It's no secret that war is tough on innocent buildings so it is no surprise that four of six major archaeological sites in Syria have been heavily looted and damaged, according to an analysis of high-resolution satellite images. 

The report analyzes 6 of the 12 sites that Syria has nominated as World Heritage Sites: Dura Europos, Ebla, Hama's Waterwheels, Mari, Raqqa, and Ugarit. Images from 2014 show numerous pits throughout three sites where ancient cities once stood. The pits generally do not appear in similar images from 2011, when the conflict in Syria began. 

Apologizing for the silence of last week, due not so much to Christmas holidays but to my working around the clock to write a grant proposal, I wish to show you today a graph which describes very well the complexities of modern day frontier theoretical calculations. That graph is the collection of some of the Feynman diagrams that have to be calculated in order to evaluate a property of the electron called its "anomalous magnetic moment".

A solid 12 years after most of its audience stopped watching "The West Wing", I decided to start - all 154 episodes. In the interest of transparency, I disclose I skipped two - one was a retrospective and one was nothing but a debate between two characters  that no one could care much about who were running for president to succeed the sitting president played by Martin Sheen. Real debates are boring enough but a fictional one written by one political side is really tedious.

We don't often think of snakes as flying creatures - a lack of wings does not lend itself to flying imagery - but some snakes can glide as far as 100 feet through the air, jumping off tree branches and rotating their ribs to flatten their bodies and move from side to side.

New research from a George Washington University professor investigates the workings behind the flight and whether they can be applied to mechanical issues.

A nationwide project to study the genetic causes of rare developmental disorders has found 12 causative genes that were unidentified before. The Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD) nationwide genome-wide diagnostic sequencing program sequenced DNA and compared the clinical characteristics of over a thousand children to find the genes responsible for conditions that include intellectual disabilities and congenital heart defects, among others. 

Bisphosphonates are medications commonly used to treat osteoporosis and other bone conditions but a new analysis suggests that women who use bisphosphonates also have about half the risk of developing endometrial cancer as women who don't use the drugs. 

Endometrial cancer, which arises in the lining of the uterus, accounts for nearly 50 percent of gynecologic cancers diagnosed in the United States, and it is the fourth most common malignancy in women and the eighth most common cause of cancer death.

While bisphosphonates are known to prevent bone loss, preclinical studies have shown that the medications also have antitumor effects, including the ability to keep tumor cells from multiplying and from invading normal tissues.

The researchers at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute discovered that the ties which lash cells together - controlled by a protein called TIAM1 - are chopped up when cell maintenance work goes wrong.

People who occupy the extreme ends of the political spectrum, be they liberals or conservatives, are less influenced by outside information bias than political moderates, according to psychologists.

The research used a simple estimation task and was conducted by psychologists Mark J. Brandt and Anthony Evans of Tilburg University and Jarret T. Crawford of The College of New Jersey. They hold that because political extremists see their own beliefs as superior to the beliefs of others, they are more resistant to so-called anchor bias, even for non-political information.

Extreme weather is more common than ever. EPA, CC BY-NC

By Mark Maslin, University College London

Climate change is one of the few scientific theories that makes us examine the whole basis of modern society.

It is a challenge that has politicians arguing, sets nations against each other, queries individual lifestyle choices, and ultimately asks questions about humanity’s relationship with the rest of the planet.

In the mid-1960s the Elizabethan morality play space western known as "Star Trek" debuted and series creator Gene Roddenberry was cagey about when exactly it took place (thus the reason to use 'star dates'), but it had to have been in the 23rd century if later writers were getting their information relayed correctly.  Regardless of the exact dates of their five year mission, the public was energized by the future - and the gadgets it contained.

Portable computers were completely believable and wireless communications already existed. A fax machine was clearly on the horizon, since the teletype had already existed since 1915 and a fax just required a phone line - but medical diagnosis was not even close to "Star Trek"'s future yet.