Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is a narrative poem of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) inspired by the love affair between Xuanzong (r. 712-756 CE), the seventh emperor of the dynasty, and his consort Lady Yang. It was written by the Chinese poet Bai Juyi (l. 772-846 CE) and is his most popular work....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Roman domus was much more than a place of dwelling for a Roman familia. It also served as a place of business and a religious center for worship. The size of a domus could range from a very small house to a luxurious mansion. In some cases, one domus took up an entire city-block, while more commonly, there were up to 8 domus per insula (city-block)....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle East land and sea routes, and spices were in huge demand both for food dishes and for use in medicines....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Although women in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) lived in a male-dominated society, far from being powerless, they ran farms and households, were responsible for textile production, moved away from Scandinavia to help settle Viking territories abroad stretching from Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles to Russia, and were perhaps even involved in trade in the sparse urban centres....
A single gene may have paved the way for the rise of human intelligence by dramatically increasing the number of brain cells found in a key brain region. This gene seems to be uniquely human: It is found in modern-day humans, Neanderthals and another branch of extinct humans called Denisovans, but not in chimpanzees. By allowing the brain region called the neocortex to contain many more neurons, the tiny snippet of DNA may have laid the foundation for the human brain’s massive expansion....
The world’s most-advanced aircraft carrier should be meeting a bottle of champagne today. Head on. The USS Gerald R. Ford will be christened during a ceremony in Newport News, Va., an event that will usher in the next generation of aircraft carriers. The Gerald R. Ford is the first of its class – the Ford class. And over the last few years, the shipbuilders at Newport News Shipbuilding have been putting together a vessel that is intended to move the aircraft carrier technology needle forward significantly....
Mothers could literally always have their kids on their minds. Researchers find that in mice, cells from fetuses can migrate into a mother’s brain and apparently develop into nervous system cells. The discovery comes from Gavin S. Dawe of the National University of Singapore and Zhi-Cheng Xiao of Singapore General Hospital, along with their colleagues from China and Japan. They were looking to design therapies for stroke or diseases such as Alzheimer’s....
Would you rather work for an aggressive jerk or a spineless wimp? Unsurprisingly, employees do not like either management style. Instead a good manager has to walk the line between too assertive and not assertive enough. Social psychologist Daniel R. Ames of Columbia Business School and organizational behavior expert Francis J. Flynn of Stanford University were curious about why previous leadership studies rarely had much to say about assertiveness. It seemed unlikely that assertiveness did not matter....
Federal officials on Tuesday announced major changes in advice to pregnant and breastfeeding women by recommending consumption of at least 8 ounces of low-mercury fish per week. It is the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration have issued advice on the minimum amount of fish that pregnant women and children should eat. The previous advisory, issued in 2004, included only maximum amounts to protect their fetuses and young children from mercury, which can harm developing brains and reduce IQs....
We humans assume we are the smartest of all creations. In a world with over 8.7 million species, only we have the ability to understand the inner workings of our body while also unraveling the mysteries of the universe. We are the geniuses, the philosophers, the artists, the poets and savants. We amuse at a dog playing ball, a dolphin jumping rings, or a monkey imitating man because we think of these as remarkable acts for animals that, we presume, aren’t smart as us....
Joseph Dwyer, a professor of physics and space sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, has been wondering the same thing. Your question lies at the core of one of science’s great mysteries: What causes lightning? Decades of electric field measurements made inside thunderstorms have failed to find large enough electric fields to cause a spark, even when the effects of precipitation are taken into account. Since we know that lightning does occur—in fact, it strikes the earth about four million times a day—we must be missing something in our understanding....
German shepherds chasing their tail in endless circles and bull terriers snapping at invisible flies appear endearing to some pet owners. Yet researchers say these spontaneous behaviors in dogs may be manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and may help shed light on the condition in humans. “Some of these compulsions are more common in certain breeds, which suggests a genetic factor,” says Hannes Lohi, a professor of canine genomics at the University of Helsinki and co-author of a study on canine compulsions published in July in PLoS ONE....
When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues–so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee, Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia....
Chemists typically concern themselves with the properties of matter at the level of atoms and molecules. That focus may seem narrow, but it is quite the opposite. Chemistry reveals a great deal about the world around us, including the origins of life, how the human body works and how tiny molecules can profoundly change the earth’s atmosphere. And, of course, chemistry makes it possible to create useful materials not found in nature....
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace are credited for co-discovering evolution by natural selection in early 1858. But on one morning back in the summer of 1852, as Wallace had just finished his breakfast, evolution nearly went up in smoke. Wallace was on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, relaxing in his cabin, when the captain strolled in and announced, perhaps too calmly: “I am afraid the ship’s on fire....
One of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers may be in more precarious shape than scientists thought. If the enormous Thwaites Glacier loses enough ice, its retreat could become “unstoppable.” That’s according to a detailed new map of the world’s largest ice sheet, published yesterday in Nature Geoscience. Known as “BedMachine Antarctica,” the project presents a comprehensive layout of the landscape underneath the ice—all the bumps, ridges and chasms in the bedrock that form the Antarctic continent and holds its glaciers in place....
Instead of thinking about whether to vote Democratic or Republican in the upcoming U.S. election, think about voting to protect science instead of destroying it. As president, Donald Trump’s abuse of science has been wanton and dangerous. It has also been well documented. Since the November 2016 election, Columbia Law School has maintained a Silencing Science Tracker that records the Trump Administration’s attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, to undermine science education or discussion, or to obstruct the publication or use of scientific information....
After collaborating on two books showcasing extinct and endangered birds, legendary cartoonist Ralph Steadman and filmmaker Ceri Levy have paired up again to create this eccentric, wildly imaginative collection of illustrations of other critically endangered animals. Steadman’s drawings are nonconformist, splotched with color and a delightful overlay of finger painting–like splashes and precise ink drawings. Levy’s descriptions detail each creature’s environment and the threats to its survival. The depictions of insects—the little mother moth, the Greek red damsel, the monarch butterfly—are particularly lavish, and an eerie bleakness is infused in the portraits of the snow leopard and giant panda....
The Earth’s climate has changed. After nearly two centuries of fossil fuel-burning, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have reached 400 parts per million, especially boosted by the seemingly ever-accelerating amount of combustion in the last few decades according to the World Meteorological Organization. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 0.04 percent may not seem like much but it is enough to have already raised average global temperatures by a full degree Celsius, according to the U....
December 22, 2012, marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. An intuitive mathematical genius, Ramanujan’s discoveries have influenced several areas of mathematics, but he is probably most famous for his contributions to number theory and infinite series, among them fascinating formulas ( pdf ) that can be used to calculate digits of pi in unusual ways. Last December Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared 2012 to be a National Mathematics Year in India in honor of Ramanujan’s quasiquicentennial....
