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Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell Crown, 2013 ($26) For much of the 20th century the study of animal minds was off-limits to researchers. Endowing nonhumans with psychological or emotional traits was considered unscientific, an attitude that dates back nearly 400 years ago to René Descartes, who believed animals were lesser beings with no capacity for reason. Morell, a correspondent for Science, argues that biologists are finally breaking this taboo....

Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle by Michael Benson. Abrams, 2009 Journalist Michael Benson leads readers from our own Milky Way back in time and space to the earliest galaxies with this glorious collection of astronomical images from the finest ground- and space-based telescopes, as well as a few amateur astrophotographers. The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton, and Antarctic Photography by David Hempleman-Adams, Emma Stuart and Sophie Gordon. Bloomsbury, 2009...

We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, emotional and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture and society at large. After forming our beliefs, we then defend, justify and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments and rational explanations. Beliefs come first; explanations for beliefs follow. In my new book The Believing Brain (Holt, 2011), I call this process, wherein our perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it, belief-dependent realism....

Emergency officials clad in HAZMAT suits rushed a health care worker with “Ebola-like” symptoms to Bellevue Hospital in New York City, Thursday, the hospital announced. Bellevue Hospital is one of eight hospitals in New York State that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has designated as “Ebola ready.” The facility will care for confirmed cases from any of the 11 public hospitals in the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) and any suspected cases among patients who fly into John F....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Deep-frying a turkey is a great way to get a delicious, moist meal for Thanksgiving. But this method of cooking can be a very dangerous undertaking. Every fall, millions of dollars of damage, trips to the ER and even deaths result from attempts to deep-fry turkeys. The vast majority of these accidents happen because people put frozen turkeys into boiling oil....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The achievements of the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), often regarded by scholars and the ancient Chinese themselves as the golden era of Chinese culture, would have lasting effects on all who followed, particularly in the areas of government, law, philosophy, history, and art. The thirst for new knowledge, ambitious experimentation, and unstinting intellectual enquiry are hallmarks of Han culture, and they helped, amongst other achievements, to develop the Silk Road trade network, invent new materials such as paper and glazed pottery, formulate history writing, and greatly improve agricultural tools, techniques, and yields....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Food and drink in the Elizabethan era was remarkably diverse with much more meat and many more varieties of it being eaten by those who could afford it than is the case today. Storage of food was still a problem and so fresh produce was grown at home or regularly acquired at local markets....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Pericles’ agora of Athens flourished under Macedonian control. After Macedon was defeated by Rome, the Romans added to the district even before Greece was taken as a province and more so afterwards. The Roman version of the agora continued as the jewel of Athens until it was destroyed by invasions in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Last Days of the Incassimonandchuster.com (Copyright) Advertisement WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE IS THAT 16TH-CENTURY CE CONQUISTADORS ACTUALLY FORMED CORPORATIONS BEFORE THEY SET OFF TO PLUNDER. ​ JBW: When reading The Last Days of the Incas, I was very surprised to learn that Francisco Pizarro (1471-1541 CE) was illiterate, illegitimate, a poor horseman, and lacked formal military training....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Plato’s concept of the Philosopher-King (one who governs according to philosophical precepts and higher truths) is thought to be best exemplified through the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (r. 161-180 CE), the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome and a devout student of Stoicism, whose principles informed both his life and reign....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. WARNING: This article contains sexually explicit language that might not be appropriate for children or teenagers. Electoral Notices, PompeiiKatharine Sykes (CC BY-SA) The Roman town of Pompeii was preserved in metres of volcanic material following the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Often, we may experience the ancient past only through the second-hand interpretations of historians and archaeologists but in the case of Pompeii we may read the very words of ordinary people themselves from the large number of graffiti, signs and electoral posters which have survived and which give a unique insight into their thoughts, hopes and desires....

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 (1400-1600) just about any artist of worth found themselves commissioned at some point in their careers to produce an altarpiece. Some of the greatest names in European art were so called upon, from Jan van Eyck to Titian. Designed to stand behind or actually on the altars within churches, altarpieces could be composed of painted panels, sculptures or both....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. By early 1070 CE William I (r. 1066-1087 CE) had almost completed the Norman conquest of England. There remained threats from the border regions with Wales and Scotland but the north of England had finally be subdued by the ruthless harrying of that region over the winter of 1069-70 CE....

July 1963 Laser Bloom “The latest device to fascinate the technical community is the optical maser, or, as it is now often called, the laser. By conservative estimate about 500 research groups are engaged in laser development and exploitation in the U.S. alone. Much of this effort is directed toward the use of laser beams in communication systems. The amount of information that can be carried by a communication channel is proportional to its frequency, and in principle the visible region of the spectrum between the wavelengths of 4,000 and 7,000 angstrom units could accommodate 80 million television channels....

Eons ago Earth experienced a wild transformation: it turned into a giant snowball. These massive glaciation events, where ice encased the planet from pole-to-pole, are fittingly named “snowball Earth.” There were at least two occurrences: one around 717 million and another some 645 million years ago. Although geologists have good evidence Earth experienced these snowball events, they still cannot figure out howthey happened. Scientists have debated for decades over what set off the most profound climatic changes in the planet’s geologic record....

Five years ago, grown-up wunderkind Stephen Wolfram did his darnedest to alter the course of scientific history. The former particle physicist, who is by all accounts a genius, poured two decades worth of heady thoughts on the nature of computers, mathematics and the universe into an ambitious 1,200-page tome modestly entitled A New Kind of Science. And when that didn’t sway his peers, he offered cash. This week, Wolfram’s software company, Wolfram Research, announced that it is awarding a $25,000 prize to an undergraduate student for proving a speculation made in the book—that a very simplified Turing machine, a mathematical model of a computer, could in principle run any conceivable computer program, from crunching math problems to sharpening images....

Forty years ago this month then president Richard M. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, a vital piece of legislation that has been called one of the world’s most effective environmental laws. One recent beneficiary of the legislation is the Santa Cruz cypress. The California evergreen thrives after natural forest fires, which serve to open its cones and release its seeds. As humans have settled in the surrounding Santa Cruz Mountains and learned to bring fires under control, the tree has suffered....

Why do cats have an inner eyelid, and what does it do? —S. HUANG BROOKLYN, N.Y. Veterinary ophthalmologist Paul Miller of the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers this explanation: The inner eyelid of cats is no biological curiosity—it plays a critical role in maintaining the health of the eye surface. In fact, this third eyelid—so called because it complements the upper and lower outer lids—is so important that among mammals and birds it is the norm....

After decades of riding icebreakers in Antarctica’s icy waters hoping to better understand the fragile ecosystem on and around this frigid continent scientists have begun delegating data collection to satellite-guided robotic subs. The hope is that these sea gliders, which can dive hundreds of meters and stay in the water for months at a time, will help to unlock the secrets of phytoplankton blooms that nourish the organisms in Antarctica’s Ross Sea for a few months each year before mysteriously disappearing....

Anyone walking into a smoker’s abode can tell you that the traces of tobacco use don’t vanish when a cigarette is extinguished. Does this so-called thirdhand smoke pose a health hazard? Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that remnants of cigarette smoke don’t just inertly settle onto surfaces. Instead the leftover nicotine can react with nitrous acid vapor, an environmentally common chemical emitted from gas appliances and vehicles, among other sources....