Newsdesk Archive

People with post-traumatic stress disorder often get flashbacks that can be triggered by an innocuous smell or sound. Now a study that linked unrelated memories and separated them again, suggests that one day we may be able to decouple memories and prevent flashbacks in people with PTSD. Related: Depression May Be As Bad For The Heart As Obesity

Can tiny brains grown in a dish reveal the secrets of sociability? Balls of brain tissue generated from stem cells are enabling us to understand the underlying differences between people who struggle to be sociable and those who have difficulty reining themselves in.

New research reveals the shape of our brain can provide surprising clues about how we behave and our risk of developing mental health disorders. Related: The folds in your brain may be linked to how neurotic you are

Two studies looking at one crucial receptor in our brains give different insights into the psychedelic effects of LSD. Two separate teams of researchers publishing papers today in Cell examined how LSD binds to serotonin receptors in our brains and what the consequences of those reactions are.

Rutgers anthropologist Lee Cronk has been working in remote stretches of Arizona and New Mexico, studying the ways in which ranchers are working together to manage the risks of their trade. One of Cronk's graduate students, Thomas Conte, is even further off the grid. He's traveling with sheep herders in northern Mongolia, observing how families cooperate to cope with calamity.

The wisdom of crowds is not always perfect. But two scholars at MIT’s Sloan Neuroeconomics Lab, along with a colleague at Princeton University, have found a way to make it better.

Computers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health. The US-based researchers say the new system, which is based on image recognition, could be developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and providing a low-cost way to check whether skin lesions are cause for concern.

The Australian government wants to replace passports with advanced biometric facial, iris, and fingerprint recognition to allow for an automatic, self-processing system for 90 percent of passengers. A pilot program will be implemented at Canberra Airport this July, followed by the bigger airports in Sydney or Melbourne by November, and a complete roll out by March 2019.

An artificial intelligence watchdog should be set up to make sure people are not discriminated against by the automated computer systems making important decisions about their lives, say experts.

Progress in artificial intelligence causes some people to worry that software will take jobs such as driving trucks away from humans. Now leading researchers are finding that they can make software that can learn to do one of the trickiest parts of their own jobs—the task of designing machine-learning software.

For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching to Geico is so easy that “even a cave man can do it,” says the tag line. The Neanderthal’s feelings are invariably hurt, and a stereotype gets perpetuated. Do Neanderthals really deserve such derision?

For decades Uri Geller, the man famous for allegedly bending cutlery with his mind on UK television, was mocked over his claims to have paranormal powers. But while the British public were always sceptical it has transpired that none other than the CIA believed the "spoonbender" was psychic all along. Alt: The real-life X-Files: How CIA recruited Uri Geller to test his psychic abilities and were STUNNED when he was able to match random drawings by an agent sealed in another room Related: Did a UFO give Uri Geller magical powers when he was three years old? It sounds crazy but in fact, an air force captain saw it all - and confirmed every detail Related: Is Nasa hiding aliens? Astronaut covers up evidence of mystery flashing lights moving past the space station, UFO hunters claim Related: An Authentic Image Of A Large UFO Hovering Over L.A. Witnessed By 1 Million People

The corpse flower takes ten years to build up enough energy to bloom, but mysteriously, dozens of them bloomed within weeks of each other in 2016

A research team has developed food ingredients from mealworms and crickets which, due to their promising structure and flavor, have the potential to be used in the manufacture of foods such as meatballs and falafel. EU legislation will change in the coming years, and the farming of insects and their processing for consumption will become a business activity also in Europe, they say. Related: The Future of Protein: Here’s How Lab-Grown Meat is Transforming Our Future

It’s finally happened. Until now, vCJD – the deadly disease caused by infection with BSE, or “mad cow disease” – has struck only people with a certain genetic makeup. Now, for the first time, researchers have confirmed a case in someone with different genes – a finding that could mean we have been misdiagnosing a new wave of cases.

Even though air travel is safer than ever and in many cases cheaper than 10 or 20 years ago, travelers love to complain about its agonies. Cramped and narrow seats, crying babies, chatty seat mates and armrest wars are common gripes. But other factors contribute much more to feelings of distress, especially on longer flights.

Using computational and experimental techniques, UB scientists provide first evidence that carbamates can upset circadian rhythms Disruptions in human circadian rhythms are known to put people at higher risk for diabetes and other metabolic diseases but the mechanism involved is not well-understood.

Treatment for certain diabetes cases involves constant monitoring of blood-glucose levels and daily insulin shots. But scientists are now developing a painless "smart" patch that monitors blood glucose and releases insulin when levels climb too high.

Today, a stroke usually leads to permanent disability – but in the future, the stroke-injured brain could be reparable by replacing dead cells with new, healthy neurons, using transplantation. Researchers have taken a step in that direction by showing that some neurons transplanted into the brains of stroke-injured rats were incorporated and responded correctly when the rat’s muzzle and paws were touched.

When a material is made, you typically cannot change whether that material is hard or soft. But a group of University of Michigan researchers have developed a new way to design a "metamaterial" that allows the material to switch between being hard and soft without damaging or altering the material itself.

Life's genetic code has only ever contained four natural bases. These bases pair up to form two "base pairs"—the rungs of the DNA ladder—and they have simply been rearranged to create bacteria and butterflies, penguins and people. Four bases make up all life as we know it.

Researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute say a protein discovered in elephants appears to attack and destroy cancer cells found in humans. Related: Why high-dose vitamin C kills cancer cells Related: MRI twice as likely as biopsy to spot prostate cancer, research shows

Sometimes the most clever ideas are the simplest. Here is a great example. Surgical masks do not offer adequate protection against viruses. This has been a problem forever, and now it may be solved. By using a little salt.

Scientists have developed a molecule that reverses antibiotic resistance in multiple strains of bacteria at once, making it one of the most promising advances we've had to date in the fight against superbugs.

Sticking together could help microbes survive in briny waters on Mars. Biofilms, colonies of cells embedded in a slimy protective coating, live longer than single cells when exposed to Mars-like brines – and even longer when they’re dried out first.

The Mars Curiosity rover has found slabs of rock cross-hatched with shallow ridges that NASA believes could be mud cracks that formed about 3 billion years ago. This discovery adds to the growing amount of evidence that Mars was once a wet planet on which life could have survived.

When New Horizons whizzed by Pluto in 2015, images from the spacecraft revealed a geologist's dream. Icy mountains, a nitrogen glacier and a surprisingly youthful surface changed our notions of the distant dwarf planet forever. And even 18 months after the flyby, discoveries continue to pour in as scientists analyze the treasure trove of data.

Is there anybody out there? The question of whether Earthlings are alone in the universe has puzzled everyone from biologists and physicists to philosophers and filmmakers. It's also the driving force behind San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane's research into exoplanets—planets that exist outside Earth's solar system.

A fearsome, wolf-size otter with a large head and a powerful jaw once swam around the shallow, swampy waters of ancient China, likely hunting for clams and other shellfish, a new study finds.

Utilizing the most rigorous testing methods to date, researchers from North Carolina State University have isolated additional collagen peptides from an 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus. The work lends further support to the idea that organic molecules can persist in specimens tens of millions of years longer than originally believed and has implications for our ability to study the fossil record on the molecular level.

A team of researchers from several institutions in the U.S., some with ties to the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, has found that male baboons in the wild at times engage in feticide.

They have a reputation as cunning creatures, and some foxes appear to be living up to it as masters of disguise. Gray foxes living in the mountains of California have been filmed deliberately rubbing themselves in the scent marks left by mountain lions.

Scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Groningen, in The Netherlands, have created a computer game style experiment which sheds new light on the reasons why starlings flock in massive swirling groups over wintering grounds.

Sex may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of climate change. But for the collared flycatcher, the two seem to be linked in some mysterious way.

[Dan Carlson] maintained that “green music”—sounds akin to, or recorded from, those found in nature, like birds singing or crickets stridulating—possesses frequencies that boost plant growth and yield rates. He claimed that when exposed to synthesized birdsong, a plant’s stomata—the mouth-like pores on the underside of leaves that absorb water and nutrients and expel oxygen—widen.

Global forest ecosystems, widely considered to act as the lungs of the planet, 'held their breath' during the most recent occurrence of a warming hiatus, new research has shown.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that major flooding and large amounts of precipitation occur on 500-year cycles in central China. These findings shed light on the forecasting of future floods and improve understanding of climate change over time and the potential mechanism of strong precipitation in monsoon regions.

Rainfall patterns in the Sahara during the 6,000-year "Green Sahara" period have been pinpointed by analyzing marine sediments, according to new research.

When the United States Army Corps of Engineers announced on December 4, 2016, that it would not grant the easement that would allow construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota—threatening the drinking water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux reservation—water protectors were wary that the victory was only temporary. Related: Standing Rock: Water Is Life, by Graham Hancock Related: Media Blackout: Surface-To-Air Missile System Deployed at Standing Rock Related: Trump signs executive action to push Keystone, Dakota Access pipelines Related: 'It's A Big One': Iowa Pipeline Leaks Nearly 140,000 Gallons Of Diesel

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wondered how hot water froze faster than cold water – Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes observed the same phenomenon. Recently, a team of scientists took on the question, and concluded the secret could lie in the strange properties formed by the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules.

Imagine you are about to plan and construct a building that involves several complicated geometrical shapes, but you aren't allowed to write down any numbers or notes as you do it. For most of us, this would be impossible.

When workers began digging out the Roman cities torched by Mount Vesuvius, the exquisite wall paintings, sumptuous villas and golden jewelry they found quickly grabbed the spotlight. But archaeologists are now looking to a less glamorous feature of these cities: the garbage.

While excavating an ancient Roman villa buried in volcanic ash, 18th-century workers found an unusual lump of metal small enough to fit in a coffee mug. Cleaning it revealed something both historically important and hilarious: one of the world’s oldest known examples of a portable sundial, which was made in the shape of an Italian ham.

It’s a whodunit, a jigsaw puzzle and a history lesson all in one. In the heart of Madhya Pradesh, at the very centre of India, stands a massive stone wall that’s odd, as walls go. It runs straight in parts, zig-zags wildly in others, stops or branches off where you least expect. Some sections tower at 15 feet; others are a just a low stretch of rubble.

For the first time, scientists have found that non-invasive brain stimulation can be used like a scalpel to affect a specific improvement in precise memory. Precise memory, rather than general memory, is critical for knowing the building you are looking for has a specific color, shape and location, rather than simply knowing the part of town it's in.

Learning Morse code, with its tappity-tap rhythms of dots and dashes, could take far less effort—and attention—than one might think. The trick is a wearable computer that engages the sensory powers of touch, according to a recent pilot study.

Children with autism may benefit from fecal transplants - a method of introducing donated healthy microbes into people with gastrointestinal disease to rebalance the gut, a new study has found.

Long-term heavy use of alcohol in adolescence alters cortical excitability and functional connectivity in the brain, according to a new study. These alterations were observed in physically and mentally healthy but heavy-drinking adolescents, who nevertheless did not fulfil the diagnostic criteria for a substance abuse disorder.

Getting drunk could make it harder to enter your password – even if your brainwaves are your login. Brainwave authentication is one of many biometric measures touted as an alternative to passwords. The idea is for a person to authenticate their identity with electroencephalogram (EEG) readings.

An illusion that mimics near-death experiences seems to reduce people’s fear of dying. Mel Slater at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and his team have used virtual reality headsets to create the illusion of being separate from your own body

Stuff that falls into a black hole is gone forever, right? Not so, says Stephen Hawking. “If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up,” he told an audience at a public lecture in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday.

The black holes in our universe may seem like bizarre, voracious beasts – but stranger ones are possible. Simulations of black holes have revealed the first superfluid specimen.

Physicists have proposed that violations of energy conservation in the early universe, as predicted by certain modified theories of quantum mechanics and quantum gravity, may explain the cosmological constant problem, which is sometimes referred to as "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics."

Throughout the Universe, there are lots of signs that there's more gravity out there than there is visible matter to produce it. Over the last few decades, physicists have slowly come to the conclusion that it is not the laws of gravity that need to be changed, but rather that a massive particle is responsible for the extra gravity.

An asteroid is a smaller-than-a-planet rock orbiting in the inner solar system. A meteor is the streak of light of a space rock plunging into the atmosphere, and a meteorite is the remnant of space rock that survives the fiery descent and comes to rest on the ground.

It's always interesting to consider all the weird and wonderful ways life on Earth could be affected by a cataclysmic disaster from space — but it seems that only when you attach a dollar amount to the damage that can be caused, the world takes morbid notice.

Using the largest set of radiocarbon dates ever obtained from a single Maya site, archaeologists have developed a high-precision chronology that sheds new light on patterns leading up to the two major collapses of the ancient civilization.

The marks on the ground in the Namib desert resemble a vast sheet of polka dots, or to the less romantic observer, perhaps a bad case of chickenpox. In local myths, the bare, red circles fringed with grass are footprints of the gods, or patches of land once poisoned by the breath of a subterranean dragon.

Norway on Thursday said it will raise $400 million to encourage Brazil's farmers to stop destroying the rainforests, launching a fund also backed by food giants Unilever and Nestle.

A project aims to plant three million trees - one for every man, woman and child - in Greater Manchester over the next 25 years. Those behind City of Trees hopes the effort will not only green the region but improve our understanding of the benefits trees provide to society.

New evidence involving the ancient poop of some of the huge and astonishing creatures that once roamed Australia indicates the primary cause of their extinction around 45,000 years ago was likely a result of humans, not climate change.

The tale of the Tasmanian tiger was tragic. Once numerous across Tasmania, the doglike marsupial was branded a sheep killer by colonists in the 1830s and hunted to extinction. The last of its kind, Benjamin, died in a zoo in 1936, and with it many secrets into the animals’ lives were lost.

Caspian tigers were some of the largest cats ever to roam the Earth, but they went extinct in the 1960s. Now, some scientists want to bring them back. A new study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, lays out the plan to reintroduce the tigers using a subspecies, the Siberian tiger, which is genetically similar to the Caspian tiger.

Our fellow primates are in trouble. In a study of unprecedented scope, a team of 31 primatologists has analyzed every known species of primate to judge how they are faring. The news for man’s closest animal relatives is not good.

An ambitious, emergency plan to help save the vaquita porpoise from extinction in the northern Gulf of California has been recommended by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA).

International police body Interpol announced a new project Friday that will identify and dismantle origanised crime networks between Africa and Asia that have devastated wildlife and made ivory a sought-after luxury.

Dozens of false killer whales have died under mysterious circumstances after stranding themselves on a remote shoreline in Florida’s Everglades National Park. Related: Japanese whalers have been caught with a dead minke whale in protected waters

Across the universe, unsuspecting galaxies are literally getting the life sucked out of them. Though the culprit is still at large, a team of researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia is working tirelessly to crack the case—and to restore law and order. Alt: Galaxy murder mystery

A new measurement of the mass of the Milky Way galaxy suggests that Earth's galactic home is a bit lighter than many previous estimates suggested, but the scientists behind the new work say it's the method that matters. The Milky Way galaxy is made up of stars, planets, clouds of gas, and a zoo of other objects and features.

The galaxies are greener on the other side of the universe, it seems: A new analysis reveals that some of the most distant galaxies ever observed are radiating green light, a finding that could deeply affect developing models of those early galaxies.

An international team of astronomers, led by Christopher Conselice, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, have found that the universe contains at least 2 trillion galaxies, ten times more than previously thought.

NASA is sending a spacecraft to a giant metal asteroid that may hold the secret to how our solar system was formed. The fact-finding mission led by Arizona State University researchers is focused on the ancient, giant metal asteroid 16 Psyche.

On June 30th, 1908, a massive explosion rocked a remote area of Siberia near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, leveling trees for 1,000 square miles and creating a mystery that has become known as the Tunguska Event. What caused such destruction? Most experts believed the area was hit by a comet or a meteor, with comet becoming the accepted explanation since no crater nor meteorite fragments were ever found.

An unusual limestone rock found at an archaeological site in Croatia indicates that Neanderthals were capable of incorporating symbolic objects into their culture. The rock was collected more than a century ago from the Krapina Neanderthal site and was just recently analyzed by experts from the Croatian Natural History Museum, the Croatian Academy of Science and Arts and the University of Kansas.

Oetzi the famous "iceman" mummy of the Alps appears to have enjoyed a fine slice or two of Stone Age bacon before he was killed by an arrow some 5,300 years ago. His last meal was most likely dried goat meat, according to scientists who recently managed to dissect the contents of Oetzi's stomach.

Last year, a Korean geneticist produced for Russian police forces a pack of cloned Belgian Malinois which were reportedly cloned from the best sniffer dogs Korea had to offer.

Scientists have successfully proven that sex cells can be created by reprogramming any kind of cell, leading to a number of new collection possibilities in the field of fertility. This new possibility involves some common ethical concerns, but it also introduces some new concerns. Scientists are tackling these issues head-on even in these earliest stages of development, and policy changes are imminent.

A baby has been born to a previously infertile couple in Ukraine using a new type of "three-person IVF". Doctors in Kiev used a method called pronuclear transfer in what is a world first.

The concept is essentially the same as using a conventional lens made of glass or plastic. By altering the shape of the lens, light can be focused to a point, or scattered outward and diffused. The LDAL is a theoretical next step, and uses lasers to create artificial lenses out of gases in the atmosphere

In the future, we’re all going to be Spiderman. At least, those of us who can afford super-sticky light-controlled wall-climbing spider boots. A team of German scientists created a strong adhesive that can quickly stick and unstick with just a flash of light.

Ever since the EU restricted sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs, homeowners have complained about the shortcomings of their energy-efficient replacements. But now scientists in the US believe they have come up with a solution which could see a reprieve for incandescent bulbs.

Over a dozen leading European and Asian firms have teamed up to promote the use of hydrogen as a clean fuel and cut the production of harmful gasses that lead to global warming.

For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth's tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth's core.

Sea-surface temperatures during the last interglaciation period were like those of today, a new study reports. The trend is worrisome, as sea levels during the last interglacial period were between six and nine meters above their present height. Alt: Sea levels could rise by six to nine metres over time, new study warns

The planet sizzled to its third straight record warm year in 2016, and human activity is to blame, federal scientists announced Wednesday. Related: Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year

During spring of 2016 a number of large presumed house terraces were identified by the authors at Korshamn. As a consequence high resolution geophysical surveys using ground-penetrating radar were carried out in September 2016.

Four cemeteries, from which at least 123 individuals have been excavated so far, have been unearthed near the remains of a medieval Christian monastery in Sudan. A few of the burials contained individuals buried in unusual ways.

Archaeologists may have finally found the lost kingdom of Rheged, the most elusive of all the sixth century kingdoms of Dark Age Britain.

The timing of the first entry of humans into North America across the Bering Strait has now been set back 10,000 years. The earliest settlement date of North America, until now estimated at 14,000 years Before Present (BP) according to the earliest dated archaeological sites, is now estimated at 24,000 BP, at the height of the last ice age or Last Glacial Maximum. Alt: The first humans arrived in North America a lot earlier than believed

Giant pandas and the distantly related red pandas may have independently evolved an extra ‘digit’ — a false thumb — through changes to the same genes.

Once we had palm-reading, now we have smartwatches. Wearable tech can now detect when you’re about to fall ill, simply by tracking your vital signs.

Could learning to play a musical instrument help the elderly react faster and stay alert? Quite likely, according to a new study by Université de Montréal's School of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology, part of UdeM's medical faculty.

When it comes to perceiving music, the human brain is much more tuned in to certain types of rhythms than others, according to a new study from MIT. A team of neuroscientists has found that people are biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratios — for example, a series of four beats separated by equal time intervals (forming a 1:1:1 ratio).

After successfully testing a long-range underwater communications system that worked under Arctic Ocean ice, an engineering team at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) adapted it for a very different environment—the tropics—and for a different purpose—to provide warnings of impending tsunamis. Related: Could an Earthquake 'Invisibility Cloak' Shield Buildings from Damage?

The world's first floating city is set to appear in the Pacific Ocean off the island of Tahiti. The government of French Polynesia has signed a deal with Seasteading Institute to begin construction work in just two years. It may seem like an ambitious plan, by the group believes semi-independent cities would be the perfect place to try new modes of government and agricultural method.

China has suspended 85 planned coal power plants in a bid to meet a government coal capacity target laid out in its latest plan for social and economic development. The National Energy Administration (NEA) announced the under-construction projects would no longer go ahead as part of measures outlined in its Five Year Plan, Greenpeace reports.

Spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could shut down the major ocean current that ferries warm water to the North Atlantic, new climate simulations suggest. While not as extreme as the doomsday scenario portrayed in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, such a shutdown could cause wintertime temperatures to plummet by an estimated 7 degrees Celsius or more in northwestern Europe and shift rainfall patterns across the globe.

The government of Bolivia, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, has been forced to declare a state of emergency as it faces its worst drought for at least 25 years. Much of the water supply to La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, and the neighbouring El Alto, Bolivia’s second largest city, comes from the glaciers in the surrounding Andean mountains.

Can a planet be alive? Lynn Margulis, a giant of late 20th-century biology, who had an incandescent intellect that veered toward the unorthodox, thought so. She and chemist James Lovelock together theorized that life must be a planet-altering phenomenon and the distinction between the “living” and “nonliving” parts of Earth is not as clear-cut as we think. Many members of the scientific community derided their theory, called the Gaia hypothesis, as pseudoscience, and questioned their scientific integrity. But now Margulis and Lovelock may have their revenge.

For years, it seemed as if the future of the Thirty Meter Telescope was writ in the stars. The enormous, next-generation observatory would explore the birth of galaxies and seek signs of life on alien worlds from atop the dormant volcano of Mauna Kea, one of the best places on Earth to study the sky.