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Climate change has made nights warmer in India over the past decade, an ominous sign for the nation’s vital rice crop. This development could have a far-reaching impact on the yield of rice, causing a shortfall in an important staple crop in a crowded country already grappling with food security and inflationary issues, said Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, India. A nighttime temperature increase of 0....

By Dan Whitcomb A possible cluster of cases of acute flaccid myelitis, a rare condition that causes weakness or paralysis in children, is being investigated in King County, Washington, the state health department said on Tuesday. King County, the state’s largest county, encompasses Seattle. An additional possible case of AFM, which affects the central nervous system, brings the total number of confirmed or suspected cases to nine, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Health said in a statement....

Scientists in Zimbabwe say they are hopeful that the sudden change of political power in their country could spell a new era for its beleaguered research system. Those working in the nation hope that the shift will unlock and attract research funds from overseas, while Zimbabwean researchers abroad say that the potential for new order in their country could encourage them to return home. The authoritarian regime of Robert Mugabe, the 93-year-old who had been president of Zimbabwe for 37 years, ended abruptly on November 21 when he resigned following military and political pressure....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Inca road system formed a network known as the royal highway or qhapaq ñan, which became an invaluable part of the Inca empire. Roads facilitated the movement of armies, people, and goods across plains, deserts and mountains. They connected settlements and administrative centres, and provided an important physical symbol of imperial power and control....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The 1,900th anniversary of the visit of the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 CE) to Britain and the construction of the wall that bears his name will be observed in 2022. A year-long festival will be held, filled with hundreds of events and activities across the length of Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site....

President Obama’s summer climate change tour will culminate in the Alaskan Arctic next week, putting him in a setting that has experienced the country’s most dramatic climatic changes and one that Obama hopes will help him boost public support. He will need that for the critical piece in his climate legacy puzzle—a meaningful global deal in Paris in three months. The president will arrive Monday to headline a two-day conference convened by Secretary of State John Kerry dealing with Arctic climate and adaptation issues....

As horrifying as the idea of baby birds growing up in a cigarette-filled home sounds, a new study suggests that some birds may benefit from weaving the fluffy plastic from cigarette butts into their nests. The nicotine lingering in smoked filters may serve as a natural insecticide, driving parasites and other harmful insects away from the nests and the baby birds living within. (Tobacco plants generate nicotine because it defends against insects and their larvae that would otherwise devour the plants....

On March 12, 1948, at 9:14 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, Northwest Airlines Flight 4422 crashed into Mount Sanford, a peak in the remote Wrangell Mountains in eastern Alaska. All 24 passengers—merchant mariners returning to the U.S. from Shanghai, China—along with six Northwest crew members, probably died on impact. The debris, too difficult to reach, was quickly covered by snow and eventually entombed by ice. There it remained until 1999, despite many failed efforts to find it....

A fossil bed in China that contains some of the world’s most exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs, early birds, reptiles and mammals may also be home to an equally rich set of older fossils from the Middle Jurassic, a new study finds. These older fossils, dating back about 160 million years, contain the earliest known gliding mammal, earliest swimming mammal, a flying reptile and the earliest feathered dinosaurs. Now, a new study classifies these fossils as belonging to a distinct ecological group, or biota....

Just like our animal skin–clad ancestors, we gather food with zeal, lust over the most capable mates, and have an aversion to scammers. And we do still wear plenty of animal skins. But does more separate us from our Stone Age forebears than cartoonists and popular psychologists might have us believe? At first blush, parsing the modern human in terms of behaviors apparently hardwired into the brain over eons of evolution seems like a tidy, straightforward exercise....

Fabiola Gianotti, the Italian physicist who first revealed to the world that the Higgs boson exists, will be the next director general of CERN, the laboratory where the elementary particle was discovered. Gianotti will be the sixteenth person — and the first woman — to lead the European physics powerhouse, which is based at the Swiss-French border outside Geneva and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary. She was the spokesperson for ATLAS, one of two experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that discovered the Higgs boson, thus completing the standard model of particle physics....

Kissing Theory “Affairs of the Lips,” by Chip Walter, suggests that the chemistry of a good kiss can predict the future of a relationship. In the “Kiss and Tell” editorial letter by Mariette DiChristina, the kiss leaves the man “speechless” and the woman with “a shivery thrill.” There are undoubtedly chemicals transferred and brain areas activated, but that hardly explains the rich soul-stirring quality of a good kiss. As a psychoanalyst, I find that the concept of incorporation goes much further in explaining the good-kiss experience than biology can....

It was February 2003, and Kris Carr, a photographer and actress, was on a roll. The bubbly, green-eyed stunner was in high demand. She was considered “the Julia Roberts of advertising” (at least according to her agent), thanks to her success in two popular Bud Light commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. She also had some impressive theater and film credits, among them a role in Arthur Miller’s Mr. Peter’s Connections, in which she performed (in the buff, no less) alongside actor Peter Falk....

On June 4, meteorologists in Huntsville, Ala., noticed a “blob” on their radar screen that looked like a strong thunderstorm, despite the fact the sun was shining and not a drop of rain could be found within a few hundred miles. After some sleuthing, and several wacky explanations, the scientists have identified the culprit. “Our operational meteorologist spotted it on radar immediately and initially thought he was caught off-guard by a pop-up thunderstorm that wasn’t in the forecast,” Matthew Havin, data services manager at weather technology company Baron Services, told LiveScience in an email....

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Residents of the Indian capital woke on Wednesday to a third day of thick gray smog in one of the worst episodes this year, which disrupted dozens of flights and train services and caused a rash of health complaints.New Delhi is among several Asian cities, including Beijing, that are suffering from toxic levels of pollution fuelled by industrial growth and a surge in the numbers of vehicles crowding their roads....

As grassland has morphed into farmland across the American Midwest, wildlife diversity and abundance have declined. But for some birds things might not be so grim. Some grassland species appear to have adapted particularly well to no-till soybean fields, according to research published in March in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment. Tilling is a process in which farmers remove weeds and loosen soil before seeding the ground, but no-till farming eschews that practice....

Pure carbon can take a great variety of forms. Diamond, carbon nano­tubes and graphene—the last the subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics—­all have unique physical and chemical qualities and applications to technology. Now evidence is mounting that there is yet another crystal structure to add to carbon’s catalogue of wonders: a material that could find applications in mechanical components whose hardness varies depending on the pressure to which they are exposed....

Key concepts Food science Chemistry Freezing Phases of matter Solutions Introduction Have you ever made homemade ice cream? It can be a lot of fun, and you end up with a tasty frozen treat! A lot of interesting chemistry is actually needed to make ice cream. For example, think about how you start out with refrigerated (or even room-temperature) ingredients and then need to cool them down to turn them turn into ice cream....

By Lucas LaursenThe blueprint of a small organism’s cellular machinery has been unveiled, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the molecular essentials of life. But the research also shows just how far biologists have to go before they understand the complete biochemical basis of even the simplest of creatures.“Our whole attempt was to establish a model organism for systems biology,” says Peer Bork, a bioinformaticist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and one of the coordinators of the project which surveyed Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes respiratory infections....

It is a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world. Of course, many experiences in daily life reflect the physical stimuli that send signals to the brain. But the same neural machinery that interprets inputs from our eyes, ears and other sensory organs is also responsible for our dreams, delusions and failings of memory....