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Imagine you are hosting a small party for six guests, and it isn’t understood who knows one another and who doesn’t. As it turns out, there’s bound to be at least three people who are complete strangers to one another—or three who are already friends. (We’re not assuming your friends don’t like one another.) So there will always be at least one group of three people who are all either known or completely unknown to one another....

In a probable scenario for climate change, New Orleans will no longer exist. Neither will Atlantic City, N.J. Boston will look much like it did in the 17th century, before the city was dredged up to build a port. And Florida will no longer keep its distinct appendage shape. These geographical changes due to sea-level rise are only the beginning, scientists bluntly stated at a briefing yesterday convened by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif....

Key concepts Food science Baking Chemistry Introduction Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving dinner dish? Maybe it’s an aunt’s special cranberry sauce or mashed potatoes combined with perfectly seasoned gravy. Or perhaps you enjoy sinking your teeth into a succulent roasted turkey the most. There are also often many baked goods to choose from: dinner rolls, biscuits, corn bread, muffins, pastries and pies! The foods in this group typically all contain a substance called gluten....

ALL PRIMATES, including humans, have two eyes facing forward. With this binocular vision, the views through the two eyes are nearly identical. In contrast, many other animal groups, especially herbivores such as ungulates (hooved animals, including cows, sheep and deer) and lagomorphs (rabbits, for example), have eyes pointing sideways. This perspective provides largely independent views for each eye and an enormously enlarged field of view overall. Why did primates sacrifice panoramic vision?...

The disintegration of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shortly after it launched on a space station resupply mission for NASA last month was most likely caused by a faulty strut inside the booster’s upper stage, company CEO and founder Elon Musk said Monday (July 20). SpaceX investigators believe the explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket on June 28 during a launch to the International Space Station occurred because a steel strut holding down a bottle of high-pressure helium snapped during ascent....

By Kate Kelland Gastric surgery should be offered as a standard treatment option for people with diabetes and could help them control their condition for years without medication, the world’s leading diabetes organizations said on Tuesday. In a joint statement which they said constituted one of the biggest shifts in diabetes treatment guidelines since the advent of insulin, the 45-strong group said bariatric, or metabolic, surgery could have a significant benefit for thousands of patients....

There may be a new roof on the New Orleans Superdome and tourists in the French Quarter, but time is not healing all wounds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. On the contrary, time has been a salt in the psychological wounds of hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents. Even two years after the storm, mental health problems in the region are growing among the nearly 70,000 families still living in temporary housing provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)....

Humanity’s impact on climate has been detected on every continent except Antarctica, or so said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2007. No longer: scientists, comparing decades of records from 17 Antarctic weather stations with computer simulations of Earth’s climate, found that human-induced global warming has been heating up the continent that is home to the South Pole, as well. “We have detected the human fingerprint in both the Arctic and Antarctic region[s],” says Peter Stott, a climate modeler at the U....

What do Barry Bonds, Bernie Madoff, and James Murdoch have in common? They were all, in their respective areas, in it to win it – whatever the cost. Their appetite for success apparently disabled the moral compass that would have otherwise kept their dishonesty, greed, and hubris in check. The magnitude of these highly publicized ethical infractions may lead one to wonder whether folks like Barry, Bernie, and Jimmy were absent the day their kindergarten teachers talked about lying, cheating, and stealing....

From Nature magazine At the Olympics, how fast is too fast? That question has dogged Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen after the 16-year-old shattered the world record in the women’s 400-metre individual medley (400 IM) on Saturday. In the wake of that race, some swimming experts wondered whether Ye’s win was aided by performance-enhancing drugs. She has never tested positive for a banned substance and the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday declared that her post-race test was clean....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Among the most interesting and revealing artifacts discovered from ancient Mesopotamia are cylinder seals. These fairly small items may be seen today in museum exhibits around the world but, perhaps owing to their size, they are not given the kind of consideration by the general public which larger and more commanding artifacts, such as reliefs or statuary, enjoy....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Islam arose as a religious and socio-political force in Arabia in the 7th century CE (610 CE onwards). The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE), despite facing resistance and persecution, amassed a huge following and started building an empire. The tenets of this empire were to be humanitarian and its military might uncontestable....

The raging combatants form a blur on all sides. the scale of the violence is almost incomprehensible, the battle stretching beyond my field of view. Tens of thousands sweep ahead with a suicidal single-mindedness. Utterly devoted to duty, the fighters never retreat from a confrontation—even in the face of certain death. The engagements are brief and brutal. Suddenly, three foot soldiers grab an enemy and hold it in place until one of the bigger warriors advances and cleaves the captive’s body, leaving it smashed and oozing....

In 2014, the federal government set aside $3.5 trillion in outlays for myriad programs. That’s a huge chunk of change exposed to a lot of risks, and according to a new report, two of the biggest threats are the impacts climate change and a looming weather satellite gap. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its biennial High Risk report on Wednesday and it chronicles 32 risks that could cost the government big time....

Exercise is difficult enough for healthy people, but it’s even harder for breast cancer survivors after surgery and rounds of taxing therapy. Studies have shown that exercise can buoy the health of cancer survivors, but heavy fatigue and pain after treatment can keep patients from going on a run or a bike ride. Now a new study published in the January issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that yoga may be a manageable way for breast cancer survivors to work out and still attain health benefits comparable with (and perhaps superior to) other kinds of exercise....

The bane of many a gardener, Bambi may be nibbling ginseng and other forest-floor plants into extinction, scientists say. New study results suggest that ginseng will largely disappear from the woods of eastern North America in the next 100 years if white-tailed deer populations are not reined in. Wild ginseng grows in forests ranging from Quebec to Georgia. Prized in Asia for its putative health benefits, this slow-growing perennial is one of the most widely harvested medicinal plants in the U....

Even as states across the U.S. relax laws governing real marijuana, synthetic cannabinoids—commonly known as fake weed, spice or K2—have become increasingly difficult to control. So far this year more than 5,300 incidents involving the drugs have been reported to U.S. poison control offices. That’s more than double the number of calls in all of 2013, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Health departments from Alabama to New York State have issued alerts after a wave of emergencies with the drugs....

Kangal, Turkey–Tucked between brown hills in central Turkey is a natural hot spring where, for a fee, you can become fish food. Dip in a hand or foot, and within seconds small fish will swarm, bump and nibble it. Stand above the pools, and the fish will gather below, waiting. The scaly swimmers–the “Doctor Fish of Kangal”–supposedly have curative powers. But in this unusual case of adaptive ecology, the human visitors may be helping the fish more than themselves....

A new study is reporting a larger climate impact from gas stoves than previously thought, stoking a debate about one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions: buildings. Published by a team of four Stanford University Earth-system scientists today in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology, the study concluded that U.S. gas stoves could emit as much greenhouse gas annually as a half-million cars. That would come chiefly in the form of methane, a gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide over a two-decade period....

Numerous recent studies have undercut the purported benefits of various herbal supplements. Gingko, echinacea and Saint John’s wort, have all been found relatively ineffective against many of the ills they have been claimed to help. This does not seem to have slowed purchases by U.S. consumers, who spent $14.8 billion on these and other natural supplements in 2007, according to a report released last summer. It also hasn’t stopped many supplement sellers from making the false claims and even recommending potentially dangerous uses of the products to customers, according to a recent investigation conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)....