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My colleague Abigail Tucker, who wrote a story on narwhal biologist Kristin Laidre, “In Search of the Mysterious Narwhal” for the May issue of Smithsonian, just got the most hilarious gift—The Avenging Narwhal Play Set.

The set is complete with a plastic narwhal; four interchangeable tusks, each with special powers (crystal: mind control, hypnosis, global communication; onyx: instant paralysis; ruby: drains the blood of its victims; and ice: freezes water, creates icebergs, chills beverages) and three representatives of the narwhal’s enemy species (penguin, snow seal and koala).

The avenging Narwhal has speared a snow seal on its magical ruby tusk.

The narwhal’s “true” story appears on the back of the box:

For centuries, the Narwhal was the great mystery of the sea. With the body of a whale and the horn of a Unicorn, many people believed that these fascinating creatures were harmless inhabitants of the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean. Recent studies, however, have exposed the secret agenda of these mysterious mammals and the true purposed of their extraordinarily long pointy tusks.

The studies revealed that millions of years ago, penguins, snow seals and koalas ruled the earth. For sustenance, they feasted upon whales, dolphins and other sea mammals to the point of near extinction. But the Narwhal went into hiding beneath the ice of the North Pole, biding their time, planning their revenge and sharpening their tusks. Finally, they reemerged, tusks gleaming with newfound magical power, and fought back against the adorable creatures that threatened their existence. The battle was long, and many Narwhal were lost, but their strong will and sharp tusks were enough to stave off the cute ones temporarily.

Now, once a year, in a continuous effort to keep their enemies at bay, the Narwhal leave their homes to embark on a treacherous migration to Antarctica in the hunt for baby penguins and seal pups. Many will not return…. Along their journey, they will spend time in Australia, swimming upstream to the inland habitat of the koalas, where they will actually leap out of the water to spear the deadly koalas from their perches high in the Eucalyptus trees.

We’re left to wonder whether the avenging Narwhal will turn on humans, perhaps in retribution for anthropogenic climate change—the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer within 30 years, according to a study published earlier this month.

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For the truth on real-life narwhals, though, read our story and watch the video that goes along with it. And if you’re curious what narwhal tastes like, check out this post on Food and Think.

Pandemic, the board game

Sunday afternoon, some friends and I sat down to play Pandemic, the board game. It seemed appropriate, since we had just been discussing the swine flu outbreak. Pandemic is a cooperative board game in which 2 to 4 people work together to cure four diseases before it’s too late. There is no winner—either you all win or you all lose (i.e., everyone dies).

Each person takes on a role—such as scientist or medic—and on each turn travels the world, treating people, building research centers and finding cures for the four diseases. Through careful planning, players collaborate to decide where they should go and what actions to take to most effectively and quickly find the cures before the diseases spread out of control. At the end of a turn, new cities are infected, and if they reach a certain level of infection, the disease spreads to neighboring cities. Occasionally an epidemic (card) will occur and make the situation even worse.

One oddity of the game is that it ends when the four cures are found, not when all of the cities are wiped clean of disease. It seemed somewhat mean to leave people still sick. Also, we found that the game was too easy for us. There never seemed to be a time when we were at risk of a true pandemic—we seemed to be controlling the outbreaks well enough and finding cures quickly.

Some of the dissatisfaction may derive from the cooperative nature of the game. Perhaps it would have been more challenging if one player had been selected to work against the others. Or there could have been more roadblocks, such as uncooperative governments, rapidly mutating viruses or treatments/vaccines that lost efficacy. But overall Pandemic seems to have a good basis in actual disease treatment, and it was pretty fun, too.

Real life is, of course, both simpler and more complex than the game. Simpler, because we are unlikely to encounter four diseases spreading so quickly at the same time. And we can see the complexity in each day’s news about swine flu (the H1N1 virus).

This morning brought the report of the first swine flu death in the United States—a child in Texas. Anything more I write is likely to be out of date by the time you read it, so here are some good sources for up-to-date information on swine flu:

CDC’s Swine flu page

Pandemicflu.gov

WHO Swine influenza page

Flu Wiki

Also, the blogs Effect Measure and Aetiology are keeping a close watch on this.

My advice: Don’t panic.

Not that long ago, going on a research cruise would have meant being out of contact with the world for weeks, maybe months, at a time. Today, though, satellite connections mean that you can easily keep up with the world—and the world can keep up with you—even on a remote ship in the Arctic.

The icebreaker Healy is ferrying 42 scientists this spring through the Bering Sea, where they’re conducting studies of sea ice, phytoplankton and seabirds, among other things. The ship also carries a photographer, Chris Linder, and a writer, Helen Fields (she wrote about dinosaur tissue for Smithsonian in 2006 and snakeheads in 2005). Chris and Helen are onboard to document what happens on the ship, and they publish Today on the Ice daily. Helen is one of a few people Twittering from the ship, and I’ve also been following her on Facebook, her blog Hey Helen and Scientific American’s 60-Second-Science. And when I emailed her last week, she was kind enough to answer some questions.

Why did you decide to take this assignment?

Seriously? There may have been jumping up and down and shrieking when I found out I got this assignment. I thought it would be fascinating to spend six weeks on an icebreaker on the Bering Sea, and I was right. I did worry that I wasn’t quite tough enough, but this has to be one of the cushiest ways to experience the frozen north. There’s a galley turning out four square meals a day, for goodness’ sake. And I’m convinced I have the coolest job on the ship – I spend the whole cruise going around asking people what they’re doing. I’m learning a little bit about everything, from the ship’s potable water system to how scientists figure out what krill like to eat.

Day 4, April 5: A scientist preparing his gear on the ice. (Credit Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Since you mentioned your four square meals, what is the food like?

It’s fine. It’s cafeteria food. I think they do a very good job of feeding 42 hungry scientists and 80 hungry Coast Guard crew members every day. It would be easy to put on a lot of weight on this cruise, with easy access to french fries, onion rings, and pie. I try not to eat pie every day. And I have a new rule: I can eat dessert if I eat something from the salad bar, too. I have been accused of putting carrots next to my dessert so the carrots can soak up the calories from the dessert, then throwing the carrots away, but there is no truth to this rumor. I eat the carrots, too.

What did you find most surprising when you first got on board the ship?

My stateroom is so much nicer than I expected. I can sit up in my bunk and there’s even carpet on the floor.

What has surprised you since?

Pretty much everything. The crew in the galley yells “brown tray” if you use one of the brown trays. (Don’t use one of the brown trays.) A Laysan albatross and a bald eagle have about the same wingspan. The ramp they put out so we can walk down to the ice is really freaking steep. The perfect instrument for moving krill is a Chinese soup spoon. Breaking ice slows the ship way down and is an inefficient use of engine power, so a lot of what you do when you drive an icebreaker is find ways to avoid breaking ice.

How do you spend your days?

I really like to nap. Oh, and work! Work. I’m working with Chris Linder, a fabulous photographer who has a grant to do a series of expeditions like this one, where he takes a writer and they report on a polar research project. Usually sometime in the morning we meet up, chat about what’s going on around the ship, and decide what story we want to do that day. Then we go report the story. He takes pictures and I take notes. After dinner we pick the eight pictures that will be on the web site the next day, then I write an introduction and eight captions. We have some ideas stockpiled – one of these days we’re going to do a story about how the ship moves, from the steering on the bridge to the propeller shafts and rudders in the back of the ship. I do take a lot of naps – being on the ship is sort of exhausting – but I also hate to miss anything, because I only have these six weeks to have this amazing experience. I could watch sea ice all day.

What kinds of animals have you seen?

Ooh! Today I saw my first ever albatross! It was a Laysan albatross. Two of them hung around the ship for a while. I was also excited to see snow buntings and McKay’s buntings in recent days, and to learn to tell a glaucous gull and a glaucous-winged gull apart. I’ve seen a ton of bearded seals and spotted seals, many with their babies. They give birth on sea ice, and some of the pups are so new you can see blood on the ice – once I even saw two gulls snacking on the afterbirth. I know, ew. On the fourth day of the cruise we passed a ginormous conglomeration of walruses – hundreds and hundreds. The bird surveyors on board, who also keep track of mammals, said they hadn’t seen a group like that in years. We’ve seen other walruses since then, but never more than a few at a time.

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The American Association of Physics Teachers placed signs, like this one explaining torque, throughout the park.

After mentioning the Six Flags America Roller Coaster Design Contest earlier this month, I received an invitation to Physics Day at the amusement park. I had to convince my boss I didn’t intend to ride roller coasters all day (unlikely, since I get queasy riding backwards on the Metro), but then I was off to the park on a sunny, warm Friday morning last week.

A couple thousand high school (and a few middle school) students were at the park that day. Their teachers had been provided with an extensive workbook of activities for the kids—such as calculating the acceleration of the bus on their way to the park, determining angles of flight on the Flying Carousel and calculating the power used to take students to the top of the Tower of Doom. Of course, there were plenty of roller-coaster related activities as well. And there were even instructions on how to make a force meter (and, importantly, how to understand it).

In the park, college students from the Society of Physics Students and employees of the American Physical Society were on hand for demonstrations of physics concepts, such as wave motion, conservation of energy and gravity. I learned how to make a simple motor with a battery, nail, neodymium magnet and wire.

Two students in blue vests housing accelerometers ride in the front of Superman: Ride of Steel.

But the seven roller coasters and other rides were the real fun. Students could wear a vest with an accelerometer that would track how fast they were moving in three axes (x, y and z; side-to-side, up and down, and forwards and backwards). Once they got off the ride, the data would be downloaded onto laptops and a program called Data Studio that would graph their ride. I had seen similar graphs before (they’re a staple when designing rides in Roller Coaster Tycoon, once one of my favorite computer games), but I was a little surprised that the graphs were messier than the ones from the computer game. I shouldn’t have been though; reality is always more complicated than a simulation.

Joker’s Jinx, the only induction coaster at Six Flags America.

My favorite geeky moment of the morning, though, was the explanation I received of the Joker’s Jinx roller coaster, the only induction coaster at Six Flags America. I was enjoying the coaster from a purely aesthetic viewpoint—the green and purple coloring was striking, and the cars made a lovely wooshing sound unlike any of the others. Becky Thompson-Flagg, of the American Physical Society, explained to me that the other roller coasters slowly take the cars to the top of a large hill and then rely on gravity for the acceleration that will move the cars through the remaining hills and loops. An induction coaster, however, uses magnets and electricity for acceleration. (An in-depth explanation of linear motors as used in roller coasters can be found here.) Gravity obviously still plays a role, but the main advantage, as I see it, is that there is no long waiting period at the beginning of the ride. Shortly after you move away from the entrance, you’re propelled upward at high speed by the linear motor.

Six Flags America will host a Math and Science Day in May. And while some students will get nothing more out of these days than a bit of fun on the rides, I hope that at least a few will take advantage of the fun to be had in the acts of doing science and maybe get inspired to continue this as they grow up.

One of the six natural lakes of Band-e-amir (Credit: Alex Dehgan/WCS)

Afghanistan got its first national park this week—Band-e-Amir, which will protect a series of six turquoise lakes separated by natural travertine dams. The area is in the eastern part of the country, near the Bamiyan Valley where the Taliban destroyed the 1,500-year-old Buddha statues. Band-e-Amir had once been a popular spot for tourists, but tourism almost entirely stopped from 1979 to 2001 because of war. But now thousands of Afghans, religious pilgrims and foreigners living and working in the country visit the region. War has taken a toll, though; visitors are warned to not wander off paths due to land mines. And much of the wildlife has been lost—hunting killed off the snow leopards, for example, by the 1980s. However, there are still ibex, urial (a type of sheep), wolves, foxes and the Afghan snow finch, which is believed to be the only bird found exclusively in the country.

Zebra at the edge of Masai Mara National Reserve (Credit: ILRI)

Even if you don’t recognize the name of Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, you will be familiar with it from the thousands of photos and plentiful video showing the sweeping landscapes and well-known creatures—including lions, wildebeests, giraffes and hyenas. Now comes news, in a study in the Journal of Zoology, that there are far fewer of some of those animals than just 15 years ago.

Scientists rigorously monitored seven ungulate (hoofed) species—giraffes, hartebeest, impala, warthogs, topis, waterbuck and zebras—between 1989 and 2003. Abundance of all the species except for zebras “declined markedly and persistently throughout the reserve during this period,” the scientists write.

What happened?

The Maasai people have traditionally been semi-nomadic herders, and a lifestyle in which they rarely consumed wild animals let them coexist with the Mara’s wildlife. However, in recent decades many of the Maasai have established more permanent settlements on the edge of the reserve, creating ranchland and cultivating crops. People sometimes allow their livestock to graze in the reserve itself, though it is illegal. There the domesticated animals displace the wildlife and degrade the land. In addition, land cultivation has resulted in less habitat for wild animals. And poaching, mostly by poor subsistence farmers, has also taken a toll.

The researchers warn that settlements near the reserve are expanding faster than ones farther away and that this will bring more conflict between the people and wildlife.

1. Plant a garden.
2. Plant a tree.
3. Plant native plants.
4. Plant a meadow instead of a lawn.
5. Compost.
6. Mulch.
7. Water in the morning.
8. Use drip irrigation.
9. Use a water timer.
10. Use grey water.
11. Don’t use pesticides.
12. Use an electric mower.
13. Use a push mower.
14. Keep your car’s tires inflated.
15. Tune up your engine.
16. Clean out your car.
17. Drive less.
18. Drive the speed limit.
19. Carpool.
20. Take the subway.
21. Take the bus.
22. Ride a bike.
23. Walk.

More Earth Day tips for your home, your laundry, your kitchen and your computer — after the jump.

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The Last Page column (our funny page) in Smithsonian’s May issue is dedicated to people who missed the cut for Macarthur “Genius” Grants. An example:

STAN LINDBERG — EXPERIMENTAL CHEMIST
Forging new frontiers in chemistry as he seeks to be the first man to consume every single element of the periodic table. In addition to holding the North American record for mercury poisoning, his gonzo account of a three-week ytterbium bender in the December 2001 issue of Science (“Fear and Loathing in the Lanthanides”) has become a minor classic.

This got me wondering: Just what is ytterbium anyway?

Ytterbium (chemical symbol Yb, atomic number 70) is a soft, silvery white metal found in minerals such as gadolinite, monazite and xenotime. It is a rare earth element and as the Science article indicates, a member of the lanthanides on the periodic table.

The element is one of three (three!) named after the Swedish town of Ytterby, which the guys from the Periodic Table of Videos visited in their recently updated video about ytterbium: