By Richard Conniff
People who work in the natural world often get asked how on Earth they came to devote their lives to gastropods, or ground beetles, or whatever other species happens to have found its way into their hearts. What the questioners generally mean is that becoming a naturalist is a little enviable, […] Read More »
By John Carey
As a scientist working on breakthrough lighting technologies, Jeff Tsao is a firm believer in the magic of energy efficiency. After all, the numbers are compelling. Replace traditional bulbs with far more efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and, studies suggest, the U.S. could cut the electricity used by lighting by at least […] Read More »
Text by Lindsey Doermann
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Bionic Handling
The elephant’s trunk re-imagined as a graceful machine
The Bionic Handling Assistant is a lightweight, fluidly moving, robotic arm inspired by the strong but flexible trunk of an elephant. Made of the polymer polyamide and containing no iron or steel, the arm is strong enough to […] Read More »
By Judith D. Schwartz
In reports of rising CO2 levels, it’s easy to get the impression that the carbon-and-oxygen molecule is a kind of toxin, some alien vapor coughed up by a century-plus of heedless industrialism now coming back to haunt us. But on closer inspection, it seems that the problem isn’t the carbon […] Read More »
When NASA’s twin Mars rovers began sending detailed pictures to Earth in January 2004, Randy Sargent, a computer scientist working on visualizations of those images, was enthralled by the sense of actually exploring Martian terrain. Onboard each rover, a camera known as the Pancam swiveled and tilted on command from NASA scientists. Sargent and his […] Read More »
By Paul Salopek
Illustration by Daniel Reiter
Look at the seed. It is oblong, tapered like a bowling pin, ashy black, smaller than a peppercorn.“You can see it’s not really domesticated,” Chris Schmidt says.
Schmidt, who is prematurely bald, soft-spoken, a bit monastic, a noticer of small things, looks exactly like an entomologist from the […] Read More »
Last year, biologist Alexander Gaos drove his derelict pickup truck thousands of miles along the western coasts of Mexico and Central America. His mission? First, coaxing suspicious fishermen—and even poachers—into revealing where he could find critically endangered eastern Pacific hawksbill sea turtles, which are often killed for their elaborate, colorful shells. Then, transforming these potential […] Read More »
By Fred Pearce
Illustration By Dan Page
The Batwa “pygmies” of central Africa lost many of their hunting lands with the creation of national parks in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo. Washed up at the side of the road and banned from their traditional lives, they seemed doomed. But now—at least if you believe […] Read More »
By Sarah DeWeerdt
Sometime in mid-2007, the world’s demographic scales tipped. Only a century earlier, urbanites represented just over 14 percent of humanity. But by 2007, a majority of the world’s people lived in cities, and more are on the way. Over the coming decades, cities will absorb all predicted global population growth and […] Read More »
By Douglas Fox
October-December 2007 (Vol. 8, No. 4)
A lone elephant hurries toward a stand of trees as the whoop-whoop of a helicopter looms overhead. The helicopter swings within a few yards of the elephant, and she breaks into a run—but not soon enough. A rifle shot rings out, and a splash of […] Read More »
