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The 63-year-old chief executive couldn’t do his job. He had been crippled by migraine headaches throughout his adult life and was in the middle of a new string of attacks. “I have but a little moment in the morning in which I can either read, write or think,” he wrote to a friend. After that, he had to shut himself up in a dark room until night. So President Thomas Jefferson, in the early spring of 1807, during his second term in office, was incapacitated every afternoon by the most common neurological disability in the world....

A 55,000-year-old incomplete skull found in Israel may belong to a human group that interbred with Neanderthals. Discovered deep in a cave by amateur speleologists, the partial cranium also fills a major gap in the fossil record of Homo sapiens’ journey from Africa to Europe. “Here we actually hold a skull of a human being that was living next to the Neanderthals,” says Israel Hershkovitz, the leader of a study published today in Nature (I....

Corals under temperature stress blanch, expelling symbiotic algae that hide the white skeletons below them. But this coral bleaching is not the only phenomena that renders the tiny creatures ashen and lifeless: So-called white syndrome spreads across coral in the South Pacific in the wake of warming events. The two catastrophes can be distinguished by the ways they leave their palls of pale death. “White syndrome moves across in a band,” says marine biologist John Bruno of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as if a pathogen is moving from neighbor to neighbor....

Jupiter will be directly opposite the sun as seen from Earth on Monday (Sept. 26), allowing skywatchers to see the solar system’s largest planet in incredible detail during an event known as opposition. During the opposition Jupiter, Earth, and the sun are aligned in such a way that both planets are on the same side of the star with Earth sitting between these two massive bodies. As the gas giant reaches opposition while rising from the east at the same time the sun sets in the west, it will also be at its closest approach to Earth , known as perigee....

By Richard A. LovettOxygen isotopes in clamshells may provide the most detailed record yet of global climate change, according to a team of scientists who studied a haul of ancient Icelandic mollusks.Most measures of paleoclimate provide data on only average annual temperatures, says William Patterson, an isotope chemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and lead author of the study published in the March 8 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

By Amy Sawitta LefevreBANGKOK (Reuters) - Seventeen factories were temporarily shut on Monday in a major Thai industrial zone dominated by foreign companies, after flood waters blocked nearby roads, a senior official said.But the official did not identify the stricken plants at the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate, a sprawling manufacturing zone home to more than 500 factories, located 114 km (71 miles) east of the capital, Bangkok.The 17 factories were shut after the workers proved unable to reach them and the navy has been asked to help pump out the water, Wibun Krommadit, Amata’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement....

Venus is similar in size and chemical makeup when compared with Earth—and the pair formed about the same time, more than four billion years ago. But that is apparently where the similarities end. According to a year’s worth of data sent back from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter launched in November 2005, the second planet from the sun is nothing like Earth—from its torrid surface to the upper reaches of its acid-laced atmosphere....

You’d think doctors and patients would be clamoring for cells so versatile they could help reboot a body suffering from everything from leukemia to diabetes. But a new report shows that an important source of these stem cells—discarded umbilical cords—is rarely used because of high costs and the risk of failure. Stem cells drawn from newborns’ umbilical cord blood are sometimes used to treat medical conditions, especially bone and blood cancers like multiple myeloma or lymphoma by replacing dysfunctional blood-producing cells in bone marrow....

Babies who have a high risk of developing autism may benefit when their parents receive some video-based lessons on how to work with their infants, a new study finds. Researchers found that the babies of parents who completed the lessons were moderately more engaged with other people, did a better job of paying attention and showed more social behaviors, compared with babies whose parents didn’t complete the lessons. The results suggest that although early intervention does not prevent autism, it may lessen its features in some children who have a high risk of developing the disorder, according to the study, published online today (Jan....

“We’re actually changing and continuing to change how the Earth system functions and leaving markers that could still be found in a million years time,” says Earth scientist Karen Bacon of the University of Leeds in England. “That’s quite incredible to think about.” The proposed marker is billions of microscopic black balls found from the high arctic to the bottoms of lakes in Chile. When a flame eats into the hydrocarbons known as coal or oil, not all the carbon atoms pair up with the oxygen that makes fire and carbon dioxide emissions possible....

Scientific American presents Tech Talker by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. The question “Why does my computer slow down?” is a perennial concern for computer owners. You’ve probably seen TV ads for software that promises to speed up your computer back to how it used to be when you bought it. Unfortunately, that is a myth. The truth is that computers don’t slow down with age....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The mathematicians of ancient Greece made a hugely significant contribution to world thought and all practical subjects which depend on that intellectual basis, from geometry to engineering, astronomy to design. Influenced initially by the Egyptians, Greek mathematicians would push on to make breakthroughs such as Pythagoras’ theory of right-angled triangles and, by focussing on the abstract, bring clarity and precision to age-old mathematical problems....

Looking deep within mammalian spit-producing glands, scientists were recently surprised to find an ancient cell type long thought to exist primarily in the slimy skin of frogs and fish. Such discoveries are rare in modern science—and researchers say these tiny cells could fill many more roles than previously thought. The scientists were trying to determine which cell produces a certain protein involved in salivary gland growth and repair. Using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing, they isolated candidate cells from mouse glands and then examined their genetic function....

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers by Simon Winchester HarperCollins, 2015 (($28.99)) The Pacific Ocean is a place of superlatives: the oldest and largest, the most seismically active and biodiverse, and the site of the world’s greatest mountains and deepest trenches. Journalist Winchester plumbs the ocean’s science and its influence on people throughout time, writing, for example, of how the alluring geography of many Oceania islands has spurred imperial powers to usurp land from native peoples....

People with COVID-19 who arrive at the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition in Mexico City to search for treatment can choose from a menu of clinical trials, carefully presented by a worker trained to offer an unbiased portrait of the potential risks and benefits. But neurologist Sergio Iván Valdés-Ferrer already knows which trial most will choose—and it’s not his. Instead, many people opt for one involving hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that has been touted by US President Donald Trump and other influential figures as an effective coronavirus treatment....

In 1977, 22-year-old Steve Jobs introduced the world to one of the first self-contained personal computers, the Apple II. The machine was a bold departure from previous products built to perform specific tasks: turn it on, and there was only a blinking cursor awaiting further instruction. Some owners were inspired to program the machines themselves, but others could load up software written and shared or sold by others more skilled or inspired....

The Ebola crisis in West Africa is approaching the one-year mark, with no clear end in sight. At present, fewer than one in five people with Ebola is diagnosed within two days of becoming infectious, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Yet in the absence of a safe and effective vaccine, the only way to end the epidemic is to quickly identify and quarantine people who have been infected. A major problem is that relatively few laboratories in West Africa have the necessary equipment and personnel to test blood samples from people thought to have Ebola (see ‘Delayed diagnoses’ below)....

Kira Testin knew that something was wrong before she and her husband ever saw the fertility specialist. “We had been trying for a year to get pregnant,” recalls Testin, who was 27 at the time. “We weren’t naïve, but it still was devastating to hear that we would be unable to conceive naturally.” For the Testins, in vitro fertilization (IVF) – when a woman’s eggs are retrieved, fertilized and grown to embryo-stage in a petri dish, then implanted back in her uterus – was their only chance at pregnancy....

The only total eclipse of the sun in 2008 will be visible on August 1 over a narrow but long swath of land, beginning in Canada and ending in China after traversing northern Greenland, the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, Siberia and western Mongolia. Those who wish to enjoy the whole 147 seconds of totality will just have to travel to some of the most out-of-the-way places on the globe....

In recent months, politicians cranking up their campaigns for the 2012 presidential elections have made some science claims that might be called interesting at best. Whether it’s Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) comparing himself with Galileo or U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) claiming, against all scientific evidence, that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, it’s clear that some leaders’ grasps on science are tenuous at best.* Of course, this summer was hardly the first season during which politicians and celebrities have flubbed at science....