Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Christmas was one of the highlights of the medieval calendar, not only for the rich but also for the peasantry. For the longest holiday of the year, typically the full twelve days of Christmas, people stopped work, homes were decorated and a Yule log burned in the hearth....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 477-524/525) was a scholar in Late Antiquity who was imprisoned and executed by Theodoric (r. 493-526 CE) but was later idolised by medieval intellectuals. His most famous work was De consolatione philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), and he can be held up as the thinker who bridged two ages: the last of the Romans, first of the scholastics....
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 civilization (c. 1400-1533 CE) is among the most vital of South America in terms of its cultural influence and legacy. The Inca began as a small tribe who steadily grew in power to conquer other peoples all down the coast from Columbia to Argentina. They are remembered for their contributions to religion, architecture, and their famous network of roads through the region....
The detritus of human habitation—mostly yellow clay potsherds—reveal that Tell Brak, an ancient city in northeastern Syria, urbanized more than 7,000 years ago and boasted suburbs likely filled with immigrants as far back as 6,200 years ago. In fact, rather than an ancient ruler willing a city into existence, the potsherds of Brak tell a story of a metropolis that grew as people, for their own reasons, flocked to it. The mound, or tell, at Brak rises 40 meters (131 feet) from the plain, solely as a result of human habitation—one layer of city rising on top of the one that proceeded it....
[This is Part 4 of an In-Depth Report on The Future of Nuclear Power.] On Feb. 16, 2002, the nuclear power plant called Davis–Besse on the shores of Lake Erie near Toledo, Ohio, shut down. On inspection, a pineapple-size section on the 6.63-inch- (16.84-centimeter-) thick carbon steel lid that holds in the pressurized, fission-heated water in the site’s sole reactor had been entirely eaten away by boric acid formed from a leak....
How much can the new president accomplish after he enters office in January? Scientific American spoke with Paulo de Bessa Antunes, an environmental law professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a former federal prosecutor in Brazil. He fought the Bolsonaro administration in the courtroom and has prosecuted many environmental cases. [An edited transcript of the interview follows.] Nowadays we have a strong commitment from various countries not to buy illegal timber, soybeans and beef....
The chances of keeping temperatures below a 2-degree-Celsius rise over preindustrial levels drop precipitously the longer policymakers dither, according to a new study that finds political will is the biggest uncertainty in fighting climate change. Enacting immediate and swift climate change policies would, in the most optimistic scenario, give the world a 90 percent chance of meeting the 2-degree target for averting catastrophic global warming. But a 20-year delay, scientists found, would mean the probability of hitting that goal drops to 50 percent – no matter how much money countries spend in the effort....
Cities could experience more acute warming than previously predicted, according to scientists. Research published Monday inNature Climate Changefound that urban regions across the world — from the United States to Africa — could warm by more than 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century under a high-emissions climate change scenario. “That’s a concerning point,” said Lei Zhao, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign....
After a false start in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the glitzy new atom smasher at CERN (the European laboratory for particle physics) near Geneva, is finally due to start its experiments this October. The LHC may or may not end up spewing out dark matter, mini black holes or other exotica. But whichever way, figuring what’s coming out will be a tremendously hard task. A controversial approach to analyzing data could help physicists make sure they don’t miss any of the good stuff....
The head of a British climate research unit under fire after thousands of stolen e-mails were made public last year said yesterday that he had “obviously written some very awful e-mails.” But the scientist, Phil Jones, defended his work and that of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which he headed, in testimony yesterday before a House of Commons panel. “You’ve only seen a tenth of 1 percent of my e-mails in this group,” he told the Science and Technology Committee....
Most people can stand comfortably under the jawline of a mounted Tyrannosaurus rex or walk under the rib cage of a Brachiosaurus without bumping their heads. T. rex is as big as the largest known African elephant, and Brachiosaurus, like other great sauropods, was much larger than any land animal alive today. We are so used to the enormous size of dinosaurs that we almost forget to think about how they grew to be so large....
The list of U.S. parents’ pandemic burdens this winter is longer and more chaotic than ever: More kids have been infected with the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, despite scrupulous safety measures. Outbreaks have occurred in staff-strained schools and daycare centers. Many have faced dreaded returns to remote learning. COVID vaccine boosters remain unauthorized for most children under age 12. Vaccines are not yet authorized for children under age five. At-home coronavirus tests are difficult, if not impossible, to come by....
By Karin Stanton PAHOA, Hawaii (Reuters) - Slow-moving lava from an erupting volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island continued to flow toward a small village, advancing about 250 yards on Monday, and threatened to reach a major traffic intersection before year’s end. While the main flow from Kilauea’s June 27th eruption has stalled yards from the main road through Pahoa Village and just feet from a recycling transfer station, the breakout upslope is active and lava is crawling toward the area, the U....
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has detected its first domestic case of the painful mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya in the southwest of the country, the state government of Chiapas said on Saturday. Chikungunya is spread by two mosquito species, and is typically not fatal. But it can cause debilitating symptoms including fever, headache and severe joint pain lasting months. The government of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, said an 8-year-old girl became the first person to contract the disease in Mexico, and that she was treated in hospital in the town of Arriaga....
Lockheed Martin Corp. is joining forces with a new trade association to promote the commercialization of innovative clean-energy technologies. The NanoAssociation for Natural Resources and Energy Security (NANRES), which launched yesterday, plans to work on developing and commercializing nano-projects that focus on alternative domestic energy sources, with the goal of strengthening the country’s resource security. It has members in the defense, clean energy, nanotechnology, finance and environmental sectors. “The nexus between national security and energy and the environment will become increasingly evident as the effects of climate change limit our access to natural resources and issues stemming from our ongoing addiction to oil and other fossil fuels exacerbate,” said Erin Ross, the group’s president, in a statement....
Ice loss from the massive ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating, according to a new study. If the trend continues, ice sheets could become the dominant contributor to sea level rise sooner than scientists had predicted, concludes the research, which will be published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The traditional view of the loss of land ice on Earth has been that mountain glaciers and ice caps are the dominant contributors, and ice sheets are following behind,” said study co-author Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine....
Some 160 kilometers of oyster reefs are being built along the Alabama coast to help mitigate effects of the 2010 BP oil spill. In front of one barrier island, concrete reef balls and bags filled with oyster shells now absorb wave action that had chewed a foot-high edge on the island’s marshy shoreline. Accumulating sediment is extending the marsh, and scientists report oyster recruitment and increased bird and fish activity around the sites....
Researchers have wondered for years whether we will one day be able to re-engineer the planet and slow down, perhaps even pause, global warming. A recent study out of Norway is now the first to describe how that might be done. There are many ways to try and climate engineer the planet, but many of them are so far-fetched that scientists aren’t sure if they would even be physically possible, let alone physically successful....
A young woman who calls herself blueberryoctopus had been taking antidepressants for three years, mostly for anxiety and panic attacks, when she recounted her struggles with them on the Web site Experience Project. She said she had spent a year on Paxil, one of the popular SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), but finally stopped because it destroyed her sex drive. She switched to Xanax, an antianxiety drug, which brought back her libido but at the cost of renewed symptoms....
This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. (ISNS) - Dylan Thomas once wrote that he could never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when he was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when he was six. As it turns out, measuring exactly how much snow fell is a tricky science problem – with a number of new solutions....
