Archives for September, 2009
Posted by Aristotle was wrong—just ask Galileo’s ghost. The 17th-century Italian was on hand today to witness the official opening of the National Air and Space Museum’s Public Observatory, a new 22-foot (6.7-meter) dome housing a more than 40-year-old telescope. “Galileo” and David DeVorkin stargaze in front of the observatory’s dome. —Photograph by Eric Long/NASM, National Air…
Posted by A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific hurled a massive tsunami at the shores of Samoa and American Samoa yesterday, flattening villages and sweeping cars and people out to sea, leaving at least 99 dead and dozens missing, the Associated Press reported. Google Maps The earthquake, which the Japanese Meteorological Agency measured as a magnitude…
At 5:55 p.m. ET today, the MESSENGER spacecraft will make its closest pass in its third and final flyby of the innermost planet. Mercury, as seen from MESSENGER on September 28, 2009 —Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington When images from the flyby start pouring in around midnight, scientists hope…
Does interaction between humans and animals provide significant health benefits? Many pet owners say that that their animals provide company, happiness, and other emotional fulfillment. NGS photo by Howell Walker “Being around dogs can have a calming effect,” pet writer Maryann Mott reported for National Geographic News a few years ago. “Studies have shown that…
Dragonflies and damselflies are ancient insects that have been around since the age of the dinosaurs. But now the aerial predators may be in trouble as climate change and human development are drying up the freshwater habitat they need to survive. One in five Mediterranean dragonflies and damselflies is threatened with extinction because of Increasing scarcity of…
By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media Scientists at the University of Utah have developed an adhesive with many possible medical uses, including repairing bone fractures, based on a glue produced by the sandcastle worm. The announcement was made at the August meeting of the American Chemical Society. The worm creates a complex water-based…
Happy Birthday Zinjanthropus!
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 28, 2009 An illustration of Zinjanthropus by Peter V. Bianchi It was 50 years ago in Olduvai Gorge that Louis and Mary Leakey found fragments of teeth and a skull that were part of a male hominid they called Zinjanthropus, or Nutcracker Man, because of his huge teeth. This led to field research programs in Ethiopia and…
Let the clean economy begin! With this rallying cry, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Climate Savers program has been joined by National Geographic and a number of large corporations committed to making substantial reductions in their emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas that is accelerating the warming of the Earth’s climate. National Geographic will work…
Better REDD than dead when it comes to climate change
Posted by Stuart Pimm on September 28, 2009 Swapping field clothes for a suit and tie, conservation biologist Stuart Pimm attended a United Nations event last week on forests and climate change. He was among world leaders and distinguished thinkers and activists invited to publicly express their commitment and support for the role of forests as an option to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide into…
Know Your Fungi
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 25, 2009 An example of biodegradable packaging from Ecovative. The 2009 Fellows from Pop!Techled by National Geographic Fellow Andrew Zollihave been announced, and this year the group includes the amazing Eben Bayer of Ecovative Design. Eben and fellow RPI graduate Gavin McIntyre were fascinated by mushrooms growing on wood chips and observed how the fungi strongly bonded…
Hope for the survival of two of the world’s most endangered primates has been renewed after China and Vietnam created sanctuaries for them last month. One reserve, in Khau Ca forest, Ha Giang Province, northern Vietnam, contains 90 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus avunculus), the UK-based conservation charity Fauna & Flora International said in a news statement…
Your friendly neighborhood geologist will tell you that the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, give or take 45 million. Since modern humans have been around for only about 60,000 years of that time, it’s hard for us to even guess at how exactly the planet was born. Luckily we have a variety…
Female mosquitofish prefer males that have longer genitals, according to Australian research. “This is a relatively novel result, as selection on genitals is generally thought to occur during or after copulation,” say the authors of the study “Females prefer to associate with males with longer intromittent organs in mosquitofish,” published this month in the science…
A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from naturally golden-colored silk thread produced by more than one million spiders in Madagascar, went on display today in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “This magnificent contemporary textile, measuring 11 feet by 4 feet, took four years to make using a painstaking technique developed…
Mountain gorillas survive in two pockets of African rain forest and are shared by three countries that have experienced much turmoil: Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That the gorillas have been able to find relative sanctuary above the fray of the human settlements around them is thanks in no small part to the vision and dedication of several people and…
By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media New research by the University of Washington gives new meaning to the term, “party animal.” Almost a week after announcing successful gene therapy treatments for color blindness in monkeys, University of Washington researchers are now announcing that rats given alcohol during adolescence are more prone to risk-taking…
By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media A New York Times story yesterday brought this video to our attention, which we found both fascinating and disturbing. Wildlife filmmaker Vanessa Serrao returned from Belize with a special souvenir after she was bit on the head by a mosquito carrying a botfly egg, according to reporting…
By James G. Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media Imagine having to wait for a whale to drop from the sky before you could eat. At least nine new species of bristleworms that have adapted to feed from the unpredictable food source of dead whales have been discovered by Swedish scientists, according to a release from…
Cloudy With a Chance of Monkeys
Posted by elandis on September 21, 2009 Panoramic view of Goldsmith working in the cloud forest canopy From afar, the primeval mountainsides of the Monteverde Cloud Forest of Costa Rica appear both majestic and mysterious. Venture within and you will discover that this mist-enshrouded tropical evergreen forest is teeming with life. This astounding biodiversity owes much of its existence to the extra…
Satellite images of farms in northwest Minnesota show neat patches of different crops among recently harvested fields. It’s an enchanting view of nurtured farmland from hundreds of miles above the countryside. But when looking at the same view through a different filter, the farmers of the land may see another story. Satellite images can help…
Yale University anthropologist Gary P. Aronsen was studying primate behavior in Uganda last year when an infrared camera trap he set captured nighttime images of a cat so rare few researchers working in African forests have seen it. Photo courtesy G. P. Aronsen, Department of Anthropology, Yale University The three images made by the camera…
Pictures from some of the world’s leading nature and wildlife photographers were exhibited at London’s Saatchi Gallery today. For those of us who couldn’t make it to the British capital, Conservation International shared some of the images from the exhibit, shown here. The places they represent are indeed remarkable. On the Look Out: The peacock mantis…
Cow Tongues May Be Damaging the Past
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on September 18, 2009 It’s 4 a.m. in the Nicaraguan frontier town of El Ayote. The kitchen chimney smoke and exhaust fumes combine with the dangling lights to give the main street an eerie vibe. Rumbling buses packed to the roof start their journey southwest to cross the mountains that mark the Nicaraguan watershed. Archaeologist and National Geographic Society/Waitt…
Olive groves with low production close to the Natural Park of the Sierra de Cardeña y Montoro, in Córdoba, are the most appropriate sites for restoring habitat suitable for reintroduction of the critically endangered Iberian lynx, Spanish scientists have determined. This is also the the only place, along with Doñana National Park, where this species…
A silverback gorilla associated closely with researcher Dian Fossey, that went on to be the star of last year’s television documentary “Titus: The Gorilla King,” died of old age in the Volcanoes National Park this week, the Rwanda Development Board-Tourism and Conservation announced on its Web site. Photo courtesy Rwanda Tourism “Not only was he one of…
