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Almost as light as air, capable of withstanding a direct flame or catching speeding comet dust like a baseball mitt stops a hardball, aerogels are some of the strangest solids in the world. This “Space Age Styrofoam” was developed in a chemistry lab decades ago but is now appearing in snowsuits, explosives and even energy storage technology. Aerogels are the lightest and lowest-density class of materials in the world. Up to 99 percent of the dry, rigid gels are air, while the rest consists of silica, carbon, metals and other substances; it feels like a Styrofoam peanut....

Put on a pair of headphones and turn up the volume so that you can’t even hear yourself speak. For those who stutter, this is when the magic happens. Without the ability to hear their own voice, people with this speech impediment no longer stumble over their words—as was recently portrayed in the movie The King’s Speech. This simple trick works because of the unusual way the brain of people who stutter is organized—a neural setup that affects other actions besides speech, according to a new study....

Scientists long believed that birds had little if any sense of smell. That view shifted toward the end of the 20th century, as researchers gradually learned that certain species, such as vultures, kiwis and albatrosses, use olfaction to help find food, and homing pigeons seem to rely at least partly on their nostrils to find their lofts. New evidence suggests that the sense of smell may play an important role in another vital activity for birds: mating....

Tourette’s syndrome is most pronounced in children. The physical and vocal tics, which can alienate kids from peers, are difficult to treat. First-line drugs are limited in their efficacy, whereas more effective antipsychotics have many potential long-term side effects, including weight gain and movement disorders. Investigators may be moving closer to a new treatment option involving drugs that already exist. Last year researchers identified a new gene mutation associated with the disorder....

Artists and material scientists alike bend, melt and mold materials into useful and aesthetically pleasing forms. But nothing human hands have made can match the intricacy of convoluted corals or the delicate and unique geometry of a snowflake. In a study published yesterday in Science researchers exploited nature’s sculpting methods to create visually stunning 3-D structures that may change the way nano- and micro-materials are made. Organisms alter their growth patterns in response to changes in their environments....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The land of ancient Egypt was alive with the spirit of the gods. The sun god Ra broke from the darkness every morning in his great boat, bringing the light, and many of the gods watched over the people by night as the stars. Osiris caused the Nile River to flood its banks and fertilize the land while Khnum directed its flow....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico include the Hohokam who occupied the US state of Arizona, the Anasazi or Ancestral Pueblo Peoples who resided in the Four Corners Region, and the Mogollon who inhabited southern New Mexico and northern portions of Chihuahua in Mexico....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The navy in ancient India carried out three roles: it was used to transport troops to distant battlefields, participate in actual warfare, and was primarily meant for protecting the kingdom’s trade on sea and navigable rivers and the maritime trade routes. The lucrative and highly developed trade with Egypt, West Asia, Greece, and Rome led to the growth of navies along India’s west coast facing the Arabian Sea, and many dynasties ruling in various parts of India also maintained navies to protect the trade being conducted through huge rivers such as the Ganga....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the most popular works of literature in the present day and has influenced countless numbers of readers but, for the greater part of its history, it was lost. The Assyrian Empire fell to a coalition of Babylonians and Medes in 612 BCE who sacked and burned the Assyrian cities and, among them, Nineveh....

In 1951 scientists thought they had found a new invader on American soil. Ectobius, a cockroach found throughout Europe and Africa, had begun turning up in homes in Massachusetts. Three decades later another Ectobius species, commonly known as the dusky cockroach, made an appearance in New Hampshire and then in Vermont. Eventually four Ectobius species were being tallied in the northeastern U.S. But Ectobius, it turns out, is not really a stranger to North America at all....

One of the nation’s largest coal-burning utilities said yesterday it will shutter 18 of its coal-fired boilers and pay billions to rein in pollutants at many of its remaining units, underscoring the evolving energy landscape in the United States. The move by the Tennessee Valley Authority will result in nearly 1 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power capacity going offline by the end of 2018, including 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired power TVA said it planned to retire last year....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

Since its first use in 1877, the petri dish has become an icon of the laboratory, sharing the same rarified space as the microscope, Bunsen burner and lab coat. But now that research has moved away from relatively simple work in, say, antibiotic resistance to more sophisticated processes such as tissue regeneration, a more robust system for cell cultures is necessary–one that more closely approximates the environment that cells inhabit in the body....

Lightning is a particularly unsettling product of bad weather. It causes more deaths and injuries in the U.S. than either hurricanes or tornadoes do, and it strikes without warning, sometimes with nothing but blue sky overhead. In central Florida, where I live, thunderstorms are a daily occurrence during the summer, and so, ironically, people in the Sunshine State often spend their afternoons indoors to avoid the risk of death from the sky....

The human body doesn’t like outsiders. When a foreign pathogen or substance, say an unwanted virus, finds its way into our blood streams we produce antibodies that the neutralize the threat. These “Y”-shaped proteins are made by a class of white blood cells called plasma cells and bind to molecules on the invaders called antigens, triggering another set of white blood cells to literally ingest the interloper. For years now doctors have used antibodies and other protein-based therapies (aka biologics) to treat a range of illnesses, cancers, infections and autoimmune diseases among them....

BOSTON—The moon has long loomed large as the next logical site for human expansion, a frontier land still lightly explored but visible to all throughout human history. With the recent discovery of a significant volume of water on the lunar surface, the idea of the moon as a livable habitat has become just that much more plausible. A new competition, Moon Capital, turned the question of what that habitat will look like over to the imagination of architects, engineers and artists....

A common complaint about wrinkle-masking Botox is that recipients have difficulty displaying emotions on their faces. That side effect might be a good thing, however, for people with treatment-resistant depression. In the first randomized, controlled study on the effect of botulinum toxin—known commercially as Botox—on depression, researchers investigated whether it might aid patients with major depressive disorder who had not responded to antidepressant medications. Participants in the treatment group were given a single dose (consisting of five injections) of botulinum toxin in the area of the face between and just above the eyebrows, whereas the control group was given placebo injections....

This story is a supplement to our feature “New Breast Cancer Treatments Help Sufferers Gain Ground” which was printed in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American. Doctors started aggressively treating breast cancer in the 19th century, with the first mastectomy performed in 1882. But insights into mechanisms driving the disease that would lead to increasingly targeted therapies began with discoveries in the 1950s. 1880s–1890s Hormonal cancer connection suggested when physicians report significant regression of breast cancer tumors following ovary removal or onset of menopause....

A warming climate could lead to a more fragrant world, but it might disturb an intricate communication system used by plants, according to a review published recently in Trends in Plant Science. When Jarmo Holopainen grew white cabbages in a greenhouse in Finland, he found that over many years of sunlight and elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the plants’ communication with the world was altered. Cabbages and most vegetation emit chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds, or BVOCs, that are mostly undetectable by humans....

A newly conservative Supreme Court on Wednesday heard the most serious legal challenge in a generation to a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. And judging from the questions asked by the justices, it appeared possible—even likely—that a majority of them could vote to turn the thorny question of whether to allow abortion and under what circumstances back to individual states. The law under review in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, passed by Mississippi in 2018, would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy....