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Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo says it’s “vital” that lawmakers begin working on legislation to address climate change, which he says could damage both the economy and environment of his district in South Florida. His views diverge sharply from those of other Republican lawmakers, including the state’s two presidential aspirants in former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. And although Curbelo has not endorsed a policy by which to reduce carbon emissions, some observers describe his openness to the issue as a thawing moment in the seemingly frozen congressional debate over global warming....

Researchers have identified the cause of a hiccup in the construction of the world’s next top particle smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). During stress tests last week at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), a support structure tore loose from the housing of a key ultracold magnet because it simply was not strong enough for the job, according to a statement released today. CERN will decide later this month whether upgrades will set back the start date of the LHC, which is set to switch on in November at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland....

With millions of baby boomers fast approaching old age, Alzheimer’s disease diagnoses are set to spike—and the hunt is on to find medications that can slow or halt the progression of this most common form of dementia. Many pharmaceutical companies pinned high hopes on monoclonal antibodies, drugs designed to latch onto a toxic protein that builds up in the brain of sufferers and triggers the immune system to break it down....

Despite decades of predictions that a fully electronic, paperless society is almost upon us, we still live in a world populated with printed documents. This insatiable demand for plant cellulose–based writing and packaging materials may end up having a silver lining: a component for a new type of low-cost, Earth-friendly rechargeable battery. Researchers Grzegorz Milczarek from Poznan University of Technology in Poland and Olle Inganäs from Linköping University in Sweden, have combined a polymer with a waste material from the paper and pulp industry to create a new kind of battery cathode, which today are mostly made from nonrenewable metals such as lithium or cobalt....

Life, the Multiverse and Everything In “Looking for Life in the Multiverse,” Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez say that life would be possible in a universe without the weak nuclear force. But they fail to note that the weak force is unique in treating matter and antimatter asymmetrically. Only because of this asymmetry did matter slightly outweigh antimatter before nearly all antimatter annihilated with an equal amount of matter, within the first seconds after the big bang....

SMAP lives in a stark white clean room at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will be launched on Jan. 29 into space, where it will unfurl a giant antenna that looks like a circular fence. The antenna is designed to collect signals pinging up from Earth 426 miles below. To SMAP, also known as the Soil Moisture Active Passive instrument, the Earth looks like a gigantic glass chamber of carbon and water, a setup similar to scientist Joseph Priestly’s experiment in 1771 when he discovered the carbon cycle....

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka “Obamacare,” is legal, thereby allowing millions of Americans to keep the tax credit subsidies that help them afford health insurance coverage. The Court’s 6–3 decision will enable individuals living in states with online health insurance marketplaces run either by their state or the federal government to be eligible for tax subsidies that help slash the cost of health insurance....

MAYARO “For 10 years now I’ve been thinking that Mayaro is right on the cusp of being able to amplify in humans and being transmitted efficiently by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes,” says Scott Weaver, a virologist at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Mayaro causes a disease that is clinically indistinguishable from the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus: fever, chills, rash and the characteristic joint pain that can last longer than a year....

His finalist year: 1991 His finalist project: Figuring out what a virus needs to “survive” What led to the project: For a long time as a kid, Weily Soong wanted to be an astronaut. But in the 1980s, as a student at Vestavia Hills High School in Birmingham, Ala., he learned about biology and chemistry and switched his allegiance to more Earth-based sciences. Soong applied for a summer program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and wound up working in the lab of Eric Hunter, a pioneering AIDS researcher (now at Emory University)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Nimrud Dogs, five canine figurines found at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nimrud, were only a few of the many startling finds in the region during the 19th century when expeditions were sent to corroborate biblical narratives through physical evidence and wound up doing precisely the opposite....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Pyramid Texts are the oldest religious writings in the world and make up the principal funerary literature of ancient Egypt. They comprise the texts which were inscribed on the sarcophogi and walls of the pyramids at Saqqara in the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (c....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Under the Seljuk rule, Persia gained a period of economic and cultural prosperity. The innovative techniques of the Seljuk period and style in architecture and the arts had a strong influence on later artistic developments. Seljuk art is a fusion of Persian, Islamic, and Central Asian (Turkic) elements, and building masonry is probably the most eminent feature of the Seljuk contribution to Islamic Art and Architecture....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The mythology of any civilization reflects its core values, greatest fears, and highest hopes and so it is with the mythology of ancient Persia. The great heroes like Karsasp, Thraetaona, and Rustum express particularly Persian values but, as with all mythical figures, are recognizable to people of any culture as role models whose best qualities are worth emulating....

Nearly a year and a half since COVID vaccines were first authorized for emergency use in adults, the shots remain unavailable to the youngest children in the U.S. Yet hospitalizations among children ages four and under have surged during the Omicron wave in recent months, and many parents are finding the wait for pediatric immunizations agonizingly long. “There’s a broad sense of disappointment and anger that young kids were left until last,” says Sallie Permar, chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and an expert on pediatric vaccines....

At this very moment, hundreds of U.S. nuclear warheads and bombs are poised to strike targets in Russia and elsewhere. Despite the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991—and thus the end of the cold war policy of mutually assured destruction—the U.S. maintains a stockpile of roughly 10,000 nuclear weapons. Russia, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan and the U.K. are now all U.S. allies or, at worst, nonbelligerent competitors. All but Russia possess only limited nuclear arsenals....

Anorexia has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder, and scientists are still perplexed by its causes. Now, however, a new study has examined the genomes of tens of thousands of people and identified eight chromosome locations that may increase vulnerability to the illness. Some of these locations have been linked to metabolic problems—suggesting the causes of anorexia may not be purely psychological. Anorexia nervosa, as it is officially known, is an eating disorder primarily associated with an extremely low body mass index (BMI), usually accompanied by an aversion to eating and a distorted body image....

Bacteria, viruses and parasites from land animals such as cats, cows and humans are sickening and killing sea mammals. Scientists have been finding a daunting number of land-based pathogens in seals, dolphins, sharks and other ocean dwellers that wash ashore dead or dying, according to an article by Christopher Solomon in the May 2013 issue of Scientific American, entitled “How Kitty is Killing the Dolphins.” The “pollutagens” could pose a threat to people, too....

Mexico has begun a program to make its climate actions more transparent, a move it hopes will raise its credibility in the international community. If the plan works, it will prove a useful case for developing countries that know they need bulletproof data to draw respect, and cash, in global climate talks. “This system is a starting point for being more transparent, because the more transparent we are, the more opportunities for financing further actions we will have in the international arena,” said Juan Mata Sandoval, director-general of climate change policy at Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources....

Every day as a practicing psychiatrist, I confront my field’s limitations. Despite the noble efforts of clinicians and researchers, our limited insight into the roots of psychiatric disease hinders the search for cures and contributes to the stigmatization of this enormous problem, the leading cause worldwide of years lost to death or disability. Clearly, we need new answers in psychiatry. But as philosopher of science Karl Popper might have said, before we can find the answers, we need the power to ask new questions....

Fear of fires, especially from lit cigarettes, helped ignite the decades-long practice of adding fire retardant chemicals to furniture and other household items. But evidence that some of the chemicals could cause cancer or other health problems eventually led to a protracted fight to get them out of furniture. Now couches made in 2014 could hit the market flame retardant–free. Their chemical cousins, however, are still routinely doused on today’s electronics....