Posts

Laura Niedernhofer is counting her pennies. The mid-career molecular biologist moved last year to the Scripps Research Institute’s campus in Jupiter, Florida — a risky decision that saw her building a new laboratory group at a time when the US government was cutting its support for science. In June, Niedernhofer abandoned one of her main lines of research — reducing the toxicity of cancer drugs — after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rejected her grant application....

As a baby bird develops, its body contorts to fit within the confines of its egg. The bird’s neck twists so that one side of its head is tucked against its chest. In this position, the bird’s left eye remains nestled among sprouting feathers—where it does not receive much light from the outside world—whereas the right eye is pressed up against the eggshell, glimpsing flickers of light and shadow through a veil of calcium carbonate....

For something so essential and basic, sleep has turned out to be a complicated biological nightmare for scientists. Certain genes, such as CLOCK and BMAL1, have been pegged for their roles in the body’s circadian rhythm, but the full cast of characters involved in moderating the process of sleep remains fuzzy. But thanks to a mother and daughter who share a rare genetic mutation—and who routinely need just six hours of sleep a night—researchers have recently taken a step forward in the journey to unravel the tangled genetic web of sleep....

A milestone in robotics history was left in the dust last October as four autonomous vehicles met a Grand Challenge set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). By driving themselves without any human guidance over 132 miles of desert trails, through narrow tunnels and down a treacherous mountain pass–and doing so at a pace that suggested they could take on even tougher courses–the machines surprised some veteran roboticists, who had predicted the Challenge would stand unanswered for years to come....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineA Scottish intelligence study that began 80 years ago has borne new fruit. Researchers have tracked down the study’s surviving participants–who joined the study when they were 11 years old–to estimate the role that our genes have in maintaining intelligence through to old age.Researchers have long been interested in understanding how cognition changes with age, and why these changes are more rapid in some people than in others....

HPV is the most widespread sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. and abroad, yet many people still go unvaccinated—especially men. Current HPV vaccination campaigns focus largely on women’s risk for cervical cancer but researchers have recently connected HPV to a surge in head and neck cancer in younger men. Experts suggest a push for male vaccination to decrease HPV-caused cancers in both sexes. Nuclear power, which is also considered a cancer risk by some, is already on the decline in the U....

Scientists have come closer than ever before to creating a laboratory-scale imitation of a black hole that emits Hawking radiation, the particles predicted to escape black holes due to quantum mechanical effects. The black hole analogue, reported in Nature Physics, was created by trapping sound waves using an ultra cold fluid. Such objects could one day help resolve the so-called black hole ‘information paradox’ - the question of whether information that falls into a black hole disappears forever....

In this article, a rough draft of which appears below, Kauffman and his colleagues Stefan Thurner and Rudolph Hanel detail some of their thinking on the subject, which is sure to raise the hackles of some members of the economic community just as their ideas on biology have ruffled some scientific feathers. What are your reactions to their arguments here? Do you think economists have not formally incorporated innovation and its relation to the growth of wealth into their theories?...

Peer inside the brain of someone with Alzheimer’s disease, and you’ll see some striking features: shriveled nerve cells and strange protein clumps. According to a leading theory, proteins called amyloid beta and tau build up in the brain and choke nerve cell communication, setting the disease in motion years before people suspect anything is wrong with their recall. Yet the Alzheimer’s brain has another curious aspect. Some of the clusters of toxic amyloid proteins are entangled with octopus-like immune cells called microglia, cells that live in the brain to clear unwanted clutter....

In 1967 British biologist and Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar famously characterized science as, in book title form, The Art of the Soluble. “Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve problems, not merely to grapple with them,” he wrote. For millennia, the greatest minds of our species have grappled to gain purchase on the vertiginous ontological cliffs of three great mysteries—consciousness, free will and God—without ascending anywhere near the thin air of their peaks....

The two young men who showed up retching and wild-eyed in an emergency room in Portland, Ore., last summer insisted they had swallowed nothing but an ordinary soft drink before one collapsed. Yet their odd coloring suggested otherwise. Fifteen minutes after they had downed the drink, their lips and skin turned a startling blue. Their blood was as dark as chocolate. Eventually one of the men confessed: they had spiked their soda with a bitter liquid they bought online....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Battle of Marj Ayyun (10 June 1179, also given as the Battle on the Litani) was a military engagement between Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (r. 1174-1185) and Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria (r. 1174-1193). Saladin decisively won the battle, enabling his victory at the Siege of Jacob’s Ford in August 1179....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. During the Renaissance, most works of fine art were commissioned and paid for by rulers, religious and civic institutions, and the wealthy. Producing statues, frescoes, altarpieces, and portraits were just some of the ways artists made a living. For the more modest client, there were ready-made items such as plaques and figurines....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Plague of Cyprian erupted in Ethiopia around Easter of 250 CE. It reached Rome in the following year eventually spreading to Greece and further east to Syria. The plague lasted nearly 20 years and, at its height, reportedly killed as many as 5,000 people per day in Rome....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Death of Ur-Nammu is a Sumerian lament over the passing of the king Ur-Nammu (r. 2047-2030 BCE), founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who was killed in battle fighting the Gutians in 2030 BCE. The poem is frequently cited for its depiction of a great banquet in the underworld, usually described as dark and silent....

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 third phase of the Delian League begins with the Thirty Years Peace between Athens and Sparta and ends with the start of the Ten Years War (445/4 – 431/0 BCE). The First Peloponnesian War, which effectively ended after the Battle of Coronea, and the Second Sacred War forced both the Spartans and Athenians to realize a new dualism existed in Hellenic affairs; the Hellenes now had one hegemon on the mainland under Sparta and one in the Aegean under Athens....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In this interview, World History Encyclopedia sits down with author and Assyriologist Amanda H. Podany to learn all about her new book Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East published by Oxford University Press. Kelly: Amanda, thank you so much for joining me today....

Baby pictures of a newborn supernova have captured this stellar explosion after the first half-dozen hours of its life, shedding light on how these giant explosions happen, a new study finds. This newly discovered cosmic baby is the type of supernova that occurs when a giant star runs out of fuel and explodes. Supernovas are so bright that they can briefly outshine all of the other stars in their home galaxy....

Tuning in: Theory of My Mind by the Amygdaloids . Knock Out Noise, 2010 ($10.99) Many rock songs are inspired by love or pain, or some heart-wrenching combination of the two. But it seems only fair to dedicate a few songs to the organ that makes music possible: the brain. Enter the new album, Theory of My Mind, by the Amygdaloids, a band that comprises three neuroscientists and one biologist from New York University....

In mid-September, with much of the American West engulfed in flames, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the Northern Hemisphere just experienced its hottest summer on record. Reports like this are increasingly common, and with each one climate change continues to morph from a vague notion of far-off future catastrophe to an unsettling reality unfolding before our eyes. While denial continues to hinder efforts to respond to climate change, nearly three fourths of Americans now think it’s occurring, more than 60 percent believe it is caused by humans, and more than two thirds report they’re at least “somewhat worried” by it....