Newsdesk Archive
Researchers have used wasp nests that are thousands of years old to date Aboriginal paintings in Western Australia's remote north-west Kimberley region.
It has long been taken as fact that ancient Romans brutally murdered, abandoned or sacrificed countless infants as piles of baby bones have been found at numerous Roman sites. However, a new study challenges this assumption by providing evidence that some infants thought to have been killed, were in fact stillborn.
The Tibetan Plateau, as the Earth’s third pole, has long been of interest to many, especially in relation to its human history. Over the last few decades our understanding of the history of human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau has significantly improved as a result of progress made in archaeological, genetic and earth science studies.
Fans of the Paleo diet may avoid bread and grains to match the 'healthier' eating habits of early humans.
But remnants of the last meals of hunter gatherers in the Balkans has offered surprising insight into what our ancestors actually ate.
Wheat and sesame seeds dating back 2,800 years ago that were taken from an excavation in an ancient castle in the eastern Van province will soon be brought back to life.
Finland’s capital, Helsinki, is known for many things: Marimekko, a forthcoming Guggenheim outpost, its new public sauna. But now, the Finnish city is making headlines for hosting two of the world’s first self-driving buses.
Related: Daimler to test using cars to scan for parking spaces
Related: Dubai debuts driverless minibus
It is now possible for machines to learn how natural or artificial systems work by simply observing them, without being told what to look for, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield.
Artificially intelligent tools could spot health conditions more expertly than humans, yet that won't be enough for them to go into everyday use
Related: Could artificial intelligence help humanity? Two California universities think so
That warm glow inside could be more than a metaphor. Researchers are working on a laser made out of blood that would emit infrared light, allowing doctors to hunt down tumours.
Related: Modern life is killing our children: Cancer rate in young people up 40 per cent in 16 years
Would you do what a robot told you to do? If people stealing food right under the eyes of a bot is anything to go by, RoboCop is still a long way off.
Related: Stay tuned for new robot, says Sony CEO
The first new antibiotic to be discovered in nearly 30 years has been hailed as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the fight against the growing resistance to drugs.
From antibacterial wipes to germ-busting cleaning agents and soaps, ours is a society obsessed with hygiene. But spending our time and money wiping out microbes may actually be harming—not benefiting—our health, says Ed Yong. As I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life reveals, these invisible organisms help regulate our immune systems, provide crucial protection to newborn infants, and, if integrated into the architecture of public buildings, could even create healthier environments for us to live and work in.
"The parallels between ant fungus farming and human agriculture are uncanny."
Ants have been farming longer than humans have, but as new research reveals, they still haven't domesticated their preferred crop -- fungus.
Previous research has shown city birds are more clever and aggressive than their rural peers
A team of researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology found birds living in urban settings produce fewer and smaller offspring than birds in rural settings.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that only 2 percent of the spray from pesticides used by farmers sticks to the plant. A relatively large portion bounces right off of the plants and lands on the ground. Then, it flows to streams and rivers, causing further pollution.
This disruption to the wind pattern - called the "quasi-biennial oscillation" - did not have any immediate impact on weather or climate as we experience it on Earth's surface. But it does raise interesting questions for the NASA scientists who observed it: If a pattern holds for six decades and then suddenly changes, what caused that to happen? Will it happen again? What effects might it have?
A decade ago, Stephen Hawking warned that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. This past December, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory and the University of Buckingham reported that the discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer planetary system over the last two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids.
The mysterious “eclipse winds” — the sudden change in wind direction and speed that occurs when the moon blocks out the sun — have long baffled scientists. Now, in two separate studies published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, researchers have put forward an explanation for this mysterious phenomenon.
Some exoplanets are only considered habitable for short periods of time, should we give life on these worlds an evolutionary helping hand?
Physicists around the world have long denounced the idea as ‘impossible,’ but one firm has now revealed its plans to send the first reactionless space drive into orbit.
Related: NASA's EmDrive thruster just took an important leap forward
NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter's north pole, taken during the spacecraft's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system's gas-giant planets.
At Cape Canaveral air force station on the Florida coast stands an Atlas V rocket bearing the Osiris-Rex probe, Nasa’s first hope to smash-and-grab material from a speeding asteroid and bring it safely back to Earth.
Cracks are showing in the dominant explanation for dark matter. Is there anything more plausible to replace it?
Related: Mysterious X-ray signal does not originate from dark matter
Parents who excel at math produce children who excel at math. This is according to a recent study that shows a distinct transfer of math skills from parent to child. The study specifically explored intergenerational transmission -- the concept of parental influence on an offspring's behavior or psychology -- in mathematic capabilities.
As we get older we get wiser, or so they say. But most other functions go downhill, particularly memory. However, some “superagers” retain a good memory as they age, and scans now reveal that their brains shrink less than average.
With nearly sixty percent of American adults now taking prescription medications—from antidepressants to cholesterol treatments—there is growing concern about how many drugs are flowing through wastewater treatment facilities and into rivers and lakes. Research confirms that pharmaceutical pollution can cause damage to fish and other ecological problems—and may pose risks to human health too.
As Ars has reported previously, scientists have found that triclosan and other antimicrobial soaps have little benefit to consumers and may actually pose risks. These include bolstering antibiotic resistant microbes, giving opportunistic pathogens a leg up, and disrupting microbiomes.
Microbeads used in bathroom products are expected to be banned by the government by the end of next year.
The small pieces of plastic are commonly found in toothpaste, exfoliating body scrubs and other household products and are thought to be damaging the environment.
Chocoholics around the globe have been aware for the last few years that their favourite sweet treat is under threat. Researchers at Bangor University may have come up with an answer that could help find a solution to the chocolate crisis by using wild mango as a new cocoa butter alternative.
As any weight-watcher knows, carb cravings can be hard to resist. Now there’s evidence that carbohydrate-rich foods may elicit a unique taste too, suggesting that “starchy” could be a flavour in its own right.
People have strong feelings about meat — not only about how it tastes, but also how the animals that provide it are raised. In fact, those feelings are so strong that they actually influence the way people perceive the meat's taste, a new study says.
The phrase "it looks so good you can almost taste it" may actually be scientifically proven based on the findings of a new study that explored how the brain processes stimuli predicting taste.
Animals are not the only creatures who can be literally half asleep. Research shows we experience this, too
Flies, birds, mice, dogs, monkeys and people all need to sleep. That is, they show daily periods of relative immobility and lack of response to external stimuli, such as light, sound or touch.
Your existence depends on an improbable threesome. A delicate reaction within stars called the triple-alpha process, which creates carbon, is often used to support the idea of the multiverse. Now, two researchers argue that stars in other universes might have alternative ways of producing carbon, giving life as we know it a greater chance in multiple universes.
Language experts describe how cultures with nothing in common can learn to communicate
Related: Retired cop calls on government to reveal ‘truth’ on infamous Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
Related: A UFO? Video captures strange object near Ohio military base
Related: Are ALIENS monitoring NASA? Footage emerges of two 'UFOs' hovering near International Space Station
Charles Darwin was right: Groups enjoy an advantage when their members are “ready to aid one another and to sacrifice themselves for the common good,” according to a new study.
On August 28, 2016, the Earth missed what could have been a doomsday scenario. A large asteroid passed between the Earth and the Moon undetected, coming within 100,000 km (60,000 miles) of Earth, less than a quarter of the distance between Earth and Moon. How did such a killer asteroid go undetected?
Alt: Earth just had a 'close shave' with a 180ft asteroid - and no one saw it coming
A group of University of Colorado Boulder researchers is readying for NASA's Sept. 8 launch of a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
The main mission goal is to pluck a sample of rocks and surface soil from the asteroid, then return it to Earth for analysis.
When we bed down in a new locale, our sleep often suffers. A recent study finds that this so-called first-night effect may be the result of partial wakefulness in one side of the brain—as if the brain is keeping watch.
Related: False memories arise because the brain codes similar ideas similarly
If you’re a “morning person,” you’re more likely to undermine your performance on a stressful task early in the day, research suggests. The same goes for “night owls” and performance in the evening.
Everybody knows that going on holiday is a great way to reduce the stress of daily life, but just how much better do vacations really make us feel, and why?
A new study comparing the biological effects of vacationing and meditation has found that both activities confer significant, and in some cases long-lasting, physiological benefits – with the best results seen in those who do both at the same time.
Many cats are kept indoors for various reasons, but because they’re natural foragers this can lead to a host of behavioral and health problems. New research shows that food puzzles are effective at staving off many of these problems.
Outside of humans and one species of armadillo, identical twins seem to be vanishingly rare. Now for the first time a dog has given birth to a pair
Would you rather get 100 euros for certain, or have a fifty-fifty chance of receiving either 200 euros or nothing? Most choose the first, as humans tend to be "risk-averse", preferring a guaranteed pay-off over the possibility of a greater reward. It is thought that the human preference for "playing it safe" has evolved through natural selection: when you live precariously, like our remote ancestors, losing all your food reserves might be catastrophic, while adding to them might not make much difference to your chances of survival.
Don’t look now, but this spineless sea creature may be able to count better than your toddler.
Cuttlefish need to be savvy if they want to eat.
To prevent Zika-infected mosquitoes from taking root in South Carolina, officials in Dorchester County gave the go-ahead to spray a powerful insecticide over the countryside. The effort resulted in the unexpected deaths of millions of bees at a time when these critical pollinators are struggling worldwide.
Related: Growing call for grouse shooting ban as season opens
New research, led by the University of Southampton, suggests that the release of methane from the seafloor was much slower than previously thought during a rapid global warming event 56 million years ago.
The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could allow scientists to better understand the potential effects of rising ocean temperatures worldwide on current and future climate change.
Sea levels are dropping, earthquakes and volcanoes are waking up, and even the earth's axis is moving—all because of melting ice
During the glacier heyday 19,000 years ago, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, the Earth groaned under the weight of heavy ice sheets thousands of feet thick
With rivers providing an abundant supply of fresh water, the upper layers of the Black Sea are less dense than its saltier lower layers. A permanent boundary between the two prevents any vertical mixing. The oxygen, derived from the atmosphere and photosynthesis, remains restricted to these surface waters.
Just in time for scientists to declare 2016 the hottest year on record, scientists at Stanford University have developed a material that could make the coolest clothes ever — shirts and pants that block the sun’s warming rays while venting body heat more efficiently than cotton or other conventional fabrics.
Like capturing a sneeze, researchers including a University of Guelph scientist have recorded the only known example of prehistoric pollen caught in explosive mid-discharge from a fossil flower.
The team describes this “freeze-frame” fossilized pollen release – preserved in amber more than 20 million years ago — in a paper describing a new genus of fossil nettle plants.
In the ferocious, sprawling brawl over genetically modified crops, one particular question seems like it should have a simple factual answer: Did those crops lead to more use of pesticides, or less?
Sadly, there's no simple answer.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek series premiere, physics professor (and sci-fi fan) David Grier offers a look into his New York University lab—the birthplace of the real-life tractor beam.
Fusion energy has long been heralded as the power-supply of the future, but the sad joke is, it always will be. The experimental energy source is perennially 30 years away from being viable on a mass-scale. Still, fusion energy could provide us with a low-cost, sustainable energy resource—if only physicists could figure out how to harness the power of the Sun on Earth.
The power grid in the Eastern US, known as the "Eastern Interconnection" (EI), is a technological marvel: an impossibly large, sprawling, and complex machine that’s been operating continuously for over a hundred years, now serving around 240 million people.
Ever since the 1950s discovery of the solar wind - the constant flow of charged particles from the sun - there's been a stark disconnect between this outpouring and the sun itself. As it approaches Earth, the solar wind is gusty and turbulent.
Stargazers in south and central Africa were treated to a spectacular solar eclipse on Thursday with the moon moving across the sun to form a “ring of fire”.
At the eclipse’s peak, all that was visible was a ring of light encircling a blackened moon – but the phenomenon was fully visible only to people in a narrow, 100km (62-mile) band stretching across central Africa, Madagascar and Réunion.
Sorry, ET fans: The mysterious signal detected by a Russian radio telescope last year probably had an Earthly cause.
Alt: 'Alien' Signal Source Reportedly Located (It Wasn't The Vulcans)
Alt: Solar flare, radio waves or ET calling – what’s the truth about HD164595?
Related: Aliens Are (Maybe) Finally Knocking. The Pentagon's Plan Is Underwhelming
Ahuna Mons is a volcano that rises 13,000 feet high and spreads 11 miles wide at its base. This would be impressive for a volcano on Earth. But Ahuna Mons stands on Ceres, a dwarf planet less than 600 miles wide that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Even stranger, Ahuna Mons isn't built from lava the way terrestrial volcanoes are—it's built from ice.
If recent findings on Earth are any guide, the oldest rocks on Mars may have signs of ancient life locked up inside.
In a new study, a team of geologists led by Allen Nutman, of the University of Wollongong in Australia, discovered 3.7-billion-year-old rocks that may contain the oldest fossils of living organisms yet found on Earth, beating the previous record by 220 million years.
Scientists have discovered the oldest physical evidence for life on the planet in the form of fossils in Greenland rocks that formed 3.7bn years ago.
Alt: Ancient cone-like fossils suggest life on Earth may go back more than 3.7 billion years
A newly discovered Tyrannosaurus rex skull and partial skeleton have been unearthed in Montana by a team from the Burke Museum, Washington. The skull is being described as mostly complete and at least some of the skeleton has been excavated, though more remains in the ground and has yet to be uncovered.
Take a walk around the Free State of South Africa, or, if you fancy it, Lesotho (le-sOO-tOO), and you might just come across some genuine dinosaur fossils. Trudge around the exposed layers of red/purple rock that make up the upper Elliot Formation and, luck permitting, among the odd bits of stone and rubble that you may kick along the way, bits of claw and arm and foot and tooth of long gone animals might become apparent to you.
When dinosaurs roamed Earth, pterosaurs ruled the skies. The largest of these ancient reptiles had wingspans of 10 metres or more. But fossil fragments unearthed in western Canada suggest that these giant flying reptiles co-existed with a more diminutive form — closer to the size of an albatross.
A group of American archaeologists claim they have discovered a palatial building dating all the way back to the King Solomon era in Israel.
The monumental building was built over 3,000 years ago during the 10th century BCE in the royal city of Gezer, Israel’s Haaretz reported Wednesday.
In the 1960s, a team of excavators uncovered the ruins of the ancient city of Lambityeco (AD 500-850), in what is now Tlacolula de Matamoros, Oaxaca, Mexico. In a recent return to the site, the discovery of a carved stone crocodile by Field Museum archaeologists has provided a key to revising long-held ideas about the site.
A central concept in the novel The Sphinx Scrolls is whether a mummification technology has ever existed that could preserve someone for long periods and retain the potential to bring them back to life. The book introduces the hypothesis that Egyptian mummification took its inspiration from an older and more advanced system which had such capabilities. But how far-fetched is that idea?
The face of an ancient female Egyptian mummy has been reconstructed with the help of 3D printing and forensic science techniques, an important step to better understand who she was. Other crucial details about her health have also been gathered, completing the picture.
A piece of wood recovered at a dig near the Great Pyramid of Giza shows for the first time that ancient Egyptians used metal in their boats, archaeologists said Wednesday.
Circular and U-shaped metal hooks were found in one of the components of a boat, discovered the same year as Khufu's "solar boat", buried near the Great Pyramid.
Alt: Ancient Egyptians used metal in wooden 'solar boats' used to ferry Pharaohs to their pyramids
As far as pop culture is concerned, a vomitorium is a room where ancient Romans went to throw up lavish meals so they could return to the table and feast some more.
Related: Surprise: Gladiators Were Vegetarians
Related: Mosaic featuring Roman zodiac uneathed in Bursa
The Zeus Lepsynos Temple from the 2nd century B.C. will be revived to regain its former glory, as archaeological excavations continue in the ancient city of Euromos in the western province of Mu?la’s Milas district.
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel may contain hidden symbols of female anatomy according to a new report. Previously male anatomy and aspects of the natural word had been found ‘hidden’ within the paintings.
Alt: Does the Sistine Chapel hide a secret feminist code? Michelangelo may have concealed symbols for the female anatomy in his great ceiling fresco
New research suggests a bad trip isn’t always bad. About 84 percent of drug users who have experienced a “bad trip” from hallucinogenic mushrooms say they benefited from the psychologically difficult situation.
The drug LSD may make it easier for the brain to access distantly related words, a new study finds, suggesting that the drug activates certain language networks in the brain.
Related: DEA will ban chemicals contained in kratom, a popular herbal supplement, petition here
That’s one small step for an elephant, but a giant leap for the survival of tiny aquatic animals. In the swamp forests of Kibale National Park, Uganda, every step elephants take can give rise to a footprint-shaped mini-pond, holding up to 200 litres of water and dozens of invertebrate species.
The results of the first-ever pan-African survey of savanna elephants using standardized data collection and validation methods, has now been announced. The report confirms substantial declines in elephant numbers over just the last decade. The researchers report that the current rate of species decline is 8 percent per year, primarily due to poaching.
For Nick Goldman, the idea of encoding data in DNA started out as a joke.
It was Wednesday 16 February 2011, and Goldman was at a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, talking with some of his fellow bioinformaticists about how they could afford to store the reams of genome sequences and other data the world was throwing at them.
An antibody that can almost completely clear the visible signs of Alzheimer’s disease from the brain has been discovered in a breakthrough that left one scientist “trying not to get too excited”.
Related: Meat-packed Western diets raise the risk of Alzheimer’s
Related: Malaria drug causes brain damage that mimics PTSD: case study
DNA found at a crime scene can help forensic investigators identify suspects. The genetic information may lead to a match in an existing criminal database or offer clues about physical attributes, such as eye and hair color. But DNA testing takes time—a rare commodity in many cases.
Related: Give all victims of crime a legal right to an apology from criminals, MPs urge Government
It's generally not a good idea to smear squid parts all over your outfit, but one day, clothes could fix their own rips with the help of coatings made of squid proteins, according to a new study.
Almost as elusive as unicorns, finding practical materials for invisibility cloaking is challenging. Researchers have new ideas how to solve that. They're using crystal "atoms" made of dielectric rods called photonic crystals.
"I'm not comfortable eating a watch battery." That's how researcher Christopher Bettinger describes one of the biggest obstacles for sending tiny medical robots into the human body for diagnosing and treating diseases.
These devices run on batteries (like those in watches) and they are usually made of toxic materials such as lithium.
In the southern United States, an afternoon thunderstorm is part of a regular summer day. But new research shows those storms might be doing more than bringing some scary thunder and lightning.
In fact, these storms are moving significant amounts of mercury to the ground.
Human occupation is usually associated with deteriorated landscapes, but new research shows that 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity.
Related:
'Clocks' in tree-rings that could reset chronologies across the ancient world
An early Bronze Age toy equivalent to the modern rattle has been discovered at the Acemhöyük excavation site in Ye?ilova, Aksaray. It is a unique artifact which sheds some light on children and daily life in ancient times.
The study of dental calculus from Late Mesolithic individuals from the site of Vlasac in the Danube Gorges of the central Balkans has provided direct evidence that Mesolithic foragers of this region consumed domestic cereals already by c. 6600 BC, i.e. almost half a millennium earlier than previously thought.
A transmissible facial cancer has devastated Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) populations. Devils have seen localized population declines exceeding 90 percent and an overall species decline of more than 80 percent in less than 20 years, with some models predicting extinction. Despite this, devil populations persist in disease stricken areas.
Related: Endangered dolphin with broken blowhole learns to mouth-breathe
Monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity and their gut bacteria ends up resembling those of humans, new research shows. The results suggest that switching to a low-fiber, Western diet may have the power to deplete most normal primate gut microbes in favor of a less diverse set of bacteria.
Alt: Gut biome of monkeys found to change when they are kept in captivity
New research shows that patients who have surgery during the night are twice as likely to die as patients operated on during regular working hours.
Related: ICU patients lose helpful gut bacteria within days of hospital admission
Finland is about to launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of 2,000–3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approx. $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support. The pilot study, running for two years in 2017-2018, aims to assess whether basic income can help reduce poverty, social exclusion, and bureaucracy, while increasing the employment rate.
In the sleepy hillside town in al-Balqa, not far from the Jordan Valley, a grand project is taking shape. The Middle East’s new particle accelerator – the Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications, or Sesame – is being built.
Data on how taxis travel through communities and on how people label points of interest on social media could help analysts and criminologists better understand neighborhood crime rates in a city, say researchers.
Related: Airlander 10: Longest aircraft hit power cable before nosediving
Sixteen years ago, a pair of scientists introduced a new word that would shake up the geologic timeline: the Anthropocene. Also known as the "Age of Humans," the idea was first mentioned in a scientific newsletter by Nobel Prize-winning, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and renowned biologist Eugene Stoermer. The duo enumerated the many impacts of human activities on the planet, outlining human induced carbon and sulfur emissions, the global run off of nitrogen fertilizers, species extinctions and destruction of coastal habitats.
Costa Rica is much more than a lush, green tourist paradise; it’s also a green energy pioneer. The small Central American nation has generated 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources for the past 113 days, and the run isn’t over yet. The country, which draws clean energy from a variety of renewable sources, still has its sights on a full year without fossil fuels.
The Earth protects itself from solar storms using an invisible shield known as the 'magnetosphere'.
But because Earth's magnetic poles are continually moving, the magnetosphere is weakening. This means our planet is increasingly vulnerable to the potentially devastating effects of solar flares.
Crisscrossed grooves and chains of small craters cover the Martian moon Phobos. Astronomers have disagreed about what caused this strange-looking landscape for decades, but new research may help settle the debate.
The solar system could be thrown into disaster when the sun dies if the mysterious 'Planet Nine' exists, according to research from the University of Warwick.
Dr Dimitri Veras in the Department of Physics has discovered that the presence of Planet Nine – the hypothetical planet which may exist in the outer Solar System - could cause the elimination of at least one of the giant planets after the sun dies, hurling them out into interstellar space through a sort of 'pinball' effect.
In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, researchers have observed several never-before-seen objects at extreme distances from the Sun in our Solar System.
Alt: New Solar System objects revealed
Astronomers say that in our galaxy alone, a billion or more such Jupiter-like worlds could be orbiting stars other than our sun. And we can use them to gain a better understanding of our solar system and our galactic environment, including the prospects for finding life. The Milky Way is home to a bewildering variety of Jupiter-like worlds: hot ones, cold ones, giant versions of our own giant, pint-sized pretenders only half as big around.
The star is located 95 light years from Earth and has at least one confirmed planet. It remains only the barest of probabilities that astronomers have just found evidence of extraterrestrial, intelligent life. Nevertheless, in the community of astronomers and other scientists who use radio telescopes to search the heavens for beacons of life there is considerable excitement about a new signal observed by a facility in Russia.
Alt: 'Wow!' Again? SETI Mystery Signal Could Long Puzzle Astronomers