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For decades the seas off U.S. shores have been roiled by controversies over where to drill for oil, how to reel in overfishing, and whom to blame for toxic streams of continental runoff. A failure to manage these problems effectively has already put the nation’s oceanic realms in serious jeopardy. And now we are inviting new industries to stake their own claims on the blue frontier. To generate clean energy from wind and tides, we need permanent installations....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The New Fire Ceremony, also known as the Binding of the Years Ceremony, was a ritual held every 52 years in the month of November on the completion of a full cycle of the Aztec solar year (xiuhmopilli). The purpose of it was none other than to renew the sun and ensure another 52-year cycle....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The peoples of the Mongol Empire (1206-1368 CE) were nomadic, and they relied on hunting wild game as a valuable source of protein. The Asian steppe is a desolate, windy, and often bitterly cold environment, but for those Mongols with sufficient skills at riding and simultaneously using a bow, there were wild animals to be caught to supplement their largely dairy-based diet....

Big Picture: Blackburn has extended her Nobel Prize–winning work on telomeres to develop measures that aim to assess overall risks for heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses. A molecular timepiece that resides inside each cell still makes headlines, decades after Elizabeth H. Blackburn conducted pioneering studies into how it works. The most recent experiments by Blackburn and other researchers have demonstrated that these cellular clocks, known as telomeres, may act as barometers of whether a person will remain healthy or not....

Jaimee Alkinani and her husband had just bought their first home in a quiet suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. The three-bedroom house was in a nice neighborhood: tree-lined street, kids riding their bikes down the sidewalk, and friendly neighbors who waved when they passed. The family was on their way — they’d also just opened a small business near their home, had an 11-month-old child, and Jaimee was eight months pregnant....

Astronomers have known for more than a decade that nearly every large galaxy contains at its core an immense black hole—an object having such intense gravity that even light cannot escape. The death of stars can produce small black holes—with masses ranging from about three to 100 times the mass of the sun—but such stellar-mass black holes are tiny compared with the behemoths at the centers of galaxies, measuring millions to billions of solar masses....

Researchers have both created and relieved symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in genetically modified mice using a technique that turns brain cells on and off with light, known as optogenetics. The work, by two separate teams, confirms the neural circuits that contribute to the condition and points to treatment targets. It also provides insight into how quickly compulsive behaviors can develop — and how quickly they might be soothed. The results of the studies are published in Science....

Early attempts at driverless cars have had little difficulty gathering the loads of data required to operate autonomously. Automakers and researchers—at Google, most notably—have logged hundreds of thousands of kilometers driven in vehicles laden with Internet servers, GPS, radar, lasers, cameras and a variety of other onboard sensors. The results are encouraging: Self-driven vehicles have demonstrated the ability to measure and maintain their distance from other automobiles and even obey traffic laws....

Homo floresiensis, the mysterious and diminutive species found in Indonesia in 2003, is tens of thousands of years older than originally thought—and may have been driven to extinction by modern humans. After researchers discovered H. floresiensis, which they nicknamed the hobbit, in Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores, they concluded that its skeletal remains were as young as 11,000 years old. But later excavations that have dated more rock and sediment around the remains now suggest that hobbits were gone from the cave by 50,000 years ago, according to a study published in Nature on March 30....

By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - West Africa will be lucky to wipe out Ebola this year, as the local population remains suspicious of aid workers, especially in Guinea, the Red Cross said on Friday. The virus is “flaring up” in new areas in the region and not all infections are being reported, said Birte Hald, who leads the Ebola coordination and support unit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies....

The 2,500 or so scientists, economists and other experts of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) call global warming “unequivocal” and think it “very likely” that humans have contributed to the problem. The world’s governments agree with the panel, which also shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Then there’s the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). These 23 individuals from 15 countries, including a handful of scientists, disagree....

Despite its rows and rows of chisel- and needle-like teeth, a newly described prehistoric marine reptile wasn’t a fearsome predator but rather an herbivorous giant that acted like a lawnmower for the sea, a new study finds. The crocodile-size reptile lived about 242 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic period. Researchers discovered the first specimen in 2014 in southern China, but because it was poorly preserved, they reported that it had a beak like a flamingo’s....

A fatal, Alzheimer’s-like disease that attacks cheetahs’ internal organs and has impeded breeding of the cats in captivity may be spread by their feces. Researchers from Japan and China report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that the disease, AA amyloidosis, was transmitted to mice exposed to fecal proteins from a cheetah that died of it. The cheetah is classified as an endangered species. Only 12,000 to 15,000 are believed to remain in about 25 countries, down from 100,000 in 44 countries in 1900, according to the Cheetah Conservation Fund....

For a Q&A with Rose George, click here. The flush toilet is a curious object. It is the default method of excreta disposal in most of the industrialized, technologically advanced world. It was invented either 500 or 2,000 years ago, depending on opinion. The ancient inhabitants of the mighty Indus Valley, in present-day Pakistan, had privies above channels of running water, whereas King Minos’s palace on Crete, 4,000 years ago, fed rainwater through terra-cotta pipes to flush privies below....

During a ransomware hack, attackers infiltrate a target’s computer system and encrypt its data. They then demand a payment before they will release the decryption key to free the system. This type of extortion has existed for decades, but in the 2010s it exploded in popularity, with online gangs holding local governments, infrastructure and even hospitals hostage. Ransomware is a collective problem—and solving it will require collaborative action from companies, the U....

The French call them “the ugly years”: that awkward, searing time of physical change and overwhelming emotion summed up by the phrase “middle school.” Judith Warner, a journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has set out to make sense of this time, drawing on psychology and social science, as well as the experiences of teachers, students and parents, herself included. In her book And Then They Stopped Talking to Me, she makes a passionate argument for recognizing the fullness and richness of this age—a first step, she says, in helping our middle schoolers, and our relationships with them, not just survive but thrive....

Closing in on 40? 50? Feel like life is passing, er, has passed you by? Maybe even left you in the dust? You’re not alone. In fact, new research shows that fellow midlifers throughout the world–or at least a significant chunk of it–share your pain. But fear not: if you endure, the study shows, things will begin looking up again, once you get over that speed bump in the road of life called (gasp!...

Plants, animals and agricultural systems have adapted to thrive in certain climates, be they arid or wet, tropical or temperate. At the globe warms, those climates will shift, potentially disrupting ecosystems and agriculture. A study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change shows for the first time that the shift will happen faster the more the globe warms. Before she did the study, Irina Mahlstein, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, anticipated that the relationship between warming and climate zone change would be linear....

Two months after safety breaches at federal labs first set off a public furor, top health officials are auditioning new checks on worker safety including specialized time-lapse cameras and digital worksheets to track crucial steps such as bacterium inactivation. The goal: to prevent future debacles with dangerous pathogens and protect employees from potentially lethal illness. The extra checks will help ensure workers are following the correct steps and performing them for the precise amounts of time typically required to be effective....

Nike is only shooting itself in the foot with its stubborn reluctance to work with Android. The athletic apparel company on Tuesday introduced its second-generation fitness tracker, the FuelBand SE, which worked beautifully on Apple’s iOS devices and computers. Missing from the presentation, however, was any mention of Android. It’s a glaring omission that Nike still doesn’t offer support for Android, which is the undisputed mobile platform champ with 80 percent of the global market....