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Artificial-intelligence (AI) researchers have no doubt that the development of highly intelligent computers and robots that can self-replicate, teach themselves and adapt to different conditions will change the world. Exactly when it will happen, how far it will go, and what we should do about it, however, are cause for debate. Today’s intelligent machines are for the most part designed to perform specific tasks under known conditions. Tomorrow’s machines, though, could have more autonomy....

In January 1985, as Guy Morrison peered out the window of a prop plane over the muddy curve of an isolated bay on the Strait of Magellan, he and his colleague Ken Ross witnessed something no other ornithologist had seen before: A flock of 7,000 rufa red knots peeling off the salt marsh, spiraling skyward like a puff of smoke. And behind them a cloud of thousands more—and thousands more beyond that....

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent LONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Giving the millions of women who need it contraception and pregnancy advice will help avoid illness, disadvantage and poverty for current and future generations, Melinda Gates said on Monday. The co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation told Reuters she is encouraged by progress in the past two years in putting family planning at the center of woman and child health programs, but says more needs to be done to ensure all women can choose freely whether and when to have children....

Astronomers have detected the first planet orbiting a star that has passed through the red giant phase, the massive bloating that befalls sun-like stars when their nuclear fuel begins to run out. The so-called exoplanet likely survived a close brush with its star, V391 Pegasi, despite once orbiting at roughly the same distance that lies between the sun and Earth, according to a study published in Nature. Researchers believe that when the sun goes red giant in five billion or six billion years, it will swallow Mercury and Venus, but they are unsure about Earth’s future....

Key concepts Chemistry States of matter Gases Energy Temperature Introduction Have you ever baked—or purchased—a loaf of bread, muffins or cupcakes and admired the fluffy final product? If so, you have appreciated the work of expanding gases! They are everywhere—from the kitchen to the cosmos. You’ve sampled their pleasures every time you’ve eaten a slice of bread, bitten into a cookie or sipped a soda. In this science activity you’ll capture a gas in a stretchy container you’re probably pretty familiar with—a balloon!...

Many research questions cannot be answered in the course of a single lifetime. Davide Castelvecchi, a contributing editor for Scientific American, has long-wondered what scientists would study if they could live for hundreds or thousands of years—or even indefinitely. Recently he put the question to leading investigators in their fields, reporting on their replies in “Questions for the Next Million Years,” in our September 2012 issue. A summary of the replies appears below....

In Chile, the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research has begun to debate a “neurorights” bill to be written into the country’s constitution. The world, and most importantly the OECD, UNESCO and the United Nations, should be watching closely. The Chilean bill sets out to protect the right to personal identity, free will, mental privacy, equitable access to technologies that augment human capacities, and the right to protection against bias and discrimination....

TWINSBURG, Ohio—The FBI is interested in us. No, we’re not “persons of interest.” We are interesting persons. My brother and I are identical twins. And the FBI has been supporting West Virginia University’s twin studies here for years. But why here? The answer is in the name: Twinsburg. For the last 21 years, this small town in Ohio has lived up to its name during the annual Twin Days Festival. This year, we are here with 1,917 other sets of multiples....

It didn’t take long for Verizon Wireless to jump into the early upgrade game. A little more than a week after T-Mobile unveiled its Jump program and two days after AT&T debuted Next, Verizon on Thursday announced Edge, its own no-contract plan that enables customer to upgrade to a new phone after only six months. Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo confirmed the Edge program on an investor conference call earlier Thursday before the carrier released the full details....

New climate simulations from NASA show that under the warmer global temperatures of the 20th century, water vapor in the atmosphere took longer than normal to fall out of the sky fall as rain, snow and other precipitation. With a few exceptions, the amount decreased over land but increased over oceans. The simulations are the first to take into consideration a part of Earths water cycle that until now has been overlookedthe storage of water vapor in the atmosphere....

New research indicates that climate change has already triggered an unstoppable decay of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The projected decay will lead to at least 4 feet of accelerating global sea level rise within the next two-plus centuries, and at least 10 feet of rise in the end. What does the U.S. look like with an ocean that is 10 feet higher? The radically transformed map would lose 28,800 square miles of land, home today to 12....

Last spring Laura Murphy, then 28 years old, went to a doctor to find out if a harmless flap of skin she had always had on the back of her neck was caused by a genetic mutation. Once upon a time, maybe five years ago, physicians would have focused on just that one question. But today doctors tend to run tests that pick up mutations underlying a range of hereditary conditions....

WE LOOK AT THE WORLD from two slightly different vantage points, which correspond to the positions of our two eyes. These dual vantage points create tiny differences between the two eyes’ images that are proportional to the relative depths of objects in the field of view. The brain can measure those differences, and when it does so the result is stereovision, or stereopsis. To get an idea of this effect, extend one arm to point at a distant object....

If you have ever lost weight on a diet only to gain it all back, you were probably as perplexed as you were disappointed. You felt certain that you had conquered bad eating habits—so what caused the backslide? New research suggests that you may have succumbed to a cognitive distortion called restraint bias. Bolstered by an inflated sense of impulse control, we overexpose ourselves to temptation and fall prey to impulsiveness....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Family planning was a topic of vital importance in the ancient Mediterranean. Some of the earliest medical literature from ancient Greece and Rome deals with fertility and reproductive health. Among the numerous treatments and procedures utilized in Greco-Roman medicine were methods of contraception and abortion. Birth of a ChildMohawk Games (Copyright)...

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Debate Between Bird and Fish (c. 2000 BCE) is a Sumerian poem dated to the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) when the genre of the literary debate was especially popular. The poem is the earliest extant on the theme of difficult neighbors and how quickly problems can escalate....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The trial and execution of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) was one of the most impactful events of the French Revolution (1789-99). In December 1792, the former king, now referred to as Citizen Louis Capet, was tried and found guilty of numerous crimes that amounted to high treason, and he was sentenced to death by guillotine....

Amanda Miller sits facing an old woman in Upington, South Africa, one hand on a cylindrical probe that she holds underneath the woman’s chin. “Speak,” Miller says in the woman’s native language, N|uu, and as the words flow out, an ultrasound screen flickers with the video of a tongue in motion. Linguists are using the same technology that images fetuses to study endangered languages. For someone who studies phonetics—the science of how sounds are perceived, articulated and organized in different languages—it is crucial for Miller to track the speaking tongue....

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from They Called Me Mad: Genius, Madness and the Scientists Who Pushed the Limits of Knowledge by John Monahan (on sale December 7 from Berkley). In it Monahan takes the reader from Archimedes archetypical “Eureka!” moment to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s fraught findings. His genius shone like a beacon throughout the Hellenistic world, and his dazzling mathematical insights and wondrous inventions continue to fascinate us to this day....

Guidelines that forbid patents on a wide array of natural products, phenomena and principles have many in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries worried about the future of their business. The rules, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office in March, are open to public comment until 31 July and are reactions to two recent decisions by the Supreme Court. In March 2012, the court ruled against Prometheus Laboratories in San Diego, California, saying that the company could not patent metabolite levels used to guide drug dosing....