Trilobites: Sea Turtles Use Magnetic Fields to Find Their Birthplace Beach

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Sea Turtles Use Magnetic Fields to Find Their Birthplace Beach Photo Loggerhead turtles are known to use the earth’s magnetic fields to nest on Florida’s Gulf beaches within about 40 to 50 miles of where they were born decades earlier. Credit J. Roger Brothers/UNC-Chapel Hill Sea turtles use the earth’s magnetic fields to navigate back to the area where they were born decades earlier, according to a new study that used loggerhead genetics to investigate their travels.
After swimming for years in a giant loop from nesting grounds in North Carolina and Florida to North Africa, the turtles find their way back to nest on beaches within about 40 to 50 miles of where they were born. The new study suggests that the turtles learned their home beach’s distinctive magnetic signature, through what is called geomagnetic imprinting.
“This is vital information if you want to restore sea turtles to areas where they once lived before being hunted to extinction,” said Kenneth Lohmann, a professor at th..

The Saturday Profile: In Homogeneous Japan, an African-Born University President

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In Homogeneous Japan, an African-Born University President Photo Oussouby Sacko, the new, Mali-born president of Kyoto Seika University, at his inauguration party this month. Credit Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times KYOTO, Japan — On a beautiful spring Sunday during cherry blossom season, the new president of Kyoto Seika University welcomed students for the start of the Japanese school year. “You have left your home,” he told the 770 first-year and graduate students gathered in a gym on the hilly campus. “But this is also your home.”
In Bamanankan — the lingua franca of his native Mali.
And so Oussouby Sacko, 51, quickly dispensed with the elephant in the room: He is a black man in a homogeneous country that has long had an ambivalent relationship with outsiders.
Dr. Sacko, who is believed to be the first African-born president of a Japanese university, segued elegantly into fluent Japanese, invoking Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté..