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PERCOLATION INSPIRATION It was an absolute delight to read about percolation theory in “The Math of Making Connections,” by Kelsey Houston-Edwards. Please feature more articles by this author and about mathematics as applied to science. I’m not a mathematician, yet I enjoy learning about theory and application. I love the expanse of disciplines you cover. I am an African-American woman with a biology degree. I used to work as a research assistant in cancer research....

When a person stubs his toe, he compensates by favoring his other leg. More dramatically, if he loses use of both his legs, he can still crawl to get from point A to point B. Now a robot shaped like a four-legged starfish can do the same. Designed at Cornell University, the nine-piece device can advance toward a goal even after incurring damage. In a paper published in this week’s Science, the researchers describe the algorithm by which this mechanical beast can assess its own condition....

Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita hypothesized in the 1960s that “we see with our brains not our eyes.” Now, a new device trades on that thinking and aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue’s surface to send light signals to the brain. Legal blindness is defined by U.S. law as vision that is 20/200 or worse, or has a field of view that is less than 20 degrees in diameter....

For the past three years, botanist Vicki Funk of the Smithsonian Institution has been trying, unsuccessfully, to transfer select leaf specimens from Brazil to the U.S. National Herbarium for identification. Comparing closely related plants “is the bread and butter of systematics,” she explains. “We need stuff from other places.” But as biodiversity becomes a valuable commodity, developing countries have complicated efforts to collect and analyze biological samples, Funk says: “It doesn’t matter if you’re an academic, not a drug company....

How Mole Hill in Virginia became a mountain is an old story, but not as old as some geologists think. The reason for that has to do with volcanoes—and may help explain why the U.S. East Coast, so long removed from geologic upheaval compared with the West, still suffers from relatively powerful earthquakes like the one that shook Mineral, Va., and much of the East Coast, in 2011. Five years ago or so, newly minted professor of geology Elizabeth Johnson needed something for her undergraduate students at James Madison University to study on field trips....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Battle of Chillianwala on 13 January 1849 was a bloody and indecisive clash between the British East India Company (EIC) and the Sikh Empire during the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-9). The EIC commander, General Gough, employed the dated strategy of an infantry charge against well-prepared Sikh positions, and a quarter of his men paid the ultimate price....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s first major work, The Book of the Duchess (c. 1370 CE), two genres of medieval literature are combined – the French poetic convention of courtly love and the high medieval dream vision – to create a poem of enduring power on the theme of grief....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. I have always been fascinated by the Gilgamesh-related immortality perspective. Nobody can live forever. However, the human soul and its achievements are still able to navigate through the universe, beyond the time factor, and reach a distance seemingly beyond our imagination. The aftermath of the Frist World War (1914-1918 CE) gave birth to what we call today the Republic of Iraq as well as its borders....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In the ancient Near East, there was a social standard by which men were ideally expected to behave. In the 21st century CE, expectations still exist, albeit in different forms. Normative masculinity through ancient Mesopotamia typically concerned male-female interactions. In sexual intercourse, for example, the male was the active person and initiator, with the female as the passive recipient....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The treasure ports of the Spanish Main such as Cartagena, Portobelo, Panama, and Veracruz were used to collect the riches the Spanish Empire had extracted from the Americas, ready for transport in the two annual treasure fleets back to Europe. The huge quantities of gold, silver, and other precious goods involved made these ports a tempting target for foreign powers and privateers like Francis Drake (c....

Wind turbines are a notorious hazard for birds, but less well known is the danger they pose to bats. In 2012 turbines killed more bats than birds, and the numbers of the dead were substantial: about 888,000 bats were found on wind farms, compared with 573,000 birds. Migrating bats such as the hoary bat, which can travel from as far as northern Canada to Argentina and Chile, make up most of those fatalities because they often navigate through areas dotted with wind farms....

Star-Craving Mad: Tales from a Traveling Astronomer by Fred Watson Allen & Unwin, 2013 Armed with dry wit and a dash of whimsy, Australian astronomer Watson makes difficult scientific concepts such as dark energy, the Higgs boson, and the surprisingly hazy distinction between giant planets and small stars seem simple. Whether telling tales of pseudoscientific alien encounters at conferences, journeying to ancient observatories in Peru or relating his views on what differentiates astronomy from all other scientific fields—“since there is no marketable end-product, there is little scope for corruption,” he writes—Watson entertains and enlightens....

Marco Rossi was looking forward to his rookie season in the National Hockey League. The 19-year-old prospect was the top point scorer among major junior ice hockey players in the 2019–20 season. Now he was set to impress with the Minnesota Wild. The team had selected Rossi ninth overall in the 2020 league draft ahead of the pandemic-shortened season of the North American league that kicked off in January. However, Rossi’s professional debut was not to be....

By Lucas Laursen of Nature magazineNuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab.Tim Mousseau, who directs the Chernobyl Research Initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine....

Mice exposed to disinfectants in commercial-grade cleaning products took longer to get pregnant, had fewer pups and suffered more miscarriages and distressed fetuses, researchers reported today. The little-known chemicals, called quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats, are common ingredients of cleaners used by hospitals, restaurants and food processing plants. Quats also are found in some shampoos, disinfectant wipes and nasal sprays. The chemicals have been in widespread use for decades. But the new study is the first to look at the reproductive toxicity of newer quat combinations found in cleaning products, according to the researchers from Virginia Tech and Washington State University....

One of the simplest devices imaginable–a strip of electrified semiconductor–continues to befuddle physicists. The flow of charge is easy enough to understand. The mystery lies in the behavior of spin, or the angular momentum associated with an electron. Researchers studying currents in a room-temperature semiconductor wire have now observed a pair of odd spin effects thought extremely unlikely to occur in that material or at such a high temperature. An electron’s spin can point in any direction but is often most useful when polarized in particular directions, such as up or down....

By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday proposed stricter curbs on ground-level ozone, a pollutant linked to several serious health conditions, in a move industry groups said would place a heavy burden on the U.S. economy. The Environmental Protection Agency said it would set National Ambient Air Quality Standard between 65 and 70 parts per billion concentration of ozone and consider public comments on standards within a 60 to 75 ppb range....

Dear EarthTalk: I’m interested in getting a new tattoo, but recently found out that red tattoo ink contains mercury. Is this true of other tattoo inks as well? Are there any ecofriendly alternatives?—John P., Racine, Wash. It is true that some red inks used for permanent tattoos contain mercury, while other reds may contain different heavy metals like cadmium or iron oxide. These metals—which give the tattoo its “permanence” in skin—have been known to cause allergic reactions, eczema and scarring and can also cause sensitivity to mercury from other sources like dental fillings or consuming some fish....

“It is the very error of the moon. She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.” —William Shakespeare, Othello ACROSS THE CENTURIES, many a person has uttered the phrase “There must be a full moon out there” in an attempt to explain weird happenings at night. Indeed, the Roman goddess of the moon bore a name that remains familiar to us today: Luna, prefix of the word “lunatic....