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April 30, 2008
. . . is an albatross, breathing fishily in my face and weighing on my conscience: the links I haven’t given you yet to two tales that connect to April’s cover story about albatrosses, “Around Their Necks.” Both concern North Pacific islands where albatrosses nested, and still nest, and between them they tell the story of our evolving relationship to the other life forms with which we share this planet. more
April 30, 2008
Glass teardrops with long tails, too tough to shatter with a hammer yet exploding into powder if the tip of the tail is snapped off—these were a curiosity that puzzled and enthralled London’s new Royal Society in the 1660s, and still intrigues materials scientists today. more
April 24, 2008
For nearly fifteen years, Brian Werner has argued that privately owned captive tigers, as well as the fairly small managed population in accredited zoos, could serve as a valuable genetic reservoir for helping to save the species and its distinct subspecies. Now, a new study headlined by researchers from the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland—including some who also perform genetic testing for AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) ex-situ conservation and breeding programs—suggests that the large captive-tiger population does indeed hide genetic treasures. Werner feels vindicated.
April 21, 2008
The birth date of some influential baby boomer? Some momentous Atomic Age treaty?
Nope. But it was a date that utterly transformed our lives. It was the birth date of that on which our whole vast technological culture balances, like a billion angels on the head of a pin: the transistor—“a little electronic switch capable of amplifying electric current.” more
April 15, 2008
From climate change to intelligent design, HIV/AIDS to stem cells, science education to space exploration, science is figuring prominently in our discussions of politics, religion, philosophy, business and the arts. New insights and discoveries in neuroscience, theoretical physics and genetics are revolutionizing our understanding of who [we] are, where we come from and where we’re heading. Launched in January 2006, ScienceBlogs is a portal to this global dialogue, a digital science salon featuring the leading bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines. Today, ScienceBlogs is the largest online community dedicated to science. more
[Updated]
April 7, 2008
Last month, writing about the birth of modern natural history in 18th-century London, I had occasion to think about the ways the study of nature has changed since then.
The evolution from the 18th-century view of nature to ours is most beautifully illustrated by two accounts, separated by more than 200 years, of the beloved English naturalist Gilbert White’s tortoise, Timothy. more
April 5, 2008
If, like me, you’re a devotee of the deity Chocolatl, you will have an inkling of why the sweet-swollen honey ant, the subject of John Conway’s April article “Sweet Dreams,” could have become an important clan ancestor in the mythic “Dreamtime” of Australia’s aboriginal inhabitants, and a subject of sacred art.
more
(Annie Gottlieb) |
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Go to the Tiger Debate
Laysan albatross © Christian Melgar
Prince Rupert of the Rhine |
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