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Homes and stables were evacuated during a rattling evening southeast of Los Angeles last month, as tall flames licked property lines while they chewed through pine needles, dead leaves and other fuels that had built up in scrub and forest during a decades-long absence of fire. Firefighters eventually prevailed against the Highway Fire—so-named because it began near a highway—by corralling it and watching as it burned out. But the 1,000-acre conflagration was an anxiety-inducing prelude to what’s projected to be a wild season of wildfires up and down the West Coast, mostly affecting parched seaside states well west and north of storm-soaked Texas....

Dear Earthtalk: Is recycling still worthwhile given the expense and emissions associated with it? — Michael Vitti, Norwalk, OH Americans generate about 254 million tons of trash and recycle and compost about 87 million tons of this material, which adds up to a 34.3 percent national recycling rate. Recycling and composting prevented the release of approximately 186 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2013, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, comparable to taking over 39 million cars off the road for a year....

Sir John M. Templeton, a billionaire investor and philanthropist who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to reconcile science and religion, died of pneumonia yesterday in the Bahamas. He was 95. Born in Tennessee, Templeton was a Rhodes scholar who worked his way through Yale University during the Great Depression. He made his first big investment in 1939, buying low-priced stock in 104 companies—34 of them in bankruptcy. He reaped large profits when he sold the stock a few years later, according to The New York Times....

The flaring of natural gas is contributing more than 40 percent of the sooty black carbon in the Arctic, a level that raises new concerns about the link between energy production and ice melt, according to a new study. The findings in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics underscore the importance of environmental regulations in the remote region as oil and gas production continues, according to analysts. They also reveal the unique conditions of the Arctic, considering that the contribution of gas flaring to black carbon concentrations is smaller in other areas of the globe, according to the study’s co-author, Zbigniew Klimont, a research scholar at the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis....

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A plane dousing wildfires in bushland south of Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, crashed into a national park on Thursday, killing the pilot and sparking a new fire to add to 55 still burning across the state of New South Wales.The accident happened as more dry, windy conditions caused a flare-up in huge fires burning for a week in mountains to the west of Sydney, closing roads and entering a valley running down towards the metropolitan area....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Have you ever wondered where the foam in the ocean comes from? Or why the sea can look clear on some days and green, brown, or even pink on others? And how fish get the ingredients to make those omega-fatty acids that we’re told are so good for us? Well, the single word answer to all of these questions is: “plankton”....

In a first-ever experiment, primates move and feel objects on a computer screen using only their thoughts When real brains operate in the real world, it’s a two-way street. Electrical activity in the brain’s motor cortex speeds down the spinal column to the part of the body to be moved while tactile sensations from the skin simultaneously zip through the spinal cord and into the brain’s somatosensory cortex. Most of us would have trouble doing the former without the latter: Absent the feel of a floor beneath your feet it’s awfully difficult to walk properly, and lacking the tactile sensation of a coffee mug, your brain cannot sense how tightly your fingers should grasp it....

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the 1999 book The Science of Star Wars by Jeanne Cavelos. Han Solo talks about making the “jump to light speed.” If the Millenium Falcon is somehow jumping to light speed, it implies a nearly instantaneous acceleration. The Falcon might be traveling along at 50 miles per hour, and then suddenly it’s traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Let BMW try to beat that acceleration!...

As monkeypox cases continue to rise in the U.S. and the rest of the world, many of those most affected by the virus say they cannot access an effective treatment. The current monkeypox outbreak has caused more than 21,100 confirmed cases worldwide, including more than 4,900 in the U.S. The virus has infected people in Central and West Africa for decades but recently started circulating abroad, so far primarily among men who have sex with men....

In the world of unintended consequences, less driving may mean more potholes. Americans’ driving habits are hanging a u-ey.For decades Americans drove more and more, but for the past 10 yearsthe trend has flattenedwhile fuel economy has climbed.If Congress doesn’t change the policies that fund our roadways in response, we may be in for a bumpy ride on our highways and byways. Gridlock in the vaunted halls of Congress may make commuting gridlock all the more common....

Share Your StoryUpload Do you ever wonder whether things would be different if a specific event or decision happened differently or not at all? Perhaps you’ve thought of alternative versions of your life where you never met your significant other, ended up in a different job or lived on the other side of the world. We’ve all looked back on our lives and reimagined important moments unfolding in different ways. This tendency to mentally simulate past events while tweaking some critical details is known as counterfactual (“contrary to fact”) thinking....

As scare-tactic journalism goes, it would be hard to beat this past summer’s article about hackers taking remote control of a Wired magazine writer’s car. “I was driving 70 mph on the edge of downtown St. Louis,” he wrote. “As the two hackers remotely toyed with the air-conditioning, radio, and windshield wipers, I mentally congratulated myself on my courage under pressure. That’s when they cut the transmission.” Scary! Hackers can take over our cars!...

Using a magnetic field to literally pull diseases from the bloodstream sounds like a sci-fi dream. But scientists may have found a way to do just that, at least for sepsis, a potentially lethal blood infection that can lead to multiple-organ failure. Biologist Donald E. Ingber of Harvard Medical School, his postdoctoral fellow Chong Wing Yung and their colleagues have devised a way to filter pathogens from the blood of septic patients using micron-size magnetic beads....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In medieval society a knight enjoyed a position of high status and often wealth, they were feared on the battlefield and known for their chivalry off it, but it took a long time and a lot of training to get there. Trained in weapons handling and horse-riding from childhood, a young man could be made a knight by the local lord he served, through exceptional bravery on the battlefield, and, at least in later times when European monarchs desperately needed funds and men of skill for their armies, the position could even be bought....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In modern debates concerning homosexuality, same-sex marriages, and gender identification, it is popular to turn to the Bible for passages to validate a position. Modern culture attributes many elements in understanding homosexuality, but in the ancient world, there was no concept of what we term a gay lifestyle, nor was there any discussion of gender identification, as we understand it....

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 the Catalaunian Fields (also known as The Battle of Chalons, The Battle of Maurica) was one of the most decisive military engagements in history between the forces of the Roman Empire under Flavius Aetius (391-454 CE) and those of Attila the Hun (r. 434-453 CE)....

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 world, human sexuality was crucial for the survival of the tribe and clan as well as pleasurable, a gift from the gods. Thousands of native cults emphasized fertility through rituals and prayers, and ancient gods were depicted with matching goddesses who produced offspring. There was a broad acceptance of the benefits of human sexuality; procreation ensured the survival of the community....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The term mythology comes from the Greek words mythos (“story of the people”) and logos (“word”) and so is defined as the spoken (later written) story of a culture. Modern scholars have divided myths into different types which serve many different cultural purposes. Myths serve to explain the origin of the world, how various aspects of that world operate and why, the meaning of suffering and death and, always, serve to reinforce cultural values....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Völuspá (Old Norse: Vǫluspá) is a medieval poem of the Poetic Edda that describes how the world might have come into shape and would end according to Norse mythology. The story of about 60 stanzas is told by a seeress or völva (Old Norse: vǫlva, also called spákona, foretelling woman) summoned by the god Odin, master of magic and knowledge....

Human children, but not chimpanzees, wear their determination on their faces, new research finds. The study suggests that humans, as the more social and cooperative species, may have evolved to subconsciously signal a request for help using facial expressions. “The likelihood is, in humans, that someone is going to help you, because we’re an inordinately social species,” said study researcher Bridget Waller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom....