RESOURCES – science information web sites
114 R&D
“THE DRAGON EATS THE SUN.” “Case Study of the Effects of Atmospheric Aerosols and Regional Haze on Agriculture: An Opportunity to Enhance Crop Yields in China Through Emission Controls?” W. L. Chameides et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 23, 1999.
“A DENTIST’S NIGHTMARE.” More about Jeffrey Hillman’s research can be found at www.dental.ufl.edu/Hillman.htm.
“AVOIDING THE NEXT BIG HACK ATTACK.” For more about Felix Wu’s research, see shang.csc.ncsu.edu. For more about denial-of-service attacks, see www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-01.html.
“ROCK OF LOVE.” For more about NEAR, including the newest images, visit the NEAR project Web site at near.jhuapl.edu.
“LANDLUBBER GENES.” “Combinatorial Signaling Through BMP Receptor IB and GDF5: Shaping of the Distal Mouse Limb and the Genetics of Distal Limb Diversity,” Scott T. Baur et al., Development, Vol. 127, pp. 605-619.
“DISCOVER DIALOGUE.” For a good introduction to Colborn’s work, check out Our Stolen Future, Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Plume/Penguin, 1996. Or see www.osf-facts.org. Everything you ever wanted to know about environmental estrogens can be found at www.tmc.tulane.edu/ecme/echome. For information on government plans to screen hormonal disrupters, see www.epa.gov/scipoly/oscpendo.
“HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT.” For an MPEG movie in retinal view, as well as a wonderful explanation of Itti’s research, visit www.klab.caltech.ed/~itti/retina.
“HOOKERS & HAULERS.” “Highway Cowboys, Old Hands, and Christian Truckers: Risk Behavior for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection Among Long-Haul Truckers in Florida,” Stratford et al., Social Science and Medicine, December 14, 1999.
“ENGLISH SUPER-RATS.” For the really curious, Issue 20 (Winter 1999) of Professional Pest Controller gives insight into resistant rat problems in the U.K. Or see Robert Smith’s Web site at www.le.ac.uk/biology/staff/rhs2.html.
“WHAT’S GOING DOWN.” For more about underwater projects off the coast of Alaska, see www.pmel.noaa.gov/foci.
“SHAKERS BEHAVING BADLY.” The Web site of the last active Shaker community of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, contains a thorough discussion of the history and beliefs of Shakers: www. shaker, lib.me.us/Welcome.html.
“MILLENNIUM WATCH.” To check out Krochta’s research, see www.cdrf.org/ research/details.cfm?ResearchID=53.
“LANDMARKS.” The winners of the King Faisal International Prize are profiled via www.kff.net. For answers to questions about railroad history, see the Web site of the National Railway Museum in York, England: www.nmsi.ac.uk/nrm/ html/home pb/menu.htm.
“ASK THE WIZARD.” To learn more about hair growth cycles: www.keratin.com/aa/aaindex.shtml.
“WHAT’S GOING UP.” More launches can be found on the Vandenberg Air Force Base Web site (www.vafb.af.mil), the Kennedy Space Center Web site (www.ksc.nasa.gov), and the Patrick Air Force Base Web site (www.pafb.af.mil/launch.htm). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains a Space Calendar at www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar.
“INTERSTELLAR DOWNPOUR.” “High Velocity Clouds: Building Blocks of the Local Group,” Leo Blitz et al., Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 514, No. 2.
“ROBOT WATCH.” Pictures, video, and more about PolyBot can be found at www.parc.xerox.com/modrobots. Or, see “Contact and Non-Contact Mechanisms for Distributed Manipulation,” by Mark Yim and Andrew Berlin, presented at the 1999 International Conference on Robotics and Automation’s Workshop on Distributed Automation. (For proceedings, see the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Web site: www.ieee.org.)
25 Future Tech
To find out more about TASHE, see the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Web site: www.lanl.gov/mst/engine.
For more about resonant macrosonic synthesis, see www.macrosonix.com.
28 The Physics of … Karate
The Newton’s Apple karate Web site (www.pbs.org/ktca/newtons/12/karate.html) neatly sums up the forces and body parts involved in karate moves.
For a detailed introduction to the ancient discipline, see Tae Kwon Do: Secrets of Korean Karate (Charles E. Tuttle, 1995) by grand master Sihak Henry Cho.
32 Vital Signs
Visit the Web site of the American Sleep Apnea Association: www.sleepapnea.org.
“The Association Between Sleep Apnea and the Risk of Traffic Accidents,” The New England Journal of Medicine, 1999, Vol. 340, No. 11, p. 847.
36 Works in Progress
Visit www.mountainzone.com/everest for more about the Mount Everest expedition. To get a sense of the mountain’s magnificence without a trip to the Himalayas, keep your eye out for the IMAX movie Everest.
If you’re in Boston, visit the Museum of Science to see the large-scale relief map of the mountain, created by Bradford Washburn. For information about the museum’s location and hours as well as current exhibits, see www.mos.org or call 617-723-2500.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, don Krakauer, Random House, 1998. A more gripping tale of a mountain cannot be found.
40 Sky Lights
To learn about all the things that don’t happen under a full moon, see the comprehensive debunking of full-moon myths at www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html.
To learn more about planetary alignments in 2000 as well as past alignments, see www.griffithobs.org/SkyAlignments.html.
44 The Magnificent Mission
The Poetry of the Universe, Robert Osserman, Anchor Books, 1996. A clear intro to curved space, the shape of the universe, and four-dimensional geometry.
For an overview of the MAP project, visit map.gsfc.nasa.gov.
Visit www.sns.ias.edu/~whu/physics/ physics.html for a discussion of cosmic microwave background physics.
For a fun introduction to topology without the mess of paper and glue, try the Torus and Klein Bottle games at Jeff Weeks’s site: www.northnet.org/weeks.
52 Aping Culture
Jane Goodall’s just-published memoir, Africa in My Blood (Houghton Mifflin), is a collection of her personal letters, worlds apart from such earlier works as The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Belknap Press, Harvard University, 1986) and In the Shadow of Man (Houghton Mifflin, 1971 and 1988). Visitors to the Web site of the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research (www.janegoodall.org) can learn all about Goodall’s life, work, and current projects.
The synthesis of chimpanzee cultural behaviors shepherded by Andrew Whiten appeared in Nature, dune 17, 1999. A newsier piece on the same subject was published in Science, June 25, 1999.
Richard Wrangham, William McGrew, Paul G. Heltne, and Frans B.M. de Waal edited Chimpanzee Cultures (Harvard University Press/Chicago Academy of Sciences, 1994), a smorgasbord of essays on living and learning, chimp style, by the specialized primatologists mentioned in Small’s article and a number of their distinguished colleagues.
London’s Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, will chart the 39 cultural behaviors chronicled by Whiten and his colleagues–and test visitors to see how they measure up-at its Annual Summer Science Exhibition, dune 20 through 22, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW 1Y 5AG; admission free; www.royalsoc.ac.uk.
58 The New Math of Gambling
Many thanks to the Fiesta Casino Hotel in Las Vegas for allowing us access to the casino while researching this story. Known as the “royal flush capital of the world,” the hotel is a mecca for video poker players because it pays out on an average of 100 royal flushes a day. The casino’s Web site is www.fiestacasinohotel.com. In physical space, they can be found at 2400 North Rancho Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89130.
The Theory of Blackjack (Sixth Edition), Peter Griffin, Huntington Press, 1999. Griffin provides a sophisticated mathematical deconstruction of the game, but be forewarned: If terms like matrix of regression coefficients make you squirm, don’t even try.
Knock-Out Blackjack, Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs, Huntington Press, 1998. Reveals a simple, elegant blackjack card-counting system that retains most of the power of more complex ones.
Stanford Wong’s Current Blackjack News, Stanford Wong, Pi Yee Press, monthly. Hungry for business, casinos often make short-term blackjack rule changes that favor the player, such as paying 3 to 1 for naturals (two-card totals of 21) as opposed to the typical 1.5 to 1. Reporters around the nation ferret out such advantageous situations for this newsletter, available online for $12.25 per quarter; details at www.bj21.com.
The Frugal Gambler, ,Jean Scott, Huntington Press, 1998. The low-roller approach to beating the odds in Vegas.
The Las Vegas Advisor, Anthony Curtis, publisher, monthly from Huntington Press, 3687 South Procyon Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada 89103; 800-244-2224. Scouts advantageous game promotions throughout the city.
66 Stephen O’Rahilly
Ellen Ruppel Shell recommends Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat (Hillel Schwartz, New York: The Free Press, 1986) for background on obesity and the evolution of body image.
Stephen O’Rahilly, Sadaf Farooqi, and their colleagues summed up the mysterious case of the leptin-deficient cousins and their successful treatment in The New England .Journal of Medicine, September 16, 1999.
Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop established the Shape Up America! Web site to broadcast information about obesity as a U.S. health issue and offer lifestyle-change advice: www.shapeup.org.
The North American Association for the Study of Obesity Web site (www.naaso.org) is an authoritative, scientific on-line resource about obesity.
The International Association for the Study of Obesity Web site (www.iaso.org) offers news and links to groups worldwide.
72 Went to Be Boss?
For more about Patricia Hawley’s work on dominance behavior in children, see “The Ontogenesis of Social Dominance: A Strategy-Based Evolutionary Perspective,” Developmental Review, March 1999 (available on-line at www.idealibrary.com).
For a comprehensive review of dominance studies in animals, see “Dominance and Reproductive Success Among Nonhuman Animals: A Cross-Species Comparison,” Ethology and Sociobiology, July, 1995.
For a good introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology, including an accessible Darwinian perspective of status pursuit, see Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are, Vintage Books, 1995.
80 Reviews
For more information about visiting COSI, see the museum’s Web site: www.cosi.org.
To find out where Galapagos is playing, visit the IMAX Web site (www.imax.com). The site has information about other IMAX films currently showing throughout the country as well as information about IMAX movies in the works.
Schedules for airing of Secrets of the Dead are available at www.thirteen.org.
More about Kennewick Man can be found at www.cr.nps.gov/aad/kennewick. For a comprehensive news site, see www.tri-cityherald.com/bones.
95 Bogglers
For more puzzles by Scott Kim, see his Web site www.scottkim.org or his book Inversions: A Catalog of Calligraphic Cartwheels, Key Curriculum Press, 1996.
96 Brainworks
For links to animal sonar research, check out the Web site of the Center for Sound Communication of Odense University in Denmark: www.ou.dk/Nat/biology/ neuro/CSC-eng.html.
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