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The findings, detailed today (September 9) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are correlational, so they can’t say exactly why the trend exists but only that there is a link. But men who produce more sperm have bigger testes, and sperm production is extremely energy intensive for the body, so it may be that fathers “face a trade-off between investing energy in parenting and investing energy in mating effort,” said study co-author James Rilling, an anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta....

Editor’s Note: We are posting this feature from our March 2002 issue because of news from the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society about the phenomenon discussed here. We live in a universe that is full of bright objects. On a clear night one can see thousands of stars with the naked eye. These stars occupy merely a small nearby part of the Milky Way galaxy; telescopes reveal a much vaster realm that shines with the light from billions of galaxies....

In the so-called golden age of piracy, spanning the late 17th and early 18th centuries, pirate captains such as Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts roamed the seas in search of plunder. Their fearsome exploits became the stuff of lore, inspiring countless films, books, amusement-park rides and, ahem, more films. But those same exploits also fed a reputation that facilitated their activities—a sort of brand name that was widely known and was instantly recognizable by its logo, the Jolly Roger (a black flag with a skull and crossbones)....

If all goes as planned, sometime in the next decade an American robotic lander will arrive at a burgeoning moon base toting a small nuclear reactor. Inside the reactor a boron control rod will slide into a pile of uranium and start a nuclear chain reaction, splitting uranium atoms apart and releasing heat. Next that warmth will be piped to a generator. Then the lights will come on—and stay on, even through long, cold lunar nights....

The Nexus franchise is finally getting a little respect. Google on Thursday pulled the wraps off its latest marquee smartphone, the Nexus 5, which comes loaded with high-end specifications and Android 4.4, or KitKat. But perhaps just as important is the confirmation that the phone will be broadly available in carrier stores across the nation. That’s right, the Nexus 5 will be sold through Sprint and T-Mobile, with only Verizon Wireless opting out of carrying the device....

Shortly after moving to Canada’s Okanagan Valley, Patricia Lee started experiencing severe irregularities in her menstrual cycle. She had one period that lasted two and a half months. The bleeding was so intense that at one point, doctors recommended a blood transfusion. “I couldn’t sleep – it was excruciatingly painful and I grew quite weak,” said Lee, now 47. Her diagnosis: a fibroid, or benign tumor, the size of a ping-pong ball in her uterus, and two cysts in her ovaries....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Traditional Lebanese handicrafts are considered to be a major sector of the living cultural heritage in the rural areas of Lebanon. Transmitted from one generation to another, traditional rural Lebanese handicrafts have been able to persist from the Phoenician and Roman periods until the present day. Rural regions have particular focus when talking about traditional handicrafts because of their rich tangible and intangible cultural heritage....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Musketeers played a vital role in the battles and sieges of the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). As the war dragged on, weapons became lighter and more accurate, and the musketeers became more capable of effective battlefield manoeuvres. Volley-fire, where alternate ranks of musketeers provided a continuous barrage of lead bullets, could be extremely effective, and the success of the musket brought about the decline of other types of weapons as warfare, now dominated by gunpowder, became much louder and deadlier than ever before....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The buccaneers who roamed the Spanish Main and the pirates who plundered the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) needed a place of refuge where they could share out and enjoy their loot. Pirate havens like Port Royal on Jamaica, Tortuga on Hispaniola, and New Providence in the Bahamas provided safe harbours, the possibility to sell looted cargo to crooked traders, and were within easy reach of the main shipping routes....

In 2019 Harish Natarajan took part in a debate with a five-and-a-half-foot tall rectangular computer screen in front of a live audience of about 800 people. The computer was Project Debater, an artificial intelligence system designed by IBM. Natarajan is a globally recognized debate champion. And the topic at hand was whether or not preschool should be subsidized. Based on an audience vote, Project Debater lost the contest. But the “it” present held its own, forming logical opening statements....

A new photo of the red “supergiant"Antares is the best ever captured of a star other than the sun, researchers said. The image shows Antares’ tumultuous surface and reveals unexpected turbulence in its atmosphere, hinting at some mysterious process that is churning away violently inside the stellar mass, the scientists added. Located nearly 620 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpio, Antares is a puffy stellar monster, with a mass and diameter 12 times and 700 times that of our sun, respectively....

By Quirin SchiermeierIn the highly politicized world of climate science, public relations can win or lose battles that shape the Earth’s future.The past year has made that abundantly clear to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body charged with assessing the latest climate science, which has been beleaguered by critics of its methods and conclusions.Now, the IPCC is looking for its very first Communications and Media Relations Programme Manager to help it avoid the pitfalls of the internet media age....

Australia experienced the worst and most consistent dry period in its recorded history over much of the past decade. The Murray River failed to reach the sea for the first time ever in 2002. Fires swept much of the country, and dust storms blanketed major cities for days. Australia’s sheep population dropped by 50 percent, and rice and cotton production collapsed in some years. Tens of thousands of farm families gave up their livelihoods....

By Marian TurnerAttaching chemotherapy drugs to small particles called nanodiamonds can make the drugs more effective, according to a study published this week in Science Translational Medicine.Anticancer drugs tend to become ineffective because cancer cells quickly pump them out before they have had time to do their work. This kind of drug resistance accounts for 90% of treatment failure in malignant cancer.Nanodiamonds – carbon-based particles 2-8 nanometres in diameter with a truncated octahedral structure that gives it multiple facets not unlike a diamond’s – overcome this problem because the cellular transport proteins that usually pump the drug out of the cell can’t carry them....

It’s been 25 years since the nations of the world formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the state of climate science. And, like many 25-year-olds, the panel is now facing questions of its identity and its future. Some are calling for the panel to change its scope, moving from the “mega-reports” released every six years to more targeted reports, such as the 2012 special report the panel released on extreme weather events....

Hidden from sight, ball bearings are key to almost all devices that spin or roll: power plant turbines, steering columns, wheels, skateboards, yo-yos, dentist drills, and the electric motors in everything from refrigerators and can openers to computer hard drives and CD players. In each case, the balls allow efficient, low-friction movement of rotating parts. Each sphere must be perfect, or the motion it facilitates will come to a grinding halt....

Dear EarthTalk: Where can I locate directories of environmental groups, businesses and jobs so that I can get involved in making a difference? – Jeanette, Carle Place, NY The most comprehensive directory of environmental groups—from small to large and local to international—is provided for free online by the Washington, DC-based National Wildlife Federation. The group’s Conservation Directory (www.nwf.org/conservationDirectory) features listings for some 4,200 groups, including conservation-oriented non-profits, commercial businesses, government entities, colleges and universities, zoos, aquariums, museums, grant-giving organizations, and related coalitions....

When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant began spewing radioactive particles after it was clobbered by a tsunami in March 2011Kaori Sakuma fled. She bundled her infant and toddler into a car and left her husband and family in Koriyama, 44 miles west of the ruptured facility. “The truth is, I ran away,” she says. Confronting gas shortages and snarled roads, she transported her children 560 miles away to Hokkaido, about as far as she could get....

The white haze that hangs over many major cities could become a familiar sight everywhere if the world decides to try geoengineering to create a cooler planet. Scientists have long suspected that one oft-discussed geoengineering technique – shooting tiny sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to deflect sunlight – could turn the blue sky white. Nature has already provided a basic proof of concept. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, spewing tons of sulfate particles in the atmosphere, it temporarily whitened the sky....

By Christopher Pala A bold move by eight Pacific island nations to preserve the world’s last large stocks of tuna is expected to face strong resistance this week at a meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) near Honolulu, Hawaii.By leveraging agreements with foreign fishermen in their own territorial waters, the islands have banned fleets that fish with purse-seine nets–mechanized nets that can capture entire schools of tuna in a single haul–from operating in a region of international waters roughly the size of India....