Natural History articles from July 2005

Natural History archives from July 2005

Down the hatch.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(Great Inagua flamingos)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Great Inagua, the southernmost island in the Bahamas, hosts a massive colony of wild West Indian flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber ruber). The resident birds--about 50,000 of them--nest around the salty flats of Lake Rosa, a reservoir ringed by...

Epilogue.(UP FRONT)
July 1, 2005... Smart. Gregarious. Long-lived. Gentle when treated well. Dangerous when angered. No, not people; I'm talking about elephants. Our cover story by Delia and Mark Owens, about the aftermath of many years of elephant poaching in Zambia's North...

Dinosaur geography.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... Mark A. Norell and Xu Xing's tyrannosaur history ["The Varieties of Tyrannosaurs," 5/05] was lucid and informative, but I would amend their assumption that all North American tyrannosaurs are of Asian ancestry. During the Late Cretaceous the...

Chain letters.(SAMPLINGS)(Mycobacterium leprae DNA sequence and origin of leprosy)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... There's a game known as "word chains" in which you go from one word to another by changing one letter at a time (hat, hot, dot, doe). Geneticists sometimes see the same thing happening with DNA. Marc Monot and Nadine Honore of the Pasteur...

Keeping an eye out.(SAMPLING)(giraffes scan out most of the time to view predators)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Like most animals, adult giraffes are a watchful crew. But even when they're alone, even when hungry lions and opportunistic hyenas may lurk nearby, and even when their own youngsters could be in danger, giraffes seem more concerned about...

Growing strains.(roses proteins fights stress)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... One must suffer to become beautiful, say the French. So it is with the rose. Making all those gorgeous colors and alluring scents does take its toll. According to Alexander Vainstein and Mery Dafny-Yellin, molecular biologists at the Hebrew...

Shakers and movers.(frog embryos response to predator attacks )(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Eggs, whether from amphibians, birds, insects, or reptiles, cannot move on their own, and few carry noxious chemicals. So when a predator chances on a clutch of eggs with no parent in sight, it's breakfast time! Case in point: a mass of...

Red power.(vermillion usage by Japanese mounds)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... For millennia, the vivid orange-red pigment called vermillion has decorated pottery and preserved royal bones. Recently a team of geologists and archaeologists, led by Takeshi Minami, an environmental chemist at Kinki University in Osaka,...

Play ball!(SAMPLINGS)(speed assessment in kindergartener children)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... All summer long, kids will be waiting eagerly to catch balls tossed by Dad or Grandma. And more than likely, they're going to wait too long: the grown-up, intending an easy catch, will make a slow toss that turns out to be just the reverse of...

Air hockey for giants.(SAMPLINGS)(Volcanic gases induces rockslides)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... The Heart Mountain rockslide in northwestern Wyoming is the world's largest rockslide and one of geology's biggest puzzles. What could cause a mass of rock nearly 450 square miles in area, and weighing trillions of tons, to slide along a...

By any means available.(SAMPLINGS)(Cryptococcus neoformans mating types)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Sex in the microbial realm is, as you might expect, not quite the same thing as what people like to do in their spare time. But it does take place. The fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, for instance, has two "sexes" (more technically, mating...

Heading out: to explore deep space--and make stops along the way--spacecraft will need new forms of propulsion.(UNIVERSE)
July 1, 2005... Launching a spacecraft is now a routine feat of engineering. Attach the fuel tanks and rocket boosters, ignite the chemical fuels, and away it goes. But today's spacecraft quickly run out of fuel. In fact, by the time a craft exits Earth...

Comeback kids: elephant "single moms" are struggling to recreate family life after the traumatic years of poaching.(NATURALISTS AT LARGE)(Cover Story)
July 1, 2005... There--a baby! She is coming to us by the river," Patrick Mwamba, a Bemba tribesman, whispered. Across the river from our camp a small female elephant trotted along the shore, her trunk flopping loosely like a garden hose. Abruptly, she stopped...

Cold fire: in Antarctica's Dry Valleys, the deep chambers and conduits that poured hot lava onto the surface are exposed as nowhere else on Earth.
July 1, 2005... Normally one would think nothing of pouring Scotch whiskey over a few chunks of ice. But this ice was more than 18,000 years old! It came from the Taylor Glacier, an enormous river of ice flowing off the polar ice cap into Antarctica's Taylor...

In the heat of the night: an assassin bug's sensory journey.
July 1, 2005... In rural areas of Latin America, adobe houses with thatched roofs are fixtures of the landscape. The houses are crisscrossed by crevices that serve as hideouts for insects. In the evenings, as the sun goes down, masses of intertwined heads,...

Unhappy trails: forensic examination of ancient remains sheds new light on the emergence of Florida's Seminole Indians.
July 1, 2005... On January 30,1838, the Seminole war hero Osceola died of malaria while in captivity at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The several hundred Florida Indians under his leadership had been waging guerrilla-style warfare against United States forces...

Sand trap: confined to a mountain valley, windblown sand has piled up into towering dunes.(THIS LAND)
July 1, 2005... More than a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, the San Luis Valley lies within the Rocky Mountains of south-central Colorado and northern New Mexico, bordered on the west by the San Juan range and on the east by the Sangre de Cristo...

Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion.(book by Alan Burdick )(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion by Alan Burdick Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005; $25.00 Standing in a lush forest on the Pacific island of Guam, science writer Alan Burdick is haunted by an eerie silence. Not a single warble,...

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed.(book by John Vaillant)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant W.W. Norton & Company, 2005; $24.95 To the Haida people of the Queen Charlotte Islands, it was known as K'iid K'iyaas, "the elder spruce." It was not the tallest...

The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison.(book by John Emsley )(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison by John Emsley Oxford University Press, 2005; $30.00 My idea of bliss in the dog days of summer is a comfortable lawn chair, a cool drink, and a stack of murder mysteries. For those with similar...

Chill out.(nature.net)(snowball Earth theory websites )
July 1, 2005... Summer heat getting you down? Then imagine setting your time machine for a geologic era more than half a billion years ago, when the entire globe, not just the polar regions, was enveloped in ice. Average surface temperatures reached minus...

Mistaken identity?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... Adrienne Mayor's supposition, presented in her article "Tales From the Badlands" [5/05], that fossils may have influenced human legends and myths, is certainly reasonable. But I found some of her supporting evidence unconvincing. On page 56,...

Not dead yet: a dying star is caught flaring briefly back to life.(OUT THERE)(Sagitta Constellation observations)
July 1, 2005... When most people see a constellation referred to as Sagitta, their first inclination is to add four letters to make the word "Sagittarius." Not so fast. The latter is indeed the famous archer, one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. But...

Fyi reader service.
July 1, 2005... For free information from the advertisers listed below, circle the corresponding numbers on the attached postage-paid card. Mail card, fax it to 856-380-41-1, or visit at www.naturalhistorymag.com. If the card is missing, mail your request to:...

The sky in July and August.(astronomy)
July 1, 2005... Mercury, still near the much brighter Venus after their close encounter late last month, shines in the western evening twilight at magnitude 0.1 as July begins. Mercury is less than a degree to the left of Venus; the two planets can be found...

Young Naturalist Awards 2005: a research-based essay contest for students in grades 7-12 to promote participation and communication in science.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
July 1, 2005... Now celebrating its eighth year, the Young Naturalist Awards recognizes the accomplishments of students who have investigated questions in the areas of biology, Earth science, or astronomy. Every year, scientists from the American Museum of...

Stephanie Fotiadis: graphic designer, National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology.(PEOPLE AT THE AMNH)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... The work that Stephanie Fotiadis does is seen by millions of kids, parents, and teachers every year, but Stephanie herself remains behind the scenes. As the Web Designer for the National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology for...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
July 1, 2005... EXHIBITIONS LAST CHANCE! Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest Closes July 10, 2005 This exhibition celebrates the beauty, power, and symbolism of the tradition of Native...

Messing about.(ENDPAPER)(frogs behavior to predators)
July 1, 2005... "Do you know [said Mole], I've never been in a boat before in all my life. Is it so nice as all that?" "Nice [said Rat]? It's the only thing. Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as...