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Mark Muckenfuss

Troops wait for President Barack Obama and first Lady Michelle Obama to arrive to speak to them, veterans and military families at theThird Infantry Division Headquarters, Friday, April 27, 2012, Fort Stewart, Ga. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Military becoming more selective on who serves

Last updated Monday, April 30, 2012 - 9:25am

Uncle Sam wants you. Then again, maybe he doesn't.

In the 1960s, it was not uncommon for young men who were in trouble with the law to be given the choice of jail or the military.

A high school education wasn't required to join the service.

These days, most of the young people walking into the Marine Corps recruiting office in San Bernardino, Calif., have some college education on their resumes, Staff Sgt. Osvaldo Hernandez said. Some have college degrees.

Military, National Read more Comments

Author sings the praises of the middle child

Mark Muckenfuss The Press-Enterprise

Last updated Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - 10:26am

Catherine Salmon may be the best friend a middle child ever had.

Salmon, 42, is a psychology professor at the University of Redlands in Redlands, Calif., and the author of "The Secret Power of Middle Children," a book about the traits exhibited by those who fall in the center of the sibling order.

Salmon, who grew up as her family's youngest child, said she wrote the book "to dispel the idea that middles are resentful and angry."

Being a middle child, she argues, can have great benefits in the areas of independence, stable relationships and job satisfaction.

Features, Books, Family Read more Comments

Marlene Zuk, world-class biologist at the University of California, Riverside, and author of several popular science books, has published a new book, "Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World." Zuk holds a cricket, which is among the insects mentioned in her book. (SHNS photo by Mark Zaleski / The Press-Enterprise)

Cricket sex nothing to chirp about, biologist learns

Mark Muckenfuss The Press-Enterprise

Last updated Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - 5:17pm

In 1991, when Marlene Zuk visited Hawaii, she did what every visitor to the islands wants to do.

"I said, 'I'll see if there are any crickets there that I can dissect for parasites,' " she said. "Doesn't everyone?"

Zuk, a biology professor at the University of California, Riverside, studies crickets along with some other animals. She recently published "Sex on Six Legs," her third book about the sex lives, and other interesting behaviors, of insects.

The book details intriguing elements of the bug world, such as how the genitals of male honeybees explode after they have sex, how mother earwigs care for and feed their young, and how a particular female wasp poisons the brain of a cockroach just enough so that she can use its antennae to steer it to her nest, where it becomes food for her brood.

Features, Biology, Insects Read more Comments

Quake scientists 'flying blind' as satellites go dark

Mark Muckenfuss, The Press-Enterprise

Last updated Friday, May 20, 2011 - 1:56pm

PASADENA, Calif. -- Before it happened, seismologists didn't believe the faults off of Sendai, Japan, were capable of generating anything much larger than a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. But the March 11 quake that spawned a disastrous tsunami measured 9.0.

Earthquake, Satellites, Science, National Read more Comments