By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine To judge from India’s official surveys, the protection of its forests is a success. Somehow, this resource-hungry country of 1.2 billion people is managing to preserve its rich forests almost intact in the face of growing demands for timber and agricultural land. But a senior official responsible for assessing the health of the nation’s forests says that recent surveys have overestimated the extent of the remaining forests....
Ultrasound-guided probe device: When doctors inject a patient with a needle, they cannot see what they are getting themselves into. Underneath the skin, where they hope there is a vein waiting to be tapped, is a dark, mysterious world. This struck Stephen Ridley, now president and chief medical officer of Soma Access Systems in Greenville, S.C., as a problem. “You literally do this blind,” he says. Ultrasound can help image tissues that are inside, but it is bad at imaging the needle itself....
In 2012 Shane Barker set out to land a job managing social media for the San Francisco 49ers. He did not have any connections inside the company; he did not even submit his résumé. An avid user of social media since 2005, he used the social-networking tools at his fingertips to try to get the 49ers’ attention. First, Barker visited a Dallas Cowboys training camp and recorded a video of himself rooting for the 49ers in enemy territory, which he then posted to his YouTube channel....
A coordinated global campaign is monitoring a wayward Russian Mars probe that’s slated to crash to Earth in the next few days, the European Space Agency has announced. The doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which Russian officials estimate will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere between Saturday and Monday (Jan. 14-16), is now officially a target for the 12-member Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, or IADC for short. “An IADC re-entry prediction campaign is ongoing since January 2....
By Maggie Lu YueyangSYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian icebreaker with 52 passengers rescued from a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice since Christmas Eve began the long journey home on Friday.“The passengers seem very glad to now be with us and they are settling in to their new accommodation,” Jason Mundy, Australian Antarctic Division Acting Director who is on board the ice breaker Aurora Australis, said on Friday morning.A helicopter from the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon ferried the 52 scientists and tourists in small groups from the ice-bound Akademik Shokalskiy and transferred them to the Antarctic supply ship Aurora Australis late on Thursday....
On June 28, 2012, a worker at La Cantina Ranch in Brooks County, Texas, was tending wild game feeders. On the ground, he found what he thought were bones scattered in an eight-foot-diameter area of mesquite-laden brush. A deputy from the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office showed up later in the day. According to the report, animals had already been there and left teeth marks in the bones. There were tangled clumps of black hair, torn items of clothing and a few personal effects—a backpack, four chicken-flavored Ramen packages, bug spray, a toothbrush and an unopened bag of Salsa Verde Doritos....
Shifting climate patterns in North America could hit U.S. crop production hard, possibly even halving the production of corn by the end of the century, a new study finds. Scientists believe that the spike in average temperatures that is widely predicted by climate models for North America could hurt its agriculture sector. As the number of days that are hotter than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) increases, they now predict, estimated future harvests of wheat, soybeans and corn could drop by 22 to 49 percent, depending on the variety of the crop....
NEW YORK — The wreck of a 17th-century Dutch warship has been discovered off the coast of Tobago, a small island located in the southern Caribbean. Marine archaeologists believe the vessel is possibly the Huis de Kreuningen, which was lost during a bloody fight between Dutch and French colonists. On March 3, 1677, the French Navy launched a fierce attack against the Dutch in Tobago’s Rockley Bay. European settlers coveted Tobago for its strategic location; in fact, the island changed hands more than 30 times after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The province of Moesia was vital to the Roman military’s protection of the Balkans. Subdued by the Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus in 29 BCE, it was initially part of Macedonia. Due to its location along the Danube, it became essential during the Dacian Wars of both emperors Domitian (r....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird is a Sumerian myth dated to the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) featuring the hero-king of Uruk, Lugalbanda, father of Gilgamesh, in his younger years as an honorable officer in the army. Lugalbanda’s purity of spirit and kindness to the great bird’s offspring are emphasized as qualities befitting a future king....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek hero Herakles, the most popular figure from ancient Greek mythology. Hercules was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus, who was always chasing one woman or another, took on the form of Alcmene’s husband, Amphitryon, and visited Alcmene one night in her bed, and so Hercules was born a demi-god with incredible strength and stamina....
JUNE 1961 Optical Maser “All conventional light sources are essentially noise generators that are unsuited for anything more than the crudest signaling purposes. It is only within the last year, with the advent of the optical maser, that it has been possible to attain precise control of the generation of light waves. Although optical masers are still very new, they have already provided enormously intense and sharply directed beams of light....
I GREW UP IN LAKE CHARLES, LA., WHERE WE FISHED AND hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies....
Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space through Time by Michael Benson Abrams, 2014 ($50) Long before Hubble Space Telescope photographs wowed us with their beauty, other images of the cosmos awed us as well. This oversized art book samples humanity’s attempts to depict the heavens throughout history. Some works are scientific; others are religious or purely artistic. Examples include modern supercomputer simulations of a sunspot, a 16th-century French painting of a solar eclipse and a bronze-and-gold image from Germany of the Pleiades star cluster dating to 2000–1600 b....
As they zero in on their sugary reward, foraging bumblebees follow an invisible clue: electric fields. Although some animals, including sharks, are known to have an electric sense, this is the first time the ability has been documented in insects. Pollinating insects take in a large number of sensory cues, from colors and fragrances to petal textures and air humidity. Being able to judge which flowers will provide the most nectar, and which have already been plundered by other pollinators, helps them to use their energy more efficiently....
An estimated 37 million people worldwide are living with HIV, with just under 2 million of those people having recently contracted the virus. In the United States, around 1.1 million people live with HIV, but as many as 15% (or roughly 1 in 7) of those infected do not know they carry the virus. Some groups bare more of the burden of the HIV risk than others, especially racial minorities and men who have sex with other men....
Opening science to public participation, the “citizen science” mode of research, has stimulated a diversity of projects that have led to real innovation and changes in behavior. It has done more than simply enhance existing research. It has also engaged a range of viewpoints that otherwise would have remained below the radar, allowing new people to provide new ideas to solve new problems. Citizen science is driven mainly by the Internet, cloud computing, smartphones and social media, which enable thousands of scientists—or nonqualified individuals who are often globally dispersed—to participate in the gathering of information and knowledge on a range of scales: Galaxy Zoo (galaxyzoo....
By Jatindra Dash VISAKHAPATNAM India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Cyclone Hudhud powered its way inland over eastern India on Monday, leaving a swathe of destruction but the loss of life appeared limited after tens of thousands of people sought safety in storm shelters, aid workers and officials said. Packing wind speeds of up to 195 kph (over 120 mph), Hudhud hammered the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states on Sunday, killing at least eight people and causing widespread devastation....
STRESS is an inevitable part of our life. Yet whether our daily hassles include the incessant gripes of a nasty boss or another hectoring letter from the Internal Revenue Service, we usually find some way of contending with them. In rare instances, though, terrifying events can overwhelm our coping capacities, leaving us psychologically paralyzed. In such cases, we may be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder marked by flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms that impair everyday functioning....
The world’s biggest collection of Zika virus is housed in a tan concrete building, rising up from the flat campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch here in Galveston. Inside, armed guards watch the lobby, and access to certain floors requires special clearance. These safeguards are in place because other viruses, including those that cause Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), are also on the premises. Zika is not as easily spread as deadly Ebola, so the laboratories that work with the mosquito-carried virus do not require spacesuit-like protection gear....
