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By Kate McAlpine of Nature magazineThin-film solar cells are plagued by diminishing returns: thinner panels are cheaper to make, but as the semiconductor layer gets thinner it loses its light-trapping ability. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena now report the secret to making thin layers more absorbent–making it possible to use layers up to 100 times thinner than those in the commercial devices available today.A theoretical light-trapping limit, called the ray-optic limit, sets out the maximum amount of light that a material can trap, but reaching that pinnacle requires the material to be thick1....

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spotted solar particles moving at incredible speeds near Saturn, giving scientists a rare up-close look at phenomena that occur during dramatic star explosions. The particles flowed from the sun during a strong blast of solar wind, then plowed into Saturn’s magnetic field shortly thereafter. This encounter, which Cassini observed in February 2007, created a shockwave that accelerated the particles to super-high energies, scientists said. Similar shockwaves commonly form in the aftermath of massive star explosions called supernovas, ramping up nearby particles to nearly the speed of light....

By Manuel Mogato and Rosemarie FranciscoMANILA (Reuters) - The strongest typhoon in the world this year and possibly the most powerful ever to hit land smashed into the Philippines on Friday, forcing more than a million people to flee, flooding villages and raising fears of widespread casualties.Haiyan, a category-5 super typhoon, scoured the northern tip of Cebu province and headed northwest towards Boracay island, both tourist destinations, after lashing the central islands of Leyte and Samar with 275-kph (170 mph) wind gusts and 5-6 meter (15-19 ft) waves....

Your Body puzzle $24.95 at fatbraintoys.com; ages 4 and up A five-layer birch puzzle lets kids peer inside the human body, revealing the digestive tract, nerves and skeleton. Katy Shepard, a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Emory University, says her three-year-old cousin received this puzzle after he pointed to his skin and asked, “What comes next?” Life Cycle Stacking Blocks $19.95 at forsmallhands.com; ages 2 to 6 Paperboard boxes that stack nearly three feet high and feature beautiful illustrations of the life cycles of the butterfly and frog are accompanied by an informative poem, says Julie Frey, a fifth grade teacher at Stuard Elementary School in Aledo, Tex....

By Imelda Abano LIMA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Philippines has long experience coping with flooding and typhoons, including building warning and evacuation systems - but those measures may not be enough to cope with the worsening impacts of climate change, the country’s climate chief warned. As powerful Typhoon Hagupit hammered the Philippines this weekend – the second year in a row the country has been battered by a major storm during the U....

By Priya Shetty of Nature magazineA clinical trial that came under fire in India threatens to have a dual legacy: inflaming unfounded fears about a lifesaving vaccine and raising new questions about the management of medical research in the country. After four teenage girls taking part in a test of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines died last year, the Indian government faced accusations that its citizens were being used as guinea pigs to test dangerous vaccines....

Think back to your first memory. Can you remember your age? Or how you felt? The further back in your recollection you reach, the murkier memories become. There’s a reason these earlier episodes are elusive. This phenomenon, called “childhood amnesia,” may kick in around age eight, according to psychologists from Emory University. The researchers asked parents to chat with their three-year-old children about recent life events such as visiting the zoo or going to a birthday party....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The English word ‘veterinarian’ as defining one who provides medical care to animals, comes from the Latin verb veheri meaning “to draw” (as in “pull”) and was first applied to those who cared for “any animal that works with a yoke” – cattle or horses – in ancient Rome (Guthrie, 1)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. On 10 May 1796, in the later stages of the French Revolution (1789-1799), a group of leftwing agitators were arrested in Paris, charged with plotting to overthrow the French Directory. After a series of trials, two of them were guillotined and seven were deported, and the extremist Jacobins were once again kept from regaining power in France....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The history of the second Persian war as presented in most of the modern literature is solely based on Herodotus’ Histories. However, Herodotus’ narration seems to contain several unrealistic elements which raise doubts about the actual strategy of the Greek alliance. In this article we present an alternative interpretation of Herodotus’ story by using the information derived from an inscription found on a marble tablet of the 3rd century BCE....

By Sid Perkins of Nature magazineThe original colours of a fossilized moth have been brought back to life for the first time. Scientists have concluded that the 47-million-year-old insects once had a yellow-green sheen that warned predators of their foul taste and toxicity when they were exposed during feeding, and provided camouflage when they were resting.Some of the brightest colours in nature come not from chemical pigments but from tiny grooves, layers or other structural patterns in body parts such as feathers or scales, that reflect light to produce different iridescent hues....

If cupid had studied neuroscience, he’d know to aim his arrows at the brain rather than the heart. Recent research suggests that for love to last, it’s best he dip those arrows in oxytocin. Although scientists have long known that this hormone is essential for monogamous rodents to stay true to their mates, and that it makes humans more trusting toward one another, they are now finding that it is also crucial to how we form and maintain romantic relationships....

President Biden thrust his administration into a race to confront the economic risks of global warming by signing an executive order yesterday that brought the once niche issue of climate finance into the highest levels of government. The long-awaited directive requires federal agencies to assess the economic dangers that rising temperatures could have on the government—and homeowners, retirees, businesses and the U.S. financial system. It marks a major turning point for U....

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - Florida’s plan to build a commercial space launch complex in a federal wildlife refuge surrounding the Kennedy Space Center drew sharp words from environmentalists and strong support from business boosters during the project’s first public hearing on Tuesday. Advocates say the proposed spaceport is needed to retain and expand Florida’s aerospace industry, which lost about 8,000 NASA and civilian jobs after the shutdown of the space shuttle program in 2011....

Scientists have discovered a ring system around the dwarf planet Haumea. Earlier this year, Haumea passed between Earth and a distant star, allowing planetary scientists to get a better idea of the dwarf planet’s shape and size. The new findings were announced today (Oct. 11) in the journal Nature. Haumea is one of the largest objects inhabiting an area beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. Pluto is the region’s largest resident, and Haumea shares some characteristics with its larger neighbor....

By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For a leader who has made fighting climate change a priority, President Barack Obama’s decision to approve Royal Dutch Shell’s return to oil and gas exploration off Alaska was seen by many environmentalists as a contradiction. On Tuesday, his administration upheld a 2008 Arctic lease sale, clearing an important hurdle for Shell. The Interior Department will now consider the company’s drilling plan, which could take 30 days....

You are a bag of water—some three quarters H2O at birth, falling to three fifths in adulthood—so the fate of Earth’s freshwater resources in large part delineates your fate as well. “Surface Tension: The Future of Water,” explores the matchless beauty of water and celebrates humankind’s diverse interactions with our most important molecule. The exhibition, being mounted by the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin as part of New York City’s upcoming World Science Festival May 30 to June 3, also considers various critical aspects of the present state of our water supply as well as what may happen to it in time....

Few telescopes in history have had such a profound effect on astronomical research as the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet its influence is not what most people think. By and large, it has not made singular discoveries–achievements that are its and its alone. Instead Hubble has taken what were hints and suspicions from ground-based observations and turned them into near certainties. It has worked in concert with other observatories to provide a multihued view of the cosmos....

We tend to forget that modern humanity is largely sheltered from the last vestiges of wild untamed Earth and that our way of life bears little resemblance to how our ancestors lived during 90 percent of human history. We have lost nearly all trace of these former selves—and, worse, have marginalized the few remaining humans who retain their hunter-gatherer identity. In Tanzania, tribes of wandering foragers called the Hadza, who have lived for thousands of years in the East African Rift Valley ecosystem, tell us an immense and precious story about how humans, together with their microbial evolutionary partners, are adapted to live and thrive in a complex natural environment....

How much sex is enough? You might question the premise of that query, but new research reports that there’s a limit to the benefits of carnal pleasures. Beyond a certain frequency, more sex does not mean more happiness. One possible reason: as long as we are doing it as often as our neighbors are, we’re content. For a recent paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Amy Muise, Ulrich Schimmack and Emily Impett, all at the University of Toronto Mississauga, analyzed three survey samples comprising more than 30,000 Americans....