Natural History articles from September 2007

Natural History archives from September 2007

Over easy.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(lioness snatches ostrich egg; Masai Mara National Reserve)(Brief article)(Photograph)
September 1, 2007... Not many mothers would interrupt an afternoon nap and leave behind their six-week-old youngsters to seek out a thundering herd of wildebeests. But for this lioness in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve late one September afternoon, such a...

New light on dark matter.(UP FRONT)
September 1, 2007... You would think the first confirmed existence of vast amounts of dark matter in the universe would have been a big embarrassment for astrophysicists, the people who brought you the Milky Way, "island universes" of distant galaxies, and galactic...

Evolution on trial.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... I congratulate Richard Milner for his review article ["Darwin in Court," 6/07]. As it happens, Randy Olson's film Flock of Dodos, which Mr. Milner discusses, was screened at "Evolution 2006," a meeting of evolutionary biologists held last year...

Pregnant response.(LETTERS)(fatigue and inflammation during pregnancy)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... In his article "Pregnancy Reconceived" [5/07], Gil Mor did not mention the extreme fatigue most women feel during the first trimester of pregnancy. That would seem to add further support for the inflammation hypothesis; the fatigue of early...

Runs with elephants.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... Adam Summers reports that the top speed of a running elephant is fifteen miles an hour, "no faster than a reasonably fit person could run in terror" ["A Spring in Its Step," 5/07]. I have a number of running friends who are considered...

Poor bird, rich bird.(SAMPLINGS)(biodiversity and distribution of wealth)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Big gaps between rich and poor put species at risk, according to a new report that provides a subtle view of how wealth correlates with biodiversity. Gregory Mikkelson of McGill University and his colleagues compared local biodiversity...

Flip-flop flap.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Given our human fascination with flight, it's no wonder that birds and their aerodynamics have been studied in great detail. Not so, however, the bat. And the mechanics of bat flight is at least as different from the mechanics of bird flight as...

Chile con Pollo.(SAMPLINGS)(chickens in Peru; species introduction)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... When the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in what is now Peru in 1532, he found chickens already integrated into the local culture. But his observations of their presence sparked an academic controversy centuries later about how...

A lonely future.(SAMPLINGS)(cosmology; expanding universe)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The universe is expanding, and many cosmologists think the expansion will continue forever. Paradoxically, though, a new analysis shows, billions of years from now--if anyone is around to care--the evidence for both the expansion and the big...

Deaths, foretold.(SAMPLINGS)(ritual human sacrifice)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Did Stone Age Europeans practice ritual human sacrifice? The large number of graves holding multiple dead, including some with abnormal skeletons or lavish funerary ornaments, have led Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa to think they...

Radiation: it's what's for dinner.(SAMPLINGS)(black fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Fungi are well-known for breaking down organic material, not creating it from scratch, as plants do. But a fungus that might break that mold has been discovered thriving at one of the most toxic sites in the world: the defunct Chernobyl nuclear...

Heat waves.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Oceanic planetary waves, just an inch or two high at the surface but thousands of feet deep and hundreds of miles apart, sweep slowly but steadily across Earth's oceans: a surfer who caught one in Acapulco would take four years to wash up on a...

No place to hide.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(La Selva Biological Station; local species population decline)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... No ecosystem, it seems, is immune to the effects of climate change. Take La Selva Biological Station, an old-growth forest reserve in the lowlands of Costa Rica. Night temperatures there have risen, an effect of global warming, and the annual...

Green for the green.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)
September 1, 2007... The European Union's "cap-and-trade" system for regulating carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]) emissions is being hailed as an important first step in addressing global warming. Beginning in 2005, the twenty-five (now twenty-seven) EU countries have...

Dark matter: most of the matter in the universe is neither bound up in stars or planets nor dispersed in clouds of "ordinary" particles. Experimenters are racing to answer the question, what is it made of?
September 1, 2007... Every second of every day, millions of dark-matter particles may course through every cubic inch of your body. The particles may be WIMPs, or they may be axions. They may be higgsinos, majorons, neutralinos, photinos, pyrgons, quark nuggets,...

Altruism among amoebas: a person who dies so that others can escape starvation is a hero. But how can evolution explain the same behavior in a nonhuman organism whose genes are "selfish"?
September 1, 2007... Can you think of a species, other than our own, in which some individuals sacrifice their own interests for the sake of others? If you're like many other nature lovers, you probably thought of the social insects, such as ants and wasps. In...

Rendezvous at Red Rock: nestled in a dry landscape, an Oklahoma canyon harbors a lush woods.(THIS LAND)
September 1, 2007... Travelers speeding along Interstate 40 between Oklahoma City and Amarillo, Texas, may not realize that the mostly flat and sparsely vegetated terrain they see on both sides of the highway is pierced here and there by colorful canyons. One of...

Mesic woods.(Habitats)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Some of the largest trees are Kentucky coffee trees. Also common are black locust, bur oak, eastern redbud, netleaf hackberry, red mulberry, slippery elm, southern sugar maple, western soapberry, and woolly buckthorn. Locally the southern sugar...

Streamside.(Habitats)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Common trees are American elm, box elder, eastern cottonwood, green ash, and Shumard oak. Small trees and shrubs include common buttonbush and elderberry. A pretty spring flower is Missouri violet, with blue flowers and arrowhead-shaped leaves....

Clifftop.(Habitats)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Blackjack oak, eastern red cedar, and post oak are the most common trees, but chinquapin oak and smooth sumac are also present. Coralberry and other shrubs occur here and there, but Adam's needle and prickly pear are more typical. Grasses such...

Literary Gould.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould edited by Steven Rose; Foreword by Oliver Sacks Norton; $35.00 Stephen Jay Gould's 300th and last essay appeared in the pages of this magazine in January 2001, and there has been,...

That gnawing feeling.(nature.net)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Recently I've been replacing my deck, which was devoured by colonies of drywood termites (as distinct from subterranean and other kinds). With termite damage and control costing U.S. homeowners and businesses billions of dollars a year, I know...

Surprise package: a supermassive black hole may lie at the heart of an intergalactic collision.(OUT THERE)
September 1, 2007... Galaxies come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. Spiral and elliptical galaxies are the two best known. The spiral is essentially a disc, and its arms are regions of the disk brightened by hot young stars; the elliptical is shaped...

Young Naturalist Awards 2007: a research-based essay contest to promote participation and communication in science.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
September 1, 2007... Every year scientists from the American Museum of Natural History travel far and wide on expeditions to learn more about the natural world. The Young Naturalist Awards, now in its tenth year, invites students in grades 7-12 throughout the...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
September 1, 2007... EXHIBITIONS Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids Through January 6, 2008 Mythic Creatures traces the origins of legendary beings of land, sea, and air. Cultural artifacts bring to light surprising similarities--and...

The sky in September.
September 1, 2007... Mercury remains a poor evening apparition in the Northern Hemisphere all this month, despite the increase in its angular separation east of the Sun throughout most of September. That's because the planet sets unfavorably early, only about...