Natural History articles from July 2006

Natural History archives from July 2006

Gill of newt.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... With all their boiling and toiling, the witches of Macbeth--who were cooking with "eye of newt, and toe of frog"--might have been improvising by tossing newt eyes into their cauldron in lieu of a much rarer ingredient: the newt's external...

Coal wars.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Jeff Goodell ["Cooking the Climate with Coal," 05/06] identifies two factors contributing to our increased reliance on coal, namely the self-interest of the coal industry and the denial of global warming. But he fails to note an equally...

Hidden world in the desert.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Although the word "oasis" might conjure images of gently swaying palm trees and pools of sparkling water, those rare watery refuges in the desert offer more than just respite for parched travelers. They're also complex ecosystems. According to...

No laughing matter.(hyenas hormones)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... To be top dog in a society of spotted hyenas, you've got to be a real bitch. Fiercely competitive scavengers, hyenas have no truck with the usual mammalian rules of dominance: females control the social hierarchy with an aggressiveness normally...

Oh, the trials of motherhood.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... When it comes to mothering, some caecilians willingly give the skin off their backs. Caecilians are tropical, soil-dwelling, legless amphibians that range in length from four inches to more than four feet. They look like giant earthworms....

Beware the toxic road!(self defense behavior of animals )(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Evolution has a way of fighting back. Nowhere is that process more visible than in Australia, where one species of snake is mounting a defense against the cane toad, an ever-encroaching menace. The toad, which can weigh three pounds, was...

Proto-Alexandria.(research of an ancient city)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Alexander the Great founded the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 331 B.C. Some scholars say the spot had been vacant land, but given its natural harbor and its proximity to the Nile delta, it should have attracted earlier settlers. Indeed,...

Fog lifts on ozone.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Way up in the stratosphere--about ten to thirty miles above Earth--ozone protects our planet from damaging ultraviolet radiation. In the troposphere, though--below about ten greenhouse gas. Its exact effect on global warming has remained...

Soap in your vegetables?(triclocarban contaminates agricultural fields)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Worried about germs? To calm your fears, modern corporations have added antimicrobial compounds to many household products, including cosmetics, soaps, and toothpastes. One such compound is triclocarban (TCC). About a million pounds of it are...

Death zone.(crater on the ocean floor)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... In a remote tract of the southwest Pacific, thirty miles east of the eastern-most island in the Samoan archipelago, a volcanic seamount rises nearly 15,000 feet from the ocean floor, higher than Mt. Shasta in California. At the center of the...

Avian Einsteins.(intelligent birds)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... To test the intelligence of birds, ethologists often present them with a piece of food dangling from the end of a string. To get the food, a bird perched on a branch must reach down, grab the uppermost segment of string in its beak, pull the...

Traveling green: tourists who want to vote with their pocketbooks for sustainable practices can consult networks that certify ecotourist operators. But who certifies the certifiers?(NATURALIST AT LARGE)
July 1, 2006... The palm-lined shores of Bocas del Toro--a group of small islands on the Caribbean side of northwest Panama--attract a bountiful assortment of species. The waters are resplendent with hundreds of tropical fish, colorful sea stars, spiny...

The other Kinsey report: Alfred C. Kinsey's scientific interests went well beyond sex.(LIFE CYCLES)
July 1, 2006... Alfred C. Kinsey, the sex doctor, died fifty years ago this August. The occasion offers the chance to reconsider a figure whose interests ranged over a great deal more than the varieties of human sexual behavior. Kinsey began his career as an...

Keep me hanging on: surviving in the intertidal zone tests the rubbery limits of algae.(BIOMECHANICS)
July 1, 2006... Now is a lovely time of year to head down to the beach. But forgo the warm sand in favor of the more interesting rocky headland down the shore. Then, as the waves pound in, consider what it must be like to live here. At low tide, the sun...

The scaly ones: squamata--lizards and snakes--have spread to almost every landmass and branched into more than 7,200 species. Ecological and molecular studies are bringing their family tree more clearly into focus.(Cover story)
July 1, 2006... They climb walls and scuttle upside down across ceilings, dive to the ocean floor to feed on algae, even glide through the air from treetops. Some, with no limbs and extremely long tails, look like snakes; others are snakes. Many are nearly...

From fins to limbs: recent fossil discoveries show how four-legged land animals evolved from fishes whose finlike paddles had already adapted to functions such as pushing through shallows and swamps.
July 1, 2006... When I became a paleontologist about twenty-five years ago, the evolution of four-legged animals from their fish ancestors was embodied in Ichthyostega, a partly terrestrial creature that lived 360 million years ago in what is now East...

Beyond the big bang: a new cosmic worldview holds that countless replicas of Earth, inhabited by our clones, are scattered throughout the cosmos.
July 1, 2006... We all live in the aftermath of a great explosion. This awesome event, somewhat frivolously called the big bang, took place some 14 billion years ago. We can actually see some of the cosmic history unfolding before us since that moment--light...

Science most foul.(Unnatural Selection)(The Quarry)(The Oxygen Murder)(The Darwin Conspiracy)(The Book of the Dead)(Intuition)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Summertime, and the reading is easy. You don't escape to the beach or the mountains to fritter away your lazy hours fretting about the pollution of the Arctic or the effects of invasive species on Hawaiian biodiversity. No, what you want is a...

Reptilophilia.(nature.net)(Website list)
July 1, 2006... I've never been much for pets--too much responsibility. Once, though, when a herpetologist friend offered me a turtle that had been turned over to him by customs agents, I said yes. A victim of the illegal pet trade, it was a big-headed turtle...

Deceptive nebulous apparition? The double helix at the center of the galaxy.(OUT THERE)
July 1, 2006... Appearances can be deceiving-especially in outer space. Thirty years ago, the Viking 1 orbiter took thousands of photographs of the Martian surface: craters, canyons, mountains, and more. The peaks and shadows of one mountain evoked a fuzzy,...

The sky in July and August.
July 1, 2006... Mercury is too dim and too close to the Sun to see until the last few days of July. It passes through inferior conjunction, between the Earth and the Sun, on July 18 and moves into the morning sky. Look for it at the end of the month, low in...

Yellowstone to Yukon opens July 15, 2006.(At the Museum: AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY)
July 1, 2006... Yellowstone to Yukon, an enthralling exhibition of over 40 full-color photographs, opens July 15, 2006, in the American Museum of Natural History's IMAX Corridor on the first floor. On view through January 15, 2007, the exhibition showcases the...

Lizards & snakes: alive!
July 1, 2006... July 1, 2006--January 7, 2007 This new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History will captivate children and adults alike with more than 60 live lizards and snakes. Visitors will learn how lizards and snakes are part of the same...

People at the AMNH.(American Museum of Natural History (New York, New York))(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Michael Cosaboom Manager of Interactive Exhibits Department of Exhibitions Michael Cosaboom, whose team develops computer-based media for special exhibitions, says that of all the projects he's worked on in his nearly five years...

Last chance! Darwin.(Public notice)
July 1, 2006... Closes August 20 This tortoise is just one of the live animals in Darwin that has made the exhibition so popular that it was extended three months past its original dosing date. But now your last chance to see this stunning exhibition is...

Space Shuttle launch live.(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Visit AMNH Space Events Web page for details July marks the return of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet to service after more than three years of engineering analysis and redesign. Join scientists and space educators from AMNH to watch the launch...

Museum events.(Calendar)
July 1, 2006... EXHIBITIONS LAST CHANCE! Darwin Through August 20, 2006 Featuring live animals, actual fossil specimens collected by Charles Darwin, and manuscripts, this magnificent exhibition offers visitors a comprehensive, engaging...

Hard labor at Bear Gulch.(ENDPAPER)
July 1, 2006... Grumpy, fuzzy, scholarly type was beside himself. Halfway up the ten-foot-high rock wall he'd run out of toe-holds, and he clung desperately to the tiny fingerholds above him. The wall was made of layers of shale, inch-thick ledges protruding...