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Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The genesis of Maya civilization in Mesoamerica was marked by an effervescence in the arts, the beginnings of their written language with glyphs, and a great attention to detail in the sphere of urban planning. Yet, despite these tremendous accomplishments, the Preclassic Maya (c. 1000 BCE - 250 CE) remain obscure and distant to many....

Early in the New Year, if all goes well, the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 will arrive where no craft has been before: the far side of the Moon. The mission is scheduled to launch from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province on December 8. The craft, comprising a lander and a rover, will then enter the Moon’s orbit, before touching down on the surface. If the landing is successful, the mission’s main job will be to investigate this side of the lunar surface, which is peppered with many small craters....

A pair of new long-term studies tracking the orbits of stars at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy further refine the evidence that a supermassive black hole lurks there. The two teams of researchers used data going back to 1992 and were even able to track a full revolution of one star, known as S2, around the theorized black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, some four million times the mass of the sun....

One of the most vexing problems in space research is that so little has changed in 50 years about the way we get to space. Consequently, space access remains both expensive and rare. It has still not reached the stage where scientists can themselves routinely travel there to conduct research, unlike oceanographers, who routinely reach the deep ocean, or geophysicists, who venture to the poles. All this is poised to change....

Reprinted with permission from SFARI.org, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation. Common gene variants that have minor effects may contribute about half the risk of developing autism, according to a study published July 20 in Nature Genetics. Identifying these variants would require tens of thousands of samples. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Much of autism research so far has focused on rare, de novo mutations, which appear spontaneously in individuals with autism....

More than a century ago, a French neurologist suggested that a specific region of the brain processes the visual images of words. Without it, he postulated, people cannot read except by laboriously recognizing letter after letter, rather than whole words. Yet humans have only been able to read for several thousand years–perhaps not enough time for such a trait to evolve, some scientists have argued. New research, however, supports the idea that reading does rely on a localized set of neurons....

An architectural marvel when it opened 11 years ago, the new Denver International Airport’s high-tech jewel was to be its automated baggage handler. It would autonomously route luggage around 26 miles of conveyors for rapid, seamless delivery to planes and passengers. But software problems dogged the system, delaying the airport’s opening by 16 months and adding hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns. Despite years of tweaking, it never ran reliably....

As if burning oil and all of its derivatives wasn’t bad enough for the environment, there’s also the natural gas that bubbles up as the oil is pumped out. This byproduct cannot be easily harvested in many cases—some oil fields are far from pipelines that can transport it and other options are very expensive. As a result, oil companies either release it into the atmosphere—a process known as venting—or burn it in a flare....

The shift to a cooked-food diet was a decisive point in human history. The main topic of debate is when, exactly, this change occurred. All known human societies eat cooked foods, and biologists generally agree cooking could have had major effects on how the human body evolved. For example, cooked foods tend to be softer than raw ones, so humans can eat them with smaller teeth and weaker jaws. Cooking also increases the energy they can get from the food they eat....

Dear EarthTalk: My wife and I drive more than 20,000 miles a year in our recreational vehicle (RV) which gets about seven miles to the gallon, but high fuel prices are eating into our nest egg. Are there more fuel efficient ways to enjoy the RV lifestyle? – Walter Hendricks, Tampa, Florida Major RV manufacturers all report a downturn in sales since the price of fuel started to skyrocket a few years ago....

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Many people with hepatitis C end up not receiving adequate treatment, because they lose their way through the medical system during the early stages of their care, researchers say. In Philadelphia, only about 2 percent of patients thought to be infected with the hepatitis C virus end up receiving treatment, health department officials there estimated. “It’s a serious problem,” said the study’s lead author Kendra Viner....

For the 35 percent of American adults who do daily battle with obesity, the main causes of their condition are all too familiar: an unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle and perhaps some unlucky genes. In recent years, however, researchers have become increasingly convinced that important hidden players literally lurk in human bowels: billions on billions of gut microbes. Throughout our evolutionary history, the microscopic denizens of our intestines have helped us break down tough plant fibers in exchange for the privilege of living in such a nutritious broth....

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. When ducklings head out to bathe in a pool, they usually follow the same individual, new research has found. But do they visit the pool that’s best for everyone, or just the one their chief prefers? This puzzle has made it hard for farmers to know how to provide for all their ducks equally, and for biologists to know what social animals really want....

Key concepts Ratios Mathematics Biology Human body Introduction Our bodies are amazing! They are full of mysteries and surprising facts such as this one: Did you know that you are about a centimeter taller in the morning, when you have just woken up after hours of lying down, than you are in the evening? You might never have noticed it. These interesting facts only reveal themselves when you look closely, measure and compare....

Earth’s orbit within the sun’s habitable zone means its temperatures are just right for life. But icy worlds located within their star’s habitable zone may abruptly skip from too cold to too hot without going through a habitable stage, a new study finds. The finding suggests that there may be fewer potentially habitable worlds than scientists previously thought, the researchers said. Whereas Venus seems too hot for life and Mars seems too cold, Earth lies between Venus and Mars, where temperatures have the potential to be just right for its surface to possess liquid water....

Coffee flour isn’t really a flour. And although it is from the coffee plant, it doesn’t taste or smell anything like the roasted coffee beans we know and love. Coffee beans are actually seeds and, like many seeds, they grow inside a fruit. The fruit that surrounds a coffee bean is called a coffee cherry. After harvesting the coffee beans, the coffee cherry has traditionally been discarded. Billions of pounds of coffee fruit was simply discarded every year....

Are you likelier to buy an expensive diet pill when you hear it has helped 40 percent of people or failed to help 60 percent? That’s easy. People are much more likely to go with a choice framed positively, even when the odds are 50–50. New research shows that our ape cousins share these tendencies, suggesting the response is rooted in our biology rather than in how we are socialized in our culture and economy....

Introduction The emergence of 17-year cicadas in the summer of 2021 revived interest in a paper Janet Barber co-authored about the role of Benjamin Banneker—a free African-American in 18th-century Maryland—as one of the first naturalists to record scientific information and observations of the insects. Now, like Banneker himself, those cicadas are gone. Their offspring, however, are nestled underground, sipping from tree roots as they’ll do until 2038, when they emerge to repeat their species’ astounding display....

Public Health Influenza September 18, 2019 — Herb Brody Medicine Toward a Universal Flu Vaccine A better understanding of the immune response to influenza is driving progress toward vaccines that protect against both seasonal and pandemic flu strains September 18, 2019 — Michael Eisenstein Public Health Q&A: Keeping Antivirals Viable Like all microorganisms, viruses can develop resistance to the drugs meant to treat them and not only in clinical situations. The rise of environmental resistance to antiviral drugs is a potential disaster we can avert, argues Josef Järhult of Uppsala University in Sweden, especially when it comes to influenza A, the virus that can lead to a human flu pandemic…...

By Nina ChestneyWARSAW (Reuters) - Nitrous oxide (N20) emissions could almost double by 2050 if more aggressive action is not taken, undermining global efforts to curb climate change, the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Thursday.Commonly known as the “laughing gas”, nitrous oxide exists naturally in the atmosphere in trace amounts.However, it is the third most potent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane due to human activities such as agriculture, fossil fuel combustion, waste water management and industrial processes....