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As computers become progressively faster and more powerful, they’ve gained the impressive capacity to simulate increasingly realistic environments. Which raises a question familiar to aficionados of The Matrix—might life and the world as we know it be a simulation on a super advanced computer? “Digital physicists” have developed this idea well beyond the sci-fi possibilities, suggesting a new scientific paradigm in which computation is not just a tool for approximating reality but is also the basis of reality itself....

The quest to chronicle the past using DNA from ancient humans and animals has become a cut-throat ‘game of bones’, in which a handful of genetics laboratories are hoarding precious samples, three archaeologists charge in a August 9 letter to Nature. The scientists call for more careful stewardship of DNA-rich bone specimens to ensure that they remain available to multiple research teams to study. They point to the example of a newly established centre in Israel that will act as a national clearing house to curate animal bones from archaeological sites, so that many researchers can access samples for genetic analysis....

Psychologists know that “secure attachments”—close, positive relationships such as healthy marriages and good friendships—increase our interest in new experiences. Babies who have learned they can count on their moms, for example, tend to try unfamiliar toys in a lab more readily than do babies whose insecure attachment to caregivers makes them anxious and clingy. A recent set of studies published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin reveals a surprising explanation for this attachment-exploration link: feeling alive and full of energy....

Unlike other jumping spiders, with their furry, round bodies, Myrmarachne species have smooth, elongate bodies that give the appearance of having the three distinct parts—head, thorax and abdomen—of ants, despite having just two. To complete the charade, the spiders walk on their three rear pairs of legs and raise the fourth pair overhead, waving them around to simulate ant antennae. They even adopt ants’ characteristically fast, erratic, nonstop mode of locomotion in place of the stop-and-go movements other jumping spiders make....

After a tumultuous decade, the nation’s astronomical community is once again preparing to rank its scientific priorities for at least the next 10 years. Seeking life on Earth-like exoplanets, discerning the deepest origins of the cosmos, reading ripples in the fabric of spacetime—these are just a handful of the options that will battle for top spots in the community’s next Decadal Survey, an authoritative roadmap Congressional appropriators and federal agencies rely on for future planning....

By Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Department of Homeland Security will grant temporary protected status to people from the three West African countries most affected by Ebola who are currently residing in the United States, department officials said on Thursday. People from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone in the United States as of Thursday may apply for protection from deportation, as well as for work permits, for 18 months, said a Department of Homeland Security official....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Ara Pacis Augustae or Altar of the Augustan Peace in Rome was built to celebrate the return of Augustus in 13 BCE from his campaigns in Spain and Gaul. The marble structure, which once stood on the Campus Martius, is a masterpiece of Roman sculpture and, in particular, of portraiture....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The society in the Byzantine Empire (4th-15th century CE) was dominated by the imperial family and the male aristocracy but there were opportunities for social advancement thanks to wars, population movements, imperial gifts of lands and titles, and intermarriage. The majority of the lower classes would have followed the profession of their parents, but inheritance, the accumulation of wealth, and a lack of any formal prohibition for one class to move to another did at least offer a small possibility for a person to better their social position....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The arrival in Europe of the printing press with moveable metal type in the 1450s CE was an event which had enormous and long-lasting consequences. The German printer Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468 CE) is widely credited with the innovation and he famously printed an edition of the Bible in 1456 CE....

The finding provides further evidence that antibodies—specialized proteins that the body produces to fight infections—could one day be used as a method to prevent people from becoming infected with HIV. “A caveat is that monkeys are not humans, but the model the authors use is about as good as it gets, and the results are a boost to HIV vaccine research and the use of passive antibodies as long-acting preventives,” said immunologist Dennis Burton of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who was not involved with the work....

Editor’s note: This Q&A is a part of a survey conducted by Scientific American of executives at companies engaged in developing and implementing non–fossil fuel energy technologies. What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of nuclear fission? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? Technical obstacles to building new nuclear plants include addressing licensing, design certification and first-of-a kind engineering. The new Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing process provides for design certification, early site approval and combined licensing for construction and operation....

A social gathering in the Cambrian era, beginning some 540 million years ago, might have resembled an underwater war game—all life resided in the ocean then and almost every creature present would have been wearing some sort of external armor, complete with spiked helmets. The ancestors of insects and crustaceans wore full exoskeletons, probably made from a mixture of protein and chitin like the shells of modern lobsters. Starfishlike organisms and mollusks manufactured their body armor from calcium carbonate extracted from seawater....

Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war....

Scientists have been trying to develop room-temperature superconductors—materials that conduct electrons with zero resistance, and do so without cumbersome, energy-sucking supercooling—for more than three decades. Now researchers predict that a new material called stanene, composed of a one-atom-thick sheet of tin, could act much like a room-temperature superconductor, leading to faster, more efficient microchips. Stanene is a type of topological insulator, a novel class of materials that have intrigued researchers for the past decade....

Electric drive vehicles have the potential to wean the United States off foreign oil and drive it toward an era of zero-emissions transportation, but that potential is being pushed into the more distant future by the ominous fact that most consumers aren’t buying them. Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), which include both battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. car market. Add in hybrids, which are selling at a much faster rate, and electrified vehicle sales are still only around 3 percent....

PARIS – For the first time, a panel of climate experts has confirmed that global warming is occurring and that it is “very likely”–90 percent certain–man-made. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a working group of some 3,000 delegates from 113 countries, today issued its final report here on the state of climate change–and the findings were grim. “There can be no question that the increases in these greenhouse gases are dominated by human activity,” says Susan Solomon, co-chair of the working group and an atmospheric scientist with the U....

Global carbon dioxide emissions will increase 43 percent by 2035 if major nations remain tied to existing energy policies and do not act to curb global warming, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. EIA, in its 2010 long-term global energy analysis, predicts oil prices will hover around $133 a barrel in 2035 and energy use will increase 49 percent between 2007 and 2035. Most of that new energy consumption will be out of China, India and other developing countries as they churn out steel, build more power plants and drive more cars....

A potentially lucrative new market is emerging around the exchange of energy between plug-in vehicles and the electrical grid, particularly as more low-carbon power generation sources come online. So-called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies are enabling electric vehicle (EV) batteries to provide ancillary services to the grid that can complement intermittent renewable energy sources or shave demand during peak hours – something utilities, automakers and consumers are seeing as a business opportunity....

Want to see the future of turf grass? It’s growing at Rutgers University in a “library” of grasses on thousands of 4-foot by 6-foot research plots – 12,000 plots exclusively for bent grasses destined for golf courses. Samples come from around the world, especially Europe, where most turf grasses used in the United States originate. University researchers work with some 25 seed companies to develop new varieties; the university earns royalties through licensing and marketing agreements....

Many of us think of invention as something that springs from an individual mind. It’s a romantic view, but it bears little relation to the creative process behind the technologies that are shaping our world. That process is increasingly collaborative—not so much a single lightbulb going off in someone’s head as many lightbulbs in a social network of diverse minds. The growing connectedness of the world and the rising contribution of scientists and engineers from all continents have broadened the possibilities for human creativity....