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The past year has been both tempestuous and exciting—from pet food, E. coli and toy poisoning scares to political fireworks over embryonic stem cell research to forest fires ravaging California. A controversial Nobel scientist (James Watson) went down in a blaze of infamy, tumbling from grace after putting his foot in his mouth one time too many, whereas a former vice president and defeated presidential candidate (Al Gore) rose from the ashes to become a Nobel Peace prize (and Oscar) winner for raising awareness on the urgency of global warming....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. While you’re biting the heads off your chocolate bunnies this weekend, you might wonder how cartoon rabbits became so central to our Easter celebrations. It’s tempting to assume that because there’s no biblical basis for the Easter Bunny, rabbits and hares have no religious significance – but that’s just not the case. Leviticus 11:6 states that the hare is an unclean animal: “The hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you”“, but in Christian art, it is regularly associated with rebirth and resurrection....

We are living through an inarguably challenging time. Earlier this year the U.S. faced its highest daily COVID-19 case counts yet. Uncertainty and division continue to dog the aftermath of the presidential election. We are a nation and a world under stress. But Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who studies the visual system, sees matters a bit differently. Stress, he says, is not just about the content of what we are reading or the images we are seeing....

Whether it takes weeks, as US President Donald Trump has hinted, or months, as most health-care experts expect, an approved vaccine against the coronavirus is coming, and it’s hotly anticipated. Still, it will initially be in short supply while manufacturers scale up production. As the pandemic continues to put millions at risk daily, including health-care workers, older people and those with pre-existing diseases, who should get vaccinated first? This week, a strategic advisory group at the World Health Organization (WHO) weighed in with preliminary guidance for global vaccine allocation, identifying groups that should be prioritized....

Scientists call it Peto’s paradox: cancer is caused by gene mutations that accumulate in cells over time, yet long-lived animals that have lots of cells, such as elephants and whales, hardly ever get it. Why? For elephants, at least, part of the answer may be the gene commonly known as p53, which also helps humans and many other animals repair DNA damaged during replication. Elephants have an astounding 20 copies of this gene....

Thousands of meters below the ice near the South Pole lies one of the most unusual observatories ever constructed. The instrument’s nervous system comprises 86 strands of light detectors, stretching down into the ice sheet like oversize strings of pearls. Each strand features 60 basketball-size detectors, spanning the depths from 1,450 to 2,450 meters below the surface. And the body of the observatory is the ice itself, an abundant medium with an astonishing natural clarity....

Lawmakers of both parties are proposing amendments to the so-called energy independence bill that would massively subsidize the coal industry to produce liquid coal as a replacement for foreign oil. (The admirable original bill is designed to increase fuel efficiency in cars and light trucks, encourage production of biofuels, and provide funds to develop technology that will capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.) Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, opposed big subsidies for coal-based fuels until mid-June, when he moved to offer up to $10 billion in loans for coal-to-liquid plants....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ghost stories were the earliest form of literature in ancient China. They were almost certainly part of a very old oral tradition before writing developed during the Shang Dynasty (1600 - 1046 BCE) and they continue to be popular in China today. Ghosts were taken very seriously by the ancient Chinese....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld is a Sumerian poem pre-dating The Epic of Gilgamesh and featuring its central characters. It is sometimes included in modern-day translations as Book 12 but is usually omitted as it does not fit the narrative form of the epic’s storyline. It is famous for its depiction of souls in the afterlife....

Unlike its golden-brown neighbor further south, Washington state was blessed with relatively generous storms over winter. But, as was the case in drought-stricken California, the naturally wild whims of Pacific Ocean winds conspired with a touch of global warming to bask the Evergreen State in unusual wintertime warmth. Instead of snowfall, Washington residents huddled under winter rains, and what little snowpack accumulated has been quickly wasting away. Without those snowpacks, Washington is staring down a brutal summertime drought—despite the productive lashings of wintertime storms....

Peter Pressman of the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, Calif. and Roger Clemens of the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy explain. Food craving, defined as an intense desire to eat a specific foodstuff, is a common occurrence across all cultures and societies. These yearnings, and those associated with nonfoodstuffs such as pagophagia (the practice of consuming ice) and geophagia (literally, earth-eating), are not linked to any obvious nutrient insufficiency....

CLEVELAND—Eleven House Republicans who are trying to change their party’s attitude on climate change appear to be skipping the GOP convention beginning here today. Several also say they won’t vote for presumed presidential nominee Donald Trump. The decision signals a sense of foreboding about Trump’s candidacy by some of the party’s most visible supporters of tackling global warming. The group of lawmakers are working on a package of bills to cut greenhouse gas emissions by promoting clean energy and other programs that they believe could appeal to some conservatives....

As an idea for wiping out cancer, it could have been ripped from the pages of a spy thriller: Take cancer cells that have departed the original tumor and spread elsewhere in the body, genome-edit them to be stone-cold killers, then wait for the homesick cells to return and make like émigré assassins. In a study four years in the making, scientists reported on Wednesday that “rehoming” cells that had been CRISPR’d to attack cells in the original tumor improved survival in lab mice with brain cancer, as well as in mice with breast cancer that spread to the brain....

In the past decade an extraordinary claim has captivated cosmologists: that the expanding universe we see around us is not the only one; that billions of other universes are out there, too. There is not one universe—there is a multiverse. In Scientific American articles and in books such as Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, leading scientists have spoken of a super-Copernican revolution. In this view, not only is our planet one among many, but even our entire universe is insignificant on the cosmic scale of things....

In July a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wy. and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people. The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies....

U.S. EPA said today that it will reconsider a Bush-administration memorandum describing why the government should not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired power plants. In a letter to the Sierra Club, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency would grant the advocacy group’s petition seeking reconsideration of former Administrator Stephen Johnson’s memo. Environmentalists have argued that the memo unlawfully tries to establish a new and binding interpretation of the Clean Air Act that violates a decision by EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, which said the agency must consider global warming emissions when issuing permits for new coal-fired power plants....

Despite those who romanticize depression as the wellspring of artistic genius, studies find that people are most creative when they are in a good mood, and now researchers may have explained why: For better or worse, happy people have a harder time focusing. University of Toronto psychologists induced a happy, sad or neutral state in each of 24 participants by playing them specially chosen musical selections. To instill happiness, for example, they played a jazzy version of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No....

Astronomers have discovered a trove of exoplanets—more than 700 worlds in orbit around distant stars, with leads on thousands of additional suspects. So now, naturally, they’re beginning to ask: What moons might be in orbit about these planets? It is a reasonable question. Most of the planets in our solar system host sizable natural satellites. And in some planetary systems, the moons of an extrasolar planet could themselves be favorable habitats for extraterrestrial life....

You have probably heard the expression, “Life is short: play with your dog.” “Okay!” you think, “I’ll do it!” After all, dogs play together until they are exhausted. They also play with people, although that is not always a given. Have you ever tried to play with a dog, and it just doesn’t work? “The dog’s not playing right,” you may think. “This stinks.” Don’t be so quick to blame the dog....

Millions of tiny microbes infest the water that carries the detritus of human life and society. Some of them steadily break down the organic material in waste streams and produce electrons in the process. By harvesting these electrons, scientists have created microbial fuel cells. New research shows how such biological power plants can be stacked to create usable current. Willy Verstraete and his colleagues at Ghent University in Belgium tested the fuel cells in an array of configurations: in a series, in parallel and individually....