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The house built by Alfred Russel Wallace after he returned from his exotic travels is about to come on the market. Wallace – who came up with the concept of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin and prompted Darwin to publish his own work – had the house built in 1872 in Grays, UK, according to the website outlining the sale. Wallace’s pioneering continued in this construction. The house, which he named ‘The Dell’ because it sat in a pit, was one of the first buildings in the United Kingdom made out of moulded concrete....

SAN FRANCISCO—Environmental advocates are trying to change how policymakers consider the climate impacts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The change, if implemented, could make natural gas a less attractive option for generating electricity in power plants. At issue is the global warming potential (GWP), a number that allows experts to compare methane with its better-known cousin, carbon dioxide. While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2....

The late esteemed English actor Christopher Lee traced his ancestry directly to Charlemagne. In 2010 Lee released a symphonic metal album paying homage to the first Holy Roman emperor—but his enthusiasm may have been a tad excessive. After all, says geneticist Adam Rutherford, “literally everyone” with European ancestry is directly descended from Charlemagne. The family tree of humanity is much more interconnected than we tend to think. “We’re culturally bound and psychologically conditioned to not think about ancestry in very broad terms,” Rutherford says....

Physicists have filled in the last missing detail of how nuclear fusion powers the Sun, by catching neutrinos emanating from the star’s core. The detection confirms decades-old theoretical predictions that some of the Sun’s energy is made by a chain of reactions involving carbon and nitrogen nuclei. This process fuses four protons together into a helium nucleus, releasing two neutrinos—the lightest known elementary particles of matter—as well as other subatomic particles and copious amounts of energy....

Vanderbilt does not seem too concerned to impress any organizing theory on his subject, the vagaries of human preference. “The picture of taste I have presented is hardly reassuring,” he writes in the book’s conclusion. “We often do not seem to know what we like or why we like what we do.” Remember, that’s the end of his book. While many pop-sci authors unspool their epiphanies with logical, airtight precision, Vanderbilt offers up a kind of book-length “shruggie”—that modern ideogram for affable bemusement: ¯_()_/¯....

The number of Adelie and chinstrap penguins living on the Antarctic Peninsula has plummeted by more than half during the past 30 years. Scientists once believed that climate change would create a stark contrast between the two species. Ice-loving Adelies, which winter on sea ice, would see their numbers dwindle as their habitat warmed, the thinking went. Ice-avoiding chinstraps, which prefer open water, would thrive. But the new study suggests that picture was only half right....

Motorists have heard a lot lately about ethanol-based fuels, which burn cleaner than gasoline and derive from renewable, domestic biomass. Iogen Corporation has furthered this technology by developing enzymes to convert tough, sugar-bearing cellulose in inexpensively produced agricultural waste into ethanol (opposite page, top). Another renewable alternative fuel is biodiesel—predominantly vegetable oils that are processed to serve as a clean-burning fuel for diesel engines. Michikazu Hara of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and his colleagues have demonstrated that a charred mixture of inexpensive sugars, starches or cellulose can be treated to formulate an effective solid-acid catalyst for making biodiesel that is insoluble, cheap to prepare and easy to recycle....

(Updates with latest death toll, new comments from official) JAKARTA, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Indonesian rescuers on Sunday used heavy-lifting equipment for the first time to clear roads leading to the site of a landslide that destroyed a village and killed at least 32 people, officials said, with scores still missing. Police, soldiers and volunteers had used their bare hands and makeshift tools to search for survivors, while trucks cleared roads leading to the landslide area after the disaster struck on Friday night....

By Janet FangSoils around the globe have increased their emissions of carbon dioxide over the past few decades, according to an analysis of 439 studies.The findings, published in the March 25 issue of Nature, match predictions that increasing temperatures will cause a net release of carbon dioxide from soils by triggering microbes to speed up their consumption of plant debris and other organic matter.Ben Bond-Lamberty and Allison Thomson, terrestrial carbon research scientists at the University of Maryland’s Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, conducted the study by stitching together almost 50 years of soil-emissions data–1,434 data points–from 439 studies around the world....

On January 11, 2007, with no warning, China’s military fired a ballistic missile at one of the country’s weather satellites and blew it to bits. China’s first test of an antisatellite weapon made a mess: tens of thousands of metal shards now litter low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station, other crewed missions and about half of all operational satellites fly. Other superpowers have been exploring space-based weaponry. In October 2014 the U....

The animal dances and lifts up its tail-flap, which, once unfurled, resembles an abstract Indian blanket of intense color. The tiny creature hops about, lifts up its legs alternately like an air traffic controller, gesturing this way and that. Its large, furry mouthparts almost make it look like it’s smiling, or at least mildly amused at this outrageous act. Meet the peacock spider. Males from several species within this group of spiders put on remarkable mating displays to win over mates of the opposite gender....

By Sharon Bernstein SACRAMENTO Calif. (Reuters) - It was still dark on Kokomo Drive in Sacramento’s Natomas district as Paul Brown edged his city-issued Honda Civic past a row of beige stucco houses with tiny front lawns, looking for water wasters. He heard the scofflaws before he saw their lush green lawns amid the otherwise parched turf. The buzz of a sprinkler system gave them away on a day that the city, desperate to save water amid California’s ongoing drought, had forbidden watering....

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 Aliwal on 28 January 1846 saw the British East India Company (EIC) defeat the Sikh Empire. One of four major battles during the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-6), Aliwal was a decisive victory where the EIC’s Bengal Lancers cavalry established their formidable reputation. After one more victory at the Battle of Sobraon, the war was won....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Magic was an integral aspect of life in ancient Egypt. The world was created through the power of heka (magic) as Atum stood on the primordial mound of the ben-ben in the middle of the endless waters of chaos with the god Heka, who personified magical power. It was Heka who allowed for the gods to perform their duties through heka and, most importantly, maintained the concept of ma’at, harmony and balance in the universe....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The armies of the Crusades (11th-15th centuries CE), which saw Christians and Muslims struggle for control of territories in the Middle East and elsewhere, could involve over 100,000 men on either side who came from all over Europe to form the Christian armies and from all over western Asia and North Africa for the Muslim ones....

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 Palace of Constantinople was the magnificent residence of Byzantine emperors and their court officials which included a golden throne room with wondrous mechanical devices, reception halls, chapels, treasury, and gardens. In use from 330 to 1453 CE, it was sumptuously decorated throughout with exotic marble and fine mosaics to impress visitors from near or far with the wealth and power of the Byzantine Empire....

Satellite images of Asia track clouds of haze that drift eastward with prevailing winds. Made up of the tiny particles created when fuel is burned, this haze drifts out to sea and slowly disappears—though not without exacting a toll. From shifting wind direction to suppressing the monsoon, aerosols’ effects derive from the absorption of sunlight, cooling the surface and warming the surrounding air. And new research shows that this localized warming is strengthening storms over the Pacific Ocean—and impacting atmospheric circulation across the globe....

By Stian Reklev ULAN BATOR (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific nations are failing to halt the loss of natural forests and grasslands, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday, robbing people of their livelihoods and worsening environmental problems like desertification and climate change. Forests and grasslands make up 58 percent of the region’s land mass, but each year 2 million hectares (20,000 square kms) are degraded and rendered useless, Patrick Durst, a FAO senior forestry officer told a food conference in Ulan Bator....

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn’s nuclear power plant workers to Homer’s low sperm count. Then there’s the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of “nuclear heat” from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity. Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions....

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the October 2001 issue of Scientific American. The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. “As the water recedes,” says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, “we expect to find a lot of dead bodies....