"I Believe in Waiting out the Weather..."

Camping!

Looking douchey at a cave I was too claustrophobic to enter:



Enjoying nature (I think Nick was enjoying something else):



Our tent companions:

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Some videos I finally uploaded from the Spring Break Road Trip:

Science Tuesday - Exercise, the Cambrian, Archaea,

The Right Way to Warm Up Is (Your Answer Here)
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, May 17, 2010

At the Boston Marathon last month, my running partner, Jen Davis, said things were pretty much the same as the 10 other times she has run this race. Most runners stood around waiting for the race to start. Some did strides — short bursts of speed — or ran briefly at close to their race pace. There was a lot of stretching, too, and applications of heat rubs like Bengay and jumping up and down to stay warm.

My son, Stefan Kolata, was with the elite men this year in Boston and warmed up with them in their own special pre-race area. Those runners had a very different routine, he says. They spent about 15 minutes doing sort of a slow shuffle. There they were, a long line of elites, going around and around the warm-up area, barely lifting their legs.

Then, some went to a parking lot and did dynamic stretching — high knees, backward running, sideways running. Others vanished from the outdoor warm-up area, emerging again when the race was about to begin.

When it was all over, the men’s winner finished in 2:05:52, an average pace of 4 minutes 48 seconds per mile. Even the 10th-place finisher had a time of 2:10:33, or 4:59 a mile. So maybe these fast men know a secret about warm-ups.

Or maybe not.

( Read more... )

Creatures of Cambrian May Have Lived On
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, May 17, 2010

Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale outcrops in the Canadian Rockies have presented scientists with a cornucopia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginning some 550 million years ago.

The fossils, all new to science, were at first seen as little more than amazing curiosities from a time when life, except for bacteria and algae, was confined to the sea — and what is now Canada was just south of the Equator. In the last half century, however, paleontologists recognized that the Burgess Shale exemplified the radiation of diverse life forms unlike anything in earlier time. Here was evolution in action, organisms over time responding to changing fortunes through natural experimentation in new body forms and different ecological niches.

But the fossil record then goes dark: the Cambrian-period innovations in life appeared to have few clear descendants. Many scientists thought that the likely explanation for this mysterious disappearance was that a major extinction had wiped out much of the distinctive Cambrian life. It seemed that the complex organisms emerging in the Cambrian had come to an abrupt demise, disappearing with few traces in the later fossil record.

Not everyone was convinced, however, and now a trove of 480-million-year-old fossils in Morocco appears to strike a blow to the idea of a major extinction. The international team of scientists who discovered the 1,500 fossils said their find shows that the dark stretch in the fossil record more probably reflects an absence of preservation of fossils over the previous 25 million years.

( Read more... )

Life in the Third Realm
By OLIVIA JUDSON, The New York Times, MAY 18, 2010

It’s that time of the month again. Yes: it’s time for Life-form of the Month. In case you’ve forgotten, this coming Saturday is International Day for Biological Diversity, a day of celebrations and parties to appreciate the other occupants of the planet. So if you do nothing else this weekend, drink a toast to “Other Life-forms!” In honor of this event, my nomination for Life-form of the Month: May is a group of abundant and fascinating beings that are undeservedly obscure: the archaea.

Say who?

( Read more... )

High-Tech Tour of the Caves of Nottingham
By SINDYA N. BHANOO, The New York Times, May 17, 2010

Legend has it that Robin Hood was captured by the Sheriff of Nottingham and then imprisoned in the sandstone caves that lie beneath the city.

Whether Robin Hood was real or mythological is debatable, but the caves of Nottingham, carved into soft sandstone, do exist. Throughout the city, under modern day homes and businesses and the Nottingham Castle, there is a labyrinth of medieval tunnels, dungeons and cellars. Now, using laser technology, researchers are collecting 500,000 data points a second, measuring the size and scope of the caves at a pace that was not previously possible.

( Read more... )