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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. The Celtic languages form a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. They derive from Proto-Celtic and are divided into Continental Celtic languages (Lepontic, Gaulish, Galatian, Noric, Celtiberian, Gallaecian) and Insular Celtic languages (six living languages: Breton, Irish, Scottish, Gaelic and Welsh; two revived languages: Cornish, Manx)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Pallavas ruled south-eastern India from the 3rd through the 9th centuries CE. Their empire covered what is today the Tamil Nadu state. Their origin is shrouded in mystery though historians believe their roots might have been from Andhra Pradesh state, north of Tamil Nadu. The Pallava’s own sculptural history at Vaikuntaperumal temple depicts their ancestral roots to the Gods Vishnu and Brahma....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Admonitions of Ipuwer (also known as The Papyrus Ipuwer and The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage) is a literary text dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040-1782 BCE). The only extant copy of the work, preserved on the Papyrus Leiden 344, dates to the New Kingdom (c....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Arch of Septimius Severus, erected in 203 CE, stands in Rome and commemorates the Roman victories over the Parthians in the final decade of the 2nd century CE. The triple triumphal arch was one of the most richly decorated of its type and even today, although badly damaged, it stands in the Forum Romanum as a lasting and imposing monument to Roman vanity....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In early Medieval Europe, a prime subject of frightening tales-come-true were the famously marauding and pillaging Vikings, spilling out of their dragon-headed longships in a state of bloodlust, thirsting for gold. With their menacing presence eventually stretching from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean all the way to North America, no land seemed safe – and it was early on in their globetrotting exercise that the Vikings zoned in on the appealing green shores of Ireland....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. In 1978 the Bee Gees ruled the airwaves, Grease topped the box office and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first proposed a rule on antibacterial hand soaps—a rule that would have eliminated an unnecessary and unsafe ingredient called triclosan. Thirty-five years later many things have changed, but the FDA has not. Just recently it proposed rules on antibacterial soaps that would remove triclosan-containing soap from the shelves—for the third time....

As yet another powerful nor’easter slams New England with wind and snow, some scientists suggest that the storm—and other extreme winter weather—could be linked to climate change in the Arctic. It’s a controversial idea, but one that has gained traction in the last few years. Some scientists suggest that Arctic warming can disrupt certain atmospheric circulation patterns in ways that may disrupt the weather elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. And new research this week may support the theory....

Chubby cheeks, big bright eyes—the characteristics of a baby’s face are thought to provoke nurturing and affectionate behavior in adults. New research suggests that a reward area of the brain initiates this response. Neuroscientist Morten L. Kringelbach of the University of Oxford and his colleagues asked 12 adults, nine of whom were childless, to complete a computer task while infant and adult faces—comparable in expression and attractiveness—flashed onto the screen. The researchers captured the participants’ neural responses with magnetoencephalography, an imaging technique that directly detects brain activity in milliseconds....

Suicide is a puzzle. Fewer than 10% of people with depression attempt suicide, and about 10% of those who kill themselves were never diagnosed with any mental-health condition. Now, a study is trying to determine what happens in the brain when a person attempts suicide, and what sets such people apart. The results could help researchers to understand whether suicide is driven by certain brain biology — and is not just a symptom of a recognized mental disorder....

The famous “Lucy” specimen (Australopithecus afarensis) is one of the earliest known human ancestors to have had a comfortably humanlike upright stride. Her kind lived some 3.6 million to 2.9 million years ago. About a million years before her was “Ardi” (Ardipithecus ramidus), which had much more primitive feet, suggesting that although she might have been able to walk upright, she still was well adapted to life in the trees. So it came as quite a surprise last year when researchers described part of a fossil foot from 3....

We may not miss the phantom shiner, the thicktail chub, the stumptooth minnow or the harelip sucker, but these freshwater fishes are among 39 species (3.2 percent of North America’s freshwater fish population) and 18 subspecies that have vanished from the continent’s waters over the past century. By 2050 the tally could reach as high as 86, an extinction rate that is about 877 times higher than normal and that has accelerated in the past 20 years, according to a study in the September issue of BioScience....

Golf is a game fraught with peril. The torque generated when swinging a golf club can torture the lower back. The repetitive stress involved in smacking the ball may induce the tendonitis known as medial epicondylitis, or golfer’s elbow. The beers im bibed on the course might lead to comic yet hazardous tumbles from the golf cart. Some 11 years ago I noted in this space that bad golfers face additional hazards, ahem....

Hormone-disrupting chemicals may be far more prevalent in lakes and rivers than previously thought. Environmental scientists have discovered that although these compounds are often broken down by sunlight, they can regenerate at night, returning to life like zombies. “The assumption is that if it’s gone, we don’t have to worry about it,” says environmental engineer Edward Kolodziej of the University of Nevada in Reno, joint leader of the study. “But we’re under-predicting their environmental persistence....

When the world first heard that Russia had used Facebook ads in attempts to interfere with the U.S.’s 2016 elections, computer scientists and cybersecurity experts heard a call to action. For the past four years we have been studying how hate and disinformation spread online so that independent researchers can build stronger defenses to protect the public. But as we have tried to conduct this basic science, we have met steep resistance from the primary platform we study: Facebook....

Jupiter’s four largest moons may be conspiring to maintain their subsurface oceans. Long thought to arise from heat generated by the crust-flexing pull of Jupiter, these oceans may also owe their existence to immense subsurface tidal waves generated by gravitational interactions among the moons. Measuring such tides can provide insights about the depths of these lunar abysses—environments that may offer the best chances for finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system....

If attendees at the Minnesota State Fair aren’t too busy reveling in the performances of Kiss or “Weird Al” Yankovic, or enjoying a celebrity cow-milking contest, they might just try spitting for science.This week, researchers from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis are collecting DNA from young fair-goers and their parents as part of an effort to uncover genetic influences on normal child health and development.Logan Spector, a pediatrics researcher who is leading the project, dubbed the Gopher Kids Study, feels the fair provides an innovative opportunity to attract participants....

Doing good for others warms the heart—and may protect the heart, too. Psychologists at the University of British Columbia asked 106 high school students to take part in a volunteering study. Half of the students spent an hour every week for 10 weeks helping elementary students with homework, sports or club activities. The other half of the students did not participate in volunteer work. Using questionnaires and a medical examination both before and after the 10-week period, the researchers found that students who volunteered had lower levels of cholesterol and inflammation after the study....

“Climate at Your Doorstep” is an effort by The Daily Climate to highlight stories about climate change impacts happening now. Find more stories like this at www.dailyclimate.org/doorstep. For California’s highway managers, research showing a decline in the Central Valley’s unique tule fog is no surprise. The thick ground fog, an iconic weather feature that settles in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys during colder months, historically has been a bane to motorists....

From Ensia (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. August 18, 2017 — The list of environmental problems that the world faces may be huge, but some strategies for solving them are remarkably small. First explored for applications in microscopy and computing, nanomaterials—materials made up of units that are each thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair—are emerging as useful for tackling threats to our planet’s well-being....

The intelligent design crowd likes to point to the elegance of the human body and the complex logic of vertebrate eyes as proof that a master “designer” (that is, God) conceived of and created all organisms. But proponents of this idea need only look at some of the creatures on Mara Grunbaum’s blog WTF, Evolution? for proof that not all of Earth’s organisms seem to have been intelligently thought out. Features on animals such as the babirusa, the pignose frog and the flannel moth “puss” caterpillar are so silly and unwieldy that they could not have been designed with efficiency, logic or aesthetics in mind....