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Barack Obama used his presidential powers to make changes that affect science. Once Donald Trump is inaugurated as president on 20 January, he will be able to do the same. These charts illustrate the government that Trump inherits as it relates to science and research, and explore how the new president might seek to take things in a different direction. Appointing leaders and freezing new hires As does every new president, Trump gets to fill out the ranks of federal science agencies with political appointees, from the agency chiefs who require Senate confirmation to lower-level bureaucrats....

By cooking up a faux comet, scientists have produced the first formation of a key sugar required for life as we know it. By creating ices similar to those detected by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, which made the first landing on a comet, scientists were able to produce ribose, a sugar that serves as an important ingredient in RNA, an essential ingredient for life. “There is evidence for an ‘RNA world’ — an episode of life on Earth during which RNA was the only genetic material,” Cornelia Meinert, an associate scientist at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis, told Space....

With just nine months to go until Election Day, electronic voting machines remain as iffy and controversial as ever. The new technology was once widely viewed as an improvement over the antiquated paper ballots used in some states during the highly contentious 2000 presidential race that ushered George W. Bush into the White House (think: hanging chads). But it is still plagued by accuracy and security concerns. In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—Congress’s investigative arm—gave at best a lukewarm endorsement of electronic voting technology....

A chunk of rock that was once part of Mars, but landed on Earth as a meteorite, will return to the Red Planet aboard a NASA rover set to launch in 2020. The meteorite, known as Sayh al Uhaymir 008 (SaU008) was found in Oman in 1999, but geologists determined that it likely originated on Mars, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Scientists think collisions between Mars and other large bodies in the solar system’s early days sent chunks of the Red Planet into space, where they might wander for eons before falling onto Earth’s surface....

The bizarre metamorphosis that occurs in halibut and other flatfish had even Charles Darwin floundering for an explanation. At birth, these fish have one eye on each side of the skull, but as adults, both eyes reside on the same side. Certainly, for fish that spend their lives along the sea bottom, having both eyes topside confers a survival advantage. But there seemed to be no evolutionary reason to start down the gradual path toward such lopsidedness—any intermediate steps would not seem to be especially helpful....

Images sent back from the Red Planet by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander after its picture-perfect Sunday touchdown provide the first close-up views of a barren landscape honeycombed with cracks that may represent the effects of seasonal freezing and thawing of subsurface ice. NASA mission controllers cheered when Phoenix sent back radio signals confirming that it had successfully completed its 10-month, 422-million-mile (679-million-kilometer) journey to Mars, landing as expected Sunday evening in the arctic plains near the Red Planet’s north pole....

Lifting the ban on cell phones during flights, a change being considered by the Federal Communications Commission, may be a bad idea: portable electronics can potentially interfere with GPS navigation, which has been increasingly used during landings. Carnegie Mellon University researchers stowed, with permission, a wireless frequency spectrum analyzer onboard 37 commercial flights in the eastern U.S. They found that passengers made one to four cell phone calls per flight. Moreover, the group discovered that other onboard sources (possibly DVD players, gaming devices or laptops) emitted in the GPS frequency, consistent with anonymous safety reports that these devices have interrupted the function of navigation systems....

By Ron Cowen of Nature magazineA chemical analysis of lunar rocks may force scientists to revise the leading theory for the Moon’s formation: that the satellite was born when a Mars-sized body smacked into the infant Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.If that were the case, the Moon ought to bear the chemical signature of both Earth and its proposed ‘second’ parent. But a study published today in Nature Geoscience suggests that the Moon’s isotopic composition reflects only Earth’s contribution....

As concerns mount over people’s exposure to the plasticizer bisphenol A in everyday products, it’s also contaminating the air near manufacturing plants: U.S. companies emitted about 26 tons of the hormone-disrupting compound in 2013. Although research is sparse, experts warn that airborne BPA could be a potentially dangerous route of exposure for some people. Of the 72 factories reporting BPA emissions, the largest sources are in Ohio, Indiana and Texas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory....

By Environment Correspondent Alister DoyleWARSAW (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders on Thursday to make “bold pledges” for cuts in greenhouse gases by next September to guide a deal to fight climate change but acknowledged that many nations would be late.Ban also told Reuters that rich nations’ promises at U.N. climate talks in Warsaw for new funds to help the poor tackle more heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels caused by global warming were “insufficient”....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - About 50,000 people are alive today because U.S. hospitals committed 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 than in 2010, government health officials said on Tuesday. The lower rate of fatalities from poor care and mistakes was one of several “historic improvements” in hospital quality and safety measured by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They included a 9 percent decline in the rate of hospital-acquired conditions such as infections, bedsores and pneumonia from 2012 to 2013....

For the nearly two years that COVID has hung over our heads, my children have been at risk of contracting and spreading the disease. I recently got them vaccinated, and I will never forget the relief I felt as we walked away from the mass vaccination site. I am a college professor and am routinely in small rooms with students who have tested positive for COVID, even with mask and vaccine mandates in place at my university....

Computer users could be forgiven if they kept their machines off on April 1. Since it first appeared last November, the malicious software known as the Conficker worm has established itself as one of the most powerful threats the Internet has seen in years, infecting an estimated 10 million computers worldwide. The malware slipped into machines running the Windows operating system and waited quietly for April Fools’ Day (the timing did not go unnoticed), when it was scheduled to download and execute a new set of instructions....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Gothic cathedrals are some of the most recognizable and magnificent architectural feats. With soaring towers and softly filtered light streaming through stained glass windows, everything about the Gothic cathedral is transportive and ethereal, lifting the gaze of the viewer towards the heavens. Architectural innovations, such as flying buttresses, were essential to creating the Gothic style, but it was the new, intentional use of light that truly set Gothic architecture apart from its heavier and darker Romanesque predecessors....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Buddhist monasteries have been part of the Japanese cultural landscape ever since the 7th century CE, and they remained both powerful and socially important institutions right through the medieval period. Today, many of Japan’s finest examples of ancient and medieval architecture are located at temple complexes, a good number of which are classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Imagine something that has never been thought of before. If one holds a book in one’s hands, one can imagine an e-book, a large-print book, a picture book, all kinds of books. But how does one imagine a book in a world where even the concept of a `book’ does not exist?...

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Meroe Head, so-called because it was found beneath a temple in the ruins of Meroe, is the head of a larger-than life statue of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (better known as Augustus Caesar) the first Emperor of Rome (reigned 31 BCE-14 CE). On 2 September 31 BCE Octavian Caesar (the future Augustus) defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt at the Battle of Actium and claimed Egypt as a Roman province....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Upanishads are among the best-known philosophical-religious works in the world and also among the oldest as the earliest texts are thought to have been composed between 800-500 BCE. These works are philosophical dialogues relating to the concepts expressed by the Vedas, the central scriptures of Hinduism. Adherents of Hinduism know the faith as Sanatan Dharma meaning “Eternal Order” or “Eternal Path”, and this order is thought to be revealed through the Vedas whose concepts are believed to be direct knowledge communicated from God....

Most of the time science is a slow and tedious business. Researchers toil away for decades at obscure limits of human knowledge, collecting and analyzing data, refining theories, writing, debating, and advancing our understanding of the world in tiny increments. Working in small teams on highly specialized projects far from the public eye—that is what most of us are accustomed to doing. But a calamity upends everything. In early 2020 COVID spread around the globe....

How long can a person survive without food? —CARLOS SANTIAGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Alan D. Lieberson, an M.D., attorney and the author of Treatment of Pain and Suffering in the Terminally Ill and Advance Medical Directives, explains: The duration of survival without food is greatly influenced by body weight, genetic variation, other health considerations and, most important, the presence or absence of dehydration. Without liquids or food, people typically perish after 10 to 14 days....