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The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. Auroras filled the sky as far south as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed. Ice cores suggest that such a blast of solar particles happens only once every 500 years, but even the storms every 50 years could fry satellites, jam radios and cause coast-to-coast blackouts. The cost of such an event justifies more systematic solar monitoring and beefier protection for satellites and the power grid....

Improving the Quality of Memories One of the most devastating aspects of Alzheimer’s is its effect on patients’ ability to recall life events. Several studies have found that music helps to strengthen these individuals’ autobiographical memories, and a paper in the November 2013 Journal of Neurolinguistics builds on these findings by exploring the linguistic quality of those recollections. Researchers instructed 18 patients with Alzheimer’s and 18 healthy control subjects to tell stories from their lives in a silent room or while listening to the music of their choice....

By Ros KrasnyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Friday extended the length of permits that allow wind farms and other operations to accidentally kill protected eagles to 30 years, drawing fire from wildlife conservationists.The move to offer permits of up to three decades, from a previous maximum of five years, had been urged by the wind energy industry but was attacked by a leading wildlife group as a “stunningly bad move....

“Water is the most important material in nature,” says physicist Marcia Barbosa of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. “Water is abundant, but the water that we can drink is decreasing.” Barbosa will discuss how better understanding the physics of water can help conserve this resource on Wednesday, March 4 at 7 P.M. Eastern time; her public lecture will be broadcast live here on this page. The talk, “Water Stress: Seeking Solutions in the Unusual Properties of Water,” is part of a public lecture series at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario presented by Sun Life Financial....

Using an index finger, trace the capital letter Q on your forehead. Which way did the tail of the Q slant? What an odd thing to ask someone to do. Exploring weird things and why people believe them, however, is what I do for a living. Coming at science from the margins allows us to make an illuminating contrast between the normal and the paranormal, the natural and the supernatural, and the anomalous and the usual....

Sound can reach the inner ear by way of two separate paths, and those paths in turn affect what we perceive. Air-conducted sound is transmitted from the surrounding environment through the external auditory canal, eardrum and middle ear to the cochlea, the fluid-filled spiral in the inner ear. Bone-conducted sound reaches the cochlea directly through the tissues of the head. When you speak, sound energy spreads in the air around you and reaches your cochlea through your external ear by air conduction....

NEW YORK — The first transatlantic “scent messages” were exchanged today (June 17) between New York City and Paris, and they smelled like champagne and macaroons. At the American Museum of Natural History here in Manhattan, co-inventors David Edwards, a Harvard professor, and Rachel Field showcased their novel scent-messaging platform, which involves tagging photographs with scents selected from a palette of aromas, and sending them via email or social networks. The messages are then played back on a new device called an oPhone....

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 Elizabethan Era (1558-1603 CE), people of all classes greatly looked forward to the many holidays and festivals on offer throughout the year. The vast majority of public holidays were also religious commemorations, and attendance at service was required by law. Still, the feasts that accompanied many of these ‘holy days’ were anticipated with pleasure, and many secular traditions began to appear alongside them such as playing football on Shrove Tuesday and giving gifts to mothers on the third Sunday before Easter....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The siege and capture of Bristol by Parliamentary forces on 10 September 1645 was one of the most devastating blows to the Royalist cause during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). King Charles I of England (r. 1625-1649) had entrusted the city’s safekeeping to his nephew Prince Rupert (1619-1682), but he could not hold out against the New Model Army led by Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Roman funeral was a rite of passage that signified the transition between the states of life and death. It was very important to conduct the proper ceremonies and burial in order to avoid having a malicious spirit rising from the underworld. While no direct description of Roman funerary practices has been passed down, numerous ancient sources exist that provide accounts of ancient funerals....

Last week China ended rules limiting families to just one child. But the demise of this troubled 35-year experiment in social engineering is unlikely to spark a baby boom and jumpstart economic growth. Despite what Communist Party leaders may hope, available data suggests that China is now truly a single-child society. Even when given the option to have two kids, many parents will stick to one. The policy, meanwhile, has created a population swollen with tens of million “surplus” men from sex-selective abortions —pregnant women used ultrasound to scan the sex of the fetus and aborted if it was female....

It started with Vic Rail’s horses, in September 1994. First one, then another, they died horrible deaths, 13 horses in all over the span of just two weeks, frothing from their noses and mouths, thrashing in agonizing pain. Then Rail died too. Weeks later Australian officials isolated a newly discovered virus they ultimately named Hendra, after the Brisbane suburb where Rail and his horses died. For 17 years, Hendra virus smoldered in its host population of fruit bats killing nearly 50 horses and claiming three more human lives....

Sea ice in the coastal Arctic may be thinning far faster than scientists believed. Ice in places like the Kara, Laptev and Chukchi seas, which border parts of Siberia and Alaska, appears to be shrinking nearly twice as fast as estimates have suggested, according to a study released yesterday. That’s likely because previous research didn’t completely account for a key variable in the Arctic: the influence of climate change on snow....

“To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.”—Mark Twain SAMUEL CLEMENS (Twain was his nom de plume) humorously mocked his inability to end his nicotine-fueled habit. But he might have gone for Quitting Round 1,001 had he had the benefit of recent research. In 1982 Stanley Schachter, an eminent social psychologist then at Columbia University, unleashed a storm of controversy in the addictions field by publishing an article showing that most former smokers and overweight people he interviewed had changed successfully without treatment....

In the 1995 film Toy Story, the gung-ho space action figure Buzz Lightyear tirelessly incants his catchphrase: “To infinity… and beyond!” The joke, of course, is rooted in the perfectly reasonable assumption that infinity is the unsurpassable absolute—that there is no beyond. That assumption, however, is not entirely sound. As German mathematician Georg Cantor demonstrated in the late 19th century, a variety of infinities exist—and they can be classified by their relative sizes....

In a few years you will be able to order a transcript of your entire genetic code for less than $1,000. Adults cannot do much to alter their biological lot, but what if parents could examine their unborn child’s genome? Without proper guidance, they might decide to take drastic measures—even to end the pregnancy—based on a misguided reading of the genetic tea leaves. Two different university laboratories have developed tests that will reveal the entirety of a fetus’s genetic code using just a blood sample from the mother (or that sample plus a drop of saliva from the father)....

Forty years ago, one of Dr. Stephen Hauser’s first patients was a young Harvard Law School graduate and White House aide with a case of multiple sclerosis that raced like a brush fire through her brain. She quickly lost her ability to speak, swallow, and breathe. She got married in a wheelchair in her hospital room, tethered to breathing and feeding tubes and dressed in her wedding gown. “We had nothing to treat her with,” recalled Hauser, now director of the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco....

More than 120 Florida officials and scientists sent a letter to the campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney last week, urging the candidates to address sea-level rise in their final debate and during tours of the state. The action comes at a time when four counties in southeast Florida are weighing passage of a regional climate plan, completed this month, that sets broad goals on how to alter Florida infrastructure for rising seas and warming temperatures....

Breathing in the hormone oxytocin has been shown in recent years to trigger all kinds of feel-good emotions in people, such as trust, empathy and generosity. Now scientists find it might have a dark side: Snorting oxytocin might also incite envy and gloating. Past studies have shown that oxytocin plays a wide role in social bonding in mammals—between mates, for instance, or mother and child—and recent work suggested the hormone was linked with pro-social behavior in people, such as altruism....

Questions answered in this episode: “What is preventing light from going faster than 300 000 km/s?"-mmbn6fan “If photon has rest mass = 0 , then why does black hole pull it in?” - Karan Karnik “When black holes absorb matter, the matter’s velocity accelerates into the black hole because of stronger and stronger gravity. But how about light? The speed of light is the limit, so what happens then? :-)” - Robert Kongshaug...