Column " Once upon a time there was a small village... " This is the beginning of many stories about brave and virtuous people that usually end with the sentence, " and they lived happily ever after. " The " fairy tale " that is going to be told here has not come to an end yet, although many people work and strive for it. Surprising? No! Let the story be told from the beginning. Once upon a tim...

The latest research seems to imply that all earthquakes are born equal. But combining that insight with earlier, seemingly contradictory, work could help us to tell which tremors grow to become more equal than others. In an analysis on page 358 (/nature/journal/v444/n7117/full/nature05275.html) of this issue1 (/nature/journal/v444/n7117/full/444276a.html#B1) , Steven Wesnousky provides strong e...

vances ever closer to the post-war horizon. With Victory will come the day when the scientific instruments and processes of war will turn abruptly to peace. Machines and tools, as well as industrial and economic thinking, will be converted quickly from the demands of war to the needs of peace. Industry will be called upon to relieve the strains of war with utmiost speed by ministering anew to h...

There are billions of believers of various religions in the world and Islam is the second largest religion having 1.6 billion followers. The primary written sources of religious beliefs and practices of Muslims are the Quran and the Hadith (saying and practices of their prophet Muhammad Peace Be Upon Him). Written text of the Quran and the Hadith books is of manageable size and hence state of t...

Thucydides is an important author for any discussion of the possibilities for an ancient Greek democratic peace. Though democratic peace did not, in fact, seem to function in classical Greece, a number of passages in Thucydides show that an affinity did exist among democratic factions and city-states in the context of hostile competition between democratic and oligarchic regimes. Thucydides rem...