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Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Relations between ancient Japan and China have a long history, and in certain periods the exchange of political, religious and cultural practices between the two was intense. China, the much older state and the more developed, passed on to Japan (sometimes indirectly via Korea) a long list of ideas including rice cultivation, writing, Buddhism, centralised government models, civil service examinations, temple architecture, clothing, art, literature, music, and eating habits....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Aztec civilization, which flourished in central Mexico between c. 1345 and 1521 CE, was able to provide an astonishingly wide range of agricultural produce thanks to a combination of climatic advantages, diverse artificial irrigation methods, and extensive farming know-how. Their skills at agriculture gave the Aztecs one of the most varied cuisines in the ancient world....

Did you like this interview? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ancient History Encyclopedia has partnered with the UNESCO Archives, which we are very excited about. Our mission aligns very much with UNESCO, wanting to bring about peace and international understanding to the world through cultural heritage and education. We sat down with Mr. Adam Cowling, the Digitization Project Manager to talk about their project and where it is headed....

The up-and-coming professional football player Chris Borland, of the San Francisco 49ers, is now leaving the sport out of concern that a career in football would increase his risk of brain disease. But what types of neurological problems have been linked with football, and how might these arise? On Monday (March 16), Borland announced he was retiring from football after studying the link between football head injuries and degenerative brain disease, and discussing his decision with friends, family members, concussion researchers and teammates, according to ESPN....

Scientists searching for the next big energy-producing biofuel, something such as switchgrass that power plants could burn to make electricity and reduce their carbon emissions, have a very fussy wish list. Ideal species should not be food crops. They need to grow quickly and have to be successful on marginal land that’s less suited to growing food crops. They should be resistant to disease and pests, and also produce enough biomass to make them competitive with fossil fuels....

A tiny change—just one mutation—appears to have boosted the modern Zika virus’s ability to attack fetal brain cells, fueling the wave of birth defects involving microcephaly (small head size) that recently swept across the Americas. The findings are reported Thursday in Science. Researchers in China found that a single swap of amino acids—from serine to asparagine—on a structural protein of the Zika virus occurred a few months before the pathogen first took off in French Polynesia in 2013....

In 1800 astronomer William Herschel kicked off more than a century of discovery when he detected infrared radiation. It was the first observation of electromagnetic radiation other than visible light and the first verification that there is more in the universe than humans can see with their eyes. In fact, the human eye perceives only about 0.0035 percent of the total electromagnetic radiation in the universe. Therefore, with all our light-based telescopes, on Earth and in space, we observe a mere fraction of the radiation that fills the cosmos....

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking to monitor the levels of radiation that its employees are exposed to from X-ray technology, including airport body scanners, a document from the agency says. In the document, the TSA said it plans to start performing radiation measurements using “personal dosimeters,” which are devices worn on the body that measure a person’s exposure to radiation, at certain airports. Such devices are used by people who work near sources of radiation such as hospital and nuclear power plant employees....

Solutions: 1. The first shipper should declare a value of 640 gold pieces. If the inspectors purchase at that price, then the next ship pays no toll whatsoever. So the net receipts to the two ships are 1,640 gold pieces. Conversely, if the inspectors accept the toll based on 640 gold pieces, then the first shipper will pay 160 gold pieces in toll and receive a net sale price of (1000 – 160) = 840 gold pieces....

Fifty-five years ago the late ber-genius John von Neumann proved that the area of any two-dimensional region subject to surface tension—such as a bubble—changes in proportion to the number of its sides. (Five or fewer, it shrinks; seven or more, it grows; six, it maintains its area.) Since then, physicists have struggled to apply von Neumann’s result to the analogous case of microscopic crystal grains growing in three dimensions, according to materials scientist David J....

Money can’t buy you love. Worshipping Mammon foments evil ways. Materialists are shallow and unhappy. The greenback finds itself in tough times these days. Whether it’s Wall Street bankers earning lavish multi-million-dollar bonuses or two-bit city managers in Los Angeles County bringing in higher salaries than President Obama the recessionary economic climate has helped spur outrage and revulsion at those of us collecting undeserved lucre. Wealthy people have a bad rep....

It’s a well-known tale: A large percentage of those who lose weight end up gaining it all back—and often more. For a long time, it was assumed that this was because dieters lapse back into the eating habits that caused them to gain weight in the first place. But over the past several years, there have been a series of studies showing that there is something else at work. People who have lost weight experience long-term changes in their metabolism that make it extremely difficult to maintain that weight loss, even when they are vigilant about maintaining healthy eating habits....

A soldier is badly wounded on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq by a roadside explosive. As he lies beside his vehicle, unable to reach his radio to contact his unit on his location and condition, blood from the wound seeps into his shirt. Luckily, its fibers are coated with cylindrical, nanosize carbon molecules that contain antibodies able to detect the presence of albumin, a protein common in blood. The shirt senses that its wearer is bleeding and sends a signal through the shirt’s carbon nanotubes (1,000 times more conductive than copper) that activates an emergency radio-frequency beacon on the soldier’s belt....

On Sunday, Colorado became the first state in the nation to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations. After four days of hearings, the state’s Air Quality Control Commission adopted rules that will require oil and gas companies to find and fix methane leaks, as well as install technology that captures 95 percent of emissions of both volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which cause air pollution, and methane. Parts of the state are already exceeding U....

LONDON – Economists and scientists may have seriously underestimated the “social cost” of carbon emissions to future generations, according to a warning in the journal Nature. Social cost is a calculation in US dollars of the future damage that might be done by the emission of one metric ton of carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas levels soar and climates change, sea levels rise and temperature records are broken in future decades....

Every month, Scientific American—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Key information from this month’s issue: HEALTH AND MEDICINE • Genetic Testing Cheap and accurate prenatal diagnostic tests are under development and could warn couples if they are passing genetic diseases to their offspring....

Much economic thinking rests on the assumption that individuals know what they want and that they make rational decisions to achieve it. Such behavior requires that they be able to rank the possible outcomes of their actions, also known as putting a value on things. The value of a decision’s outcome is often not the same as its nominal dollar value. Say you are offered a fair bet: you have the same chance of doubling your $1 wager as you have of losing it....

Although hurricane season has not yet arrived, Florida Panhandle residents and parts of coastal Alabama saw disastrous flooding from record rainfall Monday and Tuesday more akin to amounts seen in tropical storms than a spring weather system. According to data from the weather station at Pensacola Regional Airport, 15.55 inches of rain – the greatest rainfall amount from any calendar day on record—fell Tuesday. Data from the station go back to 1879....

Scientific American presents Tech Talker by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. In Part 1 of this series, we talked about some free and easy ways that you can boost the WiFi signal in your home. In this episode, I will be covering some more advanced ways you can boost your WiFi if the tips I mentioned in Part 1 didn’t do the trick....

From Nature magazine The 5,000-year-old iron bead might not look like much, but it hides a spectacular past: researchers have found that an ancient Egyptian trinket is made from a meteorite. The result, published on 20 May in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, explains how ancient Egyptians obtained iron millennia before the earliest evidence of iron smelting in the region, solving an enduring mystery. It also hints that they regarded meteorites highly as they began to develop their religion....