As Shutdown Takes Hold, an Essential Few Scientists Still on the Job

A bird identification expert might not seem like an employee essential to keeping the U.S. government functioning. But ornithologist Carla Dove was one of a select corps of federal scientists deemed important enough to be exempted from a sweeping government shutdown that began today, paralyzing research funding agencies, shuttering a wide range of science projects, and sending home more than 800,000 federal employees.

“I’m getting prepared to be lonely,” Dove said yesterday, noting that most of her colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., wouldn’t be allowed to work. “It will be me and 650,000 museum specimens.”

Read More at: http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2013/10/shutdown-takes-hold-ess...