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The idea of building a computer that uses light rather than electricity goes back more than half a century. “Optical computing” has long promised faster performance while consuming much less energy than conventional electronic computers. The prospect of a practical optical computer has languished, however, as scientists have struggled to make the light-based components needed to outshine existing computers. Despite these setbacks, optical computers might now get a fresh start—researchers are testing a new type of photonic computer chip, which could pave the way for artificially intelligent devices as smart as self-driving cars, but small enough to fit in one’s pocket....

The identification of specific bacteria that are present—or not—in patients with the debilitating bowel disease could yield better diagnoses and therapies. The largest study of its kind has revealed for the first time the specific gut bacteria involved in Crohn’s disease, which afflicts an estimated 700,000 Americans with chronic, painful diarrhea and bleeding, among other unpleasant symptoms. With a better understanding of how the microbial ecosystem changes in children who suffer from the disease, researchers have gained clues that could someday lead to better diagnosis and treatment....

A massive coastal restoration project in Louisiana could test whether new wetlands can be created faster than they’re disappearing under waves and rising seas. The $1.5 billion project would redirect more than 12% of the Mississippi River’s flow into Barataria Bay, a nearly 600,000-acre expanse of degraded marsh that’s drowning in salt water. The proposed plan would deposit millions of tons of land-building sediment in the basin over the next 50 years....

As it is, nanotubes are tiny. But researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to make these carbon structures even smaller. The size of the tubes, which are used in mass and chemical sensors as well as transistors and oscillators, imparts properties that allow for more exacting performance–for instance, the ability to oscillate at higher frequencies or improved conductivity. “We now have control of an important nanoscale building block, which we can now incorporate into all kinds of devices,” says Tom Yuzvinsky, a condensed matter physics graduate student, who is a co-author of the study....

Columbia University and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund today launched an online tracker of the Trump administration’s crackdown on climate science. The project, called the Silencing Science Tracker, has so far assembled 96 entries of federal restrictions or prohibitions on climate science since November 2016. The database is built from media reports, and it’s searchable by agency, date and type of action. More than half the entries are listed as censorship, either from government restriction or researchers who are self-censoring....

The new rules announced Friday by the Obama administration governing how energy companies frack for oil and gas on federal lands managed to anger environmentalists and the industry alike, but represent a significant step toward protecting drinking water resources in some of the most heavily drilled parts of the country. The rules mark the first time the federal government has stepped in to enact protections to limit risks posed by a technology that has been both criticized for causing environmental harm and credited with making the nation one of the leading producers of oil and gas....

Clean greens are healthy greens. Or so thought a coalition of farmers, growers and processers in California when, in response to a deadly spinach outbreak of the bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli), they created a new set of bacteria-minimizing standards for growing and handling leafy greens. Although the standards were designed to eliminate potential sources of contamination by mandating that crop sites be cleared of vegetation and kept a certain distance from wildlife and natural bodies of water, they have had some unintended consequences—namely, the destruction of habitats, the degradation of soil and the pollution of rivers and streams....

ANCHORAGE—In planet formation, slow, steady and small wins the race. Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have found that small planets such as Earth can form around all manner of stars, whereas massive gas giant planets like Jupiter tend to take shape around stars with large concentrations of heavy elements such as iron and oxygen. The researchers published their findings online in Nature on June 13 and announced the results at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held here this week....

Readers are bombarded with many “best-of” lists this time of year touting the latest and greatest in technology. Scientific American decided to broaden this idea a bit further, in search of a sampling of technologies that members of our advisory board—a group of highly accomplished scientists, engineers, educators and entrepreneurs—could not possibly live without. “Technology” was defined loosely—it could have been a high-tech personal gadget such as an iPhone or something as basic as a nail clipper....

From where did human malaria come: chickens or chimps? That’s been one of the questions up for debate over the last half-century regarding the origin of the most common human malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for taking the lives of at least one million people every year. Now, new research points a convincing finger at our primate cousin. “This is one of the outstanding medical mysteries of mankind,” says Nathan Wolfe, director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative based in San Francisco and co-author on the finding published online August 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Matt Trusheim flips a switch in the darkened laboratory, and an intense green laser illuminates a tiny diamond locked in place beneath a microscope objective. On a computer screen an image appears, a fuzzy green cloud studded with brighter green dots. The glowing dots are color centers in the diamond—tiny defects where two carbon atoms have been replaced by a single atom of tin, shifting the light passing through from one shade of green to another....

As Germany reels from an unexpected surge for the far right in the 24 September elections, researchers don’t expect much effect on the country’s generous support for science. But with smaller parties standing to gain political influence, battles over issues such as the regulation of gene-edited organisms and how to cut greenhouse-gas emissions could grow fiercer. Angela Merkel is set for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor and will lead negotiations with other parties to form a coalition government, after her centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the largest share of the seats in parliament, albeit with a diminished lead....

The United States and Russia yesterday joined Norway, Mexico, Switzerland and the European Union in becoming the first governments to set new targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and explain to the world how they plan to meet those goals. The Obama administration’s promise to cut economywide emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 held almost no surprises. The target and the route to getting there—a combination of Obama using his executive authority under the Clean Air Act with a raft of regulations on everything from heavy-duty trucks to buildings—were charted months earlier....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The gods of ancient Egypt freely gave their bounty to the people who worked the land, but this did not exempt those farmers from paying taxes on that bounty to the government. Egypt was a cashless society until the Persian Period (c. 525 BCE), and the economy depended upon agriculture and barter....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. For almost a decade, Alexander the Great and his army swept across Western Asia and into Egypt, defeating King Darius III and the Persians at the battles of River Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. Next, despite the objections of the loyal army who had been with him since leaving Macedonia in 334 BCE, he turned his attention southward towards India....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Iron Age in the traditional Ancient Near Eastern chronology ranges from somewhere around 1200 BCE to 333 BCE. It begins from the era when it was first thought iron came to be used up to the ascendency of Alexander the Great as the major power of the Ancient Near East....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The practice of mummifying the dead began in ancient Egypt c. 3500 BCE. The English word mummy comes from the Latin mumia which is derived from the Persian mum meaning ‘wax’ and refers to an embalmed corpse which was wax-like. The idea of mummifying the dead may have been suggested by how well corpses were preserved in the arid sands of the country....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Oheka Castle, built by the industrialist Otto Herman Kahn (l. 1867-1934), is one of the best-known luxury hotels of Long Island, NY, USA today. In its time as a private residence, it was the site of the kind of lavish parties which inspired the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby and continues to offer that same experience....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Xenophon’s Defense of Socrates (c. 371 BCE) is a passage from the Memorabilia of Xenophon (l. 430 to c. 354 BCE) in which he addresses the teachings and actions of Socrates of Athens and denounces the charges against him as unjust and unfounded. It is one of three extant works on Socrates’ trial written by those who knew him....

In the intriguing movie Intacto (click here for the imdb entry for Intacto), luck is a more or less permanent quality of a person, provided that he or she avoids physical contact with members of a certain group who know how to steal luck. Finding people who are lucky is the quest of one of the movie’s protagonists. In one case, he tests the luck of possible recruits by having them run blindfolded through a forest....