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Some 100,000 years ago, when Neandertals still occupied the caves of southern Europe, a star was born. It appeared when a ball of gas collapsed and ignited within a stellar factory known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Then, leftover material began to cool and coalesce around it, forming dust grains and a hazy envelope of gas. In September 2014, some of the light from that hot young star and its surroundings landed inside 66 silvery parabolas perched on a plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert—the driest on Earth....

The bluefin tuna is one of the biggest, fastest fishes in the ocean. Its streamlined body can sprint at up to 45 miles per hour in pursuit of its prey. Reaching some 500 pounds, this giant once dominated the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. But humans have hunted the bluefin for thousands of years. In the last century stocks have been decimated. The Pacific population is now just 2.6 percent of its original size....

Sifting through layers of sediment in Vietnam’s Song Hong Delta, researchers weren’t surprised to find charred evidence of ancient fires after several cultures migrated there about 5,000 years ago. Cycles of early blazes are tied to changes in the climate, when the area dried out, as well as to agriculture, as a means to clear land for planting. But what could explain a surge in singed land throughout the past 1,500 years?...

For all their sophistication, computers still can’t compete with nature’s gift—a brain that sorts objects quickly and accurately enough so that people and primates can interpret what they see as it happens. Despite decades of development, computer vision systems still get bogged down by the massive amounts of data necessary just to identify the most basic images. Throw that same image into a different setting or change the lighting and artificial intelligence is even less of a match for good old gray matter....

Interactive: View the insides of the Kindle E-Reader E-paper displays are reflective: ambient light bounces off them, so they look and read like ordinary paper. The screens are very energy efficient, too. “The only power used is when you turn a page,” says Isaac Yang, manager of software product development at Sony in San Jose, Calif. No current is needed to sustain the characters on a page once it has been called up....

Predicting which scientific discoveries will change the world is, arguably, a fool’s game. Who knows what the future will bring? Yet every year a handful of developments—say, the arrival of the quickest, cheapest genome-editing tool yet—get us so excited that we cannot help ourselves. This year those breakthroughs include tools for reprogramming living cells and rendering lab animals transparent; ways of powering electronics with sound waves and saliva; smartphone screens that correct for the flaws in your vision; Lego-like atomic structures that could produce major advances in superconductivity research; and others....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The ancient Romans left behind a wealth of remains which help archaeologists and historians to understand what daily life was like in the Roman Empire. From ancient frescos of rich table spreads, to broken wine vessels, carbonized loaves of bread, and petrified olive pits, the left-overs of Rome’s food culture are all around....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. While little is written about Parthian-Scythian relations, not only did the Parthians share origins with the Scythians and cooperated militarily but social, cultural, and commercial interactions were likely as well. Essentially leading a life of nomadic tribes - riding horses, tending herds, and living in covered wagons - Scythian tribes are often mentioned in ancient sources....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Is it possible to have a heart that is lighter than a feather? To the ancient Egyptians it was not only possible but highly desirable. The after-life of the ancient Egyptians was known as the Field of Reeds, a land just like what one knew, save that there was no sickness, no disappointment and, of course, no death....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The literature of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040-1782 BCE) is justly famous as some of the best the culture ever produced. Great works like The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and The Tale of Sinuhe stand among the great literary masterpieces of the world and there is no doubt that the literary arts in Egypt reached a high point during the Middle Kingdom....

By Jemima Kelly (Reuters) - Four years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, oil is still washing up on the long sandy beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and some islanders are fed up with hearing from BP that the crisis is over. Jules Melancon, the last remaining oyster fisherman on an island dotted with colorful houses on stilts, says he has not found a single oyster alive in his leases in the area since the leak and relies on an onshore oyster nursery to make a living....

A new drug trial that some researchers are calling the most promising yet in the fight against Alzheimer’s suggests it may be possible to clear the brain of the amyloid protein that is characteristic of the disease. The study was small and researchers caution that it’s far too soon to declare victory against a fatal disease that robs people of their memories and ability to function in daily life. But despite repeated failures of Alzheimer’s drugs in the past, there was room for enthusiasm about the trial, the results of which were published today in Nature....

California scientists have discovered clusters of autism, largely in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, where children are twice as likely to have autism as children in surrounding areas. The 10 clusters were found mostly among children with highly educated parents, leading researchers to report that they probably can be explained by better access to medical experts who diagnose the disorder. Because of the strong link to education, the researchers from University of California at Davis said the new findings do not point to a localized source of pollution, such as an industry, near the clusters....

In 2009 Susannah Cahalan was a healthy 24-year-old reporter at the New York Post, one of the country’s oldest newspapers, when she suddenly developed a range of worrying symptoms. Her left hand went numb, paranoid thoughts obsessed her mind, and migraines and stomachaches beset her body. Initially diagnosed with mononucleosis, Cahalan continued to grow worse, eventually suffering a series of near-fatal seizures, psychosis, and a gradual loss of brain function. She ended up at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, where a team of doctors, led by neurologist Souhel Najjar, diagnosed her with a disease that had been discovered only two years earlier: NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis....

Cadmium chloride is a nasty chemical. If it gets on the skin, it releases cadmium, which has been linked to cancer, lung disease and cardiovascular disease. And yet the expensive, dangerous compound has long been used as a coating for thin-film solar cells because it increases the efficiency of converting sunlight to energy. During manufacturing, chemists have to don protective gear and use fume hoods and other precautions to apply the coating, then carefully dispose of the dissolved cadmium waste....

NEW YORK—Presidents and prime ministers, environmental advocates and entrepreneurs have descended on the Big Apple to help the landmark Paris climate deal take force and discuss new ways of reducing greenhouse gases. The annual event, known as Climate Week, is in its eighth year and coincides with the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. It is the first such gathering since nearly 200 countries agreed in the French capital in December to curb global warming through nationally determined plans to limit emissions....

An analysis of two influential studies of prostate cancer screening concludes that the much-debated test “significantly” reduces deaths from the disease, suggesting that current recommendations against routine PSA screening might be steering men away from a lifesaving procedure. The analysis, published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, drew wildly different reactions, as is often the case with research on PSA screenings. Some experts in cancer screening and statistics said its novel approach was “on shaky ground” and used a “completely unverifiable” methodology that they had “never seen before,” but others praised its “intriguing and innovative approach....

It was 2012, and physicists had just announced the big news: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider had delivered what looked like (and was later confirmed to be) a Higgs particle, the capstone of a decades-long search to complete the so-called Standard Model of particle physics—a discovery that would lead the following year to a Nobel Prize. Naturally, many scientists immediately eyed the next piece of the puzzle that they anticipate the LHC will uncover....

HBO Go – with its deep, constantly refreshing online library of hit shows and movies on demand – is the cord-cutter’s dream, but don’t get too excited about a new Comcast pay-television package that offers HBO on the cheap. Though it looks like progress toward breaking out HBO, it’s a big leap from here to getting HBO Go on its own. And Time Warner, HBO’s owner, has signaled it’s a leap it has little interest in making....

One of the first things people notice about the human brain is its intricate landscape of hills and valleys. These convolutions derive from the cerebral cortex, a two- to four-millimeter-thick mantle of gelatinous tissue packed with neurons sometimes called gray matter that mediates our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and actions. Other large-brained mammals such as whales, dogs and our great ape cousins have a corrugated cortex, too each with its own characteristic pattern of convolutions....