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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. Monasticism, that is individuals devoting themselves to an ascetic life in a monastery for devotional purposes, was an ever-present feature of the Byzantine empire. Monasteries became powerful landowners and a voice to be listened to in imperial politics. From fanatical ascetics to much-appreciated wine-producers, men and women who devoted their lives to a monastic life were an important part of the community with monasteries offering all manner of services to the poor and needy, out-of-favour nobles, weary travellers, and avid bookworms....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) was the first comprehensive effort by the Catholic Church to respond to the challenge raised by the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648). The Council effectively began what is known as the Counter-Reformation (also the Catholic Reformation, 1545 to c. 1700), which reestablished the authority of the Catholic Church....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Piracy has involved many nationalities over the centuries, but one of the prominent groups in the medieval and early modern periods was the French pirates, who terrorised the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. French writers often preferred to use the term filibuster and corsair for pirates who operated as privateers, and here are presented ten such figures who have made their mark in the annals of crimes at sea....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The two Japanese invasions of Korea between 1592 and 1598 CE, otherwise known as the ‘Imjin Wars’, saw Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598 CE), the Japanese military leader, put into reality his long-held plan to invade China through Korea. The ambitious campaign got off to a brilliant start as cities like Pyongyang and Seoul were captured, but eventually, the combined operations of the Korean navy led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a large land army from Ming China, and well-organised local rebels resulted in the first invasion stalling in 1593 CE....

On June 5, 2020, the U.S Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published the details of a recent multistate outbreak of mumps in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The outbreak involved 62 cases linked to a single asymptomatic wedding attendee. Even though mumps is a vaccine-preventable disease, 41 of the individuals infected in the reported incident had been fully vaccinated according to the current guidelines. What started as a mild illness in a caretaker of children in Nebraska grew into an epidemic involving communities in six different states....

In January, scientists introduced a complication into the story of human evolution. While examining a burial site in Cameroon, archaeologists recovered genetic material from four children dating back 8,000 years. It is some of the of the oldest human DNA on record, according to the study, which was published in Scientific American’s sister publication, Nature. After sequencing the DNA, a team led by researchers at Harvard University concluded that humans may have diverged into four primary populations as many as 250,000 years ago....

Symbiont by Mira Grant Orbit, 2014 (($26)) In this book, the second in Grant’s Parasitology series of thrillers, a medical breakthrough is not all that it seems. Most of the world lives with implanted genetically engineered tapeworms that boost the immune system, protect against illness and secrete helpful drugs. The powerful biotech company behind the worms has an interest in keeping any risks under wraps, but a serious danger becomes public when a zombielike sleepwalking sickness begins infecting people....

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan of Nature magazineGermany is still recovering from one of the world’s worst outbreaks of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli, which as of 18 June had sickened more than 3,200 people and caused 39 deaths. The unusually deadly bacteria moved undetected through the food supply from livestock to agriculture to the dinner table, and the response to the outbreak was branded slow and inefficient by physicians and scientists (see ‘Microbe outbreak panics Europe’)....

By Samuel Shen and Norihiko ShirouzuGUANGZHOU/BEIJING (Reuters) - German auto giants Volkswagen AG, BMW and Daimler see China’s future as being electric - encouraged by generous government subsidies - but that bet puts them at odds with some of their Asian rivals.While the Europeans were heralding the all-electric vehicle at the Guangzhou auto show this week, Toyota Motor and Honda Motor were unveiling hydrogen fuel cell cars at shows in Tokyo and Los Angeles....

In late May, a Dutch court brought new hope to addressing climate change by ruling that Royal Dutch Shell must cut carbon emissions from both its operations and the oil and gas products the company sells. Never before has a fossil fuel company been ordered to reduce its heat-trapping emissions to address climate change. From a legal, scientific and societal perspective, the case against Royal Dutch Shell leaves little doubt that individual companies can be held accountable for driving climate change....

Four years ago writer and producer Jon Palfreman was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He has chronicled his experience and that of many other “Parkies,” as patients sometimes call themselves, in two books, the latest of which is Brain Storms: The Race to Unlock the Mysteries of Parkinson’s Disease, published this year by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which traces some of the recent progress of medical researchers in treating this disease....

Inexpensive thin-film photovoltaic cells made from organic plastics may be one of the fastest ways to ramp up production of solar power—if only they could do a better job converting the sun’s energy into electricity. One of the keys to unlocking organic thin-film’s capabilities, according to a team of University of Washington in Seattle researchers headed up by chemist David Ginger, is to better understand how electrical charges move through solar cells by studying their structure at the nano level....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. “We live in a connected world” is a well-worn axiom. Even so, few people realize the true extent of that interconnectivity. Networking giant Cisco Systems estimates that by 2015 as many as 15 billion devices will be connected to the Internet—more than double the world’s population. One forecast suggests that the number of such devices will reach 50 billion by 2050, and that is almost certainly an underestimate....

Much of Haiti’s population of 10 million already lacked reliable access to ambulance services, clean water and good sanitation before a magnitude 7 earthquake struck there in January 2010. Now, after receiving billions of dollars in aid and a small army of volunteer health workers, has the country climbed onto more stable ground for health? The short answer is, no. But the significant challenges facing Haiti in ensuring the health of its citizens involve factors more complex than temporary housing camps or damaged hospitals, public health experts say....

Driving through Manhattan during rush hour is any commuter’s nightmare. Cars and trucks move an average of 5 mph—barely faster than walking. And as the vehicles sit in traffic, planet-warming pollution spews from tailpipes. That all may change soon. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last week announced a 10-point plan to transform and fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The plan included an endorsement of congestion pricing, the idea of charging people extra for driving through popular areas at peak times....

JULY 6–10 What is creativity? How does it arise? Philosophers and neuroscientists alike are searching for answers to these intriguing questions. Neuroscientists are using functional MRI to discover whether we have brain circuits specifically associated with creative thinking. And philosophers may seek to understand both what motivates aha! moments in everyday life and how these instances determine who we are. During the five days of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers will come together to discuss themes of common interest, including the nature of honesty and the neuroethics of using brain scans for lie detection....

Saturn is perhaps best known for its intricate ring system, but the giant planet also boasts a collection of moons, numbering in the dozens, that is nothing to sniff at. The largest, Titan, has helped draw a bit more attention to the Saturnian satellites in recent days, following an announcement that various chemical abundances on Titan were consistent with but not necessarily indicative of the presence of methane-dwelling, hydrogen-breathing life....

Researchers are increasingly turning to nature for design inspiration. This book surveys examples from the field of biomimetics—from self-cleaning surfaces based on the lotus leaf to fishery echo sounders that aim to simulate dolphin sonar. Earth scientist Peter D. Ward of the University of Washington imagines how Earth and its inhabitants will change in the next 1,000 years as the ice caps melt and the seas rise. Here he describes northern California in the year 2135....

In 2004 a team of australian and indonesian scientists who had been excavating a cave called Liang Bua on the Indonesian island of Flores announced that they had unearthed something extraordinary: a partial skeleton of an adult human female who would have stood just over a meter tall and who had a brain a third as large as our own. The specimen, known to scientists as LB1, quickly received a fanciful nickname—the hobbit, after writer J....

On March 5, 1979, Voyager 1 arrived at Jupiter, followed by Voyager 2 on July 9. Suddenly, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., was flooded with crystal-clear pictures of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere and never-before-seen volcanic eruptions on its moon Io. When the twin spacecraft arrived at Saturn, they matched their previous performances at Jupiter with images of the ringed world’s magnificently intricate system and moons, granting Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone and his colleagues all they had hoped for in a torrent of discoveries....