The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is well-known for having a big heart. In a couple of years, it’ll be recognized for its brain, too. The museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway has broken ground on a large expansion that will include an exhibit featuring a giant walk-through brain, which will serve as the modern-day foil to the beloved walk-through heart built in the 1950s. The museum expansion — the largest since its founding in 1824 — will also add a conference center, classroom space and new galleries for traveling exhibits, according to Franklin Institute officials. The “Your Brain” exhibit will be the centerpiece of a 53,000-square-foot addition scheduled to open in the summer of 2014. The high-tech brain will be very different from the decidedly low-tech “Giant Heart,” a plaster and papier-mache creation that invites visitors to follow the same path that blood circulates in their own tickers as a recorded heartbeat plays from embedded speakers. Created as a temporary exhibit in 1954, it became a permanent fixture due to its instant and persistent popularity. http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20120407/NEWS01/304070035/Franklin-Institute-has-brainy-idea

As Zach Bodish traced his usual route through the thrift store last week, passing the metal shelves of castaway posters and photographs, one word caught his eye. Picasso. It was on a framed poster, alongside a crudely etched face and a French phrase advertising a 1958 exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work. Bodish, who figured it was a nice reproduction, paid the $14.14 price at the Volunteers of America in Clintonville and went home. But as the 46-year-old University District resident researched the piece online, he noticed a red scribble in the corner of his thrift-store find, the same place where Picasso penned a scarlet signature on some original versions. The print could sell for up to $6,000 at auction, or twice that if sold at a gallery, said Todd Weyman, vice president of Swann Auction Galleries in New York City. After analyzing photos of Bodish’s version, he was confident that both the print and signature are authentic: “It looks right as rain to me.” The work is a linocut, meaning Picasso carved a design into linoleum that then was pressed with ink onto paper. It has all the telltale signs of an artist’s proof, those copies that artists approve before mass production, said Ohio State University history of art professor Lisa Florman, who wrote a 2000 book on Picasso’s prints. Penciled on Bodish’s print is 6/100 and the French phrase meaning original print, signed proof. “It’s one that the artist looked at carefully, not one of the subsequent, in this case, 94 that were just run off by a printer,” Florman said, adding that lower numbers are more valuable. Picasso was asked to create the poster for a 1958 Easter exhibit of his ceramic work in Vallauris, in southern France, Florman said. Collin Binkley http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/03/28/possible-signed-picasso-print-bought-at-thrift-store.html

Words are competing daily in an almost Darwinian struggle for survival, according to new research from scientists in which they analysed more than 10 million words used over the last 200 years. Drawing their material from Google's huge book-digitisation project, an international team of academics tracked the usage of every word recorded in English, Spanish and Hebrew over the 209-year period between 1800 and 2008. The scientists, who include Boston University's Joel Tenenbaum and IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies' Alexander Petersen, said their study shows that "words are competing actors in a system of finite resources", and just as financial firms battle for market share, so words compete to be used by writers or speakers, and to then grab the attention of readers or listeners. There has been a "drastic increase in the death rate of words" in the modern print era, the academics discovered. They attributed it to the growing use of automatic spellcheckers, and stricter editing procedures, wiping out misspellings and errors. "Most changes to the vocabulary in the last 10 to 20 years are due to the extinction of misspelled words and nonsensical print errors, and to the decreased birth rate of new misspelled variations and genuinely new words," the scientists write in Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death, February 16, 2012. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.3707v2.pdf "The words that are dying are those words with low relative use. But it is not only "defective" words that die: sometimes words are driven to extinction by aggressive competitors. The word "Roentgenogram", for example, deriving from the discoverer of the x-ray, William Röntgen, was widely used for several decades in the 20th century, but, challenged by "x-ray" and "radiogram", has now fallen out of use entirely. X-ray had beaten off its synonyms by 1980, speculate the academics, owing to its "efficient short word length" and since the English language is generally used for scientific publication. " Alison Flood http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/21/why-words-are-dying

Federal Reserve Beige Book SUMMARY OF COMMENTARY ON CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS BY FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICTS APRIL 2012 Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicated that the economy continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace from mid-February through late March. Activity in the Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco Districts grew at a moderate pace, while Cleveland and St. Louis cited modest growth. New York reported that economic growth picked up somewhat. Philadelphia and Richmond cited improving business conditions. The economy in Minneapolis grew at a solid pace and Kansas City’s economy expanded at a faster pace. Manufacturing continued to expand in most Districts, with gains noted in automotive and high-technology industries. Manufacturers in many Districts expressed optimism about near-term growth prospects, but they are somewhat concerned about rising petroleum prices. Demand for professional business services showed modest to strong growth and freight volume was mainly higher. Reports on retail spending were positive, with the unusually warm weather being credited for boosting sales in several Districts. Read the 61-page report at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/fullreport20120411.pdf

With the recent rise in gasoline and diesel fuel prices, many consumers have questions about what contributes to the price they pay for these products at the retail pump. While crude oil prices, refining costs, and distribution and marketing expenses account for a significant portion of the final retail price, taxes also explain an appreciable portion of that price, accounting for 10-13% of total retail prices in 2011. State-level taxes on motor fuels vary widely, ranging from less than 10 cents per gallon to a high of over 43 cents per gallon. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the average for state excise and sales taxes on gasoline for on-highway use is nearly 25 cents per gallon, as of January 2012. State-level excise and sales taxes are only part of overall gasoline taxation—gasoline is also taxed at the federal level and by localities and districts within states. Federal taxes on gasoline have been unchanged at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1997. http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5790

The Lyrid meteor shower is not one of the strongest of the annual meteor showers, but it can be enjoyable to those meteor observers thirsting for something after over three and a half months of weak meteor activity. The Lyrids generally begin on April 16 and end on April 26, with maximum generally occurring during the night of April 21/22. At maximum, hourly rates can reach about 10 meteors per hour. The Lyrids are particularly interesting for two reason. First, observations have been identified back to at least 2600 years, which is longer than any other meteor shower. Second, the meteor shower occasionally experiences an outburst of about 100 meteors per hour and the reason is basically unknown. See location and history of the Lyrids at: http://meteorshowersonline.com/lyrids.html

The St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel or the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, is a 7th-century pocket gospel book, written in Latin. It was placed in the tomb of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, probably a few years after he died in 687. Its finely decorated leather binding is the earliest known Western bookbinding to survive, and both the 94 vellum folios and the binding are in outstanding condition for a book of this age. It is thought that after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, the book passed to collectors. It was eventually given to Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit school in Lancashire. From 1979 it was on long-term loan from the British province of the Jesuit order to the British Library, catalogued as Loan 74. On 14 July 2011 the British Library launched a fundraising campaign to buy the book for £9m (US$14.3m), and on 17 April 2012 announced that the purchase had been completed and the book was now British Library Additional MS 89000. The library plans to display the Gospel for equal amounts of time in London and Durham. They describe the manuscript as "the earliest surviving intact European book and one of the world's most significant books". With a page size of only 138 by 92 millimetres (5.4 × 3.6 in) the St Cuthbert Gospel is one of the smallest surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The essentially undecorated text is the Gospel of John in Latin, written in a script that has been regarded as a model of elegant simplicity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cuthbert_Gospel