A New Wildlife Magazine for Younger Children

After 50 years of guiding children through wildlife and ecology on his own, Ranger Rick is getting a helping hand in the form of a younger sibling.

National Wildlife Federation, via PR Newswire

Ranger Rick Jr. magazine features photos of wildlife.

National Wildlife Federation, via PR Newswire

Ranger Rick Jr. Appventures is a storybook app for the iPad.

The National Wildlife Federation, the publisher of the Ranger Rick magazine, which is intended for children ages 7 to 12, is starting a counterpart for younger readers. The new magazine, called Ranger Rick Jr., will feature Ricky Raccoon, who will serve as a mascot for children ages 4 to 7.

As interest in ecology has grown, the editors at the wildlife federation said now was a good time to engage beginning readers who are curious about animals.

"We are reaching out to them with content they want to know," said Lori Collins, the editor of Ranger Rick Jr. "It's not like this is an easier version of the content. It's totally different content."

The magazine will feature age-appropriate facts and photography about wildlife around the world and include activities intended to inspire children to explore wildlife in their own neighborhoods.

Unlike Ranger Rick, who serves as an educator, Ricky is more eager and curious, Ms. Collins said. "Ricky is just as amazed and awed by these animals as our readers are," she said.

The first issue of Ranger Rick Jr. came out Nov. 15. As with its sister publication, it will be published 10 times a year and will be free of advertising. Newsstand price is $3.99, and annual subscriptions are $19.95.

Circulation for Ranger Rick is about 400,000, said Mary Dalheim, editorial director for children's publications at the National Wildlife Federation, and she expects a similar circulation for Ranger Rick Jr.

Of course, children have grown smarter about technology, and Ranger Rick has kept pace. His publication, already available in digital form, has been repurposed as an iPad magazine app that takes children on an interactive tour of his virtual treehouse.

"We tested this magazine with kids, and they loved the idea of exploring these rooms," Ms. Dalheim said. "This delighted them to wonder what's behind the doors and exploring new content."

The magazine app will include stories, activities and videos curated by the magazine editors and produced by FableVision Studios. Starting with the first issue on Wednesday, it will be published five times a year for $4.99 each or $19.99 for an annual subscription.

Younger readers will get their own iPad app called Ranger Rick Jr. Appventures. To emphasize the difference, Ms. Collins said, Appventures will be a digital storybook that will focus on a single animal each time. The first one, which was released in November, visits lions in the grasslands of Africa. The app takes advantage of the iPad's technology by using the internal gyroscope, for instance, to offer panoramic views of the African plains.

The app, which costs $4.99, was developed in partnership with Moonbot Studios, the studio behind the animated short "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," which won an Academy Award this year.

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Carbon Dioxide Emissions Hit Record in 2011, Researchers Say

Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported Sunday — the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing.

Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project.

Josep G. Canadell, a scientist in Australia who leads that tracking program, said Sunday in a statement that salvaging the goal, if it can be done at all, "requires an immediate, large and sustained global mitigation effort."

Yet nations around the world, despite a formal treaty pledging to limit warming — and 20 years of negotiations aimed at putting it into effect — have shown little appetite for the kinds of controls required to accomplish those stated aims.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations are meeting in Doha, Qatar, for the latest round of talks under the treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Their agenda is modest this year, with no new emissions targets and little progress expected on a protocol that is supposed to be concluded in 2015 and take effect in 2020.

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the climate convention, said the global negotiations were necessary, but were not sufficient.

"We won't get an international agreement until enough domestic legislation and action are in place to begin to have an effect," she said in an interview. "Governments have to find ways in which action on the ground can be accelerated and taken to a higher level, because that is absolutely needed."

The new figures show that emissions are falling, slowly, in some of the most advanced countries, including the United States. That apparently reflects a combination of economic weakness, the transfer of some manufacturing to developing countries and conscious efforts to limit emissions, like the renewable power targets that many American states have set. The boom in the natural gas supply from hydraulic fracturing is also a factor, since natural gas is supplanting coal at many power stations, leading to lower emissions.

But the decline of emissions in the developed countries is more than matched by continued growth in developing countries like China and India, the new figures show. Coal, the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is growing fastest, with coal-related emissions leaping more than 5 percent in 2011, compared with the previous year.

"If we're going to run the world on coal, we're in deep trouble," said Gregg H. Marland, a scientist at Appalachian State University who has tracked emissions for decades.

Over all, global emissions jumped 3 percent in 2011 and are expected to jump 2.6 percent in 2012, researchers reported in two papers released by scientific journals on Sunday. It has become routine to set new emissions records each year, although the global economic crisis led to a brief decline in 2009.

The level of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, has increased about 41 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and scientists fear it could double or triple before emissions are brought under control. The temperature of the planet has already increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850.

Further increases in carbon dioxide are likely to have a profound effect on climate, scientists say, leading to higher seas and greater coastal flooding, more intense weather disasters like droughts and heat waves, and an extreme acidification of the ocean. Many experts believe the effects are already being seen, but they are projected to worsen.

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Study Bolsters Link Between Routine Hits to Head and Long-Term Brain Disease

The growing evidence of a link between head trauma and long-term, degenerative brain disease was amplified in an extensive study of athletes, military veterans and others who absorbed repeated hits to the head, according to new findings published in the scientific journal Brain.

The study, which included brain samples taken posthumously from 85 people who had histories of repeated mild traumatic brain injury, added to the mounting body of research revealing the possible consequences of routine hits to the head in sports like football and hockey. The possibility that such mild head trauma could result in long-term cognitive impairment has come to vex sports officials, team doctors, athletes and parents in recent years.

Of the group of 85 people, 80 percent (68 men) — nearly all of whom played sports — showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative and incurable disease whose symptoms can include memory loss, depression and dementia.

Among the group found to have C.T.E., 50 were football players, including 33 who played in the N.F.L. Among them were stars like Dave Duerson, Cookie Gilchrist and John Mackey. Many of the players were linemen and running backs, positions that tend to have more contact with opponents.

Six high school football players, nine college football players, seven pro boxers and four N.H.L. players, including Derek Boogaard, the former hockey enforcer who died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and painkillers, also showed signs of C.T.E. The study also included 21 veterans, most of whom were also athletes, who showed signs of C.T.E.

The study was conducted by investigators at the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy and the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, in collaboration with the Sports Legacy Institute. It took four years to complete, included subjects 17 to 98 years old, and more than doubled the number of documented cases of C.T.E. The investigators also created a four-tiered system to classify degrees of C.T.E., hoping it would help doctors treat patients.

The volume of cases in the study "allows us to see the disease at all stages of severity and how it starts and spreads in the brain, which gives us an idea of the mechanism of the injury," said Ann McKee, the main author of the study, who is a professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University School of Medicine and works at the V.A. Boston.

Those categorized as having Stage 1 of the disease had headaches and loss of attention and concentration, while those with Stage 2 also had depression, explosive behavior and short-term memory loss. Those with Stage 3 of C.T.E., including Duerson, a former All-Pro defensive back for the Chicago Bears who killed himself last year, had cognitive impairment and trouble with executive functions like planning and organizing. Those with Stage 4 had dementia, difficulty finding words and aggression.

Despite the breadth of the findings, the study, like others before it, did not prove definitively that head injuries sustained on the field caused C.T.E. To do that, doctors would need to identify the disease in living patients by using imaging equipment, blood tests or other techniques. Researchers have not been able to determine why some athletes who performed in the same conditions did not develop C.T.E.

The study also did not demonstrate what percentage of professional football players were likely to develop C.T.E. To do that, investigators would need to study the brains of players who do not develop C.T.E., and those are difficult to acquire because families of former players who do not exhibit symptoms are less likely to donate their brains to science.

"It's a gambler's game to try to predict what percentage of the population has this," said Chris Nowinski, a co-author of the study and a co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine. "Many of the families donated the brains of their loved ones because they were symptomatic. Still, this is probably more widespread than we think."

Researchers expected the details in the study to dispel doubts about the likelihood that many years of head trauma can lead to C.T.E. The growing connections between head trauma and contact sports, though, have led some nervous parents and coaches to assume that any concussion could lead to long-term impairment. Some doctors say that oversimplifies matters. Rather, the total amount of head trauma, including smaller subconcussive hits, as well as how they were treated, must be considered when evaluating whether an athlete is more at risk of developing a disease like C.T.E.

"All concussions are not created equal," said Robert Cantu, a co-author of the study and a co-director of the encephalopathy center. "Parents have become paranoid about concussions and connecting the dots with C.T.E., and that's wrong. The dots are really about total head trauma."

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Supreme Court Takes Up Question of Gene Research

The case the court added to its docket concerns patents held by Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, on genes that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.

The patents were challenged by scientists and doctors who said that their research and ability to help patients had been frustrated. "Myriad and other gene patent holders have gained the right to exclude the rest of the scientific community from examining the naturally occurring genes of every person in the United States," the plaintiffs told the Supreme Court in their petition seeking review. They added that the patents "prevent patients from examining their own genetic information" and "made it impossible to obtain second opinions."

The legal question for the justices is whether isolated genes are "products of nature" that may not be patented or "human-made inventions" eligible for patent protection.

A divided three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in Washington ruled for the company. Each judge issued an opinion, and a central dispute was whether isolated genes are sufficiently different from ones in the body to allow them to be patented.

"The isolated DNA molecules before us are not found in nature," wrote Judge Alan D. Lourie, who was in the majority. "They are obtained in the laboratory and are man-made, the product of human ingenuity."

The company urged the justices not to hear the case, saying that the "isolated molecules" at issue "were created by humans, do not occur in nature and have new and significant utilities not found in nature." It has long been settled, the company's brief went on, that "the human ingenuity required to create isolated DNA molecules" is worthy of encouragement and that its fruits are worthy of protection.

The plaintiffs in the case, Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, No. 12-398, were supported by friend-of-the-court briefs filed by the American Medical Association, AARP and women's health groups.

The justices were also scheduled to consider on Friday 10 closely watched appeals in cases concerning same-sex marriage, but they gave no indications about which ones, if any, they will hear. It is not unusual for the justices to discuss petitions seeking their attention more than once, particularly when the cases present complex and overlapping issues.

The court is widely expected to agree to hear one or more cases on the constitutionality of the part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that forbids the federal government from providing benefits to same-sex couples married in states that allow such unions.

The court has also been asked to hear cases about Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California, and an Arizona measure that withdrew state benefits from both gay and straight domestic partners.

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Solar Industry Borrows a Page, and a Party, From Tupperware

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Toni Bouchard, a vice president of SmartPower, right, outside Pat Peaper's home in Goodyear. Ms. Peaper, second from left, held a social event to promote solar panels to her neighbors.

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — The neighbors had gathered on the patio of a sun-baked ranch here, eager to hear the party's hosts talk about their products and how they could enhance their lives. But in place of the timeworn arrangement of plastic storage containers or cosmetics on the coffee table, the couple was showing off an array of a different sort: the 32 solar panels on the roof.

"It's just wonderful, the savings that we've had on our bills," Pat Peaper, one of the hosts, told the crowd as it sipped iced tea and lemonade and picked at cookies and crudités.

"We have a neighbor next door," her husband, Jim, added, "who's averaging $350 a month" in energy bills without solar. "If they put it in, they can certainly cut that, probably by two-thirds."

Environmentalists, government officials and sales representatives have been trying to get Americans to go solar for decades, with limited success. Despite the long push, solar power still represents less than 1 percent of electricity generated in the United States. Home solar panel setups, which typically run $25,000 or more, are considered by many consumers to be the province of the rich or idealistic.

So now solar companies are adhering to a path blazed by Tupperware decades ago, figuring that the best sales people are often enthusiastic customers willing to share their experiences with friends and neighbors — and perhaps earn a referral fee on any sales that result.

In Arizona, a nonprofit marketing company called SmartPower has had surprising success building networks of neighbors who install solar in their homes and then spread the gospel at promotional gatherings like the Peapers' party.

Solar companies, like SunWize Technologies and SolarCity, are running party-plan programs of their own, which makes it easier and cheaper for them to find new customers.

The effectiveness of such marketing is apparent in Pebble Creek, the gated community for older adults where the Peapers live. About 10 percent of the roughly 6,000 homes in the community, which is just west of Phoenix, have installed solar arrays, and more are about to sign up.

"You might or might not believe the salesperson," said Ted Lindhorn, a guest at the Peapers' September party who was considering a purchase. "But if it's a friend or a neighbor that has nothing to gain for it, you're going to believe them."

In many cases, those friends and neighbors do have something to gain: they can earn bonuses for steering customers to installation companies. SolarCity offers $400 for each residential referral, while a local Arizona outfit called SolarParty.org advertises paying $250.

For SmartPower, which gets the bulk of its income from foundation grants and government and utility contracts, the parties are part of its effort to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. After a pilot program in Connecticut, the group challenged 13 Arizona towns in 2011 to install solar on 5 percent of owner-occupied homes by 2015. A town reaching that goal gets a sign designating it an "Arizona Solar Community," a reward meant to encourage both communal spirit and extramural competition.

The group, under the direction of its vice president, Toni Bouchard, created a Web site and hired solar coaches, local experts who can advise customers on which installation companies they can use and what kinds of rate plans would maximize their savings. The coaches also help recruit solar ambassadors like the Peapers: ordinary residents who have solar and are willing to organize parties to encourage their friends and neighbors to do so as well.

Almost half the towns have already exceeded the 5 percent solar goal, with Goodyear and three others passing 10 percent. SmartPower is now expanding its program in New England.

"On-the-ground outreach tied to the online communication is really what's making the difference here," said Brian F. Keane, president of SmartPower. "You need to meet people in the communities where they live, work and play."

The party-plan model has traditionally been aimed at women, selling products for the home, bedroom and body, from Botox injections to Longaberger baskets. But the solar parties are intended to sell big-ticket items and appeal to men as well.

Just as Tupperware failed to fly off store shelves without a salesperson showing customers how to work the airtight seal, which inspired the party-plan model, solar panels often require demonstration and explanation to make the sale.

"If you can talk to someone who's gone through it who has a positive view, then they could really alleviate some of the concerns," said Bryan Bollinger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University who has studied patterns of solar adoption.

Mr. Bollinger found that people were more likely to install solar once their neighbors had. He said it was not clear what was behind that phenomenon, known as the peer effect, but it could be the combination of a conspicuous way of being green with the momentum of word-of-mouth.

That dynamic has been particularly strong in Pebble Creek, which has an active online network where residents offer referrals and advice.

"People here are real big on references," said Joe Wallace, one of the Peapers' guests, who said that he and his wife had thought about installing solar for a long time but decided to take the plunge only after learning more from their neighbors.

Dru Bacon, a former Solar Coach who lives in Pebble Creek and has been a driving force behind solar adoption there, said that while the promised savings on electricity had spurred many customers to install solar, that was not all that motivated them.

"I've had at least 10 people say, 'I have the biggest solar system in the community,' " he said. "They don't say, 'I have the lowest electric bill.' "

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David Schwendeman, Museum Taxidermist, Dies at 87

A bald eagle, its wings spanning more than six feet, swoops toward an Alaskan riverbank, its talons spread to grasp a salmon. A steel rod, concealed by one of the eagle's long flight feathers, is connected to the exhibit case in the Hall of North American Birds at the American Museum of Natural History, seeming to suspend the specimen in midair.

In the Hall of North American Mammals, a sinuous mink, its fur a lustrous chestnut brown, is poised to pounce on a tree frog among the flora of what is presented as the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

Hundreds of the specimens that enthrall visitors at the museum, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — coyotes, geese, striped bass and snakes of all kinds — were captured in seemingly everlasting life by David Schwendeman.

Mr. Schwendeman, the last full-time taxidermist at the 143-year-old museum, died on Monday at the home in Milltown, N.J., where he had lived for all of his 87 years. His son, Bruce, confirmed his death.

Preferring the title principal preparer, Mr. Schwendeman considered taxidermy a scientific art form.

"He would say you might stuff your Thanksgiving turkey, but not an accurate rendering of an African elephant for display in a museum," said Steve Quinn, senior manager of exhibitions at the Museum of Natural History.

"He was an extraordinary artist, an expert sculptor," Mr. Quinn said. "He could pose animals accurately and scientifically, and at the same time make them aesthetically beautiful. He saw as his goal to inspire wonder and nurture concern for nature."

Mr. Schwendeman was the museum's chief taxidermist for 29 years, starting in 1959. By then, its vast halls of mammals — exhibiting elephants, antelopes, rhinos, deer, bear and moose, among many other creatures — had been assembled decades earlier. He focused on birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, particularly from North America.

There is, for example, his covey of quail (connected by fine rods) captured in midflight.

The proper term for what taxidermists do is "mount." But that hardly conveys their skills. The process includes making sketches, watercolor paintings and plaster masks to record details that could be lost as the specimen is skinned.

It involves carefully removing, scraping, boiling and bleaching the skeleton, then reassembling it with wires, metal rods or wooden reinforcements. Plaster molds and papier-mâché forms are sculptured to precisely replicate internal tissue, which is then fitted into the tanned and preserved skin in the pose to be depicted in the exhibition. Often, the taxidermist must apply paint or varnish for the finishing touches.

"You have to have respect and intuition for the animals to bring out their best characteristics," Mr. Schwendeman said when interviewed by Melissa Milgrom for her 2010 book, "Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy." "When he had restored 500 birds originally preserved in the 1930s for the Hall of Biology of Birds," Ms. Milgrom wrote, "he said, 'Capturing the iridescence with the paint is the most difficult part of the work.' "

He learned his craft at Schwendeman's Taxidermy Studio, which his father opened in 1938 on South Main Street in Milltown, not far from the family home. His son now runs the studio.

David James Schwendeman was born to Arthur and Lillian Falk Schwendeman on Dec. 5, 1924. Besides his son, he is survived by his wife, the former Irene Piros; three daughters, Linda Schwendeman, Anna Lee Schwendeman and Mary Ellen Davis; his brother, Arthur; and four grandchildren.

By the 1950s, Schwendeman's Taxidermy was doing work for the Museum of Natural History, with the younger Mr. Schwendeman traveling into the city, carrying beavers and birds and the like in boxes. After graduating from high school, he served in the Marines in the Pacific during World War II. His mastery of the family trade led to his hiring by the museum in 1959.

"What we're doing," Mr. Schwendeman told The New York Times in 1977, "is preserving something that is already dead and would only deteriorate if it were not mounted. We don't mount endangered species."

A year earlier, the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians was opened at the museum. In it is a 15-foot-long red, brown and green Indian rock python coiled around a clutch of eggs. It is a reproduction, cast and painted by Mr. Schwendeman after he anesthetized a living snake, then returned it to the Bronx Zoo. The Indian rock python is an endangered species.

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Farish Jenkins, Fossils Expert, Dies at 72

Farish Jenkins, a paleontologist who discovered fossils of animals evolving into something new — most notably a 375-million-year-old fossilized fish with skull, neck, ribs and part of the fins that resembled the earliest mammals — died on Nov. 11 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter-in-law, Susan Jenkins. She said he had multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells.

Darwin said proof of his evolutionary theories would be found in fossils, and Dr. Jenkins used them to show life-forms changing into other forms, so-called missing links. His fish, for example, had body parts that were clearly morphing into those of land animals. Similarly, he built on existing knowledge that a group of reptiles were ancestors of mammals with fossil evidence to show how this happened: the reptilian jaw morphed into part of a mammalian inner ear.

He worked in the laboratory as well as on field digs from Arizona to Africa to the Arctic. As part of his vast exploration of how animals walk, trot, gallop and otherwise get about, he studied X-ray movies of starlings in flight. He learned that a bird's wishbone functions as a spring.

"This is well known to everybody in the world," he said after his finding appeared in the journal Science. "It's only scientists who discover the obvious."

Dry wit was only part of his personality. He delighted his Harvard students with his "Moby-Dick" lecture, in which he impersonated Captain Ahab stomping around on a peg leg to demonstrate human locomotion. He used sharpened colored chalk to draw intricate anatomical illustrations. When digging for fossils near the North Pole, he wore his trademark Czechoslovak rabbit-fur hat, and carried a flask of vodka for warmth and a rifle for warding off polar bears. Back home, he favored suits with vests, tiepins and a pocket watch.

"He cut a seriously dashing figure," said Neil Shubin, a University of Chicago paleontologist who worked closely with Dr. Jenkins.

Dr. Jenkins's most heralded find was the fossil fish that he and two other paleontologists, Dr. Shubin and Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, announced in 2006 in the journal Nature. It was the product of extreme paleontology: the team made four trips over six years to a site on Ellesmere Island, 887 miles from the North Pole, subsisting mainly on chocolate bars. Fiendish weather limited excavation to only one month a year, July. Even though the nature and age of the exposed rocks seemed propitious for finding fossils, they had almost given up when they made their big find.

The trove of fossils they unearthed enabled them to recreate a crocodile-like animal. What it showed was an organism, guided by genes, rearranging itself.

With fish characteristics like scales and fins still evident, new features like a neck appeared: it would have allowed a ground-rooted creature to swivel its head to snare prey. The skull's shape had features that resembled fish, and others that resembled later land animals. Most intriguing, the fins had an elbow joint and the beginnings of wrists that would have allowed the animal to lift itself out of shallow water. It had both gills and lungs.

"This really is what our ancestors looked like when they began to leave the water," the zoologist Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge and the biologist Per Erik Ahlberg of the University of Uppsala in Sweden wrote in an accompanying editorial in Nature.

H. Richard Lane of the National Science Foundation said, "Human comprehension of the history of life on Earth is taking a major leap forward."

Dr. Jenkins located remains of many of Earth's oldest creatures. Among them was a tiny shrewlike animal he found in Arizona's Painted Desert in 1981. It represented a newly discovered family of warm-blooded creatures. Around the same time, he found a turtle and frog that were then among the oldest ever identified.

He gladly left human evolution for others. "It's not a field for gentlemen," he said. "Those anthropologists are savage."

The eldest of three sons of a marketing executive, Farish Alston Jenkins Jr. was born in Manhattan on May 19, 1940. He graduated from Princeton with a major in geology and earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Yale, where he was the first graduate student allowed to take anatomy courses in the medical school. He taught at Columbia before moving to Harvard in 1971.

Dr. Jenkins is survived by his wife, the former Eleanor Bristol Tracy; his son, Henry Edgar Jenkins III; his daughter, Katherine Temperance Jenkins Leeds; his brother, Henry Edgar Jenkins II; and two granddaughters.

In 2010, scientists found fossil footprints in a quarry in Poland 25 million years older than Dr. Jenkins's find. Creationists said these proved that the ancient fish Dr. Jenkins had found could not have been a missing link, since creatures into which they supposedly evolved were already long extant. Dr. Shubin responded that the prints had no fingers or toes, and in any case were inconclusive without a skeleton. He and Dr. Jenkins planned another Arctic trip to find even older bones.

Dr. Jenkins, who Dr. Shubin said loved expeditions more than anything but was debilitated by cancer, did not make the trip. He had told friends that he, as a paleontologist, felt at peace with his mortality, The Economist magazine reported. "I'm familiar with extinction," he said.

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Supreme Court Takes Up Question of Gene Research

The case the court added to its docket concerns patents held by Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, on genes that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.

The patents were challenged by scientists and doctors who said that their research and ability to help patients had been frustrated. "Myriad and other gene patent holders have gained the right to exclude the rest of the scientific community from examining the naturally occurring genes of every person in the United States," the plaintiffs told the Supreme Court in their petition seeking review. They added that the patents "prevent patients from examining their own genetic information" and "made it impossible to obtain second opinions."

The legal question for the justices is whether isolated genes are "products of nature" that may not be patented or "human-made inventions" eligible for patent protection.

A divided three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in Washington ruled for the company. Each judge issued an opinion, and a central dispute was whether isolated genes are sufficiently different from ones in the body to allow them to be patented.

"The isolated DNA molecules before us are not found in nature," wrote Judge Alan D. Lourie, who was in the majority. "They are obtained in the laboratory and are man-made, the product of human ingenuity."

The company urged the justices not to hear the case, saying that the "isolated molecules" at issue "were created by humans, do not occur in nature and have new and significant utilities not found in nature." It has long been settled, the company's brief went on, that "the human ingenuity required to create isolated DNA molecules" is worthy of encouragement and that its fruits are worthy of protection.

The plaintiffs in the case, Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, No. 12-398, were supported by friend-of-the-court briefs filed by the American Medical Association, AARP and women's health groups.

The justices were also scheduled to consider on Friday 10 closely watched appeals in cases concerning same-sex marriage, but they gave no indications about which ones, if any, they will hear. It is not unusual for the justices to discuss petitions seeking their attention more than once, particularly when the cases present complex and overlapping issues.

The court is widely expected to agree to hear one or more cases on the constitutionality of the part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that forbids the federal government from providing benefits to same-sex couples married in states that allow such unions.

The court has also been asked to hear cases about Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California, and an Arizona measure that withdrew state benefits from both gay and straight domestic partners.

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Solar Industry Borrows a Page, and a Party, From Tupperware

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Toni Bouchard, a vice president of SmartPower, right, outside Pat Peaper's home in Goodyear. Ms. Peaper, second from left, held a social event to promote solar panels to her neighbors.

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — The neighbors had gathered on the patio of a sun-baked ranch here, eager to hear the party's hosts talk about their products and how they could enhance their lives. But in place of the timeworn arrangement of plastic storage containers or cosmetics on the coffee table, the couple was showing off an array of a different sort: the 32 solar panels on the roof.

"It's just wonderful, the savings that we've had on our bills," Pat Peaper, one of the hosts, told the crowd as it sipped iced tea and lemonade and picked at cookies and crudités.

"We have a neighbor next door," her husband, Jim, added, "who's averaging $350 a month" in energy bills without solar. "If they put it in, they can certainly cut that, probably by two-thirds."

Environmentalists, government officials and sales representatives have been trying to get Americans to go solar for decades, with limited success. Despite the long push, solar power still represents less than 1 percent of electricity generated in the United States. Home solar panel setups, which typically run $25,000 or more, are considered by many consumers to be the province of the rich or idealistic.

So now solar companies are adhering to a path blazed by Tupperware decades ago, figuring that the best sales people are often enthusiastic customers willing to share their experiences with friends and neighbors — and perhaps earn a referral fee on any sales that result.

In Arizona, a nonprofit marketing company called SmartPower has had surprising success building networks of neighbors who install solar in their homes and then spread the gospel at promotional gatherings like the Peapers' party.

Solar companies, like SunWize Technologies and SolarCity, are running party-plan programs of their own, which makes it easier and cheaper for them to find new customers.

The effectiveness of such marketing is apparent in Pebble Creek, the gated community for older adults where the Peapers live. About 10 percent of the roughly 6,000 homes in the community, which is just west of Phoenix, have installed solar arrays, and more are about to sign up.

"You might or might not believe the salesperson," said Ted Lindhorn, a guest at the Peapers' September party who was considering a purchase. "But if it's a friend or a neighbor that has nothing to gain for it, you're going to believe them."

In many cases, those friends and neighbors do have something to gain: they can earn bonuses for steering customers to installation companies. SolarCity offers $400 for each residential referral, while a local Arizona outfit called SolarParty.org advertises paying $250.

For SmartPower, which gets the bulk of its income from foundation grants and government and utility contracts, the parties are part of its effort to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. After a pilot program in Connecticut, the group challenged 13 Arizona towns in 2011 to install solar on 5 percent of owner-occupied homes by 2015. A town reaching that goal gets a sign designating it an "Arizona Solar Community," a reward meant to encourage both communal spirit and extramural competition.

The group, under the direction of its vice president, Toni Bouchard, created a Web site and hired solar coaches, local experts who can advise customers on which installation companies they can use and what kinds of rate plans would maximize their savings. The coaches also help recruit solar ambassadors like the Peapers: ordinary residents who have solar and are willing to organize parties to encourage their friends and neighbors to do so as well.

Almost half the towns have already exceeded the 5 percent solar goal, with Goodyear and three others passing 10 percent. SmartPower is now expanding its program in New England.

"On-the-ground outreach tied to the online communication is really what's making the difference here," said Brian F. Keane, president of SmartPower. "You need to meet people in the communities where they live, work and play."

The party-plan model has traditionally been aimed at women, selling products for the home, bedroom and body, from Botox injections to Longaberger baskets. But the solar parties are intended to sell big-ticket items and appeal to men as well.

Just as Tupperware failed to fly off store shelves without a salesperson showing customers how to work the airtight seal, which inspired the party-plan model, solar panels often require demonstration and explanation to make the sale.

"If you can talk to someone who's gone through it who has a positive view, then they could really alleviate some of the concerns," said Bryan Bollinger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University who has studied patterns of solar adoption.

Mr. Bollinger found that people were more likely to install solar once their neighbors had. He said it was not clear what was behind that phenomenon, known as the peer effect, but it could be the combination of a conspicuous way of being green with the momentum of word-of-mouth.

That dynamic has been particularly strong in Pebble Creek, which has an active online network where residents offer referrals and advice.

"People here are real big on references," said Joe Wallace, one of the Peapers' guests, who said that he and his wife had thought about installing solar for a long time but decided to take the plunge only after learning more from their neighbors.

Dru Bacon, a former Solar Coach who lives in Pebble Creek and has been a driving force behind solar adoption there, said that while the promised savings on electricity had spurred many customers to install solar, that was not all that motivated them.

"I've had at least 10 people say, 'I have the biggest solar system in the community,' " he said. "They don't say, 'I have the lowest electric bill.' "

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Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?

Takashi Murai

The "immortal jellyfish" can transform itself back into a polyp and begin life anew.

After more than 4,000 years — almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor — man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived "Thus Spoke Zarathustra": "Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . ."

Yoshihiko Ueda for The New York Times

Shin Kubota at Kyoto University's Seto Marine Biological Laboratory.

Sommer was conducting research on hydrozoans, small invertebrates that, depending on their stage in the life cycle, resemble either a jellyfish or a soft coral. Every morning, Sommer went snorkeling in the turquoise water off the cliffs of Portofino. He scanned the ocean floor for hydrozoans, gathering them with plankton nets. Among the hundreds of organisms he collected was a tiny, relatively obscure species known to biologists as Turritopsis dohrnii. Today it is more commonly known as the immortal jellyfish.

Sommer kept his hydrozoans in petri dishes and observed their reproduction habits. After several days he noticed that his Turritopsis dohrnii was behaving in a very peculiar manner, for which he could hypothesize no earthly explanation. Plainly speaking, it refused to die. It appeared to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reached its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew.

Sommer was baffled by this development but didn't immediately grasp its significance. (It was nearly a decade before the word "immortal" was first used to describe the species.) But several biologists in Genoa, fascinated by Sommer's finding, continued to study the species, and in 1996 they published a paper called "Reversing the Life Cycle." The scientists described how the species — at any stage of its development — could transform itself back to a polyp, the organism's earliest stage of life, "thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality." This finding appeared to debunk the most fundamental law of the natural world — you are born, and then you die.

One of the paper's authors, Ferdinando Boero, likened the Turritopsis to a butterfly that, instead of dying, turns back into a caterpillar. Another metaphor is a chicken that transforms into an egg, which gives birth to another chicken. The anthropomorphic analogy is that of an old man who grows younger and younger until he is again a fetus. For this reason Turritopsis dohrnii is often referred to as the Benjamin Button jellyfish.

Yet the publication of "Reversing the Life Cycle" barely registered outside the academic world. You might expect that, having learned of the existence of immortal life, man would dedicate colossal resources to learning how the immortal jellyfish performs its trick. You might expect that biotech multinationals would vie to copyright its genome; that a vast coalition of research scientists would seek to determine the mechanisms by which its cells aged in reverse; that pharmaceutical firms would try to appropriate its lessons for the purposes of human medicine; that governments would broker international accords to govern the future use of rejuvenating technology. But none of this happened.

Some progress has been made, however, in the quarter-century since Christian Sommer's discovery. We now know, for instance, that the rejuvenation of Turritopsis dohrnii and some other members of the genus is caused by environmental stress or physical assault. We know that, during rejuvenation, it undergoes cellular transdifferentiation, an unusual process by which one type of cell is converted into another — a skin cell into a nerve cell, for instance. (The same process occurs in human stem cells.) We also know that, in recent decades, the immortal jellyfish has rapidly spread throughout the world's oceans in what Maria Pia Miglietta, a biology professor at Notre Dame, calls "a silent invasion." The jellyfish has been "hitchhiking" on cargo ships that use seawater for ballast. Turritopsis has now been observed not only in the Mediterranean but also off the coasts of Panama, Spain, Florida and Japan. The jellyfish seems able to survive, and proliferate, in every ocean in the world. It is possible to imagine a distant future in which most other species of life are extinct but the ocean will consist overwhelmingly of immortal jellyfish, a great gelatin consciousness everlasting.

Nathaniel Rich is an author whose second novel, ''Odds Against Tomorrow,'' will be published in April.

Editor: Jon Kelly

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Charles Darwin's classic book on the subject of evolution. It is "On The Origin of Species," not "On the Origin of the Species."

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