Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Gilgamesh and Huwawa is a Sumerian poem relating the expedition of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the Cedar Forest and the slaying of the monster-demon Huwawa. The work predates and informs The Epic of Gilgamesh in which the death of the monster leads to Enkidu’s own as his actions are condemned by the gods....
Unmarked Russian soldiers who seized Ukraine’s Crimea region earlier this year gave every appearance of military professionals well equipped with modern body armor and weapons. Russian troops, tanks and fighter jets have massed on the Ukrainian border as if ready to storm in at a moment’s notice. But despite the flexing of military muscle, Russia most likely prefers to follow the path laid out by Chinese warrior–philosopher Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting....
French researchers have incorporated molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs)—dubbed “plastic antibodies”—into a cosmetic product to capture precursor chemicals in human sweat that cause bad smells. It’s the first time that MIPs have been added to a cosmetic formulation and could lead to better deodorants. The culprits behind body odors are certain skin bacteria. These transform some of the secreted, odourless chemicals of sweat into molecules that smell. Deodorants usually work by killing these bacteria with bactericides, including triclosan and chlorhexidine....
Asteroids are the oldest, most pristine samples of our early solar system and hold clues about how the current lineup of planets formed from what was once a giant cloud of gas and dust. This plot of roughly 45,000 asteroids that orbit between Mars and Jupiter reveals “families” of asteroids that share characteristics such as chemical composition (colors), orbit size (horizontal axis) and orbit tilt (vertical axis). Rocks with the same chemical composition tend to have similar orbital characteristics, which suggests a common origin—most likely a single larger body....
SILVER SPRING, Md. — By 10:30 a.m., a panel of the Food and Drug Administration’s top regulators had already heard from more than 50 different people, all eager to squeeze their hopes or concerns about CBD, the booming marijuana-adjacent compound companies are suddenly adding to everything from dog food to dietary supplements, into the short speaking time they were granted. There were mothers claiming marijuana drove their children to suicide, millennial entrepreneurs who struggled for a good answer when regulators asked what effect CBD has in cosmetics, and high-paid industry lawyers pitching well-vetted regulatory frameworks....
The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. About 30 percent of the U.S. now has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, I’ve read in various places. So, questions about the experience of getting vaccinated are circulating widely (and this is now a common conversation topic, according to Ian Bogost’s 3/29/21 piece for The Atlantic)....
By Philip BallThe first microscopes were a lot better than they are usually given credit for. That’s the claim of microscopist Brian Ford, a specialist in the history and development of these instruments based at the University of Cambridge, UK.Ford says it is often suggested that the microscopes used by seventeenth-century pioneers such as Robert Hooke and Antony van Leeuwenhoek gave a blurry view of biological structures such as cells and microorganisms....
Only two kinds of egg-laying mammals are left on the planet today—the duck-billed platypus and the echidna, or spiny anteater. These odd “monotremes” once dominated Australia, until their pouch-bearing cousins, the marsupials, invaded the land down under 71 million to 54 million years ago and swept them away. New research suggests these two kinds of creatures managed to survive because their ancestors took to the water. Before making their way to Australia, the marsupials had migrated from Asia to the Americas to Antarctica....
Introduction Have you ever driven up a mountain, seen a sign reading “Hazard! Icy Roads Ahead,” and wondered why ice makes roads dangerous to drive on? The answer has to do with friction—specifically, the lack of it. Specifically, in the case of driving a car down the road, the friction that allows the car to move occurs between the tires and the road. This friction normally allows the car to “grip” the road—keeping the tires in contact with the relatively rough road surface, and the driver of the car in control....
The scientific community is increasingly coming to realize how central self-control is to many important life outcomes. We have always known about the impact of socioeconomic status and IQ, but these are factors that are highly resistant to interventions. In contrast, self-control may be something that we can tap into to make sweeping improvements life outcomes. If you think about the environment we live in, you will notice how it is essentially designed to challenge every grain of our self-control....
Mice, and most likely humans, have the ability to taste calcium—and most do not like it, according to new research presented today at the American Chemical Society’s semiannual national meeting, held this week in Philadelphia. Scientists say the findings could explain why, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 80 percent of Americans do not get enough calcium when it is so important for our health. Michael Tordoff, a biologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, suspected that calcium’s unpleasant flavor—imagine the bitter taste of chalk, which is mostly calcium—makes people avoid calcium-rich foods like spinach, brussel sprouts and collard greens....
HER FINALIST YEAR: 1958 HER FINALIST PROJECT: Figuring out the concentrations of different gases in the atmosphere WHAT LED TO THE PROJECT: When she was growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, Lise Menn’s parents always wanted her to be a scientist. “Physics was the glamour science right after World War II,” she says. Because they lived very close to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, her mother (who “had ambitions to be a chemist, but that didn’t happen”) took her to public nights at the observatory....
Whether they know it or not, the National Football League faithful who root for their teams every weekend have also become big fans of “augmented reality”. If you’re not sure what this is, take a look at your television on Sunday afternoon and notice the yellow “first down” stripe running the width of the field (as well as a blue one that delineates the line of scrimmage). That’s augmented reality—technology that merges computer-generated images with real-world sights and sounds....
If the measure of President Obama’s proposed power plant regulations is their impact on climate change, they would be doomed to failure, according to climate scientists. Under the U.S. EPA proposal, carbon emissions from the power generation sector would fall by 30 percent below 2005 levels. The reductions would be split among the states, with each state assigned a distinct target by EPA. The power sector contributes 40 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of the United States, and coal-fired power plants are the sector’s biggest emitters....
Boys exposed in the womb to high levels of a chemical found in vinyl products are born with slightly altered genital development, according to research published today. The study of nearly 200 Swedish babies is the first to link the chemical di-isononyl phthalate (DiNP) to changes in the development of the human male reproductive tract. Previous studies of baby boys in three countries found that a similar plastics chemical, DEHP, was associated with the same type of changes in their genitalia....
You might be forgiven for having never heard of the NotPetya cyberattack. It didn’t clear out your bank account, or share your social media passwords, or influence an election. But it was one of the most costly and damaging cyberattacks in history, for what it did target: shipping through ports. By the time the engineers at Maersk realized that their computers were infected with a virus, it was too late: worldwide shipping would grind to a halt for days....
Key concepts The environment Engineering Oil Absorption Introduction Have you ever seen news coverage or other pictures of an oil spill in the ocean? Oil spills can devastate wildlife and damage our precious water resources. So it is important to try to clean spilled oil (which can come from shipping tankers or offshore oil drilling rigs) quickly and thoroughly. But cleaning spills can be challenging. And scientists are often looking for new and different substances to help them....
The Mediterranean region is a fine laboratory for the scientific study of early religions because so many emerged there. Everyone has heard of the mythology of Greece and the cults surrounding the Roman emperors. Yet those were the religions of city-states not far removed from our own modern societies. Far less well known are the religions of the agricultural communities that preceded the advance of Greco-Roman civilization. In several of the latter, images of corpulent human figures played an important role....
The first signs of itchy eyes or a runny nose can send allergy sufferers running to the drugstore for over-the-counter relief. Yet these medicines only alleviate allergy symptoms and do nothing to address the root cause: our immune system’ overreaction to harmless substances. The sole cure is a series of injections that desensitize the body with small doses of allergens over months or years. But many patients avoid these shots because of possible severe side effects—including anaphylaxis....
Above the surface of the sun, plasma roiling in the star’s atmosphere does something that so far defies explanation, and seems to defy physics: It gets hotter as it moves farther out. In the corona, the expansive outer layer of the solar atmosphere that extends millions of kilometers from the sun’s surface, temperatures reach millions of kelvins. The surface, by contrast, is a tepid 6,000 K (around 5,700 degrees Celsius). Although astronomers have developed a few possible explanations in recent years, no one can say precisely how or why the corona gets so hot....
