Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, a Swiss scientific illustrator, collected more than 16,000 insect specimens near nuclear plants and waste sites around the world. Her watercolor paintings record a variety of malformations. |
SCIENCE IN PICTURES
A wing and an error
Swiss illustrator's research indicates bugs may be harmed by nuclear radiation
By Scott LaFee
STAFF WRITER
On the afternoon of April 26, 1986, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger was painting mutated laboratory flies, part of her job as a scientific illustrator at the Natural History Museum in Zurich, when the news drifted in: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, had experienced a catastrophic meltdown.
Space exploration takes a big cyberstep
By Steve Lohr
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The skies may be the next frontier in travel, yet not even the wealthiest space tourist can zoom out to, say, the Crab Nebula, the Trapezium Cluster or Eta Carinae, a star 100 times more massive than the sun and 7,500 light-years away.
Pesticide exposure: Penguins
Decades after most countries stopped using DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are dripping out of melting Antarctic glaciers – and into penguins, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science researcher says.
