When it comes to hostile environments, few places can match Chile’s Atacama Desert. It’s one of the most arid places on the planet, moistened by just half an inch of rain a year. So no one thought the region’s 20,000-foot-tall Socompa volcano could sustain much life. In fact, its oxygen-starved atmosphere and intense ultraviolet radiation suggest conditions on Mars.

Recently, though, microbial ecologist Steven Schmidt, a National Geographic grantee, and his team discovered the world’s highest altitude bacteria near the volcano’s summit. It’s not clear how the microbes grow in such inhospitable terrain. But for scientists seeking life signs on Mars, they’re cause for hope. Here on Earth, the bacteria may hold biotechnological promise‚ perhaps providing building blocks for sunscreen compounds. After all, Schmidt says, they “have an amazing ability to resist the sun.”  —Hannah Bloch 

A 64-year-old Duluth woman fell on the ice last December. Arthritis kept her from getting up. She lay in the snow for hours. Her temperature dipped to 70°F. Her heart stopped. She should have been a goner. But doctors revived her; today she is fine. Medical science is always learning more about how much a body can take. Yet as Duke University physician Claude Piantadosi notes, “At some point it’s impossible to rescue yourself.” —Shelley Sperry

• Take a quiz to test your knowledge of human endurance.

Art: Jason Lee

I'm used to folding laundry and bills. But when I was working on "Fold Everything," a short article about innovative uses of origami, my fingers began itching to try the ancient art of paper folding.

After all, there are people creating not only fantastic paper animal sculptures but using the mathematical principles of origami to build foldable telescope lenses and heart stents and to better understand how proteins fold. Origami for art’s sake has also come a long way. The father of 20th century origami, Akira Yoshizawa (1911-2005), created more than 50,000 unique figures. The most modern folders have something Mr. Yoshizawa didn’t: mathematical principals and computer programs that help them transform flat into functional, or just plain phenomenal.

Most folks know the cheetah’s 
top speed of 70 mph makes it the fastest land animal. But what’s the runner-up? Turns out it’s the pronghorn. The deerlike mammal cruises at 35 mph and can hit 50. Its velocity is thought to have been a defense against cheetahs that lived in North America eons ago. Often overlooked, number twos can show how close the race is—or how far ahead a number one really is. ­—Melody Kramer

Second tallest animal
African elephant (#1: Giraffe)
The heaviest land mammal is the second tallest. Males grow to about 12 feet, females hit 9 feet. But at 15 to 19 feet tall, a grown giraffe could eat beans off an elephant’s head.

Something was messing with Texas in May 2008. A dip in Daisetta, a tiny town near Houston, became a hole the size of two football fields, sucking trucks, trees, and buildings into its 250-foot-deep maw. Residents were shaken; scientists were left shaking their heads. “This exceeds anything I’ve seen or read about,” says the U.S. Geological Survey’s Mark Kasmarek. 

Improving science understanding in America is the goal of many insitututions, scientists, educators, and media organizations. A new study shows there is much room for improvement. Shown here is a NASA outreach effort at Moses Lake in Washington. NASA/Sean Smith/Courtesy nasaimages.org.

The sorry state of science understanding in America is not news. Many good minds are grappling with the problem of how to improve the situation. Much of the discussion concerns the relationship of scientists, the public, and media. A recent publication, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, lays out some ideas about the problem and how to fix it. Yet, judging from  Jerry Coyne’s stinging review of the book in the August 7, 2009 issue of Nature, we are still a long way from consensus. Here, guest blogger Christina Elson speaks out on the topic from a scientist’s perspective. —Chris Sloan

Vanilla is definitely not plain. In fact, it's full of surprises. For instance, says economic botanist Pesach Lubinsky, a wild vanilla orchid flower "actually smells like cinnamon." Then there’s pollination. Only one Central American bee is thought to do it; everywhere else people move the pollen by hand.

It illuminated the Titanic, discovered hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, even located a lost hydrogen bomb. Now Alvin is ready for a new adventure: a major makeover. After 45 years and 4,500 dives, America’s hardest working, deepest descending submersible is slated for its biggest overhaul since 1973. According to Anthony Tarantino of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which operates the Navy-owned vessel, the upgrades will occur in two phases over several years, as funding permits. Those changes (left) will let the nimble, small-truck-size sub, which transports a pilot and two scientists, do more things better—like dive four miles instead of 2.8, and survey 99 percent of the ocean bottom versus 63. So don’t think of it as a midlife crisis; consider it Alvin 2.0, retrofitted for 21st-century exploration. —Jeremy Berlin

Click illustration to enlarge.

Art: Don Foley. Photograph by Dan Fornari, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Just to be clear, this blog post does not endorse the movie Bruno. In fact, this photo depicts a beloved (and now stufffed) German bear named Bruno so no one will think that we are in Bruno's camp—not that there's anything wrong with that.

Love him or loathe him, provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation arrives in American theaters this weekend with the subtlety of a (sequined) anvil tossed to the (well-coiffed) head. I found the movie to be utterly tasteless, offensive, vulgar, and completely cringe-inducing. Needless to say, I loved it. And as a National Geographic employee, I would be remiss to send those who wish/dare to see this film into it without a short geographic and cultural glossary. After the jump, we offer terms that highlight some of the film's finer/horrifying moments. 

Click illustration to enlarge.

“Listen carefully to the patients, and they’ll tell you the diagnosis,” a medical maxim advises. But what if the patient’s been dead for a millennium? 

After Israel invaded Gaza last winter, protests sprang up in Europe. Firebombs and tear gas were part of the mix—though not in Sweden, thanks to a new kind of crowd control.

 
Corn is now a genetically modified king, along with soybeans and cotton. Over the past ten years, crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or resist pests have become a good chunk of the market. The edible products go mainly for animal feed. Environmentalists have warned that genes could leak from modified crops and create superweeds. So far, that has not happened.

Most of the cropland is in the Americas, where the public is relatively accepting of genetic modification. China may soon OK its first modified rice, which could become the largest GM crop for human consumption—and could cross borders illegally. Even without government approval, farmers eager for the GM edge have obtained seeds. “In 30 years,” says food policy expert Robert Paarlberg, “GM crops will be pervasive.” —Jim Giles

Some birds that look very different— say, bright hummingbirds and drab nightjars—are long-lost kin. Some never considered together, like songbirds and parrots, are really close relatives. Others that act similarly, such as falcons and other birds of prey, may be genetically unrelated. 

We are getting closer to the point where we may have to employ emergency engineering solutions to cool the planet, according to panelists at a geoengineering session during last week's Aspen Environment Forum.

The economic climate is right for redefining the automobile industry, Elizabeth Lowery, vice president for environment, energy, and safety policy at General Motors said last week at the Aspen Environment Forum.

Electric cars are the short-term solution to wean the world off of gas and oil and in return reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that are driving climate change, according to a panel at the Forum on the future of transportation.

Just six days into the job, Jane Lubchenco, the new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tells National Geographic "there is a great urgency in addressing [ocean] acidification by reducing CO2 emissions."

"The decisions that individuals make every day add up to affect our global climate," Lubchenco added. "The changes we are seeing now are influenced by our energy choices and uses over the last couple hundred years."

Oceans serve as a carbon sink, absorbing about a third of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The additional CO2 changes the chemical composition and lowers the pH of the seas. Acidic waters can prevent some marine life from producing calcium carbonate needed for shells and exoskeletons.

Lubchenco, a marine biologist and former Oregon State University professor, was at the Aspen Environment Forum in Colorado yesterday to talk about climate change politics and science.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson outlines her priorities and tells National Geographic that the EPA is back, ready to protect human health and the environment, despite the bumpy road ahead.

Jackson told a crowd of more than two hundred Aspen Environment Forum participants last night that EPA's top strategy for tackling climate change is to work with Congress on legislation, instead of focusing on amendments to the Clean Air Act that would allow regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.

The 2009 Aspen Environment Forum—focused on sustainable energy—kicks off today in Colorado.

Wal-Mart executives, green building experts, climate scientists, Economist and Washington Post reporters, and government officials from Mozambique, Panama, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among many others, will mingle among the mountains as they discuss climate change, energy extraction and use, innovation and technology, efficiency, and conservation.

Lawrence Weinstein doesn’t know how many jelly beans are in this jar, but he has a very good guess. And it’s higher than you might expect. Weinstein, who teaches estimation at Virginia’s Old Dominion University, has a knack for solving problems with little data. His secret is more method than magic: Break questions into pieces, approximate, and use metric units for easier math.

Have you made plans for Pi Day? Do you even know what Pi Day is? 

As the name implies, it’s a day to celebrate 3.14. The Exploratorium, a San Francisco museum, hosts an annual homage to the number that never knows when to stop. In fact, the museum claims to have invented this celebration 21 years ago. It has since spread across the country (among mathletes, at least).

We spoke to Larry Shaw, technical curator emeritus, who takes partial credit (or blame) for Pi Day’s conception.

I once met a hunter in British Columbia who could read a trapline as if it were a novel. Where others saw merely trees, scrub, and earth, he could interpret the wanderings of foxes, deer, and lynx. He was a man who did more than look. He could see.

Alfred Russel Wallace, the almost Darwin, was such a man. Without benefit of formal education, Wallace, a young English field biologist and collector of exotic species, described a theory of evolution that paralleled one Darwin had developed but hadn’t yet published. What lifted Wallace from the realm of the ordinary, points out David Quammen in this month’s story, was his extraordinary capacity to observe, a skill honed in his early days as a land surveyor, during long walks across the Welsh moors. It helped that Wallace, on his monumental expedition to the Malay Archipelago, collected specimens in multiples. One might construct a sentence from one golden birdwing butterfly. Given 50 golden birdwings, Wallace could construct a story. Another naturalist might not note ever-so-slight variations in size, color, and pattern. Wallace did. He not only saw, he meticulously recorded his findings, then connected the dots. Of such stuff is great science made.

“Learn to see,” said the eminent 19th-century physician William Osler. Before the advent of sophisticated medical imaging like MRIs, Osler could diagnose a complicated disease simply by noting subtle signs visible to the eye. To be able to see, not merely look, is the foundation of discovery.

Photo: Robert Clark; photographed at Sophia M. Sachs
Butterfly House, Missouri Botanical Garden

My father and I are saying goodbye at a small airport in southern Africa. He and close friends of his have joined me in one of my favorite places, Botswana's Okavango Delta. We've always been close, but for some reason he seems especially emotional as I put him on the plane. Tears well in his eyes as he says how much he loves me and hopes we'll see more of each other. I assure him that I'll be home soon. He smiles and climbs into the plane.

Immediately I call my mother and sister and tell them that something is not right. During our safari he became easily confused. He drifted off in conversations. He seemed disengaged. One evening as we talked, Dad—a world traveler and geography whiz—couldn't remember the name of the Swiss village he and my mother stayed in at least a dozen times.

My mother takes him to a neurologist for testing. The diagnosis is dementia, most likely Alzheimer's. Dad remains cheerful and positive. As often happens in these cases, my mother is the one who struggles with despair. Shortly thereafter, she is diagnosed with cancer. Six months later, she is gone.

My sister and I face the toughest decision of our lives: How to give our father the care he deserves? We find an excellent facility, three miles from my sister's home, that specializes in caring for those with dementia. At first he resists, then settles in. When I call, my father tells me he's buying a new yellow Mustang, and that he and my mother are driving over to visit this afternoon. It breaks my heart to hear his gentle voice making plans that will never happen, but then I think that if he is happy living in an imaginary world with his beloved wife, perhaps memory loss isn't such a bad thing. I accept his illness and cherish every moment with him.

Memory, perishable and enduring, is the brain's archive. It is a marvel of neuronic circuitry, as Joshua Foer explains in this month's cover story. Its loss can be cruel, but remember this: It is through memory that we hold on to those we love.

In the current issue of Nature you’ll find a much-awaited report on the bodies (as opposed to the heads) of the folks that lived at Dmanisi in Georgia (the former Soviet Republic) about two million years ago. The report was much-awaited because only the heads of four of the individuals discovered there have been thoroughly reported. That left many of us wondering what their bodies were like.

We knew their brains were small and early estimates of their height and weight showed they were small in body as well, but we didn’t have a good sense of their body proportions or skeletal details from the neck down. And the reason why we cared about their bodies so much was that a paradigm was about to be broken.