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Which is cuter? The bunny or the chick?

Hey all! I’ve been a little slack in posting lately, I know. I’ve been spending quality time away from the computer in general and hope to be getting back into the swing of posting more often. So I’m starting things off with posting images for the postcard promotional that the illustration group I am a [...]

Upstate New York is well known for having many cool caves to explore. Literally cool because some of them—known as the “ice caves”—have year-round ice in them. Many years ago (okay, a couple of decades ago – when I was young and fearless), I was invited to go cave exploring in upstate New York with two male friends. It seemed like a good idea and, although we had no special equipment or training for the adventure, just knowing where one of the caves was seemed preparation enough. We got to one entrance and lowered ourselves down by a rope, going about 25 feet to the floor of the cave. As we crawled along the cave bottom, we struggled along ledges (yes, I almost fell off) until we came upon an entrance to another section. It was a steep climb to get onto the ledge of that next section, and I didn’t quite have the arm strength to make it. So the guys went ahead, leaving me behind, alone in the narrow section.

As I checked the walls of the cave for brachiopod fossils, I became aware of a weird “whirring” sound all around me. And I discovered something soft and furry lining the walls. It was bats — thousands of tiny, whirring bats. So, I was not alone after all! It was actually a wonderful experience—being surrounded by all those quietly-vocalizing little creatures—especially since I did not think about rabies and I did not yet know about the respiratory disease that bats can transmit to people. And I certainly didn’t feel so alone! Well, the guys finally came back from their separate journey. They told me about the massive space they had discovered up ahead and I told them about my bats. We headed back out of the cave. Well, lowering oneself down a rope is a lot easier than hauling oneself back up. The guys had to help pull me out of the cave (that “limited arm strength” again), which was embarrassing. But at least I had a pocket full of brachiopods!

So, why talk about all this? Because conditions are changing for these little bats, and not for the better. According to Legacy: Conserving New York State’s Biodiversity (by the American Museum of Natural History and the New York State’s Biodiversity Research Institute), although listed as endangered, as of 2006 the population of little brown Indiana bats appeared “to be stable at around 13,000 in the fewer than 10 hibernacula (overwintering caves and mines) that have been found in New York.” The bats range beyond New York during the summer; but they use only seven hibernacula during the winter. This makes their population vulnerable because it is so concentrated. And now it appears that their numbers are no longer stable. According to a news article (February 2008), recent surveys show that bats in the New York caves are “mysteriously dying off by the thousands”; and scientists are not sure why. The only tell-tale sign of illness appears to be what they call “white nose syndrome” – caused by a fungus. The wildlife experts are not sure if the fungus causes the bats’ illness and death, or is just a symptom of their as-yet-unknown illness. They think the die-off may be caused by any number of other factors—bacteria, a virus, changes in weather, a toxin, or some contaminant brought in by a cave explorer from another region.

So why should anyone besides scientists and cave explorers care about bats dying off? For one thing, bats have a huge impact on the environment because they consume millions of insects that are agricultural pests. This could have terrible economic as well as ecological consequences. And this sudden die-off is similar to the recent massive die-off of another important agricultural friend—honeybees, which pollinate countless crops. So the question becomes even larger: What is happening in our environment that is causing such a sudden losses in wildlife populations? How will this ultimately affect our lives?

For now, the research into possible causes continues at the N. Y. Department of Environmental Conservation and at Cornell University. And I will cherish my good fortune at having had some very private time with an animal that can no longer be taken for granted.

It is an important week for students of history and biology. On February 12, in 1809, two of the most important and forward-thinking men of the 19th century were born–Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. For a variety of reasons, these two men rank as heroes to millions of people. I certainly see them as such.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, the son of poor frontier farmers. Darwin, by contrast, was born in Shropshire, England, the son of a wealthy doctor and his wife. Both men had their hardships, each having lost his mother to illness while still very young. And both had brilliant and inquisitive minds. Lincoln, however, did not have the benefit of wealth to ensure a good education. He was innately ambitious and, according to one biography, he “made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm.”

Whereas Lincoln’s father was not supportive of his son’s studies, Darwin’s father tried to push him in one academic direction, and then another, neither of which succeeded. At first his father thought young Charles could follow in his footsteps, studying medicine, but his son “neglected his medical studies.” His father then enrolled him in a college to become a clergyman, but Charles “preferred riding and shooting to studying.” It was only when he began his studies of natural history that Darwin found his true calling. And, of course, the rest is history (or prehistory, as it were).

But what else connects these two men, beyond their birthdays? They were both liberators.
Lincoln is famous for having freed enslaved African-Americans during the Civil War. I think Lincoln understood that all people—whether of African or European descent—shared a common human lineage and should be treated with the respect that all humans deserve.

Darwin is famous for his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Thus, he was a liberator in the sense that he freed us from thinking that human beings are separate and apart from all other animals. That is, we share a common, biological lineage with all of creation. For example, Darwin recognized that Europeans and Africans share that lineage; and furthermore, that human beings' closest ape relatives (and our fossil ape ancestors) are all found in Africa.

It turns out that, while in medical school, Darwin learned taxidermy—a vital skill for his fieldwork—from a black man who was a former slave. This experience led him to state in his book The Descent of Man that “Negroes and Europeans were closely related despite superficial differences in appearance.” And modern genetic studies confirm that so-called “racial” differences are indeed superficial to negligible; and also that the ape genome is nearly identical to the human one.

So happy birthday to two great men! What a conversation Darwin and Lincoln could have had, if only they had met. And how I would loved to have been a fly on that wall!

When I taught at the Windsor School, a private 7–12 school in Queens, some 20 years ago, each grade covered one science subject. In grade seven it was pre-Earth science, in grade eight it was pre-biology, and in grade nine it was pre-chemistry. This worked just fine at that time. Students were exposed to each of the high-school-level sciences that would be offered to them in grades 10, 11, and 12.

However, things in education have changed since then. Many states, including New York, now have an eighth-grade exam that tests the entire middle school science curriculum. After studying one science per year, how many students, I wonder, will be able to remember what they learned in the first year of middle school through to the last year? To me, the solution is to cover some life science, some physical science, and some Earth science each year in a curriculum that spirals through the grades.

To help teachers and students, Amsco has just published Amsco’s Science: Grade 8, the third volume of our three-book middle school science series. Its purpose is to provide a complete, clear, and concise presentation of middle school science concepts, in life, Earth, and physical science in an integrated approach. This book builds on the information in Amsco’s Science: Grade 6, and Amsco’s Science: Grade 7. (Turn up the volume and watch our YouTube ad!)


The books in the series correlate 100% to the National Standards for middle school science, the NYS Middle School Core Curriculum for Grades 5–8, and the new Middle School Scope and Sequence for NYC. Each grade covers topics in life, Earth, and physical science. And at each grade level, a unique feature helps students make real-world connections to science. In the grade 6 textbook, the Career Planning section explores science-related careers. Grade 7's Science in Everyday Life feature shows students how science affects their lives. Grade 8 has Science Headline News, which zooms in on current events in science.

At each grade level, the Chapters are divided into Lessons as a planning aid for teachers. Lessons include Skill Activities, Web resources, and little-known science facts to spur student interest. Review sections contain questions of varying levels of difficulty to address the needs of all students. Extended-response questions challenge students to think, analyze, and write.

To order any or all books in the series, visit http://www.amscopub.com/ and click Online Purchasing and then General Science.

The Virunga Mountains are a spectacular range of volcanoes straddling the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo. Many years ago, before organized tourist forays into these mountains were conducted, I climbed Mt. Muhavura on the Uganda side, hoping to see some mountain gorillas. The slope was steep and heavily forested and, as night fell, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was run into a wild gorilla. My group made it to the top and slept wedged between rocks until sunrise. Our reward that next morning was walking around Muhavura’s 14,000-foot peak (entering Rwanda in the process), viewing a scene worthy of heaven, and drinking cool freshwater from the lake that had formed in the peak’s crater. Two friends who went up several hours before us spotted some gorillas’ sleep “nests” but did not encounter any live gorillas either.

Since then, thousands of tourists have visited the gorillas, mostly on the Rwanda side of the Virunga National Park. Tourist dollars are important for the economy of this region. Unfortunately, the civil war in Rwanda during the 1990s made the area too dangerous for people and gorillas, impeding both tourism and conservation research. Now the risk to people and gorillas is occurring on the Congo side of the park. The park rangers risk their lives on a daily basis to protect the gorilla family units. More than 120 of their 660 park rangers have been killed in the Congo in just the last decade. And more gorillas have been killed in 2007 than in any year since the 1960s, when they first started being studied and protected. About a dozen or more gorillas have been killed—a heavy toll for a population that numbers only about 380 individuals. (Another 320 mountain gorillas live in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.)

So, who is doing the killing? Armed poachers, charcoal traders, wildlife traffickers, and militias and rebels from all three countries present a threat to the rangers and the gorillas. Rangers have been shot when guerrillas mistake them for other rebel groups; poachers involved in the illegal charcoal trade cut down trees and kill gorillas that are in their way. The situation is so dangerous that, at present, the rangers cannot even conduct their daily tracking of the gorilla groups. Fortunately, the rangers’ dedication is strong. While park rangers safely lead tourist groups in Rwanda, rangers in the Congo blog about their daily struggle on their own Internet site. The site, which is hosted by the American-based charity Wildlife Direct, has helped raise more than $250,000 for the rangers’ equipment and salaries. You can learn more about the rangers’ lives and gorillas’ situation at: http://wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/gorilla

If you like candy as much as I do, you are in for a nasty shock. As the price of oil rises, more and more crops, such as corn, are being used to produce biofuel rather than food. For candylovers, this means that our favorite, albeit unhealthful, foods may become more expensive. Many of our favorite candies contain corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup, which are made from corn. (Duh!)

It is not just candy that is affected; corn flakes, tortillas, and German beer are also feeling the pinch. However, the diversion of corn and grain to biofuel is a two-edged sword. On one side, it means that land, water, and other resources are diverted from food production, making less corn and grain available for food and increasing food prices. On the other side, it means that as biofuel makes energy more widely available and cheap, food may also become more available. Only time will tell.

Not only our pocketbooks suffer when corn is used for biofuel; the environment suffers, too. Corn must be fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Due to the drainage systems used in corn fields and the time the fertilizer is applied, corn absorbs less nitrogen per acre than do soy beans and alfalfa. That remaining nitrogen fertilizer runs off fields in the Midwest, enters the Mississippi River, and flows to the Gulf of Mexico, where it causes an explosive growth of algae. When the algae die and sink to the bottom of the Gulf, the decay process uses up oxygen, creating a deep layer of oxygen-depleted water. This area is the 7,900-square mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone is so oxygen depleted that fish, crabs, and shrimp must escape or die.

Teachers can use this information to spark discussions in social studies, biology, environmental science, and Earth science classes, to name a few. Many students feel that what happens in the world beyond their school or town has little effect on them. Upon learning information such as this, students may be spurred to take more interest in the effect of science and technology on them and on society.

Barbara Forrest was educated in Louisiana public schools and is professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. She was one the six experts witnesses for the plaintiffs in the first lawsuit filed over intelligent design creationism, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Her book, Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, which she co-authored wih Paul R. Gross, is a carefully documented expose of the intelligent design movement. In the article below she reflects on her role since the publication of the book.

When Paul Gross and I wrote Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, we fully expected that someone with a child in a public school somewhere in the United States would eventually file a legal complaint to stop the teaching of intelligent design (ID) creationism. We had no idea, however, in January 2004, when our book first came out, that a legal case was already brewing in tiny Dover, Pennsylvania. In December 2004, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District was filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania by eleven parents who objected to the Dover school board’s attempt to inject ID into the local high school’s science curriculum. (more…)

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Whenever a friend or family member complains of lower back pain (which seems to be happening more frequently these days), I find myself mumbling, “Well you know, this just proves we weren’t meant to walk upright anyway.” All jokes aside, my background in anthropology and evolution has provided me with plenty of opportunities to read about the possible reasons, and probable mechanisms, for the origins of bipedalism (that is, walking upright on two legs) in early humans, or hominids. And it has also made me more interested in the ecology and behavior of primates.

Years ago, while vacationing in the Yucatan, I stopped by a roadside zoo as part of a day tour. Although the experience was a bit disturbing (I thought the caged animals might have been better off living free in the nearby jungle), I did make a surprising observation. In one large cage, there were two or three monkeys. I noticed they would walk upright, for a minute or two at a time, along the horizontal branches in their cage, with their arms held up to help them balance. I had never seen anything like that! They were walking in a bipedal manner – and by choice (i.e., they weren’t trained monkeys in a circus act).

It has long been thought that early hominids made the transition to bipedal movement several million years ago, but only after they moved from a tree-dwelling, or arboreal, lifestyle, in which they moved on all fours, to a ground-dwelling lifestyle, while still doing some tree climbing. And this was how I had been trained to think about evolution from the four legs to the two legs modes of movement in hominid evolution. (By contrast, the large ground-dwelling African apes – chimps and gorillas – move in a manner called knuckle-walking.)

So it was with great interest that I read the recent article “Red-Ape Stroll” in the 8/4/07 issue of Science News. The headline on the cover of this issue was “Walking Tall: Upright Evolution in Trees.” Whoa – I thought of those Central American monkeys again! It appears that primate researchers in Sumatra, Indonesia, have recently observed some orangutans walking fully upright through the trees – while reaching up to grab a branch for extra support and balance – as they foraged for fruit. The anthropologist who observed this now proposes that bipedalism evolved in a common ancestor of all living apes millions of years before early hominids made the transition from the trees to the ground. In this case, says her colleague, “you can’t rely on bipedalism to tell whether [it’s a] human or another ape ancestor.” Scientists in agreement with this argument even say that such a shared bipedal ancestry possibly “explains why orangutans’ feet resemble people’s feet more than they resemble the feet of chimps or gorillas” even though we are more closely related to the African apes. However, other anthropologists counter that “our upright stance derived from a knuckle-walking ancestor [since] the legs and knees of early hominids more closely resemble those of African apes than they do those of orangutans.”

The debate continues. Either way, it is interesting to see the flexibility of behaviors among our fellow primates – and that there are always more discoveries to be made in nature. See http://www.sciencenews.org/ to read the original article.