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Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Today, Marseille is known more for its modern history – World War II, North African immigration, and, of course, the rousing choruses of France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise. Yet it is also one of France’s most ancient cities, one rich in traces of the pre-modern past – for those who go looking....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Trajan’s Market is the name given in the early 20th century CE to a complex of buildings in the imperial fora of Rome constructed in 107-110 CE during the reign of Trajan. The complex included a covered market, small shop fronts and a residential apartment block. Trajans Market, RomeMark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)...

Last month Scientific American asked its readers to send in digital pictures of their favorite gadgets from bygone eras. You responded with dozens of photos and anecdotes revealing which devices you’ve held onto and why, and we’re grateful for each and every one. Responses ran the gamut—calculators (lots of calculators); obscure personal computers (many of those, too); music recorders and players; digital storage devices; and a handheld arcade video game, to name a few....

One day 12-year-old Elizabeth McIngvale became obsessed with the number 42, which happened to be her mother’s age at the time, 11 years ago. When she washed her hands, she had to turn the sink on and off 42 times, get 42 pumps of soap and rinse her hands 42 times. Sometimes she decided that she actually needed to do 42 sets of 42. When she dressed, she put her right leg in and out of her pant leg 42 times, then the left....

On a warm summer evening along the ridgetops of West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, thousands of bats are on the move. They flutter among the treetops, searching for insects to eat and roosts on which to rest. But some of the trees here are really metal towers, with 30-meter-long blades rotating at more than 80 kilometers per hour even in this light breeze. They are electricity-generating wind turbines—a great hope for renewable energy, but dangerous for bats....

LONDON – Anybody planning to burn fossil fuels without releasing greenhouse gases – in other words, capturing and storing the carbon dioxide – will have to think long and hard: Long, because the carbon must be kept secure for thousands of years, hard because even the hardest rocks yield under pressure. Or so say researchers looking at the pitfalls of one proposed climate change solution. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technology exists and is already one potential amelioration of the greenhouse problem....

BRONX, N.Y.—They arrive in wooden coffins and body bags, with yellow “toe tags.” The evidence is carefully protected. A team of highly skilled scientists quickly starts the “autopsy” with a visual examination, sampling, and dissection. But these “bodies” are not murder victims. They’re defective electric cables sent by large municipal utilities all over America. The “forensic” experts are engineers from New York City’s Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) power utility at the one-of-a kind Cable & Splice Center for Excellence, a $10-million facility in the Bronx, N....

Dear EarthTalk: I really want to eat healthy and organic but am constantly traveling and on the go. How can I eat fast food without having to always end up at McDonalds and Burger King? – Dylan Baker, Seattle, Washington The latest trend in fast food is healthy and organic, and luckily for conscious consumers, several chains offering just such fare are taking root in different parts of the U.S. One of the leaders of this small but scrappy pack of fast food upstarts is O’Naturals....

The mountaintops rumble to life unnaturally each year as snow clouds darken the sky across the West. Open flames burst from the throats of metal chimneys, mounted on squat towers nestled among the peaks. With a low hiss, puffs of particles belch from their mouths into the air, where the wind catches them and whisks them away. These aren’t ordinary particles. They’re tiny bits of crushed-up silver iodide, a crystal-like photosensitive substance once used in photography....

Eye tracking—a technology that uses infrared light to monitor eye movements—has been around for decades. Today scientists at many research labs track gaze, blinks and undulating pupil size to scrutinize the relationship between eye patterns and our health. But in recent years the technology has oozed into consumer products. Google recently filed patents that industry experts speculate could incorporate eye tracking into Google Glass, the company’s head-mounted smart computer. Many people are concerned about the privacy implications of the front-facing cameras in Glass, which could record snapshots and video of throngs of oblivious bystanders every day....

Size matters for stars. Smaller stars may not have quite enough mass to sustain the fusion that keeps those just above the limit–known as red dwarfs–burning bright for billions of years. This deficiency condemns them to persist for much shorter periods as so-called brown dwarfs. And larger stars that have reached the end of their hydrogen fusion fuel burn out into white dwarfs–dense, hot but cooling remnants. New observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have captured images of both the very faintest stars of this ilk–those nearest to the lowest mass limit–as well as white dwarfs so old they are turning blue....

The World Bank board of directors could today endorse a sweeping new energy policy that for the first time restricts financing for new coal plants in poor countries, bank officials confirmed. Meanwhile, the U.S. Export-Import Bank will decide later this week whether to move forward with the proposed financing of a new coal plant in Vietnam, making it the first test of President Obama’s vow to end American support for coal projects overseas....

A grant of a whopping $100 million is available to the five districts making up a state. The districts have representation in the state assembly proportional to their population. District A has 35 representatives, District B has 25, District C has 16, District D has 14 and District E has 10. If a coalition consisting of at least 51 members should form, then it can force the funds to come to their districts, where the money will be divided proportionally to the representation....

Astronomy and science organizations have declared June 30 as Asteroid Day, with plans to talk up the danger of asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth. One partner in the effort, the Sentinel mission, has an especially urgent need to drum up public support: it is struggling to raise the US$450 million it needs to launch a space telescope dedicated to finding hundreds of thousands of near-Earth objects....

Lousy day? Don’t try to think happy thoughts—just think fast. A new study shows that accelerated thinking can improve your mood. In six experiments, researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward....

The most powerful exploding stars are popping up in unexpected places, new research indicates. It turns out that these superbright “rebel” supernovas can form in “heavy metal” areas, using elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, scientists said in the new study. Supernovas happen when huge stars run out of fuel and collapse, creating an explosion that can briefly outshine their host galaxy. Thousands of supernovas have happened in the past decade, but only about 50 of them were “superluminous,” meaning they were 100 times brighter than usual supernovas....

It wasn’t until I saw the blade glinting in the sunlight that I realized how grave the situation was. Broad and belligerent in army fatigues, the man strode along the track, ranting in Greek. Behind his back, his hands flexed a knife blade in and out of its wooden handle. This man was a trapper, a poacher of birds—and he clearly didn’t want company. “What are you doing here?” he demanded....

Imagine you’re driving home from work. The streets are busy but you’re cruising along smoothly. Now, visualize two scenarios: In the first, your phone starts ringing, vibrating and lighting up as you receive an incoming call. In the alternative scenario, you notice a brief blink on your screen as a text message arrives. Which would be more likely to affect your driving? You might think the phone call would be the bigger diversion....

On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died at Princeton Hospital of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Within hours the pathologist on call, Thomas Harvey, acting on his own initiative, removed the famed physicist’s brain without the family’s permission. He then preserved the organ, counter to Einstein’s stated wish to be cremated. Harvey managed to secure a retroactive blessing from Einstein’s son Hans Albert, with the stipulation that the brain would be used only for scientific purposes....

For Jeff Privette, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, 2011 was not a great year. Privette keeps track of climate sensors on satellites as part of his job, and one of the climate sensor programs he follows was having issues. This sensor, currently mounted on a satellite mission known as SORCE, tracks how much energy from the sun hits the top of Earth’s atmosphere, a measure known as total solar irradiance....