Natural History articles from March 2009

Natural History archives from March 2009

Bait ball season.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(marlins)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE NATURAL EXPLANATION When sardines squirmed down Doug Perrine's wet-suit collar for refuge, he began to question the safety of his vantage point. It wasn't the tickling baitfish that concerned him, it was the...

Out of print.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Olivia Judson's "Life Zone" column on fingerprints ["Sticky Fingers," 12/08-1/09] was a great story but didn't address the effects of aging. After 9/11, needing security clearance, I had a full set of fingerprints taken and filed with the FBI....

Art of evolution.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Thanks for Robert McCracken Peck's article on the nineteenth-century artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins ["The Art of Bones," 12/08-1/09]. It is intriguing that Hawkins brought to life the fossil evidence of evolution without embracing Darwinian...

Khan-quest.(nature.net)(TimeMap; tracking Genghis Khan's empire)(Product/service evaluation)(Website overview)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AFTER READING anthropologist Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Crown, 2004), I turned to the Internet to learn more. A site called TimeMap (http://www.timemap.net) features an applet...

Feeling light-headed.(SAMPLINGS)(imaging the fossilized skulls of four dinosaurs)(Report)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Was T. rex an airhead? That's what wags might say following a study by Lawrence M. Witmer and Ryan C. Ridgely of Ohio University in Athens. The two paleontologists used CT scans and 3-D computer imaging to measure,...

You can't hide, glycolaldehyde.(SAMPLINGS)(space exploration)(Report)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To the great delight of earthlings who yearn for extraterrestrial companionship, glycolaldehyde ([C.sub.2][H.sub.4][O.sub.2]) has just been detected in a star-forming region of our galaxy. The substance, you see, can...

Grow your own oasis.(SAMPLINGS)(research on desert plants)(Report)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Most desert plants have small leaves to prevent desiccation, but the desert rhubarb takes a contrarian approach. Rheum palaestinum, a rare plant from the Negev desert in Israel and Jordan, grows leaves up to two feet wide. Together, the...

The spark of love.(SAMPLINGS)(elephantfishes)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... What's not to love about elephantfishes? Not only do they have extended jaws resembling their namesakes' trunks--they're electric! Modified muscle cells near their tails discharge pulses of electricity into the water. The fish use the resulting...

The blobs.(SAMPLINGS)(giant protozoans)(Report)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... On a submersible dive off the Bahamas, Mikhail V. Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and several colleagues were seeking big-eyed, glowing animals adapted to darkness. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Yet as they cruised above the...

Buzzing bodyguards.(SAMPLINGS)(armyworms' defense mechanism)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Even a novice naturalist can tell a bee from a wasp. So shouldn't caterpillars, which are unharmed by the former but destroyed by the latter, be able to do so too? Apparently not. Researchers at the University of Wurzburg in Germany...

Zippety zoo dah.(SAMPLINGS)(mimicking; orangutan)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... When the mood strikes her, Bonnie whistles. She's not very good at it--she utters only single notes and can't carry a tune. But don't judge her too harshly; as an orangutan, she's the first nonhuman primate ever documented to whistle, or to...

Broken A.C.(THE WARMING EARTH)(Arctic coast)(Report)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... In the Arctic, rising greenhouse-gas concentrations are producing a variety of unprecedented climate effects, which scientists around the world have been scrutinizing as part of the International Polar Year ending this month. Here are a couple...

Peak oil--then what?(THE WARMING EARTH)(oil production will decline)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Burning all the world's remaining conventional oil and natural gas reserves would not raise atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels above the widely accepted "safe" level of 450 parts per million (ppm), according to Pushker A. Kharecha of NASA's...

The Living Gomboc: some turtle shells evolved the ideal shape for staying upright.(BIOMECHANICS)(Report)
March 1, 2009... There is something about a turtle on its back that twists your heart. With neck craning toward the ground and legs waving to no effect, it is the image of helplessness. But, malicious kids aside, turtles almost never end up upended. And it...

To kill a cormorant: are double-crested cormorants overrunning their niche--or simply recovering from centuries of suppression?(Cover story)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] I'VE BEEN OBSESSED with cormorants for several years now, ever since I wrote my interdisciplinary master's thesis on the seabirds. My studies took me all over North America, to four other continents, and almost to...

Between a rock and a hyrax: two closely related species find safety in numbers--except in the presence of people.
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] From my perch overlooking a rocky outcrop in Matobo National Park, in southwestern Zimbabwe, I keep watch over certain creatures that emerge from the cracks and crevices in the early morning and again in the late...

Maragaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon.(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Maragaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon by Nancy C. Lutkehaus Princeton University Press, 2008; 374 pages, $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Margaret Mead, who remains America s best-known anthropologist thirty years after...

Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient world.(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient world by Sharon Waxman Times Books, 2008; 414 pages, $30,000 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] They call it the British Museum. Why, then, does it count among its treasures a...

Is God a Mathematician?(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio Simon and Schuster, 2009; 308 pages, $26.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In The Assayer, an eloquent discourse on the scientific method published in 1623, Galileo Galilei observed that God's...

Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking.(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking by Charles Seife Viking, 2008; 294 pages; $25.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The recipe is enticingly simple. Take four hydrogen nuclei and...

Skylog.(March; daylight saving time and the planet Venus)
March 1, 2009... Daylight saving time (DST) returns on the second Sunday of March for most of North America: clocks "spring forward" one hour at 2:00 A.M. local time. Daylight saving time trades a little sunshine in the morning for more in the evening, allowing...

March nights out.(SKYLOG)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... 4 The Moon waxes to first quarter at 2:46 A.M. eastern standard time. 8 Daylight saving time returns at 2:00 A.M. local time (see story above). 10 The Moon becomes full at 10:38 P.M. eastern daylight time (EDT). 18 The Moon wanes...

Thinking inside the box.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
March 1, 2009... If you've ever spent hours reorganizing a sock drawer or searching for the ideal spice rack, you have just a hint of the work afoot on fossil storage floors of the Childs Frick Building at the American Museum of Natural History. There, under a...

Milstein Science Series: World Water Day.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Water is essential to life as we know it. A seemingly limitless resource, water sustains our bodies and shapes our planet. Yet only a fraction of a percent of the world's supply supports all life on Earth. Though...

Attention documentary filmmakers: Mead Festival seeks submissions.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
March 1, 2009... African thumb-piano players, Laotian bomb technicians, primate scientists in Abkhazia, prostitutes in Phnom Penh, Manhattan pre-schoolers--these are just a few of the unusual subjects explored in the most recent annual Margaret Mead Film &...

At the museum: American Museum of Natural History.(climate change; butterfly conservatory; Saturn)(Calendar)
March 1, 2009... EXHIBITIONS Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future Through August 16, 2009 This timely exhibition explores the science, history, and impact of climate change on a global scale, providing a context for today's...

A taste of the wild.(ENDPAPER)(natura food; forest fruits)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While there are tens of thousands of edible plants in the world, people in the United States typically consume fewer than fifty. That held true for me, too, until I moved to the jungles of southern Cameroon for my...