Newsdesk Archive
Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani said on Sunday new technology is needed to determine whether Tutankhamun's tomb contains hidden chambers which a British archaeologist believes may hide queen Nefertiti's remains.
The search for the location of Ashkenaz – thought to be the birthplace of Ashkanazic Jews and the Yiddish language – is one of the longest quests in human history. It has been lasted at least 1,000 years and is perhaps second only to Noah’s Ark, which has been searched for since at least the 3rd century AD.
The Palace Museum in Beijing has confirmed the discovery of relics from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) that were buried underground in the heart of the city for more than 600 years.
Related: Kemari: Revival of a 7th Century Japanese Football Game in Modern Times
A recently discovered underground well found in the Orkney Islands and dating to the Iron Age turns out to have been used as a place to throw unwanted items away during the Victorian Era.
Human-specific variants of four microRNAs may have altered expression levels and gene targets compared to other great apes, according to a study published April 22, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alicia Gallego from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Spain, and colleagues.
In a lush conservation park in central Kenya, the world’s last three northern white rhinos are unable to breed. When they die, the subspecies will go extinct. That is unless a complex, controversial plan involving tissue cryobanks and test tube embryos can actually work.
Related: Only Three Addax Antelopes Left in the Wild?
When it comes down to it, volcanoes spend most of their existence not erupting. If you look at almost any volcano, it might have a bout of eruption for days to months at a time, then go quiet for decades, centuries or more.
Related: Rainwater can help trigger earthquakes
A mysterious deep-ocean seaweed diverged from the rest of the green-plant family around 540 million years ago, developing a large body with a complex structure independently from all other sea or land plants. All of the seaweed’s close relatives are unicellular plankton.
As 13 states struggle with drought, scientists in a corner of India have devised a way to make potable water - 6.3 million litre of it every day - from sea water. They have also developed certain filtration methods that ensure groundwater containing arsenic and uranium are safe to drink.
Moon caves could provide shelter for astronauts exploring Earth's nearest neighbor, researchers say.
A new analysis of data gathered by NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft, which mapped the moon's gravitational field in unprecedented detail, turned up a number of new candidates for lava tubes — cave-like structures that could be large enough to house supplies and astronauts.
Apologies to all of the Pluto-isn't-a-real-planet folks out there but researchers have found a way in which this ever-surprising world acts more planet-like than dwarf-like: how it interacts with the solar wind.
The Earth is under constant bombardment by subatomic particles called cosmic rays, including some, known as ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, which pack much more punch than the world's most powerful particle accelerators. Fortunately, Earth's atmosphere protects us by dissipating most of that energy before it reaches the ground.
A nearby young supernova remnant named Cassiopeia A is an excellent candidate for astrophysical observations regarding supernova explosion processes. One of the recent studies focuses on hard X-ray emissions from this source, describing a non-thermal continuum emission for the first time. A paper detailing the findings appeared online on May 2 on the arXiv pre-print server.
According to a team of scientists led by Prof. Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gases emitted by alien life forms on habitable extrasolar planets could be detected remotely by telescopes, but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the atmosphere of our planet.
It's about 660 million times as massive as our sun, and a cloud of gas circles it at about 1.1 million mph. This supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy dubbed NGC 1332, which is 73 million light years from Earth. And an international team of scientists has measured its mass with unprecedented accuracy.
The first commercial mission to harvest resources from asteroids could be launched within five years, as Luxembourg’s government works on joint missions with two U.S. space research companies to prospect for water and minerals in outer space through robotic missions.
For the second time in less than a month, SpaceX has landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship at sea.
The booster settled softly onto the deck of SpaceX's robotic "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship at 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) on Friday (May 6), nine minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a successful mission to carry the Japanese communications satellite JCSAT-14 to orbit.
The evolution of major novel traits – characteristics such as wings, flowers, horns or limbs – has long been known to play a key role in allowing organisms to exploit new opportunities in their surroundings.
While studying worm infections, scientists have discovered a surprising ability of the immune system. The strange discovery has significant implications for our understanding of how the immune system responds to infections.
Related: Antibody appears to attack cancer cells, leaving other cells unscathed
Children born to older mothers tend to be taller, healthier and better educated than siblings who were born before them.
Related: 'Super males' emerge from male-dominated populations, study finds
A universal cure for asthma and food allergies is on the horizon after scientists found a way to convince the immune system to ignore triggers like pollen or peanuts.
Pensioners should avoid common hay fever, allergy and sleeping tablets over their links to brain damage and dementia, scientists have warned.
Scientists have invented a cling film-like food wrap made from silk that can preserve fruit for more than a week, as a natural, biodegradeable alternative to plastic.
Everyone has their own personal range of bacteria living on their skin that stays largely unchanged over time, a US study suggests.
It found sites of oily skin, such as backs and ears, had the most stable microbial fingerprints.
Japanese scientists have reported the first successful skin-to-eye stem cell transplant in humans, where stem cells derived from a patient's skin were transplanted into her eye to partially restore lost vision.
A step has been taken toward the possibility of tuning the strength of memory by manipulating one of the brain’s signaling memory mechanisms, a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.
Archaeologists in Northern Italy recently unearthed an archaeological jackpot: a rare tablet inscribed with a dead language. The international researchers who make up the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project were digging at the site of an ancient temple built by the long-dead Etruscan civilization when they unearthed the valuable find.
A new Nazca geoglyph has been uncovered by Japanese scientists in Peru, and it could be linked to a major ceremonial center.
Measuring 98-feet long, the geoglyph is located within the central area of the Nazca pampa, a large, flat, arid region of Peru between the Andes and the coast. The line drawing is of an animal, with many legs and spotted markings, sticking out its tongue.
Over a ton of dinosaur fossils from 71 million years ago were recently discovered in Antarctica, scientists said.
The fossils are largely of marine dinosaurs, most notably those from a mosasaurus, the giant creature seen devouring all manner of things in Jurassic World
A crocodile-sized creature that lived 242 million years ago was the first known vegetarian marine reptile, according to new fossil evidence.
Two specimens unearthed in China reveal details of the animal's skull and how it fed.
Scientists have had a literal breakthrough off the coast of Mexico.
After weeks of drilling from an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico, they have reached rocks left over from the day the Earth was hit by a killer asteroid.
The pre-Columbian settlements in Amazonia were not limited to the vicinities of rivers and lakes. One example of this can be found in the Santarém region in Brazilian Amazonia, where most archaeological sites are situated in an upland area and are the result of an expansion of settlements in the last few centuries before the arrival of Europeans. This is concluded by a research team consisting of archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg and Brazilian colleagues.
Centuries before modern countries such as Dubai and China started building islands, native peoples in southwest Florida known as the Calusa were piling shells into massive heaps to construct their own water-bound towns.
Archaeologists are using bones unearthed from the 2,000-year-old tomb of Haihunhou, the Marquis of Haihun, to conduct DNA analysis.
The burial site in Nanchang in east China’s Jiangxi Province is the best preserved tomb from the Western Han Period (206 BC-24 AD) ever found in China.
A 350-year-old French mystery has been unmasked: In his new book, Paul Sonnino, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claims he has uncovered the real identity of the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask.
The Man in the Iron Mask was a prisoner arrested in 1669 and held in the Bastille and other French jails for more than three decades, until his death in 1703.
Salisbury Plain may be best known for Stonehenge, but the chalk plateau has revealed other, more hidden secrets over the past month.
In April an Anglo Saxon cemetery of around 150 graves holding beautiful grave goods was unearthed in Bulford, Wiltshire.
A previously unknown subterranean structure, either a souterrain or a ‘well’ dating from the Iron Age has been unearthed near the manse of Harray in West Mainland, Orkney.
The structure consists of a short low ceilinged entrance passage that opens into a larger partially corbelled chamber that is square-shaped in plan.
Antarctica was once covered with tropical forests. Now researchers have fully charted the slow transition from tropical paradise to icy wasteland, thanks to a single marine sediment core.
Standing less than three feet tall, the Vechur “dwarf” cow of Kerala is officially the smallest bovine in the world.
Its diminutive size and cute appearance has seen it become a prized, exotic pet among Indian families, echoing the “micro-pig” fad that briefly gripped Britain.
Scientists are trying to find a new way to produce the nutritional fatty acids called Omega 3 that are currently sourced from fish oil from the world's declining natural fish stocks.
Flab could hold the answer to curing diabetes after scientists discovered that stem cells harvested from excess body fat could be programmed to produce insulin.
Context plays a big role in our memories, both good and bad. Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' on the car radio, for example, may remind you of your first love -- or your first speeding ticket. But a new brain scanning study shows that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories.
A new study challenges the notion that girls are better at reading than boys.
The research, in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that boys outscored girls on reading tests if they were told the tests were a game. But boys scored significantly lower than girls when told the tests were assessments of their reading skills.
Having a good sense of smell might seem like a skill with limited utility beyond deciding whether those leftovers from Saturday night have turned. But it might actually be helpful for your social life, too. There’s a connection between a good sense of smell and a thriving social network, scientists reported in April in the journal Scientific Reports.
The popular club drug ketamine — or 'Special K' — is also a fast-acting antidepressant, but how it works has eluded scientists. Now a team reports in Nature1 that the mood-lifting effect may not be caused by the drug itself, but by one of the products formed when the body breaks the drug down into smaller molecules.
Related: Psychoactive Substances Act To Come Into Effect On May 26th
What constitutes a "normal" night's sleep?
That all depends, says Danny Forger, a biological mathematician at the University of Michigan and an expert in circadian clocks.
While the full moon cannot turn people into werewolves, some people do accuse it of causing a bad night's sleep or creating physical and mental alterations. But is there any science behind these myths?
An unsupported bipedal robot can now walk down steep slopes, through a thin layer of snow, and across astroturf littered with obstacles.
One day last week at 9.29am I hunched nervously over my keyboard and prepared to do battle with an entity called Emma. We were each primed to write about the official UK employment data at 9.30am and file our stories to my editor. I was sure Emma would be quicker than me, but I really hoped I would be better.
Step aside, Ben Carson. The once lauded ability to perform delicate operations with gifted hands may soon be replaced with the consistent precision of an autonomous robot. And—bonus—robots don’t get sleepy.
Just imagine hearts and lungs whizzing overhead.
EHang Holdings Limited of China announced a partnership with Lung Biotechnology in the U.S. to put 1,000 drones to work as organ delivery vehicles.
A review of large-scale studies involving more than 1.5 million people found all-cause mortality is higher for those who eat meat, particularly red or processed meat, on a daily basis. Conducted by physicians from Mayo Clinic in Arizona, "Is Meat Killing Us?" was published today in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.
A coalition of scientists headed by renowned conservationist Jane Goodall has implored the federal government to re-think its decision to strip protection from Yellowstone’s grizzly bears, as hunters in Montana are set to be offered $50 licenses to shoot the hulking predators.
The primary threat to vultures is the presence of toxins in the carrion they consume. Losses of vultures can allow other scavengers to flourish, and proliferation of such scavengers could bring bacteria and viruses from carcasses into human cities, say investigators.
Deakin University scientists may have found a way to stop the cancer that has been killing Tasmanian devils for the past 20 years.
And the devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) could actually already hold the solution – natural antibodies found in the marsupial's immune system.
The University of Illinois and University of Puerto Rico have completely sequenced the mitochondrial genome for the Hispaniolan solenodon, filling in the last major branch of placental mammals on the tree of life.
A “mother lode” of newly found fossil primates in southern China strengthens evidence that primates first emerged in Asia, with climate change later shifting the evolution of monkeys, apes and even our own species to Africa.
Thanks to the analysis of fossil pollen and charcoal remains, a team of scientists has reconstructed the evolution of the vegetation from Gran Canaria between 4,500 and 1,500 years ago. The study reveals that the disappearance of forests in some parts of the island is due in part to the rise in fires and the cultivation of cereals. Both factors are closely related to the arrival of the first indigenous people to the island.
The Egyptian-German Archaeological Mission to Matariya has discovered new evidence for a sanctuary of Nektanebo I (380-363 BC) in the temple precinct of Heliopolis.
Nectanebo was an army general from Sebennytos who became Pharaoh and founder of the last native dynasty of Egypt, the thirtieth. Nectanebo was a great builder and restorer, to an extent not seen in Egypt for centuries.
A 2,000-year-old tablet discovered in an ancient Turkish shrine has shed light on the rules of horse racing during antiquity. Horseback racing and chariot racing – which involved participants standing in chariots pulled by horses – were very popular sports among Greek, Roman and Byzantine civilisations.
?An extraordinary scene unfolded in the ancient city of Palmyra tonight.
The famous Russian Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra from St. Petersburg played a concert in the city's Roman theatre — only six weeks after ISIS was forced out of the historic Syrian site.
It doesn't take much to stimulate the human body's electro-magnetic circuitry, in fact a small change in the local environment is enough to create a change in awareness.
People who visit ancient temples and megalithic sites often describe such a sensation.
An international team of scholars has just unveiled plans to science the shit out of Leonardo da Vinci, the man who gave us the Mona Lisa and envisioned futuristic technologies like helicopters and tanks 500 years ago. Goals of the fledgling “Leonardo Project” include recovering the famous Renaissance figure’s remains and reconstructing his genetic code.
The face of Leonardo Da Vinci has always been a mystery, with experts never totally certain what Leonardo looked like.
Now research into Da Vinci’s family tree has revealed an amazing resemblance between one of the descendants of the Renaissance genius and the amiable old man depicted in the famous red chalk drawing kept in Turin's Royal Library, which is the only work largely agreed to be a self-portrait by da Vinci.
The ancient Egyptian cities of Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion sat on the seabed of the Abukir Bay for over a thousand years before pioneering archeologist Franck Goddio began excavating in 2001. Now his finds are part of an upcoming exhibition at the British Museum in London: Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds.
A mummy from ancient Egypt was heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago.
It’s hard to tell by looking at mummies, but many people believe that Egyptians living at the time when mummification was commonly practiced were dark-haired and dark-skinned. So how do they explain the rare blonde-haired mummies, not to mention the even more rare redheads?
The question of whether warfare is encoded in our genes, or appeared as a result of civilization, has long fascinated anyone trying to get to grips with human society. Might a willingness to fight neighboring groups have provided our ancestors with an evolutionary advantage? With conflicts raging across the globe, these questions have implications for understanding our past, and perhaps our future as well.
Modern day Azerbaijan is a country with countless religious sites, including mosques, churches and ancient temples, and for centuries the representatives of various religious beliefs have been settled alongside each other without meeting any discrimination.
Researchers have long known that women whose families include fraternal twins are more likely to give birth to twins themselves, and they’re finally starting to figure out why. After scanning data from nearly 2000 mothers of fraternal twins, scientists from eight countries found two genes that increase a woman’s chance of having twins—one that affects hormone levels and another that may alter how ovaries respond to them.
Virtual reality can help treat severe paranoia by allowing people to face situations that they fear, an Oxford University study with patients from the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has found. The virtual reality simulations allowed the patients to learn that the situations (such as a crowded lift) they feared were actually safe.
In a study prompted in part by suggestions from people with mental illness, researchers found that a history of Candida yeast infections was more common in a group of men with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder than in those without these disorders, and that women with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who tested positive for Candida performed worse on a standard memory test than women with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who had no evidence of past infection.
Scientists have grown and catalogued more than 130 bacteria from the human intestine. Imbalances in our gut microbiome can contribute to complex conditions and diseases such as obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome and allergies. This research will enable scientists to understand how our bacterial 'microbiome' helps keep us healthy and start to create tailor-made treatments with specific beneficial bacteria.
Over the past few decades, the healthcare community has observed an intriguing phenomenon: diseases related to the immune system—type 1 diabetes (T1D) and other autoimmune diseases, allergies, and the like—have taken hold in countries that have thriving, modern economies, while barely making a mark in the developing world.
Species of single-celled algae use whip-like appendages called flagella to coordinate their movements and achieve a remarkable diversity of swimming gaits.
Long before there were fish swimming in the oceans, tiny microorganisms were using long slender appendages called cilia and flagella to navigate their watery habitats. Now, new research reveals that species of single-celled algae coordinate their flagella to achieve a remarkable diversity of swimming gaits.
Antibiotics are essential for fighting bacterial infection, but, paradoxically, they can also make the body more prone to infection and diarrhea.
Exactly how the resident "good" microbes in the gut protect against pathogens, such as Salmonella, and how antibiotic treatments foster growth of disease-causing microbes have been poorly understood.
A new NASA analysis of 30-years of satellite data suggests that a previously observed trend of high altitude clouds in the mid-latitudes shifting toward the poles is caused primarily by the expansion of the tropics.
Clouds are among the most important mediators of heat reaching Earth's surface. Where clouds are absent, darker surfaces like the ocean or vegetated land absorb heat, but where clouds occur their white tops reflect incoming sunlight away, which can cause a cooling effect on Earth's surface.
Back in March 2012, a mysterious plume of cloud was spotted by amateur astronomers stretching 250 kilometres (about 155 miles) above Mars - far too high up for normal cloud formation. Now, scientists are suggesting the event, which has been debated over since its discovery, was actually caused by the Sun.
Pluto has some characteristics less like that of a comet and more like much larger planets, according to an analysis of Pluto's unique interaction with the solar wind, scientists say.
Using data from an instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft gathered on its Pluto flyby in July 2015, scientists have observed the material coming off of Pluto and seen how it interacts with the solar wind, and found it completely new – and unexpected.
The health benefits of cycling and walking outweigh the harmful effects of air pollution, a study has suggested.
Air pollution contributes to 40,000 early deaths each year in the UK and we gulp in more of it when we exercise.
Humans have always wanted to control the weather. Also, drones are cool. Put those together and you've got the "Sandoval Silver State Seeder," a new drone built by the Desert Research Institute which deploys silver-iodide flares to kick off rain fall.
A drug-sniffing car could give police patrols a whole new meaning. Researchers at the University of North Texas have developed an ultra-sensitive, air-sensing system that’s able to pinpoint suspicious chemicals up to a quarter of a mile a way.
An army of robots is on the move.
In warehouses, hospitals and retail stores, and on city streets, industrial parks and the footpaths of college campuses, the first representatives of this new invading force are starting to become apparent.
In recent years, robots have steadily crept their way into the operating room, helping to perform procedures as humans direct their movements. Robotic devices in surgery have a lot of potential benefits; they can help reduce error rates and increase the efficiency of the surgeries. But developing a robotic device that can perform the surgery completely on its own has been challenging, especially for surgeries that involve soft tissue, where the dexterity of the surgeon’s hands are vital.
Scientists have for the first time grown human embryos outside of the mother for almost two full weeks into development, giving unique insight into what they say is the most mysterious stage of early human life.
For more than two decades, Mary Ann Franco of Okeechobee, Florida, was legally blind after surviving a car accident in 1995.
It took another accident more than 20 years later to cause what she calls an act of God. After falling down in her home, she received surgery on her spine to alleviate pain in her neck and arm and, when she awoke, a “miracle.”
Surgery has some surprisingly ritual roots.
Between around 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, skilled surgeons in southwestern Russia cut holes the size of silver dollars, or larger, out of the backs of people’s skulls. But the risky procedure wasn’t performed for medical reasons: These skull surgeries fulfilled purely ritual needs, a new study suggests. And those on the cutting end of the procedure usually lived.
Between the towns of Nazca and Palpa in Peru, a stretch of ground spanning 50 miles (80km) is covered in more than 700 enormous drawings.
Now a new drawing, officially named a geoglyph, has been discovered by Japanese scientists showing an imaginary spotted animal with lots of legs, sticking out its long tongue.
For all our insanely accurate mapping technologies and unquenchable desire to see everything on Earth, huge areas of our planet remain mostly unexplored, cut off from civilisation by inhospitable climate or impossible terrain.
Geochemists from Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences may have found a solution to a long-debated problem as to where - and how - life first formed on Earth.
The oldest rocks on Earth–zircon crystals–are over four billion years old and barely the width of a human hair. Previously thought to have been created by tectonic plate shifts, a new study reveals that these delicate crystals may instead have been formed by violent asteroid impacts that struck our planet when it was just a wee 500 million years old.
A strange, rocky comet with no tail has been spotted zipping into our inner Solar System, and it's so unique, it's got scientists ready to rewrite the definition of what these ubiquitous cosmic bodies should look like.
According to a new report, the comet is carrying up to 1 million times less water than any other comet ever recorded, and it's made up of solid rock, like an asteroid, rather than ice, like a typical comet.
An 'impossible' fuel-free engine, that could take humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, has been shown to work - but no one knows why.
The so-called EmDrive creates thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed chamber, and uses only solar power.
Earlier this year scientists presented evidence for Planet Nine, a Neptune-mass planet in an elliptical orbit 10 times farther from our Sun than Pluto. Since then theorists have puzzled over how this planet could end up in such a distant orbit. New research examines a number of scenarios and finds that most of them have low probabilities. Therefore, the presence of Planet Nine remains a bit of a mystery.
Those mysterious dark lines that grow and fade on some of the Red Planet’s slopes might not have all been caused by water flowing on the surface, but violently boiling off of it, a new laboratory study finds.
The hunt for life on other planets is due for a makeover. Although it is often confined to planets orbiting in the so-called habitable zone where proximity to their host stars makes temperatures just right for liquid water, many astronomers are beginning to think outside the “Goldilocks” box. Some wonder if previously overlooked mechanisms—including life itself—could broaden the habitable zone well beyond its current definition.
A study of DNA from ancient human bones has helped unlock the secrets of Europe's Ice Age inhabitants.
Researchers analysed the genomes of 51 individuals who lived between 45,000 years ago and 7,000 years ago.
In recent years, the nascent field of resuscitation science has been taking a radically different approach to medicine, treating death as a process — a potentially reversible process — rather than an event.
According to a report in the U.K. publication The Telegraph, a groundbreaking new medical trial will put that theory to the test by attempting to regenerate the brains of dead people.
It’s happened to many of us: While looking right at someone you know very well, you open your mouth and blurt out the wrong name. The name you blurt isn’t just any old name, though, according to research that finds “misnaming” follows predictable patterns.
A trio of researchers affiliated with the University of Oxford in England and Aalto University School of Science in Finland has conducted a study of human behavior and has found evidence backing up a prior theory that suggests humans have different layers that make up their social circle with different numbers of people in them. In their paper uploaded to the preprint server, arXiv, they describe their study which involved analyzing cell phone records to count calls, what they found and that they believe it means for us a group.