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	(Sponsor this newsletter) 200 Years After Tambora, Indonesia Most at Risk of Deadly Volcanic Blast Two hundred years after the biggest volcanic blast in recorded history, scientists have ranked the countries most at risk of a deadly volcanic eruption. Today (April 10) marks the 200th anniversary of the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia. Sulfur dioxide from Mount Tambora lingered in the atmosphere for several years, cooling the planet and triggering crop failures, famine and human disease pandemics in North America, Europe and Asia. "People were eating cats and rats," said Stephen Self, a volcanologist at the University of California, Berkeley and an expert on the Tambora eruption. Read More » Why Gay Conversion Therapy Is Harmful The Obama administration recently declared its support of a ban on minors receiving a controversial form of psychotherapy known as gay conversion therapy (also called LGBTQ conversion therapy). "The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm," Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said in a statement. Gay conversion therapy — which its supporters claim can change the orientation of gay, lesbian and transgender people — has a long track record of not working, according to a review of the scientific literature published by the American Psychological Association (APA). What's more, research suggests the treatment can worsen feelings of self-hatred and anxiety, because it encourages people to fight or hate a sexual orientation that can't be changed. Read More » 'Silkpunk': Redefining Technology for 'The Grace of Kings' (Essay) Ken Liu is an author whose fiction has appeared in such outlets as F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld. Liu is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and The World Fantasy Award, all for "The Paper Menagerie," and won an additional Hugo for his story "Mono No Aware." Liu's debut novel, "The Grace of Kings" (Saga, 2015), the first in a fantasy series, will be published in April 2015. Contending warlords divided China into more than a dozen small kingdoms engaged in mutual warfare, until Xiang Yu, ruler of Western Chu, and Liu Bang, ruler of Han, emerged as the two dominant powers and fought a bitter war for control of all of China. The Chu-Han Contention, as the war came to be called, led to the founding of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220), which is often considered one of the golden ages of China's history for its technological and cultural development. Read More » Richard Feynman's Lessons from Ants, Dinosaurs and His Dad (Video) David Gerlach is the Executive Producer of Blank on Blank and he contributed this article and video to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. He proposed the parton model in the field of particle physics. Starting in 1966, science historian Charles Weiner interviewed Richard Feynman as part of an extensive oral history project at the American Institute of Physics. "Richard Feynman on What It Means" is part of The Experimenters series, from the creators of Blank on Blank. Read More » For First Time, U.S. Dietary Guidelines May Boost Veggies Over Meat (Op-Ed) In mid-February, a committee of top U.S. government scientists and nutritionists presented recommendations for the latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines. While those findings aren't news to many working in medicine and nutrition, the report represents a shift in what the government may recommend to the American public in the soon-to-be revised U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Simply reducing the amount of meat, eggs and dairy we eat has a profound effect on health, yet, instead, patients take a laundry list of drugs to battle their chronic diseases. Those findings were supported just weeks ago, at a meeting of the American Heart Association,, when researchers released results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which started in 1992. Read More » Oldest Neanderthal DNA Found in Italian Skeleton The calcite-encrusted skeleton of an ancient human, still embedded in rock deep inside a cave in Italy, has yielded the oldest Neanderthal DNA ever found. Although modern humans are the only remaining human lineage, many others once lived on Earth. The closest extinct relatives of modern humans were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia until they went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Recent findings revealed that Neanderthals interbred with ancestors of today's Europeans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa — 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa today is Neanderthal in origin. Read More » Earthquake! Your Smartphone Could Give an Early Warning Shaking a smartphone can help you pinpoint your parked car, discover a good diner and then pay for your meal. Earthquake early warning systems depend on the time delay between two sets of seismic waves. "A few seconds can be enormously helpful," said lead study author Sarah Minson, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. The GPS warning system is deceptively simple: If the GPS receivers from just a few phones suddenly lurched in one direction, that's probably not an earthquake. Read More » Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells Dotting the arid grasslands of Namibia, fairy circles have long baffled scientists as to how these round grassy patches form and why they disappear for seemingly no reason. Their mysterious nature has perhaps deepened with a new finding that the circles share a mathematical pattern with the skin cells of zebrafish. Read More »
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