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Pity the poor, forlorn foreign graduate teaching assistant at an American university – far from home and family, living on a meager stipend, cramming by day and grading by night, fielding questions from undergraduates like “Do people wear regular clothes in your country?” or “Are any of your relatives terrorists?” Of the many indignities international students endure, accent discrimination may be the most mortifying, in part because it is still widely accepted in our society....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In the first part of our new travel series devoted to the archaeological sites around the Bay of Naples, we shared some hints and tips as to how you can best prepare for your self-guided tour of Pompeii. In this second part, we look into the fascinating history of Pompeii’s “little sister”, the town of Herculaneum....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356 CE was the second great battle of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453 CE) after Crécy (1346 CE) and, once again, it was the English who won. Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376 CE), son of Edward III of England (r. 1327-1377 CE), masterminded victory largely thanks to the continued domination of the powerful longbow weapon, Edward’s excellent defensive positioning, and the outdated reliance of heavy cavalry by the French leadership....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The civil service examinations of Imperial China allowed the state to find the best candidates to staff the vast bureaucracy that governed China from the Han Dynasty onwards (206 BCE - 220 CE). The exams were a means for a young male of any class to enter that bureaucracy and so become a part of the gentry class of scholar-officials....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Instructions of Shuruppag (c. 2000 BCE) is the most famous work of the genre of Sumerian wisdom literature whose purpose was to encourage proper behavior in conformity with cultural values and standards. It is among the oldest works of philosophical literature extant. The Instructions of ShuruppagDaderot (Public Domain)...

In 1697 a legal professional in the French city of Lille wrote to his cousin in the Netherlands to request a relative’s death certificate, possibly in order to finalize an inheritance. He folded and sealed his mundane missive so it would hold together without an envelope and mailed it off to the Hague. For some reason, it never reached its recipient and remains sealed today. Yet a team of historians and scientists have still read it—thanks to high-resolution imaging and a “virtual unfolding” algorithm....

At first glance you might not notice anything odd on meeting a young boy with autism. But if you try to talk to him, it will quickly become obvious that something is seriously wrong. He may not make eye contact with you; instead he may avoid your gaze and fidget, rock his body to and fro, or bang his head against the wall. More disconcerting, he may not be able to conduct anything remotely resembling a normal conversation....

It wasn’t quite a grand entrance, but the first 2020 presidential primary debate last night showed that climate change — at least for the moment — has the attention of the Democratic field. The issue merited several questions from the debate moderators, and a few candidates even managed to sneak in climate-related answers when asked about other topics. The U.S. economy is “doing great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere — just not for the rest of us who are watching climate change bear down upon us,” said Sen....

Between us, we have more than a century of experience in climate research, literature assessment, and scholarly support for domestic and international efforts to respond to environmental challenges. We have learned the value of rigorous scientific research, even when it challenges conventional wisdom, and of skepticism where it is appropriate. As we watch the response of epidemiologists and public health experts to COVID-19 (e.g., here, here, here and here), we have some idea of the challenges they face....

Feb 17 (Reuters) - A CSX Corp oil train that derailed and erupted in flames in West Virginia on Monday was hauling newer model tank cars, not the older versions widely criticized for being prone to puncture, the firm said. All of the oil tank cars on the 109-car train were CPC 1232 models, CSX said late Monday. The train, which was carrying North Dakota crude to an oil depot in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed in a small town 33 miles (54 km) southeast of Charleston....

This is the first of a three-part series that examines our growing understanding of the scope and impacts of microplastics pollution. During a research cruise to the Sargasso Sea in fall 1971 marine biologist Ed Carpenter first noticed peculiar, white specks floating amidst the mats of brown sargassum seaweed. After some investigating he discovered they were tiny bits of plastic. He was stunned. If thousands of the broken down particles were showing up in in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 550 miles from any mainland, he says, “I figured it’s all over the place....

A mammoth US effort to genetically profile 10,000 tumours has officially come to an end. Started in 2006 as a US$100-million pilot, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is now the biggest component of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a collaboration of scientists from 16 nations that has discovered nearly 10 million cancer-related mutations. The question is what to do next. Some researchers want to continue the focus on sequencing; others would rather expand their work to explore how the mutations that have been identified influence the development and progression of cancer....

Humankind caught its first glimpse of a black hole on April 10, 2019. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, which uses an Earth- spanning network of radio observatories acting in concert, shared images it had captured of an apparent black hole with 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun in the center of the nearby M87 galaxy. This was a breathtaking achievement—our first view of one of the most mysterious objects in the universe, long predicted but never directly “seen....

Editor’s Note: Neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine in 1986, died December 30 at the age of 103. This story was originally published in the January 1993 issue of Scientific American. As a feminist in a family with Victorian mores and as a Jew and free-thinker in Mussolini’s Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini has encountered various forms of oppression many times in her life. Yet the neurobiologist, whose tenacity and preciseness are immediately apparent in her light, steel-blue eyes and elegant black-and-white attire, embraces the forces that shaped her....

By Carey Gillam (Reuters) - Three environmental and public health groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, seeking to press it to move forward with rules that would require public disclosure of certain pesticide ingredients. The Center for Environmental Health, Beyond Pesticides, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, all non-profit advocacy groups, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The groups claimed there has been an “unreasonable delay” on the EPA’s part in finalizing rules to require chemical manufacturers to disclose hazardous inert ingredients in their pesticide products....

Dear EarthTalk: We’ve all heard about the abysmal food served in prison, as well as the economical, nutritional and even therapeutic value of growing one’s own food. Are there any agricultural programs or garden projects in U.S. prisons? —Jerry Mullins, Tennessee Colony, TeXx. While there is no nationwide program administering prison agriculture programs, various individual prisons across the country are embracing the notion of getting inmates involved in on-site food production and agricultural research....

Key concepts Chemistry Food science Solubility Gelatin Introduction What is your favorite type of candy? Have you ever wondered why you like this candy so much? Is it its taste, how it feels in your mouth—or both? Cooks and food scientists study how substances dissolve or melt to create a unique and pleasant sensation in the mouth and optimize the release of flavor. Would you like to know how your favorite candy works?...

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put out a new video to address false claims about the “Mayan apocalypse,” a non-event that some people believe will bring the world to an end on Dec. 21. In the video, which was posted online Wednesday (Mar. 7), Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Objects Program Office at NASA/JPL, explains away many of the most frequently cited doomsday scenarios. [See video] Addressing the belief that the calendar used by the ancient Mayan civilization comes to a sudden end in December 2012, and that this will coincide with a cataclysmic, world-ending event, Yeomans said: “Their calendar does not end on December 21, 2012; it’s just the end of the cycle and the beginning of a new one....

Virgin Galactic unveils designs for new spacecraft Plans for a new commercial suborbital spacecraft were presented this week by Virgin Galactic, the space tourism arm of Virgin Atlantic, and Scaled Composites, maker of the first privately funded manned spacecraft. Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan, the heads of the respective organizations, revealed models, artists’ conceptions and construction photos of the eight-seat SpaceShipTwo, designed to carry six paying passengers to the edge of space for four and a half minutes of weightless awe....

It all started with a summer pool party and a Harvard neuroscientist who prefers to be called Bob. Bob—aka Sandeep Robert Datta—was splashing around the pool with his kids when science writer Carl Zimmer noticed an image of DNA inked to his shoulder. It was not a surprising choice for a tattoo, since Bob studies the DNA of fruit flies. But it turned out there was more to it. In an excerpt from the introduction to his latest book, “Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed,” Zimmer explains the science and story behind his friend’s tattoo:...