Natural History articles from December 2005

Natural History archives from December 2005

Shore leave.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(South Georgia Island)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Every summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the islands around Antarctica attract millions of beachgoers, some with family obligations and some with a need to just vegetate. Both types appear in this scene on South Georgia Island. King...

Improvise and flourish.(UP FRONT)
December 1, 2005... We had seventeen [reindeer] harnessed into one caravan to pull our sledges.... Seven pairs of reindeer alternated with six sledges; the remaining three animals were tied behind as spares.... ... I had crossed this area before on horseback,...

Sudden collapse.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... Lee Siebert's article "Blown Away" [10/05] details how volcanoes can collapse. Last year, when Mount St. Helens reawakened, my colleagues and I at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were asked whether the mountain's southern flank was unstable....

Holding up the Amazon.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Usually it's hard to imagine that the ground beneath your feet is anything but solid. In fact, though, the Earth's crust is elastic. In many places it moves up and down just a fraction of an inch, usually in sync with the varying amounts of...

Great leap.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Genes that "jump" between closely related single-celled organisms are plentiful. But finding a gene that can jump between complex and distantly related species would excite any evolutionary biologist. Charles C. Davis, a systematist and...

Can't stand the heat.(SAMPLINGS)(honeybees and wasps)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... A honeybee colony is a model of unity and selfless cooperation. Bees work together to tend their queen, forage for food, and maintain the colony. And when the colony's young are endangered by cold weather, worker bees come to the rescue. They...

The lice and the whale.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Whale lice--diminutive crustaceans that feed on dead skin--spend their lives attached to right whales (Eubalaena spp.). The benign parasites, also called cyamids, grow in thick masses, forming distinctive white patches on the whales' dark skin;...

Tale of a two-tailed virus.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... With waters at least ten times more acidic than vinegar, and scorching temperatures as high as 200 degrees Fahrenheit, the hot springs of Pozzuoli, in southern Italy, are a special place to live. It's a good bet that any life-form that can...

Salt in the wound.(SAMPLINGS)(use of sodium chloride as de-icer on winter roads makes surface water salty)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... This winter, as you drive on ice-free roads flanked by drifting snow, ponder this: In winter, some streams in urban and suburban Baltimore have become one-fourth as salty as seawater. In areas where more than 40 percent of the ground is covered...

Deep green.(SAMPLINGS)(photosynthesis on ocean floor from hot gases that give off light)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... When most people think of photosynthesis, they think of sunlight. But most people aren't aware that black smokers--vents on the ocean floor that spew hot gases into the seawater--give off minute amounts of light, in addition to the heat and...

Scramble for milk.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The pups of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) are on a strict diet from the moment they are born. Mom leaves them stowed in an underground nest, then visits only once a day for a three-minute feeding session. Worse, the pups have to...

Fire and ice: the Earth may be warming, but the cosmos is headed toward a very big chill.(UNIVERSE)
December 1, 2005... When Cole Porter composed "Too Darn Hot" for his 1948 Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate, the temperature he was bemoaning was surely no higher than the mid-nineties. No harm in taking Porter's lyrics as an authoritative source on the upper...

Spore launchers: ferns and fungi that explosively reproduce.(BIOMECHANICS)
December 1, 2005... Reproduction usually involves routing very small particles--sperm, eggs, and spores--away from the site where they were created. Diverse solutions to the basic transport problem have evolved, such as sticky pollen that is picked up by insects,...

The birth of the uterus: genes that help determine what goes right or wrong in pregnancy also enabled early mammals to switch from laying eggs to bearing live young.
December 1, 2005... One hundred eighty million years ago, a small, hairy animal resembling a shrew or a vole evolved a new way to care for her developing offspring. Instead of laying eggs and incubating them in an uncertain outside world, she retained her embryos...

Small things considered.(micrographs)
December 1, 2005... Microscopy has come a long way since the seventeenth century, when the English polymath Robert Hooke peered through a primitive compound microscope of his own design and realized that cork is made up of what he termed "cells." Today's...

Land of plenty: Austria's red deer feast on handouts and live half the year in fenced enclosures. Can they still fend for themselves?
December 1, 2005... My first encounter with a rare herd of red deer wintering in the Austrian Alps came after a four-hour ascent on skis through snowed-in forests and steep terrain. The reward for my exertion was a perfect view of 160 animals, whose dark-brown...

Wet and wild: midway between Walt Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center lies a haven for Florida's natural delights.(THIS LAND)
December 1, 2005... As much as I love southern Illinois, my native home, I must admit that I enjoy the relatively tropical vegetation in Florida. When I was teaching at Southern Illinois University, my family and I would pack off to Florida each spring break to...

Fyi reader service.(Advertisement)
December 1, 2005... 1. ADVENTURE CANADA Travel on the 104-passenger, zodiac-equipped M/S Explorer and discover the art, culture and wildlife of Arctic Canada and Greenland with our team of artists, scientists, and culturalists. 2. ADVENTURE LIFE JOURNEYS...

And for the coffee table.(Bibliography)
December 1, 2005... Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs, by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart (Candlewick Press; $26.99) Talk about intelligent design! The creators of this unique volume are artists and graphic designers, not scientists, and they have put...

Space glitter: cosmic nanodiamonds may steal some sparkle from a quasar.(OUT THERE)
December 1, 2005... Interstellar matter--the gas and dust that surround the stars--play all kinds of wacky tricks with light. Sometimes they change the light that shines through them from more distant objects. Sometimes they shine on their own. Some of their light...

Bonobo watch.(nature.net)
December 1, 2005... I have nothing against scientific surveys scanning the heavens for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. But given the odds, my bet is that the only nonhuman intelligence we'll ever really know is already here. On a recent visit to the San...

The sky in December and January.
December 1, 2005... On December 1 Mercury rises only an hour and fifteen minutes before the Sun and, at magnitude 1.2, is a bit hard to see. The planet rises earlier each day, however, and soon emerges from the glare of sunrise. By the 5th it is visible low in the...

Wrong poison.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... In his article "Toxic Treasure" [10/05], Robert George Sprackland writes that tetrodotoxin "also turned up in the feathers of two genera of birds.... The source of the toxin turned out to be bacterial." My doctoral research focuses on those two...

Stormy waters.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... I was intrigued with Laurence A. Marschall's review [10/05] of The Great Hurricane: 1938, by Cherie Burns. I experienced that hurricane from the relatively safe confines of Watertown, Massachusetts, and I have studied many accounts of the...

The next big one.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... I happened to pick up the February 2005 issue, and as I read Shea Penland's article, "Taming the River to Let In the Sea," I was amazed by its timeliness and accuracy. Six months after its publication, Mr. Penland's dire predictions--that a big...

Misplaced Madison.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... Robert H. Mohlenbrock may know This Land ["Where Glaciers Did Not Tread," 10/05], but the map that accompanied his article misplaced Madison, Wisconsin by about 100 miles. Matthew J. Courchane Greendale, Wisconsin THE EDITORS...

Darwin.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
December 1, 2005... Darwin, the most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on this highly original naturalist and his theory of evolution, will remain on view at the Museum through May 29, 2006. It offer visitors a comprehensive, engaging exploration of the life and...

Cosmic collisions: new space show at the Hayden Planetarium! Opens January 14, 2006.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... On January 14, a new Space Show of cosmic proportions is hitting the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater! Immersed in a dazzling virtual reality simulator, you'll journey into deep space--well beyond the calm face of the night sky--to explore...

Lauri Halderman: director of Exhibition Interpretation Department of Exhibition.(PEOPLE AT THE AMNH)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Lauri Halderman, Director of Exhibition Interpretation, admits that after months of working on a new exhibition, seeing the words come alive on gallery walls is both exciting and gratifying. As head of the team that writes the text for all...

Museum events.(Calendar)
December 1, 2005... EXHIBITIONS The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Batteries Alive in Winter. Through May 29, 2006 A return engagement of this popular exhibition includes up to 500 live, free-flying tropical butterflies in an enclosed habitat that...