"To honor and remember": An ethical awakening to African American remains in museums.

In 2021, amid surging activism in the Movement for Black Lives, the Smithsonian Institution's possession of the remains of thousands of African Americans drew widespread attention. In response, the Smithsonian and its National Museum of Natural History undertook a series of steps to assess these remains and to develop a policy for returning as many as possible to descendants and descendant communities, under changes that would apply to all non-Native American remains in Smithsonian collections. This paper reviews the actions taken to date and the work that is still in progress or planned. I contextualize these steps more broadly within an "ethical awakening" to African American remains that have long been present, studied, and displayed in collections across the museum community in the United States, where other institutions have faced similar challenges and changes.

A new species of Lophostreptus Cook, 1895 discovered among syntypes of L.regularis Attems, 1909 (Diplopoda, Spirostreptida, Spirostreptidae).

A new species of the genus Lophostreptus Cook, 1895 is described, based on specimens hidden for over a century among the syntypes of its congener Lophostreptusregularis Attems, 1909 housed in the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet Stockholm (NRMS) and the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHMW). A lectotype is designated for Lophostreptusregularis Attems, 1909 in order to stabilize its taxonomy. Updates to the millipede fauna of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania are provided.

Contribution to the knowledge about mammal collections in Brazil

We provide a brief introduction on the importance and use of scientific collections and a general overview of the articles that are part of the special issue of the Brazilian Journal of Mammalogy on Brazilian mammal collections. The 19 articles that comprise this issue refer to collections distributed across eight Brazilian states. Most of the collections hold specimens of living mammals, and two of them are paleontological collections. Two articles address specific orders of mammals, while the rest present data for all the orders. We hope that this issue represents a significant contribution to efforts to preserve Brazilian scientific collections, providing a more comprehensive view of their importance and the current and potential use of the specimens preserved therein.

Apresentamos uma breve introdução sobre a importância e uso de coleções científicas e um panorama geral dos artigos que fazem parte do número especial do Brazilian Journal of Mammalogy sobre coleções brasileiras de mamíferos. Os 19 artigos abrangem coleções distribuídas em oito estados da federação. Em sua maioria tratam de mamíferos viventes, sendo dois referentes a coleções paleontológicas. Dois artigos abordam ordens específicas de mamíferos e os demais apresentam dados para todas as ordens. Esperamos que este número represente uma contribuição significativa aos esforços para preservar as coleções científicas nacionais, fornecendo uma visão mais abrangente acerca das coleções e do uso atual e potencial dos espécimes nelas preservados.

Promoting Access in a Mexican-American Museum during the Pandemic: Online Community Events and Robots.

During COVID-19, many museums closed their physical structures and transitioned their exhibits to online platforms for public digital access. As museums reopen, there remains a need for some visitors to attend exhibits and cultural events with minimal risk. This article examines an innovative hybrid platform for museum digital access-personal telerobots to co-explore museums alongside community members. The way it works is as follows: a community member remains at home and remotely logs into the museum robot. A friend/family member is physically at the museum, and once the robot is embodied by the remote user, they can walk around the museum together, talk with each other, interact with artifacts, and experience the exhibits together. Ultimately, the robot user and the visitor can both be immersed in the venue, separate yet together at the same time. This article examines the use of online community events and personal robots in a Mexican-American history, art, and culture museum for cultural exhibits and how these technologies may facilitate the way community members learn, interact, and explore museum artifacts. It also explores the need for best practices on the use of online communities and personal robot technology in museums. This work contributes observations, reflections, and curatorial considerations on both forms of digital media for inclusive museum practices.

Incorporating Medical Museum Specimens Into the Training of Environmental Health Students.

Xenobiotics, radiation, and other environmental health risk factors leave their mark on human organs. This can be demonstrated through the use of pathology museum specimens. Upon completing two semesters of postgraduate studies in environmental health, a tour of the Museum of Pathology is offered to postgraduate students at Athens Medical School who are being trained in environmental health. A structured questionnaire is employed to assess the specimens' impact on several aspects: improving students' observational skills, reinforcing the taught material, acquiring new relevant knowledge, and cultivate the social-cognitive ability of empathy. Additionally, students are asked to evaluate the necessity of preserving metadata associated mainly with the social context of the specimens. This research-educational initiative, a component of an ongoing larger project, underscores the significant educational and research value of museum specimens pertaining to environmental health. Furthermore, effectively utilizing such exhibits can enrich the museum experience for visitors and increase public awareness of environmental health issues.

Frozen, Cold, or Cool? Chemical Assessment of the Effectiveness of Storage Conditions for Celluloid 3D Objects.

Preserving celluloid artifacts is challenging for museums, as this plastic is highly prone to degradation. Frozen, cold, and cool storage solutions are typically recommended for inhibiting the chemical degradation of celluloid. However, they are rarely implemented for three-dimensional celluloid (3D-CN) objects because low temperatures might cause irreversible effects (e.g., microcracking). This work presents the effects of four different storage temperatures (+23 °C, +13 °C, +9 °C, -15 °C) on the preservation of artificially aged 3D-CN mock-ups, aiming at understanding their effectiveness by measuring molecular weight distribution, camphor, and nitrogen contents after storage. Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) results showed that the least loss of camphor content and fewer polymer chain scissions happened at -15 °C, hinting that this temperature was the best for preservation. However, the heterogeneous nature of celluloid alteration, i.e., the development of degradation gradients in thicker 3D-CN objects (>0.5 mm), made it necessary to apply a novel sampling technique, which selectively considers several depths for analyses from the surface to the core (depth profiling). This depth profiling made monitoring the degradation evolution dependent on the storage conditions in the thicker mock-ups possible. This approach was also used for the first time to quantify the polymer chain scission, camphor loss, and denitration of historical artifacts, indicating a dramatic difference in the degradation stage between surface and core. The effectiveness of frozen storage on the chemical stability of 3D-CN after seven months could support museums to consider reducing the storage temperatures to preserve precious artifacts.

The nature of science: The fundamental role of natural history in ecology, evolution, conservation, and education.

There is a contemporary trend in many major research institutions to de-emphasize the importance of natural history education in favor of theoretical, laboratory, or simulation-based research programs. This may take the form of removing biodiversity and field courses from the curriculum and the sometimes subtle maligning of natural history research as a "lesser" branch of science. Additional threats include massive funding cuts to natural history museums and the maintenance of their collections, the extirpation of taxonomists across disciplines, and a critical under-appreciation of the role that natural history data (and other forms of observational data, including Indigenous knowledge) play in the scientific process. In this paper, we demonstrate that natural history knowledge is integral to any competitive science program through a comprehensive review of the ways in which they continue to shape modern theory and the public perception of science. We do so by reviewing how natural history research has guided the disciplines of ecology, evolution, and conservation and how natural history data are crucial for effective education programs and public policy. We underscore these insights with contemporary case studies, including: how understanding the dynamics of evolutionary radiation relies on natural history data; methods for extracting novel data from museum specimens; insights provided by multi-decade natural history programs; and how natural history is the most logical venue for creating an informed and scientifically literate society. We conclude with recommendations aimed at students, university faculty, and administrators for integrating and supporting natural history in their mandates. Fundamentally, we are all interested in understanding the natural world, but we can often fall into the habit of abstracting our research away from its natural contexts and complexities. Doing so risks losing sight of entire vistas of new questions and insights in favor of an over-emphasis on simulated or overly controlled studies.

Indoor Content Delivery Solution for a Museum Based on BLE Beacons.

The digital transformation advancement enables multiple areas to provide modern services to their users. Culture is one of the areas that can benefit from these advances, more specifically museums, by presenting many benefits and the most emergent technologies to the visitors. This paper presents an indoor location system and content delivery solution, based on Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons, that enable visitors to walk freely inside the museum and receive augmented reality content based on the acquired position, which is done using the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI). The solution presented in this paper was created for the Foz Côa Museum in Portugal and was tested in the real environment. A detailed study was carried out to analyze the RSSI under four different scenarios, and detection tests were carried out that allowed us to measure the accuracy of the room identification, which is needed for proper content delivery. Of the 89 positions tested in the four scenarios, 70% of the received signals were correctly received throughout the entire duration of the tests, 20% were received in an intermittent way, 4% were never detected and 6% of unwanted beacons were detected. The signal detection is fundamental for the correct room identification, which was performed with 96% accuracy. Thus, we verified that this technology is suitable for the proposed solution.

Inclusion for Cultural Education in Museums, Audio and Touch Interaction.

Inclusive access to culture for all people in institutions, such as museums, is an important issue specified in French laws and is also recognized internationally. This article investigates inclusion of blind and partially blind visitors in museums. The pilot study conducted involves blind, partially blind, and sighted people and observes their perception of audio descriptions and different tactile representations within a museum. 12 participants were asked to experience three different conditions for 3 scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry using inclusive and co-created audio descriptions, simplified swell paper representations, and high relief representations. Overall, a high level of interest was found across all conditions, with multimodality through audio and tactile stimulus found to have enriched participants' experience. However, more guided tactile exploration would be better. From participants' feedback, some observations have emerged which could be explored for the development of new technologies to better respond to museum visitors' expectations.

Teaching controversial socio-scientific issues in online exhibits of science museums: Covid-19 on the scene.

The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked an unprecedented public debate over socio-scientific controversies, particularly regarding vaccination and social distancing measures. Despite the potential of such subjects for developing critical thinking and a sense of citizenship, the theme of controversies is still incipient in science museums. This documentary study investigates the way three science institutions have proposed online exhibits on Covid-19 on Google Arts & Culture platform and checks their potential for favoring teaching on controversial science topics. Google Arts & Culture platform was searched for Covid-19-related keywords and the filtering of the results was based on focus and organizing institutions. Three exhibits were detected, whose analysis was submitted to an inter-rater agreement (Cohen's kappa). The results revealed the predominance of social and economic aspects that can strongly favor more scientifically progressive views of both science literacy and a socially undistorted science. On the other hand, the superficiality of political discussions on science topics, a lack of naturalization of the controversial discussions, and an excessive use of textual content were identified, thus revealing some initiatives have not explored the interactivity, multimediality, and the way dilemmas that mark the trajectory of science museums extend to online exhibits. From this perspective, we point out paths for teaching and learning socio-scientific controversies in museums.

Insect collecting bias in Arizona with a preliminary checklist of the beetles from the Sand Tank Mountains.

Background: The State of Arizona in the south-western United States supports a high diversity of insects. Digitised occurrence records, especially from preserved specimens in natural history collections, are an important and growing resource to understand biodiversity and biogeography. Underlying bias in how insects are collected and what that means for interpreting patterns of insect diversity is largely untested. To explore the effects of insect collecting bias in Arizona, the State was regionalised into specific areas. First, the entire State was divided into broad biogeographic areas by ecoregion. Second, the 81 tallest mountain ranges were mapped on to the State. The distribution of digitised records across these areas were then examined.A case study of surveying the beetles (Insecta, Coleoptera) of the Sand Tank Mountains is presented. The Sand Tanks are a low-elevation range in the Lower Colorado River Basin subregion of the Sonoran Desert from which a single beetle record was published before this study. New information: The number of occurrence records and collecting events are very unevenly distributed throughout Arizona and do not strongly correlate with the geographic size of areas. Species richness is estimated for regions in Arizona using rarefaction and extrapolation. Digitised records from the disproportionately highly collected areas in Arizona represent at best 70% the total insect diversity within them. We report a total of 141 species of Coleoptera from the Sand Tank Mountains, based on 914 digitised voucher specimens. These specimens add important new records for taxa that were previously unavailable in digitised data and highlight important biogeographic ranges.Possible underlying mechanisms causing bias are discussed and recommendations are made for future targeted collecting of under-sampled regions. Insect species diversity is apparently at best 70% documented for the State of Arizona with many thousands of species not yet recorded. The Chiricahua Mountains are the most densely sampled region of Arizona and likely contain at least 2,000 species not yet vouchered in online data. Preliminary estimates for species richness of Arizona are at least 21,000 and likely much higher. Limitations to analyses are discussed which highlight the strong need for more insect occurrence data.

Effectiveness of museum-based participatory arts in mental health recovery.

The World Health Organization encourages mental health services to adopt a strategic intersectoral approach by acknowledging the potential of the arts and the value of culture on the process of mental health recovery. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of participatory arts in museums on mental health recovery. A quasi-experimental, pre-post and multicentre study was carried out. By using a mixed methods evaluation at baseline and at 3 months, quantitative outcome measures were used to assess the changes in recovery and social support and qualitative interviews to explore the self-perceived impact on five processes of recovery. One hundred mental health service users participated for 3 years in the face-to-face programme RecuperArte, of which the data of 54 were analysed. The results indicate a significant increase in recovery measured with the QPR-15-SP (42 vs. 44; p = 0.034) and almost significant in functional social support measured with the DUKE-UNC (41.50 vs. 43.50; p = 0.052), with almost large (r = 0.29) and medium (r = 0.26) effect sizes, respectively. Participants perceived mostly an impact on the recovery process of Meaning in life 30/54 (55.56%), Hope and optimism about the future 29/54 (53.7%) and Connectedness 21/54 (38.89%), followed by Identity 6/54 (11.11%) and Empowerment 5/54 (9.26%). The findings contribute to the growing evidence of the potential of the arts as a therapeutic tool, the value of museums as therapeutic spaces and the role of nurses in intersectoral coordination, between the mental health and cultural sectors, as facilitators and researchers of these evidence-based practices.

Range restricted old and young lineages show the southern Western Ghats to be both a museum and a cradle of diversity for woody plants.

The Western Ghats (WG) mountain chain is a global biodiversity hotspot with high diversity and endemicity of woody plants. The latitudinal breadth of the WG offers an opportunity to determine the evolutionary drivers of latitudinal diversity patterns. We examined the spatial patterns of evolutionary diversity using complementary phylogenetic diversity and endemism measures. To examine if different regions of the WG serve as a museum or cradle of evolutionary diversity, we examined the distribution of 470 species based on distribution modelling and occurrence locations across the entire region. In accordance with the expectation, we found that the southern WG is both a museum and cradle of woody plant evolutionary diversity, as a higher proportion of both old and young evolutionary lineages are restricted to the southern WG. The diversity gradient is likely driven by high geo-climatic stability in the south and phylogenetic niche conservatism for moist and aseasonal sites. This is corroborated by persistent lineage nestedness at almost all evolutionary depths (10-135 million years), and a strong correlation of evolutionary diversity with drought seasonality, precipitation and topographic heterogeneity. Our results highlight the global value of the WG, demonstrating, in particular, the importance of protecting the southern WG-an engine of plant diversification and persistence.

The lost value for users of cultural institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic: a life satisfaction approach.

Studies related to the assessment of the non-market values of culture typically employ methods based on stated or revealed preferences. In this paper, we implement a new emerging non-market valuation technique, namely the life satisfaction approach. In particular, we quantify in monetary values, the additional utility that people benefit from cultural experiences, as well as the additional disutility suffered by cultural consumers specifically due to the closure of cultural organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the pandemic provides a unique setting. Using a survey conducted in Denmark in the spring of 2020, we confirm the link between cultural participation and well-being by estimating a life satisfaction model, instrumenting for both income and cultural participation to avoid simultaneity problems. Furthermore, we show that fervent cultural consumers have experienced an additional welfare loss during the lockdown period, controlling for all other known life dimensions affected by the pandemic. Our results aim to highlight the role of cultural participation in sustaining life satisfaction and, consequently, to support a well-being evidence-based cultural policy that facilitate cultural accessibility as a mean to increase the individual well-being.

Promoting children's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning at home through tinkering and storytelling.

This study examined whether connecting storytelling and tinkering can advance early STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning opportunities for children. A total of 62 families with 4- to 10-year-old (M = 8.03) children were observed via Zoom. They watched a video invitation to tinker at home prepared by museum educators prior to tinkering. Then, half of the families were prompted to think up a story before tinkering (story-based tinkering group), whereas the other half were simply asked to begin tinkering (no-story group). Once they had finished tinkering, researchers elicited children's reflections about their tinkering experience. A subset of the families (n = 45) also reminisced about their tinkering experience several weeks later. The story instructions provided before tinkering engendered children's storytelling during tinkering and when reflecting on the experience. Children in the story-based tinkering group also talked the most about STEM both during tinkering, and subsequently when reminiscing with their parents about their tinkering experience.

Anatomists' uses of human skeletons: Ethical issues associated with the India bone trade and anonymized archival collections.

Concerns have recently been expressed about the continuing availability of human bones from India, obtained originally for educational purposes but lacking the requisite informed consent that would be expected today. More generally, a broader claim is being made, namely, that the practice of using any unconsented bones in educational settings is unethical and should cease. These calls, in turn, raise broader issues regarding the availability of anonymous archival collections in anatomy museums. Although this debate centers on undergraduate anatomy teaching, much anthropological research utilizes human remains of past populations for which there can have been no consent. A suggested alternative for undergraduate teaching is the use of 3D images of human bones, rather than the bones themselves. In addressing these issues, the background to the India bone trade is assessed, and the year 1985 is pinpointed as having significant ethical weight. The cultural and ethical interests inherent in studying archival anonymous skeletal material are weighed against indiscriminate reburial. Although any use of unconsented material represents ethical compromise, account should be taken of changing ethical expectations with time. It is concluded that: there is no justification for repatriation or disposal of all bones for which specific informed consent has not been obtained; continued use of anonymous archival human bones in a professional setting is acceptable, even in the absence of informed consent, with the proviso that there are no culturally relevant groups seeking repatriation; the continued existence of bones in long-standing private collections cannot be justified since it amounts to long-term storage with no identified goals; the notion that 3D images are an ethically superior alternative to actual human bones is unsustainable, since there is an intimate connection between the bones and the 3D images.

A Study on Consumers' Perceptions of Museum Cultural and Creative Products through Online Textual Reviews: An Example from Palace Museum's Cultural and Creative Flagship Store.

The digital transformation and innovative development of museums have led consumers to increasingly prefer purchasing museum cultural and creative products through e-commerce platforms. Although this trend shows potential for market growth, the lack of distinct cultural identity and insufficient product differentiation hinder its stable development. Therefore, this study aims to explore consumers' perceptions on Palace Museum's cultural and creative products using cultural hierarchy theory. Taking the Palace Museum's Cultural and Creative Flagship Store on Tmall.com as a case study, the employed evaluation method involves constructing a lexicon of cultural features using Word2vec model and then analyzing online textual reviews to identify these features. Results reveal that among the various cultural features of the products, consumers placed the greatest emphasis on "Materials used" and the least on "Specialty craft". With regards to the cultural features of inner "intangible" level, consumers tend to have a limited comprehension and familiarity with the cultural heritage and histories behind the products. This study provides suggestions to museum professionals to optimize the use of traditional cultural resources and develop a product development plan.

Impact of perceived supervisor support and leader-member exchange on employees' intention to leave in public sector museums: A parallel mediation approach.

High staff turnover in certain public sector organizations in Pakistan is a challenging problem, and organizations strive to reduce this issue using different mechanisms. Therefore, this research investigates the parallel mediation impact of perceived organizational support (POS) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) on the relationships among perceived supervisor support (PSS), leader-member exchange (LMX), and employee's intention to leave (IL). Data were collected from 482 employees working in public sector museums in Pakistan in three waves. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with a two-step approach was used to evaluate the data. The research found that both POS and OCB mediate the negative relationship between PSS and IL and between LMX and IL in a parallel mediation mechanism. Public sector museums should focus on providing visible supervisory support and develop a healthy work environment where the exchange relationship between supervisors and subordinates strengthens to reduce the possibility of the employee's leave intentions.

Dataset of virtual and real-life visual experiences inside a museum: survey on visual perception with objective and subjective measures.

Occupants' perception of a space depends on their experience [1], [2], [3]. Four kinds of visiting experiences were carried out inside the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa [4]. The museum is housed, together with the National Museum of the Charterhouse [5], inside the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci, near Pisa. Four of the permanent exhibition halls of the Museum were selected for the survey: Historical Gallery, Mammal's Hall, Ungulates' Gallery and Cetaceans' Gallery. A total of 117 participants were divided into four groups depending on their visiting experience: real-life, or virtual based respectively on videos, photos or computer-generated photorealistic images (renders). Experiences are compared. The comparison comprehends objective data (measured illuminance levels) and subjective data (questionnaire outcomes on the perception of the space). The illuminance levels were measured using a photoradiometer: datalogger Delta Ohm HD2102.2 equipped with LP 471 PHOT probe. The probe was placed 1.20 m above floor level, and it was set to measure vertical illuminance at 10 seconds intervals. To evaluate participants' perception of the space questionnaires were used. The presented data refer to the article: "Perception of light in museum environments: comparison between real-life and virtual visual experiences" [1]. This kind of data provides a base to assess if virtual kinds of experience can be implemented in museum environments as an alternative to the real-life experience, and to understand if such an implementation is detrimental or not in terms of participants' perception of the space. Virtual experiences can be particularly useful for spreading culture, making it accessible even in presence of moving restrictions for people, such as those in force today due to the SARS-CoV-2 emergency.