Natural History articles from April 2008

Natural History archives from April 2008

The natural explanation.
April 1, 2008... "Once in a great while you witness one of those rare moments where everything comes together: subject, location, light, and--in this case--dead calm." That's how photographer David Chauvin describes the windless scene he found at a watery...

Pet peeve.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I was disappointed by Josie Glausiusz's "Far From the Forests of the Night" [2/08], which implies that everyone interested in owning an exotic animal would raise it on Cheetos in their twelve-year-old's bedroom. The...

Something fishy.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... It was with great interest that I read Neil Shubin's article "Fish Out of Water" [2/08]. As a pediatrician, I often deal with the evolutionary consequences of our fishy origins: inguinal hernias, blocked airways, and ear infections are just...

A parasitic moment.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2008... I was fascinated by Erin Espelie's description of the blow fly laying her eggs in the carrion flower Stapelia gigantea ["Vegetarian Carrion," 2/08]. Espelie describes the way in which S. gigantea acts as a parasite on the reproductive efforts...

Class act.(nature.net)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ONE OF THE GREAT PROMISES of the Internet is that it provides schooling opportunities. Although face-to-face contact with teachers and fellow students may be lacking, age, location, and mobility are no barriers to...

No dumping.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The Roman town of Herculaneum in Italy was destroyed nearly two millennia ago, yet it still displays a relevant public-service announcement. The ancient sign, inked on plaster at the base of a city water tank, was deciphered in 1938 by the...

Caught red-bellied.(SAMPLINGS)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Parasites are wicked little things. They can transform the appearance and behavior of their hosts, on occasion so radically that the infected hosts resemble an entirely different organism. But such extreme cases are...

Teen-eggers.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... As modern birds and reptiles do, dinosaurs laid eggs. But in the timing--if not the packaging--of their reproduction, they seem to have been more like large mammals: a new study suggests they grew fast and bred early. Andrew H. Lee and...

The dog's meow.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Humankind's two best friends don't always fight like cats and dogs, a new study shows. When living under the same roof, the alleged antagonists often get along swimmingly, in fact--especially if they're introduced at...

Hold the crust.(SAMPLINGS)
April 1, 2008... The Pacific is the biggest ocean on Earth, but it's getting smaller every day. Australasia and the Americas are inching closer together, and in about 350 million years the Pacific will effectively close. That's when plate tectonics--the process...

Six feet under.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Of the million-plus insect species alive today, only 1,400 or so--less than a quarter of 1 percent--inhabit the ocean. Of those, just five species, sea skaters of the genus Halobates, live on the high seas; the rest...

Take once a day, with dirt.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many animals eat dirt once in a while--a practice called geophagy--but the chimpanzees of Kibale National Park in Uganda are unusually methodical about it. They down a small handful of soil almost every day,...

Protein shake-up.(THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Among the subtler effects of rising levels of carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]) is that the crops of tomorrow won't be as nutritious as today's: high C[O.sub.2] concentrations reduce the protein yield of crop plants (for reasons that are still...

Want ice in your water?(THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Ice is in retreat worldwide as glaciers melt, Arctic ice floes vanish, and Antarctic ice shelves break apart. Will all of it eventually disappear as the globe warms? Not necessarily, say Andre Bornemann of the University of Leipzig in...

Spacecraft behaving badly: something unexpected has been happening to a pair of distant space probes. Could strange new physics be the cause?(UNIVERSE)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's no sweeping it under the rug. NASA's twin Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, launched in the early 1970s and headed for stars in the depths of our galaxy, are both experiencing a mysterious, continuous...

Sweet dreams: in which an American biologist follows the trail of honey ants to Australia and meets people who can teach him about an ancient treat.
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN THE 1970S, WHEN I WAS JUST A graduate student in biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, my Ph.D. advisor offhandedly mentioned he needed some preserved honey ants to trade to ant specialists in other...

Around their necks: albatrosses are diverse in form and range, but they share a common problem: people.
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] No self-respecting birdwatcher should mistake an albatross for a pelican, right? Yet etymologists can trace the word albatross back through the annals of early seafarers' logbooks--albitross... algatross......

Invisibility: a device that renders objects truly invisible maybe commonplace within the next frew decades.
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, the crew of the Enterprise hijacks a Klingon battle cruiser. In case you're not a die-bard trekkie, that was quite a feat for a Federation starship. Usually the Klingon ships are the...

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird By Bruce Barcott Random House, 2008: $26.00 To readers jaded by the deluge of nonfiction about vanishing...

Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us About Ourselves by Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall Texas A&M University Press, 2008; $29.95 Mention the search for human origins to an intelligent layperson...

Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica by Tom Griffiths Harvard University Press, 2008; $29.95 On the 17th of December, 2002, Tom Griffiths, an environmental historian at the Australian National...

Skylog.(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This past winter, observers were treated to close-up imagery of the planet Mercury courtesy of a space probe known by the acronym MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging). In Roman...

April nights out.(SKYLOG)(Brief article)(Calendar)
April 1, 2008... 1 Saturn, the "Lord of the Rings," is on the local meridian (the line running north to south), and thus as high as it gets in the sky during the night, at about 10:30 P.M. It arrives there four minutes earlier each day thereafter, in excellent...

Biology and culture: bridging the gap.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
April 1, 2008... What do the dialects of indigenous peoples in Papua New Guinea, hunting traditions of the Vuntut Gwitchin people of the Northern Yukon, colobus monkeys in Ghana, and the Zanzibar leopard have in common? All are under threat from many of the...

Two evenings of Darwin: Tuesday and Thursday, May 6 and 8.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... While a student at Cambridge University, Charles Darwin was so enthralled by the study of plants he took the sole botany course three times. His later work with plants was central to his revolutionary ideas about natural selection. Until the...

Opens next month: The Horse May 17, 2008-January 4, 2009.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Black Beauty. Seabiscuit. My Little Pony. Mr. Ed. The horse--in fiction and fact, from prehistory to the present--has captured our imagination through books, television, film, and many other media. But there is a compelling backstory to this...

It figures: coral conservation.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
April 1, 2008... ART/SCI COLLISION: CROCHETING THE CORAL REEF TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 7:00 P.M. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HYPERBOLIC CROCHET: advanced mathematics, handicraft, a little of both? One thing is clear: it's a dazzling art form being used to...

Exhibitions.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Calendar)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Saturn: Images from the Cassini-Huygens Mission IMAX Corridor, first floor Opens April 26, 2008 This new exhibition reveals details of Saturn's rings, moons, and atmosphere with images sent over half a...

Global weekends.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Cultural and Biological Diversity Saturday, 4/5, 1:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. For details, visit cbc.amnh.org/biocultural Explore the vital link between humanity and the natural world through spoken word, live music, and film. Presented in...

Lectures and tastings.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Global Kitchen: Wine and Culture Three Tuesdays, 4/22-5/6, 7:30 p.m. With Louisa Thomas Hargrave and Jean-Louis Carbonnier.

Field trip.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Spring Bird Walks in Central Park Eight week, s starting on 4/8, 4/9, or 4/10. For tickets and details, visit www.amnh.org. Observe the spring migration of birds in Central Park.

Family and children's programs.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)(Calendar)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WATER SUNDAYS 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (Ages 4-6, each child with one adult) and 1:30-3:00 p.m. (Ages 7-9) In conjunction with Water: [H.sub.2]O = Life, these hands-on workshops introduce young audiences to the...

Hayden planetarium programs.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)(Calendar)
April 1, 2008... TUESDAYS IN THE DOME Virtual Universe The Grand Tour Tuesday, 4/1, 6:30 p.m. Celestial Highlights Carnivores' Corner Tuesday, 4/29, 6:30 p.m. These programs are supported, in part, by the Sant'Angelo/Koval Family,...

Hayden planetarium shows.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Field Trip to the Moon Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m. Guided by a live presenter, children and adults can see a sunrise in space and orbit and land on the Moon. Cosmic Collisions Journey into deep space to explore the hypersonic...

IMAX movie.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Dinosaurs Alive! Great dinosaur finds by AMNH scientists past and present come to life with archival and contemporary footage and scientifically accurate, computer-generated images. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Late night dance party.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... One Step Beyond Friday, 4/25, 9:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m. This monthly party in the Rose Center features the biggest names in techno, electronica, hip-hop, and indie rock. Cocktails keep the party going.

The prince and the popper.(ENDPAPER)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Six years ago, I was looking out the window of a plane bound for England, admiring the sunlight illuminating the slightly pink clouds. My British companion remarked that the clouds were just like candy...