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Back in the early 1970s, a handful of scientists, engineers, defense contractors and U.S. Air Force officers got together to form a professional group. They were essentially trying to solve the same problem: how to build machines that can operate on their own without human control and to figure out ways to convince both the pub­lic and a reluctant Pentagon brass that ro­­bots on the battlefield are a good idea. For decades they met once or twice a year, in relative obscurity, to talk over technical issues, exchange gossip and renew old friendships....

If humanity ever travels to another star, the trip could take generations. Such a journey would present serious technological challenges, of course, but the social difficulties of keeping a large population happy and healthy on a spaceship could be no less daunting. Anthropologist Cameron Smith of Portland State University has studied these questions and will discuss the biological and cultural science of long-term space travel during a lecture at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario that will be broadcast live here on this page....

GENEVA (Reuters) - Yemen’s cholera outbreak has infected 612,703 people and killed 2,048 since it began in April, and some districts are still reporting sharp rises in new cases, data from the World Health Organization and Yemen’s health ministry showed on Tuesday. The overall spread of the epidemic has slowed in the past two months, with the daily number of new suspected cases cut to around 3,000 in recent days. However the epidemic, the most explosive on record in terms of its rapid spread, has continually confounded expectations....

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 Richard Hingly to chat about his new book Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain published by Oxford University Press. Kelly: Do you want to tell us a bit about what the book is about? Advertisement Richard: Yes, it is obviously about the Roman conquest of Britain, but that takes some explaining because, I suppose, in the mind of the public, sometimes the Roman conquest is quite a short term thing, perhaps it occurs over a few years, but in reality, it goes on for a long period of time....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Retreat from Kabul in 1842 was one of the most notorious disasters in the history of the British Empire. An East India Company army had invaded Afghanistan but was obliged to withdraw. This army of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers was utterly destroyed before it reached the frontier, and the debacle condemned Britain to defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. This is how the Epic of Gilgamesh concludes; there is no immortality. Gilgamesh was wrong! The echoes of his Epic has been resonating within the universe over the past 5 millennia and its message will keep reverberating for good and forever, carrying with it the scent of Mesopotamia....

By Stuart McDill LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) - One in five types of plant worldwide is at risk of extinction from threats such as farming and logging that are wrecking many habitats, a first global overview of plant life said on Tuesday. In total, 391,000 types of plants are known to science, from tiny orchids to giant sequoia trees, according to the “State of the World’s Plants” written by 80 experts led by the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) at Kew, in London....

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited and expanded excerpt from Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris. Copyright © 2011 Emma Marris. Jessica Hellmann, an ecologist at Notre Dame University in Indiana, is in the midst of exactly the kind of painstaking study that can help guide those who want to move species. Hellmann works, among other places, on Vancouver Island, studying a kind of oak savanna ecosystem that most people associate with California....

Atoms are now such a commonplace idea that it is hard to remember how radical they used to seem. When scientists first hypothesized atoms centuries ago, they despaired of ever observing anything so small, and many questioned whether the concept of atoms could even be called scientific. Gradually, however, evidence for atoms accumulated and reached a tipping point with Albert Einstein’s 1905 analysis of Brownian motion, the random jittering of dust grains in a fluid....

You cannot see them, but radio waves pervade your peaceful living space. They emanate from an increasingly large menagerie of electronic gadgets, appliances and satellites. FM radio and broadcast television have been around for years; more recently, cell phones and Wi-Fi routers have added their high frequencies to the mix. Should we worry? In May the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that long-term cell-phone use could “possibly” cause cancer; it says the same for coffee drinking....

Sharks have long inspired our fascination and our fear. However, a growing body of scientific evidence has shown that instead of being afraid of sharks—which have killed fewer humans within a year than such risks as accidents taking scenic selfies and encounters with vending machines—we should be afraid for sharks. The latest numbers from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List show that nearly one third of all known species of sharks and their relatives are considered threatened with extinction....

If John Carlisle had a cat flap, scientific fraudsters might rest easier at night. Carlisle routinely rises at 4.30 A.M. to let out Wizard, the family pet. Then, unable to sleep, he reaches for his laptop and starts typing up data from published papers on clinical trials. Before his wife’s alarm clock sounds 90 minutes later, he has usually managed to fill a spreadsheet with the ages, weights and heights of hundreds of people—some of whom, he suspects, never actually existed....

Jonathan Haidt is concerned, like many Americans, with the way our country has become divided and increasingly unable to work together to solve looming threats. Yet, unlike most Americans, he is a psychologist and specialist on the origins of morality. A few years ago, he began to wonder what he might do, and the result is a book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” In it, Haidt examines the roots of our morality, and how they play out on the stage of history....

Aside from its impact on sea levels, weather and the economy, researchers say climate change is also an urgent public health concern, a matter that has been largely left out of the global climate conversation until recently. Rising average temperatures and more frequent weather extremes place a tremendous burden on human health, a fact officials need to include in developing a climate policy at regional and international scales. These are not merely practical concerns but have strong ethical implications as outlined in two papers last week in the journal PLoS Medicine....

U.S. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts a new late-night talk show, Star Talk. Iceland As it sheds ice—and weight—the island’s land surface is rising 1.4 inches a year. Germany Spans of its high-speed autobahn system will open to self-driving cars in a pilot program, government officials say. Israel In western Galilee, archaeologists found a 55,000-year-old partial human skull—making the area the most plausible for human and neandertal inbreeding. Kenya To save the norther white rhino, conservationists plan to collect eggs from the females for the first time....

If orange juice is a part of your breakfast, you might be in trouble. A debilitating disease has citrus growers questioning the future of the orange industry in Florida and other parts of the U.S., and new revelations about how it spreads is making prospects look even worse. According to recent research, the insects that transmit the disease don’t just spread it from tree to tree—they spread it amongst themselves as well....

Dear EarthTalk: What’s going on with all the cases of autism cropping up and no one seems to know why? It stands to reason it must be something (or some things) environmental, yet every study allegedly turns up no conclusion? What are the possible causes? – Jessica W., Austin, TX No doubt about it, autism rates have skyrocketed in the U.S. and beyond in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease affects one in every 150 children born today in the U....

Fox baseball commentator Tim McCarver is a retired baseball catcher whose work as a TV analyst recently got him inducted into the announcers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He occupies the top TV perch in the sport, and fans either love him or hate him. If McCarver truly wants to be loved and hated more, there’s no better way to accomplish that than link climate change to America’s pastime, on national TV, in the middle of a Cardinals-Brewers ballgame....

In late 2014 then 40-year-old Katherine Benson was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and told she had less than a year to live. “She was stunned,” says her father Rick Nolan, a former congressional representative of Minnesota. Benson had never smoked and was a young, healthy mother of four. “She’s the last person you would expect to get something like this,” Nolan says. Lung cancer kills about 130,000 people in the U....

Major appliance makers and pro-efficiency groups have privately agreed on higher standards for the biggest energy users in the home, such as dishwashers and refrigerators. The groups have written an agreement outlining these standards, and they will now take it to the Department of Energy, which sets energy standards for appliances every few years, U.S. EPA and Congress. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, or AHAM, represented the industry perspective in the talks....