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Rosetta mission scientists have selected a landing spot on the comet that the European spacecraft has been orbiting since August. They say the target site, on the ‘head’ of the rubber-duck-shaped object, will give them the best chance of safely landing Philae, a washing-machine sized robotic probe. Planned for November 11, the soft-landing will be the first ever attempted on a comet, and the effort is fraught with risk. Scientists for the European Space Agency mission had expected the object, known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to be a regular, potato-shape comet, and they estimated the chance of success at 70-75%....

Not only is stem cell research the most politicised field in the history of science, it is also one of the most dauntingly complex. So while stem cells have the potential to provide therapies for a vast range of ills, it is proving hard to attract the investment needed to develop them. Many venture capitalists make the comparison with monoclonal antibodies, which took more than 20 years to translate from basic research to marketed products....

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to limit sugary drinks is losing juice, but an idea the city has used to convey caloric information about these beverages might actually have legs. Public awareness posters used by the campaign showed the number of miles a person would have to walk to burn off the calories in a 20-ounce soda, and new research suggests that physical activity–based conversions such as these can actually persuade people to make healthier choices....

A top Vatican official yesterday offered a blistering critique of the industrial world’s energy consumption and called for urgent action on climate change. “The ever-accelerating burning of fossil fuels that powers our economic engine is disrupting the earth’s delicate ecological balance on almost unfathomable scale,” Cardinal Peter Turkson warned a Vatican audience that included U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “In our recklessness, we are traversing some of the planet’s most fundamental natural boundaries,” he said....

Movie fans across the world will soon be treated to an epic spectacle: the billowing sands and remorseless sun of Arrakis, the desert planet at the heart of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune. Newly adapted to the silver screen by Denis Villeneuve, the story is set some 20,000 years in the future, but the landscape is familiar. We have seen the same endless, lifeless seas of sand in so many films, from spaghetti Westerns and Lawrence of Arabia to more recent blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road or No Country for Old Men....

Chemicals that seem to act as sex-specific signals tickle the brains of gay men and straight women in a similar way. Using brain scans, Swedish researchers had found that women getting a whiff of the steroid derivative androstadienone, found in sweat, experience increased blood flow in a part of their hypothalamus known to release sexual hormones. Male sniffers responded instead to an estrogen derivative. Now the group has observed that in gay men the same brain location, called the peroptic area, responds to androstadienone rather than the estrogenlike steroid....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Matter of Aratta is the modern-day title for a collection of four poems – Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, and Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird – concerning the rivalry between the cities of Uruk and Aratta and dated to the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In any society, members of the community recognize they are required to restrain certain impulses in order to participate in the community. Every civilization has had some form of law which makes clear that the benefits of peaceful coexistence with one’s clan, city, village, or tribe outweigh the gratification of selfish desires, and should one act on such desires at others’ expense, there will be consequences....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Today, traveling an hour by ferry from Piraeus, the port of Athens, the first remnant of Aegina’s great past a visitor will see is the lonely pillar of Apollo rising from the trees on the hill of Kolona. Once a splendid complex of three buildings (the Temple of Apollo itself rose on eleven large pillars and six smaller ones) and a cemetery (in which a large collection of gold and jewelry was found in the tombs, now housed in the British Museum) the pillar of Apollo is all that remains....

BEIJING (Reuters) - A nationwide investigation has shown that as much as 16 percent of China’s soil contains higher-than-permitted levels of pollution, the environment ministry said on Thursday. China is desperate to tackle the impact of rapid industrialization and urbanization on its food supplies, with the aim of maintaining self-sufficiency and reducing its dependence on grain imports amid soaring demand. The Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a notice posted on its website (www....

The news that researchers want to create human-animal chimeras has generated controversy recently, and may conjure up ideas about Frankenstein-ish experiments. But chimeras aren’t always man-made—and there are a number of examples of human chimeras that already exist. A chimera is essentially a single organism that’s made up of cells from two or more “individuals”—that is, it contains two sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms. One way that chimeras can happen naturally in humans is that a fetus can absorb its twin....

Inside every cell is a chef of sorts, cooking up the “cuisine” that makes life possible—a vast array of proteins. Now scientists have built an alien chef, capable of cooking from recipes written in artificial DNA to make novel proteins that might serve as antibiotics, biofuels or other useful molecules. In the typical order of things, these chefs, known as ribosomes, are made of two pieces of RNA and amino acids that work together briefly to build proteins and then go their own ways when the job is done....

Do cosmic rays cause lightning? —B. Whiteside, Woodridge, III. Joseph R. Dwyer, a professor of physics and space sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, has wondered the same thing: Although some researchers have proposed that cosmic rays instigate lightning, others, including me, have voiced doubts about this theory. At present, the debate remains unsettled. Decades of measurements inside thunderstorms have failed to find electric fields larg e enough to spontaneously spark lightning....

“The Biden Plan for Education beyond High School,” a platform document circulated by Joe Biden’s team during the 2020 presidential campaign, refers to community colleges as “America’s best kept secret.” While that may come as a surprise to the 8.2 million students enrolled in these institutions (who represent 37 percent of the country’s year-round undergraduates, according to the U.S. Department of Education), it is a point worthy of consideration. Higher education in the U....

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Moderate- or high-quality evidence supports the use of marijuana for some medical conditions, but not for others, according to a fresh review of past research. After reviewing 80 randomized trials that included nearly 6,500 people, researchers found moderate support for using marijuana to treat chronic pain and muscle spasms and involuntary movements. The evidence wasn’t as strong to support marijuana’s use for nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, sleep disorders, HIV-related weight loss and Tourette syndrome....

By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drug to treat low female sexual desire should be approved with strict measures in place to ensure patients are fully aware of its risks, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded on Thursday. Eighteen panelists voted in favor of approving the drug with a risk management program. Six voted against approval. None voted to approve the product without such a program....

Global food prices have roughly doubled in three years. At the World Food Summit in Rome in early June, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon recalled that on a trip to Liberia he encountered people who had once bought rice by the bag and whose cash now suffices for a meager cupful. The current crisis means that another 100 million hungry may join the 854 million who already lack sufficient daily nourishment....

With much of the nation’s attention focused on Western wildfires, a different climate disaster arrived overnight with a roundhouse kick. Hurricane Sally this morning is lashing parts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle with torrential rain and life-threatening storm surge, according to the National Hurricane Center. By lunch, it could dump between 10 and 30 inches of rain along densely developed beaches and bays from Biloxi, Miss., to Pensacola, Fla....

To contemplate genius is to call forth history’s month fascinating people.Take Leonardo da Vinci, whose artworks— The Last Supper, the Mona Lisa—shine like beacons across the centuries. His scientific writings secured his position as the quintessential Renaissance man. Other polymaths also stand out as exemplars of genius: René Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, Mikhail Lomonosov. The patterns hidden in the names we summon are telling. The people we choose to venerate expose both the defining cognitive features and the circumstances that kindle exceptional creativity....

Venomous lionfish are striking to look at, with bold stripes and flowing, sail-like fins. However, scientists are paying especially close attention to the fish not for their beauty, but for their ability to invade ecosystems where they have no natural predators. The fish also tend to multiply in numbers that upset the balance of native biodiversity. A new study shows that the first wave of a lionfish invasion has struck in the Mediterranean Sea, a region where these fish had not been established before....