| Critically endangered Angolan antelope gets a second chance Travel to the African nation of Angola and you'll see representations of the giant sable antelope ( Hippotragus niger variani ) everywhere you turn: on the country's currency, on stamps, and on company logos. But unless you look really hard, you probably won't find any actual giant sable antelopes. Fewer than 100 of the iconic animals are believed to exist following the devastation of Angola's bloody 27-year civil war. Now a new project hopes to reverse that and create some hope for this critically endangered species. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Decoding an Ancient Computer: Greek Technology Tracked the Heavens (preview) If it had not been for two storms 2,000 years apart in the same area of the Mediterranean, the most important technological artifact from the ancient world could have been lost forever.The first storm, in the middle of the 1st century B.C., sank a Roman merchant vessel laden with Greek treasures. The second storm, in A.D. 1900, drove a party of sponge divers to shelter off the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and the mainland of Greece. When the storm subsided, the divers tried their luck for sponges in the local waters and chanced on the wreck. Months later the divers returned, with backing from the Greek government. Over nine months they recovered a hoard of beautiful ancient Greek objects--rare bronzes, stunning glassware, amphorae, pottery and jewelry--in one of the first major underwater archaeological excavations in history. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Understanding nitrogen's role in the ocean Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com RV ATLANTIS MAIN DECK--For years scientists have thought that the amount of nitrogen coming into and out of the world's oceans was relatively equivalent, creating a "balanced" and naturally maintained budget. But this theory has been based on a relatively small amount of data obtained from only a few of the world's oceans, leaving room for scientists to question how accurate the model is. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Search Continues After Fatal Flooding in Arkansas A search resumed for survivors of a flash flood that raged through campgrounds in western Arkansas on Thursday, killing at least 17 people and leaving dozens missing. nytimes.com |
Will birth control solve climate change? An additional 150 people join the ranks of humanity every minute, a pace that could lead our numbers to reach nine billion by 2050. Changing that peak population number alone could save at least 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere each year by 2050, according to a new analysis--the equivalent of cutting more than 10 percent of fossil fuel burning per year. [More] rss.sciam.com |