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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. Jade (nephrite) was regarded as the most precious stone in ancient China, and it symbolised purity and moral integrity. Prized for its durability and magical qualities, the stone was laboriously carved and polished into all manner of objects from jewellery to desk ornaments. Jade was especially used for ritual objects such as the bi disc and zong (cong) tubes, both of which are of unknown function....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Scribes in ancient Mesopotamia were highly educated individuals trained in writing and reading on diverse subjects. Initially, their purpose was in recording financial transactions through trade, but in time, they were integral to every aspect of daily life from the palace and temple to the modest village or farm....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Women in ancient Persia were not only highly respected but, in many cases, considered the equals of males. Women could own land, conduct business, received equal pay, could travel freely on their own, and in the case of royal women, hold their own council meetings on policy....

Neuroscientists for the first time have identified regions of the brain involved in envisioning future events. Using brain imaging, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that the human mind taps into the same parts of the brain while imagining the future as it does when recollecting the past. This means that the brain apparently predicts the course of future events by imagining them taking place much like similar past ones....

When it comes to convincing a skeptical evangelical Christian about the need to accept and confront climate change, a Bible can be a more useful tool than any chart, report or PowerPoint presentation. That was the message from two leading environmental advocates who travel frequently between two worlds that are often perceived to be at odds with each other—the scientific and evangelical Christian communities—and have made it their mission to convince evangelicals of the need to take climate change seriously....

Inside the golden-yellow spice turmeric lurks a chemical deceiver: curcumin, a molecule that is widely touted as having medicinal activity, but which also gives false signals in drug screening tests. For years, chemists have urged caution about curcumin and other compounds that can mislead naive drug hunters. Now, in an attempt to stem a continuing flow of muddled research, scientists have published the most comprehensive critical review yet of curcumin—concluding that there’s no evidence it has any specific therapeutic benefits, despite thousands of research papers and more than 120 clinical trials....

Drone strikes have proved an effective, if controversial, weapon in the hunt for al Qaeda operatives in the Middle East and beyond. The use of such unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) domestically for civilian jobs such as U.S. border patrol, weather research, pipeline inspection or even real estate photography has lagged, however, because of a cumbersome Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) case-based approval process. This could change within the next few years as the FAA considers relaxing some restrictions on certain small UAS that would allow them to share the national airspace system with manned aircraft....

When they set out in 2011 to build a human-powered helicopter that could fly 10 feet into the air and hover in one place for 60 seconds, Todd Reichert and Cameron Robertson faced one major obstacle: it was supposed to be impossible. Experts had reached that conclusion after 30 years of failure and crashes, beginning in 1980, when the American Helicopter Society (now AHS International) offered a prize, eventually worth $250,000, for a successful human-powered flight....

From Nature magazine When the Soviet probe Luna 3 sent back the first shots of the dark side of the Moon, they showed that it was noticeably more pockmarked by craters than the near side. The nearside crust, by contrast, had more large, shallow basins. More than 50 years after those images first baffled researchers, a study published today in Science explains the observations. Some theories suggest that the large basins on the near side were caused by impacts from asteroids bigger than those that caused the craters on the far side....

Forty years ago, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries placed an embargo on petroleum, bringing an oil-addled world to its knees. As oil prices quadrupled, the world panicked. In the immediate aftermath, gas stations closed on Sundays. Small, fuel-efficient cars became popular. The U.S. government initiated the first programs into developing solar power and electric vehicles. And Brazil – a developing country under military dictatorship at the time – began the push for what has become the most successful biofuel industry in the world....

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of six features on the science of food, running daily from March 30 through April 6, 2009. Famous for their taste, color and, well, homeliness, heirloom tomatoes tug at the heartstrings of gardeners and advocates of locally grown foods. The tomato aficionado might conclude that, given the immense varieties—which go by such fanciful names as Aunt Gertie’s Gold and the Green Zebra—heirlooms must have a more diverse and superior set of genes than their grocery store cousins, those run-of-the-mill hybrid varieties such as beefsteak, cherry and plum....

Scientific American presents Savvy Psychologist by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Savvy Psychologist: This week we’ll talk about how to talk to strangers and with us is the expert. Brandon Stanton is the creator, photographer, and interviewer behind the acclaimed and wildly popular blog, Humans of New York. His new book is Humans of New York: Stories. Brandon, thank you so much for being on the show....

The rush we feel when newly in love is not an emotion. It is a reward produced by ancient brain pathways that similarly motivate eating and drinking, according to a new, multi-institute study. The results indicate that during the intoxicating early stages of a relationship, “we are driven,” says Lucy L. Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a co-author of the study. “The person we are in love with becomes a goal in our lives....

About 20 years from now astronomers will be in the midst of a revolutionary era of discovery, using new telescopes on the ground and in space to study the cradle-to-grave evolution of galaxies, probe the deepest origins of black holes, glimpse the earliest moments of cosmic time and gather breakthrough images of Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars. On average, those future researchers should also be healthier and happier, more diverse and inclusive, than their present-day counterparts....

India has pledged to slash its emissions intensity relative to economic growth and make a massive push on clean energy by 2030 as part of its formal submission to the United Nations ahead of landmark global warming negotiations in Paris. India’s vow to unconditionally cut emissions intensity 33 to 35 percent below 2005 levels and boost the share of non-fossil-fuel energy sources more than threefold as long as it receives assistance from Western countries was widely praised by the environmental community, even as some said the world’s third-largest emitter could do more....

(Credit:CNET)iPhone 5S buyers could have their choice of screen size, according to Topeka analyst Brian White.Citing information from a meeting with a “tech-supply chain company,” White said today he believes Apple will unveil the iPhone 5S in at least two or possibly three different screen sizes.“We believe Apple is coming around to the fact that one size per iPhone release does not work for everyone, and offering consumers an option has the potential to expand the company’s market share,” White said in an investors note released today....

RAINIER, Ore. – The grainy photograph hanging on the wall of the Ol’ Pastime Tavern here recalls a time when lumber still defined the economy of the Northwest. It was taken in 1924. The tavern – at that time still a hotel and saloon – is perched in the foreground, flanked by smaller clapboard buildings on either side. Railroad tracks run down the main street amid piles of logs waiting for the next train....

Ninety years ago, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began an ambitious search for the brightest kids in California, administering IQ tests to several thousand of children across the state. Those scoring above an IQ of 135 (approximately the top 1 percent of scores) were tracked for further study. There were two young boys, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, who were among the many who took Terman’s tests but missed the cutoff score....

The posed stare-down is a staple of the pre-fight ritual. Two fighters, one day removed from attempting to beat the memories from each other, stand impossibly close, raise their clenched fists and fix their gaze on the other’s eyes as cameras click away. This has always seemed little more than a vehicle for media hype, but new research from psychologists at the University of Illinois suggests that there may be clues in this bit of theatre that predict the results of the fight to come....

It is one of the great symbols of summer: a sunflower (Helianthus annuus) bending to track the path of the Sun from east to west, straining to make the most of each day. At night, the sunflower eases back towards the east in preparation for daybreak. Yet these flowers are not responding simply to light, but also to an internal clock, researchers have found. Plant biologists Hagop Atamian and Stacey Harmer of the University of California in Davis grew sunflowers in a field and then transferred them to growth chambers with a fixed overhead light that was always on....