Punishing Wrongs from the Distant Past

Climate Change: Lessons for Our Future from the Distant Past

We consider information from many sciences bearing on the causes and consequences of climate change, focusing on lessons from past mass extinctions of life on Earth. The increasing atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gases are now established, as is their source in human activity. Worldwide temperatures are rising on a high variance stochastic trend. Evidence from the past 500 million yea...

Traces of a Distant Past

Ju ly 20 0 8 Il lu st ra tI o n b y se a n m cc a be ; s o u rc es : D a n Ie l sa m br au s (h um an s ku ll) , P a sc a l G o et G h el u ck (N ea nd er ta l s ku ll) , b Io Ph o to a ss o cI at es (c hr om os om es ) P ho to R es ea rc he rs , I nc . A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the Bab el...

Animal Wrongs

The Vioxx® legacy: Enduring lessons from the not so distant past.

Despite having been voluntarily withdrawn from the market almost 10 years ago, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) rofecoxib (Vioxx, Merck & Co.) remains an infamous and controversial drug in the minds of the public and physicians alike. While it is no longer making its way into prescription bottles, its legacy lives on, in its enduring influences, on drug safety monitoring in the ...

Traditional Chinese medicine and Kampo: a review from the distant past for the future.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a complete system of healing that developed in China about 3000 years ago, and includes herbal medicine, acupuncture, moxibustion and massage, etc. In recent decades the use of TCM has become more popular in China and throughout the world. Traditional Japanese medicine has been used for 1500 years and includes Kampo-yaku (herbal medicine), acupuncture and a...