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“Drill, baby, drill” has become a slogan of those who want to produce more oil and gas and who scoff at alternatives to petroleum. But rarely mentioned is the expense required to get that oil and gas—and still more rarely mentioned is the energy required to access those resources. Charles Hall, an ecologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, has spent most of his long career trying to get fellow researchers and the public to take a serious look at the energy required to get the energy we use....

This is just one more piece of evidence. Please imagine the essential goodness of a woman in Australia who went onto the classifieds Web site Gumtree, in search of a couple of iPhones. As the Herald Sun reports, the core of an agreement was reached between the woman and another woman who called her on seeing the ad. They arranged to meet at a McDonald’s in the Sunnybank suburb of Brisbane....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. A Model of Christian Charity is a sermon delivered by the Puritan John Winthrop (l. c. 1588-1649 CE), second governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, either just before or after his ship, the Arbella, set sail from England for North America in 1630 CE. The sermon has become famous for the passage in which Winthrop compares the colony to a ‘city on a hill’, a reference to the biblical passage from Matthew 5:14 in which Jesus Christ encourages his followers by telling them, “You are the light of the world....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ai Khanum (also spelled Ai-Khanoum or Ay-Khanum, lit. “Lady Moon” in Uzbek), was founded in the 4th century BC, following the conquests of Alexander the Great and was one of the primary cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. The site is located in the northern part of modern Afghanistan, in a little plain between the Amou-Darya and the Kokcha....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Cats and humans have shared in each other’s lives for thousands of years and, even though they have not always been regarded as highly as in the present, have played an important role in a number of cultures. Always enigmatic, the cat has sometimes been mistrusted by various civilizations but always managed to prove their worth....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In this article, we look at the lives and deeds of seven notorious women pirates. There is Teuta, the Balkan enemy of ancient Rome; Alwilda, the Scandinavian princess who chose a life of crime on the High Seas; Maria Lindsey, who terrorized the northern Atlantic; the Irish pirate and folk hero Grace O’Malley; the widow Zheng Yi Sao, who led a huge Chinese pirate fleet; and two figures from the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1720) in the Caribbean: Anne Bonny and Mary Read....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Venice was one of the most powerful empires in maritime history. It is now a leading tourist attraction and a must-visit for anyone interested in history and cross-cultural influence. People are drawn to this picturesque city to see the canals, ride gondolas, taste delicious Italian food and, of course, visit St....

The electric power industry can achieve deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by building new nuclear plants, sequestering coal-plant emissions, boosting wind energy and improving efficiency, the industry’s top research group said yesterday. The Electric Power Research Institute’s report on decarbonizing electricity generation said an “aggressive” push on new technologies could lower 2005-level carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 41 percent in 2030. EPRI’s conclusions about energy technology gains were fed into a second computer model to assess the costs of stripping 80 percent of 1990-level carbon emissions out of the electricity sector by 2050, approximating the goal of the House-passed climate bill....

The ongoing tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic afflicts every corner of the world. Vaccines may be our best hope for a safe return to workplaces, parties, stores and schools, but even if all leading vaccine candidates are protective, the British charity Oxfam estimates that nearly two thirds of the world’s population will not have access until at least 2022. We suggest a scalable alternative that may prevent morbidity and mortality from Covid-19 in the meantime: the common cold....

Dozens of power industry executives who flew to Washington for a Monday meeting with U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had three minutes apiece to tell him whether they want to replace the Clean Power Plan. Many said that if EPA follows through with rescinding the rule, the agency should write a less stringent carbon regulation that sets efficiency standards for coal plants. That would give the industry certainty to make planning decisions, they said....

A supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), resides at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Findings presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, Calif., indicate that it, in turn, could be surrounded by a swarm of smaller black holes that have accumulated over billions of years. The results suggest that the smaller black holes will eventually fall into the supermassive black hole, increasing its size and helping astronomers better understand how such black holes grow....

WASHINGTON/AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Two explosions hit the flood-swamped Arkema SA (AKE.PA) chemical plant 25 miles northeast of Houston early on Thursday, and a sheriff’s deputy was taken to a hospital after inhaling fumes, the French company said. Arkema said further explosions of organic peroxides produced by the Crosby, Texas, plant and stored onsite were possible, and it urged people to stay away as the fire burns itself out. Black smoke was billowing from the site, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters at a televised news briefing....

Scientists and forest agency officials yesterday said they see a link between climate change and the record-breaking 2015 wildfire season. Parsing the exact role a changing climate played in the historic burns can be challenging, especially in Western forests overstocked with woody kindling due to decades of fire suppression and a relatively hands-off forest management policy. But, experts agreed, there is clear evidence that a warmer, drier climate played a central role....

For years, research on fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic mental illness, has suffered from an inadequate mouse model. But Israeli researchers unveiled an improved model that uses human embryonic stem cells to track the mechanism at the root of the disorder, which affects one in 4,000 boys and one in 6,000 girls. In humans, the disorder stems from a mutation on the X chromosome as a three-base sequence begins to repeat over and over in a section of the fragile X mental retardation 1 gene (FMR1)....

Today you have to choose: Blackberry-style keypad or the touch screen of iPhone and others. Keypads provide handy tactile feedback and are durable, but the keys are small and cut down the screen size. The dynamic keypads of touch-sensitive screens let you easily summon or dismiss letters, numbers or symbols, but the lack of well-defined keys make accuracy challenging, and typing on a flat surface is less pleasing for some users....

When the underwater Axial volcano erupted on April 24, scientists were watching. Monitoring instruments on the sea floor off Oregon captured the action in real time, in an unprecedented look at a deep-sea eruption—the most common type of volcanic activity on Earth. The event is the first major test for the $386-million Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The program, funded by the National Science Foundation, is in the final stages of putting oceanographic instruments in dense networks in just a few portions of the ocean—including Axial Seamount....

Pockmarked Mercury may superficially look like Earth’s moon, but close-up images show that it is anything but moonlike. NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft transmitted these and other images during its first flyby of the scorched planet on January 14. Scientists last saw such detail when Mariner 10 zipped past 33 years ago, and thanks to better equipment and different lighting angles, MESSENGER has gleaned new information. Equipped with 11 color filters, MESSENGER’s eyes can see beyond what human vision can detect....

By Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) - One man died, more than 500,000 people were urged to evacuate and hundreds of flights were cancelled in Japan as a strong typhoon brought torrential rain and high winds to its southwestern islands and could bring heavy rain to Tokyo later this week. Typhoon Neoguri weakened from its original status as a super typhoon but remained intense, with gusts of more than 250 km per hour (155 mph)....

After Flint, Mich., switched from purchasing water via Detroit to sourcing locally from the Flint River, residents began noticing a change in water quality. One resident—Lee Anne Walters—suspected the water might be toxic, and had her water tested for lead. She brought samples to Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a world-renowned expert on water treatment. He found lead levels in her tap water at 13,200 parts per billion; the U....

The authors, both correspondents for the Economist, argue that to protect the environment and lessen our dependence on oil, we must rethink the automobile. Oil is the problem, they say; cars are the solution. They are hugely optimistic about the time frame for the new generation of cars, contending that the revolution is already under way—in Japan, Silicon Valley, India and China—as entrepreneurs work on cars powered by hydrogen, electricity and biofuels....