Natural History articles from November 2003

Natural History archives from November 2003

A well-dressed bird.(The Natural Moment)
November 1, 2003... Cutting the cake, carving the Thanksgiving turkey, or getting first crack at tearing into wildebeest flesh, as the case may be, is an honor usually bestowed upon the senior or perhaps showiest member of the dining party. On the savannas of...

Flushed.(Up Front)(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... Just when you thought you'd become so jaded about assaults on the natural environment that you'd heard it all, along comes a story that manages to stir shock, depression, and outrage anew. Thousands of miles out to sea, in a remote region of...

The light fantastic.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... I thought your 9/03 issue was sensational, but one thing puzzled me in Neil deGrasse Tyson's column "In the Beginning," about the early universe.' He writes, "By now, one second has passed since the beginning of time. The universe has grown to...

Carl Sagan's legacy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... It was a great comfort to me in 1997, the year following the death of my husband and professional collaborator, Carl Sagan, to read the dedication in Stephen Jay Gould's book Questioning the Millennium: In loving memory of my friend Carl...

Whence the moon.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... I would like to take issue with three elements in G. Jeffrey Taylor's excellent summary of the legacy of forty years of lunar exploration ["Moonstruck," 9/03]. First, the "giant impact" hypothesis for the origin of the Moon is seriously...

Ask Pooh.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Robert M. Sapolsky's article "The Pleasure (and Pain) of 'Maybe' [9/03] gives fresh meaning to Winnie-the-Pooh's response to Christopher Robin's question "What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?" We read that Pooh "had to stop and...

Night lights.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Until my first week as a Marine grunt in Vietnam, I had never seen fireflies. Reading Sara Lewis and James E. Lloyd's "Summer Flings" [7/03-8/03] brought back strong memories. It's hard to describe the tension and fear you experience on an...

Naked: it's so 68,000 B.C.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... One of the great questions for the fashion industry must be, When was clothing invented? Climate being what it is, body coverings could not have been long in coming after the loss of hominid fur, but the familiar paleontological clues aren't...

Spinmeisters.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... You wouldn't think spider webs could be part of the fossil record--and if it weren't for the preservative power of amber, they wouldn't be. Scrutinizing a fragment of Lebanese amber 130 million years old, Samuel Zschokke, a biologist at the...

Poisoning the waters.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Algae are a diverse crew. They range from single cells less than one ten-thousandth of an inch across to gigantic organisms hundreds of feet long. They're also the mainstay of the marine food chain, but that doesn't mean they passively accept...

Elemental question.(Samplings)(periodic table of the elements)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... When attention wanders in science class, students' eyes often scan a familiar wall adornment: the periodic table of the elements. But if L. Bruce Railsback has his way, that enormous but relatively simple chart will be replaced--at least in...

Really sinister.(Samplings)(behavioral laterization in snakes)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... What did Julius Caesar, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, and Babe Ruth have in common? If you said all of them were lefties, smile and take a bow. Favoring the use of one side of the body isn't unique to people, though: some cats tend to reach...

Dark and darker: there's a lot more gravity in the cosmos than meets the eye.(Universe)
November 1, 2003... Gravity, that most familiar of natures forces, is both the best- and least-understood phenomenon in the cosmos. Not until Sir Isaac Newton turned his attention to the problem in the late seventeenth century did anybody figure out that gravity's...

The Cayman islands.(Distinctive Destinations)
November 1, 2003... South of Cuba, the Caymans consist of a trio of islands: Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. All are renowned for their spectacular coral reefs, sun-kissed beaches, waters teeming with fish flecked with gold, and a grand 500 years of...

Maryland.(Distinctive Destinations)
November 1, 2003... If you're looking for a perfect getaway that has a bit of everything--history, culture, and the great outdoors then Maryland is the answer. Nature lovers might start their visit in the state's Western Region, home of Deep Creek Lake,...

Cruise Wwest.(Distinctive Destinations)
November 1, 2003... Are you interested in history, wildlife, and tropical beauty? Tiny villages where roads will never lead? Great cities, accessible from the sea? Check out Cruise West, the leading small-ship cruise line in North America. Cruise West offers...

West Virginia.(Distinctive Destinations)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... West Virginia is Wild and Wonderful, says the state's slogan. This is no idle boast: 80 percent of the state is forested. No wonder, then, that there are great opportunities for camping, hiking, and more: Paddling through frothing rapids....

Desert dreams: seeking the secret mammals of the salt pans.(Naturalist At Large)
November 1, 2003... On several forays into the Salinas Grandes--one of Argentina's great salt deserts--we had dug up mysterious burrows, but we had never discovered what kind of animal made them. Our team of biologists was looking for a rare mammal, a salt-pan...

Catch and release: sea cucumbers might put a torn Achilles tendon back together again.(Biomechanics)
November 1, 2003... When football season Rolls around, a biomechanist's thoughts inevitably turn to connective tissue--and then, of course, to sea cucumbers. Most fans focus on cutbacks, open-field tackles and chop blocks, but I can't help but ponder the common...

The lizard kings: small monitors roam to the east of an unseen frontier; mammals roam to the west.
November 1, 2003... A small lizard, caught in the open, flushes ahead of a pursuing monitor. The prey, desperately seeking escape, begins to run a winding course. The tactic could throw a predator off, but the monitor doesn't bite. Rather than engage in a tail...

Trashed: across the Pacific Ocean, plastics, plastics, everywhere.
November 1, 2003... It was on our way home, after finishing the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii sail race known as the Transpac, that my crew and I first caught sight of the trash, floating in one of the most remote regions of all the oceans. I had entered my cutter-rigged...

Fight of the bumblebee: insects, like people, are constantly threatened by disease. Bumblebees' simple but effective immune systems shed light on the evolution of immune defenses and the costs of maintaining them.
November 1, 2003... Humming from flower to flower, a bumblebee worker busily collecting nectar and pollen for its colony is, for many, the epitome of nature's peace and tranquillity. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is the foraging bumblebee...

Oasis in the Everglades: a Florida wildlife refuge combines nature and nurture.(This Land)
November 1, 2003... Wetlands once covered much of the southern third of the Florida peninsula. Cypress swamps dominated the western part of the region and mangrove swamps the south coast. In the east lay a vast tract of water and sawgrass known as the Everglades....

Stand and deliver: why did early hominids begin to walk on two feet?
November 1, 2003... Ask any paleoanthropologist what got humankind started on its unique evolutionary trajectory, and the reflex answer will almost certainly be "the adoption of upright bipedalism." And whatever the exact characteristics of the most ancient...

Ancient Wine: the Search for the Origins of Viniculture.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Patrick E. Mcgovern Princeton University Press, 2003; $29.95 So old is the love of wine, and so rich in lore and legend, that its origins remain lost in the tangles of time. In Greco-Roman legend the god Dionysus is identified with...

Mutants: on Genetic Variety and the Human Body.
November 1, 2003... by Armand Marie Leroi Viking Press, 2003; $25.95 Don't let the bearded lady on the dust jacket fool you: this book is not a smarmy gallery of freaks and monsters. Armand Marie Leroi, a developmental biologist at Imperial College, London,...

Built for Speed: a Year in the Life of Pronghorn.
November 1, 2003... by John A. Byers Harvard University Press, 2003; $24.95 Travelers passing through the Great Plains called pronghorn antelope "prairie ghosts," as a testament to their speed and agility; an adult pronghorn can accelerate from zero to almost...

Time will tell.(nature.net)
November 1, 2003... The movie camera is a marvelous tool in the hands of anyone, scientist or amateur, who is curious about time. The camera, after all, can control time--speed it up or slow it down--and so open a new and often surprising window on reality. ...

Experience SonicVision: how do you see your music?(At the museum: American Museum of Natural History)
November 1, 2003... The American Museum of Natural History, in association with internationally renowned performer Moby and MTV2, presents SonicVision--a new digitally animated alternative rock music show. Shown in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater of the Rose...

Museum events.(Calendar)
November 1, 2003... EXHIBITIONS Petra: Lost City of Stone Through July 6, 2004 This exhibition tells the story of a thriving metropolis at the crossroads of the ancient world's major trade routes and of the technological virtuosity that allowed the...

Up the chimney: pipes of hot gas stream from superbubbles bursting out of the disk of the Milky Way.(Out There)
November 1, 2003... The Milky Way has gas--and lots of it. Throughout the flapjack-shaped spiral galaxy we live in, there's at least half a quadrillion Earth-masses' worth of free-floating gas, most of it cold, neutral hydrogen just, a few degrees above absolute...

The sky in November.(Out There)
November 1, 2003... Mercury spends most of November lost in the Sun's glare. But at month's end the planet may be visible through binoculars, low in the southwestern sky after sunset. Brilliant Venus, at magnitude -3.9, shines low in the southwestern sky as...

Captivated.(Endpaper)
November 1, 2003... I'm sitting on a bench in New York City's Central Park, waiting for the zoo to open. I have spent years observing macaque monkeys in the field, but these days I only teach and write about what they do, and I miss them. So whenever I'm in...