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23 Articles

I got a chuckle out of the article on eavesdropping animals. Our property abuts a large open space which has a number of prairie dog burrows. As most know, they “bark,” and there is a very distinct emergency/warning bark they make when danger — often coyotes — approaches. Our black lab is smart enough to distinguish between a regular bark and a warning bark: When he hears the latter, he jumps up and bolts out the door, barking all the way because he knows there is a coyote out there that the prairie dogs are announcing. ERRATUM The Sep/Oct 2022 article “Invasive Eats,” says, “Not all non-native species are invasive. In fact, corn and wheat, two of the highest yield crops in the U.S., came from overseas, just like many of these…

THE LATEST NEWS AND NOTES

NATURE’S NOSIEST FROG A shimmering brown body, a spectacular snout and a striking similarity to the tapir would make most animals stand out. But despite all that, the trick to finding the tiny tapir frog isn’t to search it out by sight, but by sound. Following the high-pitched, beeping song of these amphibians to specific spots underneath the peatlands of Peru’s Putumayo Basin, a team of international biologists and their local guides dug up several of the burrowing frogs in November 2019. The resulting analysis of the specimens — which assessed their genetics, anatomy and auditory behavior in a 2022 paper in Evolutionary Systematics — solidified their identity as a new species. According to the team, the presence of these frogs beneath the peat signifies the health of the Putumayo Basin…

THE LATEST NEWS AND NOTES

ARE YOU ASTRONAUT MATERIAL?

ASTRONAUTS HAVE one of the most competitive jobs in the world — 18,300 people applied to be part of NASA’s 2017 class of astronauts, and only 12 made the final cut. But the process of finding astronauts with “the right stuff ” has changed over time, and a lot of us earthlings have the wrong idea about what NASA is looking for. “I think a lot of the public conception is that we choose super-geniuses or super-jocks or super-pilots,” says Mike Barratt, a NASA astronaut and physician. “I would say that the astronaut office right now is full of people who are comfortable to be with. I mean, don’t get me wrong — we’ve got a couple of super-geniuses. But the main [goal] is that we’ve chosen well-rounded, well-behaved, professional people…

ARE YOU ASTRONAUT MATERIAL?

THE SCIENCE OF CLEFT LIP AND PALATE

WHEN I WAS BORN, two tiny gaps — no more than a few millimeters across — split apart my upper lip and the roof of my mouth. My parents had known about this craniofacial anomaly at least several weeks before my birth, thanks to a routine ultrasound. Over the course of the next few decades, I would undergo countless surgeries, from complicated orthodontic procedures to jaw-breaking bone grafts. My experience is hardly unique. One in 700 to 1,000 babies are born with either (or both) a cleft lip and/or cleft palate, which occurs when the lip or mouth doesn’t properly fuse during early pregnancy. “Cleft lip and palate is one of the most common congenital birth defects,” says Janice Lee, clinical director of the Craniofacial Anomalies and Regeneration Section of the…

THE SCIENCE OF CLEFT LIP AND PALATE

Could Usain Bolt Outrun a Dilophosaurus?

IF YOU WERE just going by the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, you might think that the dinosaur Dilophosaurus was pretty spry. In a now-infamous — and scientifically dubious — scene, the Early Jurassic predator dodges behind a tree while playfully evading one of the film’s villains. Moments later, it scurries up a stream of cascading water (offscreen) before popping up to unfurl its neck frill and spit venom in the man’s face. Paleontologists know that Dilophosaurus didn’t have colorful neck frills, nor did they spew black goo to subdue their prey. And while the double-crested creature is depicted as roughly human-sized on screen, it actually weighed a whopping 900 pounds and spanned just under 20 feet in length some 190 million years ago. Still, the filmmakers may have been onto something…

Could Usain Bolt Outrun a Dilophosaurus?

The Sugar Scientist Revolutionizing Health Care

COMPARED TO the pristine flask in a sterile lab environment, cells in the body are messy balls of chemical soup. This means that chemical reactions invented in a lab often fail in the body. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Stanford University chemist Carolyn Bertozzi developed a suite of reactions that work quickly and efficiently, even in a messy cellular environment. She named the field bioorthogonal chemistry, which has since helped scientists make major breakthroughs in biological research, medical imaging and drug delivery. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work. “Orthogonal means ‘not interacting,’ and bioorthogonal means ‘not interacting with biology,’ ” Bertozzi says. “With all of the proteins and nucleic acids and blood components and tissues, and all this stuff, these two molecules ignore them…

The Sugar Scientist Revolutionizing Health Care

BEWARE THESE POISON BOOKS

NOWADAYS, we tend to give arsenic a wide berth — the element isn’t known as the “king of poisons” for nothing. Its toxicity stems from its similarity to the life-sustaining nutrient phosphorus, which allows arsenic to invade important chemical reactions in the body and disrupt them. The element is also happy to mix with others, often forming deadly compounds with no taste or smell. Yet this versatility is what made arsenic so ubiquitous in a variety of Victorian-era products, from home decor and wallpaper to clothing and books. When arsenic trioxide is combined with copper acetate, it produces an eyecatching compound called copper acetoarsenite, or emerald green. “At the time, emerald green was a wildly popular color among consumers,” says Melissa Tedone, a conservator at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library…

BEWARE THESE POISON BOOKS

Not-So-Mellow Yellow

The buzz of my pager alerted me that the Emergency Department needed a gastroenterologist. Even from 20 feet away, I could tell that the patient, James, was deeply jaundiced: His skin and eyes were both an unhealthy shade of yellow. He also looked thin and sickly in a way that suggested he was chronically ill. After I introduced myself, James, a retired aerospace engineer in his 70s, told me his story: For about a month he had been feeling weak and run down, with a poor appetite. He would eat a few bites and, despite feeling hungry, be unable to continue. Such complaints are common in cancer patients of his age, and serve as alarm symptoms to doctors. James also had a gnawing pain in his stomach that worsened when he ate.…

Not-So-Mellow Yellow

The Invisible Biome

To the untrained eye, Brazil’s savanna seems a bland expanse of brown grasslands, woody shrubs and wizened trees abutting the lush Amazon rainforest. The region, called the Cerrado, is tormented by harsh environmental conditions: acidic soils, long periods of low precipitation and frequent wildfires. Yet it is precisely these conditions that have encouraged unique and highly specialized organisms to form. When Mercedes Bustamante first came to the Cerrado three decades ago, she was fascinated by its hidden abundance of life: The region is home to almost a third of the species found in Brazil and around 5 percent of all global species. “The Cerrado is the most diverse savanna in the world,” says Bustamante, now an ecologist at the University of Brasilia. During the hot summer months — when the region turns…

The Invisible Biome

Beyond ECOTOURISM

Across Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, pools of azure water punch through the landscape like Swiss cheese. In many of these sinkholes, called cenotes (pronounced “seh-NOtays”), braided root systems and spiraling foliage descend multiple stories down limestone walls to soak in the oases. Increasingly, however, the flora is sharing these cool waters with throngs of human visitors — swimming, snorkeling or snapping selfies in the otherworldly setting. Geologically speaking, Mexico’s cenotes are entry points to the Yucatán Peninsula’s uniquely shallow and vital aquifer. They’re entry points for tourists, too, as more and more of these natural marvels are developing into eco-park attractions. And travel access across this region is projected to expand significantly as of 2024, due to an ambitious national train project. But the transportation effort, spearheaded by Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López…

Beyond ECOTOURISM

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

For context, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) encompasses an area bigger than the U.K., Switzerland and Holland combined. It’s home to some 600 known varieties of hard and soft corals and many more species of fish and marine creatures — though these figures could decline as coral colonies continue to die off. The GBR itself has been the subject of many dire climate headlines over the past decade, particularly as the abundance of coral dropped by roughly 50 percent over just 30 years, according to a major study of the GBR published in 2020. Two back-to-back mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 did exceptional damage — followed by bleaching events in 2020 and 2022. The four occurrences have been attributed to stress due to changing surface temperatures in the ocean. One…

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

FIREFLY SPECTACLE

Near Elkmont Campground, a select group of visitors ventures down a logging road into the forest as a distant river gurgles in the background. The damp soil feels spongy underfoot. Ferns merge with mountain laurel and their showy white blooms in the dim light — then it begins. One blink, spotted like the first star of the night. Then another, prompting a hushed gasp. At first, the flickers resemble a familiar evening in many an American backyard during firefly season, roughly May through June or July. But this is not just any backyard, nor are these your average fireflies. As more and more join in, a pattern emerges. Two, then 10, and suddenly dozens of fireflies are blinking in rhythm with each other — all males, from the species Photinus carolinus.…

FIREFLY SPECTACLE

CENOTES OF MEXICO’S YUCATÁN PENINSULA

Today, on a larger scale, they remain a vital resource and alluring feature of the limestone block forming the Yucatán Peninsula. “Through geological time, the flow of the water has created these voids that eventually collapse to form the cenotes,” says hydrogeologist Emiliano Monroy-Ríos, who specializes in cenotes. Thousands of these sinkholes remain barely touched, with new ones appearing and existing ones expanding regularly. Many of these cenotes are part of the world’s largest underwater cave system, Sac Actun, often referred to as an underground river and archaeological frontier. As recently as 2015, a previously unknown cenote was discovered underneath the famous Maya temple pyramid at Chichén Itzá. Then there are the day resort or nature park attractions, such as Gran Cenote, or Cenote X’Canche adjacent to the Ek Balam Archaeological…

CENOTES OF MEXICO’S YUCATÁN PENINSULA

MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE

IF YOU LIVE ON THIS PLANET — AND YOU’RE OF A CERTAIN AGE — THERE’S A DECENT CHANCE YOU’VE SEEN THE CLASSIC STAR TREK EPISODE “MIRROR, MIRROR,” IN WHICH CAPTAIN KIRK AND SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE ENTERPRISE FIND THEMSELVES IN WHAT APPEARS TO BE A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. The trouble starts when they attempt to beam up from a planet during an ion storm. Something goes wrong. They appear aboard the Enterprise, but things are askew: Crew members greet the captain with Nazi-style salutes, and First Officer Spock sports a goatee. Observing these small but significant differences, Kirk muses that the crew has materialized in “a parallel universe coexisting with ours on another dimensional plane.” These days, one parallel universe is hardly enough for science fiction. Instead, it seems the entire multiverse is…

MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE

THE MULTIPLE MULTIVERSES

There isn’t just one theory that suggests we live in a multiverse. In fact, physicists have found that several different ideas in particle physics and cosmology appear to point to the existence of universes beyond our own. ETERNAL INFLATION: This multiverse model presents a world where little “pocket universes” are continuously popping into existence. It stems from the idea of cosmological inflation, which posits that the universe went through a massive growth spurt in the first moments of the Big Bang. These pocket universes grew just as ours did, and might now contain stars, planets and galaxies like ours. STRING THEORY: In this theory, our universe is described as though made up of tiny, vibrating strings that are too small to detect. The equations of string theory have billions upon billions of…

THE MULTIPLE MULTIVERSES

THE MULTIVERSE ON SCREEN

As the titular Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch flits between universes with ease. Mild-mannered laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) battles her own demons from various branches of the multiverse. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker takes a spin with alternate versions of the character from prior movies. From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home to Everything Everywhere All at Once, alternate universes are plentiful in movies today. But writers and filmmakers have been exploring the topic for nearly a century. On screen, some of these stories allude to physics; often, the parallel universes are merely imagined, playing out only in a character’s head. But these tales all capitalize on what the multiverse offers — endless chances to imagine what could (or should) have happened if things…

THE MULTIVERSE ON SCREEN

A TASTE FOR WASTE

Like any superhero, the black soldier fly is suitably attired. It has a nearly indestructible ebony exoskeleton, wings that fold to form a shimmering, iridescent cape, and an anvilshaped helmet that sports bulbous eyes and an impressive set of antennae. Despite its formidable name and appearance, however, the 3/4-inch-long fly has a mild, Clark Kent-esque demeanor. It doesn’t bite, isn’t a disease vector and doesn’t chow down on garden veggies. And it won’t buzz about your backyard barbecues, because it’s not even a good flier. But Hermetia illucens does have a superpower. What it does — and does well enough to qualify it as a potential planetsavior — is digest stuff. The implications for global health and food security are huge. “It’ll eat just about anything organic,” says Jeffery Tomberlin, a professor…

A TASTE FOR WASTE

STOMACHING BUGS

While producing mass quantities of animal feed is a worthy goal for H. illucens, the ultimate challenge awaits: feeding humans. The notion goes beyond novelty and commercial viability — it may be an absolute necessity for global food security in the coming decades. In swoops the BSF. Anthropo-entomophagy — humans consuming insects — has been around for millennia and is still practiced in various tropical countries where edible insects are abundant and culturally acceptable as foodstuffs. Mealworms, crickets and ants are popular menu items. Even in highly developed parts of the world, including much of North America and Europe, a cottage industry has sprung up based on edible-insect novelty foods: barbecue-flavored mealworms, cricket flour, fruit-flavored suckers that house whole scorpions. The black soldier fly doesn’t yet have a significant presence in…

STOMACHING BUGS

While paging through the book Space Physiology and Medicine in 1995, Senator John Glenn spotted a chart that captured his imagination. Listed were 52 kinds of physical changes routinely experienced in space by orbiting astronauts, including osteoporosis, cardiovascular difficulties and alterations in the distribution of body fluids. The 73-year-old Glenn, who had spent years on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, realized that he was looking at a list of complaints common to seniors — yet the typical astronaut was in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Given the similarities, Glenn wondered if there were any plans to fly senior citizens into space. He called the authors of the publication along with other space doctors to find out. To his surprise, despite shuttle missions going up every few months, nobody knew of…

A Cure-All’s Comeback

“Whoever studies the history of medicine finds L’Orvietan,” says Lamberto Bernardini. In his laboratory in Orvieto, Italy, a medieval hill town famous for its soaring duomo, that history is all around. Bernardini’s vaulted, frescoed space dates to the 1200s. One of the rooms in his lab is a museumlike space filled with historic books and framed antique letters, advertisements, and certificates. Centuries-old apothecary jars line the wooden shelves, their labels hand-painted in Italian script: angelica, genziana, mirra. Separated by a glass wall, the other room could be a medieval alchemist’s studio were it not for the modern stainless steel vats, which sit amid rows of glass bottles and stacks of cartons and labels. It’s here that Bernardini brews up his 21st-century version of an old and storied recipe. Through a hobby…

A Cure-All’s Comeback

WHEN CHARLATAN WASN’T A BAD WORD

What do you think of when you hear the word charlatan? A quack? A snake-oil salesman? A faker and a thief? In its original usage, charlatan didn’t have any of those negative connotations. Charlatan, or ciarlatano in Italian, is a combination of two words, ciarla and cerretano. Ciarla means “to chatter.” Cerretani were men from the Umbrian town of Cerreto di Spoleto who were licensed to travel from town to town to collect alms. As a side business, they took up selling cures, including L’Orvietan. Their sales pitches, whether soliciting donations or selling their wares, involved lots of ciarla. In the vernacular of the day, these beggar-peddlers from Cerreto became known as ciarlatani. When doctors and pharmacies started selling L’Orvietan and similar cures, they used their credentials to differentiate themselves from the…

New Life From an Old Rock

In 1995, NASA was strapped for cash — and the search for life beyond Earth looked like it could be in trouble. Years of steep cuts had reduced the space agency’s five-year budget plan by just over 30 percent. Interest in exobiology — the study of the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe — had been drying up for decades. After the 1976 Viking lander’s life-seeking experiment on Mars came up empty, NASA cut down on Mars missions. Congress canceled NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program in 1993, after less than a year of operation. And in 1995, the Clinton administration called for more than $5 billion in additional reductions to NASA funding before the new millennium. “Then a miracle happened called ALH84001,” says Wesley Huntress, then NASA’s…

New Life From an Old Rock

Utah’s 106-acre quaking aspen grove known for being one of Earth’s largest living organisms is faltering. Pando’s 40,000-plus trees are actually all genetically identical shoots from the same root system, but mule deer and cattle have been feeding on its new sprouts faster than the clone can regenerate itself. While fencing erected around several portions of the stand in response to the threat is effectively deterring hungry animals, ecologist Paul Rogers raised new concerns in a fall 2022 report in Conservation Science and Practice. The fencing approach has essentially divided the structure into ecologically divergent segments, he says. To preserve Pando, and the ecosystem it supports, long-term conservation and restoration efforts are needed — including dynamic management of the species that are feasting on Pando’s new generations. SCIENCE IN REAL LIFE We…

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