Natural History articles from March 2003

Natural History archives from March 2003

This stop is Vietnam. (Up Front).
March 1, 2003... Isn't it odd, really, that so much of what we outsiders know about Vietnam is colored by the memory of the war? As someone who came of age in the late 1960s, I still find it hard to put aside the terrible associations some of the names conjure:...

Pretty poison. (The Natural Moment).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... To be seen or not to be seen? Most slug caterpillars survive their vulnerable youth by making a visual statement. Orange-tinted skin, black body rings, and piercing yellow eyespots mark the Vietnamese larva of Setora fletcheri pictured here....

All in the family? (Letters).
March 1, 2003... In his search for differences between Neanderthals and modern humans, Juan Luis Arsuaga ["Requiem for a Heavyweight" 12/02-1/03] may have missed the importance of similarities. He thinks no Neanderthal genes have reached us, but why should we...

Central questions. (Letters).
March 1, 2003... Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Delusions of Centrality" [12/02-1/03] comes close to saying what I would put this way: Because everything in the observable universe began expanding from the same point, wherever one happens to be is, for all practical...

Drinking in the dark. (Samplings).(night sight)
March 1, 2003... Far from city lights, with only the Noon and stars to guide them, people see in shades of gray. That's because our eyes have just two kinds of photoreceptors--rods and cones--and the rods, the only receptors that work well in dim light, do not...

Aftermath of a cataclysm. (Samplings).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Most scientists agree that about 65 million years ago a catastrophic meteor impact wiped out the dinosaurs. That collision, however, is dwarfed by events that took place billions of years earlier, when the Earth was only a billion years old....

Frozen dinners. (Samplings).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... One September afternoon a dozen years ago, two hikers came across a mummified man at the edge of an alpine glacier in northern Italy. Now known as the Tyrolean Iceman, or Otzi (after the Otzar Alps, where he was discovered), the 5,200-year-old...

Core values. (Samplings).
March 1, 2003... Besides preserving the occasional frozen mummy, glaciers and ice fields contain evidence of the climates of long ago. As ice is consolidated from the annual snowfall, the quantities and composition of dust and atmospheric gases trapped in the...

Experiment of the month. (Samplings).
March 1, 2003... Any runner knows that if you want to cover a long distance, you shouldn't start too fast. And that may be a sound rule of thumb for a runner's entire lifetime. Experiments with people as well as with laboratory animals continually demonstrate...

New Brunswick: welcome to New Brunswick, Canada ... where bird-watchers answer the call of Sandpipers, Plovers, Bald Eagles, Puffins and rare waterfowl. From island retreats to protected marshes and preserved habitats, this is an ecological haven for millions of winged creatures. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... NEW BRUNSWICK'S BAY of Fundy, One of the Marine Wonders of the World, is a prime feeding ground for migrating birds. Campobello Island and Grand Manan Archipelago (one of Thayer's Top 100 Birding Hot Spots) are located at the mouth of the bay...

Cayman Islands: nestled in the calm, turquoise waters of the western Caribbean is the peaceful British Crown colony known as the Cayman Islands. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... SOUTH OF CUBA--AND JUST 480 miles south of Miami--the Caymans consist of a trio of islands: Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. All are blessed with sun-kissed beaches, waters teeming with fish flecked with gold, and a grand 500 years...

Scotland: a land of mountains and moors, deep clear lochs and glens, Scotland attracts birds and birdwatchers with its natural splendor. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... BRING YOUR BINOCOCULARS when you hike across its hills and moors strewn with heather or visit its myriad islands bathed in northern light, for you will find a plethora of birds in Scotland. You'll find eagles on the beautiful Isle of Skye...

West Virginia. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... WITH MORE THAN 80,000 acres of state parks and 100,000 acres of forests, West Virginia offers a natural, peaceful setting for watching its native wildlife. From the Potomac Highlands in the northeast to the New River Valley in the south,...

Delta Queen cruises. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... TAKE A TRIP BACK INTO TIME when you go Steamboatin' with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company. This cruise company specializes in nostalgic river cruise vacations that transport passengers back to an earlier, genteel time. From the time you...

Canada. Discover our true nature. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... WITH ALMOST 700 BIRD species, Canada is a natural destination for avid birders. From Newfoundland and Labrador to Yukon, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, the abundance of authentic wilderness offers unparalleled bird watching. In...

Belize lodge & excursions. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... REMARKABLE AS it may seem, more than two-thirds of the country of Belize is still forested, and almost half of it is protected, making it a haven for 540 species of birds. Birds are so plentiful that it's not unusual for even a casual birder to...

Stick-in-the-mud science: you'll need your brain and plenty of patience--but not much more--to take the measure of the Earth and its motions. (Universe).
March 1, 2003... For a century or so, various blends of high technology and clever thinking have driven cosmic discovery. But suppose you have no technology. Suppose all you have in your backyard laboratory is a stick. What can you learn? Plenty. With...

Open wide (and fast): the law of physics that propels rockets into space enables an Australian turtle to catch a darting fish. (Biomechanics).
March 1, 2003... Slow and steady might win races for tortoises, but it's not clear that the same strategy would work for a pond turtle ambushing its prey. Imagine one of these torpid reptiles trying to hide its awkward shell from a school of minnows: The turtle...

Maryland: the land between tide and time: from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to the peaks of the majestic Allegheny Mountains, Maryland is a state of natural wonders. (Special Advertising Section).
March 1, 2003... PADDLE THROUGH THE FERtile marshes of the lower Chesapeake as ducks, geese, eagles, and a swirl of birds soar above you. Bicycle on trails that meander through the unspoiled forests of western Maryland, or hike on the Appalachian Trail itself....

Vietnam's secret life: naturalists exploring the country's mountains and forests are finding that the keys to its extraordinary biodiversity may lie deep in the past.
March 1, 2003... A long Vietnam's border with Laos runs the Truong Son range, known to the Laotians as Saiphou Louang and to much of the rest of the world as the Annamites. But the mountains are becoming known--to conservation biologists as well as to everyone...

The golden number: nature seems to have a sense of proportion.
March 1, 2003... what do: * the arrangements of sunflower seeds; * the branching of leaves on a stem; * the flight path of a diving falcon; * the breeding of rabbits; * the spiral shapes of nautilus shells and other mollusks; * the...

My life as a forest creature: growing up with the Cuc Phuong National Park. (This Land).
March 1, 2003... I was born in a hammock on a forest path in Cuc Phuong National Park. (The health center to which my mother was being carried was just a little too far away.) The path is still used, though it no longer leads back to our home. As a little girl,...

Let's make a galaxy: astronomers have identified a cosmic infant "nearby"--70 million light-years from Earth. (Out There).
March 1, 2003... Galaxies in the universe are rather like the cells in an animal. Just as cells combine to make an animal's organs and systems, so, too, do galaxies come together to make the superclusters and filaments that define the large-scale structure of...

The sky in March.
March 1, 2003... Mercury, acting more the lamb than the lion, enters March still lost in the Sun's glare. It reaches superior conjunction--disappearing, from our perspective, behind our star--on March 21. Thereafter, it begins climbing into the western evening...

Table talk: stories of the stuff that makes up the world.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... The ingredients: A Guided Tour of the Elements By Philip Ball Oxford University Press, 2003; $22.00 When I was in college nearly half a century ago, we students were entranced by the inimitable campus bard, Tom Lehrer, singing "The...

A Certain Curve of Horn: the Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... by John Frederick Walker Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002 $26.00 Animals can compel our love or admiration. Some amuse us; some annoy us. But only a few can enchant. For some reason--their bearing, their elusiveness, the remoteness of their...

Coal: a Human History.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... by Barbara Freese Perseus Publishing, 2003; $20.00 The history of coal, of course, spans time on a geologic scale. Yet Barbara Freese, a former assistant attorney general of Minnesota, brings welcome brevity to that history in this readable...

Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... by Andro Linklater Walker & Company, 2002; $26 In January of 1790, addressing the new U.S. Congress for the first time, George Washington set forth three priorities for the fledgling nation: to defend its sovereignty, to strengthen its...

Les grands sites. (nature.net).
March 1, 2003... The French Ministry of Culture and Communication has created a tour de force with its "Great Archaeological Sites" (www.culture.fr/ culture/arcnat/en/grsites.htm), a collection of nine elegantly designed Web pages, conveniently translated into...

Unique collaboration culminates in exhibition. (At The Museum).
March 1, 2003... When the exhibition Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind & Spirit opens at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on March 15, 2003, it will be the product of an unprecedented collaboration between the AMNH and the Vietnam Museum of...

Center for Biodiversity and Conservation's spring symposium addresses sustainable tourism.
March 1, 2003... TIGER IN THE FOREST: SUSTAINABLE NATURE-BASED TOURISM IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Thursday and Friday, March 20 and 21 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Advance registration is recommended. Please visit research.amnh.org/biodiversily or call 212-769-5200. ...

Museum events.(Calendar)
March 1, 2003... EXHIBITIONS Biodiversity of Vietnam Opens March 20 Akeley Gallery, second floor This exhibition of photographs highlights Vietnam's remarkable diversity of plants and animals and the Museum's Center for Biodiversity and...

Lost and found. (Endpaper).
March 1, 2003... My father always knew just which direction he wanted to go and how he wanted to get there. Of course he did have a secret: he and his truck never left the secure confines of the dairy country south of Lodi, Wisconsin. He drove the back roads of...