Natural History articles from February 2003

Natural History archives from February 2003

New engines of evolution. (Up Front).(Column)
February 1, 2003... Last month I noted that part of what many people don't like about science stems from its conclusion that we human beings don t occupy the center of the universe. But another great source of discomfort about science is its insistence that change...

Raw bar. (The Natural Moment).(polar bears)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... As their Latin name, Ursus maritimus, indicates, polar bears are true seafarers: they spend most of their lives aboard ships of shifting pack ice, patrolling for stowaway seals. In winter, ice floes bring bears to the edge of Alaska's northern...

A matter of gravity. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... In his "Universe" column ["Going Ballistic" November 2002], Nell deGrasse Tyson eloquently covered many different and interesting aspects of "free fall." Of particular interest to me was his discussion of the chaotic motion of the planetary...

The shark has sharp turns. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... In his "Biomechanics" column on the hammerhead shark ["Head Turner" November 2002], Adam Summers reports that the shark does not bank its winglike head as it turns. He thus dismisses the idea that the head provides lift and maneuverability, as...

Wings and stings. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... In his tale of initiation into the pleasures and perils of rainforest field research ["Bites of Passage," October 2002], Nathan Welton writes that the "mad scientists" of La Selva Biological Station, in Costa Rica, "happily spend their days...

Heedless youth. (Samplings).(adolescent mice)
February 1, 2003... Sometimes teenagers seem drawn to risky behavior like moths to porch lights. But among adolescent mammals, they're not alone. Novelty-seeking-the urge to explore unknown environments--seems to surface at this stage of development. Perhaps the...

Grain gain. (Samplings).(rice and methane)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Nearly every day, more than half the people on Earth eat rice, a dietary staple grown mostly in flooded fields. Unfortunately, the Foots of rice plants are a source of nutrients for microorganisms that, under the anaerobic conditions prevailing...

Experiment of the month. (Samplings).(leatherback sea turtles)
February 1, 2003... When marine biologist Scott A. Eckert first tracked the deepwater dives of leatherback sea turtles in the Caribbean, his data told him the animals were spending middays at or just below the surface. He presumed they were basking in the...

Three's a crowd. (Samplings).(red crossbills, squirrels, conifer seeds)
February 1, 2003... Crossbills and squirrels both feed on the seeds of conifer cones--a dietary triangle that sets the stage for intriguing evolutionary interactions. In the Rocky Mountains, red squirrels harvest most of the cones of lodgepole pines before red...

Letting go. (Samplings).(autotomy: detaching a part of the anatomy)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... To escape a predator's grasp, some prey would rather give up a limb than give up on life. Through a process called autotomy, muscles can contract violently along the base of an appendage, breaking off the limb. Thus can sea stars cast off an...

Naming rights: how to stake a claim in the dictionary of science. (Universe).(Islam's role )
February 1, 2003... If you visit the gift shop at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, you'll find all manner of space-related paraphernalia for sale. Familiar things are in stock--plastic models of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, cosmic...

Flap your hands: to fly like a bat, you need flexible hand bones and stretchable skin across your fingers. (Biomechanics).
February 1, 2003... Both the Boeing Company and bats (the furry, flying mammals) are leaders in aeronautical performance and versatility, yet they have strikingly different approaches to getting (and staying) off the ground. The kind of flight most of us have...

The worm and the parasite: some tropical scourges call for a defense against an entire micro-ecosystem. (Findings).(lymphatic filariasis)
February 1, 2003... In the late 1960s, when I was a student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, my classmates and I had a microbiology professor who enjoyed taunting us as we struggled to identify badly preserved, poorly stained slides of...

Genetic hoofprints: the DNA trail leading back to the origins of today's cattle has taken some surprising turns along the way.
February 1, 2003... The genes present in the 1.3 billion cattle living on the Earth today represent a stream of inheritance that stretches back 10,000 years. The founding event in the legacy of the domesticated farm animal was the capture of the formidable wild...

Shaken to the core: mid-continental earthquakes can be even more damaging than the ones at the boundaries of tectonic plates. The great Indian earthquake of 2001 is a benchmark for geologists seeking to understand how they happen.(Buhj)
February 1, 2003... In the westernmost corner of India, south of a huge salt marsh known as the Rann of Kachchh, lies the old walled city of Bhuj, administrative headquarters of the district of Kachchh. To a Westerner, even a traveler equipped with a Lonely Planet...

Invasion of the gender benders: by manipulating sex and reproduction in their hosts, many parasites improve their own odds of survival and may shape the evolution of sex itself.(microorganisms that change sex of host)
February 1, 2003... Sex is fraught. Every teenager can attest to the havoc it wreaks--and to its unique power to change a life. Of course, that's one of life's lessons that survive far beyond the teenage years--and far beyond the human condition. To anyone who...

Tuff crowd: formations of volcanic rock dominate a landscape in southeastern Arizona. (This Land).(Chiricahua National Monument)(Column)
February 1, 2003... About 27 million years ago, in what is now the southeastern corner of Arizona, a volcano spewed out vast amounts of hot ash and pumice that fused into a 2,000-foot layer of rock known as rhyolitic tuff. Subsequent erosion has transformed the...

Tightening our Kuiper Belt: from the edge of the solar system come hints of a disrupted youth. (Out There).
February 1, 2003... More and more often, some new astronomical discovery is thrusting Pluto and its home, the Kuiper Belt, into the public eye. Most of the attention focuses on Pluto's status as one of our solar system's major planets. Should it retain that...

The sky in February.
February 1, 2003... Swift Mercury shines low along the east-southeastern horizon about an hour before sunrise in the first week of February. The planet, as bright as magnitude -0.1, reaches its greatest western elongation from the Sun on the 4th, 25 degrees from...

The curious energy of the void: dark energy is making the universe bigger and bigger, faster and faster.(The Extravagant Universe: Exploring Stars, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Cosmos)(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... The Extravagant Universe: Exploring Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos by Robert P. Kirshner Princeton University Press, 2002; $29.95 In February 1998 new observations of exploding stars in distant galaxies stood the world of...

Scaling down. (nature.net).(San Francisco Explatorium's web site about solar system)
February 1, 2003... It's a pretty safe bet that you're never going to travel more than a few thousand miles from home--how could you, without becoming an astronaut and leaving the Earth itself? So how can you hope to get an intuitive grasp of the size of the solar...

AstroBulletin showcases cutting-edge research at the South Pole. (At The Museum).
February 1, 2003... For decades, cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, garnered little support within the scientific community because few believed there was enough direct evidence to support such inquiry. Today, however, it is...

An interview with Ian Tattersall. (At The Museum).(The First Europeans: Treasures from the Hills of Atapuerca; American Museum of Natural History, New York)(Interview)
February 1, 2003... Co-curator of The First Europeans: Treasures from the Hills of Atapuerca Ian Tattersall is Curator in the Division of Anthropology and author of many books on human evolution including, most recently, The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on...

Museum events.
February 1, 2003... EXHIBITIONS Einstein Through August 10, 2003 Gallery 4, fourth floor This exhibition profiles this extraordinary scientific genius, whose achievements were so substantial and groundbreaking that his name is virtually synonymous...

Homing instinct. (Endpaper).(bald eagles return)(Column)
February 1, 2003... By the time I hired on to survey the common loon population of northern New Hampshire, back in 1978, bald eagles were long gone as a nesting species. Shot as predators, trapped for the taxidermy trade, left homeless as, one by one, their...