SAMPLINGS
Thomas Lendl, Univ. of Vienna |
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Greens Eat Their Greens—For carnivores, these plants sure eat a lot of algae.
Raw Deal—Even the great apes like their meals cooked.
Junk Food Diet—For many marine predators low-quality food is just as bad as a low quantity of food.
Jurassic Undertakers—Bone-boring beetle larvae attacked dinosaur skeletons to reach the marrow.
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Not So Slothful—New field study shows that wild sloths catch fewer Zs than captive sloths.
Gut Reactors—Bacteria can adapt to anticipate the future.
Bee Brains—Language dialects and counting skills join honeybees’ list of cognitive tricks.
Iced Punch—Antarctic ice streams shake the Earth.
The Warming Earth
Arm Wrestling—Acidifying seawater makes brittlestar arms regenerate with less muscle mass than normal pH levels.
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INTO THE FIELD
The 2008 Young Naturalist Awards winners with their sponsors and advisors
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The Young Naturalist Awards Competition
promotes student participation in scientific research.
For 11 years now, students in grades 7 through 12 in the United States and Canada have taken up the challenge put to them by the American Museum of Natural History: turn your curiosity about biology, Earth science, or astronomy into a carefully researched science project and write about the results. This year, the judges—a team of scientists, educators, and science writers and editors—chose 13 winners from 600 entries. Thumbnail sketches of the 2008 winners’ projects and brief excerpts from their essays are reported here.
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, as well as a selection of past Partner articles.
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BOOKSHELF
By Laurence A. Marschall
When the Huygens probe barreled in to land on Saturn’s largest moon on January 14, 2005, there was no one at the controls—nor any means to respond remotely to last-minute glitches, as radio communications would have taken more than an hour between Earth and Saturn. Ralph Lorenz, a mission scientist who waited nervously in the command center that day, has teamed with veteran science journalist Jacqueline Mitton to convey both the human and scientific drama of robotic space exploration. Their book, Titan Unveiled: Saturn’s Mysterious Moon Explored, also reveals a world where temperatures hover at –289° F, ice plays the role of rock, methane drizzles from the clouds, and liquid hydrocarbons carve winding channels. Laurence A. Marschall’s other reviews look at philosopher David Rothenberg’s investigation of the “songs” of whales and dolphins and the persistence of the notion that the Earth is flat.
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