When Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado returned to his family land in Brazil during the 1990s, he reportedly found a devastated landscape instead of the lush forest he remembered from childhood. Years of deforestation, cattle grazing and soil degradation had stripped the land of wildlife, water and greenery. Rivers had dried up and much of the…

What Steve Jobs understood about messy careers that most people miss? Image credit – Wikimedia Almost twenty years since Steve Jobs’ famous speech at Stanford University’s graduation ceremony, one section of that speech has remained memorable for people across the globe who are students, professionals, or entrepreneurs. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you…

In the mid-sixth century, a devastating disease swept across the Byzantine world and changed the course of entire cities. The outbreak, now known as the Plague of Justinian, is often described in historical records, but new archaeological findings from Jerash are making the story feel far more real and human. Researchers studying a mass grave…

Earthquake-resistant technology may soon become simpler, cheaper and far more reliable thanks to a newly patented steel sphere cylinder developed by researchers at the University of Sharjah. The passive seismic damping device, created by civil engineering professor Moussa Leblouba, uses friction generated by steel balls inside a hollow cylinder to absorb earthquake vibrations in buildings,…