This week: We’re going to Lebanon for a story on threatened cedar trees. Then to Sweden and India to learn about a greenhouse pollutant that’s been making headlines lately – black carbon. This month seems to be one of astronomical discoveries – scientists have discovered a new magnetar. Also, Elsa is back from vacation and brings us news about birds and insect and tips on pouring Champagne. And we’re still talking online about volunteer computing projects in our Science Forum discussion. So please stop by with your comments and questions.

Saving Lebanon’s Legendary Cedars: Cedars have been an important part of life in Lebanon for at least 8,000 years, but they’re vanishing from the landscape. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on efforts to preserve Lebanon’s legendary cedar trees.
Report by: Ari Daniel Shapiro
See a slide show of Ari’s trip to see Lebanon’s Cedars.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• More on Urban Bird Songs: Some male songbirds sing higher-pitched tunes in the noisy city environment than in the quiet countryside. Researchers thought that the new pitch might help the songs to be heard over the urban racket. But two new studies suggest that high-pitched songs don’t help city birds very much after all.
  There are two new studies, here and here.
  Listen to our recent story about finch songs in Mexico city.
  More on urban birdsong from the BBC.
• Water Striders Coerce Females to Mate: Talk about pressuring a girl for sex! Male water striders (Gerris gracilicornis) climb on a female’s back and start tapping the water to draw in hungry predators. They don’t stop tapping until the female, under threat of death, consents to mate.
  The study.
  Here’s a video that shows what happens when the female doesn’t consent quickly enough.
  
• Romanians Make Butterfly DNA Library: Romania is now the first country to have barcoded its entire butterfly fauna–all 180 species. The project fits in with a global effort to generate DNA barcodes for every plant and animal. The barcodes provide an easy way to identify species for biodiversity monitoring, regulatory enforcement, and a host of other uses.
  The study.
  What is DNA barcoding?
  More about the international barcode of life project.
  Barcoding bushmeat.
• The Science of Pouring Champagne: Pouring Champagne straight into the bottom of the flute may look festive and fizzy, but it flattens the drink and could change its flavor. For a more sparkling toast, pour the bubbly down the side of the glass like beer. That’s the verdict of a new study, which shows that the traditional pour can rob Champagne of more than a quarter of its carbonation.
  The study.
  Here’s our previous story about Champagne bubbles (in which Elsa manages to spill alcohol all over her office).
  The chemistry of Champagne.
  More about Champagne bubbles.

Black Carbon from Cook Stoves: The leading pollutant blamed for climate change is carbon dioxide, but a new study says another form of carbon ranks a close second. So-called black carbon is a kind of soot produced by diesel engines, power plants, and the burning of wood. A major source of black carbon is cook stoves in the developing world, and scientists are now trying to clean those stoves up.
Report by: Rhitu Chatterjee
See a slide show of my pictures from rural India.
Controlling Soot Emissions Can Help Slow Climate Change, Wired
Black Carbon’s grey areas, by the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media.
Black carbon and atmospheric warming, a recent paper by V. Ramanathan.
More about Ramanathan’s latest black carbon studies.

New Magnetar Discovered: Scientists have discovered a rare magnetic star, or magnetar. It’s about 16,000 light years away in a star cluster called Westerlund 1, in the Ara constellation. Magnetars, a type of neutron star, form when stars collapse following a supernova explosion. This magnetar was formed from a star 40 times the size the Sun. Stars that big typically form black holes. The new discovery has led scientists to re-evaluate their theories about what happens to stars when they die.
Read more on the BBC’s website.
More about the new discovery here.

Fly through the Westerland 1 star cluster to see an artist’s illustration of the newly found magnetar. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada.
Scientists recently discovered another kind of neutron star last week – a pulsar. Check out that story in last week’s podcast.

[player] Download MP3

This week: How barbecue may have sparked human evolution.  Also: giant kangaroos, shrinking dinosaurs, and some old grain.

Catching Fire: Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham has written a new book called “Catching Fire.” In it, he argues that – more than anything else – what allowed our hominid ancestors to evolve into modern humans was the invention of cooking.

Wrangham has spent decades studying primates in Africa. He says cooking gave our ancestors access to a wider range of foods, helped their brains grow, and – because they no longer had to eat berries and leaves for six hours a day – gave them leisure time to develop tools and technologies.

Richard Wrangham

Wrangham also proposes other provocative ideas: how the explosion of modern, over-processed foods plays a key role in today’s obesity epidemic; and how cooking led to the subjugation of women. And Wrangham shares his own experiences eating raw meat and leaves like chimpanzees do.

Wrangham is also our guest in The World’s interactive science forum. Join us for a lively conversation. Ask questions, share your ideas, or just exchange your favorite zebra and gazelle recipes.

Guest: Prof. Richard Wrangham, Harvard University.

And….. Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories For the Week

More on prehistoric food:

Humans killed Australia’s giant kangaroos (illustration below). (The study.)
Dinosaurs were smaller than we thought. (The study.)
Earliest granary discovered in Jordan. (The study.)

Music:
Mashed Potatoes USA, by James Brown
Struttin’ With Some Barbecue, by Louis Armstrong

Hunting may have driven giant kangaroos (Procoptodon goliah) to extinction. Image courtesy of Gavin Prideaux, Flinders Univeresity.