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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. The Maya sites of San Gervasio (on the island of Cozumel) and Tulum (on the mainland of Mexico in Quintana Roo) are often overlooked for the better-known Chichen Itza or other spectacular ruins further inland but both these locations have their own vibrant story to tell and each will reward a long, leisurely, visit....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The revolt of the gladiator Spartacus in 73-71 BCE remains the most successful slave revolt in the history of Rome. The rebellion is known as the Third Servile War and was the last of three major slave revolts which Rome suppressed. The story of Spartacus has been told by historians, novelists, and filmmakers up to the present day when it enjoys a wide following as a very popular television series but admiration for the hero of the Third Servile War is nothing new....

JUNE 1960 STUNT MAN— “‘Putting a man in space is a stunt: the man can do no more than an instrument, in fact can do less.’ So said Vannevar Bush, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a statement to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. ‘There are far more serious things to do than to indulge in stunts. As yet the American people do not understand the distinctions, and we in this country are prone to rush, for a time, at any new thing....

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....

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have developed a new use for 3D printing, putting it to work to create personalized replica models of cancerous parts of the body to allow doctors to target tumors more precisely. The initiative is the latest example of medicine harnessing the rapidly emerging technology, which has already been used to manufacture some medical implants. 3D printing makes products by layering material until a three-dimensional object is created....

By Richard A. LovettGlobal warming may be making pesticide residues, heavy metals and household chemicals more dangerous to fish, wildlife and, ultimately, humans, scientists warn.At the North American branch of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry’s 31st annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, on 8 November, environmental chemists warned that complex interactions between chemistry and climate change might be making chemicals more toxic and the environment more susceptible to damage.For example, Erin Mann, a graduate student studying environmental chemistry at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, Canada, said that melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean exposes more seawater to the atmosphere, which may make it easier for toxic chemicals in arctic waters to escape into the air....

By Patrick Rucker and Nia WilliamsWASHINGTON/CALGARY (Reuters) - Canada is running out of time to offer U.S. President Barack Obama a climate change concession that might clinch the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, as the country’s energy industry continues to resist costly curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.Two years of negotiations between the Canadian government and the energy sector to curtail carbon pollution have not produced an agreement. Oil producers have balked at anything more than the 10-cents-a-barrel carbon tax imposed by the province of Alberta....

The space rock that wiped out most of the dinosaurs may have had a colossal case of bad timing. If the impact had occurred a few million years earlier or later, more of the majestic beasts may have survived, scientists say. A global team of researchers examined the evidence for different extinction scenarios and concluded that an asteroid or comet almost certainly triggered the abrupt annihilation of all dinosaurs, except for birds, some 66 million years ago....

By Joseph Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Jan 24 (Reuters) - Two balloonists took flight from Japan on Saturday in a bid to break world records for distance and duration for gas balloon travel, in what they hope will be at least a six-day trans-Pacific flight reaching the U.S. West Coast, officials said. The distance record of 5,209 miles (8,383 km) for gas balloons was set on the only previous manned trans-Pacific flight, in 1981, while the duration record of more than 137 hours aloft was set in 1978 by a team crossing the Atlantic....

French authorities confirmed today (Sept. 3) that a piece of debris that washed up on an island in the Indian Ocean in July came from the Malaysia Airlines plane that mysteriously disappeared last year. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 seemingly vanished without a trace on March 8, 2014, and the airplane part that washed ashore is the first piece of physical evidence recovered from the flight. The large piece of wing could offer up clues for authorities hoping to locate the rest of the airplane and determine what happened to the ill-fated aircraft....

A truth that floated to the surface during the BP energy company’s Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, along with hundreds of millions of liters of oil, is that the world does not have a ready replacement for conventional forms of fuel such as crude oil and likely will not have one for some time, particularly as demand for energy grows worldwide. Cleaner energy alternatives, including natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear and biofuel, have gained ground on greenhouse gas–producing oil (as well as coal), but there is still a long way to go before these inexpensive, efficient fuel sources can be phased out, according to a keynote panel assembled recently at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies (EmTech) conference in Cambridge, Mass....

The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. died this morning in Dallas at 7:51 A.M. local time. The sad news was announced by the facility offering his care, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, in an emailed statement this morning that read: “It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7:51 am. Mr. Duncan succumbed to an insidious disease, Ebola....

(Credit:Google)Anyone who has ever had to send enormous files across the Internet has a new option. Google announced today that it has integrated Google Drive with Gmail, allowing users of both services to insert files from Drive directly into their messages. Notably, file sizes can be up to 10GB, or 400 times larger than is allowed in a traditional attachment. The team also built some “smart assistant” technology into the feature to make sure recipients of your shared files have the necessary permissions....

The prevalence of diabetes, a condition related to the body’s inability to appropriately produce a hormone called insulin, has been steadily increasing worldwide over the last 30 years. According to the World Health Organization, over 422 million people worldwide are currently living with diabetes. An estimated 30.3 million of those people, or 9.4% of the population, are in the U.S. Also in the U.S., as many as one in four adults with diabetes don’t even know that they have it, and another 84 million people are pre-diabetic which often means they will be diabetic within five years without treatment....

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. It’s wintertime – it’s cold, wet, and often filled with viruses and bacteria running rampant through the air. Many of us will get sick at least once during the winter season and although it’s more than likely to be the common cold or flu that we contract, some illnesses can wreak havoc on our holiday plans and bodies....

US President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order on March 28 that aims to dismantle his predecessor’s climate policies. The long-anticipated document directs the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to repeal curbs on power plants’ carbon emissions—policies designed to help the United States meet its commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “My administration is putting an end to the war on coal,” Trump said during a signing ceremony at EPA headquarters, flanked by coal miners....

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Mara Hvistendahl’s book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. The technology that ultimately became the dominant method of sex selection around the world began as a tool for navigation. The story of ultrasound dates to 1794, when an Italian biologist curious about how bats find their way in the dark discovered sonar, or the fact that distance can be determined by bouncing sound waves off a faraway object and measuring how long it takes for the waves to ricochet back....

A gigantic comet is actually the largest ever seen, new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm. Stretching about 80 miles (129 kilometers) across, the nucleus (or solid center) of the comet, known as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), is larger than the state of Rhode Island, according to a statement from NASA. And it’s about 50 times larger than the average comet core. “This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system,” David Jewitt, co-author of a new study confirming the comet’s size and a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), said in the NASA statement....

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken its first direct images of a planet orbiting a distant star. The planet, known as HIP 65426 b, is a gas giant several times more massive than Jupiter, circling its star at a distance that is about three times greater than the separation between Neptune and our sun. HIP 65426 b is only around 15 million years old—a newborn in astronomical terms—and roughly 350 light-years from Earth....

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard of ecotourism, but what on Earth is “geotourism?”—Sally Kardaman, Sumter, S.C. “Geotourism” describes tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a given place, including its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of local residents. The idea is that tourism can be a positive force that benefits both travelers and local environments and economies. National Geographic Senior Editor Jonathan Tourtellot coined the term in 1997 to distinguish it from “ecotourism” or “sustainable tourism,” both which more narrowly focus on travel’s ecological impacts....