Neil Tyson Named in Time Magazine's List of World's Best Tweeters

Wednesday, March 30 5:37 pm

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Photo: © Patrick Queen

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, was named one of the world’s 140 most influential tweeters by Time this week in the magazine’s list of individuals and companies whose Twitter feeds are “shaping the conversation,” from politicians and celebrities to businesses like Starbucks and JetBlue Airways.

Tyson, who tweets as @neiltyson and has 130,000 followers, was one of 10 tweeters recognized in the Health and Science category, which also includes institutions such as the New York Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, the British medical journal The Lancet, and writer Michael Pollan.

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Grandfather and Grandson Set Record for Sleepovers

Monday, March 28 4:20 pm

Gregory Cox and grandson Shane, 11, have camped out under the blue whale six times. Credit: © AMNH/C. Chesek

When Gregory Cox was a teenager attending the Food and Maritime Trades School in the 1960s, he sometimes took advantage of a midday switch from the East Side campus to the West Side to skip school and head to the American Museum of Natural History.

“I didn’t take the [school] bus, I took the subway,” he recalls over the phone from his home in Brooklyn. “They never caught me!”

Cox, who lives in Brooklyn, went on to a career in ship repair, like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him. Now retired and a Family-level Member, he loves sharing his longstanding affection for the Museum with his grandchildren, Shannon Concalves and Shane and Shamus Drucker of Staten Island.

Contrary to Cox’s playing hooky, Shane, who is 11, uses extra schoolwork as an excuse to get his grandfather to take him to the Museum. “Every time he has a school project, he has to go there to research it first,” Cox says. “He loves it.”

Moreover, since the Museum inaugurated its Night at the Museum Sleepover program four years ago, it is a matter of special pride for Cox that he and Shane have spent six nights camping out under the blue whale in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life.

“My grandson is bound and determined to have the record for most times,” Cox says.  So far, he has succeeded. “No one has come close,” says Leslie Martinez, who manages the program.

Cox is so keen on the sleepover experience that he carries around descriptions of the program he printed from the Museum’s website to hand out in doctors’ offices and elsewhere , encouraging others to experience the sleepovers for themselves. “I appreciate that he tells everyone about it,” says Martinez. “He’s a great support.”

At age 3, Cox’s youngest grandchild Shamus is still too young for a sleepover. Shannon, 16, was too old when the program began four years ago for kids 8 to 12 (the age range has since been expanded to 7 to 13), and although Cox says he saw her through an avid dinosaur phase when she was younger, she is now more likely to visit the Museum with a boyfriend. “She outgrew me,” he says, noting that, on the other hand, at Shane’s age “grandparents are everything.”

And even though Shane will outgrow the program in a few years, Cox still foresees many, many years of Museum visits and even sleepovers ahead. “By the time Shane outgrows me, I’ll have the little guy!” he says.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Winter issue of Rotunda, the magazine for Museum Members.

The next sleepover date is Saturday, April 16. For more details, visitamnh.org/sleepovers.

The World’s Largest Dinosaurs: Infographisaurus

Friday, March 25 9:46 am

Life as a 60-foot-long Mamenchisaurus was no small feat. Check out how an average human would size up next to one of these super-sized sauropods that once roamed the Earth and visit The World’s Largest Dinosaurs site for more details about the upcoming exhibition.

Click to Download the PDF

Podcast: Global Kitchen’s Smell (and Taste) the Roses

9:43 am

Our sense of smell and how we experience aromas are influenced by a number of factors. In this podcast from Adventures in the Global Kitchen, “Smell and Taste the Roses,” explore how the human brain processes sensory input, and how memory influences eating desires and habits.

Join the discussion with Howard McGee, author of “On Food and Cooking;” perfumer Mandy Aftel; and nueuroscientist Jay Gottfield of Northwestern University.

The next Global Kitchen event, “Rooftop Farming: The New Frontier,” takes place at the Museum on April 27, 2011. Learn more about this monthly series of talks and tastings.

Recorded at the Museum on February 21, 2011.

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (1 hour, 20 mins, 91 MB)

Using Museum’s CT Scanner, Researcher Makes Defensive Discovery

Wednesday, March 23 3:40 pm

This image of a Pseudocordylus subviridis highlights its tail armor. Image: © AMNH/E. Stanley

Edward Stanley, a doctoral candidate in comparative biology at the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School, made a surprising discovery using the Museum’s new state-of-the-art CT scanner: the presence of tiny osteoderms, or bony plates, along the legs of the craglizard Pseudocordylus subviridis. This particular lizard was thought to have such plates, which are believed to serve as protective armor, only on its head and tail.

A graduate of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland with a master’s degree from Villanova, Stanley is aiming to tease apart the evolutionary history of a family of African “girdled lizards” (Cordylidae). Osteoderms are embedded in the skin and not attached to the skeleton, exactly the kind of evidence that can be disturbed in dissection. Seeing these features in place using the CT scanner gives him a set of clearly defined characteristics for sorting out the relationships among species. This technique, says Stanley, “allows you to see traits and patterns that were simply not observable before.”

Girdled lizards are vulnerable to predators from the air and on the ground. It appears that the slower-moving the species, the more heavily they are armored, presumably protecting them from attacks by mongooses, snakes, and other land predators. The less-armored species seem to have evolved a quickness needed to evade dive-bombing birds. While it is too early to say for certain, Stanley’s research, which focuses on the correlation between amount of armor and speed, suggests that Pseudocordylus subviridis fits the latter category. Several members of this lizard family live high up in the mountains where avian predators are common, and this lightly armored form has evolved multiple times independently in these environments.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Winter issue of Rotunda, the magazine for Museum Members.