Natural History articles from November 2006

Natural History archives from November 2006

Turning the tables.(birds )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Scavengers vie for elbow room around a carcass in Staffan Widstrand's photograph of what seems an irresistibly sweet role-reversal as the holidays approach: a meal in which the birds pick the meat from a mammal. Here several birds feast...

Changing times.(Powhatan Confederacy)(flowering plants )
November 1, 2006... The story of Captain John Smith's capture by the Powhatan Indians in December 1607 and his subsequent rescue by the Powhatan chief's daughter Pocahontas is the iconic event in Year One of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in what...

Crikey!(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... I thought of Steve Irwin, the legendary Australian "Crocodile Hunter" who was killed tragically this past September, when I saw the photograph of a crocodile snapping at a wildebeest ["Wildebeests of the Serengeti," by Richard D. Estes,"...

Do biologists count?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... It seems that the success of a group of organisms is customarily measured by number of species--rather than individuals. Thus Laurie J. Vitt and Eric R. Pianka ["The Scaly Ones," 7/06-8/06] say: "In terms of extant species, scleroglossans...

Mate swap.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... The story by Robert B. Payne and Michael D. Sorenson ["Song Lines," 9/06] prompts me to write for clarification. Even before Konrad Lorenz's studies, bird breeders and falconers were aware of the role of imprinting in mate selection. In the...

Sexy necks.(saurischians)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Museums around the world display fossil sauropod dinosaurs--Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and others--with heads held proudly aloft on seemingly endless necks. It's easy to imagine the gigantic creatures reaching up to munch vegetation in the...

Bacteria strike gold.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... More than a decade ago, geochemists studying how gold grains form encountered a mystery. On the surfaces of gold grains and nuggets collected at several sites in Australia and the Americas, they detected microscopic, gold-encrusted structures...

Ocean commotion.(noise pollution )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... A rise in global shipping is turning up the volume in the ocean. In the 1960s the U.S. Navy recorded ambient noise at several sites in the waters off the west coast of North America. Recently Mark A. McDonald, an acoustician at WhaleAcoustics...

Mercury rising.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Fossil-fuel burning and certain industrial processes release toxic mercury into the atmosphere. In the Northern hemisphere, much of the contaminant travels northward with the winds, precipitates, and is stored in the soils of high-latitude...

Spring back.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... On Memorial Day, 1868, an old photograph (right) shows, the deciduous trees in Lowell Cemetery in Massachusetts had yet to leaf out. On Memorial Day, 2005 (far right), they stood in full verdure. Leafing or flowering dates each year depend on...

Breakdown in the desert.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Here's a new way global warming may feed on itself. In most terrestrial ecosystems, microorganisms decompose the plant litter. In dry areas, however, sunlight is in charge, according to Amy T. Austin and Lucia Vivanco, ecologists at the...

Rain stalls.(summer season)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Summers are getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere, thanks to global warming, and warmer springs aren't the only sign. According to Paul A. Dirmeyer, a climatologist at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies in Calverton, Maryland, and...

Pipefish baby boom.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Juvenile snake pipefish are suddenly on the rise in the northeastern Atlantic, and warming sea temperatures are the likely cause. Richard R. Kirby, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth in England, and two colleagues studied samples...

True grit.(plants )
November 1, 2006... Gnashing your teeth against loose gravel in your salad is not considered the finest culinary experience--that's why most cooks wash the lettuce. But with many other plants, grasses in particular, washing isn't much help. The plants incorporate...

Neanderthals get smarter.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... The last of the Neanderthals disappeared from Europe around the same time the first modern humans arrived there, some 350 centuries ago. Just how similar the two groups were intellectually, and whether they overlapped or interacted has long...

City serenity.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Traffic noise, bright lights, crowds of rushing people: urban life can sure be stressful. How do avian city dwellers keep all the disturbances from ruffling their feathers? According to Jesko Partecke and two other ornithologists from the...

Delusions of space enthusiasts: sometimes innovation gets interrupted.
November 1, 2006... Human ingenuity seldom fails to improve on the fruits of human invention. Whatever may have dazzled everyone on its debut is almost guaranteed to be superseded and, someday, to look quaint. In 2000 B.C. a pair of ice skates made of polished...

Times of our lives: gravity, along with dark energy, plays a key role in the timing of our cosmic appearance and sets strict limits on the span of life anywhere in the universe.
November 1, 2006... Behind Me--dips Eternity--Before Me--Immortality--Myself--the Term between--Emily Dickinson Time passes. We are all swept up in its flow. Human affairs are measured in seconds, days, and years--the times of our lives. But that perception...

The ritual world of Pocahontas: as Jamestown celebrates its 400th anniversary, the dramatic rescue of John Smith turns out to have been part of an elaborate piece of statecraft, misunderstood by the English colonists.(Cover story)
November 1, 2006... In May 1607, during the reign of King James I of England, three small English ships sailed up what would soon be known as Virginia's James River and reached a small peninsula. A few more than a hundred passengers disembarked and established the...

Sex among the flowers: a bouquet of botanical breakthroughs is shedding light on the exuberant evolution of the earliest flowering plants and their mysterious sexual history.
November 1, 2006... In an oft-quoted letter written in 1879, Charles Darwin confessed, with his usual candor, that the "rapid development as far as we can judge of [flowering plants] within recent geological times is an abominable mystery." In fact, through much...

Matters of size: from bacteria to blue whales, organisms live in worlds defined by their size. The implications for movement, metabolism, and even life span are surprisingly diverse.
November 1, 2006... When I was a student and first saw, through a microscope, one-cell protozoa moving across my field of vision, I marveled at how fast they traveled. Later I realized that they were in fact moving very slowly and that the magnification of the...

Generation: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life, and Growth.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Generation: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life, and Growth by Matthew Cobb, Bloomsbury Publishing; $24.95 Ovid and Virgil, two of ancient Rome s greatest poets, both gave the same cockamamy recipe for...

Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man by Dale Peterson Houghton Mifflin Company; $35.00 Books about celebrities are a peculiar subspecies of biography, presenting a distinct literary challenge even to the most expert writers. The...

The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug. by Thomas Hager Harmony Books; $24.95 Harry, the sad protagonist of Hemingway's 1936 short story The...

Earthly treasure.(art museums )
November 1, 2006... Panning for gold used to be one of my long-standing desires. My own personal gold "rush" came this past year when I chaperoned my son's school trip to Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. There, in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered a few...

The sky in November.
November 1, 2006... Two unusual and exciting events reward starry-eyed sky watchers this month: a glimmering shower of falling stars and the stately passage of Mercury across the face of the Sun. Mercury reaches inferior conjunction, passing between Earth and...

Name games: getting the family surname on that special object in the sky is a toss of the dice--unless your name is Minkowski.(International Astronomical Union)
November 1, 2006... Across Planet Earth this past summer, headlines repeated the verdict of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the major professional organization for astronomers worldwide. Pluto was officially demoted to the status of "dwarf planet,"...

The glory of gold: exhibition opens November 18.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
November 1, 2006... It is the stuff of legend from the lure of El Dorado to the bad bargains of King Midas and Rumpelstiltskin. Its durability is celebrated in wedding bands. It is a measure of wealth and, from Oscars to Olympic medals, it is an incomparable...

Young Naturalist Awards: a research-based essay contest for students in grades 7-12 to promote participation and communication in science.(American Museum of Natural History )
November 1, 2006... Following in the tradition of scientific expeditions, the American Museum of Natural History's Young Naturalist Awards program, now in its ninth year, encourages students in grades 7 through 12 to hypothesize about the natural world while...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.
November 1, 2006... EXHIBITIONS Gold Opens November 18, 2006 See page 76. Lizards & Snakes: Alive! Through January 7, 2007 Live lizards and snakes are the center of attention in this engaging exhibition that explores these creatures' remarkable adaptations....

People at the AMNH.(American Museum of Natural History's Eric Hamilton)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Eric Hamilton Senior Manager, Program Administration National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology Eric Hamilton, who has both bachelor's and master's degrees in illustration, recognizes not only the scientific value...

It's about time.(terms )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... TIME TIME AND A HALF TIM OUT TIME ON HIS HANDS WASTED TIME NEW YORK TIMES TWO-TIMING MODERN TIMES TIME ON HIS SIDE THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES A STITCH IN TIME SAVE NINE SAME BAT TIME ...

Last stands: Pristine patches of a northeastern forest are threatened by insects and disease.
November 1, 2006... Alarge forested zone extends from central Minnesota eastward through Maine, reaching northward into bordering areas of Canada and, at its southernmost extent, into Pennsylvania. The zone is generally referred to as the hen> lock-white...