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Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Forts and sieges held a key position in ancient Indian warfare. Built on considerations of strategic location, topography, and the natural advantages provided by the site, forts would be heavily supplemented with man-made fortifications. They were required not only for the security of the populace that lived in its vicinity but the kingdom as a whole....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The storming of Bristol, a port then second only in importance to London, on 26 July 1643 by Royalist forces led by Prince Rupert (1619-1682) was a major coup against the Parliamentarians during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). The Royalists were able to break through the long perimeter fortifications, which were manned by a defensive force spread too thinly....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Paul was a member of the Jewish Pharisees in the 1st century CE, who experienced a revelation of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In this vision, Jesus commissioned him to be the apostle (herald) to the Gentiles (non-Jews). After this experience, he traveled widely throughout the Roman Empire, spreading the “good news” that Jesus would soon return from heaven and usher in the kingdom of God on earth....

The Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean between Japan and Papua New Guinea, plunges nearly seven miles below the surface at its deepest point. It is one of the most inaccessible environments on Earth, but it has not escaped the impact of humanity’s violence. A group of scientists have now found radioactive carbon-14—at levels high enough to indicate it originated from the detonation of nuclear bombs—in the flesh of shrimplike crustaceans living in the trench....

1 THE RINGS OF SATURN You are cruising in the troposphere of Saturn under the most magnificent ring structure in the solar system. Few sights are more astounding. The white, icy rings soar 75,000 kilometers above your head. Ring shine illuminates everything around you. No fewer than six crescent moons rise in the sky. The light from the setting sun scatters against a mist of ammonia crystals, forming a sun dog....

How do electric eels generate a voltage, and why don’t they get shocked? Angel Caputi, senior scientist and head of the department of integrative and computational neurosciences at the Clemente Estable Institute for Biological Research in Montevideo, Uruguay, provides this answer: The electric eel generates large electric currents by way of a highly specialized nervous system that synchronizes the activity of disk-shaped, electricity-producing cells packed into a specialized electric organ. The nervous system uses a command nucleus that tells the electric organ to fire....

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), worldwide military expenditures have been growing annually for the past 15 years, and between 15 and 20 major armed conflicts—yes, wars—are in progress as you read this. All told, upward of 175 million people died in war-related violence during the 20th century, plus another eight million because of conflicts among individuals. Even so, according to a weighty new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking Adult, 2011), by Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, the “better angels” of human nature have actually brought about a dramatic reduction in violence during the past few millennia....

The basic building blocks of life may have been present on Earth from the very beginning. Astronomers detected 21 different complex organic molecules streaming from Comet Lovejoy during its highly anticipated close approach to the sun this past January. Many of these same carbon-containing compounds have also been spotted around newly forming sunlike stars, researchers said. “This suggests that our proto-planetary nebula was already enriched in complex organic molecules (as disk models suggested) when comets and planets formed,” study lead author Nicolas Biver, of the Paris Observatory, told Space....

Jessica writes: “I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism several months ago. There are many websites, blogs, and Facebook groups for people with hypothyroidism that insist that you have to go gluten-free. Is this true?” Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is the most common cause of hypothyroidism. It’s an auto-immune condition in which the body’s immune system gradually destroys the thyroid gland. As a result, the amount of circulating thyroid hormone in your body is too low....

Environmental, humanitarian and economic challenges do not exist in isolation, but that is how the world most often deals with them. To take just one example: one of the key challenges facing cities around the globe in the 21st century is flooding. Flooding is determined by environmental factors, from climate change to overcrowding of floodplains with habitation. Flooding is also often a humanitarian disaster when it strikes and can be an aftereffect of big development projects, like hydroelectric dams....

Coffee and tea may do more than just jolt you awake—they could also help keep your brain healthy, according to a slew of recent studies. Researchers have linked these beverages with protection from depression, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. One large study investigated the link between depression and the intake of coffee, tea and sweet drinks [see box below]by following more than a quarter of a million older adults for 10 years....

Solar Sale A tiny, cost-effective solar cell nearly doubles the amount of electricity generated by sunlight as compared with standard photovoltaic cells. Developed by Spectrolab (a company that makes solar cells for spacecraft) with funding from the Department of Energy, the so-called multiple-junction solar cell consists of germanium and several layers of gallium arsenide. Each layer responds to different wavelengths and works with sunlight concentrated by lenses or mirrors, thereby maximizing the conversion efficiency....

Even Apple, though, hedged its bets. Nestled on either side of the space bar were keys not found on any typewriter. They were modifier keys, to be used exclusively for keyboard shortcuts, aimed at those who still found tapping keys to be more efficient than mousing to the menu. To this day, some people live by keyboard shortcuts—on Windows it’s Control C for Copy, Control V for paste—and others use the mouse....

Once a year many kids come home from school gripping a different kind of report card. The missives do not list “A’s,” “B’s” or something less. Instead, the reports, informally dubbed “fat letters,” rate how children’s body mass indexes (BMIs) compare with those of other kids their age. Many children are receiving poor marks. That’s not too surprising when you consider that more than one third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese....

Recently an international team of astronomers traveled back in time to when our universe was just 1.8 billion years old. They did not go directly, of course, but settled for the next best thing: gathering 17 hours’ worth of starlight from a single small patch of the distant cosmos with the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory atop Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona. Such clock-rewinding virtual voyages are routine in astronomy—light’s finite speed ensures that the deeper into space you see, the further back in time you gaze....

If all goes according to plan, Honolulu’s main port may soon get a power source as clean as the water sloshing under its docks. A consortium of partners headed by the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories is looking to integrate a portable hydrogen fuel cell unit into the operations of Younger Brothers Ltd., the primary shipper of goods throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Its architects say the technology demonstration could serve as a model for similar facilities in ports around the nation....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Can enormous heat deep in the earth be harnessed to provide energy for us on the surface? A promising report from a geothermal borehole project that accidentally struck magma – the same fiery, molten rock that spews from volcanoes – suggests it could. The Icelandic Deep Drilling Project, IDDP, has been drilling shafts up to 5km deep in an attempt to harness the heat in the volcanic bedrock far below the surface of Iceland....

Editor’s Note: This story was published in the August issue of Scientific American. A few heaping piles of scrap metal and a rusty coal shed are all that is left of the power plant that until recently squatted like an immense, smoke-belching dragon in the middle of Tongliang, a gray city of 100,000 in south-central China. As we walk toward the shed, a Belgian Shepherd begins barking furiously, jerking its iron chain and baring sharp teeth....

You can find a microwave oven in nearly any American kitchen—indeed, it is the one truly modern cooking tool that is commonly at hand—yet these versatile gadgets are woefully underestimated. Few see any culinary action more sophisticated than reheating leftovers or popping popcorn. That is a shame because a microwave oven, when used properly, can cook certain kinds of food perfectly, every time. You can even use it to calculate a fundamental physical constant of the universe....

We humans have evolved a rich repertoire of communication, from gesture to sophisticated languages. All of these forms of communication link otherwise separate individuals in such a way that they can share and express their singular experiences and work together collaboratively. In a new study, technology replaces language as a means of communicating by directly linking the activity of human brains. Electrical activity from the brains of a pair of human subjects was transmitted to the brain of a third individual in the form of magnetic signals, which conveyed an instruction to perform a task in a particular manner....