Smithsonian.com

I’m back in New Zealand now, but here’s one more note from my trip to Antarctica.

I spent last week on Cape Crozier, Ross Island, accompanied by four people and a half-million penguins. We camped in 70-mph winds on a rocky slope, looking down on orcas and leopard seals as they cruised the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. It was possibly the wildest place I’ve ever been. To me, the most marvelous sights were the snow petrels (a kind of seabird) that wheeled over our heads each day on the wind.

Snow petrels live only in and around Antarctica, where they nest on any rock faces the wind leaves bare of snow. They’re clean, shining white and bright as the sun on ice cliffs. In the air they’re definitely at the Maserati end of the spectrum.

Like many seabirds (albatross-like birds that travel the open ocean, skimming food from the surface), snow petrels are one of the final receptacles for discarded plastics. If we don’t properly dispose of our plastic bags, bottle caps and the like, these items can wind up floating in the ocean, where they look like food.

Snow petrels are luckier than most—their feeding grounds tend to be south of Antarctica’s band of pack ice, which acts like a sieve to keep out most plastics. Still, dead snow petrels and their chicks have turned up with plastic shreds in their stomachs. Researchers with the Australian Antarctic Division are investigating trash that washes up along the tide lines of sub-Antarctic islands, trying to learn whether the plastic among it can choke birds or leach toxic chemicals into their bodies. Until we know for sure, it’s a good idea to put your trash securely inside a recycling bin.
(Chris Linder/WHOI)

Outside of the county fair, I’ve never seen an actual unicyclist (or is it unicycler?). But if one did cross my path, I’m pretty sure my immediate reaction would be one of amazement and delight.

And that would make sense, according to a new observational study in the British Medical Journal, because I’m a woman. Men, in contrast, would be more likely to make a joke—and not even a particularly good joke.

Sam Shuster, an emeritus professor of dermatology at Newcastle University, has for the last year documented the first responses of 400 people upon seeing him ride his unicycle around Newcastle upon Tyne. For most of them, it was their first time seeing a unicyclist in action.

More than 90 percent of respondents responded physically, by staring or waving their hands. Almost half responded verbally—and that’s where it gets interesting. Adult women, he found, overwhelmingly praised him, encouraged him, or showed concern. One said, “Magic…it is magic”; another said, “You are an Olympic champion.” They rarely made a joke. But only 25 percent of adult men said something kind. The rest tried to make degrading jokes. And the jokes weren’t very original; Shuster said most of them referred to his lack of wheels, as in, “Couldn’t you afford the other wheel?”

However, the men didn’t start bullying until puberty. Boys aged 7 to 12 responded with curiosity, saying things like “Was it hard to learn?” Once they hit 13, though, the boys got aggressive, saying things like “fall off granddad,” while laughing and throwing small pebbles. (What little monsters!)

Shuster thinks that the simplest explanation of these differences is that male hormones like testosterone induce virility in men. Humor may emerge in teenagers, he continues, as a way of softening aggression.

As with most observational studies, I’m skeptical. But he could test it. Taking his idea to its logical conclusion would mean that 1) women who exhibit this kind of humor have more testosterone kicking around than women who don’t; and that 2) men are generally more humorous than women…Maybe granddad is missing a wheel or two after all.

(mikebaird, via Flickr)

A chest freezer at Montana State University holds more than 400 different hair samples, ranging from pale blond to jet black, from the grizzly bears of Yellowstone National Park. Some of them were collected recently, others are 25 years old. In a few months, they’ll all be shipped to a lab called Wildlife Genetics International, in British Columbia, to determine if new DNA has been introduced into the population in the past few decades.

The hairs are usually plucked from a bear’s shoulder region while it’s being tagged with a radio collar, or after it’s been found dead. Some samples are inadvertently snagged when a bear crawls under barbed wire.

Though the grizzly population in the Yellowstone ecosystem—about 550 to 600 bears—is double what it was 20 years ago, experts fear that it lacks genetic diversity. “We know it’s low,” Chuck Schwartz, head of the Grizzly Bear Study Team based at MSU, said in a press release. “There are concerns about inbreeding and other issues because we don’t have new genes flowing into the system on a regular basis.”

The genetic analysis team will compare the Yellowstone bear DNA to that of bears from the Northern Continental Divide (including Glacier National Park), where a similar study has already been done. In addition to giving an indication of how diverse the grizzly population is, the results will show whether bears from the Northern Continental Divide migrate to Yellowstone.

(Shellie Raney, via Flickr)

After pointing you to those neat-o Hubble holiday cards, I thought you’d enjoy this new story about our favorite telescope: Hubble’s getting wrapped up.

Along with installing new gyrocompasses and batteries, one of the aims of the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble, scheduled for August 7, is to put on a new outer thermal blanket. “Thermal blankets are to spacecraft as clothes are to people,â€? Mike Weiss, Hubble’s technical deputy program manager, says on NASA’s website. “Just as clothes cover our skin and help protect us from nature’s elements . . . the cold winter wind and the scorching summer sun, thermal blankets protect Hubble from the harsh environment of space.â€?

Hubble’s sweater is made not of cashmere, but 16 layers of dimpled aluminum with an outer Teflon skin. Above, NASA technician Brenda Estavia cuts a piece of this aluminum kapton film. Some of the Goddard technicians who make space blankets have designing backgrounds in furniture upholstery, costume designing and even ice skating costume-making.

Check out this video of the Hubble engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center practicing for the spacewalks they’ll make in August.

(NASA)

It’s Christmas time, which means many people are telling stories about the “Star of Bethlehem.” For those of us who are, um, less religiously inclined, how about celebrating the Orion Nebula, the Bubble Nebula, or the Crab Pulsar?

The Hubble website now features 21 downloadable, printable greeting cards featuring our favorite celestial images from NASA’s famous orbiting telescope. My favorite, above, shows the best view of Mars ever seen from Earth (orange ornament); the Whirlpool Galaxy (small silver ornament on upper right); and the Cone Nebula, a star-forming pillar of gas and dust (small pink and blue ornament on upper left). See what’s on the other ornaments at the bottom of this page.

As Phil points out: If you’re feeling ironic, send out the card that says “Peace to all” below a photo of Mars. (Mars was the god of war, remember?)