Natural History articles from May 2003

Natural History archives from May 2003

Bubble feast. (The Natural Moment).(Humpback whales)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... To say that baleen whales feed by passively filtering krill is almost to insult the mammals' truly sophisticated behavior. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are known to hunt in remarkably cooperative and cohesive groups. Pictured here,...

Thinking blue. (Up Front).(Editorial)
May 1, 2003... One of the most astonishing discoveries a visitor can make during a first love affair with New York City is "the whale," a ninety-four-foot life-size model of a blue whale that has swum overhead since 1969 in the vast Hall of Ocean Life, at the...

Rights and wrongs. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... In his "Universe" column ["Naming Rights" 2/03], Neil deGrasse Tyson acknowledges that slavery in the United States affected scientific endeavors. But he ignores the fact that many of the Islamic nations whose history he lauds also had...

The shadow knows. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... Neil deGrasse Tyson's article on low-tech science ["Stick-in-the-Mud Science," 3/03] reminded me of my career in educational television nearly half a century ago. Sputnik 1 had begun to orbit, and suddenly Americans noticed that their schools...

Curiouser and curiouser. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... In his book review "The Curious Energy of the Void" [2/03], Donald Goldsmith states: "As the universe expands,... more space continuously comes into being, and so the total amount of dark energy also increases proportionately" In effect,...

Cattle call. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... Daniel G. Bradley concludes that British aurochs did not interbreed with early domestic cattle ["Genetic Hoofprints" 2/03]. But that assertion overlooks that fact that (especially early on) domestication is a social as well as a biological...

You say tomato, I say tomahto. (Samplings).(whales behavior)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Not all members of the same species whistle the same tune. Groups of white-crowned sparrows and killer whales, for instance, may utter different songs or calls on similar occasions. Populations of cetaceans that share a vocalization "dialect"...

Fold three times and drink. (Samplings).(to prevent cholera in rural Bangladesh)
May 1, 2003... One of the world's most notorious waterborne diseases is cholera, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. For decades bacteriologists have known that the organism lives in close association with zooplankton, particularly the minute crustaceans...

Not guilty. (Samplings).(large mammal extinction)
May 1, 2003... About 11,500 years ago in North America, people started using fluted stone points for hunting. Archaeologists have called those people "Clovis," after the town in New Mexico where the characteristic stone points were first discovered. That same...

Experiment of the month. (Samplings).(mineralization of invertebrate eggs)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Amid all the fanfare that has accompanied recent discoveries of fossilized Precambrian invertebrate eggs found in China and elsewhere, a few grumbles of disbelief have been heard. After all, invertebrate eggs are made of soft tissue, so...

Traveling light. (Samplings).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Why do some plant immigrants spread so widely and destructively in their adopted lands, yet remain relatively innocuous back home? Presumably the new host country lacks some of the disease-causing fungi and viruses that afflict the plant in its...

Dust to dust: in the darkest regions of the Milky way are vast interstellar clouds harboring the remains of dead stars and the nurseries for new ones. (Universe).
May 1, 2003... A casual look at the Milky Way on a dark, clear night reveals a cloudy band of light-and-dark splotches extending from horizon to horizon. With simple binoculars or a backyard telescope, the dark and boring areas of the Milky Way look like,...

Mycological maestros: in the Ecuadorean rainforest, a "missing link" in the evolution of termite agriculture? (Naturalist At Large).
May 1, 2003... From the vantage of our laboratory at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the eye can wander over the majestic landscape of the Connecticut River Valley. It is a landscape profoundly shaped by cultivation: field boundaries are marked,...

New York State. (Special Advertising Section).(Seaway Trail)
May 1, 2003... The 454-mile Seaway Trail--the state's only National Scenic Byway--parallels the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, the Niagara River, and Lake Erie, carrying visitors through an eclectic array of large towns, quaint villages, picturesque bays,...

New Brunswick, Canada. (Special Advertising Section).(Advertisement)
May 1, 2003... New Brunswick, Canada, has so many wonders waiting to be experienced and explored! New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy is One of the Marine Wonders of the World. Twice a day, the world's highest tides rise and fall almost 48 feet (14 metres... that's...

Wyoming. (Special Advertising Section).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Wyoming has 14 scenic byways or "backways," including what many would call the most beautiful highway in America--the Beartooth Highway (U.S. 212), built in the 1930s. From the Custer National Forest to Yellowstone National Park, the Beartooth...

Arizona. (Special Advertising Section).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The Grand Canyon State's scenic byways and historic roads transport visitors to all of its natural wonders and many hidden treasures off the beaten path. Get your kicks on Route 66, probably Arizona's most famous road, which crisscrosses...

Quebec. (Special Advertising Section).(Iles de la Madeleine Islands)
May 1, 2003... For a vacation site that's secluded, beautiful, and undiscovered, head to the Iles de la Madeleine Islands. These islands are located in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a five-hour ferry ride from Prince Edward Island (Souris). You can...

Serpents in the air: a little contortionist can go a long way. (Biomechanics).(flying snake)
May 1, 2003... The ophiophobe worries, somewhat irrationally, about snakes--whether they're slithering across the sidewalk, lurking in laundry hampers, or even appearing on television. If you, too, are burdened by such anxieties, you might just skip this...

A plenitude of ocean life: a new census of the sea is revealing that microbial cells thrive in undreamed-of numbers. They form an essential part of the food web. (Cover Story).(Cover Story)
May 1, 2003... The Polar Duke, our ice-worthy Norwegian vessel, was immobilized--beset, to use the correct nautical term--by enormous sheets of sea ice. It was early August 1995, late winter in Antarctica, and the two-meter skin of frozen seawater that...

A yen for the traditional: in modern Japan, street performers sell ritual and nostalgia to compete with high-tech advertising.
May 1, 2003... The good old chindonya, changing the world from dark to light, people both young and old clap their hands, chinchira dondon chin dondon.... --Lyrics from a chindonya troupe in Kumayama, Japan When I tell Japanese people of a certain...

Temples for water: the stepwells of western India were a magnificent architectural solution to the seasonality of the water supply.
May 1, 2003... For all of recorded history the land that is now western India has been seasonally arid. The western monsoon sharply divides the annual cycle into wet and dry, making the earth glisten with rain for three months, then leaving the surface...

Bogs and burning woods: small variations in elevation create the strange habitats of New Jersey's pine barrens. (This Land).
May 1, 2003... At frequent intervals between 135 million and five million years ago, the sea covered what is now the coastal plain of New Jersey, depositing days, silts, sands, and gravels. The sandy soil covering the plain today is acidic and low in...

Hydro dynamics: forget oil. Sharing freshwater equitably poses political conundrums as explosive and far-reaching as global climate change.(Water from Heaven: The Story of Water from the Big Bang to the Rise of Civilization, and Beyond)(Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Water from Heaven: The Story of Water from the Big Bang to the Rise of Civilization, and Beyond by Robert Columbia University Press, 2003; $27.95 Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst by Diana Raines Ward Riverhead...

www-dot-[H.sub.2]O. (nature.net).(web site about water)
May 1, 2003... Freshwater doesn't always flow freely (and free of charge) from a tap, and it's probably worth knowing, in these days of uncertainty, just where it comes from and how precious it is. The Web site "Water Science for Schools"...

Hawks Rest: a Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... by Gary Ferguson National Geographic Adventure Press, 2003; $15.00 Measured by its distance from roads, the Bridger Wilderness, just southeast of Yellowstone National Park, is one of the most remote spots in the lower forty-eight states. It...

Voyages of Delusion: the Quest for the Northwest Passage.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... by Glyn Williams Yale University Press, 2003; $29.95 In this age of technical marvels, when satellite images of the globe are only a mouse click away (see, for instance, terraserver.microsoft.com), it comes as a shock to see how sketchy are...

Sharper focus: resolving the details of the cosmic microwave background has brought new precision to our picture of the cosmos. (Out There).
May 1, 2003... For the first third of a million years or so after the big bang, matter and energy in the universe moved in lockstep. Wherever matter was relatively dense, so was energy. Then, as space expanded enough to accommodate the independent motions of...

The sky in May.(Astronomical observatories)
May 1, 2003... Two "three-star" events draw the eye to the sky this month: a transit of Mercury and a total eclipse of the Moon. At sunrise on the 7th, properly equipped viewers in parts of the eastern United States and Canada can catch the final minutes...

Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life reopens. (At The Museum).
May 1, 2003... One of New York City's grandiest spaces, the Museum's beloved Hall of Ocean Life, reopens this May after a major renovation, its first in over 30 years. Current scientific research and cutting-edge exhibition technology have been combined with...

Museum events.(exhibits about Vietnam)
May 1, 2003... EXHIBITIONS Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind & Spirit Through January 4, 2004 Gallery 77, first floor This comprehensive exhibition presents Vietnamese culture in the early 21st century. The visitor is invited to "walk in Vietnamese...

Of mice and Masai. (Endpaper).
May 1, 2003... After several pairs of house mice determined that my Manhattan flat was a suitable place to raise their families, they gleefully moved in. Rather than scurry furtively along baseboards or hide out until the dead of night, they chased one...