Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The agora of Athens developed from the 6th century BCE until it was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BCE. Afterwards, the statesman Pericles (l. 495-429 BCE) used funds from the Delian League to restore it as the physical manifestation of the political power of the Athenian Empire....
Here’s a new way to make fuel from sunlight: starve a microbe nearly to death, then feed it carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced with the help of voltage from a solar panel. A newly developed bioreactor feeds microbes with hydrogen from water split by special catalysts connected in a circuit with photovoltaics. Such a batterylike system may beat either purely biological or purely technological systems at turning sunlight into fuels and other useful molecules, the researchers now claim....
Overwhelming stress cripples. Neuroscientists have begun to learn that even acute, everyday stress can turn off the brain’s command-and-control center, the prefrontal cortex. Without our mental executive, we feel helpless and out of control. The more we learn about stress, the more we realize that monitoring stress and taking steps to keep it under control is an important preventive health measure. Three Yale researchers—Amy Arnsten, Carolyn M. Mazure and Rajita Sinha—recount the state of stress science in the April issue with their article, “This Is Your Brain In Meltdown....
Apple’s “very busy” fall season of product launches is in full swing. The company just sent out invites for a news event next week, where new iPads and Macs are expected. The invite says only, “We still have a lot to cover,” and has colorful leaves from the Apple logo. The press conference will take place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, and begins at 10 a....
Conditions in the Arctic are slipping rapidly from bad to worse as the pace of climate change accelerates in that region. That’s the message from an annual environmental assessment of the far North, released on Wednesday. “Conditions in the Arctic are changing in both expected and sometimes surprising ways,” said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The changes are having an impact far beyond the far North, she added....
Does donating a chunk of change to charity make you feel good inside? How about paying your taxes? According to a new study, people have similar brain activity—and feel rewarded—no matter how they fund the public good. Researchers at the University of Oregon set out to determine the motives of people who give to charity. Their findings, reported this week in Science: people contribute out of “pure altruism”— the pleasure of seeing the others’ well-being improve—as well as for the “warm glow” they feel as the result of doing a good deed....
A continuing series on what folks in the public sphere have said about climate change in recent days. The U.S. secretary of state has been circling the globe, for the most part laboring to stifle the winds of war but also taking time to get a few sparks going on slowing climate change. The reviews from two of his former colleagues on the Hill have not been all that flattering. I wanted to start right here, in Jakarta, because this city —this country —this region —is really on the front lines of climate change....
China has won international plaudits for its commitment to green goals. It has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by at least 40 percent per economic unit by 2020 and is also adding alternative energy sources such as wind farms and nuclear power plants faster than any other country. But the nation is also in the midst of unprecedented economic growth—and an unprecedented surge in the use of energy, which for China means coal....
Nearly six years into its survey of a site called Gale Crater on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover has delivered what may be the biggest discovery yet in its quest for signs of habitability and life: Organic molecules are abundant in Red Planet rocks, and the simplest organic molecule, methane, seasonally blows through the thin Martian air. On Earth, such carbon-rich compounds are one of life’s cornerstones. Both discoveries emerged from Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, a miniaturized chemistry lab and oven that roasts dollops of air, rock and soil to sniff out each sample’s constituent molecules....
Americans are exposed to much more ionizing radiation (the potentially harmful type) than they were 30 years ago. Greater use of medical imaging such as CT scans accounts for almost all the increase. The tests can reveal serious health threats, of course, but they come with risks. Radiation experts recommend that the public receive less than one millisievert a year beyond natural background radiation (3.1 mSv), not counting medical tests. As shown, common sources such as airport scanners fall far below that recommendation, suggesting that anxiety about certain technologies is unwarranted....
Researchers have found that Japanese lung cancer patients in general respond better than American sufferers to chemotherapy but they also tend to experience more debilitating side effects from the treatment. In an effort to determine why, David Gandara, director of clinical research at the University of California, Davis, launched a clinical trial that closely matched American and Japanese patients by gender, age and severity of illness. The discrepancy lies in the genes, Gandara announced today during a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago....
I first went to the Arctic in the summer of 1970, aboard the Canadian oceanographic ship Hudson, which was carrying out the first circumnavigation of the Americas. The ship was ice-strengthened and needed to be. Along the coasts of Alaska and the Northwest Territories, Arctic Ocean ice lay close in to land, leaving a gap of only a few miles to do our survey. Sometimes ice went right up to the coast....
This year, more than 94,000 fires, most in carbon-rich peat lands, have engulfed the island nation of Indonesia, sending thick, acrid smoke into the air. The haze is affecting the health of millions of people there and in Malaysia and Singapore. It is also creating a diplomatic nightmare and enforcement problem for government officials. In past years, monsoon rains have offered relief by naturally quelling the flames that are so hard to control in the spongy, dense peat forests, but new forecasts of this year’s strong El Niño event signal delayed rains and therefore no relief anytime soon....
PRETEND YOU ARE a member of an audience watching several people dribbling and passing a basketball among themselves. Your job is to count the number of times each player makes a pass to another person during a 60-second period. You find you need to concentrate, because the ball is flying so quickly. Then, someone dressed in a gorilla suit ambles across the floor (right). He walks through the players, turns to face the viewers, thumps his chest and leaves....
The fact that Edvard and May-Britt Moser have collaborated for 30 years — and been married for 28 — has done nothing to dull their passion for the brain. They talk about it at breakfast. They discuss its finer points at their morning lab meeting. And at a local restaurant on a recent summer evening, they are still deep into a back-and-forth about how their own brains know where they are and will guide them home....
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.—With nothing but the scrubby eastern Arizona desert surrounding it for miles, the Lumberjack Sawmill rises from the horizon like a set piece from a “Mad Max” film. Jason Rosamond, who owns the mill as CEO of Good Earth Power AZ, strolls around the property, describing how each piece of hulking machinery shapes ponderosa pine logs into salable products, from boards to telephone poles to horse bedding. Rosamond is doggedly optimistic, even though everyone from local logging companies to Sen....
The custom officer’s eyes opened wide. She was viewing an x-ray image of my two suitcases. Both were packed with plastic containers small and large, all double-wrapped individually and each carrying a soft mass in clear liquid. “Are you bringing fresh cheese?” she asked me. It was June 2012, and I was returning from South Africa to Brazil through the international airport in São Paulo. A Portuguese couple ahead of me had just been caught sneaking in prohibited fresh cheese, which could contain live pathogens harmful to local cattle....
If President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is going to work, lots of things will have to fall into place. Perhaps the most important is the reduction in greenhouse gases that is expected from increased use of natural gas to generate electricity. Under the plan, which aims to reduce electricity sector emissions by 30 percent by 2030, the EPA projects that coal-fired power will drop more than a quarter from its current 40 percent share of U....
By Maxim Nazarov and Gleb Gorodyankin MOSCOW (Reuters) - A leak on a major Russian oil pipeline caused a spill in the Black Sea near the port of Tuapse on Wednesday where officials said stormy weather was hampering efforts to assess and respond to the mishap. “Some quantity of oil has spilled into the sea,” Sergei Proskurin, first deputy captain of the port of Tuapse, told Reuters. He said the size of the spill was unclear and that emergencies services were working to deploy temporary floating barriers to contain the spill but were being delayed by the stormy conditions....
Your face is the future of smartphone security. Apple made that clear last week when it unveiled the pricey iPhone X, which trades in the familiar home button and TouchID fingerprint scanner for a new camera system that unlocks the device using facial recognition. The company has repeatedly proved its ability to push emerging technology into the mainstream—but with FaceID, Apple claims to have conquered many of the challenges that have prevented the widespread use of facial biometrics....
