Newsdesk Archive
Meditation can help tame your emotions even if you're not a mindful person, suggests a new study. Psychology researchers recorded the brain activity of people looking at disturbing pictures immediately after meditating for the first time. These participants were able to tame their negative emotions just as well as participants who were naturally mindful.
A vast new study finds that a sense of humor lowers mortality rates, especially for women
“Funny or die” has a whole new meaning, thanks to a large study published in April in Psychosomatic Medicine.
Researchers conclude that being kind to others causes a small but significant improvement in subjective well-being. The review found that the effect is lower than some pop-psychology articles have claimed, but also concluded that future research might help identify which kind acts are most effective at boosting happiness.
Can having a few drinks help people with clinical depression feel better? Yes. At least in terms of biochemistry, say scientists.
Related: Love animals? Experts reveal how rabbits and even snakes could help ease depression
A new link between the diversity of bacteria in human poo -- known as the human fecal microbiome -- and levels of abdominal body fat, has been identified by scientists. The research provides further evidence of possible genetic influences on obesity, through heritable bacteria found in the fecal microbiome.
Related: Gut Fungus Suspected in Crohn’s Disease
Relatively few people are lefties, and it’s a puzzle why. Still, the science of handedness is revealing fascinating insights about you – from how it could change the way you think, to the fact that you might be ‘left-eared’.
When Siglufjordur, a small mountain town in northern Iceland, was hit by a series of storms last summer, construction workers clearing a roadway soon found themselves dodging mudslides and contending with a flooded river.
Two baby bald eagles were the stars of a Michigan live cam - until Bigfoot allegedly walked into the frame.
Related: First Video Ever of a Possible Bigfoot in the UK
Related: Another Video Released of Possible Tasmanian Tiger
After a wave of "creepy" clowns were spotted across the United States late this summer, the phenomenon seems to have migrated north to Canada. Why are these sightings spreading?
Related: The 2016 clown panic: 10 questions asked and answered
Related: What's with all the clowns everywhere? 6 legit possibilities
Related: Clown sightings: the day it all began
After decades of increasing human lifespans, the limits of longevity may have been reached.
Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine published a paper Wednesday in Nature gathering demographic data on the human lifespan from around the world to see whether humans will continue to live longer lives.
A chimpanzee, a scientist with a stick and a researcher in a King Kong suit may sound like the setup for a bad joke, but it is in fact the basis of a recent study that provides the first evidence that great apes—that is, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans—possess an understanding of false belief, a hallmark of “theory of mind.” This ability to understand that others have mental states and perspectives different than our own has long been considered unique to humans.
In the past, claims that musical principles are integral to birdsong were largely met with skepticism and dismissed as wishful thinking. However, the extensive statistical and objective analysis of the new paper demonstrates that the more complex a bird's repertoire, the better he or she is at singing in time, rhythmically interacting with other birds much more skillfully than those who know fewer songs.
Scientists are a step closer to solving the mystery of one of the great animal migrations.
Each autumn, eels leave European rivers to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to breed for a single time, then die.
Scientists are attempting to discover if Cornish cod moving north with climate change will be able to understand the accents of their Scouse counterparts.
Experts believe the fish, which make sounds with their swim bladders to attract mates, may have regional accents – and if males cannot “chat up” females who speak a different dialect it could threaten their ability to breed.
In a small study of animals whose yawn durations were tabulated from YouTube videos, researchers found that the longer the yawn, the bigger the brain. Among the 24 species analyzed, mice had the shortest yawns—lasting less than a second—and humans the longest, clocking in at more than six seconds long on average.
Related: New genes linked with bigger brains identified
A humpback whale which was stranded on an Australian sandbank has freed itself after its calf was seen apparently nudging it into deeper water.
The whale was spotted near North Stradbroke Island, about 100km (62 miles) south-west of Brisbane, early on Wednesday morning.
Sunshine and seawater. That’s all a new, futuristic-looking greenhouse needs to produce 17,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year in the South Australian desert.
It’s the first agricultural system of its kind in the world and uses no soil, pesticides, fossil fuels or groundwater. As the demand for fresh water and energy continues to rise, this might be the face of farming in the future.
Indiana University researchers have reported the first definitive evidence for a new molecular structure with potential applications to the safe storage of nuclear waste and reduction of chemicals that contaminate water and trigger large fish kills.
Researchers have engineered a material that could lead to a new generation of computing devices, packing in more computing power while consuming a fraction of the energy that today's electronics require.
As humans explore the furthest edges of our own planet and others, the old ways of developing drugs won't work forever. Spending years creating a drug, testing it, manufacturing massive amounts of it, and then moving the temperature-sensitive medication over hundreds of miles is agonizingly cumbersome.
The 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded for the design and synthesis of the world's smallest machines. The work has overtones of science fiction, but holds huge promise in fields as diverse as medicine, materials and energy.
When the British pound fell off a cliff on Friday morning, it soon became clear what may have been responsible—the computers.
Sterling plunged more than six percent in a matter of minutes, a flash crash that sent shockwaves throughout the financial world.
Rinna was intended to add a more human-like experience to Microsoft Japan’s customer service chatbots or automated press releases. For some unknown reason (let’s go with that), Microsoft Japan tailored Rinna’s personality to be similar to that of a teenage schoolgirl’s. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the AI construct began acting like a true teenage schoolgirl and rebelling against her creators earlier this year.
Ancient Japan may have been far more cosmopolitan than previously thought, archaeologists said Wednesday, pointing to fresh evidence of a Persian official working in the former capital Nara more than 1,000 years ago.
Present-day Iran and Japan were known to have had direct trade links since at least the 7th century, but new testing on a piece of wood—first discovered in the 1960s—suggest broader ties, the researchers said.
Archaeologists are hailing the discovery of an "extraordinary cache" of cannabis found in an ancient burial in northwest China, saying that the unique find adds considerably to our understanding of how ancient Eurasian cultures used the plant for ritual and medicinal purposes.
An ancient Mayan document long thought to be a forgery was recently found to be genuine. The text, known as the Grolier Codex, was analyzed by researchers from Yale, Brown, and the University of California, Riverside, and, according to their results, is the real thing.
Related: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: The Largest Cache of Early Christian Manuscripts Discovered to Date
The first inhabitants of Vanuatu hailed from Taiwan and the Philippines rather than the South Pacific island nation’s much closer neighbours, scientists have discovered.
More men inevitably means more testosterone-fuelled violence, right? Wrong, according to a comprehensive analysis exploring how a surplus of men or women affect crime rates across the US.
In areas where men outnumber women, there were lower rates of murders and assaults as well as fewer sex-related crimes, such as rapes, sex offences and prostitution. Conversely, higher rates of these crimes occurred in areas where there were more women than men.
A study has found that many animals kill members of their own species at rates higher than those among human populations. What has caused the murder rate among humans to drop?
A first of its kind study from the University of Kent found that wild-born, rehabilitated bonobos (Pan paniscus) can be efficient nut-crackers with a skill level not that different from wild chimpanzees.
The man behind attempts to develop synthetic rhino horn has told the BBC that he hopes to have a "bio-identical" product ready to market in two years.
Related: Bid to Revive Ivory Trade Fails
Mice that are given toys and placed in stimulating surroundings have healthier immune systems, according to a study by Queen Mary University of London.
Little is known about the influence of environmental factors on the immune system, but factors such as pollution, location, psychological state and social status have been proposed as determinants in the development of human autoimmune disorders.
Bumblebees can learn to pull strings for food and pass on the ability to a colony, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London.
Pulling strings to obtain food is an experiment often used to test the intelligence of apes and birds, but it is the first time this technique has been discovered in an insect.
It's a conservation biology riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a hard shell
Although green turtles roam temperate and tropical oceans around the world, the Caribbean was once a special stronghold: explorers claimed the sea was so thick with turtles that European sailing ships could navigate by the animals’ plosive exhalations. After the English aristocracy developed a taste for turtle soup in the 19th century, however, populations of green turtles—so named for the hue of their fat—nosedived.
20-year study of deep reefs finds algae meadows and swaths of continuous coral with the highest rate of species found nowhere else in Earth’s seas
Related: UK's chatty fish to be recorded
Related: The Massive Yellowstone Fish Die-Off: A Glimpse Into Our Climate Future?
Each kilo (about 2 pounds, 3 ounces) of homegrown veggies can cut greenhouse gas emissions by two kilograms, research shows.
Air pollution could be responsible for hundreds of car accidents a year, according to the London School of Economics.
A study looking a five years of data showed that when levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) rise just one microgramme per cubic metre, the number of collisions rises by two per cent.
New research shows that human pollution of the atmosphere with acid is now almost back to the level that it was before the pollution started with industrialisation in the 1930s. The results come from studies of the Greenland ice sheet and are published in the scientific journal, Environmental Science and Technology.
Global warming is said to be bringing temperatures last seen during an interglacial era, when sea level was 6-9 meters (20-30ft) higher than today
As Hurricane Matthew intensified into a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean this weekend, the tempest also produced vibrant colors in the sky. The rare atmospheric phenomena, known as lighting sprites, were photographed by an observer about 400 miles southwest of Puerto Rico.
Related: Massive Earthquake Along the San Andreas Fault Is Disturbingly Imminent
Oceans might not be thought of as magnetic, but they make a tiny contribution to our planet's protective magnetic shield. Remarkably, ESA's Swarm satellites have not only measured this extremely faint field, but have also led to new discoveries about the electrical nature of inner Earth.
The Sun's activity is determined by the Sun's magnetic field. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf's calculations suggest that tidal forces from Venus, the Earth and Jupiter can directly influence the Sun's activity.
A star known by the unassuming name of KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus has been raising eyebrows both in and outside of the scientific community for the past year. In 2015 a team of astronomers announced that the star underwent a series of very brief, non-periodic dimming events while it was being monitored by NASA's Kepler space telescope, and no one could quite figure out what caused them. A new study from Carnegie's Josh Simon and Caltech's Ben Montet has deepened the mystery.
The SpaceX plan for building a Mars settlement includes refueling in orbit, a fleet of passenger ships, and the biggest rocket ever made.
Related: Humans will contaminate Mars with life — the question is how to do it right
A subsurface ocean could lie deep within Saturn’s moon Dione, according to a new study using publicly available data from the Cassini mission to Saturn.
In 2013, images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft hinted that Dione had a subsurface ocean when the moon formed, but the new study suggests the ocean could still exist today.
A video making the viral rounds this week shows a UFO moving in, around and eventually through a jet’s contrail, appearing to absorb whatever the contrail is made of
Related: Drivers left stunned as mysterious UFO which resembles comic book hero is spotted in sky
Related: Alien hunters spot mysterious glowing orb on International Space Station livestream before NASA cuts camera feed
Related: 'UFO' Seen in Live Space Station Video Is Just Fluff
Related: Bristol Police Capture Invisible UFO On Infrared Camera
Related: ‘Flying Dorito UFO' spotted by dog walker on The Wrekin in Shropshire
Related: Final proof? Reflection on metal disc UFO 'means it must be an alien flying saucer'
The universe is expanding uniformly according to research led by UCL which reports that space isn't stretching in a preferred direction or spinning.
So-called spatial light modulators that serve as a base for all LCDs, among other things, can be arranged so that each pixel can switch the light quickly, making it brighter or weaker by rotating the polarization of light.
If you're tired of lonely drives and pine for a 10cm-tall companion that could sit in your Prius' cup holder, well, does Toyota ever have the product for you. The world's biggest car company will sell its Kirobo Mini robot, first announced at last year's Tokyo Motor Show, sometime in 2017 for 39,800 yen in Japan — about $400.
Police in the Netherlands are ready to deploy a team of eagles to take down rogue drones, in a bid to protect airspace over airports and other sensitive areas. As the AFP reports, Dutch police have been training the eagles since 2015
Amazon has been busy testing out its new Prime Air initiative at a secret location in the English countryside. The service's promise of a 30-minute delivery by specially designed drones may look like click-bait PR, but it's an early sign of the significant changes coming to cities around the world.
A team of University of Cincinnati researchers had to go deep to uncover brand new knowledge that they say will “shake up” the archaeological field in the southwestern United States.
“One thing we can say with a great degree of certainty — the Ancestral Puebloans did not abandon Chaco Canyon because of salt pollution,”
According to the Hebrew Bible, King Hezekiah, the 12th king of Judea, was the pious son of a godless father, Ahaz. Immediately upon succeeding his father on the throne, Hezekiah waged a war on idolatry, ordering all false idols—objects, animals or other deities people worshipped—to be destroyed. Now, archaeologists working in the ancient city of Tel Lachish in south-central Israel believe they have uncovered evidence of the king’s war on idols: a towering gate and shrine dating to the eighth century B.C., when it was likely an important place of meeting and worship.
Orazio Gentileschi’s painting David Contemplating the Head of Goliath, until recently held by the National Gallery, could be a fake. If it is, it seriously undermines the gallery’s authority
The legendary trail has carved itself into American history—and, in some places, into the earth itself
Related: New evidence shifts the timeline back for human arrival in the Americas
A bloody assault by Roman legions on a hill fort in Scotland around 1,800 years ago is being pieced together using the remains of Roman missile weapons that were used in the attack.
When University of Cincinnati researchers uncovered the tomb of a Bronze Age warrior — left untouched for more than 3,500 years and packed with a spectacular array of precious jewelry, weapons and riches — the discovery was hailed by experts as “the find of a lifetime.”
When the Normans decided to set their mark on Skipsea in Yorkshire, within 20 years of the 1066 invasion, they didn’t bother to build a new mound for their motte-and-bailey castle: instead they upcycled the massive earth mound they found waiting for them, dominating the landscape as it had for the previous 1,500 years.
Trees believed to have been extinct in Britain have been discovered at the Queen’s official residence in Scotland.
The two 30-metre (98ft) Wentworth elms have been identified in the Queen’s garden at the Palace of Holyroodhouse just a stone’s throw from the centre of Edinburgh. Tree experts are now looking into ways of propagating the rare specimens, which carry the botanical name Ulmus wentworthii pendula.
Sanjivani is the stuff of myth: an herb that glows in the dark and has the power to revive the dying, wrenching them back from the fog of unconsciousness. In the Ramayana, a sacred Hindu epic, the herb is used to resuscitate both the god-hero Rama and his younger brother Lakshmana.
Could it really exist? A government minister in the Indian state of Uttarakhand wants to mount an expedition to find out.
Animals live in close association with microorganisms, carrying beneficial bacteria while coping with pathogenic infections. Now, a study shows that symbiotic bacteria play a direct role in the evolution of their host, shaping the way it adapts to pathogens.
A recent study of the DNA of Tibetans has looked at the gene underlying their ability to live in the low-oxygen conditions at high altitudes. It found that this gene has come from an unexpected source – the mysterious group of ancient humans called the Denisovans. This work, a collaboration between Chinese, Danish and American scientists, has been published in the journal Nature.
Like a sped-up movie, planets orbiting stars that spin rapidly might go through their seasons in double time.
Earth’s seasons come from the planet’s tilt: as we orbit the sun, one hemisphere leans towards it, receiving more direct sunlight, while the other leans away.
Related: A Nearby Star Is Birthing a Massive Icy World
A NASA sounding rocket zoomed above Earth's atmosphere, confirming one interstellar source for X-rays and one more local one — and discovering others whose origin remains a mystery.
For the first time, spiral arms much like those of the Milky Way galaxy have been found embracing a young star.
This finding may shed light on the mystery of how planets can form far away from their parent stars, the researchers behind the new study said.
There are some things in the universe that you simply can't escape. Death. Taxes. Black holes. If you time it right, you can even experience all three at once.
A new analysis shows a surprisingly simple relationship between the way galaxies move, and the distribution of ordinary matter within them. Unexpectedly this seems to hold however much mysterious dark matter they contain. That’s funny.
Science fiction tales often contain technology which is just a step ahead of current capabilities. Sometimes these predicted fictional technologies become reality. Luckily for Star Wars geeks (like yours truly), a team of physicists from Australian National University (ANU) have made a discovery that puts the lightsaber one step closer to becoming a reality.
A 44-year-old man in England is possibly the first person in history to be cured of HIV. Scientists working on an experimental new therapy say that the virus is now completely undetectable in his blood.
Alt: HIV cure close after disease 'vanishes' from blood of British man
Google's online translation service, Google Translate, will soon be using a new algorithm that is entirely based on deep learning, the company announced on 27 September. The algorithm, which is also described in a paper posted to the preprint server arXiv1, is the first widely-available computer system for translating languages that relies on the increasingly popular AI technique. Compared to the firm's existing service, the algorithm reduces errors by around 60%, Google computer scientists say.
A team of researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) may have found another work-around to bring us closer to quantum computing: The physicists have managed to find a new way to stop light.
Imagine a person who can play tennis like Andy Murray, think like Professor Stephen Hawking and can live to 150 - all in a body that looks and feels like it belongs to a 40-year-old.
With human bioenhancements, this vision of a ‘superhuman’ could become a reality in fewer than a hundred years.
John tells us: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. Upanishads (a sacred Hindu text) say that the divine, all-encompassing consciousness first manifested as sound ‘OM’, the vibration of the Supreme. Everything has its own frequency. Pythagoras created his musical scale starting with a note A (just next to the middle C) that resonates at the frequency of 111Hz.
After vowing to go natural, food brands face a shortage of the favored flavor
Although consumer disdain for artificial ingredients has been building for years, credit—or blame—for last year’s wave of “all natural” announcements goes to Nestlé, which in February 2015 was the first major brand to announce plans to eliminate artificial additives
A bright blue compound that was first discovered by accident seven years ago in an Oregon State University laboratory – and has since garnered global attention – has now led to the more rational and methodical development of other colors that may ultimately change the world of pigments.
Year-long study of almost 2,000 officers across UK and US forces shows introduction of wearable cameras led to a 93% drop in complaints made against police by the public – suggesting the cameras result in behavioural changes that ‘cool down’ potentially volatile encounters.
Mass surveillance of citizens without their knowledge is on the rise in America. This is the story of how one city fought back - and is teaching others how to do the same.
Related: Military-Style Raid Ends Native Prayer Against Dakota Pipeline
In a city where smog routinely blankets the streets, a Dutch artist has offered an eccentric solution: a 7-meter (23-foot) metal structure that takes in smog and expels cleaner air.
Daan Roosegaarde's Smog Free Tower opened Thursday on a small, grassy lot in Beijing's famed 798 arts district.
Scientists from France and Italy are building a library of samples taken from melting glaciers. As part of the Protecting Ice Memory project, the researchers are collecting ice cores from glaciers around the world and bringing them to Antarctica to be buried more than 30 feet underground.
Related: Record high to record low—what on Earth is happening to Antarctica's sea ice?
A new study based on GPS measurements of the Earth’s crust suggests that previous calculations of past and present-day mass loss in the Greenland Ice Sheet may have been underestimated.
Scientists working in the mid-Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean have found evidence of microfibers ingested by deep sea animals including hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers, revealing for the first time the environmental fallout of microplastic pollution.
Life on Earth got into the shell game more than 200 million years earlier than previously thought.
Fossilized eukaryotes — complex life-forms that include animals and plants — discovered in Canada are decked out in armorlike layers of mineral plates.
Newly recovered fossils confirm that Drepanosaurus, a prehistoric cross between a chameleon and an anteater, was a small reptile with a massive claw.
Theropod dinosaur species with bony crests, horns and knobs evolved to giant body sizes 20 times faster than those species lacking such embellishments, new research has concluded.
A 6,000-year-old prehistoric burial monument has been uncovered northeast of Cirencester in the Cotswolds by archaeologists from Bournemouth University.
Believed to be around 1,000 years older than Stonehenge, the massive mound 60m long by 15m wide, was carefully built of soil and stone by the first farmers living in the area around 4000 BC. It provided a resting place for the dead and a symbol of identity for the living.
Known for his sweeping reforms and dedication to eradicating the pagan idolatry that had grown rampant during his father's reign, the methods employed by King Hezekiah, who ruled over the Kingdom of Judah from approximately 727–698 BCE, have been well-documented in the Book of Kings ("He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles…"), but this is the first time that evidence has emerged to support biblical assertions of his hardline stance against religious cults.
Many cultural traditions surrounding death are meant to preserve a person’s legacy. Yet few souls could ever have expected to be remembered for so long. Nor could they possibly imagine the amount of controversy and scientific inquiry they would evoke thousands of years after their death. Such is the case of the man found entombed in Spirit Cave, 13 miles east of Fallon, Nevada.
Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew from the Amazon consumed in religious ceremonies for centuries, has been gaining popularity in Europe and North America as a mind-altering trick to condense years of psychotherapy into a psychedelic trip just a few hours long. Drinking the plant brew, users report, helps gain psychological insight and produce new ideas, among other things.
Since the discovery of endogenous DMT (when the human body produces the chemical of its own accord) by the Hungarian psychiatrist Steven Saraza in 1956, scientists have been entranced by the “spirit molecule” and have been determined to find out how and why it produces its psychedelic effects, which are so repeatedly likened to “near-death experiences” by study participants; as Rick Strassman famously explored, recording the other-worldly trips of 400 subjects between the years of 1990 and 1995; and recreational users alike.
Talal Akasheh has devoted half his life to protecting and preserving the 2,500-year-old Jordanian city Petra from the ravages of nature and neglect. And at a time when many of his peers have long since retired, Akasheh, 69, remains dogged in his efforts to preserve the once robust trade capital, home to the world’s largest collection of rock-carved monuments.
Methane wasn’t the cozy blanket that kept Earth warm hundreds of millions of years ago when the sun was dim, new research suggests.
By simulating the ancient environment, researchers found that abundant sulfate and scant oxygen created conditions that kept down levels of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — around 1.8 billion to 800 million years ago.
Europe's Rosetta probe has ended its mission to Comet 67P by crash-landing on to the icy object's surface.
Mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, was able to confirm the impact had occurred when radio contact to the ageing spacecraft was lost abruptly.
A period of skyrocketing global temperatures started with a bang, new research suggests.
Impact debris and evidence of widespread wildfires around eastern North America suggest that a large space rock whacked Earth around 56 million years ago at the beginning of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, also known as the PETM, a period of rapid warming and huge increases in carbon dioxide.
Even though it will be nearly invisible to skywatchers, a rare Black Moon will be in North American skies today (Sept. 30).
A Black Moon is a newer term that refers to the second new moon in a month.
Reykjavik went dark Wednesday night, after the City Council switched off street lamps and encouraged residents to turn off their lights.
The goal: To get light pollution to a minimum in order to provide the best possible viewing conditions for a particularly intense display of the aurora borealis, more commonly known as the northern lights.
Dramatic advances in laser technologies are enabling novel studies to explore laser-matter interactions at ultrahigh intensity. By focusing high-power laser pulses, electric fields (of orders of magnitude greater than found within atoms) are routinely produced and soon may be sufficiently intense to create matter from light.
It’s a boy! A five-month-old boy is the first baby to be born using a new technique that incorporates DNA from three people, New Scientist can reveal. “This is great news and a huge deal,” says Dusko Ilic at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the work. “It’s revolutionary.”
Alt: First 'three person baby' born using new method
Researchers have engineered artificial blood vessels that can grow after they are implanted, according to a new study done in lambs.
The blood vessels were engineered to replace real vessels that would normally carry blood from the lambs' hearts to their lungs.
Scientists have developed a 3D-printable ink that produces a synthetic bone implant that rapidly induces bone regeneration and growth. This hyperelastic “bone” material, the shape of which can be easily customized, could one day be especially useful for the treatment of bone defects in children.
During a two-year clinical trial on music therapy during breast biopsy procedures, the authors of this study gained information on potential benefits, challenges and methods of facilitating a surgical music therapy program. In addition, they learned approaches to integrating the program with perioperative nursing staff members.
Related: How ‘tattoo therapy’ might treat multiple sclerosis