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By Toru Hanai HIROSHIMA (Reuters) - At least 36 people, including several children, were killed in Japan on Wednesday, when landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into the outskirts of the western city of Hiroshima, and the toll could rise further, police said. Seven people were missing after a month’s worth of rain fell overnight, loosening slopes already saturated by heavy rain over the past few weeks. “There was rain and thunder all night, beating down so hard I was scared to go outside,” a resident told Fuji TV....

By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazineAfter months of soul-searching, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has agreed on reforms intended to restore confidence in its integrity and its assessments of climate science.Created as a United Nations body in 1988 to analyze the latest knowledge about Earth’s changing climate, it has worked with thousands of scientists and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. But its reputation crumbled when its leadership failed to respond effectively to mistakes–including a notorious error about the rate of Himalayan glacier melting–that had slipped into its most recent assessment report (see Nature 463, 276-277; 2010)....

The Search for Our Planet’s Twin Michael D. Lemonick Walker & Company, 2012 ($26) Scientists hunting for planets outside our solar system may be just months away from discovering Earth’s twin—a rocky planet like our own, spinning around a star at the right distance to sustain life. In this book, Lemonick, a science writer, spotlights “Exoplaneteer Rock Stars,” the scientists who detect planets by marking the telltale wobbles and flickers of the stars that they orbit....

Scientists use pipettes when they need to dispense well-defined volumes of liquid. Existing pipettes can deliver fluid volumes as small as an attoliter—a quintillionth, or a billionth of a billionth, of a liter. Physicists Peter W. Sutter and Eli A. Sutter of Brookhaven National Lab­oratory have broken that lower limit by constructing a pipette that metes out a droplet measured in a unit that is a thousandth as small—a zeptoliter (a sextillionth of a liter)....

At an environmental science workshop this past spring, Columbia University ecologist Shahid Naeem mused, “Gone are the good old days when you could do ecology just because it was fun.” Those in his profession might once have analyzed ecosystems purely for the intellectual challenge, but today their work has an urgency to it. They return to a forest they had worked in, only to find it chopped down; they hear older colleagues reminisce about birds last seen decades ago; they walk on permafrost turned mushy by global warming....

By Jonathan Kaminsky(Reuters) - A rare oarfish has washed up on the California coast for the second time in less than a week, authorities said, leaving experts stumped.The second carcass of the eel-like species was discovered on Friday on a beach in Oceanside, a city police dispatcher said.The 14-foot (4.3-meter) fish, which has a pug-like face and a skeleton of bone, was found five days after a marine instructor snorkeling off Santa Catalina Island, about 50 miles to the west, spotted a dead 18-foot (5....

OBESITY is a “global epidemic,” according to the World Health Organization. Two thirds of American adults and one third of school-age children are either overweight or obese (defined as extremely overweight). These proportions have been rising steeply, report the latest surveys. From 1960 to 2002 the population of overweight and obese adults increased by roughly 50 percent, and the corresponding increase for children was 300 percent. Compounding the problem, obesity rates in other countries are rapidly approaching those in the U....

Atomic clocks are currently the most precise timekeepers in the universe. But they are not quite good enough for all purposes. To work correctly, forthcoming technologies such as quantum computers might require clocks that are even more exact than existing timepieces. Nobel physics laureate David Wineland will describe efforts to develop the next generation of atomic clocks, called optical clocks, in a public lecture to be broadcast live on this page Wednesday, November 4 at 7 P....

After two years of decline, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere because of human activity increased 2 percent in 2013 over the previous year. That surge was fueled, in large part, because of a growing economy, falling coal prices and a cold winter, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday in its annual greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Emissions across nearly all sectors grew in 2013, with increased GHG emissions from electricity generation, more vehicle miles traveled on the nation’s roadways and greater industrial production, according to the EPA....

LONDON – Power-generating stations worldwide release 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year as they burn coal, oil or natural gas; home and commercial heating plants release another 11 billion tons. A team of Dutch scientists has a use for it. Power plants could, they argue, pump the carbon dioxide through water or other liquids and produce a flow of electrons – and therefore more electricity. This would be enough, they argue, to create 1,750 terawatt hours of extra electricity annually – about 400 times the output of the Hoover Dam in the Nevada – and all without adding an extra gasp of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere....

Physicians have known for a long time that, for most men, sex is safe and even life-prolonging. Yet evidence is growing that, at least for adulterers, the picture is different. In a review of the literature on infidelity published online in April in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers presented intriguing evidence that extramarital sex can kill. To be sure, death by copulation is rare. But the data suggest that when it happens, it usually happens to adulterers, and the cause is typically cardiovascular....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. African slave life in Colonial British America was far worse than slavery practiced in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. The indigenous tribes took people as slaves in raids, enslaved those convicted of crimes, and traded slaves between tribes but the enslaved were thought to have done something to deserve their fate....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Cain and Abel are the first two sons of Adam and Eve after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden in the biblical book of Genesis. According to the biblical story, Cain killed Abel because God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but rejected Cain’s. With this act of jealousy, Cain became the first murderer....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Religion in Colonial America was dominated by Christianity although Judaism was practiced in small communities after 1654. Christian denominations included Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, German Pietists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Quakers among others. Religion was fully integrated into the lives of the colonists and completely informed their world view....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Roman artillery weapons were instrumental in the successes of the Roman army over centuries and were especially used in siege warfare, both for offence and defence. Principally used in fixed positions or onboard ships, these machines, known generally as ballistae, could fire bolts or heavy stones over several hundred metres to punch holes in enemy fortifications, batter ships, and cause devastation in the ranks of opposing troops....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Tea, still probably the world’s most popular prepared beverage, was first drunk by Chinese monks to aid meditation and those who valued its medicinal qualities, but it quickly grew in popularity, spreading to other East Asian cultures, especially Japan. An elaborate ceremony for its preparation and consumption developed which sought to foster the appreciation and beauty of life’s simple luxuries....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. One of the most effective and enduring military formations in ancient warfare was that of the Greek phalanx. The age of the phalanx may be traced back to Sumeria in the 25th century BCE, through Egypt, and finally appearing in Greek literature through Homer in the 8th century BCE (and since has been generally associated with Greek warfare strategy, the name itself coming from the Greek word for ‘finger’)....

Bees use an egg yolk protein to prime their offspring’s immune system against different pathogens, Finnish researchers have discovered. This deeper understanding of how honeybee immune systems function means that a bee ‘vaccine’ capable of protecting pollinators against disease is now potentially within reach. Although honeybees are commercially important pollinators, populations are in decline and stress, illness and pesticides have been blamed for the current crisis. Their disappearance has become an increasingly urgent issue and several new pesticide policies have been enacted in response....

The Southern Ocean’s legendary winds have been blowing more fiercely and in a more poleward direction since the 1950s. Temperature observations are sparse around the hostile continent, but scientists recently modeled the ocean current knock-on effects of these wind changes, which have been caused by ozone thinning and by the buildup of greenhouse gases. The scientists were blown away by the vicious climate change feedback that they unearthed. The researchers reported that the shifting winds “produce an intense warming” just below the surface of the ocean....

Show a man a picture of an attractive woman, and he might play riskier blackjack. With a real-life pretty woman watching, he might cross traffic against a red light. Such exhibitions of agility and bravado are the behavioral equivalent in humans of physical attributes such as antlers and horns in animals. “Mate with me,” they signal to women. “I can brave danger to defend you and the children.” So says Lei Chang, a psychologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong....