Science

From Washington University:
“Fish Genitalia May Balance Attractiveness with Predatory Escape.”

The scientists found that female mosquitofish prefer the well-endowed male. Unfortunately for the males, larger genitalia impede a speedy getaway, making them more likely to be eaten by predators. Sometimes, you just can’t win.

THE GENIUS FACTORY:
The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank
By David Plotz;
Random House;
288 pages;
$24.95

Twenty-five years ago, a retired optometrist named Robert Graham set out to save the planet. As the inventor of unbreakable plastic eyeglass lenses, he certainly had the cash to do great good as a traditional philanthropist, building libraries, say, or endowing scholarships for disadvantaged youth. Instead the Southern California eccentric changed the world in a more un-usual way.

“Now we are getting nearer to true submarines,” PopSci proclaimed in June 1949 of the Navy’s newly revamped U.S.S. TUSK, “not just buttoned-up surface ships that can dunk for a few hours.” The TUSK, first commissioned as a torpedo boat in 1946, reemerged as a deadly spy sub capable of remaining in the deep for weeks, thanks to a snorkel that allowed its diesel engines to run underwater while its upgraded batteries recharged. This technology and a sleek aircraft-inspired design improved the sub’s speed from 10 knots to 15 knots.

Last spring Canada became the first and only country to approve a drug called Sativex to treat the chronic pain endured by most of the 2.5 million people with multiple sclerosis. The announcement caused, ahem, quite a buzz. Sativex is a whole-plant extract of high-grade Cannabis sativa, a.k.a. marijuana, and is the first prescription drug to contain all 60-plus of the plant’s cannabinoids, those compounds that include the psychoactive chemical THC.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, hundreds of
underground bunkers in enemy territories serve as weapons silos, command
centers and safe havens for rogue leaders. Drilled several hundred feet or deeper into the ground, many of the hideouts are far beyond the reach of conventional weapons. The Pentagon’s solution: Build a super-slim bomb called a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) capable of piercing 20 feet of solid rock and unleashing shock waves on par with a magnitude-7 earthquake.

This fall Congress will decide whether to approve $8.5 million to complete a

1. Academic Scan Ban University presses say that Google´s plan to scan their books and create searchable, full-text indexes of their content is infringement and are trying to shut the project down. 2. Copyright CraziesThe official who runs the U.S. Copyright Office is suggesting to Congress that copyright infringementis used to fund terrorism, citing only rumors.3. Invasive Acts If the latest iteration of the Patriot Act passes, the FBI will be able to get your health records, e-mail, and banking details without a judge´s approval.

The Federation of American Scientists has created two tools to estimate the destructive impact of a nuclear “bunker buster” bomb. The blast-effects calculator illustrates the immediate destruction that occurs in the moments following a detonation. Specify bomb yield and location, and the calculator produces a blast diagram superimposed over a satellite image of the selected city. Use the fallout calculator to trace the four-day radiation pattern that results from the initial blast.

Common wisdom in this age of door-to-door combat dictates that the U.S. submarine fleet is of diminishing utility–after all, there are no terrorists hiding underwater. But common wisdom does not so easily apply to the USS Jimmy Carter, a giant Seawolf-class nuclear submarine modified into a spy ship. The submarine, commissioned in February, will serve as a stealthy weapon near enemy shores: tapping into undersea fiber-optic cables, covertly delivering Navy Seals into enemy ports, and, if necessary, directly attacking enemy ships and land-based targets.

To photograph our story on the uncertain future of the world’s favorite fruit, New York photographer Jeffrey Weiss traveled to Honduras, where he documented the banana´s life cycle-from fertilization to fruit market.

A pair of twins is born, and both infants begin to develop normally. By their first birthday, however, the male sibling has begun to diverge from his sister, showing less eye contact and affection. He often wears a spaced-out expression and fixates on certain puzzles and patterns. By age three, his mounting symptoms lead to a diagnosis that has become disturbingly routine in recent years: autism.

What causes the disease, which now strikes 1 in every 166 children, and why does it affect four times as many boys as girls?

David Keith never expected to get a summons from the White House. But in September 2001, officials with the President's Climate Change Technology Program invited him and more than two dozen other scientists to participate in a roundtable discussion called "Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change." While administration officials were insisting in public that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.

Ed Note: In 2005 Dan Koeppel traveled to Central America to begin his research on the banana—a fruit whose ubiquity, he discovered, may very well prove to be its downfall. His book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, was recently published to much acclaim. Here's the feature that started it all.

"A Banana," says Juan Fernando Aguilar, "is not just a banana." The bearded botanist and I are traipsing through one of the world's most unusual banana plantations, moving down row after row of towering plants and ducking into the shade of broad leaves in an attempt to avoid the Central American midday heat. In an area about the size of a U.S. shopping mall, Aguilar, 46, is growing more than 300 banana varieties. Most commercial growing facilities handle just a single banana type-the one we Americans slice into our morning cereal.

1. Imagine, for instance, that New York´s Central Park was in the crosshairs. The asteroid strike would release the force of a 1,660-megaton bomb, triggering a magnitude-6.8 earthquake, blasting a two-and-a-half-mile-wide crater and hurling trailer-size rocks deep into Long Island and New Jersey. The tri-state area would be toast.2. The world´s first known insurance policies were issued 5,000 years ago to Mesopotamian
caravan operators.3. “You dumbass!” was the assessment of Harvard´s David Ropeik.

So what about 2004 MN4, that hunk of rock hell-bent for Earth?

On December 27, 2004, while the world was focused on the Indian Ocean tsunami, a few astronomers were contemplating the possibility of an even deadlier disaster: that of a massive asteroid striking Earth. A fifth of a mile wide—heftier than the space rock that leveled a vast swath of Siberian forest in 1908—Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 had grabbed the attention of NASA scientists just before Christmas. They put the chance of an April 13, 2029, collision at 1 in 2,700 and two days later upped the odds to 1 in 165.