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Five hundred million years ago, spineless chordates slunk through Earth’s Cambrian oceans. These unassuming creatures would eventually give rise to more complex vertebrates such as fish, dinosaurs and even us, so they are crucial evidence for scientists trying to trace animal evolution’s early steps. But because these organisms lacked bones or shells, the soft-tissue features that managed to survive the fossilization process have made the specimens look very primitive, possibly excessively so....

Climate action taken by the world today wouldn’t be noticed for decades to come, according to researchers who say warming on Earth won’t start to slow down for at least 20 years. And that’s probably an optimistic scenario. A study published Tuesday in Nature Communications illustrates how the rewards for aggressive action would come much later. If global carbon dioxide emissions began falling tomorrow by at least 5% every year, the rate at which the Earth is warming wouldn’t begin to change —at least in a detectable way —until after the year 2040 or so....

Astronomers peering across the universe think they’ve caught a dozen quasars—extremely bright and distant objects powered by ravenous supermassive black holes at the centers of ancient galaxies—in a disappearing act. Or at least transitioning into their quiescent and dimmer counterparts: galaxies with starving black holes at their cores. The surprising find has astronomers asking whether these objects are shutting down permanently or simply flickering out for the time being. Last year Stephanie LaMassa from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (then at Yale University) discovered the greatest change in luminosity ever detected in a quasar....

In early summer 2008 Timothy Walsh of Cardiff University in Wales got an e-mail from Christian Giske, an acquaintance who is a physician on the faculty of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. Giske had been treating a 59-year-old man hospitalized that past January in Örebro, a small city about 100 miles from Stockholm. The man had lived with diabetes for many years, suffered several strokes and had lately developed deep bedsores. But those were not the subject of Giske’s message....

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence stands out in the quest to find life elsewhere because it assumes that certain kinds of life will manipulate and exploit its environment with intention. And that intention may go far beyond just supporting essential survival and function. By contrast, the general search for other living systems, or biosignatures, really is all about eating, reproducing and, not to put too fine a point on it, making waste....

President Obama opened high-level U.S.-China meetings in Washington today by underscoring the need for enhanced cooperation between the countries – the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters – on low-carbon energy sources. “Let’s be frank: Neither of us profits from a growing dependence on foreign oil, nor can we spare our people from the ravages of climate change unless we cooperate,” Obama said. “Common sense calls upon us to act in concert....

The Ursid meteor shower peaks tonight, and it should be a great show. When skywatchers think of meteor showers during the month of December, the Geminid shower (which peaked earlier this month) usually comes to mind. But the Ursid meteor shower—peaking tonight and into the wee hours of Tuesday (Dec. 23) morning—should also offer skywatchers a good view this year. Even if you can’t see tonight’s meteor shower due to light pollution or bad weather, you can still catch the Ursids online thanks to the Slooh Community Observatory....

Thanks to many ad campaigns over the years, most people know that their notebook PCs are powered by processors from Intel (or its chief rival, AMD). Those companies use a chip architecture known as x86, named for the the last two digits of the Intel chip model number in the first IBM PC. But while Intel may be the best-known PC chip company, designs from ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) serve as the basic architecture behind chips from Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia that power almost every smartphone on the market....

A fish out of water is not usually a graceful or impressive sight, unless that fish is flying—or hovering inside a laboratory wind tunnel. The members of the flying fish family soar above the waves on unusually large pectoral and pelvic fins, which act as wings. Although scientists have studied the anatomy and behavior of these peculiar finned gliders, understanding flying fish aerodynamics has never been more than educated guesswork: Researchers have approximated the physics based on known aerodynamics of other gliding animals with similarly shaped wings....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Religion in ancient Egypt was fully integrated into the people’s daily lives. The gods were present at one’s birth, throughout one’s life, in the transition from earthly life to the eternal, and continued their care for the soul in the afterlife of the Field of Reeds. The spiritual world was ever present in the physical world and this understanding was symbolized through images in art, architecture, in amulets, statuary, and the objects used by nobility and clergy in the performance of their duties....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The bow was the most common weapon in ancient Chinese warfare and the skill of using it was the most esteemed martial art for millennia. Archers were used as infantry, chariot riders, and cavalry over the centuries, and while the weapon’s importance was challenged by the crossbow and sword, it remained a vital component of a commander’s battlefield strategy, especially in the opening moves, retreat, and in the defence of cities....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The legacy of the ancient Romans – from both the time of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) and the time of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE) – exerted a significant influence on succeeding cultures and is still felt around the world in the present day....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. There were over 200 gods and goddesses worshipped throughout ancient China, but if one were to count every deity or spirit, the number would be over 1,000. Each town, village, city, field, farm, and sometimes even separate plot in a graveyard, had its own Tudi Gong, an elemental earth spirit, who was recognized and honored....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Hunter-gatherer societies are – true to their astoundingly descriptive name – cultures in which human beings obtain their food by hunting, fishing, scavenging, and gathering wild plants and other edibles. Although there are still groups of hunter-gatherers in our modern world, we will here focus on the prehistoric societies that relied on the bounty of nature, before the transition to agriculture began around 12,000 years ago....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The sunbaked plain of the Alentejo region in central Portugal is called planicie dourada (golden plain) by the Portuguese, and it is dotted with cork oak forests, vineyards, olive groves, and hilltop towns with whitewashed houses. ‘Alentejo’ means “beyond the Tagus River”, and there is a raw beauty to this agricultural region that is particularly evident at sunset when the light is pale gold....

Massive dinosaurs and pterosaurs have a newfound cousin: a palm-size pipsqueak of a reptile, a new fossil reveals. Even the name of the newly described reptile—Kongonaphon kely, or “tiny bug slayer” in Malagasy and Greek—is an homage to its diminutive size, as well as its likely diet of hard-shelled insects, the researchers said. This tiny beast reveals that the dinosaurs and pterosaurs—which reached the sizes of school buses and airplanes, respectively—originated from teensy creatures, the researchers wrote in the study....

In the September issue of Scientific American, Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser describes how education and entrepreneurship can make or break cities. In a series of case studies around the Web, Glaeser has explored how those factors and others have allowed some U.S. cities to thrive as others continue to struggle. Below are links to his writings, plus related articles, on five American metropolises. DETROIT Detroit’s mayor David Bing has adopted a promising strategy to save his city: shrink it to a sustainable size....

Apparently they would, to the tune of millions of copies sold, elevating the book to the New York Times best-seller list. If readers had purchased Trudeau’s Mega Memory, perhaps they would have remembered that he spent almost two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to credit-card fraud and that the Federal Trade Commission banned Trudeau “from appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public, except for truthful infomercials for informational publications....

MINNEAPOLIS — Less than two months after Hurricane Irene barreled up the eastern coastline of the United States, a group of scientists from some of the areas hardest hit presented evidence of the storm’s dramatic geological effects on their home states. Researchers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Vermont took to the podium at a meeting of the Geological Society of America, to discuss what they’ve learned since the massive storm swept across the Northeast....

Apart from some rear-guard behaviorists, few people hesitate to ascribe empathy to their dogs. But then dogs are mans best friend, freely credited with lots of human sentiments. For as much as we empathize with our canines, we have been stingy about recognizing empathy elsewhere in the animal kingdom, reserving it as a human trait. This belief is changing, however, as a growing line of research demonstrates not just empathys existence in other animals but its subtleties and exceptions as well....