TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| New Miles Are Added to Trail Along Hudson The new section of trail forms the northern portion of Croton Landing Park and adds a half-mile to the RiverWalk, a planned 53-mile pathway parallel to the Hudson. nytimes.com |
The secret right under our (bottle)nose: What dolphins can teach us about hydrodynamics The flippers that some marine mammals use to glide underwater have a lot in common with the wings of passenger jets and fighter planes. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Some California Amphibians May Need a Lift to Survive Climate Change As temperatures rise over the next century, three California amphibian species could be pushed to the cusp of extinction because the warming climate will effectively block their migration to more suitable habitats. Interventions by humans who physically relocate the animals may be the only way to help them survive. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Uncharted waters: Students retrofit sailboat with hydrogen power and motor up the Hudson Editor's Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students are traveling up New York's Hudson River this week on the New Clermont, a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat's motor. Their journey began September 21 from Manhattan's Pier 84 and will cover 240 kilometers (at a projected speed of 8 kilometers per hour). After making several stops along the way, the crew expects to arrive back at Rensselaer Polytech's campus in Troy, N.Y., on September 25. This is the first of Scientific American.com's blogs chronicling this expedition, called the New Clermont Project . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Extreme Monotremes: Why Do Egg-Laying Mammals Still Exist? Only two kinds of egg-laying mammals are left on the planet today--the duck-billed platypus and the echidna, or spiny anteater. These odd “monotremes” once dominated Australia, until their pouch-bearing cousins, the marsupials, invaded the land down under 71 million to 54 million years ago and swept them away. New research suggests these two kinds of creatures managed to survive because their ancestors took to the water.Before making their way to Australia, the marsupials had migrated from Asia to the Americas to Antarctica. Forced to contend with all the animals along the way, marsupials may have been primed for competition, hence accounting for their overwhelming success in Australia, says evolutionary biologist Matthew Phillips of the Australian National University in Canberra: “The question then becomes, ‘Why did the monotremes survive?’” [More] rss.sciam.com |