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News
Zeus' altar of ashes
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Excavations at the Sanctuary of Zeus atop Greece’s Mount Lykaion have revealed that ritual activities occurred there for roughly 1,500 years, from the height of classic Greek civilization around 3,400 years ago until just before Roman conquest in 146. “We may have the first documented mountaintop shrine from the ancient Greek world,” says project director David Romano of...
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News
Graffiti on the walls in Pompeii
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Well-off homeowners living in the Roman city of Pompeii more than 2,000 years ago could read the writing on their own walls, and apparently didn’t mind the spontaneous scrawling. Citizens of Pompeii scratched out graffiti on the walls of private residences to share creative greetings, welcomes and salutations to friends, Rebecca Benefiel of Washington and Lee University in...
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Feature
The final chemistry frontier
The landscape could be the backdrop of a postapocalyptic film. It’s an environment of extremes, blasted by intense radiation, fierce winds and shock waves from violent explosions. Yet within this desolation, species persist. Not only are there ordinary, familiar faces, there is also, evidence suggests, a motley crew: galactic gangs that would make Mad Max cringe. Some are decked out in metal...
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Feature
Dressing up dinos
Fossils of an ancient animal don’t typically include much more than the creature’s hard parts — sometimes intact, but often shattered to smithereens. Lucky paleontologists may stumble upon a well-preserved, nearly complete skeleton that offers a rough idea of an animal’s size and shape. But fossils that preserve soft tissues — skin, flesh, feathers — are the rarest of the rare....
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Feature
Let there be light
In the beginning, the brain was a dark and shapeless void.
Then scientists deployed dyes, and lo, the intricate branching of brain cells called neurons was revealed. It was good but didn’t show which cells rubbed branches with others.
After a time, scientists brought forth electrodes and functional MRI machines to eavesdrop on neurons’...
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Comment
Energy, safety and nuclear capabilities intertwined
On January 1, Charles D. Ferguson became president of the Federation of American Scientists, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists to promote humanitarian uses of science and technology. Ferguson worked at FAS 10 years ago as director of its nuclear policy project, and he returns after working from 2004 to 2009 at the Council on Foreign Relations as...
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Reviews & Previews
Book Review: Communicating Science: Professional, Popular, Literary by Nicholas Russell
Books about science communication typically start from the premise that communication is important and proceed to tell scientists how to do it better. Russell’s book departs from that tradition to analyze the history of such communication and look at how views of its importance have changed over time. The result is a fascinating exploration of past and current trends, with some insight into...
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Reviews & Previews
Book Review: The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved & Why It Endures by Nicholas Wade
Several recent best sellers in the natural and social sciences have portrayed religious belief as irrational and even downright harmful. In his new book, Wade gives faith a reprieve. He argues that religion served crucial purposes in ancient societies and, via evolution, became ingrained in the human brain.Wade offers a respectful outlook on humanity’s faith in gods and supernatural powers,...
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Reviews & Previews
Write an Effective Funding Application: A Guide for Researchers & Scholars by Mary W. Walters
A step-by-step guide to creating successful funding proposals.Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, 151 p., $22.
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Reviews & Previews
Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch’s Medical Bacteriology by Christoph Gradmann and Elborg Forster, translator
A science historian examines the origins of the field of medical bacteriology and the life of one of its founders.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, 318 p., $35.