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Half of newborns in a Brooklyn-based study were exposed in the womb to triclosan, a germ-killing chemical widely used in consumer products, researchers reported today at an annual meeting of chemists. “Our study suggests that expectant mothers may be highly exposed to these compounds which have endocrine-disrupting capabilities,” said study coauthor Laura Geer, an environmental health scientist at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in New York. In addition to triclosan, about one-quarter of the newborns were exposed to traces of triclocarban, another germ-killing chemical in some bar soaps....

Carrie Bow Cay is a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, about 14 miles off the coast of Southern Belize. The island is so small—0.77 acres—that you can walk its entire perimeter in under 10 minutes. Scientists regularly visit Carrie Bow Cay to study coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows, as well as the animals that live in these unique ecosystems. When Sara Lewis and Randi Rotjan of Tufts University travel to Carrie Bow Cay, they spend most of their time underwater, examining corals....

The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford. Revised and expanded from the 2008 edition. Thames & Hudson, 2010. Cocktail-party conversation fodder abounds in this book, which maps everything from carbon dioxide emissions to atheism. Origins: Human Evolution Revealed by Douglas Palmer. Mitchell/Beazley, 2010. Hobbits, Neandertals and australopithecines are just a few of the extended family members you will meet in this book featuring reconstructions by paleo­artist John Gurche....

In many animals, relatives tend to stay close, either sharing the same territory or living in neighboring ones. By sticking together, individuals can defend food, mates and other resources, thereby working to perpetuate the family genes, even if not all manage to breed or raise young. One particular mammal, however, turns this general observation on its head, and experts in behavioral ecology do not quite understand why. Striped hyenas (Hyaena hyaena), which live in Africa and parts of Asia, demonstrate so-called protosocial tendencies....

By Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib of Nature magazineA ground-based telescope that can scan the skies faster than any other of its size could help to protect satellites from collisions with space debris and each other. The Space Surveillance Telescope (SST), developed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to be used to protect U.S. and international assets and commercial and international satellites in orbit around Earth.“We’ve got a lot of high-value missions up there, and if you’re trying to do those missions with a blindfold on, you just don’t know what’s going to run into you at any time,” says Chuck Laing, deputy division chief of the Architecture and Integration branch of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado....

Privacy-challenged office workers may find it hard to believe, but open-plan offices and cubicles were invented by architects and designers who were trying to make the world a better place—who thought that to break down the social walls that divide people, you had to break down the real walls, too. In the early 20th century modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright saw walls and rooms as downright fascist. The spaciousness and flexibility of an open plan, they thought, would liberate homeowners and office dwellers from the confines of boxes....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The assassination of revolutionary activist and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793 was one of the most iconic moments of the French Revolution (1789-1799), immortalized in Jacques-Louis David’s painting Death of Marat. Marat’s killer, Charlotte Corday, believed that the only way to save the Revolution and prevent the excesses of the Reign of Terror was through his death....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The cataclysmic end of the Roman Empire in the West has tended to mask the underlying features of continuity. The map of Europe in the year 500 would have been unrecognizable to anyone living a hundred years earlier. Gone was the solid boundary line dividing Roman civilization from what had been perceived as ‘barbarism’....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Modern medicine has its origin in the ancient world. The oldest civilizations used magic and herbs to cure their sick people, but they also used religion to free them from harm and to protect their health. The medical care of today has its roots in ancient Greece. With the introduction of Asklepios and Hygieia in Athens, there sprouted a very important healing cult that existed from about 500 BCE until 500 CE....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Egyptians believed the afterlife was a mirror-image of life on earth. When a person died their individual journey did not end but was merely translated from the earthly plane to the eternal. The soul stood in judgement in the Hall of Truth before the great god Osiris and the Forty-Two Judges and, in the weighing of the heart, if one’s life on earth was found worthy, that soul passed on to the paradise of the Field of Reeds....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The crusades of the 11th to 15th century CE have become one of the defining events of the Middle Ages in both Europe and the Middle East. The campaigns brought significant consequences wherever they occurred but also pushed changes within the states that organised and fought them. Even when the crusades had ended, their influence continued through literature and other cultural means and, resurrected as an idea in more modern times, they continue today to colour international relations....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. During the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730), pirates were first and foremost after gold, silver, and jewels, but if these could not be grabbed, then a ship’s cargo would be taken for resale at a pirate haven. Shared amongst the crew, the lure of plunder drove many a mariner to piracy in the hope that they could escape the toil and hardships of ordinary ship life and enjoy the fleeting pleasures of shore....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The War of the Eight Princes (291-306 CE) is the conflict which weakened and finally ended the Western Jin Dynasty (266-316 CE) in China and resulted in more far-reaching consequences throughout the country. The power of the Sima family was established in the State of Wei by Sima Yi (l....

The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

Volcanoes often signal they are about to blow their tops days or even months in advance. Seismic activity or sulfurous gases indicate red-hot magma is nearing the surface, for example. However, Bogoslof, a volcanic island in the Aleutians off the southwest coast of Alaska exploded without any warning last Saturday. This was its 40th eruption since December 2016, of which 75 percent have not been predicted by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO)....

It’s probably not surprising that mothers excel at recognizing and interpreting the moods and emotions of their infants. Although infants can’t speak, mothers seem to know what their babies are thinking: they smile when their baby smiles and they frown when their baby is upset. Research suggests that the mother’s ability to understand the needs of her infant is very important for establishing a secure mother-infant relationship. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are poorly understood....

The failure last week of an attempt to extend California’s smoking ban to electronic cigarettes has disappointed researchers who worry that a boom in vaping will re-normalize smoking in places where it now carries social stigma, and lead to a new generation of people addicted to nicotine. Although several other US states have already passed e-cigarette legislation, the California bill had special resonance because the state has a reputation for pioneering anti-tobacco legislation....

Modern geometry transcends the formulas for the Pythagorean theorem and the area of a circle that you probably learned in high school. The field has branched into a variety of sometimes esoteric subdisciplines. There are now hyperbolic, projective and even tropical geometers, some of whom devise abstract constructions that even the most brilliant mathematicians have a hard time understanding without software visualizations. Labs at the University of Maryland, College Park (U....

Scientists have known that heart patients who also suffer from depression are at greater risk for a subsequent attack. But the experts did not quite know why. Epidemiologists at Ohio State University’s School of Public Health have offered an intriguing explanation. They scanned the blood of depressed and nondepressed heart patients and found that those with deflated moods are pumping out twice the level of a pro-inflammatory molecule that can damage vascular muscle....

The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned last year that a pandemic caused by a novel strain of influenza would cripple the country‘s response capabilities by driving millions of people into overwhelmed hospitals. The report, which was written before the new coronavirus first surfaced in China, offered these prescient predictions: The deluge of patients would create “a shortage of medical supplies, equipment, beds, and healthcare workers.” FEMA‘s warning, issued in July, forecast with stunning accuracy the social, economic and personal devastation that the ongoing pandemic has caused....