The Paris Agreement has completed its uneasy transformation from the idealized expression of world solidarity it was three years ago in the French capital to a set of mechanisms that countries hope will deliver results. In the waning hours of Saturday night, nations agreed to the 156-page “rulebook” for the Paris compact after negotiations here ran more than a day into overtime. The results were met with more relief than jubilation....
The world must act quickly to contain West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, which is “spiralling out of control”, President Barack Obama said on September 16. To that end, the United States will send 3,000 military personnel and spend roughly $750 million on fighting the epidemic, which is thought to have infected nearly 5,000 people and has killed more than 2,400, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. Experts say that a massive increase in personnel and other resources will be necessary to contain the virus....
Every great bottle of wine begins with a humble fungal infection. Historically, winemakers relied on naturally occurring yeasts to convert grape sugars into alcohol; modern vintners typically buy one of just a few laboratory-grown strains. Now, to set their products apart, some of the best winemakers are revisiting nature’s lesser-used microbial engineers. Not all these strains can withstand industrial production processes and retain their efficacy—but a natural additive offers a possible solution, new research suggests....
“How will Scientific American be different with you as its first woman editor in chief?” It was December 2009, and the official announcement had just gone out about my taking the helm of a magazine founded in 1845. I suppose I should have expected the reporter’s question. But instead I was surprised. Irritable thoughts swirled unbidden: “Why is being a woman in leadership still considered an amazing thing? I mean, how was the magazine different when I was its first female executive editor for eight years?...
West Virginia is grappling with one of the largest reported hepatitis A outbreaks in U.S. history. The disease flare-up has sickened at least 1,031 people this year, and some health officials say the surge is linked to the ongoing opioid crisis and other drug use. About 80 percent of those known to be infected in the outbreak say they use illicit drugs, according to state records. Although health officials do not know exactly which substances are involved, self-reported data from hepatitis A patients indicate about 58 percent inject illicit drugs and 42 percent use noninjected ones; some report using both....
When Russia invaded Ukraine last month, many security analysts were expecting a level of cyberwar never seen before, because of Russia’s history of such aggression. There has been low-level activity. Cyberattacks were under way in Ukraine even before Russian forces invaded on 24 February. Hours prior, a type of malware called a wiper circulated on Ukrainian government computing systems, corrupting data. Earlier that week, a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, widely attributed to Russia, had flooded Ukrainian bank websites with traffic, making them inaccessible....
Antibiotic resistance poses a dire threat in hospitals and communities. To help limit such risk, health care professionals should begin sequencing the DNA of offending bacteria, the White House’s council of science advisors said in a new report. Armed with genome-sequencing technology that enables scientists to glean details about where the infection comes from and to what extent it is related to antibiotic use on farms, policy makers will be better poised to tamp down the threat....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The ancient Near East, and the historical region of the Fertile Crescent in particular, is generally seen as the birthplace of agriculture. The first agricultural evidence comes from the Levant, from where it spread to Mesopotamia, enabling the rise of large-scale cities and empires in the region....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Emerging from a small sect of Judaism in the 1st century CE, early Christianity absorbed many of the shared religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman world. In traditional histories of Western culture, the emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire is known as “the triumph of Christianity....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Henry of Navarre became the nominal ruler of France after the assassination of Henry III of France (r. 1574-1589), whose marriage to Louise de Lorraine produced no heir. After years of attempts to deny the throne to Navarre, his enemies realized they could not defeat him militarily. The French Wars of Religion had exhausted the country, and it became clear that Henry would need to adopt the religion of the majority of his subjects to assure the freedom of conscience for Protestants with whom he had a religious affinity and who had fought by his side....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Judea was initially dependent on its neighbor Syria for military support until it received a Roman legion of its own in 70 CE after the Great Jewish Revolt of 66 CE. Legio X Fretensis was stationed at remains of the burned city of Jerusalem, serving as the resident legion....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Mighty King Assyrian War Relief Panel, NimrudOsama Shukir Muhammed Amin (Copyright) 600 of their warriors I put to the sword and decapitated; 400 I took alive; 3,000 captives I brought forth; I took possession of the city for myself: the living soldiers, and heads to the city of Amidi the royal city, I sent....
Endless news cycles and viral social media warn of “breakthrough infections” in people already vaccinated for COVID-19. These reports leave the mistaken impression that protections afforded by the vaccines are not working—and they can fuel reticence among the millions of people in the U.S. who have yet to get a shot. But such infections are not only known to occur after COVID vaccination. They frequently happen following inoculation against influenza, measles and many other diseases....
In my Scientific American column this month I vented about the importance of software interface design. Bad design wastes our time, makes us feel incompetent, interferes with productivity—and, sometimes, really messes things up. Herewith: Five of the worst digital user-interface debacles of all time. Windows 8 The trouble wasn’t that Microsoft’s designers couldn’t design a good operating system interface; it’s that they designed two of them. Windows 8 had one environment for keyboard/mouse and a second, overlaid interface for touch screens....
Link to Slide Show IT IS A FACT of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world. Of course, many experiences in daily life reflect the physical stimuli that enter the brain. But the same neural machinery that interprets actual sensory inputs is also responsible for our dreams, delusions and failings of memory....
By Alister Doyle OSLO, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The president of the Pacific island state of Kiribati favors buying more land abroad after a purchase in Fiji, to secure both food supplies and perhaps a future home if rising sea levels swamp low-lying atolls. Anote Tong, in Norway on a stopover to view melting Arctic ice pushing up sea levels before he attends a U.N. climate summit in New York on Tuesday, said he wanted to lay conditions for “migration with dignity” from the islands....
The modern supermarket offers a rainbow cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. Peppers, avocadoes, strawberries, cucumbers—they’re all made possible by bees. But “there just aren’t enough pollinators in the natural world” to take care of our global crop load, says Sarah Arnold, an ecologist at the University of Greenwich. So farmers release commercially reared bees by the thousands onto their fields, where the insects buzz along diligently and pollinate billions of dollars’ worth of crops every year....
By a simple food-in/energy-out model, a run on the treadmill or swim in the pool should make you want to eat more. But recent findings have suggested that exercise can actually help to slow overeating. And a new study presents evidence that the body’s physiologic response to exercise can help retune the nervous system’s cues and make the body feel less hungry, rather than more so. Hunger is a complex sensation, but it is determined in part by neurons located in the hypothalamus, which send signals to the brain telling it that you’re either hungry or sated....
Over the years, ConocoPhillips — an energy company so rich that it earns as much in a year as Croatia — has positioned itself as a good guy among its peers when it comes to greenhouse gas pollution. It is a member of a U.N.-led initiative to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the primary component of natural gas. In the United States, it is a longtime participator in U....
Human skulls are pierced with coffin nails and human bones are turned into Ouija board pieces; almost nothing is off-limits in the U.K.’s thriving online human remains trade, a Live Science investigation has found. Buying and selling human remains isn’t illegal in the U.K., provided that the body parts sold aren’t used for transplants, and Facebook and Instagram are hubs for dealing in the dead. The remains of adults, children, babies and fetuses are all on the market....
