Newsdesk Archive

Digital virtualization is one way to preserve temples and statues from bombs, says anthropologist In March 2001, the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, two of the tallest Buddha sculptures in the world. This horrific attack on an important and beautiful example of the patrimony of central Asia shocked the world. It also forever changed the landscape of cultural preservation, archaeology and global heritage.

DNA from seven decapitated skeletons thought to be gladiators is helping researchers unravel the gruesome origins of the ancient remains. The new findings suggest that the Roman Empire's genetic impact on Britain may not have been as large as researchers had thought.

If new U of T research on the brains of an ancient rodent tells us anything, it's that bigger does not necessarily mean better. U of T Scarborough PhD candidate Ornella Bertrand along with Associate Professor Mary Silcox and undergraduate student Farrah Amador-Mughal recently reconstructed two endocasts of Paramys, the oldest and best-preserved rodent skulls on record. What they found was surprising.

The relationship between humans and cats, it turns out, has always been complicated. The oldest archaeological evidence for domesticated cats can be traced back to 7500 BC, on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. All domestic cats today, for the most part, are related to that subspecies – Felis silvestris lybica, or the Near Eastern wildcat.

Some octopuses intimidate their neighbors by turning black, standing tall and looming over them threateningly, like an eight-armed Dracula. That's according to a study published Thursday that helps show that octopuses aren't loners, contrary to what scientists long thought; some of the invertebrates have an exciting social life.

Days after a poacher’s trap killed a young mountain gorilla in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, researchers have spotted something remarkable: two four-year old gorillas working together to dismantle similar snares in the area. "This is absolutely the first time that we've seen juveniles doing that ... I don't know of any other reports in the world of juveniles destroying snares,"

In a milestone for artificial intelligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires "intuition" rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said Wednesday. Dubbed AlphaGo, the system honed its own skills through a process of trial and error, playing millions of games against itself until it was battle-ready, and surprised even its creators with its prowess.

It's a race befitting the goal of moving passengers and cargo at the speed of sound. Three Southern California companies are building separate test tracks to see how well the 'hyperloop' transportation concept works in the real world.

For the first time, researchers have shown that they can capture CO2 from the air, and convert it directly into methanol, which can then be used as an alternative fuel, as well as for hydrogen storage, in fuel cells, or as a building block for plastic.

The CIA has posted online previously secret photographs purportedly showing UFOs or ‘flying saucers’ hovering over Britain. The hand selected images are among formerly classified files from the 1950s which were hidden away by the American spy agency. Alt: The Real 'X-Files'? CIA Reveals Weirdest UFO Stories

An Indian Air Force Su-30 MKI fighter jet has intercepted an unidentified flying object in Barmer, Rajistan, yesterday after the balloon-shaped object was seen on radar, triggering an alert. Alt: Indian Fighter Jets Just ‘Shot Down A UFO’

WICHITA, Kansas – Sedgwick County emergency dispatchers report receiving numerous reports of explosions from various locations around Wichita Saturday. Several viewers sent KSN emails saying they heard a loud boom and felt their homes shake.

At least 10 sonic booms have been reported this afternoon (Jan. 28) from southern New Jersey along the East Coast to Long Island, New York, say scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Alt: Sonic Booms Likely Caused by Naval Aircraft Testing

People are calling in to our sister station’s newsroom reporting vibrations from Charleston, Berkeley and Williamsburg Counties in South Carolina. In Mount Pleasant, people reported hearing a big booming sound.

Researchers at Poland’s Institute of Nuclear Physics found complex ‘fractal’ patterning of sentences in literature, particularly in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which resemble ‘ideal’ maths seen in nature

Chemistry teachers recently had to update their classroom décor, with the announcement that scientists have confirmed the discovery of four new elements on the periodic table. The as-yet unnamed elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 filled in the remaining gaps at the bottom of the famous chart—a roadmap of matter’s building blocks that has successfully guided chemists for nearly a century and a half.

There is a mathematical way to tell if conspiracy theories are true, says Oxford University researcher David Robert Grimes. “It is common to dismiss conspiracy theories and their proponents out of hand, but I wanted to take the opposite approach, to see how these conspiracies might be possible.

Astronomers have discovered the largest known solar system, consisting of a large planet that takes nearly a million years to orbit its star. The gas giant is one trillion kilometres away, making its orbit 140 times wider than Pluto's path around our Sun.

Surely you have heard all of the news about Planet Nine? If not, here are a few of the major points: * There are many objects in the Kuiper belt (the stuff past Pluto) that have orbits around the Sun but are sort of bunched to one side of the solar system.

New research has revealed the importance of a circadian body clock that matches the rotational speed of the Earth. A team of scientists from Holland, Germany and the UK’s University of Manchester studied animals in which variation in a single gene dramatically speeds up the natural circadian cycle from 24 to 20 hours.

An extraordinary tree frog thought to have died out more than a century ago has been rediscovered in India. The discovery was made by renowned Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju and a team of scientists, in the jungles of north-eastern India. Related: Lizards camouflage themselves by choosing rocks that best match the color of their backs

When Charles Darwin visited the Azores islands in the 19th Century, the birds he observed were familiar to him. However, if he had travelled there 500 years before, he would have found an ornithofauna as particular as that of the Galápagos. The recent discovery in these islands and in Madeira of five extinct species of rail, which lost the ability to fly due to having evolved on islands, confirms how fragile they are in the face of changes to their habitat like the ones that must have occurred after the first visits by humans over 500 years ago. Related: 'Adele' like song leads scientists to identify bird as new species

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution offers an explanation for why biological organisms seem so well designed to live on our planet. This process is typically described as “unintelligent” – based on random variations with no direction. But despite its success, some oppose this theory because they don’t believe living things can evolve in increments. Something as complex as the eye of an animal, they argue, must be the product of an intelligent creator.

Genetic evidence is an incredibly useful tool for understanding evolutionary history. It has helped us build up our current picture of how humans migrated out of Africa and also estimate when chimps and humans parted ways from our last common ancestor. Estimates that used different methods have placed the chimp-human split anywhere from three million to 10 million years ago (mya), sometimes falling far from the estimated 6 to 7 mya suggested by the fossil record—an indication that something is wrong in the calculations.

Archaeologists excavating the site of Ancient Aptera in Iraklio, Crete, on Tuesday announced the discovery of two small yet spectacular statues depicting the gods Artemis and Apollo.

Three 1,700-year-old funerary inscriptions, two in Aramaic and one in Greek, have been revealed at Zippori, northern Israel, after local residents found them and alerted the authorities. The Greek inscription lists the name “Jose” – a version of Joseph. It was and remains very common for Jews to be named for the patriarch. (Zippori, a moshav in the Galilee, was also commonly known by its ancient Greek name, Sepphoris.)

Archaeologists expected to find something but didn’t know how much when they started excavating in 2012 around what would become the new County Road 101 bridge spanning between Chanhassen and Shakopee. "It’s one of the most significant sites I've worked on, certainly. Yeah," Kent Bakken says.

Buried beneath the remains of an ancient temple in the Pucalá district of Peru, archaeologists have made a grisly discovery that yields among the first clues to 1,200-year-old sacrificial rituals. The bodies of six women, believed to have been ritually killed in a secret compound on the site of the temple, were found alongside the remains of a llama and ceramics.

It has long been assumed the Aztecs sacrificed prisoners of war at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán in what is now Mexico City, immediately after battle. But a new study suggests they also offered the lives of people much closer to home as sacrifices to their bloodthirsty gods.

There is little dispute that in the wake of European colonists’ arrival in the New World, Native American populations were decimated by disease and conflict. But when it comes to the timing, magnitude, and effects of this depopulation — it depends on who you ask. Many scholars claim that disease struck the native population shortly after their first contact with Europeans, and spread with such ferocity that it left tell-tale fingerprints on the global climate. Others, however, argue that — though still devastating — the process was far more gradual, and took place over many years.

Tea is often referred to one of the world's oldest beverages. But just how old is it? A Chinese document from 59 B.C. refers to a drink that might be tea, but scholars cannot be certain. Now, a new analysis proves that plant remains found in tombs 2,100 years old – about 100 years before that document – definitely are tea, the oldest physical evidence for the drink. And the buried tea was high-quality stuff, fit for an emperor.

Italian police have uncovered an illegal rubbish dump hidden in the remains of ancient Roman catacombs sealed off the area while they investigate alleged environmental pollution. Underground caverns and tunnels used as tombs since the second century BC had been filled with harmful waste over the years, creating an underground lake of acrid oil, Italian media reported.

A headless body, stretched out along the beach, appears through the smudged window of our ATV as we sail across the sand. There’s a windy lawlessness up here along the Chukchi Sea; I’m reassured by the rifle lashed to the lead ATV in the caravan. The archaeologist at the helm passes the decaying creature without pause. Anne Jensen has seen many headless walruses before—this one was likely already dead when it washed ashore and was relieved of its tusks.

Those of us caught up in last weekend’s ginormous East Coast blizzard got a reminder of that perennial lesson that comes each winter: Icy roads are no joke. How’s this for a solution? For several years, scientists have been noodling around with roads that can de-ice themselves by way of a low-voltage electric charge that runs through the pavement.

While coal deposits formed both before and after the Carboniferous, this period provided the mother lode. It occurred a bit over 300 million years ago and was a funky time that saw relatives of club mosses grow to the size of trees while insects also reached comparatively gigantic proportions due to the higher-than-modern oxygen concentration. Related: Oil cost falls below $28 a barrel, or less than the price of an actual barrel

A new water filter can remove toxic heavy metal ions and radioactive substances in just one pass. The filter membrane is a hybrid of two low-cost materials: whey protein fibers and activated charcoal. The simple technology overcomes several disadvantages of existing methods, which are typically expensive and can only remove a specific element or have a very small filter capacity.

Solar power costs are tumbling so fast the technology is likely to fast outstrip mainstream energy forecasts. That is the conclusion of Oxford University researchers, based on a new forecasting model published in Research Policy. Related: Japan is building the World’s largest floating solar power plant

In its symbolic look at the likelihood of armageddon, members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced today that they are keeping the world's so-called Doomsday Clock at three minutes to "midnight" — a metaphor for the end of the world as we know it. The clock has been set at 11:57PM since January 2015, when it was moved down from five minutes to destruction. It's the closest the clock has been to midnight since the Cold War in the 1980s.

Some people really do win the genetic lottery. For the first time, scientists have shown that intelligence is linked to good health, so those blessed with brains are also less likely to become sick, develop disease or die early.

University of Helsinki study says use of antibiotics in early years ‘may have long-term effects on the metabolic and immunological health of the child’ The use of antibiotics in young children may alter the natural populations of gut microbes in a way that leaves them predisposed to weight gain and asthma in later childhood, according to new research.

A diet rich in fiber may not only protect against diabetes and heart disease, it may reduce the risk of developing lung disease, according to new research published online, ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Related: Incidence of psychiatric disorders has increased in a shrinking population of smokers

Over 1,500 years ago, the Gupta emperors ruled large parts of India. They helped consolidate the nation, but they also popularized India's caste system, making it socially unacceptable for people to marry outside their castes. Now, a new analysis of genetic variation among contemporary Indians has revealed that this social shift left a distinctive genetic signature behind.

A Brazilian town plans to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes to suppress the wild mosquito population responsible for Zika and Dengue outbreaks. Genetically modified male mosquitoes were released in parts of Piracicaba city in Southern Brazil as a pilot project in April 2014. Studies have shown that these GM mosquitoes have reduced the wild mosquito population by 82% in areas covered under the pilot project.

A breakthrough in the transformation of human cells by an international team led by researchers at the University of Bristol could open the door to a new range of treatments for a variety of medical conditions. Their paper, published today in Nature Genetics, demonstrates the creation of a system that predicts how to create any human cell type from another cell type directly, without the need for experimental trial and error. Related: Are clinical drug trials more marketing than science?

While AI focuses on creating intelligent machines that perform human tasks, a human-based algorithm, harnessing the power of the crowd to make predictions, shows remarkable accuracy.

Thunder Energies Corp has recently detected invisible entities in our terrestrial environment with the revolutionary Santilli telescope with concave lenses. Thunder Energies Corporation has previously presented confirmations of the apparent existence of antimatter galaxies, antimatter asteroids and antimatter cosmic rays detected in preceding tests. In this breaking news, Thunder Energies presents evidence for the existence of Invisible Terrestrial Entities (ITE) of the dark and bright type. "This is an exciting discovery. We do not know what these entities are; they're completely invisible to our eyes, our binoculars, or traditional Galileo telescopes, but these objects are fully visible in cameras attached to our Santilli telescope,"

By mimicking the way orchids, calla lilies and other plants bend and twist, scientists have created shape-shifting "4D-printed" structures that they say could one day help heal wounds and be used in robotic surgical tools.

A deeply disturbing and controversial line of thinking has emerged within the physics community. It's the idea that we are reaching the absolute limit of what we can understand about the world around us through science.

The bright, red star Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion, has entered the twilight of its life. Like many stars of a similar size that reach the end of the road, Betelgeuse is slowly shedding its mortal coil — by ejecting much of its mass out into space.

A couple of times a month — sometimes more, sometimes less — an explosion goes off on the surface of the sun, releasing energy that's equal to millions of hydrogen bombs. Mind boggling as that number is, this tremendous energy output cannot explain how material that is spit out by these explosions gets ramped up to nearly the speed of light. It's like expecting a golf cart motor to power a Ferrari.

Life on Earth has little to fear from the hypothesized Planet Nine, astronomers say. Some scientists have suggested that a big undiscovered body lying on the far outer reaches of the solar system could be responsible for many of the mass extinction events throughout Earth's history, by shaking up the distant comet repository known as the Oort Cloud and sending some its denizens screaming toward our planet.

Scientists behind a "Doomsday Clock" that measures the likelihood of a global cataclysm are set to announce Tuesday whether civilization is any closer or farther from disaster. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is expected to unveil the minute hand on the metaphorical clock in Washington, D.C. The clock reflects how vulnerable the world is to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies, according to the bulletin.

The Zika virus is likely to spread across nearly all of the Americas, the World Health Organization has warned. It has been linked to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains and some countries have advised women not to get pregnant.

Chemical often associated with mood also senses sour in the mouth Unless you’re in the middle of biting into a delicious Reuben sandwich, you might forget that taste is one of the fundamental senses. “It’s required for our enjoyment of food,” explains Emily Liman, a taste researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “Without taste … people stop eating. They don’t enjoy their food.” Related: How Bitter Taste Receptors Defend the Body against Bacteria

A cure for type 1 diabetes is closer than ever after scientists showed they can switch off the disease for six months in animals – which would equate to several years in humans. In 2014, researchers at Harvard University discovered how to make huge quantities of insulin-producing cells, in a breakthrough hailed as significant as antibiotics.

They spin in their cages and don’t interact. The scientists who created autistic monkeys say they’ll now try to cure them. Scientists in China say they used genetic engineering to create monkeys with a version of autism, an achievement that could make it easier to test treatments but that raises thorny practical and ethical questions over how useful such animal models will be. Related: Brain levels of vitamin B12 decrease with age and are prematurely low in people with autism and schizophrenia

Why did some species, such as humans and dolphins, evolve large brains relative to the size of their bodies? Why did others, such as blue whales and hippos, evolve to have brains that, compared to their bodies, are relatively puny? It has long been thought that species with brains that are large relative to their body are more intelligent.

During the past several years, I've watched country after country destroy their stockpiles of confiscated elephant ivory, preventing that ivory from somehow slipping back into the black market and symbolically demonstrating commitment to stopping the illegal trade. But to my mind, something that’s always been missing is an apology: No country has ever formally said sorry for its complicity in the trade. Tomorrow Sri Lanka will hold a religious ceremony to do just that.

It’s official: 2015 was the warmest year on record. But those global temperature records only date back to 1850 and become increasingly uncertain the further back you go. Beyond then, we’re reliant on signs left behind in tree rings, ice cores or rocks. So when was Earth last warmer than the present?

Long gone are the days when scientists asserted that ancient humans could not possibly cross through and inhabit the harsh world of what has historically been referred to as the Arabian Desert, including the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. Traditional theories depicted groups of early modern humans first dispersing out of northeastern Africa north and east through the Levant and then northward into present-day Europe and through northern routes into India and then the Far East.

Were domestic cats brought to China over 5,000 years ago? Or were small cats domesticated in China at that time? There was no way of deciding between these two hypotheses until a team of investigators succeeded in determining the species corresponding to cat remains found in agricultural settlements in China, dating from around 3500 BC.

Egyptian media say prosecutors have referred eight museum employees for trial over the botched reattachment of the beard on the burial mask of the pharaoh, Tutankhamun. It comes a year after officials opened an investigation into how the blue and gold braided beard came to be detached and then hastily glued back on. Alt: Egypt says King Tut mask was scratched, sends 8 to trial

Antiquities Minister Dr. Mamdouh Eldamaty announced today the discovery of the first probable case of scurvy in Ancient Egypt, from the Predynastic settlement of Nag el-Qarmila (c. 3800–3600 BCE) in Aswan. The discovery was made by the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project (AKAP), a joint venture between the University of Bologna and Yale University, directed by Dr. Maria Carmela Gatto and Dr. Antonio Curci.

Work has begun to return 126 medieval carved stones home to Elgin Cathedral. Carved faces, plants and animals are being hoisted up into the cathedral towers to form part of an exciting exhibition due to open on Easter weekend. The Elgin stones spent much of 2015 at Historic Environment Scotland’s conservation centre in Edinburgh, being cleaned by expert conservators and studied by researchers. Now an immersive exhibition has been developed, telling the story of the cathedral and the people who built and used it

The patient was dead, but the cause remained a mystery. And if there's anything doctors hate more than their inability to forestall death, it's their inability to explain it. And so, 357 years after Oliver Cromwell died at age 58, several dozen physicians convened here under the austere arches of Westminster Church this fall to ponder the patient's medical history, assess his symptoms in his final days, and settle upon a cause of the English statesman's death.

Microbes appear to be dormant in permafrost in a region of Antarctica, which could deal a blow for the search for life in similar regions on Mars. A group of researchers found negative tests for microbial activity at temperatures below freezing in a region called University Valley, in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. However, in spots just a little above freezing (5 Celsius, or 41 Fahrenheit), the same team found five bacteria and one yeast.

A desert beetle taught scientists how to prevent frost on airplanes, coils, and windshields. A team of scientists with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) has discovered a method for controlling and preventing frost, according to a study published in Scientific Reports, an online journal run by Nature.

New research from the University of Southampton indicates that the public are being exposed, without their knowledge, to airborne ultrasound. The study found increasing exposure to ultrasound in locations such as railway stations, museums, libraries, schools and sports stadiums, in which there have been complaints of nausea, dizziness, migraine, fatigue and tinnitus.

Most of your Facebook friends don’t care about you and probably wouldn’t even sympathise with your problems, according to a new study. Many people have hundreds of Facebook friends. But people can only really depend on four of them, on average, according to new research.

Why did the Renaissance happen in Florence? Why did the small Scottish city of Edinburgh produce so many world-transforming inventions in the 19th century? What caused Calcutta, in India, to produce a cluster of geniuses then slide into poverty and dereliction? In Geography of Genius, best-selling author Eric Weiner sets off on a journey around the world to answer those questions. He examines seven places where a golden age occurred—including Hangzhou, China; Vienna, Austria; and Athens, Greece—and discovers that genius thrives in chaos.

New research suggests that people who think they are experts tend to fall into the trap of overclaiming It is only logical to trust our instincts if we think we know a lot about a subject, right? New research suggests the opposite: self-proclaimed experts are more likely to fall victim to a phenomenon known as overclaiming, professing to know things they really do not.

If you were in search of a new, disease-fighting antibiotic, where might you start? In a swamp? A remote island? Well, how about combing beards? On Trust Me I'm a Doctor we do experiments which sometimes throw up genuinely new science. In a previous series, for example, we discovered you can cut the calories in pasta by cooking, cooling and then reheating it.

Just when the news about lead poisoning the drinking water of Flint, Michigan, couldn’t get any worse. A report from The Guardian says many US cities are systemically and purposely downplaying the amounts of lead and copper in municipal water systems. Alt: US authorities distorting tests to downplay lead content of water

While the effects of power plant emissions, vehicle exhaust and other manmade aerosols on air quality and public health are well-known, their impact on the climate is not completely understood. Scientists have shown that aerosols can lower surface temperatures either directly, by reflecting sunlight skyward, or indirectly, by increasing the reflectivity of clouds, but until now have not figured out the role these airborne particles play in shaping the distribution of rain and snowfall around the world.

For more than 100 years, scientists have debated what the underlying molecular structure of water is, and the common view has been that H2O molecules are either "water-like" or "ice-like." Now through computer simulation conducted at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS) at Stony Brook University, researchers can illustrate that the structure and dynamics of hydrogen bonding in liquid water is more similar to ice than previously thought.

More than 150 years ago, Jules Verne imagined a fantastic voyage into Earth’s depths. In reality, the planet’s innards are no less remarkable than the Jurassic--period monsters and subterranean labyrinths that Verne envisioned: Iron crystals stretch 20 kilometers long, colossal plumes of liquefied rock surge toward the surface and fragments of ancient seafloors lie entombed in the mantle. Related: Explosive underwater volcanoes were a major feature of 'Snowball Earth'

In three decades, the world’s oceans will contain more discarded plastic than fish when measured by weight, researchers say. The shocking finding was revealed in a newly released Ellen MacArthur Foundation report that investigates the inefficiency of the world’s plastic economy.

Eavesdropping on sperm whales has revealed that they can convey a lot of information about themselves in just a few clicks Near the Caribbean island of Dominica, there is one group of sperm whales that has interested researchers for over a decade.

A former fisherman has discovered a trench in the bottom of Loch Ness that makes it 900 feet deep, that would be big enough for the mythical monster to live in. Tourist sightseeing boat skipper Keith Stewart, 43, found the crevice around nine miles down the loch, south east of Inverness, using state of the art sonar equipment.

Look at that picture! Seriously, this is one of the single most amazing optical phenomena I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff. It was taken on Jan. 13, 2016, by Mia Heikkilä in Eura, Finland, and I’ll admit it took me a moment to figure out what it was. When I did, literally, my jaw dropped.

Advancements in robotics technology are forcing us to change our perception of what a robot is. From smart cars to interactive Segways, more powerful computer programs are giving machines the ability to act alongside us, rather than simply for us.

The world must act quickly to avert a future in which autonomous robots with artificial intelligence roam the battlefields killing humans, scientists and arms experts warned at an elite gathering in the Swiss Alps.

Imagine storing your entire music collection in a house plant or the entire works of Shakespeare in an area of shrubbery. Scientists are developing a new technique for using seeds and plants as data repositories by encoding information into their DNA.

In an alternate universe, the arrows of time could run in the opposite direction of what we know, unfolding so that our known past exists during the far-off future of a distant world. A pair of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who suggest this concept aren't the first to do so, but they've demonstrated how this phenomenon could arise based on simpler principles than previously examined.

The first evidence of alien life may be recorded as a hologram. Scientists have detected microbes in Greenland sea ice using a specially built digital holographic microscope, suggesting that the instrument could have similar success on icy moons in the outer solar system, if any of them harbor life.

Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, say astrobiologists from The Australian National University (ANU). In research aiming to understand how life might develop, the scientists realised new life would commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets.

Evidence of this new addition to our solar system is indirect at the moment, but direct evidence could come relatively soon, in the form of a telescope observation, Planet Nine's proposers say Related: ‘Planet Nine’ is 5,000X the mass of Pluto Related: Ninth planet was discovered by 'man who killed Pluto'

Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counterintuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered. They intuitively reasoned that when something seems too good to be true, most likely a mistake was made.

When a sperm and an egg cell merge a new life begins. This is the case in humans and in animals, but in principle also in plants. A team of biologists has discovered a gene trigger in the moss Physcomitrella patens that leads to offspring without fertilization. The researchers assume that this mechanism is conserved in evolution and holds the key to answer fundamental questions in biology.

Imaging studies and other research suggest that there is a biological basis for transgender identity Some children insist, from the moment they can speak, that they are not the gender indicated by their biological sex. So where does this knowledge reside?

Often when big storms strike, so does an uptick in births — to the tune of a 2 percent increase nine months later. But be careful: With the most severe storms, births in the area actually decrease. Related: Controlling Parents Lead To Mean College Kids: How To Prevent Your Kid From Being Awful Related: So You Want To Eat Snow. Is It Safe? We Asked Scientists

Pregnant women are being warned not to travel to the Olympics in Brazil after a virus causing thousands of babies to be born with unusually small heads swept through the region. Related: El Salvador Urges Against Pregnancies Until 2018 as Zika Virus Spreads

Peru just dismissed its top anti-illegal logging official, amid claims that he was doing too good a job at breaking up the organized crime groups profiting from ravaging the country’s vast Amazon rainforest. The decision, by President Ollanta Humala, was announced on Friday in El Peruano, the state-owned newspaper where government news is published.

Global efforts to crack down on illegal ivory trafficking are eating away at prices, a wildlife trade regulator said Tuesday, voicing confidence the bottom was falling out of the market. "We're seeing the price of ivory start to tank," said John Scanlon, head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Taming that sweet tooth for your New Year's resolution might be harder than you think. New research suggests that forming a habit leaves a lasting mark on specific circuits in the brain, which in turn seems to prime us to further feed our cravings. The research deepens scientists' understanding of how habits manifest and may suggest new strategies for breaking the bad ones.

Could you walk in a perfectly straight line while blindfolded? It’s lucky this skill isn’t demanded often, because people aren’t very good at it. Most veer a little to one side. And the direction you err in may be tied to your personality. People with more anxious personalities, for example, tend to drift left. The insight could help scientists learn where these personality traits reside in the brain.

Scientists are still puzzling out how savantism relates to a person’s likelihood of being on the spectrum. “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” Rex Lewis-Clack croons, his head joyfully bobbing in time with the Duke Ellington standard. The 20-year-old musician accompanies himself on a grand piano, deftly striking the keys with a dexterity reminiscent of the Duke himself.

Venus flytraps are probably the most famous plants that hunt. They lure insects with sweet nectar but, as the unsuspecting bugs move around the plant's open trap, they brush up against sensitive trigger hairs and.... Snap! The trap slams shut, ensnaring a tasty morsel.

The immune system exercises constant vigilance to protect the body from external threats--including what we eat and drink. A careful balancing act plays out as digested food travels through the intestine. Immune cells must remain alert to protect against harmful pathogens like Salmonella, but their activity also needs to be tempered since an overreaction can lead to too much inflammation and permanent tissue damage.

To decide whether and where to move in the body, cells must read chemical signals in their environment. Individual cells do not act alone during this process, two new studies on mouse mammary tissue show. Instead, the cells make decisions collectively after exchanging information about the chemical messages they are receiving.