Natural History articles from April 2007

Natural History archives from April 2007

Bay of the locust.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Who among us would act the same way in a noisy, sweaty crowd of strangers as we would, say, alone on a serene mountaintop? Locusts, too, change their behavior drastically when in the company of others, and they go so far as to change...

Multiple "Universes".(Column)
April 1, 2007... Writing these essays is the most exhilarating and exhausting thing I do in life. It is where I'm not only trying to convey information, I'm trying to convey love, the love of a subject. I don't always succeed, but when I do, I know of no...

Blowing hot and cold.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I am befuddled that Donald Goldsmith ["Ice Cycles," 3/07] finds it "sad" that "the present release of carbon dioxide, mainly through the burning of coal and oil, overcompensates for any cooling trend by several orders of magnitude. "Why not...

Octopus eyes.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I have a small correction to a caption that accompanies Jennifer A. Mather's article on octopuses ["Eight Arms, With Attitude," 2/07]. The eye of the octopus is described as having a cornea. In fact, the pupil is open to seawater, which is...

Spinmeister.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Charles Liu's assertion, in his article "Spin Control" [3/07], that engineers design pipeline systems "with Reynolds numbers no higher than about 2,000" is not correct. True, a Reynolds number of about 2,300 is the transition point between...

Overactive volcano.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Contrary to what Robert Anderson states in his column "New Tubes" [3/07], Mount St. Helens is in Washington State. The volcano is still active, but not active enough to have moved to Oregon. Ann Bjork Seattle, Washington

Space bling.(SAMPLINGS)(carbonaceous rocks)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Carbonado diamonds, also called black diamonds, are nothing like their flashy cousins: they're an opaque black or gray, with a porous, sometimes charcoal-like texture. Conventional diamonds, moreover, form under pressure deep within the Earth...

Fishy logic.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... "Pick your battles wisely" is sound advice that people forget all too often. We could learn a thing or two from Astatotilapia burtoni, a little cichlid fish from the shallows of Lake Tanganyika in central Africa. New research shows that A....

Grow long.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... In a colony of naked mole rats, as in a beehive, only one female--the queen--gets to breed. A mole-rat queen is easy to recognize because her body is the longest one in the colony. Furthermore, once she dies, the other females fight to replace...

Cold wind from the East.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... During the most recent ice age, some 20,000 years ago, a thick ice sheet covered Canada and parts of the northern United States. The climate then was obviously quite different than it is today--but was it so different that the prevailing winds...

Reading the leaves.(corn leaves)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... There's nothing corny about global warming, perhaps the twenty-first century's most serious environmental and economic challenge. But a new study shows that corn can help map emissions of carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]), an important greenhouse...

Early adapters.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Some plants take decades to mature before reproducing; others complete their entire life cycles in a year. A new study shows that when it comes to global warming, fast-maturing plants might have a "leaf up" on slow-maturing plants because they...

What killed Napoleon?(Napoleon Bonaparte's death investigations)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Had Napoleon Bonaparte escaped or been released from his exile on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, some historians believe, European history might have taken a decidedly different course. But a recent investigation into the cause of...

The carnivore's dilemma.(hunting of predatory animals)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Land mammals that eat meat fall into two camps: the kiddie-menu crowd and the supersize-me set. Small carnivores usually go after bite-size prey, such as worms and mice, which don't take much effort to hunt. But even the most proficient hunter...

Menage a trois.(Curvularia protuberata fungi that is found on Dichanthelium lanuginosum a species of grass)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Hot geothermal soils aren't particularly hospitable to plant life, yet that's where Dichanthelium lanuginosum, a species of grass, thrives. It owes its survival to a symbiotic fungus, Curvularia protuberata, that lives in its tissues--or so...

The cosmic perspective: for this month's special anniversary of his "Universe" column, Nell deGrasse Tyson explains how embracing cosmic realities can give us a more enlightened view of human life.(UNIVERSE: THE 100TH ESSAY)(Column)
April 1, 2007... Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is...

Meerkats at play: evolution demands that activities costing a lot of energy provide survival value in return. But what do these rambunctious little mammals gain from having so much fun?(Cover story)
April 1, 2007... In the cool freshness of dawn, two meerkat pups raced down the dune toward me. Turning suddenly, they reared up on their stumpy hind legs and clasped each other like little sumo wrestlers. Shuffling to and fro, each pup tried to topple the...

The sauropod chronicles: the largest creatures ever to have walked the Earth were animals such as Apatosaurus--aka brontosaurus. Paleontologists are revising the picture of how they lived. Again.
April 1, 2007... In 1842, the English anatomist and pioneering paleontologist Richard Owen introduced the word "dinosaur" to distinguish a new category of reptiles. Today dinosaurs are familiar to people of all ages, and perhaps none are more familiar than the...

Vulcan's masonry: the builders of ancient Rome clad soft, porous volcanic tuff with harder travertine and marble, creating enduring, majestic structures out of local materials.
April 1, 2007... Walk with me through the Roman forum, but imagine it through the eyes of an ancient Roman from the provinces, visiting the capital for the first time in many years. It is exactly 2,000 years ago. As we walk along the familiar Sacred Way through...

The Grid: A Journey through the Heart of our Electrified World.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of our Electrified World by Phillip F. Schewe Joseph Henry Press; $27.95 Benjamin Franklin, for all his scientific acumen, never dreamed that the electricity he tinkered with would someday join food,...

Steller's Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Steller's Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska by Dean Littlepage The Moutaineers Books; $17.95 At the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg is a slab of white bone with an oddly ridged...

Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers by Amy Stewart Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill $23.95 Sitting down to write this review, a scant forty-eight hours before Valentine's Day, I realized that,...

Pop Charts.(population affecting ecology)
April 1, 2007... Nowadays, when I fly, my two children compete for the window seat. But I remember when I used to be glued to the airplane window on approach to Los Angeles. The grid of streets and the sinuous system of freeways spread out for hundreds of...

The sky in April.
April 1, 2007... Mercury is a morning object during April, but it has sunk too low into the bright morning twilight to be viewed from northern latitudes. Venus, blazing at magnitude -4.1, is the grand evening "star" this month, far outshining all the other...

Dinosaurs walk the earth--again: new Imax film.("Dinosaurs Alive!")(Movie review)
April 1, 2007... If ever there were a perfect subject for the magic of the large-format screen, it would be the prehistoric giants whose existence and extinction have captivated human imagination since their fossils were first unearthed in the 19th century....

An elegant gallery reopens.(American Museum of Natural History's Audubon Gallery)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... As a rule, it is the contents of an exhibition hall that merit public attention. This month, however, the Museum celebrates not only the opening of a fascinating art show, but the reopening of the display space itself, the beautifully restored...

AMNH and the invisibles.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
April 1, 2007... We tend to think of all things microbial as agents of disease. But there are countless unseen organisms that are beneficial, even crucial, to sustaining human life. And yet much remains unknown about their numbers, the role they play in the...

Karen Newitts: Visual Manager, Retail and Licensing.(American Museum of Natural History)(Interview)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... If there's anything cooler than having an aunt who works at the American Museum of Natural History, it's having an aunt who works in the Museum's gift shops. All five nieces and nephews got gifts from the Museum this Christmas, and at this...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.
April 1, 2007... EXHIBITIONS Gold Through August 19, 2007 This glittering exhibition explores the captivating story of the world's most desired metal, Extraordinary geological specimens, cultural objects, and interactive exhibits illuminate gold's...

Therapy: the cosmic perspective.(Cartoon)
April 1, 2007... SUN NARCISSISM: THINKS WORLD REVOLVES AROUND IT [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] JUPITER OLD: ALWAYS TRYING--TO REMOVE SPOT [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MULTIPLE UNIVERSES ARE WE ALONE? YES. NO. MAYBE. I AM...