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Dear EarthTalk: Which are the most ecofriendly and nontoxic (to people, cats and sanitation systems) cat litters?—Sam Barnes, Macon, Ga. It makes sense that environmentally enlightened cat owners would want cat litter made from natural products that will not potentially compromise their health or that of their beloved pets. Many mass market cat litters contain significant amounts of silica dust which has been linked to upper respiratory issues in cats and even humans....

Volkswagen AG admitted on Tuesday that 11 million of its diesel vehicles worldwide use the software that helped the carmaker cheat on federal emissions tests. This revelation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice launches a criminal probe against the company and officials in European Union and South Korea open their own investigations. Despite the backlash against the German automaker, VW’s use of emission control devices isn’t illegal or even surprising....

Every time I log onto Facebook, I brace myself. My newsfeed—like everyone else’s I know—is filled with friends, relatives and acquaintances arguing about COVID-19, masks and Trump. Facebook has become a battleground among partisan “echo chambers.” But what is it about social media that makes people so polarized? To find out, my colleagues and I ran a social media experiment in which we divided Democrats and Republicans into “echo chambers,” or small groups whose members affiliate with just one political party....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Spanning across three continents and holding dominance over the Black and Mediterranean Seas, the Ottoman Sultanate (1299-1922) was a global military superpower between the 15th and 17th centuries. From the point of its inception in 1299, the Ottoman Empire expanded rapidly, mostly at the expense of European powers and rival Muslim states neighboring the Turks....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Alpine stilt houses are a unique and fascinating aspect of prehistoric architecture in the Alps, which provide valuable insights into the lives and culture of the ancient communities. The houses were built by prehistoric communities living in the alpine regions of Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Reconstructed Neolithic Stilt HouseAndreas F....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. When he came to the throne in 884 BCE, Ashurnasirpal II had to attend to revolts which broke out across the empire. He ruthlessly put down all rebellions, destroyed the rebel cities and, as a warning to others, impaled, burned, and flayed alive any who had opposed him....

NAMCHE BAZAAR, Nepal – By this time next month, Kancha Sherpa will, once again, become a busy man. At 79, he is the last man living among the 103 guides who accompanied the famous mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary on the first successful 1953 expedition to Everest. Come peak tourist season in this ancient village of Internet cafes, Nepali crafts and gear shops that serves as the gateway to Mount Everest Base Camp, Kancha Sherpa will be besieged by journalists and climbers alike eager to hear his memories of the ascent....

For more than two years the U.S. had been neutral while the “Great European War” raged on, but driven by circumstance and popular demand, the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Opinion in the U.S. was shaped by a highly controlled stream of information from governments involved in the war, who relied heavily on censorship and propaganda to bolster national support for efforts to shift entire societies onto a war footing....

Is it just a bluff to pressure the development of more renewable energy, or does Greenpeace actually intend to own and manage one of Europe’s largest coal mining operations? The assets in question are a coal field and six attendant power plants in eastern Germany, worth upward of €3 billion and now up for auction by Vattenfall, a state-owned Swedish energy company looking to unload its lignite holdings as it pivots more aggressively toward renewables investments....

The Department of Defense wants to make sure that when disaster strikes, renewable energy sources can still help keep the lights on at military bases. Starting this fall, the Pentagon expects to join forces with a coalition of other agencies and national labs to create the first installation-level “microgrid” technology. The end result will be cyber secure, it says. The $42 million project – assuming Congress approves the money – will integrate energy from existing diesel-powered generators alongside alternative and renewable energy sources....

Cheap shale gas is significantly reducing coal demand in the United States, but global coal consumption is still expected to rise 2.6 percent annually by 2017, the International Energy Agency said today in a report. Coal consumption will climb to 4.32 billion tons of oil equivalent by 2017, nearly matching oil consumption of about 4.4 billion, the Paris-based agency said in its first Medium-Term Coal Market Report. “Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year, and if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade,” said Maria van der Hoeven, IEA’s executive director....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Mount Agung in Bali has been thrusting ash thousands of feet into the sky for almost two weeks. Lava is burbling at the volcano’s peak. Indonesian authorities have ordered evacuations around Agung, while tourists are stranded at the closed airport. The volcano’s flanks are bulging from magma trying to push its way out, and earthquake frequency has been increasing....

After staying up all through the night with what we can only assume is his personal entourage of engineering superheroes, Elon Musk will provide a link to a more complete vision of his Hyperloop transportation system this afternoon. Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others). Hopefully not too many mistakes. Will publish link at 1:30 PDT.– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2013 Musk has been forthright about the double-edged sword that is the Hyperloop, having said in a Tesla earnings call August 8 that he shot himself in the foot by claiming that the future of transportation could be cheaper, faster, and more energy efficient than high-speed rail if we could, with the help of magnets, shoot ourselves through a tube system at speeds upward of 700 mph....

Some infectious disease experts are warning that it may no longer be feasible to contain the new coronavirus circulating in China. Failure to stop it there could see the virus spread in a sustained way around the world and even perhaps join the ranks of respiratory viruses that regularly infect people. “The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr....

In recent years the U.S. national laboratories have laid out an ambitious research agenda for particle physics. About 170 scientists and engineers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill., have been developing designs and technologies for the International Linear Collider (ILC), a proposed machine that would explore the frontiers of high-energy physics by smashing electrons into their antimatter counterparts [see “Building the Next-Generation Collider” by Barry Barish, Nicholas Walker and Hitoshi Yamamoto; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, February 2008]....

Researchers studying the effects of general anesthesia recently made a startling discovery: the drugs used to knock out patients during surgery may lead to increased pain when they wake up. Doctors have known for decades that most general anesthetics may cause a temporary burning sensation when administered or swelling around the injection site. Similarly, inhaled agents can cause momentary coughing bouts, according to Gerard Ahern, a pharmacologist at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D....

When last we met, the subject was athletic performance enhancement. I spoke of modalities for raising one’s game, including surgery, lucky genetics and, of course, “eau de Canseco,” also known as anabolic steroids. That column contended that many world-class athletes are freaks—of nature, yes, but freaks nonetheless. In effect, they make use of performance-enhancing substances that happen to be produced by their own bodies rather than by a friend of a friend who knows a really good pharmaceutical chemist....

They may all waddle around in their tuxedolike feathers, but the penguins of the Antarctic Peninsula are not equal in their ability to adapt to a warming climate. While the populations of the Adélie and chinstrap penguin species are currently declining, the gentoo species is increasing. But this hasn’t always been the case, according to a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports. By tracing the genetics of the region’s present-day penguins back about 12,000 years, a team of scientists from Oxford University, the U....

Editor’s note: The following is the introduction to a special e-publication called Civil War Innovations. Published in September 2012, the collection draws articles from the archives of Scientific American. Any Civil War buff is familiar with the technological advances of that era: the carnage caused when tactics failed to accommodate breech-loading rifled muskets and artillery pieces, the truly revolutionary introduction of armored ships and railroad networks, and the merely tantalizing deployment of submerged warships and reconnaissance balloons....

Ending a half-century of geological speculation, scientists have finally seen the process that causes rocks to move atop Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above Death Valley, California. Researchers watched a pond freeze atop the playa, then break apart into sheets of ice that — blown by wind — shoved rocks across the lake bed. Until now, no one has been able to explain why hundreds of rocks scoot unseen across the playa surface, creating trails behind them like children dragging sticks through the mud....