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Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The gods of the ancient Egyptians were always apparent to the people through natural events. The sunrise was Ra emerging from the underworld in his great ship, for example, and the moon was the god Khonsu traveling across the night sky. When a woman became pregnant, it was through the fertility encouraged by Bes or Tawaret, and the Seven Hathors were present at the child’s birth to declare its destiny....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Mediterranean Sea was the economic focal point of the Roman Empire. Rome’s armies first established an empire across these waters beginning back in the times of the Roman Republic. In 200 CE, the Mediterranean was still the channel that connected the vast Roman Empire. The greatest imperial cities were located along the seacoast, and ships could cross the waters in a fraction of the time it would take to traverse the empire on land....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The pottery of ancient Korea stretches back to prehistory when simple brown wares were made and decorated with geometrical incisions and ends with the production of the superb celadons and white porcelain of the Goryeo dynasty but between these periods the Silla kingdom produced distinctive stoneware and pottery of its own....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Greenland was drawn into the Viking Age and settled by Norse Vikings in the late 980s CE, their presence there lasting into the 15th century CE. Despite its ice-riddled geography, the Norse managed to carve out a living for themselves in these unforgiving lands by seeking out verdant pockets along the south-western coast, founding both the so-called Eastern Settlement (which is located, confusingly, in the south of West-Greenland) and the Western Settlement, some 650 km further north along the west coast in the present-day Nuuk region....

By the close of the 20th century, taxonomy had reached a crossroads. Funds were declining and academic interest dwindling, even as biologists and conservationists raced to identify and quantify species. “During my long engagement in the tropics, I’ve been confronted with the frustration that all biologists feel, with no knowledge of the life systems around them,” explains evolutionary biologist Paul D. N. Hebert, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity....

Gene therapy delivered to the inner ear can help shrivelled auditory nerves to regrow — and in turn, improve bionic ear technology, researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine. The work, conducted in guinea pigs, suggests a possible avenue for developing a new generation of hearing prosthetics that more closely mimics the richness and acuity of natural hearing. Sound travels from its source to ears, and eventually to the brain, through a chain of biological translations that convert air vibrations to nerve impulses....

Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond by Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzke Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2015 (($29.99)) Light is all around us in more ways than we think, present not just in visible rays but in the microwaves that often transmit wireless Internet and the x-rays that expose the health of our teeth and bones. This large-format book provides a visual introduction to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, illustrating each wavelength band with captivating photographs taken through telescopes, microscopes and cameras sensitive to all ranges of light....

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The destruction of the world’s largest rainforest accelerated last year with a 29 percent spike in deforestation, according to final figures released by the Brazilian government on Wednesday that confirmed a reversal in gains seen since 2009. Preliminary data released late last year by Brazil’s space research center INPE had indicated deforestation was on the rise again, as conservationist groups had warned. The largest increases in deforestation were seen in the states of Para and Mato Grosso, where the bulk of Brazil’s agricultural expansion is taking place....

The new reserve, called Alto Maues, has 6,680 square km (668,000 hectares or 1.65 million acres) of mostly untouched forests that are not known to have human presence, the Brazilian Environment Ministry said. Declaring a federal reserve means forest clearing and similar development are forbidden. Putting large areas of mostly intact rainforest under federal protection is one of the tools the Brazilian government has to combat deforestation and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions....

By Monya Baker of Nature magazine Last week, the Sacramento Bee reported that two neurosurgeons at the University of California, Davis, had been banned from research on humans after deliberately infecting three terminally ill cancer patients with pathogenic bacteria in an attempt to treat them. All three died, two showing complications from the infection. Nature explores what happened and the science behind it. Who authorized the researchers to infect the patients?...

In April 2018 a new video of Barack Obama surfaced on the Internet. Against a backdrop that included both the American and presidential flags, it looked like many of his previous speeches. Wearing a crisp white shirt and dark suit, Obama faced the camera and punctuated his words with outstretched hands: “President Trump is a total and complete dipshit.” Without cracking a smile, he continued. “Now, you see, I would never say these things....

At some point in their lives, about half of all Americans will to some degree develop a disorder of anxiety, mood, impulse control or substance (abuse or dependency). Sufferers also hesitate in seeking treatment but get help more often now than 10 years ago. The conclusions come from a national survey of 9,282 households. Percent who will develop a mental disorder during their lives: 46.4 Percent who will develop two: 27....

Careful study of the long-term climate record has shown that even a minor shock to the system can cause an enormous change in outcome, a nonlinear response that has come to be called “abrupt climate change.” Less well recognized is that our social and economic systems are also highly sensitive to climate perturbations. Seemingly modest fluctuations in rainfall, temperature and other meteorological factors can create havoc in vulnerable societies. Recent years have shown that shifts in rainfall can bring down governments and even set off wars....

By Jo Marchant Whoever saves Egypt’s endangered antiquities, it will not be Zahi Hawass. The larger-than-life Egyptologist has been in charge of the country’s archaeological heritage for almost a decade. But he stepped down at the weekend, warning that police are not protecting the sites and that looting has escalated. Hawass had been Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the body responsible for Egypt’s archaeological sites and artefacts, since 2002....

Electric and magnetic fields have been gaining ground as brain therapies because they can exert force on charged objects, such as neurons. Yet they typically affect cells indiscriminately, including healthy ones. Now researchers are looking to aim the fields more precisely to treat brain cancer and major depression. In 2011 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a portable cap that delivers low-intensity, alternating electric fields to tumors in adults with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and stubborn form of brain cancer....

Understanding the human mind in biological terms has emerged as the central challenge for science in the 21st century. We want to understand the biological nature of perception, learning, memory, thought, consciousness and the limits of free will. That biologists would be in a position to explore these mental processes was unthinkable even a few decades ago. Until the middle of the 20th century, when I began my career as a neuroscientist, the idea that mind, the most complex set of processes in the universe, might yield its deepest secrets to biological analysis and perhaps do this on the molecular level could not be entertained seriously....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The theory that the Americas were populated by humans crossing from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge was first proposed as far back as 1590, and has been generally accepted since the 1930s. But genetic evidence shows there is no direct ancestral link between the people of ancient East Asia and modern Native Americans....

By David Douglas NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A diet rich in fish, fruit, and vegetables may reduce endothelial dysfunction and low-grade inflammation and hence lead to less cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to Dutch researchers. “Our study shows for the very first time that a healthy diet influences beneficially an important process that leads to heart disease. Such an effect might be even stronger in those with diabetes and (or) cardiovascular disease already,” Dr....

If artificial intelligence takes over our lives, it probably won’t involve humans battling an army of robots that relentlessly apply Spock-like logic as they physically enslave us. Instead, the machine-learning algorithms that already let AI programs recommend a movie you’d like or recognize your friend’s face in a photo will likely be the same ones that one day deny you a loan, lead the police to your neighborhood or tell your doctor you need to go on a diet....

What do a strangely fading faraway star, an oddly shaped interstellar interloper in the solar system and a curious spate of UFO sightings by members of the U.S. military all have in common? They are all mysterious, for one thing—eye-catchingly weird, yet still just hazy outlines that let the imagination run wild. All have recently generated headlines as possible signs of life and intelligence beyond Earth, of some mind-bogglingly advanced alien culture revealing its existence at last to our relatively primitive and planetbound civilization....