Natural History articles from February 2007

Natural History archives from February 2007

Heart of the matter.(nebulae)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Revealing your heart to someone takes time. In the case of IC 1805--a hot cloud of gas near the constellation Cassiopeia--the revelation has taken 7,500 years. That's how long light from the cloud must travel through space to reach Earth. But...

Hominid time machine.(fossils)
February 1, 2007... The year is 3.2 million B.C., the light is flattering, and for once, Og's face isn't covered with blood, grime, and the infected bites of tsetse flies. Doesn't someone have a digital camera? Regretfully, no. And no one, to my knowledge, has...

Darwin's progress.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2007... I was somewhat startled by Laurence A. Marschall's statement, in his review of Darwinism and Its Discontents [10/06], that "nothing about the process of natural selection guarantees that things must get better with time." That may be true in...

Elephant's thermostat.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2007... I must quibble with the illustration on pages 54 and 55 of John Tyler Bonner's article, "Matters of Size" [11/06]. The gazelle-size elephant wouldn't be able to maintain body temperature without some fur. Likewise, it would lose too much heat...

Light on the dark.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2007... In "Times of Our Lives" [11/06], Robert L. Jaffe states that "like a sales tax, the dark energy is a fixed percentage of the newly created volume of space," implying (at least to a novice like me) that some sort of continuous creation is going...

Taking turns.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2007... Donald Goldsmith ["Turn, Turn, Turn," 12/06-1/07] describes three periodic motions of Earth: a daily rotation, a yearly revolution, and the 25,785-year precession of the rotation axis. There are two additional periodic motions--the Milankovitch...

DMZ paradox.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2007... I found Mary Mycio's essay "Chernobyl Paradox" [4/06] fascinating reading, all the more so because I had just returned from a trip to South Korea and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates South and North Korea. With nothing except...

Cloudmakers.(marine phytoplankton affect climate forecasts)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Phytoplankton--single-cell marine organisms--may be microscopic, but they can also play a sizable role in regulating the Earth's climate. A recent study of their chemical emissions could change climate forecasts, though whether for better or...

Out to dry.(lakes go dry due to global warming)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Lakes in Alaska are vanishing, and the most probable culprit is--you guessed it--global warming. A trio of ecologists led by Brian Riordan at the University of Alaska Fairbanks analyzed aerial images from the past half-century to track changes...

Bug life.(warmer climate effect insect population)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... How will insects, the most abundant animals on Earth, respond to a warmer climate? The answer lies in a basic tenet of biology: at higher temperatures, biochemical reactions happen faster. The principle is particularly relevant for insects and...

But did they do it?(neanderthals research)
February 1, 2007... When early modern humans spread through Europe some 35,000 years ago, they almost surely met Neanderthals. But did members of the two groups mate and procreate before the Neanderthals died out? The question has spurred debate since soon after...

The beast of kings.(medieval lions unearthed)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Two medieval lions have lurked unnoticed in the Natural History Museum in London for decades. Their skulls, along with those of a leopard and nineteen dogs, were discovered during a 1937 archaeological excavation of the Tower of London. But...

Silent alarm.(tungara frog )(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... It pays for lovelorn male tungara frogs to listen while they call for mates in the dangerous jungle twilight. A sudden silence that interrupts the chirping, chucking, trilling, and whining of a frog chorus might herald the arrival of an...

Squid secrets.(Marine Biological Laboratory's Lydia M. Mathger, Roger T. Hanlon on visual communication)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... As any squid knows, visual communication is a wonderful way to convey a message. It has a major downside, though; predators can tune in to the broadcast just as readily as the intended recipients (other squid) can. A recent study by Lydia M....

Vitriphagy.(microorganisms feed on volcanic glass )(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Microorganisms can live in the most extreme environments, feed on a host of seemingly inedible materials, and thrive on improbable sources of energy. Can they possibly still surprise us? Try this: they feed on glass inside submarine volcanoes....

Little neutral ones: in John Updike's memorable description, "The earth is just a silly ball/To them, through which they simply pass.".
February 1, 2007... You'd never know it, but 6 trillion subatomic particles pass through every square inch of your body every second at nearly the speed of light. Most are leftovers from the big bang, but others arrive fresh from their superhigh-energy origins...

Faces of the human past: science and art combine to create a new portrait gallery of our hominid heritage.(Cover story)
February 1, 2007... Judging from their astonishing paintings and engraved images of animals on the walls of European caves--works that have somehow survived since prehistoric times--people have been making pictures for at least thirty millennia, and probably for a...

Eight arms, with attitude: octopuses count playfulness, personality, and practical intelligence among their leading character traits.
February 1, 2007... Twenty-five years ago, when I started my fieldwork on the behavior of juvenile common octopuses in the azure waters of Bermuda, I expected all my subjects to be much the same. I assumed their activities would be fairly limited; individuals...

Family ties: unexpected social behavior in an improbable arachnid, the whip spider.
February 1, 2007... If you're a fan of the Harry Potter films, you've seen an amblypygid. The most recent cinematic installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, showed an improbable creature with a flat body, spiny "arms," and incredibly long....

Ozark mushrooms: bedecked with resilient plants, an Arkansas cliff top overlooks fantastic formations known as pedestal rocks.(Travel narrative)
February 1, 2007... The Ozark Mountains are centered in Missouri, but they extend into northwestern Arkansas, where they fall largely within the Ozark National Forest. The Arkansas Ozarks are a rugged region of high peaks, steep cliffs, ravines, and various...

The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery.(Book review)
February 1, 2007... The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery by D.T. Max Random House; $25.95 Among the manifold ways we may depart this mortal coil, none are more terrifying than those that involve the slow disintegration of the central nervous...

Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man.(Book review)
February 1, 2007... Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man by Susan Elizabeth Hough Princeton University Press; $27.95 For more than forty years, from 1927 until his formal retirement in 1970, Charlie Richter was an employee of the...

Human Anatomy: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age.(Book review)
February 1, 2007... Human Anatomy: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age by Benjamin A. Rifkin and Michael J. Ackerman, with biographies by Judith Folkenberg Abrams, New York; $29.95 In medicine, as in many other professions, the distinction between science...

Not seeing is believing: the existence of dark matter is confirmed--again.
February 1, 2007... Dark matter is everywhere. According to current theory, it permeates our solar neighborhood, surrounds our Milky Way, and envelops every other substantial collection of matter in the universe. It's so dilute that astronomers can't even detect...

The sky in February.(temperature)
February 1, 2007... February begins with Mercury in prime position for evening viewing. When darkness falls on the 1st, the innermost planet glows low in the west-southwest at magnitude -0.9 and sets about eighty minutes after the Sun. From the 1st through the...

Of arms and the brain.(cephalopodas)
February 1, 2007... Last summer my son and I went snorkeling in the chilly waters off Catalina Island, along the California coast. As we swam above a kelp forest swaying with the surf, we spotted fish by the hundreds. Then my son pointed excitedly toward a...

AMNH to confer doctoral degrees.(American Museum of Natural History)
February 1, 2007... For nearly a century, graduate students have conducted doctoral research at the American Museum of Natural History, but always for a degree at another institution. Until now. The American Museum of Natural History is now the first--and...

Podcast news.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... The next time you assume that teenagers with the tell-tale wires hanging down from their ears are zoning out to the latest band on their iPods, think again. They might just be pondering the legacy of Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle or...

I spy a butterfly! www.amnh.org.(American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Unleash your inner lepidopterist with the Museum's online Butterfly Cam, which is focused on the colorful creatures of the in-house hothouse that is The Butterfly Conservatory, on view through May 28, 2007. To get there, simply click on...

Dedicated to Dunham.(American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... You dance because you have to. --Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) Katherine Dunham sought, in the native dances of the Caribbean, in the pounding rhythms of Africa, the cultural origins for the distinctive form of dance she pioneered. She...

Leslie Martinez: coordinator, Sleepover Program.(American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Every Thursday, when many people race for the door at the end of their workday, Leslie Martinez heads to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals for an evening animal drawing class. "I love it," she says. "It's a way to get to know the dioramas--and...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.
February 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...

Small is beautiful.(photomicrography organized by Olympus America Inc.)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... The often uneasy marriage between science and art can be positively blissful when it comes to photomicrography, or photography through a light microscope. Micrographs have become a powerful tool for scientific investigation, but the ones shown...