Virginia Hughes

Above is Desmoxytes purpurosea, a millipede that was recently chosen (somewhat arbitrarily) by Arizona State University’s International Institute for Species Exploration as one of the “top ten” species described in 2007. Also called the “shocking pink dragon millipede,” scientists suspect its coloration warns predators of its toxicity. Here, from the press release, is the full list of the top ten: 

On the list are an ornate sleeper ray, with a name that sucks: Electrolux; a 75-million-year-old giant duck-billed dinosaur; a shocking pink millipede; a rare, off-the-shelf frog; one of the most venomous snakes in the world; a fruit bat; a mushroom; a jellyfish named after its victim; a life-imitates-art “Dim” rhinoceros beetle; and the “Michelin Man” plant.

Benny Bleiman isn’t too happy with those choices. He describes a few more that didn’t make the list:

[S]ome of the year’s sweetest creatures didn’ t make the list! For example, this frogfish whose eyes are in the front of its face like a mammel; and what about this GIANT SHREW that is the size of a house cat!? Yeah, no biggie; And why for any reason would a brand new, 9 foot-long, spitting cobra, who has enough poison to kill 20 people or an elusive tiny dwarf, Amazonian, river manatee make the list? They’re only ridiculously sweet.

Well, Benny, a top ten list is, by definition, limited. I’m just happy that some much-deserved attention is going to the incredible diversity of species on Earth. 

A month ago I started an absolutely delightful beginner’s course on wine tasting at the 92nd Street Y. At the end of my second two-hour class, I was—surprise, surprise—feeling friendly. I started chatting with my instructor, Meg, about wine books and wine blogs.

In one of my favorite science books, A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman points out that although humans have an incredible ability to differentiate among thousands of different smells, we’re lousy at describing them in words. As she puts it:

“The physiological links between the smell and language centers of the brain are pitifully weak…Who can map the features of a smell? When we use words such as smoky, sulfurous, floral, fruity, sweet, we are describing smells in terms of other things (smoke, sulfur, flowers, fruit, sugar). Smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names. Instead we tend to describe how they make us feel. Something smells ‘disgusting,’ ‘intoxicating,’ ’sickening,’ ‘pleasurable,’ ‘delightful,’ ‘pulse-revving,’ ‘hypnotic,’ or ‘revolting.’

Ackerman goes on to list the seven categories that all smells fall under:

-minty (peppermint)
-floral (roses)
-ethereal (pears)
-musky (musk)
-resinous (camphor)
-foul (rotten eggs)
-acrid (vinegar)

Anyway, I mentioned Ackerman’s general point to Meg, and she responded with the names of some of the best wine writers out there. One of them was Eric Asimov, the New York Times wine critic who hosts a blog called The Pour. I promptly added it to my RSS reader, and have been reading it devoutly ever since.

The Pour is a really fun read, even for a wine amateur like me. (Everyone can surely relate to his post on hangovers, for instance.) But tonight I put my analytical hat on to see how this master of the vino rhetoric describes smells. I searched his blog for “smell” and then “smells” and was actually a bit surprised to find that Ackerman was right. All of his described “smells” are not smells at all, they’re foods or metaphors or feelings. See for yourself:

“It’s the tangy, crisp, saline quality of the sherry, especially manzanilla, which smells like the sea, that makes it such a good accompaniment to almost anything salty.”

“…my first impression was that this wine smelled like grapes – piercingly – grapes and alcohol. It was almost painful to sniff. There was a candied quality to the aroma, too…”

“…the wine was so light and delicious, smelling of cinnamon and leather, and so pure.”

” …it was bottled with a good dose of sulfur dioxide, a stabilizing agent that, if it’s still present when you open a bottle can smell like a just-struck match.”

“The Nickel & Nickel might have been too young, but it was oaky enough to smell like a vanilla panna cotta.”

So, can anyone think of words that are designated for smells? I can’t. Perhaps we should create some…

:: :: ::

A few weeks ago, a NASA satellite caught a tiny star making a big show. EV Lacertae is a small, red dwarf star, located about 16 light years from us (which, amazingly, makes it one of our closest star-neighbors). EV Lac has about 1/3 the mass of our Sun, and normally shines with about 1 percent of the Sun’s light. Normally.

But every once in awhile, the star sets off a massive flare. That’s because it rotates once every four days, which is extremely fast (for comparison, our Sun rotates once every four weeks). The star is made up of ionized gas, which has an electric charge. The charge, when moved so quickly, produces incredibly strong magnetic fields. The energy stored in the fields builds and builds until….boom!

“This star has a record of producing flares, but this one takes the cake,” Rachel Osten, a Hubble Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park said in a NASA press release. “Flares like this would deplete the atmospheres of life-bearing planets, sterilizing their surfaces.”

(Hat tip: Phil)

Check out this awesome TED talk, by Michael Moschen.

Who is he?

“A high school dropout turned MacArthur ‘genius grant’ recipient, Michael Moschen is an art juggler, spawning scores of imitators and an entire methodology of crystal-ball juggling he likes to call Dynamic Manipulation.”

Definitely worth your next free 37 minutes!!

(Hat tip: Greg Laden)

Some scientists say that children with autism may show signs of the disease when they are younger than a year old.

But some children with autism seem to develop normally in the first two years of life — making eye contact, waving goodbye, even saying a few words. Then, according to their parents and pediatricians, these children seem to abruptly lose those skills.

This ‘autistic regression’, reported in about one-third of children with the disorder, is baffling researchers.

“We haven’t found any biological markers to say why this child regressed and another didn’t,” says pediatrician Michael Davidovitch, chairman of the Israeli Association of Child Development and Rehabilitation. “And we don’t know if their prognosis will be better or worse.”

About 20 years ago, researchers began asking whether autistic regression could be a distinct subgroup of autism, with its own telltale biological markers. Since then, dozens of contradictory behavioral, physiological and genetic studies have left the field no closer to finding the answer.

…read the rest of my latest article at the Simons Foundation website.

I’m not the only one obsessed with this video: It’s almost hit 48 million views on YouTube.