Dinosaur Disaster

Roughly 65 million years (1) ago, dinosaurs along with 65 to 70 percent of other plant and animal species on Earth, became extinct. This massive wave of extinctions - makes the end of the Cretaceous geologic period-has long fascinated (2) scientists, their proposal of numerous explanations for it. The most well known of these is the Alvarez hypothesis, which holds that a gigantic asteroid struck the planet, causing climate change and ecosystem collapse.

The Alvarez hypothesis first emerged in (3) 1980. In that year, scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez noted the high level of iridium, an element that is rare on Earth but abundant in asteroids, in layers of rock from the Cretaceous period. They proposed that iridium could be evidence of a massive asteroid strike. This hypothesis gained additional support in the 1990s, after researchers determined that a 110-mile-wide crater near the town of Chicxulub, Mexico, was likely caused by an asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous period. The asteroid impact would have ejected a tremendous amount of iridium containing dust into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight (4) and resulting in global cooling and a darkness that would have halted photosynthesis. These sudden environmental shifts would have rapidly driven many species to extinction, (5) a conclusion supported by sharp declines in the levels of plankton and pollen in the fossil record after the asteroid strike.

The Alvarez hypothesis, however, is (6) challenged by research that suggests gradual environmental changes, caused by volcanic eruptions occurring before the asteroid collision, had already stressed dinosaur populations. (7) Finally, a range of volcanoes in western India called the Deccan Traps is thought (8) to have been the site of several huge eruptions near the end of the Cretaceous period. According to Princeton University geologist Greta Keller, climate-altering gas and dust clouds from these volcanic eruptions could have caused most of the extinctions during this period, (9) leaving the few surviving dinosaur species to be eliminated by the asteroid impact.

(10) In a 2010 article, dozens of scientists reaffirmed the Chicxulub asteroid as the most likely cause of the Cretaceous extinctions, but the available evidence on dinosaur extinctions suggests that environmental changes from these eruptions could have made dinosaurs more vulnerable to the devastation caused by the asteroid strike. The impact of the Chicxulub asteroid continues to be viewed as the event that ended the age of the dinosaurs. (11) But the actual number of species that became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period has been a subject of debate.

Not-So-Ancient Poetry

In the late 1700s, readers across Europe (12) got a big kick out of a series of poems purportedly written by Ossian, a legendary Scottish poet and storyteller from the third century. (13) Ossian was said to have worked in the oral rather than the written tradition, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte so admired the poems (14) to where he commissioned two paintings of Ossian to be hung in his summer palace. There was just one problem: the poems were largely the invention of their so-called translator, James Macpherson.

Macpherson was a Scottish (15) Highlander who grew up listening to songs and stories in the Gaelic language. When he began his career as a schoolteacher in Ruthven, Scotland, he set about collecting the tales and ballads of the region. A friend persuaded him to translate the Gaelic poem "The Death of Oscar" into English, and in 1760 Macpherson published his translation, along with translations of several other poems, in a volume entitled Fragments of Ancient Poetry.

The Fragments immediately captured the public's imagination. Equally captivating was Macpherson's hint in the preface that an epic poem (a poem chronicling heroic deeds of great significance to a culture) might be recovered through further study of ancient manuscripts and oral traditions in the Highlands. Excited patrons provided Macpherson with funds to undertake a research (16) trip, they were not disappointed. (17) In spite of their contributions, Macpherson published two epic poems, Fingal and Temora, which recounted the feats of ancient Gaelic warriors. Macpherson claimed that the poems had been written by Ossian. (18) The influential English author Samuel Johnson demanded to see the original (19) manuscripts, that Macpherson had translated. When Macpherson refused, Johnson accused him of fraud and undertook a trip to Scotland to debunk Macpherson's claims. Johnson provided a formal account of his suspicions in his 1775 travel book, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

The public remained divided between those who believed in the poems' authenticity and those who agreed with Johnson that the poems were a hoax. (20) Today it is believed that Macpherson created the Ossian texts by combining poetry and stories he had heard on his travels with (21) invented material of his own invention. Having set out to find an epic poet in the Highlands, he created one by attributing these amalgamated works to the mythic Ossian. Although many modern critics do not share Johnson's hostility toward Macpherson, Johnson was ultimately correct in thinking that poems such as Fingal and Temora are better understood as the work of an eighteenth-century poet (22) than as a third-century one.

USPS: You Can Bank On It

In 2014 the Office of lnspector General of the United States Postal Service (USPS) released a report containing a surprising (23) recommendation: post offices should offer their customers banking services such as refillable debit cards, check cashing, and (24) offering small loans. Although the idea may seem strange at first, postal banking has benefited people in many parts of the world and could do so in the United States as well. A postal banking system would rely on the existing network of post offices to provide essential financial services to residents throughout the United States. (25) In some countries, such as Brazil, post offices partner with commercial banks. In others, such as Japan, the postal service itself acts as a full-scale bank, offering loans and savings accounts. The diverse array of successful postal Banking systems around the world show that post offices can provide many of the same services (26) like banks.

There is a real need for an institution to fill this role in several parts of the United States because (27) people have increasingly been looking to switch from nationwide bank branches to smaller, independent banks. An average of more than 2,300 bank branches closed in the United States each year (28) in the time period between the years 2010 and 2013, leaving customers in many parts of the country living in "bank deserts," areas without local banks. The USPS is ideally suited to (29) undertake this lack of access because many post offices — (30) more than half of them, in fact— are located in zip codes with fewer than two bank branches. (31) Approximately 60 percent of post offices are located in zip codes with one or more banks. 

Although postal banking is effective in other (32) countries, many post offices are located in regions where banks are critically needed, some critics of the proposal contend that post offices are ill-equipped to act as banks. Postal banking would indeed significantly expand the range of the USPS's duties. (33) However, as Inspector General David C. Williams, notes, US post offices currently offer many similar products: "The post office already sells money orders, runs a huge cash retail business, sells insurance on parcels, and cashes Treasury checks." Even postal banking itself has a precedent in the United States: from 1911 to 1967, the Postal Savings System allowed people to hold savings accounts at their local post offices.

Offering financial services would represent a significant transformation of the USPS, but there is every reason to believe it would be a change for the better. With many citizens now living in bank deserts, offering such services would represent a significant investment in US communities.

Costume Curators in the Digital Age

Bridging art and popular culture, costume exhibits have enabled museums to attract media attention and new audiences. Such exhibits are created and overseen by costume (34) curators. The term "costume curators" refers to professionals who oversee the acquisition, maintenance, and display of clothing collections at museums. Costume curators must have a deep knowledge of their collections and must study the materials, construction, and historical significance of the pieces. Also, they must share this knowledge with the public in accessible and entertaining ways. In recent years, some curators have used new technologies such as modelling software and digital displays to study and exhibit their collections. This has allowed curators to bring costumes to life in ways that were (35) previously and formerly impossible.

 One of the first costume exhibits to benefit (36) from these technological developments was the 2014 Charles James: Beyond Fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). Early in their preparations, Met curators Harold Koda and Jan Glier Reeder drew on new technologies to (37) reach people who could not visit the exhibit in person. James, one of the most respected clothing designers of the twentieth century, created sculptural dresses using many layers of unconventional materials. The curators used X-rays and computer models to study the layers of mesh, feathers, cotton, and horsehair that (38) makes up James's "Clover Leaf' gown, which would be one of the centerpieces of their show. 

Having come to a fuller understanding of James's work, (39) how to present it in the best way to museum visitors was what the curators had to determine. James's dresses presented the curators with one of their most common professional challenges: (40) marketing the exhibit to increase museum admissions. Clothing in museums would quickly fall apart if it were handled frequently, but traditional displays of costumes on mannequins make it difficult for visitors to (41) see how a piece is constructed. Koda and Reeder solved this dilemma by designing computer animations that showed visitors the separate pieces that makeup dresses such as the "Clover Leaf' gown, the way these pieces fit when they are worn. By doing so, the curators could give museum-goers a sense of their own excitement at being able to see inside James's designs. (42)

According to Valerie Steele, chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, a costume curator's (43) job is to, "tell the story of the meaning of the clothes." New technologies have allowed costume curators to tell their stories in more ways, (44) and other exhibit teams at the Met would do well to imitate the costume curator's approach.