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Much remains a mystery about the first billion years of the universe’s history, the epoch in which the cosmos emerged from its dark ages with the dawning of the earliest stars and galaxies. Now scientists have developed the largest, most detailed computer model of this period to date to help shed light on how the infant universe evolved. Named THESAN, after the Etruscan goddess of the dawn, this new project’s predictions about the primordial past will soon be tested by data from NASA’s recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other next-generation observatories....

Companies and individuals are often at odds, concerned either with collecting information or with preserving privacy. Online stores and services are always eager to know more about their customers—income, age, tastes—whereas most of us are not eager to reveal much. Math suggests a way out of this bind. A few years ago Rakesh Agrawal and Ramakrishnan Srikant, both data-mining researchers, developed an idea that makes telling the truth less worrisome. The idea works if companies are content with accurate aggregate data and not details about individuals....

To most Americans electric cars are as new a concept as the first combustion vehicles were to horse-and buggy-drivers in the early years of the 20th century. But to the organizations around the world that have been working to make modern electric cars a consumer reality, it has taken decades to get to this point. In fact, the electric car industry is old enough now that it has developed its own internal conflicts—the biggest of which centers on vehicle charging....

By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazineAs radioisotopes pour into the sea from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, one reassuring message has been heard over and over again: the Pacific Ocean is a big place.That the isotopes will be vastly diluted is not in question. Nevertheless, scientists are calling for a marine survey to begin as soon as possible to assess any damage to ecosystems in the area around Fukushima. Although the contamination is unlikely to cause immediate harm to marine organisms, long-lived isotopes are expected to accumulate in the food chain and may cause problems such as increased mortality in fish and marine-mammal populations....

Got motivation? Without it, the long, difficult hours of practice that elevate some people above the rest are excruciating. But where does such stamina come from, and can we have some, too? Psychologists have identified three critical elements that support motivation, all of which you can tweak to your benefit. Autonomy Whether you pursue an activity for its own sake or because external forces compel you, psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard M....

Galaxies in the universe come in all shapes and sizes. Some are giant spheres of stars many times larger than the Milky Way. Others are flattened disks, with pancakelike stellar swirls orbiting a central bulge. But others still, including our own, are arrangements of stars that dance in spirals around their center. Astronomers have long puzzled over how these spirals form, and a number of theories have been proposed. Now new observations are revealing the galactic-scale magnetic fields associated with these spirals, providing what may be vital clues to their formation....

Sons are tough on their mothers. Whether it is heavier birth weights, amplified testosterone levels or simple, hair-raising high jinks, boys seem to take an extra toll on the women who gave birth to them. And by poring over Finnish church records from two centuries ago, Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield in England can prove it: sons reduce a mother’s life span by an average of 34 weeks. The 33-year-old Finnish evolutionary biologist, aided by genealogists, has scoured centuries-old tomes (and decades-old microfiche) for birth, marriage and death records—and clues about the influence of evolution on human reproduction....

Air conditioning and other cooling systems are widely recognized as integral to protecting people from the sometimes deadly impacts of extreme heat, which are intensifying in step with climate change. Yet according to a study, published yesterday in Nature Sustainability, there remains a “global blind spot” when it comes to handling the already exorbitant demand for cooling and indoor air conditioning, which alone is projected to triple by 2050. That’s a stark reality, the report warns, given that many cooling systems are carbon-intensive—and contribute to global warming themselves....

Flint, Mich., was in the midst of its leaded water crisis in February when its residents suffered yet another hit to their water supply. A cracked pipe that delivered potable water to the town meant that for three days they had to boil their tap water to protect against bacterial contamination. Such water main breaks nowadays are hardly unexpected—much of the nation’s waterworks requires upgrades and replacement. Solutions include relining pipes or replacing them with corrosion-resistant polyvinyl chloride (PVC)....

At 2:50 PM on Monday, April 15, I was sitting in my Cambridge office, separated from the finish line of the Boston Marathon by 2.5 miles of parks, city streets, and the iconic Charles River. Around 3:00 PM, I started receiving what would soon become a flood of messages—texts, emails, and Facebook chats, from friends, family members, and high-school classmates: “Are you ok?” “Are you safe?” “You’re not at the marathon, are you?...

The London Olympic Games and the Tour de France are on the horizon in Europe. Here in North America, the baseball season is under way, with football soon to follow. All of which means that around the world, in gleaming state-of-the-art facilities and dingy state-of-the-meth-lab basements, chemists are hard at work making molecules for athletes to swallow, snort, apply and inject into one another’s butts. Almost all sports fans decry the use of performance-enhancing drugs....

It is only logical to trust our instincts if we think we know a lot about a subject, right? New research suggests the opposite: self-proclaimed experts are more likely to fall victim to a phenomenon known as overclaiming, professing to know things they really do not. People overclaim for a host of reasons, including a desire to influence others’ opinions—when people think they are being judged, they will try to appear smarter....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal) is currently hosting the North American premiere of the exhibition Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives. Visitors can meet six mummies who lived in ancient Egypt from the Third Intermediate Period (1069-525 BCE) and to Roman Egypt (30 BCE - 395 CE) and learn about their lives, how they fit into society, and of course about how they died....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In this interview, Ancient History Encyclopedia is talking to Wendy Orr about her first historical fiction novel set in the Aegean Bronze Age, Dragonfly Song. Kelly Macquire (AHE): Wendy, thank you for joining me! Do you want to start off just telling everyone a little bit about what the book is about?...

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The unicorn, a mythical creature popularized in European folklore, has captivated the human imagination for over 2,000 years. For most of that time, well into the Middle Ages, people also believed them to be real. The roots of the unicorn myth date back at least as far as 400 BCE, when the Greek historian Ctesias first documented a unicorn-like animal in his writings on the region of India....

No matter whom President-elect Donald Trump puts in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and names to his cabinet, many observers predict a rollback of President Obama’s environmental policies. But the most controversial ones—the Clean Power Plan and a rule defining government regulation of wetlands—will take the most time and effort to unravel. Obama administration rules that Trump is eyeing fall into three categories: those in place before this spring; those that took effect in the past two months or will take effect by January; and those that the incumbent president is rushing to finish before leaving town....

Scientific American presents Savvy Psychologist by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Seeking help from a psychologist, psychiatrist, or other counselor can be a great way to get through a rough patch, get some perspective, or optimize your life. But not everyone feels comfortable taking that step. This week, we’ll address some common myths and fears that may needlessly be keeping you from getting help and feeling better....

At a recent event about the latest science of exoplanets, former NASA Kepler mission astrophysicist Natalie Batalha redefined what it means to look into the night sky. Rather than seeing solitary stars peppered in space, she said, she now thinks of each point of light as its own solar system of orbiting planets. Astronomers estimate that there are some 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe—averaging 100 million stars apiece....

For the first time astronomers have glimpsed a long-predicted population of black holes lurking at the heart of the Milky Way. Scientists already knew that our galaxy’s core holds a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times more than our sun and that this great beast is enveloped by a diverse entourage of lesser companions. Trapped in its gravitational clutches, run-of-the-mill stars whip around this gargantuan black hole like fireflies in a hurricane....

By Carey Gillam (Reuters) - Honey bees, crucial in the pollination of many U.S. crops, are still dying off at an worrisome rate, even though fewer were lost over the past winter, according to a government report issued on Thursday. Total losses of managed honey bee colonies was 23.2 percent nationwide for the 2013-2014 winter, according to the annual report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the “Bee Informed Partnership,” a group of honeybee industry participants....