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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 Etruscan civilization flourished in central Italy between the 8th and 3rd century BCE and produced distinctive art in the form of decorated pottery, figure sculpture, wall paintings, and the focus of this article, engraved bronze mirrors. Perhaps rather unfairly, the Etruscans long-held a reputation for effeminacy and as lovers of luxury; a portrait not coincidentally perpetuated by their conquerors the Romans....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Etruscan civilization flourished in central Italy between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, and their prosperity was largely based on their exploitation of local mineral resources, both through manufactured goods and trade. The Etruscans exchanged goods not only with their fellow cities in Etruria but also with contemporary Mediterranean civilizations such as the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Near East cultures....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In this interview, World History Encyclopedia talks to author and scholar Gordon Campbell all about his new book Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth published by Oxford University Press. Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth by Gordon CampbellOxford University Press (Copyright) Kelly (WHE): Thanks for joining me today....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris was originally consecrated as a private royal chapel in 1248 during the reign of King Louis IX of France (r. 1226-1270), who was known in life as rex christianissimus (‘most Christian king’) and canonized in death as St. Louis. Visually stunning, the chapel is packed with political and religious symbolism to communicate and legitimize the power of Louis IX and the Capetian Dynasty....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. According to Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the last thing Jesus did before he bodily ascended to heaven was to commission the disciples to ‘witness’ to his teachings. ‘Disciple’ meant ‘student’ and was derived from the various schools of philosophy in the ancient world. There was a master/teacher, and his students collected the teachings and passed them on....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. A story on a papyrus dating from the 2nd century CE relates that the goddess Isis, bestowing gifts on humanity, gave as much power and honor to women as she did to men. This tale reflects the high status women enjoyed in ancient Egypt. Although they never had the same rights as males, an Egyptian woman could own property in her own name and hold professions that gave her economic freedom from male relatives (women could practice medicine, handle money and make real estate transactions)....

How do we perceive a rainbow? And does everyone perceive a rainbow in the same way? These seemingly simple questions can reveal some interesting features of the human brain. For instance, is the “striped” appearance of the rainbow—the seven distinct bands of color that we see—a construct of our higher mental processes, or do the mechanics of human color vision determine it at a very early perceptual level? If your language does not have separate words for “blue” and “green” (and many languages, including Welsh, do not), do you perceive these shades as more similar than a speaker of English?...

The globe was unusually warm last year but fell shy of a global record despite chart-topping heat in the United States, according to separate federal analyses released yesterday. NASA ranks 2012 as the ninth-warmest year for the planet since record keeping began in 1880, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration places it at No. 10. The two agencies, which conduct separate analyses of global temperature data using slightly different methods, agree that the Earth was about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer last year than the 20th-century average, in part due to record warmth in the lower 48 United States....

Psychologist Rachael Jack and her colleagues recruited 80 people to take this test as part of a study in 2018. The team, at the University of Glasgow, UK, enlisted participants from Western and East Asian cultures to explore a long-standing and highly charged question: do facial expressions reliably communicate emotions? Researchers have been asking people what emotions they perceive in faces for decades. They have questioned adults and children in different countries and Indigenous populations in remote parts of the world....

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week gave its first green light to a company that wants to start selling a blood test to evaluate for mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion. The agency lauded the blood test as an innovative tool for speeding diagnosis and avoiding radiation exposure from brain scans. But some head trauma experts worry the authorization was pushed through too hastily. “The data aren’t as conclusive as we would have hoped, so I was surprised by the rapid FDA approval,” says Henrik Zetterberg, a professor of neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was not involved with the project....

KABUL (Reuters) - At least 58 people have been killed and many more are missing in flash floods that hit parts of northern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai’s office said on Saturday. The floods were caused by heavy rain that fell overnight in the Gozargah-e Noor district of the northern Baghlan province. Ahmad Nasir Kohzad, head of disaster response for Baghlan, said more than 800 families had been affected and many more bodies could be seen by the river....

The controversial exoplanet Gliese 581g is the best candidate to host life beyond our own solar system, according to a new ranking of potentially habitable alien worlds. Gliese 581g shot to the top of the list — which was published Thursday (July 19) by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo’s Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) — after a new study marshaled support for its long-debated existence. The exoplanet was discovered in September 2010, but other astronomers began casting doubt on its existence just weeks later....

By Sharon Weinberger of Nature magazine For some Pentagon officials, the demonstration in October 2007 must have seemed like a dream come true — an opportunity to blast reporters with a beam of energy that causes searing pain. The event in Quantico, Virginia, was to be a rare public showing for the US Air Force’s Active Denial System: a prototype non-lethal crowd-control weapon that emits a beam of microwaves at 95 gigahertz....

Los Angeles is a hedonist’s paradise. At night, you can cruise the Sunset Strip. Although The Doors no longer play there, you may run into Paris Hilton or Britney Spears before seeing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at a red-carpet event. During the winter, you might venture downtown to watch Kobe Bryant and the Lakers play. Every day of the year you can sit outside at Starbucks and try to identify professional basketball players looking for a latte in West Los Angeles....

Dear EarthTalk: I am looking at possibly buying a house that is very close to a gasoline station. Is it safe to live so close to a gas station? What concerns should I have? I have toddler and infant babies. – Ranjeeta, Houston, TX Despite all the modern health and safety guidelines they must follow, gas stations can still pose significant hazards to neighbors, especially children. Some of the perils include ground-level ozone caused in part by gasoline fumes, groundwater hazards from petroleum products leaking into the ground, and exposure hazards from other chemicals that might be used at the station if it’s also a repair shop....

A vaccine against malaria has shown promise in early clinical trials, raising hopes that it might one day prove to be an effective weapon against one of the world’s biggest killers of children. In a trial in 450 children aged 5–17 months, the vaccine, called R21, was up to 77% effective at preventing malaria over the course of one year — which, if confirmed, would clear a 75% effectiveness target set by the World Health Organization....

Great thinkers have often warned us: when seeking happiness, do not rely on worldly goods. Science bears out the advice—people with more wealth are not happier. Yet how you spend your funds does matter. Research reveals a few strategies that increase long-term contentment. Spend on experiences, not goods. Many studies support the fact that spending on activities such as dining, concerts or travel makes people happier in the long term than does purchasing goods....

Secret societies attract many people. Incense and dark lights lend a sense of importance to otherwise dull and meaningless experiences, a cynic might say. Most secret societies choose their members based on birth, athletic ability or connections. The Dren Society uses brains and athletic endurance as its criteria. The major test is a ladder code involving an eight-step ladder. The code consists of climbing the ladder to the top in some particular sequence of step sizes....

Two groups of researchers searching for extrasolar planets—planets orbiting stars other than our own sun—laid claim today to an astronomy milestone: photographing extrasolar planets directly, rather than inferring their presence through effects on their parent stars. A team led by astronomer Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, detected a planetary candidate orbiting Fomalhaut, a star 25 light-years away in the constellation Pisces Australis (the Southern Fish), using visible-light observations from the Hubble Space Telescope....

NASA says its Phoenix Mars Lander will try a new method for sampling Martian soil after failed attempts to sift a pile of dirt on its instrument deck. Phoenix is designed to scoop up dirt and ice using a backhoe-like shovel on its nearly eight-foot (2.5-meter) robotic arm and drop various samples into eight tiny, single-use ovens. The oven openings are about the width of pencil lead; a set of screens filters out larger particles to prevent clogs....