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One day in 2009 Robert Milner (not his real name), a lawyer and avid outdoorsman, was driving on a highway through the mountains of Washington State when he sensed he was tumbling sideways. Had his car flipped, propelled perhaps by an unseen T-bone collision? Milner slammed on the brakes. The car stopped—but not upside down. It sat fully upright in the middle of the highway. There Milner stayed, stuck in his mental tailspin, until the highway patrol arrived....

By Rory Carroll SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With California facing its worst drought in a century, state officials have fast-tracked first-in-the-nation water efficiency standards for new toilets, urinals and faucets, an action expected to save about 8.2 billion gallons of water the first year while cutting energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The draft standards, released late last week, would prohibit the sale of appliances in California that do not meet proposed standards, which are expected to go into effect in 2016....

A creative way of selling solar energy is gaining traction in sub-Saharan Africa: customers can pay as they go. Only one in six rural inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity. For households living off the grid, kerosene lamps are the primary lighting source—an expensive technology that is also unsafe, because kerosene is flammable as well as poisonous when inhaled or ingested. The World Bank estimates that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and two thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are nonsmokers....

It may sound bizarre—or like some kind of high school science fair project, but it’s not: Researchers have discovered that peeling adhesive tape ejects enough radiation to take an x-ray image. If they stick, the findings could set the stage for a less expensive x-ray machine that does not require electricity. Lead researcher Carlos Camara, a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports in Nature today that his team captured x-rays of a finger on film (positioned behind it) by using a simple tape-peeling device (placed in front of it)....

At first glance, an octopus’s sucker looks like the simple suction cup that tips a toy dart or affixes a GPS to the windshield. In fact, it is a remarkably sophisticated organ that not only can attach to objects with varying degrees of force but also can maneuver them, thanks to specialized muscle groups. The sucker has two chambers: the outer infun­dibu­lum and inner acetabulum. When it attaches to an object—a tasty clam, for instance—the muscles of the infundibulum reshape the sucker rim to conform to the shell surface, forming a seal....

Anxious about BPA? Petrified of pesticides? Plenty of scientific literature shows that concerns about certain chemicals’ potential to up the risk for chronic disease are justified. And although genetics can predispose a person to many ills, more than half of disease risks—and possibly as much as 90 percent—likely stem from environmental factors, according to recent epidemiological research. Hard data—of the quality now gleaned from genetic studies—however, has been lacking in the environmental field....

Related stories Instead, Legere (pronounced like “ledger”) delivered a profanity-laden talk that seemed more fitting for a comedy club than a corporate press event. He called AT&T’s network in New York City “crap” and quipped that capped data plans put a crimp on watching porn on phones. Legere has reason to be aggressive. T-Mobile is the last-place national carrier in a game where bigger is always better. At a time when AT&T and Verizon Wireless are using their considerable marketing muscle to cement their leadership positions, T-Mobile faces the daunting task of convincing subscribers to switch services....

By Fumbuka Ng’wanakilalaDAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Police in Tanzania arrested three Chinese nationals and seized hundreds of elephant tusks in the past week in anti-poaching raids in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam and the southern town of Mtwara.A total of 797 tusks were seized in three raids, officials said on Tuesday, representing the slaughter of about 400 elephants.“706 tusks were confiscated in Dar es Salaam on Saturday alone,” said Chikambi Rumisha, a spokesman for the natural resources and tourism ministry....

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere blew past 415 parts per million this past May. The last time levels were this high, two or three million years ago, the oceans rose tens of meters, something likely to happen again as Earth’s ice melts over the next 1,000 years. To replace bad news with action, we need hope—a vision for restoring the atmosphere. Think about the Endangered Species Act: it does not stop at saving plants and animals from extinction; it helps them recover....

As NASA gets to work on the Constellation Program—the space agency’s next not-so-small-step for mankind that hopes to put U.S. astronauts back on the moon by 2020—the European Space Agency (ESA) has set its sights on learning more about our own planet. Toward that end the agency this month, at its Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service (TEMIS) conference in Italy, touted its ability to provide free atmospheric and environmental data to help nations assess air pollution problems....

If two black holes merge and no one is around to hear them, do they still make a sound? Careful—this is a trick question. Despite their reputation as the most fearsome objects in the universe, black holes by themselves aren’t actually very noisy. Any sounds emitted inside the event horizon, the boundary beyond which light itself cannot escape a black hole’s gravitational pull, would never reach the outside universe. So two bare black holes meeting and merging in the cosmic dark would be expected to make essentially no sound at all....

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazineGovernments from more than 90 countries have agreed to establish an independent panel of scientists to assess the very latest research on the state of the planet’s fragile ecosystems. The decision, which will create a body akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was made in Panama City this weekend, after years of negotiations.The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will be responsible for producing international scientific assessments on issues such as ocean acidification and pollination, to help policy-makers to tackle the global loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Dogs have played a prominent role in the lives of humans going back thousands of years and, more than any other domesticated animal, this role has remained relatively unchanged. In the present day, dogs serve as guardians, perform tricks or tasks, and are seen as companions and even members of one’s family just as they were in earlier eras....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The social organisation of the ancient Etruscans, a civilization which flourished in central Italy between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, can only be pieced together from a collection of rather unsatisfactory sources which, unfortunately, do not include texts written by the Etruscans themselves. These sources include short inscriptions, art, tombs and their contents, pottery graffiti, and descriptions by Greek and Roman writers who often struggled to fathom this strange foreign culture and could only inadequately apply to it their own familiar terms and concepts....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The fall of the Girondins, which occurred during the Paris insurrections of 31 May-2 June 1793, marked the end of a bitter power struggle between the Girondins and the Mountain during the French Revolution (1789-99). It was significant for ensuring the dominance of the Jacobins over the Revolution, and for leading into the period of the Reign of Terror (1793-94)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. No other Roman emperor travelled as much as Hadrian (r. 117-138 CE). The ‘restless’ emperor spent more time travelling than in Rome, devoting half of his 21-year reign to the inspection of the provinces. His travels provided him with the political means of unifying the Roman Empire, but he may also have been personally motivated by his insatiable curiosity, philhellenism, and love of travel....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Herodotus’ narrative on Lydia takes up almost one half of Book I of his Histories and the section dealing with King Croesus is among the best-known and often anthologized. The last section, in which he discusses Lydian women as prostitutes, is not as well-known but continues a criticism of the region earlier reserved only for its king....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. World History Encyclopedia’s main mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. We are achieving this through our definitions and articles, our videos and education resources, our audio articles and social media. Recently, we have updated our merch store so people can wear ancient history proudly, and this creative outlet as a way of sharing our passion for history is something that has truly seen a boom in the last few years....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, Celtic tribes moved en masse into southern Europe, intent on seizing land and wealth to feed their swelling numbers. As these tribes began crossing the Alps, they came into conflict with the Romans and Greeks living around the Mediterranean. The death of Alexander the Great (356 BCE - 323 BCE) made Greece appear like an easy target to many opportunistic Celtic chieftains who led their people into the Balkans, first to Thrace and Illyria before pressing forward towards Macedon....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The great discoverer of the treasures of King Tutankhamun, Howard Carter, was born on May 9, 1874 CE to Samuel John and Martha Joyce (Sands) Carter in Kensington, England. A sick, home-schooled child, Carter learned to draw and paint from his father, an accomplished Victorian artist. These skills helped Howard Carter in his career as an archaeologist, working at a time when color photography was nonexistent....