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The year was A.D. 1000. A crew of Vikings traveled north along Greenland’s western coast in an open, six-oared boat, headed to the edge of the world as they knew it. With little protection from wind and rain and the frigid saltwater spray, it must have been a miserable trip. Drowning and hypothermia would have been constant threats. Yet at the end of their 15-day voyage, described in a historical text, the Vikings would arrive at the beaches of what is now called Disko Bay, where the walruses haul themselves out of the water to mate and rest....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. From medieval witch hunts in Europe to contemporary “witch doctors” in Tanzania, belief in witchcraft has existed across human societies throughout history. Anthropologists have long been fascinated by the phenomenon, but have struggled to study it with quantitative methods—our understanding of how and why it arises is therefore poor. But a study we conducted of one Chinese region provided an opportunity to test the most common hypothesis—that witchcraft accusations act as punishment for those who do not cooperate with local norms....

With a presidential campaign, health care and the gun control debate in the news these days, one can’t help getting sucked into the flame wars that are Internet comment threads. But psychologists say this addictive form of vitriolic back and forth should be avoided — or simply censored by online media outlets — because it actually damages society and mental health. These days, online comments “are extraordinarily aggressive, without resolving anything,” said Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ancient Persian culture exerted a powerful influence throughout the Near East, and beyond, for over a thousand years between c. 550 BCE - 651 CE and many aspects of their culture continued to influence others afterwards and up through the present day. The first Persian polity was the Achaemenid Empire (c....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Madeira is a group of volcanic islands in the North Atlantic which were colonised by the Portuguese from 1420. The settlement and distribution of land rights on the uninhabited islands was a model the Portuguese Crown would copy in other colonial island groups and in Brazil. The Madeira archipelago was a handy stopping-off point for ships that plied the trade routes between Europe and the Americas....

“If we continue a consistent departure from average for the rest of 2014, we will edge out 2010 as the warmest year on record,” said Jake Crouch, a climatologist with NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, during a press briefing Thursday. Specifically, if each of the remaining months of the year ranks among the top five warmest, 2014 will take the top spot, he said. The news may come as a surprise to those living in the eastern portion of the U....

In January 2020, news outlets around the world reported a disease outbreak in China caused by a new pathogen. For a while, the now all-too familiar disease called COVID-19 appeared to be mostly contained in China—at the start of the final week of January, there were 2,700 confirmed cases in the country and only around 40 cases elsewhere. The rest of the world scrolled past the headlines, failing to see what was coming....

The beetle ranch is lovely: slate tile, a Viking range, knotty oak paneling and a wood stove with a preening taxidermy turkey on the wall above it. The porch is lined with rocking chairs that face out to a massive walnut tree and, beyond it, the pastures and thickets of southern Oklahoma’s Lower Canadian Hills. Clover fields glow in the afternoon sun. A phoebe hollers from her nest; a scissortail flits between fence and field....

Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, modernization is the watchword in Russia—with science as a vital means to that end.* During the spring meeting of the 14 international editions of Scientific American, we gathered in Moscow, and our hosts introduced us to many of the surrounding issues. Scientific American has had a long history in this country, where it has been available in translation for 28 years....

The sneezing, watery eyes and runny noses from seasonal allergies are poised to land more people in the emergency room as temperatures rise, researchers have found. In a study published online yesterday in GeoHealth, scientists reported that warmer winters resulting from climate change will lead to more intense pollen from oak trees, spelling more misery for allergy sufferers. “We believe that this is a health risk that has been underappreciated and is likely worsening,” said lead author Susan Anenberg, an environmental scientist at Environmental Health Analytics LLC, a health research and consulting firm....

The U.S. wants back into the manufacturing game, but the industry has had to weigh this desire to create new jobs and stimulate the economy against the reality of competing against lower operating costs elsewhere in the world. Whereas traditional assembly-line work may never return stateside in a big way, manufacturers and government agencies have begun placing bets on additive manufacturing technologies—including 3-D printing—that they believe could represent the industry’s future....

Stimulating the immune system to destroy tumor cells has long been a hope—but judging from past studies, perhaps a dashed one. Clinical trials testing various cancer vaccines have failed miserably; in one, a melanoma vaccine called Canvaxin did not improve the survival of patients, an outcome that ultimately forced the drugmaker to sell itself to another firm. But rather than writing off cancer immunotherapy, some researchers argue that the agents have been examined in the wrong way, resulting in erroneous conclusions....

Healthy red blood cells are shaped a lot like lifesavers, just with more of a dimple than a hole in the middle. But red blood cells that are sick or damaged often change shape, becoming bloated when infected by the parasite that causes malaria, for example. Quickly detecting that irregular shape might one day speed up identification of blood diseases, certain kinds of cancer or even tell blood banks when red blood cells sitting in storage are past their prime—all without breaking the skin or spilling a single drop of blood....

Join us below at 11 A.M. Eastern time on Wednesday, July 4 for a live 30-minute online chat with physicist Michael Tuts of Columbia University, who will discuss an early-morning announcement from CERN, a Switzerland-based lab for particle physics, about the long-running search for the Higgs boson. We invite you to submit questions in advance in the comments section at the bottom of this page. The Higgs particle, first hypothesized in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs and others, would help explain why elementary particles, such as quarks, have mass....

For the romantics among us, physicist Haroldo Ribeiro’s recent work might seem prosaic. He has developed a computer program that deconstructs works of art into sets of numbers. Now Ribeiro has applied his physics-inspired metrics to nearly 140,000 digitized paintings indexed on the visual art encyclopedia WikiArt to look for trends in the evolution of painting styles. The process, described by Ribeiro and his colleagues last September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, involves assessing the complexity and entropy, or disorder, of these digitized artworks....

Ushering in the beginning of a new era in astronomy and physics, scientists on Monday announced they have for the first time detected the spacetime ripples known as gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. Streaming in from the sky over the Indian Ocean on August 17, the waves registered at the twin detecting stations of the U.S.-based Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) as well as a European detector called Virgo located in Italy....

When we engage in intimate social interactions, the “trust hormone” oxytocin likely plays a role—it is vital to building normal relationships. Even a synthetic version has been shown to boost feelings of security. Now increasing evidence suggests that oxytocin could also correct some of the interpersonal deficiencies experienced by those who have autism. In a study published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 13 high-functioning adults with autism played a computerized ball-tossing game with three fictitious characters....

What would happen if some soft tissue cells in your body randomly got the message to transform into stiff bone cells? Patients born with a disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) are locked into this fate, often becoming severely disabled before adulthood. The disease first manifests itself at birth, when a baby appears normal but has bent big toes. By early childhood, however, some of the body’s connective tissues—including muscles, ligaments and tendons—have begun ossifying into skeletal bone, locking the joints and distorting posture and movement....

You have probably heard people say something along the lines of “your brain is like a muscle.” That comparison certainly supports the brain training industry (by that I mean school) and keeps millions of youth around the world sitting at desks, doing math problems, writing essays, and dissecting unsuspecting amphibians - but is it true? Interestingly, the brain-as-a-muscle comparison isn’t all that accurate. If you want to build your glutes, you have to flex your glutes but when it comes to your brain, a more coincidental approach is more accurate....

In the mid-1800s a caterpillar the size of a human finger began spreading across the northeastern U.S. This appearance of the tomato hornworm was followed by terrifying reports of fatal poisonings and aggressive behavior toward people. In July 1869 newspapers across the region posted warnings about the insect, reporting that a girl in Red Creek, N.Y., had been “thrown into spasms, which ended in death” after a run-in with the creature....