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By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Several foreign climbing expeditions have called off attempts to scale Everest following an avalanche that killed at least 13 local guides, meaning Nepal faces an entire season without a single ascent of the mountain for the first time in decades. The toll from last Friday’s accident was the highest in a single day in Everest history, and many Sherpas who are angry over their treatment at the hands of foreign mountaineers and the government have refused to guide visitors up the climb....

The national security establishment needs to prepare for a series of global crises sparked by climate change, a group of experts wrote in a report released today. The analysis by the Center for Climate and Security identifies 12 “epicenters” where climate change could stress global security, possibly igniting conflicts around the world. American diplomats and military planners have already started grappling with some of these problems—but the links between them do not get enough attention, the experts said....

According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” Reproductive isolation is the key to understanding how new species form, and many types of barriers can divide a population and split it into two different groups: geographic (such as a mountain range, desert, ocean or river), morphological (a change in coloration, body type or reproductive organs), behavioral (a change in breeding season, mating calls or courtship actions), and others....

Life as we know it is remarkably diverse and adaptive, permitting organisms to gain a toehold in some of the most outwardly inhospitable places on the planet. But it tends to rely on a tidy, predictable array of six nutrient elements, a modest alphabet of basic biology that leaves open the possibility of other combinations making up entirely different kinds of biological activity. Life as we know it, then, might not be all there is—for either terrestrial or extraterrestrial biology....

An antibiotic with the ability to vanquish drug-resistant pathogens has been discovered — through a soil bacterium found just beneath the surface of a grassy field in Maine. Although the new antibiotic has yet to be tested in people, there are signs that pathogens will be slow to evolve resistance to it. Today in Nature, a team led by Kim Lewis of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, report that the antibiotic, which they have named teixobactin, was active against the deadly bacterium MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in mice, and a host of other pathogens in cell cultures....

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft grazed Saturn’s iconic rings Sunday (Dec. 4), performing the first plunge of the long-lived mission’s next-to-last phase. Cassini zoomed within 57,000 miles (91,000 kilometers) of Saturn’s cloud tops on Sunday morning, diving through the planet’s ring plane at about the spot where a faint ring generated by the small moons Janus and Epimetheus lies, NASA officials said. Cassini will perform 19 more such close passes, each one about a week apart, through April 22, 2017....

The Earth’s surface is warming, after all, says a team of researchers who sought to investigate claims that flawed data and methods had skewed existing analyses of global temperature trends. The work by the Berkeley Earth Project shows that, on average, global land surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1950s – on par with the warming trend described by research groups at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the U....

Soil microorganisms absorb carbon dioxide only to convert it into much more potent greenhouse gases, negating almost 17 percent of the Earth’s ability to absorb heat-trapping emissions, a new study suggests. The study, published in this week’s issue of Nature, measured the release of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) gases from soils in forests, grasslands, wetlands and agricultural fields, including rice paddies. Although less abundant than carbon dioxide, these two greenhouse gases have about 30 and 400 times the heat-trapping power of CO2, respectively....

Key concepts The heart Heart rate Health Exercise Introduction Have you ever wondered how many times your heart beats in a day, a month, a year—or will beat in total throughout your life? Over an average lifetime, the human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times. For a person to keep their heart healthy, they should eat right, not smoke and get regular exercise. In this science activity, you’ll measure your heart rate during different types of physical activities to find out which gives your heart the best workout to help keep it fit....

Distortions and outright lies by politicians and pundits have become so common that major news outlets like the Associated Press, CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Washington Post routinely assign journalists and fact-checkers to verify claims made during stump speeches and press briefings. The motivation to uncover falsehoods and misleading statements taken out of context is laudable. But when it comes to real-world complexities, the trouble is that people often see different things when looking at the same event, a phenomenon repeatedly documented by psychologists....

Five years ago two of us whiled away a cloudy night on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii by placing bets on how many moons remained to be discovered in the solar system. Jewitt wagered $100 that a dedicated telescopic search could find, at most, 10 new ones. After all, he reasoned, in the entire 20th century, astronomers had come across only a few. Sheppard more optimistically predicted twice as many, given the increased sensitivity of modern astronomical facilities....

How “green” is that organic cotton yoga outfit on Aisle 30? Read the tag. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said today that it will require its suppliers to provide information about the environmental impact of their products and distill the data into sustainability ratings, akin to nutritional labels on food. Wal-Mart is asking its top-tier suppliers to reply by Oct. 1 to 15 uniform questions that measure greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste production, water consumption and production ethics....

Michael Raupp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, offers this answer. Imagine a monarch butterfly searching for nectar or a mate in a meadow on a humid afternoon in July. Suddenly, a fast-moving thunderstorm approaches, bringing gusty winds and large raindrops. For the monarch and other butterflies this is not a trivial matter. An average monarch weighs roughly 500 milligrams; large raindrops have a mass of 70 milligrams or more....

The scheme sounded too good to be true: with a few simple clicks researchers could identify thousands of people who would be a good fit for trials testing certain drugs or therapies, thanks to their geography, rare disease or risk factors like obesity. The promise of this method, researchers crowed, would allow them to leapfrog over the gaping chasm between the number of people typically needed for clinical trials and how many stumble across relevant advertising or meet with recruiting doctors....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The city of Jericho is remembered for the story in the Book of Joshua in the Bible regarding its destruction by the Israelites. Excavations have revealed that Jericho is one of the earliest settlements dating back to 9000 BCE. It also has the oldest known protective wall in the world....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire involved the Christian faithful travelling often huge distances to visit such holy sites as Jerusalem or to see in person relics of holy figures and miraculous icons on show from Thessaloniki to Antioch. Well-worn routes resulted along which regular stopping points allowed pilgrims to sleep, eat, and be cared for in a network of monasteries and churches....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Black Death of 1347-1352 CE is the most infamous plague outbreak of the medieval world, unprecedented and unequaled until the 1918-1919 CE flu pandemic in the modern age. The cause of the plague was unknown and, in accordance with the general understanding of the Middle Ages, was attributed to supernatural forces and, primarily, the will or wrath of God....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Arthurian legend begins with the Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100 - c. 1155 CE). Earlier history writers such as Gildas, Bede, and Nennius had already established the existence of a British war-chief who defeated the Saxons at Badon Hill long before Geoffrey wrote his own account but none of them would imagine the king so brilliantly or choose to develop history into legend....

Everyone knows the crankiness, puffy eyes and excessive yawning that follow a bad night’s sleep. Those chronically sleep-deprived also have increased risks of heart disease, obesity and early death. Because sleep patterns are difficult to monitor in large populations, researchers do not know what causes many sleep problems or how exactly these problems affect us. Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, thinks a global “human sleep project” could finally solve some of these mysteries....

As demand for streaming video over the Web, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calling services and other forms of Internet-based multimedia communication skyrockets, content creators and consumers are counting on fiber-optic networks to handle these increasing loads quickly and efficiently. One way to ensure this happens is to enhance the ability of such networks, which transmit data over glass or plastic threads, to capture and retain data even for very brief intervals....