Cloning: A method by which an organism is produced that is identical in DNA to a single ancestor or donor. It is a concept that may seem more at home in science fiction than the real world, but cloning has become increasingly prominent over the past twenty years. In 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first animal cloned from the adult cells of another animal. The process has advanced greatly since then, and cloned animals have begun to emerge as an economic and social force.

Bird conservation is a subject that has a long history in the United States, and this year we have reached an important milestone: The hundred year anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Because of this law, you may want to stop adding to your feather collection. It might be illegal!

While honey bees are charismatic, helpful, and interesting, they take a back seat in our new exhibit at the Bruce Museum, Wild Bees: Photographs by Paula Sharp and Ross Eatman. This exhibit explores the small scale world that native bees inhabit and showcases their beauty and diversity in form and lifestyle. These wild bee species are facing many challenges as the world changes around them, but there are steps we can take to make things a little better for our buzzing allies.

We take for granted that ice is slippery enough to make winter sports like skiing, ice skating, and luge possible, but this property of ice is actually rather unusual for natural materials. You couldn’t skate without wheels on a floor made of stone or wood, so why is ice different? Over the years, many physicists have asked themselves this same question, and come up with a number of intriguing possibilities.