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Phil Robertson may be on the cusp of solving a long-standing mystery. Boosters of organic food often say the practice, which rejects synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, is a good method for curbing climate change because it stores more carbon in the soil. But aside from anecdotal observations, no one could really explain the dynamics behind why organic fields keep more carbon underground than conventional ones. Robertson, a researcher at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station, thinks he might have an answer: a chemical group called phenolics, a class of complex compounds that also protect plants from disease and pests....

Editor’s Note (9/11/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published September 6, 2011, in light of the 17th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Story begins below the infographic. The smell cannot be forgotten. Any smoky mix of burnt plastic and other smolderings can instantly bring back memories for locals of the aftermath of the collapse of the two towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Religion in the Middle Ages, though dominated by the Catholic Church, was far more varied than only orthodox Christianity. In the Early Middle Ages (c. 476-1000), long-established pagan beliefs and practices entwined with those of the new religion so that many people who would have identified as Christian would not have been considered so by orthodox authority figures....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The fullers of ancient Rome were launderers who washed the clothes of the city and also finished processing fabric later made into clothing, blankets, or other necessary items. They were looked down upon for their use of human and animal urine as a detergent but were among the most successful and highly-paid workers in the city....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Speedwell was the English passenger ship which was supposed to carry the Leiden congregation (later known as pilgrims) to the New World in 1620 CE accompanied by the cargo ship Mayflower. The Speedwell was 43 years old at the time and, under the name Swiftsure, had participated in the 1588 CE sea battle against the Spanish Armada....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087 CE) was victorious at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066 CE, and Harold Godwinson, King Harold II of England (r. Jan - Oct 1066 CE) was dead. The English throne and kingdom were there for the taking but there was still much work to be done before the Normans could claim the rights of conquest....

Scientific American presents The Dog Trainer by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Can dogs tell which people are generous and which ones are stingy? I can hear you now: “Of course they can – why else has Zippy spent every family dinner gazing wistfully up at Aunt Trudy ever since the first time she accidentally-on-purpose dropped a piece of roast in front of him?...

As another active hurricane season in the Atlantic winds down, some atmospheric scientists say they have the tools to stop or slow the powerful storms. Their efforts, however, are hampered by a lack of funding and tricky legal issues. Until recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Secu­rity has been investigating whether seeding storm clouds with pollution-size aerosols (particles suspended in gas) might help slow tropical cyclones. Computer models suggest that deploying aerosols can have “an appreciable impact on tropical cyclone intensity,” writes William Cotton, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University....

SHANGHAI – After decades of getting its millions of citizens off their bicycles and into modern transportation, China is now struggling to make a big policy U-turn. Last month, southern China’s Zhongshan city for the first time filled its streets with 4,000 public bicycles, which citizens can ride free of charge for up to an hour. To further fuel the sharing, the city also built an online platform that gives citizens real-time information on where the closest docking station is and how many bicycles are available....

After Omicron comes pi in the Greek alphabet. And then rho, sigma, tau…. Before SARS-CoV-2 finishes its grand tour through the Greek alphabet, the global public health establishment should do what it should have done long before this coronavirus emerged. It must put in place the basic health systems needed to detect new outbreaks and deploy technologies that allow for vaccines and medicines to be manufactured and administered in low- and middle-income countries....

The complex corn genome—coming in at a hearty two billion base pairs (compared with the human genome’s 2.9 billion base pairs)—has been mapped by more than 150 researchers, who worked for years to decipher the grain’s genetic code. It’s the most complicated plant genome to be deciphered to date and promises to increase the efficiency of the crop itself. “It sets up our ability to start using three million to five million years of diversity” rather than a few hand-selected traits to improve production, says Ed Buckler of Cornell University and a collaborator on the research....

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Work boots towered above Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as he moved down rows of shelving at Justin Boots’ distribution center in Fort Worth. The campaign ad promised a “new era of economic opportunity.” And the staunchly conservative gubernatorial candidate used the setting to make his message clear: Abbott is the one to protect Texas’ record-breaking oil boom that suddenly has the state producing more oil than Iran....

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve read that human breast milk contains toxins from pollution and other causes. How serious is this and what affect will it have on my baby? —Skylar S., New York City Researchers have found that those of us living in developed countries—men, women and children alike—carry around quite a toxic burden in our bodies from the constant exposure to various chemicals in our urban, suburban and even rural environments....

This is a special series of SA Forum essays produced with the World Economic Forum and to run during the Summit on the Global Agenda, held in Abu Dhabi from November 18 to November 20 Much of the academic world still turns to the American higher education system for leadership, with a few stellar institutions dominating annual rankings. There is a growing consensus, though, that the country took the wrong path a generation ago, and that its reputation for excellence cannot be sustained....

Bacteria chatter among themselves. A chemical signaling system called quorum sensing allows those single-celled bugs to detect when their numbers have multiplied enough to mount an effective attack or emit glowing light. Yet decades after scientists learned about this brainless bacterial coordination a research team has uncovered new evidence suggesting animal cells may speak the same lingo. These new hints were revealed through an unexpected approach—plucking hairs. When a researcher at the University of Southern California and his colleagues plucked 200 hairs from mice in a specific pattern in a confined area—ensuring that many neighboring hairs were pulled—more than 1,000 hairs grew back in their place, including some beyond the plucked region....

Since Spain opened the first 3-D–printed pedestrian bridge in 2016, the push for printed architecture seems to be accelerating. Shanghai inaugurated the world’s longest printed concrete bridge in January, and the first-ever printed steel span is set to cross a canal in Amsterdam this year. Beyond bridges, the first 3-D–printed homes available to rent—five bulbous buildings in the Dutch city of Eindhoven—should hit the market by this summer. Some of the artsy, even zany, designs seem like architectural fantasy....

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will destroy all buildings along the Nile River and its tributaries that were erected illegally, the water and irrigation minister said on Monday, seeking to protect canals needed to help grow food. The government will “not be complacent in the face of encroachment on the Nile River and its tributaries and streams”, Minister Mohamed Abdel Motteleb was quoted as saying by the state news agency MENA. Egypt is the world’s biggest wheat importer, a drain on its precarious finances....

The question of whether modern humans made love or war with our ancestors has swung back and forth over decades of often acrimonious debate. At present, most researchers trying to read prehistory in our genomes believe that we contain no trace of species past and that we are all descended from a group that left Africa within the past 100,000 years and replaced all other humans, such as Neandertals, without interbreeding....

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET) Planning to take Friday off to play with your new Xbox One? Microsoft has posted a doctor’s note that might just convince a game-loving employer to give you a break. As the next-generation Xbox One preps to sail into stores on Friday, hot on the heels of Sony’s new PlayStation 4, Microsoft is likely expecting and certainly hoping that throngs of customers will line up to buy the new console....

January sees the start of what has been billed as the largest-scale open-access initiative ever built: an international effort to switch the entire field of particle physics to open-access publishing. But the initiative, organized by CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, has not yet fulfilled its dream — it currently covers only a little more than half of published particle-physics papers. The scheme’s scope was slashed in the summer when the field’s largest journal, Physical Review D, pulled out, although its publisher, the American Physical Society (APS), did agree to publish papers on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider on an open-access basis without charging author fees....