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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. According to UNESCO, an estimated three million shipwrecks are scattered in the oceans’ deep canyons, trenches, and coral reefs and remain undiscovered. These shipwrecks preserve historical information and provide clues about how people lived in the past. The term ‘underwater cultural heritage’ refers to traces of human existence and activity found on ancient sunken ships or retrieved cargo such as bronze statues and priceless artworks....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The English East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600, and it came to control both trade and territories in India, as well as a trade monopoly with China. Goods the EIC traded included spices, cotton cloth, tea, and opium, all in such massive quantities it made its investors enormously rich, caused wars with competitors, and changed cultural practices worldwide....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Vikings (2013-present) is a historical fiction TV series created and written by English screenwriter Michael Hirst for the History Channel. Filmed in Ireland, the show draws on Scandinavian and European history and lore as it follows the life of legendary Viking chief Ragnar Lothbrok, his descendants, and the kings and cultures the Vikings influenced in the 8th and 9th centuries CE....

Venus is Earth’s closest sibling, in terms of size and proximity, but it remains relatively little explored compared with Earth’s other planetary neighbor, Mars. For instance, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) currently have three working Mars orbiters and one active Mars rover between them, whereas at Venus, ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has the place to itself. Given how little is known about Venus, the exclusive access Venus Express currently enjoys offers plenty of room to make new discoveries about how the planet works....

Yesterday, after more than a year of bickering, stalling and revising, the Senate passed its most significant cybersecurity bill to date 74–21. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) is a controversial measure to encourage businesses and government agencies to share information related to malicious hackers and their methods. Government and industry have talked about such information sharing for more than a decade. The House of Representatives passed a precursor to CISA—the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)—in 2013, but the bill’s progress stopped when Pres....

Law enforcement has for years struggled to keep up with cyber crooks who use computers and networks to commit their crimes—whether it’s theft, extortion or fraud. Cyber criminals are a slippery bunch, adept at covering their digital fingerprints to stay one step ahead of the law. One of the most effective ways of fighting any crime is to discourage would-be criminals by making an example of lawbreakers. Yet, in an ironic twist of fate, on Tuesday, the very day that a federal judge in Seattle made an example out of so-called “spam king” Robert Alan Soloway, 28, by sentencing him to nearly four years in prison, the U....

(Credit: Blockbuster) Blockbuster has admitted defeat in the DVD-rental business. Parent company Dish announced Wednesday that it will shut down all remaining company-owned Blockbuster stores in the United States by early January 2014. The closure will affect around 300 remaining retail outlets as well as the company’s distribution centers. The Blockbuster By Mail service will be cut off in mid-December. Only franchised and licensed stores in the US and abroad will keep their doors open....

ISTANBUL—Driving along the E5 highway, this ancient city’s jumble of concrete block high-rises and Ottoman-domed mosques recedes into the distance. The future gleams. Sleek luxury condominiums and shopping malls tower over modern new suburbs. Orange construction cranes have taken up residence along the side of the roads, feeding the teeming city’s seemingly endless building boom. Fueling Istanbul’s growth—and, as the country’s economic center, Turkey’s development, as well—is coal. With the second-highest energy consumption growth after China, Turkey is highly dependent on Russian and Iranian oil and gas....

Globs of malformed protein are conspicuously present in many degenerative disorders of the brain and nervous system. A number of these possibly damaging proteins have been isolated and studied, but researchers have struggled to characterize certain protein deposits in the brains of people with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have now revealed the offending molecule and discovered that it also shows up in those with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a debilitating neuromuscular disorder, suggesting that the two conditions might have intersecting routes on the pathway to cell death....

A fundamental characteristic of the field of genomics is aspiring to be comprehensive. After all, genomics is the study of all of an organism’s DNA: its genome. Scientists in the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) consortium have now reported the first truly complete sequence of a human genome, nearly two decades after the Human Genome Project produced the first (essentially complete) human genome sequence. People may wonder how it is that scientists are claiming to complete the human genome sequence again....

By Laura ZuckermanSALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A controversial hunting contest in Idaho targeting wolves and coyotes has ended with nearly two dozen coyotes killed but no wolves shot, though rancor over the event remains undiminished.The coyote and wolf derby was promoted by ranchers and hunting enthusiasts as a form of family recreation aimed at reducing the number of predators threatening livestock and big-game animals like elk prized by hunters. It was condemned by conservationists as cruel and unsportsmanlike....

In 2019 air travel accounted for 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions, a number that could triple by 2050. While some airlines have started offsetting their contributions to atmospheric carbon, significant cutbacks are still needed. Electric airplanes could provide the scale of transformation required, and many companies are racing to develop them. Not only would electric propulsion motors eliminate direct carbon emissions, they could reduce fuel costs by up to 90 percent, maintenance by up to 50 percent and noise by nearly 70 percent....

Leading male researchers in the life sciences employ fewer women than do their female peers, according to a study of US laboratories. The effect is particularly pronounced in labs run by ‘elite’ male principal investigators, who train significantly fewer women than do other male professors, the authors have found. Their study appears in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Because a disproportionate number of assistant professors are appointed from such elite labs, the authors suggest that the skew could help to explain why women account for just 18% of full professors in the biological sciences, despite making up more than half of PhD graduates in the field....

It would be hard to imagine two more different timescales in the lives of organisms than development–the transformation of an embryo to an adult within a single generation–and evolution–the modification and transformation of organisms between generations that reach back 600 million years. Yet for the past two centuries, natural philosophers, morphologists and biologists have asked whether there is a fundamental relationship between development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny). There is, and it finds expression in the thriving discipline of evolutionary developmental biology (evo devo, as it has been called since the early 1990s)....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the best way to recycle my old and/or unwanted paint, primer and stains? —Kim Beeler, Lake Oswego, OR Has one of the many popular shows on HGTV inspired you to renovate your own home? If so, you’re not alone! Home renovations have been on the rise the last few years in the U.S. and Canada, which can mean lots of leftover paint. Extra paint can last for years when properly sealed and stored away from extreme heat and cold, and if unneeded, can be donated to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Keep America Beautiful....

Just met a really interesting guy or gal? These days, the first thing most people do is turn to social media to find out everything they can about the person. But this can lead to disaster — and quickly get you labeled as a creeper. First date? It’s not going to happen if you’re sloppy while sleuthing. When it comes to using social media, consult an expert — also known as a teenager....

Carbon nanotubes–tiny straws of pure carbon–have many properties that make them attractive for applications as varied as nanoelectronics and nanofibers. Scientists are recruiting carbon nanotubes in the fight against cancer, too. A report published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that when paired with a modified laser beam, the rods can act as tiny heaters to selectively destroy tumor cells. When exposed to near-infrared light, carbon nanotubes quickly release excess energy as heat....

As Apple’s fall product reveal approaches, alleged images of the new iPhone parts are appearing with greater frequency. The latest is plastic packaging for an iPhone 5C, which appeared on the Chinese WeiPhone discussion forum. The 5C could be the rumored lower-cost, plastic-encased iPhone that could show up along with an updated iPhone 5, expected to be call the 5S. Read: The Apple guessing game It’s uncertain whether the image is the real thing....

A honeybee queen mates only during one brief period of her life, storing sperm in a sac inside her body for later use. But if she fails to keep that sperm viable, her colony may collapse. This “queen failure” is a main factor in the U.S. drop-off in bee numbers. Identifying reasons for queen failure has proved difficult; queens show no clear symptoms when it happens. But a new study offers a way to zero in on causes, which could lead to a valuable diagnostic tool for beekeepers....

The tangled web of autism symptoms and genetic markers has left researchers searching for patterns and trends in unusual places. New work examining the subtle symptoms shared by close relatives has underscored the disease’s heritability. Findings published online August 2 in Archives of General Psychiatry add to the growing list of familial clues about the disease: shared eye-movement deficits. Researchers working at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (U.I.C.) Center for Cognitive Medicine have found a striking trend: those with autistic relatives are more likely to show disrupted eye movement similar to their afflicted relation....