http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com Science, Insight, Summary, Smithsonain.com Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:05:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Check out this deft rap about life on other planets by Jonathan Chase, a.k.a. Oort Kuiper (yes, that Oort and that Kuiper). The delivery is subdued and literate, like Massive Attack-era Tricky, and the video incorporates clips from Cosmos, the classic PBS series narrated by Carl Sagan. Bonus points for ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/394 I spent last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology meetings at Cornell University. Behavioral ecology, the study of what animals do and how it affects their lives, can be delightfully arcane. One research team designed a robot stickleback in order to learn how many fish it takes to ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/386 Don't worry, that's not a giant bug on the first tomato of summer. It's a tiny bug on a chile pepper about the size of a caper. But don't let its size fool you: that's one of the hottest peppers out there, the chile piquin, which grows wild in Bolivia. I ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/381 This week I'm blogging from a meeting of 1,000 ornithologists in Portland, Oregon. At a symposium entitled "Avian CSI" I heard about sophisticated ways that biologists learn intimate details about birds from tiny pieces of recovered evidence. A team of Smithsonian scientists is especially good at identifying bird remains - even ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/371 It often seems that good news about primates—and especially gorillas—is hard to come by. Last year, we reported the sad story of the endangered mountain gorillas of Congo’s Virunga National Park (Guerillas in their Midst), where several of the animals had been massacred. Later, rebel forces overtook the park, and ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/366 Diamonds are the subject of one of the great battles between the forces of Marketing and the forces of Matter. In one corner is DeBeers, with the best advertising slogan of the 20th Century, "Diamonds are Forever." In the other corner are the chemists, with the knowledge, since 1796, ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/361 Filed under "Hang on a sec": a new scientific paper has called into question one of the most exciting paleontological finds of the 21st century. Soft tissue discovered deep inside a Tyrannosaurus rex legbone may be a recent "biofilm" (what you might call scunge if you found it on a ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/357 In a happy turn of events for the quake-stricken Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, three pandas gave birth to four babies over the weekend. The center's future had looked anything but bright after the devastating earthquake in May, which toppled 14 panda houses, killed one panda, and killed ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/353 Famed paleontologist Jack Horner is out in the dusty badlands of eastern Montana, aiming his chisel at ancient bone fragments that may once have belonged to a Triceratops. He's working in 100-degree heat at the aptly named Hell Creek Formation, a chunk of bedrock that's between 67 million and 65 ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/344 You've still got a couple days this month to step outside, look up, and enjoy a tremendous yellow moon. One of my favorite features is that little belly-button of a crater at the bottom, called Tycho. When the moon is full, this crater and the long rays emanating from it ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/334 Here's a refreshing bit of good news to chew on next time you fill up your car: high gas prices are saving as many as 1,000 American lives each month. After being stung at the pump, it seems, we've made up our minds to drive less and to drive more slowly. ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/328 It's been a good week for people who look through microscopes at fossils. First off, Scientific American told us about some German scientists who discovered evidence of 400-million-year-old life trapped in seawater trapped inside volcanic rock. Far more buzz circled around the second report: that we may be able to ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/327 Temperatures in Greenland were 63 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. If it felt warm to the residents of Kangerlussuaq, imagine how it felt to the wool-draped musk oxen roaming the hillsides. It wasn't a record high temperature, but it's enough to keep Greenland's massive ice cap melting - a process that has accelerated ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/325 Cheers to New Scientist's Environment blog for keeping us up to date on current research in dingo urine. (If you're pressed for time, watch the YouTube clip: 28 seconds.) Turns out Australia has upwards of 50 million kangaroos hippity-hoppitying around the arid continent. Cute as they are, kangaroos are major pests ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/323 It's happened. We're in the early 21st century, and it's now possible for a space suit to look hopelessly outdated. I mean, would you pilot a 1950s vehicle off the planet in something that looks like it recently came off a baked potato? I think Devo once made a ... http://thegist.smithsonianmag.com/archives/321