Posts

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The best way to learn ancient history is not by memorizing dates and facts but, rather, through critical thinking and analysis. When studying ancient history, the key is to make inferences, using empathy and evaluation to alter one’s perspective. This is the fundamental reason why educators use primary sources in the classroom....

In 1857, during the dwindling years of the California Gold Rush, a steamship loaded with some 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) of gold was ensnared in a hurricane and sunk off the coast of South Carolina, banishing gold bars and freshly minted coins to the bottom of the sea. Last month, during a reconnaissance expedition to the wreckage of the so-called “Ship of Gold,” more than 60 lbs. (27 kg) of the lost treasure was recovered....

India is running out of water for crops. Most of the water-intensive agriculture in the nation takes place in Punjab, a state in the northwest that makes up 2 percent of the country’s territory but provides more than 50 percent of its grain reserves. Farmers there currently pump out 45 percent more groundwater than is replenished by monsoon rains. The problem has arisen in part because Punjabi farmers have veered away from growing traditional crops that are suited for semiarid land, such as wheat and corn, and turned instead to more profitable, but water-intensive, rice....

The Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) recently released National Broadband Plan has met with mixed reactions from the industries with a stake in the availability of broadcast spectrum. Whereas technology companies producing and serving data to these wireless gadgets want the government to remove a potential bottleneck to the Internet, broadcasters are feeling pinched, having already surrendered the unused “white spaces” in between their channels last year during the digital TV transition....

“I think, therefore I am” is perhaps the most familiar one-liner in western philosophy. Even if the stoners, philosophers and quantum mechanically-inclined skeptics who believe we’re living an illusion are right, few existential quips hit with such profound, approachable simplicity. The only catch is that in Descartes’ opinion, “we” – our thoughts, our personalities, our “minds” – are mostly divorced from our bodies. The polymathic Frenchman and other dualist philosophers proposed that while the mind exerts control over our physical interaction with the world, there is a clear delineation between body and mind; that our material forms are simply temporary housing for our immaterial souls....

Rising seas threaten to consume the coastal areas of major metropolises around the world. Now those risks are compounded by an accelerating danger: Most of those cities are also sinking. That means flooding and other disruptions sharpened by future sea-level rise could hit those urban centers far sooner than expected, according to a study in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data to measure subsidence rates in 99 coastal cities, the researchers found that many of those metropolises are sinking faster than sea levels are rising....

SEOUL, July 8 (Reuters) - A severe drought in North Korea is putting the lives of children at risk and many are in serious danger of disease and malnutrition, the U.N. children’s agency said on Wednesday. UNICEF said in a statement that there had been in a sharp increase in cases of diarrhoea among children in drought-affected areas, as access to safe drinking water and sanitation was severely compromised. “Lack of rain reduces access to clean water and undermines effective hygiene, putting children’s lives at risk,” UNICEF Regional Director Daniel Toole said....

In December 2010 I appeared on John Stossel’s television special on skepticism on Fox Business News, during which I debunked numerous pseudoscientific beliefs. Stossel added his own skepticism of possible financial pseudoscience in the form of active investment fund managers who claim that they can consistently beat the market. In a dramatic visual demonstration, Stossel threw 30 darts into a page of stocks and compared their performance since January 1, 2010, with stock picks of the 10 largest managed funds....

IT ALL STARTED with an online dating service. I was looking for a date. Like most men (we dogs), I made my initial judgment based largely on a photo. Yes, that’s shallow, and when one is online, it’s also fairly stupid because photos are all too easy to fake. But this time, I really blew it. The main photo showed a slim, attractive brunette, supposedly living in California not far from me....

By Shelby Sebens PORTLAND Ore. (Reuters) - An initiative requiring mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods in Oregon moved one step closer to the November ballot on Wednesday after advocates said they submitted more than enough qualifying signatures to the state. New Approach Oregon officials say they submitted more than 155,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office in Salem, far exceeding the required 87,213 needed by July 3 to qualify for the ballot....

Feeling embarrassed? You can probably thank your pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), a boomerang-shaped region of the brain nestled behind the eyes. Cognitive scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, and U.C. Berkeley probed the neuroanatomy of embarrassment by asking healthy people and those with neurodegenerative diseases to sing along to the Temptations’ “My Girl.” Horns blared, strings flowed and the subject’s voice soared—and then the music and professional vocals were stripped away....

Deep below the ground, radioactive elements disintegrate water molecules, producing ingredients that can fuel subterranean life. This process, known as radiolysis, has sustained bacteria in isolated, water-filled cracks and rock pores on Earth for millions to billions of years. Now a study published in Astrobiology contends that radiolysis could have powered microbial life in the Martian subsurface. Dust storms, cosmic rays and solar winds ravage the Red Planet’s surface. But belowground, some life might find refuge....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Monarch butterflies are known for their striking flame-orange and black appearance, and especially for their mass migration in their millions to spend winters in the mountain forests of Mexico. But despite growing problems with deforestation in Mexico, their struggle begins at home in the United States and Canada. The butterflies that fly to Mexico are the great-great-great grandchildren of the monarchs that were in Mexico the previous winter....

NASA’s dwindling astronaut corps will not be enough to meet the demands of future space station missions if staffing levels continue as the space agency expects, according to a new report. With the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet this year, the American astronaut corps has steadily been decreasing in size as U.S. spaceflyers retired or quit their posts. But NASA still needs astronauts to fly missions to the International Space Station (ISS), which is slated to run through 2020....

As you might expect for organisms that are billions of years old, bacteria have evolved lots of tricks to protect themselves in often-hostile surroundings. One of their most effective strategies is to coat themselves with a gooey layer, known as biofilm, which insulates them from predators, harsh chemicals and, more recently, antibiotic drugs. Carl Zimmer wrote a feature story in the January 2015 Scientific American that explores how some researchers are disrupting biofilm production by manipulating the bacteria’s ability to communicate and cooperate with one another....

WARSAW (Reuters) - Building nuclear power plants is the cheapest way for Poland to curb carbon emissions in the coming decades, a government report said on Wednesday.Poland, which generates nearly all its electricity from ageing, coal-fired power plants, is formulating a new national strategy aimed at modernizing its energy sector to make it more efficient and to cut carbon emissions.The report said Eastern Europe’s biggest economy would need to increase spending on power infrastructure to 26 billion-37 billion zlotys ($8....

Score one for inflation. The idea that the universe ballooned rapidly after the big bang received a boost in March, when physicists confirmed a prime prediction of inflation theory. The Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) experiment at the South Pole found evidence for primordial gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time, that were created when the early universe swelled. The discovery is not just a major validation of inflation, physicists say, but a good way to narrow down the many possible versions of inflation that might have taken place....

The ability to distinguish between two different languages is not unique to humans. New research indicates that rats can manage this as well, making them the third type of mammal with this documented ability. Juan M. Toro and his colleagues at the Parc Cientific de Barcelona in Spain studied 16 rats exposed to sentences spoken in either Japanese or Dutch. The researchers trained the animals to push a lever in response to a specific sentence, and then played sentences in the other language as well....

Getting out of bed in the morning, especially in the persistent darkness this time of year, can be tough sledding. But when it comes to athletics it might be worthwhile to pay heed to the alarm clock—at least for some players. So says a new study that suggests our individual internal clocks hold significant sway over athletic performance. The new study categorizes athletes as either morning people (“larks”), evening people (“owls”) or somewhere in-between, and takes stock of how athletes perform in endurance testing throughout the day....

Into Thin Air Helium prices have doubled in the past five years. The high demand is not exactly coming from people with party balloons to fill. Rather helium cools the superconducting coils of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices, and the sale of those machines has grown tremendously, driving the demand for helium up by 25 percent since 2003. In contrast, helium production has increased by only about half as much. In 2006 the U....