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Charlotte’s Web, the E. B. White childhood classic, ends with Wilbur the pig eagerly waiting for Charlotte’s baby spiders to emerge from their egg sac in spring. When they finally crawl out, they do something that seems pretty amazing to anyone not familiar with how some spiders travel long distances: they fly away. “One spider climbed to the top of the fence,” White wrote. “Then it did something that came as a great surprise to Wilbur....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Renaissance period witnessed a great renewed interest in the art of antiquity. There was an appreciation of the technical skill required to produce such objects as a Roman marble figure of Venus and an admiration for the form and beauty which medieval art had often ignored. There was, too, an interest from artists eager to learn how best to present the human body and achieve a pleasing sense of proportion in their own new works....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Jolly Roger with its white skull and crossbones set against a black background has become a rather jovial part of pirate folklore but, in its day, this flag and others with similar blood-curdling designs, had a single and terrifying purpose. The raising of the pirates’ flag, usually only hoisted at the last minute, signalled that the ship under approach should immediately surrender or face not only attack and boarding but the execution of all on board....

Researchers from the United Kingdom and Brazil also said the pair of droughts have raised concerns that the forest could be approaching a point where it ceases to be a carbon “sink,” absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it produces, and flips to a carbon source. Both the 2005 and 2010 droughts were the result of a “very, very unusual” weather pattern linked to higher sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, said lead author Simon Lewis, a tropical forests expert at the University of Leeds....

A chance to peek into the future—at least one possible future—is always a tempting fantasy. But if it were offered in reality, would you take it? And if you didn’t like what you saw, how hard would you try to change it? After almost 20 years spent reading, mapping and analyzing human DNA, researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) believe that personal genetic information is nearly ready for use by consumers in managing their health, so the institute is launching a large-scale study to gauge whether consumers are ready for the information....

When Naika Venant killed herself in January, the Miami-area teen broadcast the event for two hours on Facebook’s popular video live-streaming feature, Facebook Live. A friend of hers saw the video and alerted police but aid did not arrive in time to save the 14-year-old’s life. Other young people have also recently posted suicidal messages on social media platforms including Twitter, Tumblr and Live.me. In a bid to save lives Facebook and other social media giants are now wading into suicide prevention work—creating new alert systems designed to better identify and help at-risk individuals....

Key concepts Perception Vision Optical Illusions Introduction Have you ever stopped to wonder why you have two eyes—but only see one image? Usually it is because your brain takes the information from each of your eyes and combines them, without you even noticing! But sometimes your brain is too smart for its own good; it makes assumptions (or guesses) about the things you see. When your brain makes guesses it sometimes makes mistakes, as it will do in this activity!...

Wei Zhu and Gerald Pao had questions about basic mechanisms that allow some human and animal cells to change identity, becoming more like stem cells. David M. Gardiner and S. Randal Voss had been chipping away for years at the mysteries of the salamander, a creature whose cells can repeatedly morph into an entire new body part. So when a chance at a data windfall that could help all their diverse investigations came along, these researchers, based in California and Kentucky, pooled their ideas and entered a contest....

By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - At least 12 people, including eight foreign hikers and a group of yak herders, were killed in Nepal by unseasonal blizzards and avalanches triggered by the tail of cyclone Hudhud, officials said on Wednesday. The hikers’ deaths come during the peak trekking season in Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountain peaks, including Mount Everest. For the past two days, Nepal has been lashed by heavy rains brought by the cyclone that has battered neighboring India....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - To learn the secret behind aging gracefully, you may want to check out the bowhead whale, the majestic denizen of the Arctic waters that boasts a lifespan topping 200 years. Scientists on Monday unveiled the genetic blueprint for the bowhead whale, a genome chock full of clues behind this creature’s exceptional longevity and remarkable disease resistance. Comparing its genome to other mammals, the scientists discovered differences in the whale’s genes related to DNA repair, cell cycle, cancer and the aging process that may help explain its lifespan and vitality....

When I tell someone I am a mathematician, one of the most curious common reactions is: “I really liked math class because everything was either right or wrong. There is no ambiguity or doubt.” I always stutter in response. Math does not have a reputation for being everyone’s favorite subject, and I hesitate to temper anyone’s enthusiasm. But math is full of uncertainties—it just hides them well. Of course, I understand the point....

Roughly 251 million years ago, an estimated 70 percent of land plants and animals died, along with 84 percent of ocean organisms—an event known as the end Permian extinction. The cause is unknown but it is known that this period was also an extremely warm one. A new analysis of the temperature and fossil records over the past 520 million years reveals that the end of the Permian is not alone in this association: global warming is consistently associated with planetwide die-offs....

One morning last August, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s deep-sea robot, named Doc Ricketts, was snooping around the ocean floor in 1,812 meters of very cold water off the coast of northern California. It was gliding over an oblong mound 2,000 meters long and 60 meters thick, draped in places with a thin layer of khaki-colored sediment. Video from the robot’s underwater camera suddenly revealed what looked like a dirty yet nonetheless luminously white snowbank—the kind found at the edge of a plowed parking lot, except for the clams and fish around it....

In one small step towards space manufacturing, NASA is sending a 3D printer to the International Space Station. Astronauts will be able to make plastic objects of almost any shape they like inside a box about the size of a microwave oven — enabling them to print new parts to replace broken ones, and perhaps even to invent useful tools. The launch, slated for around September 19, will be the first time that a 3D printer flies in space....

Speaking last week in Washington DC, US President Barack Obama reminded voters of the plan they had effectively endorsed by re-electing him. One of his key objectives, Obama said, would be to ensure that the United States “is a global leader in research and technology and clean energy, which will attract new companies and high-wage jobs to America”. A different objective will be in the spotlight this week when Obama visits New York, a city still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy on October 29th....

The FDA recently released its annual Pesticide Residue Report. As pesticides are one of the things people worry most about, I thought we should take a look at what they found. Here to help us make sense of this very technical and complex data is Dr. Carl Winter of the UC Davis. Dr. Winter is a toxicologist who researches the detection of pesticides and naturally-occurring toxins in foods and how to assess their risks....

Music, photography and publishing have all gone digital to varying extents, and the analog storage media they use are quickly losing market share or becoming obsolete altogether. The field of astronomy is no different, save perhaps for the fact that the digital revolution took hold early with astronomers. The 1969 invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD), which forms the basis of image sensors in everything from point-and-shoot digital cameras to the Hubble Space Telescope, changed the face of professional astronomy in the 1970s and 1980s....

When he was President, Bill Clinton famously (and perhaps apocryphally) complained that getting Democrats to agree on a course of action was like herding cats, while the Republicans didn’t seem to have this problem. All political parties are large coalitions of people with varied interests and beliefs, but is it possible that ideological differences between the parties could play a decisive role here? A new paper by researchers at New York University, in press at Psychological Science, suggests that the answer is yes....

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Kelp off Southern California was contaminated with short-lived radioisotopes a month after Japan’s Fukushima accident, a sign that the spilled radiation reached the state’s urban coastline, according to a new scientific study. Scientists from California State University, Long Beach tested giant kelp collected in the ocean off Orange County and other locations after the March, 2011 accident, and detected radioactive iodine, which was released from the damaged nuclear reactor....

As Senate hearings get underway this week to probe the accident at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah that claimed the lives of six miners and three rescuers, attempts are also being made to evaluate the performance of robotic equipment sent in to assist the failed rescue mission. The robotics team faced several daunting engineering and device-control challenges as it tried to unearth clues as to the whereabouts of the miners trapped 1,500 feet underground....