Posts

Shortly after his landslide victory in 2014 Prime Minister Narendra Modi startled India’s scientific community by mentioning the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh as evidence that ancient Indians had knowledge of plastic surgery. Then this yeara junior minister of human resource development mocked Darwin’s theory of evolution, saying no one had ever witnessed apes turning into people. And last month India’s Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan made apparently unsubstantiated claims that Stephen Hawking had suggested the Vedas, India’s ancient Hindu scriptures, might offer a theory superior to Albert Einstein’s E = mc2....

When ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. announced last week that it would transition to 100% electric vehicles by 2030, observers cheered its ambitious commitment to curbing climate pollution. But as analysts dig into the details, some are questioning whether the company can—and will—make good on its promise. “It’s a noble commitment. But it needs to be backed by a plan and financial resources,” said Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Autotrader. “It’s easy to throw out a goal....

Many people with drug-resistant depression have found relief via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Yet the mechanism of this relief has been unknown. Now a study finds that TMS may work by correcting connectivity. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College used functional MRI to scan the brains of 17 patients with depression and 35 healthy volunteers while they were not focusing on anything in particular. Previous research has shown that the regions active in this resting state, known as the default mode network, are hyperconnected in depression....

Children of long-lived parents have a lower-than-average risk of heart disease in middle age, according to the latest results from a decades-long study tracking the heart health of residents of Framingham, Mass. Researchers found that if one or both of a person’s parents survived to the ripe old age of 85, then that lucky individual could expect lower blood pressure and cholesterol—two major risk factors for heart disease, the nation’s number one killer....

What goes up, must come down. This basic rule of gravity on Earth’s surface also applies to water vapor in the atmosphere. And as the air, earth and sea warms with climate change the atmospheric water vapor load increases by as much as 6.5 percent per degree Celsius, according to satellite data from the past 20 years. As the water vapor increases, so, too, will rainfall, argues physicist Frank Wentz, director of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) in Santa Rosa, Calif....

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is scrambling to regain control of a robotic Progress 59 cargo ship that appears to have suffered a serious malfunction shortly after launching into orbit early today (April 28). Video from the Progress 59 spacecraft showed it in a dizzying spin, with the Earth and sun rapidly coming into and then out of frame. Russian flight controllers abandoned plans to attempt to dock the cargo ship with the International Space Station on Thursday (April 30), NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in a NASA TV update....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sharpshooters will renew culling the white-tailed deer population, growing fast in the heart of the U.S. capital, as early as Thursday night, the National Park Service said.The nighttime hunts by Department of Agriculture shooters in Washington’s Rock Creek Park will continue until March 31, or until 106 deer have been killed, said Nick Bartolomeo, the park’s chief of resources management.The general public should remain out of harm’s way because joggers and cyclists are generally barred from the park after dark, according to the park service....

For nearly a year after Nazi Germany unleashed its V-1 flying bomb in June 1944, the early, crude cruise missile plagued English and Belgian cities and countrysides with its terrifying buzzing sound before raining down random death and destruction. Engineers are now refining the pulse jet, the simple but noisy and fuel-wasting power plant that propelled the buzz bomb, into a lightweight and powerful engine that relies on repeated shock wave–driven combustion cycles to produce thrust efficiently....

Almost immediately after Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic properties of LSD in the 1940s, research on psychedelic drugs took off. These consciousness-altering drugs showed promise for treating anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addiction, but increasing government conservatism caused a research blackout that lasted decades. Lately, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in psychedelics as possible therapeutic agents. This past spring Swiss researchers published results from the first drug trial involving LSD in more than 40 years....

Look down. There isn’t a doubt in your mind that the body you are looking at is yours. But what if you could be fooled into thinking that one of your hands belonged to someone else? Scientists at the University of Oxford recently incited this false perception through an illusion—and they found that when people felt dissociated from a limb, their brain devoted less processing power toward that limb and even interfered with its temperature regulation....

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Reuters) - Firefighters battling 15 wildfires that have killed at least 11 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings in California’s wine country on welcomed a drop in winds and an expected layer of cool, moist fog rolling in on Tuesday. Officials said about 1,500 homes and commercial buildings had been destroyed as tens of thousands of acres had gone up in flames since the weekend. Videos and pictures circulated online showed pockets of devastation, including an entire residential neighborhood reduced to ashes, a Hilton hotel ablaze and an inferno that was previously a supermarket....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650 between the English Parliament’s New Model Army led by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and Scotland’s army led by David Leslie (c. 1600-1682) was one of the last major battles of the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). The battle was part of the conflict between various English and Scottish armies now known as the Third English Civil War or Anglo-Scottish War (1650-51)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Warning: See the definitions of Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms before reading this article, otherwise the following lines could give you serious headaches! A lack of information is a common problem for historians of the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, due to the almost-inexistence of written accounts about them. The fact that the modern political problems in the area allow looters to spread whatever remains in all directions makes things worse, as it is removing the possibility of scientific studies....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Olives and olive oil were not only an important component of the ancient Mediterranean diet but also one of the most successful industries in antiquity. Cultivation of the olive spread with Phoenician and Greek colonization from Asia Minor to Iberia and North Africa and fine olive oil became a great trading commodity right through to the Roman period and beyond....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ancient History Encyclopedia has now been around for almost twelve years. Since then, over 136 million people have used our website to learn about history, making it one of the most-read history publications in the world. Our project has won awards and it is recognized by prestigious institutions of learning; the name Ancient History Encyclopedia has become an established brand, not only in historical circles....

Africa is splitting apart at the seams—literally. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, the continent is coming un­­stitched along a zone called the East African Rift. Like a shirtsleeve tearing under a bulging bicep, the earth’s crust rips apart as molten rock from deep down pushes up on the solid surface and stretches it thin—sometimes to its breaking point. Each new slit widens as lava fills the gap from below....

With global carbon emissions hitting an all-time high in 2018, the world is on a trajectory that climate experts believe will lead to catastrophic warming by 2100 or before. Some of those experts say that to combat the threat, it is now imperative for society to use carbon farming techniques that extract carbon dioxide from the air and store it in soils. Because so much exposed soil across the planet is used for farming, the critical question is whether scientists can find ways to store more carbon while also increasing agricultural yields....

Even a dwarf planet can harbor big surprises. Ever since it was discovered floating between Mars and Jupiter in 1801, Ceres has perplexed astronomers and defied easy categorization. Telescopic studies over the years showed it was roughly the size of Texas, with up to a third of its weight in water—too small to be a true planet, too wet and icy to be an asteroid and too big and rocky to be a comet....

The UK trial of a leading coronavirus vaccine, which was abruptly halted last week because of safety concerns, restarted on Saturday after the university conducting the trial said an independent committee found that it was safe to do so. The University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca paused enrolment in the global trials of their vaccine candidate on 6 September, after a person participating in the UK trial experienced an adverse reaction....

Even people who have had COVID-19 receive long-lasting benefits from a full course of vaccination, according to three recent studies. What’s more, one of the studies found that the ‘hybrid’ immunity caused by vaccination and infection is long-lasting, conferring highly effective protection against symptomatic disease for at least six to eight months after vaccination. The data were collected before the Omicron variant emerged, casting some doubt on the studies’ relevance today....