Newsdesk Archive

“Man perishes; his corpse turns to dust; all his relatives pass away. But writings make him remembered in the mouth of the reader. A book is more effective than a well-built house or a tomb-chapel in the west, better than an established villa or a stela in the temple!” Those prescient lines were written over 3,000 years ago, in ancient Egypt. They are part of a new book offering fresh translations of Egyptian hieroglyphics by Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge. For the book, called “Writings From Ancient Egypt“, he gathered texts from poets, scribes, priests, storytellers and everyday citizens spanning some 2,000 years of Egyptian civilization to present a tantalizingly personal glimpse into a society defined today mostly by pyramids and mummies.

A small onyx stone believed to have been worn in the sacred breastplate of the High Priest of Jerusalem may have been found after being missing for more than 1,000 years. A sardonyx gem, thought to have been one of two that were set in gold on each shoulder of the breastplate and deemed to be 'forms of divine communication', was discovered in South Africa. Related: Rare Gold Coin with Nero's Face Discovered in Jerusalem

The finding gives a glimpse of the majestic detail of this long-lost edifice central to Jewish and Christian history Related: Remains of Ancient Roman Oven Unearthed in Scotland

If you’ve ever visited Roman ruins, you’ll know that the ancient Romans were really into bathing. Every town had at least one bathhouse, which had a combination of steam rooms, hot tubs, and cold baths. But did these rituals actually do anything for the Romans’ health?

Scientists have identified a gene that helps us feel and keep tabs on our body’s position in space. Two people, aged nine and 19 years old, with mutations on a gene called PIEZO2 showed researchers how their senses of touch and body awareness, or proprioception, differed from those of other people.

Financial traders are better at reading their 'gut feelings' than the general population – and the better they are at this ability, the more successful they are as traders, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge.

People born without sight appear to solve math problems using visual areas of the brain. A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How are you feeling today? In a paper that will be presented next month at MobiCom, the Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, researchers from MIT's CSAIL announce that they have developed a device that can determine people's emotions by analyzing reflections in wireless signals.

A robot has been arrested while taking part in a political rally in Russia, after police intervened to prevent it from interacting with the public. Adding to the bizarre situation is the fact that this is the same model of robot that previously tried to escape twice from its manufacturer.

Isaac Asimov gave us the basic rules of good robot behaviour: don’t harm humans, obey orders and protect yourself. Now the British Standards Institute has issued a more official version aimed at helping designers create ethically sound robots.

Can Google bring peace to the web with machine learning? Jigsaw, a subsidiary of parent company Alphabet is certainly trying, building open-source AI tools designed to filter out abusive language. A new feature from Wired describes how the software has been trained on some 17 million comments left underneath New York Times stories, along with 13,000 discussions on Wikipedia pages.

Is. Isn’t. Is. Isn’t. Is. Isn’t. It’s annoying enough when kids get stuck in this kind of loop. But certain bots on Wikipedia have been at it for years, endlessly making and unmaking each other’s edits in spats that never end. Wikipedia editors sometimes use bots to help them keep on top of changes that users have made to the online encyclopedia. But when two editors task different bots with making incompatible edits, each bot will keep finding that its work has been undone.

The world’s first self-driving taxi has finally found its ride-hail network. On Thursday, NuTonomy, an MIT-spinoff testing self-driving cars in Singapore, announced a partnership with Grab, the Uber of Southeast Asia. The partnership will allow NuTonomy to expand its public trial, which started several weeks before Uber launched its own public test in Pittsburgh Related: Self-Driving Cars Gain Powerful Ally: The Government

Using a simple membrane extract from spinach leaves, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a bio-photo-electro-chemical (BPEC) cell that produces electricity and hydrogen from water using sunlight. The raw material of the device is water, and its products are electric current, hydrogen and oxygen. Related: Researchers discover more efficient way to split water, produce hydrogen

Tesla may be at the forefront of solar technologies right now, with their merger with SolarCity bringing the technology full circle. In fact, one of their newer developments is a rumored “solar roof,” an actual roof that functions as solar panels.

Could an outpost on the moon be the next logical step towards the know-how and infrastructure we need to head into the farther reaches of the solar system?

The puzzling appearance of an ice cloud seemingly out of thin air has prompted NASA scientists to suggest that a different process than previously thought—possibly similar to one seen over Earth's poles—could be forming clouds on Saturn's moon Titan. Alt: NASA Scientists Attempt to Decipher Mystery Cloud on Saturn's Titan --"Appeared Out of Thin Air"

NASA has announced a teleconference to be held on Monday afternoon next week, during which it will present new findings from images of Europa, one of the largest of Jupiter’s 67 known moons, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Alt: NASA: Activity Spied on Europa, But It's 'NOT Aliens'

With a new president on the horizon, a key Senate committee moved Wednesday to protect long-standing priorities of the nation’s space program from the potential upheaval of an incoming administration. Members of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bipartisan bill authorizing $19.5 billion to continue work on a Mars mission

When objects approach a black hole, they become stretched under immense gravitational force – a phenomenon fittingly known as “spaghettification.” The black hole then devours its cosmic meal, before finally letting loose a massive, flaming cosmic belch.

Building-size chunks of rock were photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in January as they broke free from a disintegrating comet zooming around the sun. The relatively rare images are providing insight into how these icy space rocks die. Related: Native American prophecy ‘hints that massive comet is about to hit Earth’

It's not just the love hormone: oxytocin could prop up our spiritual lives, according to new research out of Duke University. “Oxytocin appears to be part of the way our bodies support spiritual beliefs," lead author Patty Van Cappellen said in a Duke Today interview.

You made a choice and it didn’t turn out too well. How will your brain ensure you do better next time? It seems there’s a hub in the brain that doles out rewards and punishments to reinforce vital survival skills.

What defines who we are? Our habits? Our aesthetic tastes? Our memories? If pressed, I would answer that if there is any part of me that sits at my core, that is an essential part of who I am, then surely it must be my moral center, my deep-seated sense of right and wrong. Related: Evidence Rebuts Chomsky's Theory of Language Learning Related: Book explores how our voices shape the rules of grammar

There will never be a horse like Mr. Ed, the talking equine TV star. But scientists have discovered that the animals can learn to use another human tool for communicating: pointing to symbols. They join a short list of other species, including some primates, dolphins, and pigeons, with this talent.

A Russian geneticist, the BBC is reporting, replicated the process that led to the domestication of the dog, with foxes, over the course of just fifty years. Curious about the means by which dogs became domesticated, Dmitry Belyaev began a breeding program in the late 1950's aimed at replicating the process using foxes. Related: Pugs are anatomical disasters. Vets must speak out – even if it’s bad for business

In The Trainable Cat, feline behavior specialist Sarah Ellis explains how you can train your kitty to come on command, take medicine and stop waking you up in the middle of the night. Related: Feral Cats Are an Ecological Disaster

Cats like to think they don't need us, but a new study into feline genetics has indicated that the global kitty population only boomed when they moved in with humans. The research, presented last week and reported by Nature, seems to show two distinct waves of growth in cat numbers: first around 10,000 years ago as humans first started cultivating crops, and second as we started taking to the seas.

The ocean might seem like a quiet place, but listen carefully and you might just hear the sounds of the fish choir. Most of this underwater music comes from soloist fish, repeating the same calls over and over. But when the calls of different fish overlap, they form a chorus.

Researchers at The University of Queensland have established that reef fish see colours that humans cannot. A team from Professor Justin Marshall's Sensory Neurobiology Lab at the Queensland Brain Institute ran a series of behavioral experiments with trigger fish, in a bid to decode how they see the world.

The mystery of why so many plants on New Zealand's otherwise bleak subantarctic islands have very large deeply coloured flowers and giant leaves has been solved by new University of Otago research. These insect-pollinated "megaherbs" stand out like sore thumbs amongst the islands' other flora which are small, wind-pollinated plants that mainly reproduce by self-pollination or asexual reproduction.

A pair of 46,000-year-old human teeth has been discovered in Liang Bua, a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores that was once home to the 1-metre-tall ‘hobbit’ species Homo floresiensis. The teeth are slightly younger than the known hobbit remains, which strengthens the case that humans were responsible for the species’ demise.

Modern humans evolved in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. But how did our species go on to populate the rest of the globe? The question, one of the biggest in studies of human evolution, has intrigued scientists for decades. In a series of extraordinary genetic analyses published on Wednesday, researchers believe they have found an answer. Alt: All non-Africans alive today likely descend from people within a single migration out of Africa

Claims that Indigenous Australians are the most ancient continuous civilisation on Earth have been backed by the first extensive study of their DNA, which dates their origins to more than 50,000 years ago. Scientists were able to trace the remarkable journey made by intrepid ancient humans by sifting through clues left in the DNA of modern populations in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Related: Indigenous Australians know we're the oldest living culture – it's in our Dreamtime

We already know what Ötzi the Iceman was wearing when he died more than 5,000 years ago in the Italian Alps, as well as how many tattoos he had. But now scientists have taken things one step further: they've managed to recreate the "best possible approximation" of his voice.

Scientists have formally announced their reconstruction of the Ein Gedi Scroll, the most ancient Hebrew scroll since the Dead Sea Scrolls. Alt: Jubilation as scientists use 'virtual unwrapping' to read burnt ancient scroll

Biofilms are affecting edifices like Angkor Wat and the Jefferson Memorial, and debate is raging over whether they are helpful or harmful.

While many of today’s top predators are more recent products of evolution, the modern American alligator is a reptile from another time. New research shows these prehistoric-looking creatures have remained virtually untouched by major evolutionary change for at least 8 million years, and may be up to 6 million years older than previously thought.

Like thousands of soap-dish-sized Rosetta stones, the shells can reveal clues about the past—if you know what you’re looking for Related: Cumbrian lakes hold a centuries-long flood record

Scientists have unearthed an exceptionally well preserved fossil of a complete mammoth skull from an eroding stream bank on Santa Rosa Island within Channel Islands National Park.

Forty researchers elbow their way to the front of the room. They whip out their cameras and mobile phones like palaeontological-paparazzi, and start snapping. Others hang back, hands on chins, to take in the animal standing on the table-top from different angles. They dispense approving nods, and converge to discuss their conclusions in hushed tones.

Evidence suggests that microbes existed on Earth as far back as 3.7 billion years ago, a billion years after the planet formed. Animal remains, however, don't appear in the fossil record until 600 million years ago during the Ediacaran period, though there are indirect signs that animal life may have gotten started much earlier.

Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have found that, contrary to popular belief, the Earth is not comprised of the same material found in primitive meteorites (also known as chondrites). This is based on the determination that the abundance of several neodymium (Nd) isotopes are different in the Earth and in chondritic meteorites.

A new study demonstrates that the Earth and other planetary objects formed in the early years of the Solar System share similar chemical origins -- a finding at odds with accepted wisdom held by scientists for decades.

Measurements of an element in Earth and Moon rocks have just disproved the leading hypotheses for the origin of the Moon. Tiny differences in the segregation of the isotopes of potassium between the Moon and Earth were hidden below the detection limits of analytical techniques until recently.

A new study shows that rocks formed by the grinding together of other rocks during earthquakes are rich in trapped hydrogen -- a finding that suggests similar seismic activity on Mars may produce enough hydrogen to support life.

For most of its 14 year existence, SpaceX has focused on designing and developing the hardware that will lead to its ultimate goal: colonizing Mars. These plans have remained largely secret from the general public, as company founder Elon Musk has dropped only the barest of hints. Related: Elon Musk's Mars colonization plans: what we know so far

NASA astronauts are opening new doors in the worlds of science and medicine by sequencing DNA in all sorts of extreme environments, including, for the first time, the microgravity of the International Space Station.

They are the toughest known animals on Earth and now the secret to one of their superpowers – resistance to radiation – is out. Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are tiny, eight-legged creatures that live in small bodies of water in habitats such as moss across the planet and are renowned for their extreme survival skills.

It’s appealing to think that “all it takes is a lot of practice,” but the factors behind elite performance are more complicated than that

Loneliness is linked to poor physical and mental health, and is an even more accurate predictor of early death than obesity. To better understand who is at risk, researchers conducted the first genome-wide association study for loneliness -- as a life-long trait, not a temporary state. They discovered that risk for feeling lonely is partially due to genetics, but environment plays a bigger role.

Babies born with big heads are likely to be more intelligent, a study has suggested. Related: WWI babies whose fathers were killed in action have shortened adult life expectancies

US study finds gut microbe pattern in one-month-old babies linked to increased risk of developing asthma and allergic reactions Related: Babies Have a Microbial Window of Opportunity Related: Feeding babies egg and peanut may prevent food allergy, study suggests

A dose of microbes can let plants better withstand drought conditions by growing more leaves and roots and using less water, research shows. With California in its fifth year of severe drought and many western states experiencing another year of unusually dry conditions, plants are stressed.

There's increasing evidence to show that trees are able to communicate with each other. More than that, trees can learn. If that's true — and my experience as a forester convinces me it is — then they must be able to store and transmit information. And scientists are beginning to ask: is it possible that trees possess intelligence, and memories, and emotions? So, to cut to the quick, do trees have brains? Related: Intelligence in Nature, by Jeremy Narby

Indonesia's highest Islamic authority has said it is a sin for people to deliberately burn forests to clear the land for growing crops. Illegal slash-and-burn farming has devastated large areas of Indonesia and causes air pollution which affects countries around the region.

The forest around Manjau in Borneo once reverberated with the scream of chainsaws, as gangs of illegal loggers felled ancient hardwood trees for sale to timber merchants downstream. But many loggers in the remote Indonesian village are hanging up their chainsaws in return for affordable healthcare, through a community incentive scheme that aims to save lives and protect Borneo's fragile rainforests. Related: In Uruguay, green school 'plants seeds' for planet

According to new research from University of Virginia economist Federico Ciliberto, widespread adoption of genetically modified crops has decreased the use of insecticides, but increased the use of weed-killing herbicides as weeds become more resistant. Related: Nature loss linked to farming intensity

A large crack in an Antarctic ice shelf has grown by 13 miles in the past six months A large crack in an Antarctic ice shelf has grown by 13 miles in the past six months, threatening to detach an area of ice larger than Delaware. Related: Arctic Ice Shrinks to Second Lowest Level on Record

Addressing fundamental unknowns about the earliest history of Earth’s crust, scientists have precisely dated the world’s oldest rock unit at 4.02 billion years old. Driven by the University of Alberta, the findings suggest that early Earth was largely covered with an oceanic crust-like surface.

An amateur archaeologist has tracked down hundreds of prehistoric rock engravings in Scotland in what has been described as a “phenomenal” contribution to the understanding of Britain’s earliest artworks.

When police heard about the frozen corpse up in the Alps in September 1991, they opened a criminal probe. Murder it was, but the crime was rather old—and the ultimate cold case. Related: Dying in ancient Egypt—evidence of inflammation, infection and possible cancer

One of the safest things for a Viking to have was a big family. In a recently published paper in Evolution and Human Behavior, researchers have found that killers in Iceland's Viking society often had larger family networks than their victims.

At first the story seemed clear enough. When an Aboriginal man’s skeleton was found beside an Australian river bank two years ago, the long gash in his skull indicated he’d been slashed to death by a sword or cutlass, probably during the turbulent years when Europeans were spreading across the continent.

Archaeologists have found the world's oldest fish hooks in a cave on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The pair, dating from about 23,000 years ago, were carved from sea snail shells and found with other ancient relics, according to a paper. Alt: Ancient fish hooks found on Okinawa suggest earlier maritime migration than thought

Site has already revealed most spectacular cargo ever found from antiquity, but bones are first hope of sequencing DNA from 1st century BC shipwreck victim

Scientists have found what could be the bones of some of the last surviving Neanderthals in Western Europe. And it appears our ancient cousins were far smarter than researchers believed. Alt: New evidence suggests ancient jewelry at Grotte du Renne cave made by Neanderthals

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — For decades, archaeologists here kept their eyes on the ground as they tramped through thick jungle, rice paddies and buffalo grazing fields, emerald green and soft with mud during the monsoon season.

Whoever she was, she had achieved celebrity status. At Catalhoyuk, an ancient site in central Turkey, archaeologists have discovered a rare stone figurine of a woman about 8,000 years old. Only a handful of statuettes of the era have been found in one piece.

The long-lost ship of British polar explorer Sir John Franklin, HMS Terror, has been found in pristine condition at the bottom of an Arctic bay, researchers have said, in a discovery that challenges the accepted history behind one of polar exploration’s deepest mysteries. Related: Earhart's Last Picture, Messages Resurface

Remains of two humans who died violent deaths about 1,000 years ago and buried with 10 dogs that were likely strangled and two guinea pigs have been unearthed at a site of the ancient Ychsma people in Peru. One of the bodies was the remains of a young boy who was positioned as if he was hugging a pregnant dog.

Witch trials were not new in Europe, where they'd been occurring sporadically since the 1400s—and they became so popular that they continued through the late 1700s. But between 1609 and 1614, up to 7,000 people were accused of witchcraft in Basque Spain.

IT may sound like sci-fi, but hundreds of Australians are turning themselves into super-humans who can unlock doors, turn on lights and log into computers with a wave of the hand.

Gamers playing the popular online puzzle game Foldit beat scientists, college students and computer algorithms in a contest to see who could identify a particular protein's shape. The study findings have implications for video game enthusiasts and classroom instruction, and showcase the positive impact citizen science can have on research.

Microsoft has vowed to “solve the problem of cancer” within a decade by using ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state.

A new world record for quantum teleportation has been set, bringing quantum communication networks that can stretch between cities a step closer. Two independent teams have transferred quantum information over several kilometres of fibre optic networks. Alt: Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World

We have a tendency to oversimplify complicated issues. Sometimes this gives useful clarity, but more frequently it gives a distorted impression of what I am stubborn enough to call the truth. Clarity can be seductive, but is disastrously misleading if it neglects important facts. This is true in politics, in history, and in science.

The most detailed 3D map yet of a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy was released today (Sept. 14), along with a sneak peek at brand-new data on millions of stars collected by the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft.

I’ve got to say, you are one of the luckiest people I’ve ever met. For starters, you are the descendant of an incomprehensible number of lifeforms who were successful, and survived long enough to find a partner, procreate, and have an offspring. Related: Astrophysicists discover mechanism for spiral-arm formation in disk galaxies

You go out and look at the stars year after year and never see any of them get up and walk away from their constellations. Take a time machine back to the days of Plato and Socrates and only careful viewing would reveal that just three of the sky's naked eye stars had budged: Arcturus, Sirius and Aldebaran.

After traveling for 37 years, Voyager I is recording pulses from the sun that confirm it has entered a different region near the edge of the solar system called interstellar space.

The majestic auroras have captivated humans for thousands of years, but their nature—the fact that the lights are electromagnetic and respond to solar activity—was only realized in the last 150 years. Thanks to coordinated multi-satellite observations and a worldwide network of magnetic sensors and cameras, close study of auroras has become possible over recent decades.

France has passed a new law to ensure all plastic cups, cutlery and plates can be composted and are made of biologically-sourced materials. The law, which comes into effect in 2020, is part of the Energy Transition for Green Growth – an ambitious plan that aims to allow France to make a more effective contribution to tackling climate change.

Over eight months of training, the advanced-class pigeons were taught to distinguish four-letter words from non-words. They were even able to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters, like “very” and “vrey," or words with different letters included to make them completely misspelled.

The report also listed 86 species of birds, including the Canadian warbler, that are threatened by plummeting populations, habitat destruction and climate change.

After a century of constant decline, the number of wild tigers is on the rise! According to the most recent data, around 3,890 tigers now exist in the wild—up from an estimated 3,200 in 2010. We can attribute this updated minimum number—compiled from national tiger surveys—to rising tiger populations in India, Russia, Nepal, and Bhutan; improved surveys; and enhanced protection of this iconic species.

The sixth mass extinction—the one that seven billion humans are doing their darnedest to trigger at this very moment—is shaping up to be like nothing our planet has ever seen. That’s the conclusion of a sweeping new analysis, which compared marine fossil records from Earth’s five previous mass extinction events to what’s happening in the oceans right now.

The mystery cause has not been confirmed, but residents have a few suspicions Related: Dhaka flooding: Why are there 'rivers of blood' at Eid?

In the waters off the coast of Hawaii, a tall buoy bobs and sways in the water, using the rise and fall of the waves to generate electricity. The current travels through an undersea cable for a mile to a military base, where it is fed into Oahu's power grid—the first wave-produced electricity to go online in the U.S.

Ball lightning is weird. Not just in the capricious way it appears unexpectedly, and thus largely remains a mysterious phenomenon, but also in other strange aspects of its behaviour.

THIS is the moment two police officers claim to have captured their close encounter with a UFO on camera. Related: Retired cop calls on government to reveal ‘truth’ on infamous Rendlesham Forest UFO incident Related: We Asked People Who Claim They Were Abducted by Aliens to Draw Their Experience Related: Gigantic Four-Armed UFO Sails Once Again Past Sun; NASA Still Won't Talk About Artificial Object Spotted In 2011, 2012 And 2016, Conspiracy Theorists Say Related: Bizarre 'UFOs' caught shining over forest by dog walker moments before fully charged camera mysteriously dies

“Assume the worst and plan for that” sounds like a good motto for the European Sample Curation Facility, a project whose purpose will be to isolate and contain any alien life forms brought back to Earth from Mars, comets or any other space bodies Earth ships visit, mine or bring back living souvenirs from – knowingly or otherwise. You mean we don’t have one yet?

The turquoise waters became darker and darker, and squiggly glow-in-dark marine creatures began to glide past in the inky depths like ghosts. Related: How hot is too hot for Earth-style life?

“Hitler’s acid” is a colloquial name used to refer to Orthocarbonic acid – a name which was inspired from the fact that the molecule’s appearance resembles a swastika. As chemical compounds go, it is quite exotic, and chemists are still not sure how to create it under laboratory conditions.

Put a spin on it. Saturn’s rings might have formed when it ate a rotating icy rock that passed too close. This scenario could explain why Saturn’s rings are made of different stuff from those of other gas giants.

Something very odd is going on around Pluto. According to NASA scientists, the New Horizons’ flyby of the former ninth planet has revealed an enigma: the icy world that orbits some 3.6 billion miles from the sun appears to be emitting x-rays—high energy radiation associated with gases with temperatures of a million degrees. That makes Pluto the furthest known x-ray source in our solar system. Alt: Pluto Is Emitting X-Rays, and That's Really Weird

A long time ago, Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to allow running water on its surface. But today these vast gullies -- and features that some scientists interpret as ocean shorelines -- are bone-dry. Something thinned the Red Planet's atmosphere over time, and there's a mission in orbit to find out how, when it happened and how quickly.

Lakes and snowmelt-fed streams on Mars formed much later than previously thought possible, according to new findings. The recently discovered lakes and streams appeared roughly a billion years after an earlier era of wet conditions on ancient Mars. These results suggest the surface conditions at this later time may also have been suitable for microbial life on the Red Planet. Alt: Ancient lakes on Mars suggest the red planet could have hosted life for a BILLION years longer than we thought

Analysis of rocks in the Western Isles has provided "a tantalising clue" that Mars may contain habitats which can potentially support life. Scientists from Scotland, Canada and US, said their studies of rocks on Barra and the Uists showed that hydrogen was formed after earthquakes.

A supermassive black hole in the core of a galaxy churns up hot gas from its own accretion disk to create a cloaking torus. Many supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies possess a thick ring of material known as a torus.