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A new study should delight fans of the comic book superhero Spider-Man. Researchers from the Munich Technical University (M.T.U.) in Germany have built a microfluidics (miniature plumbing) system for spinning short strands of artificial spider silk. The new strands are less than half a millimeter, or 0.02 inch long, and their strength and elasticity are still untested. Other research groups have already created strands yards or more in length that come close to the properties of real spider silk....

In 2018, psychiatrist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll was wrestling with a puzzling fact about mental disorders. He knew that many individuals have multiple conditions—anxiety and depression, say, or schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He wanted to know how common it was to have more than one diagnosis, so he got his hands on a database containing the medical details of around 5.9 million Danish citizens. He was taken aback by what he found. Every single mental disorder predisposed the patient to every other mental disorder—no matter how distinct the symptoms....

More than two weeks after Hurricane Sandy, now that its floodwaters have receded and the region’s utilities and transportation systems have largely been restored, researchers and authorities are beginning to look at Sandy’s other effects. One of those more lasting — and even less appealing — problems: sewage, sediment and other pollutants churned up and swept into waterways by the storm. “We tend to think of events like Sandy in terms of the ephemeral effect of the wind, rain, waves and even snow as it swept through our communities, but in fact this superstorm can have a longer-term effect in the large pulse of sediment and associated pollutants swept into our waterways,” Marcia McNutt, U....

Key concepts Chemistry Coagulation Water filtration Introduction It’s easy to take our clean water for granted, we’re so used to being able to drink from a fountain or faucet whenever we’re thirsty. But did you know more than a billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water? Part of the problem is that cleaning (or purifying) water is not an easy task. Not only do you need to remove dirt and other debris but you also have to get rid of all the invisible bacteria and microorganisms that can make people sick....

A magician tosses a ball into the air once, twice, three times. Suddenly, the ball vanishes in mid-flight. What happened? Don’t worry, the laws of physics haven’t been broken. Magicians do not have supernatural powers; rather, they are masters of exploiting nuances of human perception, attention, and awareness. In light of this, a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, coauthored by a combination of neuroscientists (Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, both at the Barrows Neurological Institute) and magicians (Mac King, James Randi, Apollo Robbins, Teller, John Thompson), describes various ways magicians manipulate our perceptions, and proposes that these methods should inform and aid the neuroscientific study of attention and awareness....

When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s, we were periodically put through “duck and cover” drills under the risibly ridiculous fantasy that our flimsy wooden desks would protect us from a thermonuclear detonation over Los Angeles. When I was an undergraduate at Pepperdine University in 1974, the father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, spoke at our campus about the effectiveness of mutual assured destruction (MAD) to deter war....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The diet of ancient Japan was heavily influenced by its geography as an archipelago, foodstuffs and eating habits imported from mainland Asia, religious beliefs, and an appreciation for the aesthetic appearance of dishes, not just the taste. Millet was replaced by rice as the main staple food from c....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The hei tiki is a small personal adornment, fashioned by hand from tough pounamu (New Zealand greenstone or nephrite jade), and is worn around the neck. Hei means something looped around the neck, and tiki is a generic word used throughout Polynesia to denote human figures carved in wood, stone, or other material....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In ancient Mesopotamia, the gods informed every aspect of daily life including the practice of medicine. Gula, the Sumerian goddess of healing, presided over the medical arts, guiding doctors and dentists in the treatment of health problems, usually attributed to supernatural causes, for over 2,000 years. Many aspects of medicine later associated with Greece were pioneered in Mesopotamia....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Westcar Papyrus, dated to the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt (1782 - c.1570 BCE), but most likely written during the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE), contains some of the most interesting tales from ancient Egypt. The papyrus takes its name from the man who first acquired it, Henry Westcar, who purchased the piece c....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Unam Sanctum (1302) was a papal bull issued by Pope Boniface VIII (served 1294-1303) requiring the complete submission of all people, including kings, to the authority and dictates of the pope. As the Church was understood as holding the keys to heaven and hell, and the pope was head of the Church, failure to comply threatened salvation....

Bees, like birds and butterflies, use the Sun as a compass for navigation, whereas mammals typically find their way by remembering familiar landmarks on a continuous mental map. However, the latest research suggests that bees also use this type of map, despite their much smaller brain size. The work adds a new dimension to complex bee-navigation abilities that have long captivated researchers. “The surprise comes for many people that such a tiny little brain is able to form such a rich memory described as a cognitive map,” says co-author Randolf Menzel, a neurobiologist at the Free University of Berlin....

Big brains do not just develop overnight. To get that density of circuitry and higher order processing takes time. According to the “cognitive buffer hypothesis,” this supposed “cost” of time spent in extended development is offset by the advantages afforded by larger brains—namely, the ability to tailor behavior to different environmental stimuli. A new study of birds provides the first physical evidence of this hypothesis. The report, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveals that birds with bigger brains relative to their body sizes were found to have a better chance of survival in nature....

Editor’s note: This Q&A is a part of a survey conducted by Scientific American of executives at companies engaged in developing and implementing non–fossil fuel energy technologies. What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of wind power? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? One of the primary obstacles is balancing electrical generation, load, and storage over time, since wind energy is a variable power source....

At a juncture in history during which women are seeking equality with men, science arrives with a belated gift to the feminist movement. Male-biased evolutionary scenarios—Man the Hunter, Man the Toolmaker, and so on—are being challenged by the discovery that females play a central, perhaps even dominant, role in the social life of one of our nearest relatives. In the past three decades many strands of knowledge have come together concerning a relatively unknown ape with an unorthodox repertoire of behavior: the bonobo....

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. (ISNS)—Using the microphones and speakers that come standard in many of today’s laptop computers and mobile devices, hackers can secretly transmit and receive data using high-frequency audio signals that are mostly inaudible to human ears, a new study shows. Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz, researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing, and Ergonomics, recently performed a proof-of-concept experiment that showed that “covert acoustical networking,” a technique which had been hypothesized but considered improbable by most experts, is indeed possible....

After more than 20 years as a professional paleontologist, I know how lucky I am to spend my days studying dinosaurs. In times when so many people can barely afford the basic necessities, how can I possibly justify using taxpayers’ money to study animals that vanished millions of years ago? What can they teach us about today’s world? Aren’t they irrelevant to modern-day problems? The truth is, paleontology is anything but irrelevant....

By Amy MaxmenPrecious memories need not fade if a report today bears fruit. Neuroscientists have successfully strengthened old memories in rats, according to research published today in Science.A handful of substances can strengthen memories as they’re being made. But a greater aim for neuroscientists is to learn how to enhance existing, older memories, such as where you live or your grandson’s name – memories often lost because of dementia or amnesia....

By Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) - Extreme floods like those swamping parts of Britain in recent months could become more frequent in Europe by 2050, more than quadrupling financial losses, if climate change worsens and more people live in vulnerable areas, research showed on Sunday. The study said instances of very extreme floods, which now occur about once every 50 years, could shorten to about every 30 years, while cases of extreme damage now occurring once every 16 years could shorten to once every 10 years....

FINALIST YEAR: 1958 HER FINALIST PROJECT: Measuring the orbit of a satellite called…Sputnik WHAT LED TO THE PROJECT: Like many young people growing up in the 1950’s, Jane Richardson veered into science in part because of Sputnik—though in her case, the connection was quite direct. Deeply interested in astronomy, she and her friends in Teaneck, N.J., used to stake out spots in a field in the days after the Soviets launched their satellite....