“How do you make a worm?”
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Caenorhabditis elegans • Image by Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo by Sourabh Panari on Unsplash
Earth’s big fix is in the bacteria
It’s planting time. Rototilling. Hoeing. Sticking in the seeds. Onions. Radishes. Lettuce. Beans. No real need to do it. We can buy our veggies at the store for a lot less money than we send to Smith & Hawken for all those upscale garden tools.
John J. Audubon's illustration of the pinnated grouse, of which the heath hen is an extinct subspecies
Noting of species is a human pastime
Most of us have heard of the passenger pigeon, a bird that once darkened the skies of North America in its teeming numbers, and now is no more. The last passenger pigeon, named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept. 1, 1914.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Life-enhancing drugs should be lifesavers
A hundred years from now, historians will look back and see the 20th century as the time when scientists discovered that the human self is a biochemical machine.
Drosophila melanogaster • Photo by Hannah Davis (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Fruit fly joins the quest to unveil secrets of life
Drosophila melanogaster, the “black-bellied dew lover,” better known as the fruit fly, has joined the list of creatures whose DNA has been sequenced. It is the second multicelled animal to achieve this distinction, with the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans.
Photo by Juan Aguirre Saravia on Unsplash
Bahamas on front line for sea-level changes
One can be forgiven for being nervous about global warming if virtually your entire country lies only a few feet above sea level. As ocean water warms, it expands, and sea level rises. Also, a warming climate melts continental ice, further increasing the volume of the sea.
A late-summer Monarch prior to migration • Photo © Tom Raymo
Accepting the holy as something natural
Last week I described a visit to the Chincua monarch butterfly sanctuary in the mountains of central Mexico. Each winter, tens of millions of monarchs from all over eastern North America congregate at Chincua, and a few other patches of nearby forest, to hibernate, feed, and breed.
Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash
Flutter of monarchs inspires gushy prose
Getting here wasn’t easy: A six-hour drive from Mexico City over sometimes terrifying mountain roads, with an overnight stay along the way in Zitácuaro; a mile-long climb by foot along a rugged trail deep in volcanic dust to 10,500 feet, then a drop into a canyon forested with fir trees.
Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash
Science fits nicely between art, reality
“There’s nothing creative about science,” someone recently said to me. “The world’s out there and science tries to know it. Scientists create nothing; they merely describe.”
Photo by Firanka Mipinska on Unsplash
The missing amphibians: Mystery or telltale sign?
There was wind in the willows as the Water Rat and the Mole rowed their boat along the river. They were on their way to visit Toad of Toad Hall.