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In the 1990s a graduate student named Lin Chao at Princeton University decided to bubble carbon dioxide into an electrochemical cell. Using cathodes made from the element palladium and a catalyst known as pyridinium—a garden variety organic chemical that is a by-product of oil refining—he discovered that applying an electric current would assemble methanol from the CO2. He published his findings in 1994—and no one cared. But by 2003, Chao’s successor in the Princeton lab of chemist Andrew Bocarsly was deeply interested in finding a solution to the growing problem of the CO2 pollution causing global climate change....

Editor’s Note: This story was originally printed in the March 2008 issue of Scientific American. All tuna are not alike. The canned tuna fish in sandwiches and salads comes from either skipjack, a meter-long species that is caught in prodigious quantities around the world and served as “light meat tuna,” or albacore, another small fish that is marketed as “white meat tuna.” The yellowfin and the bigeye tuna are larger species that are also heavily fished, but neither makes for particularly wonderful sushi, and they are usually served grilled....

Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, died at 45 (elderly in rhino age) Monday at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, about 130 kilometers north of Nairobi. The animal’s health had been deteriorating for the past month and recently worsened so much that he could no longer stand, prompting a decision by his veterinary team to euthanize him. Born in Shambe, South Sudan, the rhino was captured two years after roaming in the wild and brought to the Dvur Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic....

The United Nations postponed an important year-end climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, because of concerns about the novel coronavirus pandemic. U.N. climate leaders bowed yesterday to mounting pressure to delay the summit that attracts thousands of delegates and observers. The gathering will be held in 2021, and a midyear meeting that would have been held in June is scheduled to occur in Bonn, Germany, at the end of this summer. The news comes as the coronavirus has spread to 180 countries and claimed more than 45,000 lives....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. At the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (aka Battle of Varus), c. 9 CE, a combined force of Germans annihilated a Roman army consisting of three legions including three squadrons of cavalry and six cohorts of auxiliary troops. As some soldiers must have been left behind to defend summer camps, the army probably held 10,000 to 15,000 men or roughly 8 to10 % of the total Roman army....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Feasts were an important part of ancient Celtic culture which marked important dates in the calendar and community successes. They were, too, an opportunity to display social status and, of course, eat and drink aplenty. Drunkenness and brawling were not an uncommon feature of these events, and sometimes there were even fights to the death over matters of honour such as who should have the right to eat the best cut of meat....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Dr. Jeanne Reames’ Dancing with the Lion: Becoming and Dancing with the Lion: Rise follow an epic tale of Alexander before he was “The Great.” In this interview, Dylan Campbell inquires about her passion for history and the development of her new novels. Dancing with the Lion: BecomingJeanne Reames (Copyright)...

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The pottery of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in ancient Peru between 200 BCE and 600 CE, is amongst the most distinctive art produced by any civilization from antiquity. Endlessly inventive both in form and in its use of strong colours and bold decorative designs, the ceramic wares of the Nazca are instantly recognisable....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The central cultural value of ancient Egypt was ma’at – harmony and balance – which maintained the order of the universe and the lives of the people. Keeping balance in one’s life encouraged the same in one’s family and, by extension outward, one’s neighborhood, community, city, and the entire nation....

NASA could be one of the nation’s most potent weapons in battling climate change. The space agency has conducted decades of research into weather, life-support systems and the atmospheres of other planets providing it with unique skills to address this problem. It would be easy for policymakers to overlook NASA as they map out a strategy for solving Earth’s biggest environmental woes. But here are some important reasons why they shouldn’t....

Cancer therapy is too often a matter of chance. Despite advances in cancer genetics, physicians have only limited information to make decisions about individual patients. People undergo treatments with their fingers crossed, not knowing if they will be helped or harmed. A group at Massachusetts General Hospital might have a way to personalize cancer care more effectively. It is currently refining and testing a lab-on-a-chip that can sample and analyze the circulating tumor cells from just a teaspoon of a patient’s blood, obviating the need, in many patients, for sometimes dangerous biopsies....

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty Milkweed Editions, 2021 ($25) In this lyrical and often dazzling memoir, 17-year-old Dara McAnulty brings readers into close communion with the natural world while offering an intimate look at what it’s like to live with autism. Diary of a Young Naturalist is structured like a journal and spans one year, during which McAnulty’s family moves cross-country from their home in Northern Ireland’s County Fermanagh to the mountainous County Down....

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not....

Zimbabwe’s foremost land degradation expert has come up with a readily available solution for reversing the spread of deserts around the planet and slowing climate change in the process: He wants to let cows and sheep eat their way through the problem. In a provocative appearance on the video blog Ted Talks, biologist Allan Savory said desertification of the world’s grasslands may be releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels....

Have you seen reports about massive increases in cybercrime during coronavirus: ransomware up 90 percent, data breaches up 223 percent? Noticed many major accounts getting hacked on Twitter? If so, you might be feeling a sense of déjà vu. If you were on the Internet in 2009, you would have heard that cybercrime had doubled. You would also have heard about the growth of cybercrime and that police departments were staffing up to stop it....

Don’t call them stem cells just yet, but researchers say they have discovered a rare and long-sought class of cell in adult mice that is responsible for patching up an injured pancreas. If equivalent cells were found in the human pancreas, the hope is that they would point the way to therapies for growing new insulin-secreting beta islet cells, which cause diabetes when they break down. “That’s the far away dream, but the data we find in mice gives us the hope this kind of reasoning makes sense,” says biologist Harry Heimberg of Vrije University Brussels in Belgium, who the led the research, published in the journal Cell....

Key concepts Physics Engineering Gravity Mechanical design Introduction Have you ever used a coin-sorting machine to separate pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters? When you need to separate things that are all mixed together, using a machine can be much faster than picking them apart by hand. In this project you will build a machine that can automatically separate two different size marbles—powered by nothing but gravity! Background Sorting machines are used in many different applications, but they all have something in common....

Mallorca, Spain’s largest island, is not just a desirable place for a Mediterranean vacation; it is also a treasure trove of data on the earth’s past. Thanks to the island’s long-term geologic stability, the caves record sea levels over the past tens to hundreds of thousands of years in the form of stone structures. In examining such rock formations, a team of geologists conclude that, compared with today, sea levels were roughly one meter higher 81,000 years ago, when the world was thought to be experiencing an ice age that should have locked up water in glacial ice, which should have lowered sea level as much as 30 meters....

The second-largest radio telescope in the world has suspended operations as powerful Hurricane Irma churns ever closer. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which features a 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) radio dish, is closed for safety reasons until further notice, telescope representatives said via Twitter on Tuesday (Sept. 5). “We will return to our regular operations when weather conditions permit,” the officials added (in Spanish) in another tweet from the @NAICobservatory account....

A fuel-cell power unit that can use natural gas, propane or diesel may in a couple of years provide on-site electricity to factories, computer-server farms and even your home. The solid oxide fuel cell, or SOFC, is also set to go mobile, with new systems providing auxiliary or “hotel” power to long-haul trucks. They may also keep a solar-powered surveillance drone in the sky for what could be years at a time....