Newsdesk Archive
In 1837, Charles Darwin sketched a simple tree in one of his notebooks. Above it, he scrawled “I think.” That iconic image perfectly encapsulated Darwin’s big idea: that all living things share a common ancestor. Ever since then, scientists have been adding names to the tree of life. Last year, for example, one group compiled what they billed as a “comprehensive tree,” a garguantuan geneaology of some 2.3 million species that “encompasses all of life.”
Radioactive boars are running wild and breeding uncontrollably in the northern region of Japan contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The animals have been devastating local agriculture and eating toxic, nuclear-contaminated food from around the accident site.
Japan is introducing a system which could replace both cash and credit cards. There are hopes the move will attract more tourists to the country, while easing payment and dispensing with the need for cards or cash. Tests are starting this summer.
Related: Japan is designing an invisible train to hit the tracks by 2018
A German firm has embarked on a new era in urban mobility with a manned flight in the world's first certified multicopter.
With passenger in tow, The Volocopter VC200 took to the skies for a three minute voyage using its 18 gently humming rotors and eco-friendly electric propulsion.
Composite metal foams (CMFs) are tough enough to turn an armor-piercing bullet into dust on impact. Given that these foams are also lighter than metal plating, the material has obvious implications for creating new types of body and vehicle armor – and that’s just the beginning of its potential uses.
In a world first, a quadriplegic man can once again move his fingers after a chip was implanted in his brain.
Ian Burkhart from Ohio in the US can even move individual fingers to play a guitar-based computer game.
Computers may trounce humans at games like chess and Go, but there’s one game we’ve still got a lock on: quantum physics. Scientists who had people play an online video game that mimicked a troublesome quantum mechanical problem found that the gamers were far better than the computers at working out viable solutions.
For the past 100 years, physicists have been studying the weird features of quantum physics, and now they're trying to put these features to good use. One prominent example is that quantum superposition (also known as quantum coherence)—which is the property that allows an object to be in two states at the same time—has been identified as a useful resource for quantum communication technologies.
Can you fly an iPhone to the stars?
In an attempt to leapfrog the planets and vault into the interstellar age, a bevy of scientists and other luminaries from Silicon Valley and beyond, led by Yuri Milner, a Russian philanthropist and Internet entrepreneur, announced a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of robot spacecraft no bigger than iPhones to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.37 light-years away.
Alt: $100-Million Plan Will Send Probes to the Nearest Star
Of the more than 600,000 known asteroids in our Solar System, almost 10 000 are known as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). These are asteroids or comets whose orbits bring them close to Earth’s, and which could potentially collide with us at some point in the future. As such, monitoring these objects is a vital part of NASA’s ongoing efforts in space. One such mission is NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which has been active since December 2013.
You can never predict what treasure might be hiding in your own basement. We didn't know it a year ago, but it turns out that a 1917 image on an astronomical glass plate from our Carnegie Observatories' collection shows the first-ever evidence of a planetary system beyond our own Sun. This unexpected find was recognized in the process of researching an article about planetary systems surrounding white dwarf stars in New Astronomy Reviews.
These puzzling holes in the arid valleys of southern Peru tell us there was once a flourishing, sophisticated society here.
In one of the most arid regions in the world a series of carefully constructed, spiralling holes form lines across the landscape. Know as puquios, their origin has been a puzzle – one that could only be solved from space.
Jaguar Paw Temple lies deep in the Guatemalan rainforest, part of the ancient Mayan ruins of El Mirador. Three days walk from the nearest road, it’s almost inaccessible. And yet here I am.
I get down on my knees to examine a sculpture of a jaguar. I see jungle dirt in the crannies. Dead leaves have collected at its feet. I can see it all, right in front of my face.
Archaeologists have uncovered a unique insight into the life of one of the Roman Empire’s most prominent landowners. Until now, very little has been known about these leaders, aside from their battle triumphs, territorial conquests, and monumental legacies.
Researchers investigating the vast Imperial estate of Vagnari in Italy, have unearthed evidence of wine production on a huge industrial scale. The discovery sheds light on their home life away from the battlefield.
AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—Scholars have long debated how much of the Hebrew bible was composed before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE. While scholars agree that key biblical texts were written starting in the 7th century BCE, the exact date of the compilation of these books remains in question.
Thirty-eight hundred years ago, on the hot river plains of what is now southern Iraq, a Babylonian student did a bit of schoolwork that changed our understanding of ancient mathematics. The student scooped up a palm-sized clump of wet clay, formed a disc about the size and shape of a hamburger, and let it dry down a bit in the sun. On the surface of the moist clay the student drew a diagram that showed the people of the Old Babylonian Period (1,900–1,700 B.C.E.) fully understood the principles of the "Pythagorean Theorem" 1300 years before Greek geometer Pythagoras was born, and were also capable of calculating the square root of two to six decimal places
The Bosnian Indiana Jones has come into contact with a giant stone sphere. Like the famous movie counterpart, this large object is also bringing excitement along with it. The stone sphere discovered in mid-March, 2016 in Bosnia may be the largest of its kind in the world, however there is much debate if the feature is man-made or natural. The stone ball was discovered in a forest in Podubravlje and has a radius of between 1.2 – 1.5 meters (3.9-4.9 ft.) Preliminary tests suggest that it could weigh over 30 tons, making it the most massive stone sphere in Europe.
Montana archaeologists have found a treasure trove of ancient human activity in the Hi-Line. According to BLM Archaeologist Josh Chase, his team is using prescribed burning and drones to examine artifacts dating all the way back to 750 AD
“The kinds of cultural sites we have on the Hi-Line are predominately prehistoric and predominately stone,”
Fire, a tool broadly used for cooking, constructing, hunting and even communicating, was arguably one of the earliest discoveries in human history. But when, how and why it came to be used is hotly debated among scientists.
A new scenario crafted by University of Utah anthropologists proposes that human ancestors became dependent on fire as a result of Africa's increasingly fire-prone environment 2-3 million years ago.
The cave drawings in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, France may be taking back the crown for the oldest animal paintings on Earth, as an international team of scientists have found new evidence that they are 10,000 years older than previously believed.
Chauvet-Pont d’Arc is a cave located in the Ardèche département, a region that is found in south-central France. Discovered in 1994, it features human hand prints as well as drawings of 14 different animal species, ranging from cave bears to big cats. It was long believed to be the oldest known human-decorated cave in the world, with its artwork estimated to be from between 22,000-18,000 BCE.
Humans today often carry around a small chunk of DNA from Neanderthals, suggesting we interbred with our closest known extinct relatives at some point in our history. So why isn't there more Neanderthal DNA in modern humans?
Turns out, the Y chromosome may have been key in keeping the two lineages apart by creating conditions that might often have led to miscarriages if or when the two got together, researchers now say.
Humans migrating out of Africa likely spread disease to Native Europeans and Asians, contributing to their extinction, according to a new study.
Similar to how Native Americans had no evolved immunity for diseases brought over by Europeans, Neanderthals and other archaic humans from Europe and Asia are believed to have had no evolved immunity for diseases brought over by migrating anatomically modern humans from Africa.
The clam, the clap and the pox are rarely linked to romance. But new research suggests they may have helped drive humans to monogamy.
Based on insights from computer models, scientists argue that the shift away from polygynous societies – where men had many long-term partners, but women had only one – could be down to the impact of sexually transmitted infections on large communities that arose with the dawn of the agricultural age.
Leonardo da Vinci lives on, according to two Italian researchers who have tracked down the living relatives of the Renaissance genius.
It was believed that no traces were left of the painter, engineer, mathematician, philosopher and naturalist. The remains of Leonardo, who died in 1519 in Amboise, France, were dispersed in the 16th century during religious wars.
Albert Einstein once said that his mathematical genius had nothing to do with language: “Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes.”
And now high-definition brain scans prove he had a point. The ways that the brain processes language and complex mathematical concepts are quite different, according to a new study.
Researchers have published the first images showing the effects of LSD on the human brain, as part of a series of studies to examine how the drug causes its characteristic hallucinogenic effects.
Related: Tripping on LSD could unlock child-like creativity – video
Ayahuasca is a psychedelic mix used for ceremonial purposes by the indigenous Amazon tribes since times immemorial. Once under its influence, a medium facilitating introspection and self knowledge is opened. Among other things, ayahuasca contains DMT which is an illegal substance in most western countries. This has made any research that might uncover beneficial pharmacological effects very difficult. One new research on rats, however, suggests that the magic brew could be very potent against anxiety if ingested over a prolonged time.
Related: Medicinal cannabis legalised in Victoria, child epilepsy patients to be given access from 2017
It is widely thought to affect the brain in a similar way to cocaine, and now a new study has suggested people addicted to sugar should be treated in the same way as other drug abusers.
According to researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), excessive sugar consumption increases the dopamine levels in a similar way to other drugs such as cocaine.
It is no surprise that most users of private green spaces generally consider them to be very restorative. In the recent study by MedUni Vienna, respondents rated gardens as being significantly more restorative than their lounges, balconies or terraces. It seems that the decisive factor is the relationship the user has with the garden, as was demonstrated by the research group led by Health Psychologist Renate Cervinka of MedUni Vienna's Center for Public Health. The study has been published in the specialist journal "Urban Forestry & Urban Greening".
The sun has been very quiet over the past month, but a massive sunspot has formed that is several times the size of Earth.
This sunspot group — designated 2529 — more than doubled in size over the weekend. It is so big that people have been photographing it. (Remember never to look directly at the sun
Around 65 million years ago there was a mass extinction of dinosaurs. In addition, plankton, the base of the ocean food chain, was greatly affected. Many families of brachiopods and sponges disappeared, and the remaining hard-shelled ammonites vanished. It also greatly reduced the diversity of sharks and caused most of the vegetation on Earth to disappear. In short: more than half of the animal and plant species that inhabited our planet was eliminated.
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of planets that have had their atmospheres stripped away by their host stars.
Planets with atmospheres that orbit too close to their host stars are bombarded by a torrent of high-energy radiation.
Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction – most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe. The astronomers publish their results in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
It's a mystery that has stumped geologists for more than a century.
Now, thanks to new technology - including satellite laser imagery - researchers may be one step closer to understanding the origins of an archetypal landform: the drumlin hill.
High-profile physicists and philosophers gathered to debate whether we are real or virtual—and what it means either way
If you, me and every person and thing in the cosmos were actually characters in some giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it. The idea that the universe is a simulation sounds more like the plot of “The Matrix,” but it is also a legitimate scientific hypothesis.
Are we getting some kind of warning from a parallel universe? Another “ghost” or “floating” city was spotted in China, this time in Dalian. Scores of people witnessed it, many photographed it, many more asked, “What IS it?”
Related: Exorcism is making a comeback — and big news — worldwide
Palmyra must not “rise again”, as Syria’s director of antiquities has promised. It must not be turned into a fake replica of its former glory. Instead, what remains of this ancient city after its destruction by Isis – and that is mercifully more than many people feared – should be tactfully, sensitively and honestly preserved.
POMPEII, ItalyFor the first time in 19 centuries, a breath of life is wafting through the ghostly streets of Pompeii. Under the guidance of a dozen architects, squads of construction workers dig and drill in its ruins, shoring up eroded facades and installing drainage pipes. Engineers and biologists convene over morning coffee, sharing notes and posing questions.
Key parts of the Old Testament may have been compiled earlier than some scholars thought, suggests a new handwriting analysis of text on pottery shards.
Lost and almost forgotten over the years amidst the flurry of news about other archaeological discoveries in and around Jerusalem, the 'Abba Cave' is arguably still on the list of cold cases of ancient tomb discoveries of the last century. But recently, Dr. James Tabor, Professor of ancient Judaism and early Christianity at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, has penned a few reminders about it in his popular blog, raising some issues that could be worth another look among scholars with the expertise and resources to investigate the case.
Diseases and infections passed on by the ancestors of modern humans when they moved out of Africa and into Europe may have helped wipe out the Neanderthals who previously dominated the continent.
A group of powerful City investors who together control more than $1tn in assets have written to leading fast food, pub and restaurant chains urging them to take immediate action to reduce antibiotic use in their meat and poultry supply chains.
Over the last decade or so, the media have slowly but steadily fed the public information about the staggering impact of our meat-eating habits on the environment, and on climate change in particular. For instance, one recent study found that a global transition toward low-meat diets could reduce the costs of climate change mitigation by as much as 50 percent by 2050.
The spin of the earth is a constant in our lives. It’s quite literally why night follows day.
And while that cycle isn’t going away, climate change is messing with the axis upon which our fair planet spins. Ice melting has caused a drift in polar motion, a somewhat esoteric term that tells scientists a lot about past and future climate and is crucial in GPS calculations and satellite communication.
A group of youngsters just won a major decision in their efforts to sue the federal government over climate change. An Oregon judge ruled Friday that their lawsuit, which alleges the government violated the constitutional rights of the next generation by allowing the pollution that has caused climate change, can go forward.
A new study shows that a swarm of hundreds of thousands of tiny microbots, each smaller than the width of a human hair, can be deployed into industrial wastewater to absorb and remove toxic heavy metals. The researchers found that the microbots can remove 95% of the lead in polluted water in one hour, and can be reused multiple times, potentially offering a more effective and economical way to remove heavy metals than previous methods.
The number of tigers in the wild has risen from an estimated 3,200 in 2010 to about 3,890 in 2016 — a gain of more than 20 percent after a century of decline, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The group says the tiger populations have grown in at least four countries: India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan.
Salamanders and fish possess genes that can enable healing of damaged tissue and even regrowth of missing limbs. The key to regeneration lies not only in the genes, but in the DNA sequences that regulate expression of those genes in response to an injury. Researchers have discovered regulatory sequences that they call 'tissue regeneration enhancer elements' or TREEs, which can turn on genes in injury sites.
Artificial limbs have come a long way since the days of peg legs and hooks for hands. But one thing most of these prosthetics lack is a sense of touch.
Zhenan Bao intends to change that.
Some people appear to be born with 'superhero DNA' that cancels out genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, say researchers.
The study of nearly 600,000 people found 13 who should have developed debilitating diseases, but did not.
A new plant-derived drug can block the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS), an international research team has demonstrated. MS is a chronic incurable condition marked by attacks that bring gradual deterioration in the patient's health. About 2.5 million people are affected worldwide.
Chemists at the University of California San Diego have designed a set of molecules that promote microscopic, anatomical changes in neurons associated with the formation and retention of memories. These drug candidates also prevent deterioration of the same neuronal structures in the presence of amyloid-beta, a protein fragment that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Researchers have taken the next step in the evolution of bacteria-powered energy.
For the first time ever, researchers connected nine biological-solar (bio-solar) cells into a bio-solar panel. Then they continuously produced electricity from the panel and generated the most wattage of any existing small-scale bio-solar cells - 5.59 microwatts.
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed the remains of the oldest kilns in the country, finding the location where commercial quantities of raw pale green “Judean glass” were produced.
The roughly 1,600-year-old kilns served the entire Roman Empire, according to a statement by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). They indicate that “the Land of Israel was one of the foremost centers for glass production in the ancient world,” the IAA said.
Incompatibilities in the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans may have limited the impact of interbreeding between the two groups.
It's now widely known that many modern humans carry up to 4% Neanderthal DNA.
But a new analysis of the Neanderthal Y chromosome, the package of genes passed down from fathers to sons, shows it is missing from modern populations.
Bustling cities, sprawling suburbs and blossoming agricultural regions might seem strong evidence that people have always dominated the environment. A Stanford study of South America's colonization shows that human populations did not always grow unchecked, but were at one time limited by local resources – just like any other species.
When scientists unveiled the fossil remains of a newly discovered human species from South Africa called Homo naledilast September, the find electrified audiences around the world. It was an astonishing haul: some 1,550 specimens representing at least 15 individuals, recovered over just a few weeks of intensive excavation from the Rising Star Cave system outside Johannesburg. But it was the researchers’ favored explanation for how the remains ended up in the cave, more than the fossils themselves, that captured the public imagination and jolted the paleoanthropology community.
"Antiques" with a declared value of $26 million have been imported to the United States from Syria since 2011, when the civil war there began, according to documents that the U.S. Census Bureau provided to Live Science.
In my previous two-part article titled "The Exceptional Cuban Underwater City," I argued that the existence of a city at a depth of over 2,000 feet (609 meters) below sea level off the coast of Cuba could be explained by the Caribbean Basin having been dry and habitable when the city was built.
Treasures are not always large gold hoards or mountains of precious stones. A treasure can also be a highly precious artifact such as the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear of Longinus, and the Sword of Nuada, the Holy Grail or a small, but very precious ring with magical powers.
Whether you’re coming home from an airport fluttering with international germs, a daycare full of sticky-fingered toddlers, or just a grimy office building, scrubbing your hands with bacteria-busting soap seems like a great idea. But the data that have washed up on the cleansers in recent years suggest that they actually do more harm than good—for you, those around you, and the environment.
Related: BPA substitute can trigger fat cell formation: Chemical used in BPA-free products exhibits similar endocrine-disrupting effects
Researchers from MIT have used a new 3D-printing method that works with both solids and liquids to create a six-legged, hydraulically-powered robot. The team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) created the bot using a commercially-available 3D printer. Several sets of tiny bellows power the robot's legs, and are filled with liquid deposited during the 22-hour printing process.
Related: Chinese Funeral Home 3D Prints Body Parts For Damaged Corpses
Scientists are claiming a major breakthrough in the field of cryonics after a rabbit brain was frozen and recovered in “near perfect” condition – the first time an entire mammalian brain has been restored successfully.
The procedure has brought scientists a step closer to fulfilling the sci-fi goal of living forever by resurrecting the frozen dead or installing the human brain into a robot.
Dubai's beaches and picturesque desert attract around 13 million tourists every year.
To keep these landscapes pristine, the United Arab Emirates city will soon use a squadron of surveillance drones to catch litterbugs.
Related: US Army hopes to outfit soldiers with tiny drones by 2018
Composite metal foams (CMFs) are tough enough to turn an armor-piercing bullet into dust on impact. Given that these foams are also lighter than metal plating, the material has obvious implications for creating new types of body and vehicle armor – and that's just the beginning of its potential uses.
Solar panel technology has changed the way many people bring energy into their homes, but this type of technology has always posed one concern: panels cannot output optimal power without ideal weather conditions. When you have rainy days or a lot of cloud cover, there is only so much energy that panels can store for later use. While engineers and material scientists have been able to make their efficiency far better over the years, with solar panels that store decent amounts of energy to be used when sun is not readily available, there has never quite been a development like the one discovered this year.
A team of Japanese astronomers has recently discovered water ice at the surface of a distant star's disk. Using the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) installed on the Gemini South Telescope in Chile, the researchers, led by Mitsuhiko Honda at the Kurume University School of Medicine's Department of Physics, found that a circumstellar disk around the star HD 100546 contains water ice grains. The findings are reported in a paper published online on Mar. 31 in the arXiv repository.
A conspicuous “chirp” heralded the first detection of gravitational waves. But some future measurements could be more like hushed murmurs.
Scientists may soon be able to tease out a faint signal of gravitational waves from black hole collisions too distant to be detected directly, scientists with LIGO, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, report in the April 1 Physical Review Letters. A detection could come in as few as three years — considerably faster than scientists had dreamed possible, the new analysis suggests.
The true nature of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) may not have been revealed after all.
These energetic eruptions seem to pop up in random locations in the cosmos and they appear and disappear in a matter of milliseconds, making them exceedingly hard to pinpoint.
A team of astronomers has discovered one of the youngest and brightest free-floating, planet-like objects within relatively close proximity to the Sun. At an age of only 10 million years, which means it's practically a baby on a galactic time scale, the object identified as 2MASS J1119-1137 is between four and eight times the mass of Jupiter, and hence falls in the mass range between a large planet and a small brown dwarf star.
For SpaceX, the fifth time was the charm in the impressive feat of landing a rocket on a boat.
On Friday, SpaceX — more formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif. — launched a mission taking cargo for NASA to the International Space Station. While the capsule carrying 7,000 pounds of experiments, supplies and equipment continued to orbit, the booster stage of the Falcon 9 rocket turned around and headed back toward a floating platform off the coast of Florida.
Contrary to recent reports, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is not experiencing unexplained deviations in its orbit around Saturn, according to mission managers and orbit determination experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Astrophysicists have outlined what Planet Nine might be like - if indeed it exists.
In January, researchers at Caltech in the US suggested a large, additional planet might be lurking in the icy outer reaches of the Solar System.
Evidence for a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis was revealed by graffiti on a 1st century flagon unearthed in Tooley Street, Southwark which read “LONDINI AD FANVM ISIDIS” – translated as “To London at the temple of Isis”.
Collection, storage and management of water were top priorities for the ancient Maya, whose sites in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala were forced to endure seven months out of the year with very little rainfall.
Mexican archaeologists said Tuesday they are racing to keep up with development on the Yucatan peninsula as suburbs of the colonial city of Merida swallow Maya settlements.
Yucatan state has over 3,500 known archaeological sites but just 22 government archaeologists. While attention focuses on big ruins like Chichen Itza or Uxmal, only about 17 of the state’s sites are even open to the public.
Related: Save an Ancient Maya City from Destruction
Hundreds of iconic moai statues stand testament to the vibrant civilization that once inhabited Easter Island, but there are far fewer clues about why this civilization mysteriously vanished. Did they shortsightedly exhaust the island’s resources?
Human population growth has followed the trajectory of a typical invasive species, says a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and that suggests there may be a looming global population "crash."
To control the spread of lionfish, ecologists and chefs are trying to make it a mainstream meal option.
American seafood enthusiasts have spent years dining on salmon, shrimp, and the occasional mahi mahi. Now a new, rather unexpected fish is starting to creep onto menus and into seafood shelves at supermarkets: lionfish.
In a series of studies conducted in rats, researchers have found that eating blueberries could help to reduce the genetic and biochemical drivers behind depression and suicidal tendencies associated with PTSD.
Millions of people globally are overweight or obese and sugar is considered a major factor. Now a world-first game-changing study suggests drugs used to treat tobacco addiction could work for sugar addiction too.
What if you could pop a pill that made you smarter? It sounds like a Hollywood movie plot, but a new systematic review suggests that the decades-long search for a safe and effective “smart drug” (see below) might have notched its first success. Researchers have found that modafinil boosts higher-order cognitive function without causing serious side effects.
Related: Is a popular painkiller hampering our ability to notice errors?
Fruit flies live 16% longer than average when given low doses of the mood stabiliser lithium, according to a UCL-led study.
How lithium stabilises mood is poorly understood but when the scientists investigated how it prolongs the lives of flies, they discovered a new drug target that could slow ageing - a molecule called glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3).
The Knights Templar’ secret of longevity may lie in their unique diet, says new research that looked into the eating habits of the powerful and secretive medieval order.
The diet would require eating lots of fruits, vegetables, dried legumes and consuming fish rather than meat and drinking moderate amounts of wine mixed with aloe pulp.
A 17th-century manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton that was held in a private collection for decades is being placed online, offering a fascinating glimpse into the work of the celebrated physicist.
Nostradamus (1503 – 1566) was best known as an author of prophesies. He is credited by some with predicting a number of events in world history, including the French Revolution, the atom bomb, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. However, around 400 years before him lived Jayabaya, a Hindu king in Java whose importance in the history of the archipelago now known as Indonesia, is also known for his prophecies, particularly regarding the future of Java.
The next time you're driving down a country road in outback Australia, consider there's a good chance that very route was originally mapped out by Aboriginal people perhaps thousands of years before Europeans came to Australia.
And like today, they turned to the skies to aid their navigation. Except instead of using a GPS network, they used the stars above to help guide their travels.
A rare copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, published in 1623, has been found in a stately home on a Scottish island.
The remarkable discovery comes as the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death looms on April 23.
A team of technologists working with Microsoft and others have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Dutch master Rembrandt.
The portrait was created after existing works by the artist were analysed by a computer.
A compound found in red wine, resveratrol, reduces the risk of heart disease by changing the gut microbiome, according to a new study by researchers from China. The study is published in mBio, an open-access journal published by the American Society for Microbiology.
Vitamin D supplements may help people with diseased hearts, a study suggests.
A trial on 163 heart failure patients found supplements of the vitamin, which is made in the skin when exposed to sunlight, improved their hearts' ability to pump blood around the body.
The fluctuations of your heartbeat may affect your wisdom, according to new research. The study suggests that heart rate variation and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues.
If the super-rich actually paid what they owe in taxes, the US would have loads more money available for public services
We should all be able to agree: no one should be poor in a nation as wealthy as the US. Yet nearly 15% of Americans live below the poverty line. Perhaps one of the best solutions is also one of the oldest and simplest ideas: everyone should be guaranteed a small income, free from conditions.
Analysts have used detailed light detection and ranging data for 128 cities nationwide, along with improved data analysis methods and simulation tools, to update its estimate of total US technical potential for rooftop photovoltaic systems. The analysis reveals a technical potential of 1,118 gigawatts of capacity and 1,432 terawatt-hours of annual energy generation, equivalent to 39 percent of the nation's electricity sales.
A newly discovered microbe chows down on polluting plastic.
For humans, polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET, is a stiff, strong plastic fiber that’s the main ingredient in polyester clothing and disposable bottles. But for the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis, PET is dinner.
The microbes that once thrived around deep-sea shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico have transformed significantly after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, according to a new study. These dramatic changes to the microorganisms that live on and near historically significant vessels could wreak havoc on the vessels and ocean life itself, researchers say.
According to a new study in Nature, the Northern Hemisphere has experienced considerably larger variations in precipitation during the past twelve centuries than in the twentieth century. Researchers from Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland have found that climate models overestimated the increase in wet and dry extremes as temperatures increased during the twentieth century. The new results will enable us to improve the accuracy of climate models and to better predict future precipitation changes.
Global warming is changing the way the Earth wobbles on its polar axis, a new Nasa study has found.
Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland, are changing the distribution of weight on Earth. And that has caused both the North Pole and the wobble, which is called polar motion, to change course, according to a study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances.
Don't believe the doomsday hype about the putative Planet Nine.
Yesterday (April 7), the New York Post published a video claiming that Planet Nine — a hypothesized world in the solar system's far outer reaches — could send asteroids and comets hurtling into Earth soon, with potentially devastating consequences.
Two new papers appearing in the journal Nature this week are "slam-dunk" evidence that energies from supernovae have buffeted our planet, according to astrophysicist Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas.
Alt: Supernovae showered Earth with radioactive debris