SAMPLINGS
Photos: Un’en’en excavation team |
Many Whales Ago—A 3,000-year-old carved walrus tusk bears two scenes of men pursuing whales in multipassenger vessels, with lines connecting the vessels to the whales, evidence the early Arctic communities were indeed whaling.
A Whiff of DNA—Scientists can tell whether bullfrogs are at hand by examining just a tablespoon of pondwater.
Bugs Smell Funny—Insects dispense with many of the in-cell reactions that other animals rely on to smell.
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Poison Control—Some bacteria not only resist antibiotics—they eat the drugs for breakfast.
Clouds and Mirrors—The Milky Way’s central black hole was once radiant with X-rays.
Sea of Stripes—The worlds' oceans are banded with mysterious, slow-moving currents.
Brain Freezes—The mind starts to wander up to half a minute before the body errs.
The Petal Effect—Texture lets rose petals hang on to water droplets.
The Warming Earth
Six-Legged Agents of Change—An explosion of beetles is making British Colombian forests net producers—rather than absorbers—of carbon dioxide.
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SCIENCE CENTER NOTES
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The K-1 Attack—a true flex fuel/plug-in hybrid
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West Philly Hybrid X Team Interviewed by Teens
from the Saint Louis Science Center YES Program
On March 20, 2008, the competition began for the 10-million-dollar Progressive Automotive X PRIZE. The goal of the prize is “to inspire a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change.” Seventy-three teams have already entered the competition. In this group, one team stands out: the West Philly Hybrid X Team: they are the only high school group in the competition. Courtney Brooks and Kevin Griffin, two teenagers from the Youth Exploring Science (YES) program at the Saint Louis Science Center, heard about those teens in Philadelphia and began a dialogue.
Members of any of Natural History’s Museum Partners receive the magazine as a benefit of membership. Our Partners—natural history museums and science centers—regularly contribute notes from the field, research reports, and other features to their editions of the magazine. Click the link above to read about the Saint Louis Science Center's contact with the West Philly Hybrid X Team. View the list of our Museum Partners and links to their Web sites. See also a selection of other Partner articles.
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BOOKSHELF
By Laurence A. Marschall
Strange things have been happening in the graviton laboratory of physicist Yariko Miyakara, and you just know that she, two fellow scientists, a security guard and a German shepherd, will enter the graviton chamber and—boom!—find themselves “translocated” into the age of dinosaurs. In his annual roundup of science-laced fiction for “beach reading,” Laurence A. Marschall rates Cretaceous Dawn as engaging as Jules Verne. Another adventurous tale is Final Theory, about the Unified Field Theory. What if Einstein actually had solved the quest, and what if, many years later, someone learned of Einstein's secret and set about to extract it from the few surviving confidants—by whatever means necessary? Also reviewed are: a three-part story that resolves into a meditation on how humans relate to each other and to the natural world; a mystery set in 1887 Istanbul; and the companion book to the 2007 animated movie Flatland.
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