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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. This text is part of an article series on the Delian League. The second phase of the Delian League’s operations begins with the Hellenic victory over Mede forces at Eurymedon and ends with the Thirty Years Peace between Athens and Sparta (roughly 465/4 – 445/4 BCE).The Greek triumph at Eurymedon resulted in a cessation of hostilities against the Persians, which lasted almost six years....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Sargon of Akkad (also known as Sargon of Agade and Sargon the Great, reigned 2334 to 2279 BCE), the founder of the Akkadian Empire, was a man keenly aware of his times and the people he would rule over. While he was clearly a brilliant military leader, it was the story he told of his youth and rise to power that exerted a powerful influence over the Sumerians he sought to conquer....

By Gyles Beckford and Lincoln Feast WELLINGTON/SYDNEY, March 16 (Reuters) - The first reports from the outer islands of Vanuatu on Monday painted a picture of utter destruction after a monster cyclone tore through the Pacific island nation. Authorities in the South Pacific nation were struggling to establish contact with the islands that bore the brunt of Cyclone Pam’s winds of more than 300 kph (185 mph), which flattened buildings, smashed boats and washed away roads and bridges as it struck late on Friday and into Saturday....

Editor’s Note: Luc Montagnier shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, awarded on October 6. The new Nobel laureate co-authored this article, originally published in the October 1988 issue of Scientific American. We are making it available here due to its historical significance. As recently as a decade ago it was widely believed that infectious disease was no longer much of a threat in the developed world. The remaining challenges to public health there, it was thought, stemmed from noninfectious conditions such as cancer, heart disease and degenerative diseases....

Virtual-reality headsets are likely to be at the top of many kids’ wish lists this holiday season, but with many VR devices coming with age restrictions, is the technology safe for youngsters? The Oculus Rift and Samsung’s Gear VR headsets are recommended for ages 13+, while Sony’s recommendation for its PlayStation VR is ages 12 and up. HTC’s Vive is not designed for children, according to the company, and HTC said young children shouldn’t be allowed to use the headset at all....

A pioneering astronaut mission is on its way to the International Space Station. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Ax-1, a mission from Houston-based company Axiom Space, today (April 8) at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here on Florida’s Space Coast. None of Ax-1’s four crewmembers are government spaceflyers. It’s the first-ever fully private crewed mission to launch to the orbiting lab. “Together, a new chapter begins,” Axiom Space’s Jon Rackham said during a webcast of the launch today....

In the beloved novel Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White, an old sheep advises the gluttonous rat Templeton that he would live longer if he ate less. “Who wants to live forever?” Templeton sneers. “I get untold satisfaction from the pleasures of the feast.” It is easy to empathize with Templeton, but the sheep’s claim has some merit. Studies have shown that reducing typical calorie consumption, usually by 30 to 40 percent, extends life span by a third or more in many animals, including nematodes, fruit flies and rodents....

Diamond-based quantum devices can now make nuclear magnetic resonance measurements on the molecular scale. Work by two independent groups will make it easier to find out the structure of single biological molecules such as proteins without destroying or freezing them. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and its close cousin magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) give information about a sample’s structure by detecting the weak magnetic forces in certain atomic nuclei, such as hydrogen....

Early drafts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s next report were leaked online yesterday. The report is due to come out in four parts, beginning in September 2013. But draft chapters from the IPCC’s Working Group I, which analyzes the science of climate change, were posted last night at StopGreenSuicide.com, a website created by climate skeptic Alec Rawls. Rawls, who says he dropped out of Stanford University’s doctoral program in economics to pursue interests in “moral theory and constitutional law,” is one of several hundred “expert reviewers” who volunteered to vet the Working Group I draft, part of the U....

Dear EarthTalk: How does congestion toll pricing, used in some cities around the world, cut down on vehicle traffic and promote green-friendly public transit? – Bill Higley, via e-mail Despite increasing green awareness and steadily rising gasoline prices, Americans and other denizens of the developed world—not to mention millions of new Chinese and Indian drivers hitting the road every week—are loath to give up the freedom and privacy of their personal automobiles....

Mice are a mainstay of biomedical research laboratories. But the rodents are poor models for studying women’s reproductive health, because they don’t menstruate. Now researchers at Monash University in Clayton, Australia, say that they have found a rodent that defies this conventional wisdom: the spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus). If the finding holds up, the animal could one day be used to research women’s menstruation-related health conditions. “When you do science you’re not surprised at anything — but wow, this was a really interesting finding,” says Francesco DeMayo, a reproductive biologist at the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, who was not involved in the work....

Key Concepts Physics Sound Perception Vibration Pitch Introduction Making music can be a lot of fun—and it is also a great way to explore the physics of sound. With some string and a friend even an absolute beginner can play a nice tune. This experiment is especially interesting because what is audible to you can barely be heard by anyone else. Background You hear sounds when vibrations get inside your ear and stimulate your nerves to send electrical signals to your brain....

From Nature magazine An extinct primitive marine vertebrate had the sharpest dental structures ever known — with tips just one-twentieth of the width of a human hair, but able to apply pressures that could compete easily with those from human jaws. The razor-sharp teeth belonged to conodonts, jawless vertebrates that evolved some 500 million years ago in the Precambrian eon and went extinct during the Triassic period, around 200 million years ago....

Since North Korea’s foreign minister recently floated the idea that his country might test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean, the North’s leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. Pres. Donald Trump have engaged in an escalating battle of name-calling and threats. As unsettling as the exchange has been, fortunately there has so far been no demonstration of thermonuclear weaponry. Many experts question whether Pyongyang actually has an H-bomb and the capability to accurately deliver it....

In a recent tête-à-tête with my boss, Mariette DiChristina, we mused over what motivates us in life and work. She shared a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one … the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy....

The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It by Kelly McGonigal Avery, 2015 ($26.95) Correlation does not imply causation. This is a fundamental lesson psychology professors like me teach in introductory courses. Violating this principle can lead to serious misconceptions, even dangerous practices. McGonigal, a psychology instructor at Stanford University, probably teaches that principle, but in The Upside of Stress she seems to have ignored it....

Monkeys might not be known for their generosity, but when they do seem to act selflessly, a specific area in their brains keeps track of these kindnesses. The discovery of this neuronal tally chart may help scientists to understand the neural mechanisms underlying normal social behavior in primates and humans, and might even provide insight into disorders such as autism, in which social processing is disrupted. Steve Chang and his colleagues from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, used electrodes to directly record neuronal activity in three areas of the brain prefrontal cortex that are known to be involved in social decision-making, while monkeys performed reward-related tasks....

Various studies have debunked the idea of a pause, or hiatus, in global warming—the contention that global surface temperatures stopped rising during the first decade of this century. The arguments for and against “the pause” were somewhat muted until June 2015, when scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a paper in Science saying that it had slightly revised the sea surface temperatures it had been citing for the 1900s....

Oil is not drilled, refined, shipped or burned equally, and climate assessments should reflect that, experts say. Though tailpipe emissions from a gallon of gasoline remain similar whether the fuel came from shale or a deep-sea reservoir, the paths those hydrocarbons took to the tank have significant carbon footprints of their own. These differences have big policy implications: The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline hinges on the project’s carbon dioxide emissions, from the oil sands where production occurs to the energy needed to push the product more than 2,000 miles to Gulf Coast refineries to the cars and trucks that will eventually burn the oil....

Rather than searching for weird weather or enemy missiles, some satellites are helping researchers to track—and predict—the spread of deadly diseases. With the pandemic spread of H1N1 swine flu and the continued advance of the H5N1 avian flu, scientists are anxious to better predict the spread of infectious diseases and are looking for new tools wherever they might be—even if that’s hundreds of miles in the sky. “Ideally we could predict conditions that would result in some of these major outbreaks of cholera, malaria, even avian flu,” says Tim Ford of the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine....