seeing the Earth as the center of the universe went against scripture. Galileo was placed on house arrest for the rest of his life at his home in Florence where he eventually went blind and died in 1642. It wasn't until 1835 that the Vatican removed the book from its list of banned books and in 1992, the Catholic Church formally admitted that Galileo was right.

UM Exhibit Museum of Natural History presents the last Polar Science Adventures in the series! Explore the effects of the melting of land ice and sea ice. How will it affect polar animals or people? What can we do to help right now?

Join this workshop for children ages 6-11 and an adult to learn about the Artic and Antarctica. Activities are designed to be accomplished with collaboration between adults and kids. Register at any public services desk or call the library at 327-4200 and choose a session. Walk-ins are also welcome!
Pittsfield Wednesday, March 26th, 4:30-5:30 PM
Malletts Creek Saturday, March 29th, 10-11 AM
Northeast Saturday, March 29th, 2-3 PM

What animals live at the poles and how do they survive? Discover how polar bears swim in ice-cold water and other sub-zero animals live through extreme temperatures through hands-on experiments. Find out all about artic animals in this fun-filled adult/child workshop presented by the UM Exhibit Museum of Natrual History. Call any information desk to register your spot in a branch or drop in. Workshop for children ages 6-11 with an adult.

Pittsfield Branch, Wednesday, February 20, 4:30-5:30 PM
Malletts Creek Branch, Saturday, February 23, 10-11 AM
Northeast Branch, Saturday, February 23, 2-3 PM

Spend the day at the UM Exhibit Museum of Natural History to learn more about the Poles. Check out the Antarctica's Climate Secrets: One Teacher's Story exhibit on the Museum's fourth floor to learn about Robin Frisch-Gleason's recent trip to Antarctica. Robin is an Ann Arbor 4th grade teacher, who took the trip as part of the Antarctic Drilling Project (ANDRILL). Learn how the drilling project collected ocean floor core samples to research the long-term climate changes in Antarctica, and see a real set of Extreme Cold Weather gear.

Where are the North and South Poles, and why are they so cold? What’s the difference between seawater and fresh water? Sea ice and land ice? How do layers of ice stack up? From ice cores to ocean currents, we’ll learn about the coldest places on Earth in this exciting science workshop held in collaboration with the UM Exhibit Museum of Natural History. The workshop is for children ages 6-11 and their adult guardian. Activities are created for both adults and children to complete together.

Call the Youth Desk at 327-8301 or ask at any service desk to register for the program. Choose from the following dates:
Wednesday, Jan. 16, 4:30-5:30 PM at the Pittsfield Branch
Saturday, Jan. 19, 10-11 AM at the Malletts Creek Branch
Saturday, Jan. 19, 2-3 PM at the Northeast Branch

It was on December 27, 1831 that Charles Darwin sailed from England on the HMS Beagle. During this trip to South America and the Galapagos Islands, Darwin explored the rainforests and made some amazing discoveries about the plants and animals he found there. It was on the Islands that Darwin began to formulate his theories that later became the groundbreaking book, The Origin of the Species, a book that would create one of the greatest scientific controversies of modern times.

The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum is featuring a family day themed "The Big Freeze" running December 26-31 from 10am-5pm. You'll be able to check out liquid nitrogen demonstrations, hands-on ice cream making, arctic facts and live reindeer. Check the museum's full schedule for those days to see what activities are happening when!
Hands-on Museum, $8 (members and infants free), 220 E. Ann St. 995-5439.

Bestselling author and scientist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking have a children’s book out that has strong gravitational pull on our 11-year-old son. In fact, reading George’s Secret Key to the Universe is keeping him up way past bedtime. The major attraction is a super-computer named Cosmos who allows George and his friends to travel through the universe, as they learn about time and space. But what if the wrong people got Cosmos? That would be bad. The book's website says sequels are planned in 2008 and 2009.

Plus never before seen footage from extraterrestrial film that had to be taken out of NASA's liquid nitrogen storage! How many movies can boast that? Today, In the Shadow of the Moon opens at the Michigan Theater. In the 1960s, 400,000 people joined forces to show what the human race can achieve when we work together. They did the impossible--they sent Man to the Moon and safely returned our brave tour guides to Earth. And they achieved this goal in under a decade! Want more info on the Apollo Missions? AADL has it.
Not going to go see the movie because you think the moon landings were hoaxes? Buzz Aldrin's fist will certainly tell you otherwise!

Ever ‘caught’ a yawn from someone else? According to University of Maryland professor Robert Provine, about 55% of viewers seeing a yawn will yawn themselves. Provine embarked on a quest to design “the 100 percent contagious yawn” (inspired by a Monty Python sketch).

Intrigued? NPR’s All Things Considered talked to Provine about his experiments on September 24th. See if you can make it though the story without yawning yourself – I couldn’t!

Want to learn more? Read Provine’s article about his early research in the December 2005 issue of American Scientist. The full text of the article is available through the General Reference Center Gold database on the library’s Research page.

What do baby names and swearing reveal about thought and human nature?

Find out in Steven Pinker’s new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

If you haven’t read any of Pinker’s entertaining and thought-provoking books on language and psychology - or if you’re already a fan - listen to him discuss his new book on the second hour of NPR’s Science Friday on September 14th.