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Scientists have discovered the coldest type of star-like bodies known, which at times can be cooler than the human body. Astronomers had unsuccessfully pursued these dark entities, called Y dwarfs, ever since their existence was theorized more than a decade ago. They are nearly impossible to see relying on visible light, but with the infrared vision of NASA’s WISE space telescope, researchers finally detected the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years....

Roughly 12,900 years ago a global-cooling anomaly contributed to the extinction of 35 mammal species, including the mammoth. In some areas, average temperatures may have dropped as much as 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit). New evidence, in the form of diamonds several nanometers wide, supports a theory proposed last year that a comet collision or a similar explosive event threw up debris and caused the cooling. Nanodiamonds occur only in sediment exposed to high temperatures and pressures, such as that produced by a cometary impact....

Man’s closest relatives cannot be taught to speak, but chimpanzees (and other apes) can be taught to sign. Like their ape relatives, human babies find it difficult to say what they want, but they can sign for it. And although capuchin monkeys will beg for food with a gesture, no animal other than apes has been shown to regularly rely on gesticulation for communication. Now new research from the Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center reveals the hidden complexity of ape gestures and argues that it may provide the symbolic basis for human language....

After the death of his long-time companion, Maxwell fell into a dark place. He no longer seem to take joy in life, refused to eat much, and lost a dangerous amount of weight—so much that his liver faltered. Following a stay in intensive care to stabilize him, Max was given antidepressants and this, combined with changes in the home environment, eventually drew him out of his deep depression. Max is a cat....

BE MINDFUL OF HYPNOSIS As the author of the book Mindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience (W. W. Norton, 2011), I suggest there is much to be gained by studying the relation between clinical hypnosis and mindfulness, which Amishi P. Jha wrote about in “Being in the Now.” Just as people experience perceptual shifts, sensory shifts, physiological alterations, cognitive changes, and more during mindful experiences, so do they in response to suggestions given in any similarly focused and responsive state, such as during hypnosis....

There is no longer any doubt: the world is getting warmer, and humans are partially to blame. Unless we make significant changes at both the individual and societal level in the coming years, the consequences could be catastrophic. However, such changes are inherently difficult to enact because they cut directly against human nature. Humans are naturally prone to making short-term decisions (for instance, taking the plane rather than the train) as opposed to pursuing longer-term collective interests....

Researchers working in Brazil have discovered a new species of forcepfly with enormous genital pincers (right), bringing the total number of known species in this family to three. And in Costa Rica a new fairyfly has been found: at 250 microns long, it is invisible to the naked eye and one of the smallest insects in the world. Entomologist Renato Machado of Texas A&M University and his colleagues described the new forcepfly, a pale, golden-colored insect, in February in the journal ZooKeys....

By Eugenie Samuel ReichThey are more than a 100 times the mass of the Sun, glow more than 10 million times as brightly, and, over the course of their lives, spew out more than half their mass in the form of a relentless stellar wind. Yet the origin of the young massive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy has been a mystery for astronomers for decades.Vasilii Gvaramadze, an astronomer at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute at Moscow State University, and his colleagues have now located the birthplace of one of the group, and have shown that it is a “runaway star,” bolting across the LMC at more than 130 kilometers per second after being ejected from its home cluster....

A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the Bab el Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. If this ambitious project is ever realized, the throngs of African pilgrims who traverse one of the longest bridges in the world on a journey to Mecca would pass hundreds of feet above the probable route of the most memorable journey in human history....

The private sector is returning to the risky world of insuring homes against flood damage, offering hope that the paltry percentage of homeowners with flood insurance will rise out of the single digits. The growth is being triggered by federal policies, new technology that lets insurance companies assess a property‘s flood risk and investors who have poured huge amounts of cash into insurance companies, prompting their expansion into new markets. The National Flood Insurance Program continues to dominate the market, though....

William C. Valine, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona, explains. Ever since Benjamin Franklin’s time lightning has been understood to be a large electrical discharge similar to that seen when a conductive object (like a metal doorknob) is touched after a static electric charge is picked up (by feet scuffing across carpet, for example). But whereas the spark from static electricity measures a centimeter or less in length, a lightning channel can span five kilometers or more....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Jade Museum (Spanish: Museo del Jade y de la Cultura Precolombina) in San José, Costa Rica houses the world’s largest collection of ancient jade from the Americas. With nearly 7,000 pieces in its collection, the artifacts at the Museum of Jade reflect the creativity and beliefs of Costa Rica’s indigenous peoples, as well as their rich economic and cultural exchanges with the civilizations of Mesoamerica....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The weapons of an English medieval knight in combat included the long sword, wooden lance with an iron tip, metal-headed mace, battle-axe, and dagger. Trained since childhood and practised at tournaments, the skilled knight could inflict fatal injuries on even an armoured opponent. The sword, symbol of the chivalric code and his noble status, was above all the knight’s most important weapon....

I am not the first to say it, but it’s worth repeating—we are living in a movement-drought. Even us regular gym-goers, pool-dwellers, and trail-runners are essentially sedentary when compared to the amount and diversity of movement our much healthier ancestors engaged in on a daily basis. And I’m not even talking about some paleolithic, spear-wielding, cartoon caveman. We only have to go back three or four generations to see how much more movement was required and expected in day-to-day life....

NEW YORK – Even by this city’s standards, the Garment District is an imposing place to ride a bike. A never-ending parade of delivery trucks rumbles along 8th Avenue between 34th and 42nd streets, leaving a wake of gritty exhaust for cyclists to feel, smell and breathe. After riding in the Garment District, Robert “Rocket” Ruiz, a 13-year veteran of the bike messenger business, would often look into the bathroom mirror and see his face covered in grime....

In the summer and fall of 2011, a green tide of blue-green algae enshrouded 230 square miles of Lake Erie’s western basin. This algae “bloom” poisoned the water with toxins, suffocating the aquatic life of oxygen, burdening the city of Toledo, Ohio’s water treatment plant and threatening a $11.5 billion tourism industry in Ohio. This algal bloom broke the record for Lake Erie, in terms of both size and concentration. And with climate change, these blooms could become a regular occurrence in the next century, says a team of scientists in a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

If the countries of the world reduced their greenhouse gas emissions today enough to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius, when would they be able to tell that these efforts had succeeded? That’s the basic question posed in a paper released yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The answer: about 25 to 30 years, at least where global temperatures are concerned. On a regional level, it may take even longer to see the changes, the paper states....

We have not been seeing cells as they really are, says Rick Horwitz, and it is time for that to change. Traditional laboratories focus on one or two aspects of cells, and not on the way the hundreds of different pieces of molecular machinery within the cell affect one another. To improve that perspective, Horwitz is leaving his cell biology lab at the University of Virginia to become the inaugural director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle....

When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be?...

At a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association last week, Yale University child psychologist Fred Volkmar gave a presentation on how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is changing the definition of autism. In his talk, Volkmar came to a startling conclusion: more than half of the people who meet the existing criteria for autism would not meet the APA’s new definition of autism and, therefore, may not receive state educational and medical services....