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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. Parmenides (l. c. 485 BCE) lived and taught in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy and is known as the founder of the Monist School (though it may have been founded by Xenophanes of Colophon, l. c. 570-478 BCE) which claimed all of reality is One. The observable world, Parmenides said, is actually uniform and singular (mono) in being....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Xenophanes of Colophon (l.c. 570-c.478 BCE) is known as one of the Pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece, so-called because they pre-date Socrates (l. c. 470/469-399 BCE), recognized as the Father of Western Philosophy. The Pre-Socratics initiated philosophical inquiry in ancient Greece starting in the 6th century BCE with Thales of Miletus (l....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Before Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25, there was little doubt that its impact would be devastating and wide-ranging. Unfortunately, Harvey delivered and then some with early estimates of the damage at over US$190 billion, which would make it the costliest storm in U.S. history. The rain dumped on the Houston area by Harvey has been called “unprecedented,” making engineering and floodplain design standards look outdated at best and irresponsible at worst....

A small crack unzipped Monday (March 17) under the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles, waking millions of people with Southern California’s largest earthquake in years. The fracture that caused the earthquake was not on a significant fault and is unlikely to be a new source of major earthquakes, said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson. (An earthquake is a sudden movement that releases stored energy on a fault.) Instead, the break likely is a bit player in California’s tectonic drama, a minor crack in tortured crust being squeezed between two tectonic plates....

The sun has certainly been shining for perovskite solar cells in recent years. First created in 2012, perovskite solar cells have shown great promise as an affordable alternative to other solar technologies and their performance has gone from strength-to-strength. Reports now suggest they are capable of efficiencies greater than 20%—a milestone which took other solar cells decades to reach. But how realistic are these efficiency values? This question is now being asked by national laboratories, with a cluster of research groups finding that the very nature of efficiency testing, as well as the questionable stability of perovskites themselves, is only serving to exaggerate device performance....

A pilot sits in the cockpit of a Diamond DA42 light aircraft, mentally working through the steps needed to safely land on the runway ahead. Moments later he touches down without having laid a hand on the controls or stepped on the aircraft’s pedals. He is no ordinary pilot—in fact, he is not a pilot at all, and he has just landed his aircraft using brain waves. In a series of experiments earlier this year, seven people with varying degrees of cockpit experience—including none—successfully flew and landed a simulated DA42....

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China pledged further support support for its ailing solar power industry on Saturday as the government seeks to revive a sector struggling with overcapacity and falling prices.The State Council, China’s cabinet, said in July that the country aimed to more than quadruple solar power generating capacity to 35 gigawatts by 2015 in an apparent bid to ease a glut in the domestic solar power industry.The State Council, in a statement published on its website, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was taking measures to “promote the healthy development of the photovoltaic industry”....

In the ferocious arena of a northern elephant seal colony, where few males ever get to mate, jostling suitors often face bloody battles over access to groups of females. And these boisterous bulls have a dramatic way of making their presence known to rivals: individuals identify themselves via rhythmic, guttural calls, accompanied by body slams that literally shake the ground around them. Now research indicates that the seals are not born with these identifying signals....

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by repetitive, anxiety-inducing thoughts, urges and compulsions, such as excessive cleaning, counting and checking. These behaviors are also prevalent in the general population: one study in a large sample of U.S. adults found more than a quarter had experienced obsessions or compulsions at some point in their life. Although most of these individuals do not develop full-blown OCD, such symptoms can still interfere with daily life....

Dear EarthTalk: Global population numbers continue to rise, as does the poverty, suffering and environmental degradation that goes with it. Has the U.S., under Obama, increased or at least restored its family planning aid to developing countries that was cut when the Bush Administration first took office?— T. Healy, via e-mail The short answer is yes. President Obama is much more interested in family planning around the world than his predecessor ever was....

Call it the case of the justices versus modern times. Just prior to this column going to press, the Supreme Court heard arguments in United States v. Wurie (and Mr. Wurie’s cell phone). The case centers on whether the Fourth Amendment protects against warrantless searches of a cell phone possessed by a guy who is already under arrest. I don’t know how United States v. Wurie is going to be decided, but I’m betting on a 5–4 decision that basically grants the police the right to examine the contents of your cell phone and possibly your stomach and small intestine....

If you live in a state bordering Canada or Mexico, you may soon be given an opportunity to carry a very high tech item: a remotely readable driver’s license. Designed to identify U.S. citizens as they approach the nation’s borders, the cards are being promoted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to save time and simplify border crossings. But if you care about your safety and privacy as much as convenience, you might want to think twice before signing up....

Millions of years ago, the microbes in river bottoms disappeared into the earth, buried by successive layers of sediment. Over hundreds of millions of years, these microbes—syntrophic bacteria and methanogenic Archaea—evolved to thrive in this underworld, slowly consuming the rich hydrocarbons that surrounded them in the form of oil. As a result, a large amount of the planet’s petroleum stash has been ruined, becoming instead a “hot spot” for deep microbial life that consumes it and taints the rest with sulfur and other byproducts....

NASA’s space shuttle fleet will never fly again, but the agency believes it still has plenty to learn from the iconic vehicles. NASA technicians prepping the grounded shuttles for delivery to museums have been instructed to pull out and hang onto many different pieces, from the windows near the nose to the huge main engines near the orbiters’ tails. Agency engineers will study these parts to help inform development of future spaceships—and some of the hardware may even be used again....

A tweak to a technique that edits DNA with pinpoint precision has boosted its ability to correct defective genes in people. Called CRISPR, the method is already used in the lab to insert and remove genome defects in animal embryos. But the genetic instructions for the machinery on which CRISPR relies—a gene-editing enzyme called Cas9 and RNA molecules that guide it to its target—are simply too large to be efficiently ferried into most of the human body’s cells....

President Biden’s nominee to serve as the next NASA administrator, former Senator Bill Nelson, has overseen the agency’s budget and operations for the better part of 40 years. The White House announcement of his nomination said that “Most every piece of space and science law has had his imprint” and that “In the Senate he was known as the go-to senator for our nation’s space program.” Nelson’s outsized influence on NASA over four decades is undisputed, but some of us in the space community are concerned this may not be a feature....

EarthTalk® E - The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that American kids are going through puberty earlier today than in previous generations, and are there any environmental causes for this? — Paul Chase, Troy, NY Research indicates that indeed Americans girls and boys are going through puberty earlier than ever, though the reasons are unclear. Many believe our widespread exposure to synthetic chemicals is at least partly to blame, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why our bodies react in certain ways to various environmental stimuli....

The drug maker Sanofi Pasteur is entering the race to develop a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus sweeping through China, the company announced Monday. David Loew, Sanofi’s global head of vaccines, announced the company would partner with the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority—known as BARDA—to make a vaccine using the company’s recombinant DNA platform. Loew said the company’s previous work to develop a vaccine for SARS—a cousin virus—gives it a leg up on this work....

Early last October the Nobel Prize committee announced that it was awarding Barack Obama the Peace Prize for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” At the same time, in counterpoint to that news, it was reported that the director of India’s 1998 nuclear testing program had called for new tests. That move provoked fears of escalation, in case it motivated Pakistan and China to recommence testing and made it even harder for the U....

Some of the earliest signs of climate change are evident in the highest, coldest parts of the globe, where Arctic sea ice is reaching record low levels and glaciers calve dramatically off Greenland’s frozen ice sheet. In northern Canada, researchers are seeing another signal that is likely connected to global warming. Shallow lakes in the tundra are drying up. There are two reasons for this, according to Frédéric Bouchard, an earth scientist at Laval University and lead author of a study on the lakes recently accepted in the journal Geophysical Research Letters....