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Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of the new book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man , by Mark Changizi.

In the wake of the bombing in Oslo and the shooting on Utoya Island in Norway, the spotlight has focused on confessed perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik. What drove the Norwegian citizen with extremist right-wing views to these mass killings? Although one of the terrorist's driving motives was anti-immigrant sentiment, he also killed fellow Norwegians belonging to his own ethnic group

This is an invited guest post by Olivia Koski, graduate of the NYU program for science, health and environmental reporting.

Nestled more than half a kilometer deep in a salt mine, the plutonium slowly decays, taking some 250,000 years to become uranium. As the U.S. debates what to do with the nuclear waste produced by its fleet of 104 reactors, the radioactive legacy of decades of nuclear bomb-making sits entombed in the U.S.

By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A wildfire that burned over 400 square miles of Alaska tundra in the scorching summer of 2007 poured as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire Arctic normally absorbs each year, according to a new study in the scientific journal Nature. [More]

By Richard Van Noorden of Nature magazine When chemists design new detergents, shampoos, paints, and lubricants, they don't immediately consider whether their molecules will have toxic side-effects. [More]

NEW YORK, July 29 (Reuters) - Ratings agency Standard &Poor's downgraded five catastrophe bonds on Friday, a consequence of changes that catastrophe modeling company RMS [More]

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- Despite the grounding of NASA's storied space shuttle fleet, American spaceships are expected to make three trips to the International Space Station in the coming months

With unconventional oil and natural gas drilling spreading across much of the country, U.S. EPA said yesterday it plans to regulate the industry's air emissions tied to public health problems and that contribute to global warming. This comes as environmental groups, regulators and the booming natural gas industry debate how to safely drill tens of thousands of shale gas wells in the coming decade

* Worst mine accident in Ukraine since 2007 * Mine run by company controlled by Ukraine's richest man [More]

The weeks before Hosni Mubarak's ouster last winter turned into a tumultuous time during which precious artifacts were lifted from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (aka the Cairo Museum). For an interview that appears in the August issue of Scientific American , former Newsweek foreign editor Jeffrey Bartholet talked to Zahi Hawass, the minister of state for antiquities, about efforts to recover the artifacts

OBSERVATIONS BLOGS: [More]

The 20th century was highly unusual when it comes to the media and to the way people receive and exchange information. [More]

By Shinichi Saoshiro and Yoko Kubota TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will strive to avoid a complete shutdown of its 54 nuclear reactors and avert crippling power shortages in the near term while charting plans to reduce the nation's dependence on nuclear power, the government said on Friday.