Image of sage grouse at lek

Greater sage grouse lekking • Jeannie Stafford/USFS (Public Domain)

Image of shrimp

Denizens of an EcoSphere • Photo by David Goehring (CC BY 2.0)

A world under glass

I have on my desk a clear glass sphere about three inch­es in diam­e­ter, on a plas­tic stand. The sphere is two-thirds filled with water. The remain­ing vol­ume con­tains air. A snip of green algae, sea grass, floats in the water, and four tiny pink shrimp swim lazi­ly about. The sphere is com­plete­ly sealed. With the excep­tion of heat and light, there are no trans­ac­tions with the out­side environment.

Image of Garden in the Woods

The Garden in the Woods, Framingham MA • Photo by Daderot (Public Domain)

Image of magazine covers

Scientific American through the years

Image of Jacques-Louis David painting

Detail from “The Intervention of the Sabine Women” by Jacques-Louis David, 1799

Image of astrology charts

Definitely not science (Public Domain)

Illustration of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883

Chromolithograph of the “Great East River Suspension Bridge,” 1883 • Currier and Ives (Public Domain)

Image of Canada mayflower

Canada mayflower • Photo by Woods People (CC BY 2.0)

Image of deer herd

Photo by Anthony from Pexels

Birds and bees and Bambi

The week before last, the Humane Soci­ety of the Unit­ed States spon­sored a sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence in East Wind­sor, New Jer­sey, that con­sid­ered among oth­er things the use of con­tra­cep­tion in wildlife man­age­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing sci­en­tists hope to find prac­ti­cal ways to chem­i­cal­ly reg­u­late the fer­til­i­ty of wild mammals.

Image of Earth from space

Earth from 100,000 miles • NASA/Apollo 10 (Public Domain)