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A new front in an old feud is being opened in the push for greater energy efficiency. In the late 19th century, two competing electricity systems jostled for dominance in electric power distribution in the United States and much of the industrialized world. Alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) were both used to power devices like motors and light bulbs, but they were not interchangeable. A battle for the grid emerged from the Apple and Microsoft of the Gilded Age....

WINSTON-SALEM N.C. (Reuters) - The first African elephant to be born in North America has died at age 36 after ingesting too much sand at a North Carolina zoo, officials said on Wednesday. “Little Diamond” was born in 1978 at the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee and had lived at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro since May 1995, the zoo said. The female elephant began showing signs of illness on Friday, when it stopped eating and grew lethargic, and died on Tuesday after several days of treatment, according to a zoo statement....

Since pterosaur fossils were first discovered more than two centuries ago, scientists have lacked proof of how early members of this group of flying reptiles, from the Triassic or Jurassic periods, walked on land. But now the first known footprints of such pterosaurs, discovered in southern France, are overturning suggestions that they were sprawling or clumsy walkers that struggled when earthbound—or that they strolled on their hind legs like birds. Even though more than 30 sites worldwide have yielded fossilized pterosaur footprints in the past few decades, all were left by pterosaurs knows as pterodactyloids—a group that was common in the Late Jurassic and throughout the Cretaceous....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Facing the Freshwater Crisis” which was printed in the August 2008 issue of Scientific American. Lots of Water, but Not Always Where It Is Needed One hundred and ten thousand cubic kilometers of precipitation, nearly 10 times the volume of Lake Superior, falls from the sky onto the earth’s land surface every year. This huge quantity would be enough to easily fulfill the requirements of everyone on the planet if the water arrived where and when people needed it....

Today only, and while supplies last, Staples has the first-generation Google Nexus 7 tablet (16GB) for $139 shipped (plus sales tax where applicable). It’s new, not refurbished, and the lowest price I’ve seen on this much-ballyhooed model. Last year, Android fanboys went gaga over the Nexus 7 (as did CNET), lauding its sharp screen, great battery life, and overall design. Personally, I can’t say I fully understand the appeal, except perhaps that this is among the few “pure” Android tablets, with an unadulterated, bloatware-free version of Android 4....

Early experiences not only shape adult lives, but they might also protect against future cognitive problems resulting from brain damage, according to neurobiologists studying the mental abilities of rats with brain lesions. Typically, these lesions impair a rat’s ability to focus and filter out distractions. But scientists now have evidence that an early behavioral intervention could prevent this effect. Researchers at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, the Nathan S....

The death toll at Japan’s Mount Ontake volcano climbed to 36 today (Sept. 29), with rescue crews still searching for missing people. The eruption caught the hikers by surprise this weekend. More than 250 people were exploring shrines and resorts at the 10,062-foot-high (3,067 meters) peak, the country’s second-tallest volcano. But just a month ago, in Iceland, anyone with an Internet connection knew exactly where new magma was tunneling underground before the Bardarbunga eruption began....

Roiling, incandescent magma and boiling gases covered the earth in the wake of its formation 4.6 billion years ago. Regions of this fiery sea eventually cooled enough to crust over, leaving the planet’s first hard rocks floating like slag on the white-hot liquid. But they were nothing more than a thin veneer. The thick roots of terra firma were much longer in the making. Exactly how—and how quickly—continents arose and grew is a matter of ongoing debate....

In late 1956, Elvis Presley was on the precipice of global stardom. “Heartbreak Hotel” had reached number one on the charts earlier that year and Love Me Tender, his debut film, would be released in November. In the midst of this trajectory, he was booked as a guest on the most popular TV show at the time, The Ed Sullivan Show. But he wasn’t only there to perform his hits. Before the show started, and in front of the press and Ed Sullivan himself, Presley flashed his swoon-worthy smile, rolled up his sleeves and let a New York state official stick a needle loaded up with the polio vaccine in his arm....

Editor’s note (11/16/15): Following the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13 and the ensuing debate about counterterrorism efforts and encrypted communications, Scientific American is republishing the following article. In November 2012 a 28-year-old woman plunged 15 meters from a bedroom window to the pavement in New York City, a devastating fall that left her body broken but alive. The accident was an act of both desperation and hope—the woman had climbed out of the sixth-floor window to escape a group of men who had been sexually abusing her and holding her captive for two days....

By Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib of Nature magazineOn land, the pattern is a sadly familiar one: when an ecosystem is threatened, it is the large predators that usually suffer the greatest decline and therefore are most in need of protection. Logic would seem to dictate that the same pattern should apply at sea, but new research has demonstrated the opposite. It’s the small fry at the low end of the marine food chain that may be more prone to population collapse....

The treadmill is 13.8 inches long and operates at a speed of 2.2 mph. The average shrimp runs at a mellow 0.75 mph, so that is more than enough to keep a pet critter’s heart healthy, wrote David Scholnick, a professor at Pacific University and treadmill owner. The posting is more than an exercise in snark; it is Scholnick’s way of defusing politicians who have for years disparaged his research. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Scholnick in 2008 to study how marine organisms, like shrimp, cope with diseases caused by bacteria that proliferate due to global warming....

Credit for sculpting Earth’s surface typically goes to violent collisions between tectonic plates, the mobile fragments of the planets rocky outer shell. The mighty Himalayas shot up when India rammed into Asia, for instance, and the Andes grew as the Pacific Ocean floor plunged beneath South America. But even the awesome power of plate tectonics cannot fully explain some of the planet’s most massive surface features. Take southern Africa, which boasts one of the world’s most expansive plateaus, more than 1,500 kilometers across and almost two kilometers high....

The artificial sweeteners that are widely seen as a way to combat obesity and diabetes could, in part, be contributing to the global epidemic of these conditions. Sugar substitutes such as saccharin might aggravate these metabolic disorders by acting on bacteria in the human gut, according to a study published by Nature this week (J. Suez et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13793; 2014). Smaller studies have previously purported to show an association between the use of artificial sweeteners and the occurrence of metabolic disorders....

Editor’s Note: The following excerpted from The Prince of Evolution: Peter Kropotkin’s Adventures in Science and Politics by Lee Alan Dugatkin. Copyright (c) 2011 by Lee Alan Dugatkin. “…{He is} that beautiful white Christ which seems to be coming out of Russia… {one} of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience.” -Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde was not the sort of man prone to effusive compliments. Who could possibly have merited such glowing praise from Wilde’s typically satirical, razor-edged pen?...

They already have to contend with cruel seas and crueler grant reviewers, but American marine scientists may face an even bigger problem: barring major investment, the federal oceanographic fleet is going to be down to half its current size by 2026. At the end of May, the White House released an assessment of the vessels run by its various agencies for research and survey work. It shows a fleet battered by multiple issues....

Our homes will get a lot smarter in the coming years, allowing us to use a smartphone to manage an integrated system of appliances and other electronics from any room—a kind of universal remote control for the “Internet of things.” An even easier, more intuitive approach, however, would allow us to flip through TV channels or turn on the coffeemaker with a simple hand wave. A team of University of Washington (U....

If you believe in ghosts, you are far from alone. Around 45% of Americans believe in ghosts and as many as 18% of people will go so far as to say they have had contact with a ghost. I will also admit to spooking myself out on occasion when my dog has refused to stop barking at what appears to be an empty corner of the house. But what makes us feel like we are in the presence of a supernatural spirit?...

A recent study by researchers at the University of Utah suggested that the amount of food diners in a restaurant consumed was influenced by fork size. I haven’t seen details of the study, but it does remind me that people can draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the same raw data by altering definitions ever so slightly. If only such contradictory results were contrived and isolated phenomena, but they’re not. When dealing with weakly correlated quantities, we often can come up with spurious trends and associations by artfully defining the size of the categories we use....

About a year ago, Nature Conservancy foresters started a small experiment on a 20-acre field in eastern Maryland, planting about 1,000 longleaf pine seedlings just north of their natural range. And on Wednesday, the conservancy teamed up with a Fish and Wildlife Service crew to set its experiment on fire. A team of 16 men and women sporting fire-resistant clothing and drip torches methodically set the area alight, and soon flames engulfed everything that grew there....