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Yuta Ikeda received an e-mail in the middle of the night about a massive earthquake in Japan, followed by a devastating tsunami that slammed the eastern coast near the city where he went to college.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan this week didn't just trigger a massive tsunami. It also caused an atomic-power emergency at the the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture, where 3,000 people in a two-mile radius around the plant were forced to evacuate due to an overheated reactor.

Disease outbreaks common after quakes, floods, and other natural disasters

At 2:46 P.M. Tokyo time, one of the largest earthquakes of the past century hit just off the coast of Honshu, the main island of Japan. The 8.9-magnitude quake stirred up massive tsunami waves that battered coastal cities, especially along the east coast north of Tokyo.

We continue our examination of the business book In Search of Excellence with an interview of author Tom Peters. Why was it so successful, what is the book's legacy and what does a restaurant owner in Chicago have in common with Jack Welch? What was the impetus for you to write In Search of Excellence

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan is causing problems for at least one of its fleet of nuclear reactors--and authorities have shut down 10 of the country's 55 units.

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Falling buildings and swirling flood waters aren't the only threats when disaster strikes

Editor's note (3/11/11): This article is from the forthcoming April issue of S cientific Aemrican . We are posting the text of the article early in light of the deadly Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami

The massive magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck near the east coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, at 2:46 P.M. local time and unleashed a fierce tsunami claiming hundreds of lives is already being felt as far away as the west coast of North America, about 8,000 kilometers away. Much of this has to do with the depth of the ocean that the tsunamis waves traversed as well as the sheer size of the quake, which was the strongest recorded in Japan's history

Our partners at Nature have a correspondent in Japan.

First came Geminoid , now there's Robokind . The diminutive educational robot coated with Frubber, a semi-convincing kind of synthetic robot skin, can replicate a great variety of human expressions. But is this a good thing

This post is a slightly edited version of my December 29, 2004, post written in reaction to media reports about a "sixth sense" in animals, that supposedly allows them to avoid a tsunami by climbing to higher ground.

Will seismologists ever be able to reliably predict the exact location, time and magnitude of earthquakes like the one that just devastated Japan and sent tsunamis racing across the Pacific Ocean? If so, they might be able to save many lives.

Like many Americans, I have recently been diagnosed with a vitamin D deficiency. In addition to drinking milk, eating dark leafy greens, and taking 2000 IU’s of D a day, I’ve also been trying to get as much sunlight as possible. When I came across this article in the November 7, 1903 Scientific American , I realized that a possible reason for my deficiency is my home’s inability to rotate