domingo, 10 de julio de 2011

Science review

Answer for Invasive Species: Put It on a Plate and Eat It

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Erik Olsen/The New York Times

Although the lionfish appears off-putting, some see a growing place for it on American plates."

While most invasive species are not popularly regarded as edible food, that is mostly a matter of marketing, experts say.

Video: An Exotic Predator (Nov. 22, 2010)

Buzz Aldrin in a photograph taken by Neil Armstrong.

Shreds of Moon History on the Block

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

The flag that was put on the moon had to be trimmed to make it fit the staff, and the expected selling price of the shreds is $100,000.

PROTOTYPE

Nathalie Miebach wearing her basket sculpture, which plots astronomical data.

Science to Art, and Vice Versa

By AMY WALLACE

A sculptor and a lighting artist have very different techniques but the same goal: to promote understanding by finding new ways of seeing the world.

AN APPRAISAL

Spectators watched the launch of Apollo 11 in Florida in 1969.

3, 2, 1, and the Last Shuttle Leaves an Era Behind

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

The Atlantis launch was festive, but raised worries about the future of American spaceflight.

POSSESSED

CHAOS The writer James Gleick, below, has a van der Pol oscillator built to make noise.

There’s No Quiet Without Noise

By DAVID COLMAN

It doesn’t take an oscilloscope to see that reality contains both concord and discord.

The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its final mission into space.

Atlantis Lifts Off for Last Space Shuttle Mission

By KENNETH CHANG

Though thunderstorms threatened, Atlantis was launched for NASA’s 135th and final shuttle flight, bound for the International Space Station with four astronauts.

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Photographers greeted the crew of the Atlantis on Friday as they left their quarters for the final space shuttle flight.

A Demonstration of Science Seemingly Made for TV

By BRIAN STELTER

Did the news networks’ decreasing coverage of the space program lead in part to the shuttles’ declining popularity?

Space Shuttle Atlantis astronauts, from left, Doug Hurley, Rex Walheim, Sandy Magnus and Chris Ferguson after a crew news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston last month.

Only 4 Fliers for Last Shuttle Launch

By KENNETH CHANG

With no spare spacecraft available to rescue the astronauts if something goes wrong, NASA is sending four people, rather than the usual six or seven.

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An emergency crew working along the Yellowstone River in Laurel, Mont., on Wednesday.

Governor Says Montana Was Misled on Oil Spill

By JIM ROBBINS

He said Exxon Mobil withheld documents and reported that the pipe had been turned off within six minutes, even though records that show it was nearly an hour.

THE SATURDAY PROFILE

Bomb Took 3 Limbs, but Not Photographer’s Can-Do Spirit

By C. J. CHIVERS

A hidden bomb in Afghanistan made Giles Duley a triple amputee, but after rehabilitation, he’s ready to go back into the field.

SCIENTIST AT WORK BLOG

Echinoderms are a large group of odd animals common in the deep-sea. They include organisms such as this starfish, which is of a species that is seldom seen except through use of deep-sea research vessels.

Chasing Down Sea Lilies

By RICH MOOI

Scientists on expedition in the Philippines discover new echinoderms deep in the sea, along with plastic discarded by humans.

Science Times: July 5, 2011

Pleistocene Treasures, at a Breakneck Pace

By KIRK JOHNSON

Among the findings, clockwise from top left, mastodon teeth, a bison jaw, more mastodon teeth and a mastodon humerus.

Scientists had only 70 days to search an old lake bed in Snowmass, Colo., for remnants of ancient animals, like mammoths, mastodons, supersize bison, camels and horses.

Slide Show: Ice Age Fossils

ESSAY

ABOVE THE CLOUDS As seen from a passenger jet, the Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., in May.

As Shuttle Era Ends, Dreams of Space Linger

By DENNIS OVERBYE

After 30 years, the last shuttle flight is scheduled for Friday, ending a program that was to have made spaceflight cheap and almost as routine as air travel.

Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive

By NATALIE ANGIER

Darwinian-minded analysts argue that Homo sapiens have an innate distaste for hierarchical extremes, the legacy of our long nomadic prehistory as tightly knit bands.

Laid-Back in the Lab, Maybe, but They Spurred the Weapons Race

By JOHN MARKOFF

A trove of photographs reveals the casual approach to designing weapons that prevailed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1950s, and sheds light on weapons innovation.

Health

Science Columns

OBSERVATORY

Getting a Handle on Cosmic Dust Caused by Supernovas

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

With the aid of the European Space Association’s Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers detected enough cosmic dust, emitted from a supernova almost 25 years ago, to form 200,000 Earths.

OBSERVATORY

A sample of lower jaw diversity from 400 million years ago which include, from top: a giant 8-meter apex predator, a lungfish with a duck-like snout, a reef-dwelling representative of an extinct group of vertebrates, a fish-like relative of land animals, and a shark-like cousin of bony fishes. The jaws are not to scale, and all are oriented with the front end to the left.

Jawless Fish Held Their Own Long After Being Upstaged

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Though only two types of jawless fish remain, a new study suggests that even after sophisticated jaw types emerged, fish with and without them coexisted well for at least 10 million years.