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The incidence of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, has spiked in developed countries in recent decades. In three studies published today in Nature, researchers describe the molecular pathways that can lead to autoimmune disease and identify one possible culprit that has been right under our noses — and on our tables — the entire time: salt. To stay healthy, the human body relies on a careful balance: too little immune function and we succumb to infection, too much activity and the immune system begins to attack healthy tissue, a condition known as autoimmunity....

By Ros Krasny WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Energy Committee advanced a bill on Wednesday that would force congressional approval of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline project, but the measure seems unlikely to be taken up by the full Senate. The bill, the latest effort by lawmakers to breathe life into the long-delayed pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, will languish without a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring it to a vote....

The race to the $1,000 genome heated up today as Life Technologies, based in Carlsbad, Calif., announced that it will debut a new sequencing machine this year that will eventually be capable of decoding entire human genomes in a day for less than $1,000. The machine, called the Ion Proton, will be the successor to the Personal Genome Machine made by the company Ion Torrent, a subsidiary of Life Technologies....

Vision Quest: Retinal Implants Deliver the Promise of Sight to Damaged Eyes. Emerging technologies successfully stimulate retinas ravaged by retinitis pigmentosa, age-related macular degeneration and other diseases to give sufferers a new lease on light Jun 15, 2010 Biomarker Studies Could Realize Goal of More Effective and Personalized Cancer Medicine. Finding individual differences in tumors is key to treating the right patient with the right medicine at the right time, researchers say Apr 26, 2010...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska’s largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. The swans, famed for their French horn call and immortalized by author E.B. White, were nearly hunted to extinction in much of the United States and Canada by the late 1800s for their meat, feathers, down and quills....

From polluting exhaust spewed from tailpipes to caved-in roadways due to extreme weather, transportation and climate change have an intimate and insidious relationship, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) has outlined in a new paper. “It’s particularly timely now because we’re seeing so many weather phenomena, from heat records to wildfires and severe droughts,” said Cynthia Burbank, vice president of the global infrastructure consulting firm Parsons Brinckerhoff and an author of the document....

A bundle of recent genetic studies have suggested modern humans had sex with Neanderthals thousands of years ago when the two populations roamed the planet alongside each other. However, the bones left behind by the two species don’t bear any obvious traces of interbreeding, and a new study of monkeys in Mexico shows why we shouldn’t expect them to. Researchers examined blood samples, hair samples and measurements collected from mantled howler monkeys and black howler monkeys that were live-captured and released in Mexico and Guatemala between 1998 and 2008....

“Every one of us has a bad relationship tale to tell—the frog or two scattered among the princes and princesses. There was the guy who did his business with the bathroom door open. Or the girl who would lick utensils clean and put them back in the drawer. There was the one who split every joint purchase down to the penny. And the one who thought inflatable furniture was perfectly sufficient....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The society of the Celts in Iron Age Europe was made up of several distinct hierarchical groups. At the top were rulers and elite warriors, then there were the religious leaders, the druids, and then specialised craftworkers, traders, farmers, and slaves. Our knowledge of Celtic society is, unfortunately, fragmentary and reliant on secondhand literary sources and archaeology....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Library of NysaCarole Raddato (CC BY-NC-SA) The Concept of a Library in Antiquity Libraries in antiquity were not always designed for the public to freely consult texts or take them off-site as libraries function today, although some did offer this service. Many libraries in the Near East and Egypt were attached to sacred temple sites or were part of an administrative or royal archive, while in the Greek and Roman worlds these types continued but private collections became much more common, too....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Mehrauli Archaeological Park is situated in Delhi, just beside the Qutb Complex (historically Mehrauli was the first of the seven cities of Delhi). Spanning an area of more than 200 acres (80 ha), the site displays the rich heritage of India, starting from the Pre-Islamic to the Colonial phase....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Death of Gilgamesh is a Sumerian poem relating the death and afterlife of the famous hero-king of Uruk, who had become a legendary figure. The piece is dated to before the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE), and although its theme informs The Epic of Gilgamesh, it is not always included in modern-day translations....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. This text is part of an article series on the Delian League. The fourth phase of the Delian League encompasses the first part of the Great Peloponnesian War, also referred to as the Ten Years War, sometimes called quite incorrectly The Archidamian War, and it ends with the Peace of Nicias (431/30 – 421/20 BCE)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Portuguese first took an interest in East Africa from the beginning of the 16th century as their empire spread eastwards across the Indian Ocean. Trade in the region was already well-established and carried out by Africans, Indians, and Arabs. Attacks on the trading cities of the Swahili Coast and the Kingdom of Mutapa by the Portuguese did not bring any tangible benefits as traders simply moved to the north....

More and more workers in the next few years will be shortening their morning commute as they make the move from an office building to their home office. According to a new report by global market intelligence and advisory service firm International Data Corp., the mobile work force will surpass 1.3 billion people by 2015 – representing 37.2 percent of the world’s overall work force. Stacy Crook, senior research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Research program, said the worldwide mobile worker population was just over 1 billion in 2010....

The origin of life is one of the great unsolved problems of science. Nobody knows how, where or when life originated. About all that is known for certain is that microbial life had established itself on Earth by about three and a half billion years ago. In the absence of hard evidence of what came before, there is plenty of scope for disagreement. Thirty years ago the prevailing view among biologists was that life resulted from a chemical fluke so improbable it would be unlikely to have happened twice in the observable universe....

Blood type may affect brain function as we age, according to a new large, long-term study. People with the rare AB blood type, present in less than 10 percent of the population, have a higher than usual risk of cognitive problems as they age. University of Vermont hematologist Mary Cushman and her colleagues used data from a national study called REGARDS, which has been following 30,239 African-American and Caucasian individuals older than 45 since 2007....

Thanks to a recent change in how Twitter displays photos and videos, scanning your tweet feed on a desktop or mobile device is either an eye-popping or infuriating experience. Earlier last week – just days before Twitter will price shares for its initial public offering – the social network known for 140-character missives altered its text-based format to emphasize visual media. Once a click away, Twitter photos and Vine videos are being thrust into the faces of the company’s 230 million members....

In 1979 China instituted the one-child policy, which limited every family to just one offspring in a controversial attempt to reduce the country’s burgeoning population. The strictly enforced law had the desired effects: in 2011 researchers estimated that the policy prevented 400 million births. In a new study in Science, researchers find that it has also caused China’s so-called little emperors to be more pessimistic, neurotic and selfish than their peers who have siblings....

Commercial fishermen contracted by the Western Australia Department of Fisheries to perform a controversial shark cull that began in January are supposed to kill only sharks that are longer than three meters. And undersize sharks, which made up 75 percent of the total catch during the first few weeks of the cull, have in fact been released. Yet photos and video taken by a team of local conservation activists show that many of the freed undersize animals, mostly tiger sharks, are dying nonetheless....