Newsdesk Archive
A major step has been taken to coordinate U.S. agencies and intergovernmental efforts to respond to future near-Earth objects that threaten Earth.
NASA has announced the creation of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).
Ancient, tightly packed clumps of stars found at the fringe of the Milky Way are a good bet in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence (Seti), research suggests.
Because of their abundance of stars, these "globular clusters" were an early favourite in the Seti field.
There is a chance – just a chance – that if black holes rule the universe, they could have "switched on" habitable planets, such as Earth, allowing them to support complex life.
It's an unavoidable implication of the work of astrophysicist Paul Mason, who is examining the role of the super high-energy particles from black holes and exploding stars in the advent of habitable planets.
Neil Armstrong sent mankind leaping through the stars, but if a new robotic explorer makes it into space, we may soon be hopping instead. Called the Highland Terrain Hopper, or HOPTER, the vehicle will use hopping—instead of driving—to explore the surface of other planets.
Researchers from Australia and the USA have discovered a distant, ancient cloud of gas that may contain the signature of the very first stars that formed in the universe.
The gas cloud has an extremely small percentage of heavy elements, such as carbon, oxygen and iron – less than one thousandth the fraction observed in the Sun.
Astronomers have measured the age of 70,000 stars across the Milky Way and put the results into a galactic map.
It confirms what was already suspected about our galaxy's growth: it started in the middle and grew outward.
Related: The Entire Observable Universe, Captured In One Stunning Image
Humans are living in a new geologic epoch, one that is largely of their own making, scientists say.
In a new study, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, an international team of geoscientists concluded that the impact of human activity on the Earth is so widespread and persistent that it warrants formal recognition with the creation of a new geologic time unit, which they propose to call the Anthropocene epoch.
Bolivia and Peru agreed to provide more than $500 million towards cleaning up Lake Titicaca, whose polluted waters are home to some animals nearing extinction, a Bolivian environment official said.
The deal, which is meant to improve the lake's biodiversity, includes environmental management and recovery through to 2025.
The government of Peru has passed a resolution that bans fishing of giant manta rays in its waters and requires fishermen to release any accidentally caught mantas immediately back into the ocean. Peru joins a dozen other countries with manta protection laws, including its northern neighbor, Ecuador; between them, Peruvian and Ecuadorian waters hold the largest known population of the species in the world.
Within a year, federal wildlife officials plan to reclassify the long-embattled Florida manatee from "endangered" to the less serious status of "threatened."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to publish a proposed rule to reclassify the species. The public would then have 90 days to weigh in on the change. Then the service expects to publish the final rule to reclassify within a year.
Precolombian seafarers left what is now mainland Panama to settle on Pedro González Island in the Perlas archipelago about 6,000 years ago, crossing 50-70 kilometers (31-44 miles) of choppy seas -- probably in dugout canoes. Dolphins were an important part of the diet of island residents according to Smithsonian archeologist Richard Cooke and colleagues from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and Colombia's Universidad del Norte.
Although it has yet to be built, a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia already has its first guest: the historic remains of an 18th-century ship.
Approximately one-third of the ship’s hull, which officials say is “sturdily built and well-preserved” was unearthed from the future site of the Indigo Hotel earlier this week.
Tom Garrison was four hours away from camp down a bumpy jungle road—headed into the city to get treated for poisonwood exposure—when he got the call from his co-director Edwin Román.
"You need to get back here right now."
As a kid, Dennis Downes was the type who played in the woods. The forests where he frolicked were near Lake Michigan, around where Wisconsin and Illinois meet. The spot is striking—in these woods, there are large, old trees that have contorted into incredible shapes.
No more than four or five feet off the ground, these trees bend sharply into right angles, parallel the earth for a measure, and turn sharply up again, towards the sky.
The President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, says scientists plan to explore a jungle site where they believe a mysterious ancient city is hidden.
Spanish colonisers searched for it believing "the City of the Monkey God" or "the White City" was filled with fabulous riches.
That old saying about the birds and the bees might have to include dinosaurs now, too. Giant scrapes carved into sandstone sites in Colorado were left by amorous dinosaurs looking to impress potential mates, according to an international team of scientists.
Pacific Northwest nightmares are getting a revision. The saber-toothed salmon that once swam in the region may have been less saber-toothed cat and more tusky warthog.
Sharp front teeth gave the saber-toothed nickname to the extinct Oncorhynchus rastrosus fish.
During the age of the dinosaurs, three tiny mantises became engulfed in glops of sticky amber and stayed there, preserved, until researchers discovered the entombed critters millions of years later.
The three specimens — found in modern-day Lebanon, Myanmar and Spain — are helping scientists learn more about the diversity, family tree and geographic range of these ancient insects.
Australian scientists Wednesday said they had devised an "innovative method of conservation" through feeding giant monitor lizards small cane toads so they won't be killed by larger-sized amphibians.
Cane toads, an invasive species from Central and South America that were introduced to Australia in 1935, are so toxic they can kill predators that try to eat them and are continuing to spread across northern Australia at an estimated 40-60 kilometres (25-37 miles) a year.
A certain pygmy chameleon can achieve one of the most explosive movements in the animal kingdom, and now scientists know the secret to its power.
The endangered rosette-nosed chameleon, or Rhampholeon spinosus, is capable of flinging its tongue 2.5 times the length of its own body and from zero to 60 miles per hour in a hundredth of a second -- that's 300 times faster than a 2015 Chevrolet Corvette accelerates.
"What a drag it is getting old," the Rolling Stones famously sang. And nobody knows that more than Jonathan, the 183-year-od Aldabra giant tortoise that's thought to be the oldest known living animal on Earth.
Old age has caught up with Jonathan, robbing him of his senses of sight and smell and, until a few years ago, relegating him to an unhealthy diet of twigs on the British island territory of St. Helena (map), off Africa's western coast.
Most people think of music as more of an art than a science. Although sound is a wave, and can therefore be described by the laws of physics, understanding how certain patterns of sound waves create what we perceive as music requires a much higher-level perspective than merely understanding the properties of waves.
Related: Why Do We Feed Wild Animals?
Monkeys, like humans, will take the time and effort to punish others who get more than their fair share, according to a study conducted at Yale. In fact, they can act downright spiteful.
Capuchin monkeys will yank on a rope to collapse a table that is holding a partner monkey's food.
Normally, the idea of powered exoskeletons evokes images of futuristic super soldiers, given massive boosts of strength and agility thanks to their motorized outerwear. That's definitely not the story for Genworth's R70i Aging Suit. The exoskeleton, which is being showcased at CES, is designed to make those wearing it feel as if they've aged 40 years.
We spend around six years of our lives dreaming – that’s 2,190 days or 52,560 hours. Although we can be aware of the perceptions and emotions we experience in our dreams, we are not conscious in the same way as when we’re awake. This explains why we can’t recognize that we’re in a dream and often mistake these bizarre narratives for reality.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response is the technical term for what some call ‘head orgasms’, or ‘brain tingles’. But what does the research say about it?
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR, is a curious phenomenon.
A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that bisexuality in America is on the rise, especially among women, CS Monitor reports.
The new study reported that women were three times as likely as men to be bisexual.
A new study shows this bias comes from both male and female instructors, too
According to research presented at the American Economic Association yesterday, attractive women get better grades not due to higher intelligence, but professor bias. If men aren’t dating us because we’re too smart for our own good, then we’re making the grade for expertly applying mascara.
A survey of more than 2,000 people living in the UK has found that those with a higher IQ are more likely to live a longer life. Researchers analysed data from the Scottish Mental Surveys - in which almost every 11-year-old in Scotland was given the same IQ test on the same day in 1932 - and tracked the participants' lives up to when they passed away.
‘The freeze-dried poop method’ might not sound like a weight-loss strategy that would catch on, but—as some researchers are now testing—it may be an effective way to slim down.
In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity.
Passionate encounters between ancient humans and their burly cousins, the Neanderthals, may have left modern people more prone to sneezes, itches and other allergies, researchers say.
The curious legacy comes from three genes that crossed into modern humans after their distant ancestors had sex with Neanderthals, or their close relatives the Denisovans, more than 40,000 years ago.
Alt: Neanderthal genes gave modern humans an immunity boost, allergies
What did the Romans ever do for us? Despite all the hot baths and smart multi-seat public lavatories, the surprising answer turns out to be lice, fleas, bed bugs, bacterial infections from contamination with human faeces, and 25ft-long tapeworms, a misery spread across the empire by the Roman passion for fermented fish sauce.
Alt: Roman toilets gave no clear health benefit, and Romanization actually spread parasites
On the day that Ötzi the “Iceman” was murdered in the Tyrolean Alps of Italy about 5300 years ago, he had a full stomach—and a tummy bug. But it wasn’t just any gut microbe—this early farmer was infected with a particular ancient strain of Helicobacter pylori bacteria that is most similar to modern Asian strains.
Our selfish genes are behind the aches and fever, suggests new research. In the paper, the scientists go through a list of common symptoms, and each seems to support the hypothesis that feeling sick is an evolutionary adaptation. Appetite loss, for example, hinders the disease from spreading by communal food or water resources.
Worldwide, migraines strike roughly 12% of people at least once per year, with women roughly three times as likely as men to have an attack.
On the horizon, however, is a new class of drugs that many scientists believe can stop migraines at their root.
As the post-Christmas credit card bills roll in, most of us would say that a little more money wouldn’t go amiss. In fact, according to research for the Guardian in 2015, money is the greatest source of anxiety for Britons.
But would more of it really make us happy? It’s a question that fascinates – and divides – psychologists.
Valuing your time more than the pursuit of money is linked to greater happiness, according to new research. In six studies with more than 4,600 participants, researchers found an almost even split between people who tended to value their time or money, and that choice was a fairly consistent trait both for daily interactions and major life events.
Chinese drone maker Ehang Inc. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first drone capable of carrying a human passenger.
The Guangzhou, China-based company pulled the cloth off the Ehang 184 at the Las Vegas Convention Center during the CES gadget show. In a company video showing it flying, it looks like a small helicopter but with four doubled propellers spinning parallel to the ground like other drones.
Related: LG made an 18-inch display you can roll up like a newspaper
Imagine if your clothing could, on demand, release just enough heat to keep you warm and cozy, allowing you to dial back on your thermostat settings and stay comfortable in a cooler room. Or, picture a car windshield that stores the sun's energy and then releases it as a burst of heat to melt away a layer of ice.
Scientists have successfully converted human skin cells into fully-functional pancreatic cells. The new cells produced insulin in response to changes in glucose levels, and, when transplanted into mice, the cells protected the animals from developing diabetes in a mouse model of the disease.
Nanotechnologists have discovered a new fundamental property of electrical currents in very small metal circuits. They show how electrons can spread out over the circuit like waves and cause interference effects at places where no electrical current is driven.
By crushing Earth's lightest element with mind-boggling pressures, scientists have revealed an entirely new state of matter: phase V hydrogen.
The squished hydrogen is a precursor to a state of matter first proposed in the 1930s, called atomic solid metallic hydrogen.
A trio of researchers with Northwestern University has created a type of concrete made only from materials found on Mars, which suggests it could be used as a building material for those who make the journey to the Red planet sometime in the distant future.
Related: Builders on Mars Will Be Able to Use Martian Concrete
While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change.
Nathan Cude pulls open the top of a white Tupperware container labeled Q8R, which holds one of the hundreds of samples of American farmland he’ll handle in a year. The dark brown soil inside looks lifeless, but the microbiologist at Novozymes smiles as he utters one of his favorite lines: A spoonful of soil contains about 50 billion microbes, representing up to 10,000 different species. The number of organisms in the container surpasses the number of people who have ever lived on Earth.
Human material from the Anatolian site Kumtepe was used in the study. The material was heavily degraded, but yielded enough DNA for the doctorate student Ayca Omrak to address questions concerning the demography connected to the spread of farming. She conducted her work at the Archaeological Research Laboratory.
I struggle to keep my footing on a narrow ridge of earth snaking between flooded fields of rice. The stalks, almost ready to harvest, ripple in the breeze, giving the valley the appearance of a shimmering green sea. In the distance, steep limestone hills rise from the ground, perhaps 400 feet tall, the remains of an ancient coral reef.
Recent fieldwork at the ancient city of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete finds that during the early Iron Age (1100 to 600 BC), the city was rich in imports and was nearly three times larger than what was believed from earlier excavations.
What made the ancient Greeks such feared warriors? If you said courage, intense training and superior leadership, you’d be right. If you said, “Because they threw snakes at their enemies,” you’d be right too. Not only that, live specimens of these so-called “javelin” snakes – thought to be extinct or close to it – were found recently in Sicily.
Radiocarbon dating of atomic bomb fallout found in sea turtle shells can be used to reliably estimate the ages, growth rates and reproductive maturity of sea turtle populations in the wild, a new study led by Duke University and NOAA researchers finds.
Scientists have solved what shall henceforth be known as the piebald mystery: by discovering the origins of the broad white patches that can adorn the belly and head fur of cats, dogs and farm animals.
The distinctive patterns were known to be caused by a mutated gene, but how the faulty DNA produced the signature white bellies and other splashes of light on animals’ coats was far from clear.
Earth’s magnetic field guides shark movement in the open ocean, but scientists had always suspected that sharks might also get their directions from an array of other factors, including smell.
To sniff out smell’s role, biologists clogged the noses of leopard sharks (Triakis semifasciata), a Pacific coastal species that makes foraging trips out to deeper waters.
Someone is dead. There's a body, attended by a number of concerned and watchful figures, all in black.
The lifeless corpse belongs to a crow, and the dark-garbed group congregating nearby is a gathering of its fellow crows, sometimes referred to as a "murder."
Many people believe that our perceptions of human beauty are primarily determined by societal norms. But could there be something innate in our brains that influence whether we think a face is beautiful? Here, a group of researchers tested this hypothesis by determining whether chickens have any innate preferences for certain human faces.
A bull found dead and mutilated, with parts of the animal removed - that's what the Harvey County Sheriff's Office is investigating.
The farmer tells Eyewitness News he found the dead bull about a quarter mile into his pasture off S. Hillside in Newton. He says the loss is costing him about $5,000.
A MYSTERIOUS light over Australia’s capital has captured the imaginations of social media users, with many declaring the baffling flare as evidence of a UFO.
Since the video was uploaded to YouTube on January 3, it has been viewed over 137,000 times, with users speculating it is everything from Bronwyn Bishop in a taxpayer-funded UFO to a flying saucer opening an intergalactic portal.
Related: The Westall ‘UFO’ incident still remains a mystery 50 years after it occurred
Related: Photographer Claims Taking UFO Picture Damaged Her Camera
Defence officials in Vietnam are investigating the origin of three metal spheres which fell from the sky in the north of the country.
The largest object weighs about 45kg (99lb) and was found near a stream in Tuyen Quang province, the Thanh Nien News website reports.
Globular star clusters are extraordinary in almost every way. They're densely packed, holding a million stars in a ball only about 100 light-years across on average. They're old, dating back almost to the birth of the Milky Way. And according to new research, they also could be extraordinarily good places to look for space-faring civilizations.
Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system located within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is best known for an enormous eruption seen in the mid-19th century that hurled an amount of material at least 10 times the sun's mass into space. Still shrouded by this expanding veil of gas and dust, Eta Carinae is the only object of its kind known in our galaxy. Now a study using archival data from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes has found five similar objects in other galaxies for the first time.
Astronomers have discovered that black holes can be observed through a simple optical telescope when material from surrounding space falls into them and releases violent bursts of light.
Alt: 'Seeing' black holes with the naked eye
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is a Salafi jihadist militant group that adheres to an Islamic fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. You know who they are. They used to be called ISIS, (sometimes ISIL, sometimes just Islamic State), but now (for reasons Greg Taylor so brilliantly summed up here) we call them Daesh. Isis, the Egyptian Mother of Life, the Crone of Death, the Goddess of Magic, worshipped more than three thousand years before the Prophet Mohammed was born, venerated by the Romans and Ancient Greeks alike (and still worshipped by some today), has had her name taken in vain for long enough.
A 3,400-year-old Canaanite fort discovered in the heart of the modern Israeli city of Nahariya will be incorporated into a residential high-rise to be built at the spot.
The Bronze Age citadel apparently served as an administrative center serving Mediterranean mariners, stated the Israel Antiquities Authority. It had been destroyed at least four times by fire and was rebuilt each time, says the IAA.
As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities.
Pompeii’s graffiti is the world’s most frustrating goldmine.
When it comes to ancient Rome, the vast majority of insights into their world we have are from one group: Wealthy (or patronized) free men. According to Charles Freeman[1], in all of the surviving works from Rome, only one author speaks of his life as a former slave—a philosopher named Epicetus. Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost to time.
A box of seemingly unremarkable stones sits in the corner of Dr Giulio Lucarini's office at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research where it competes for space with piles of academic journals, microscopes and cartons of equipment used for excavations.
Archaeologists currently at work at the site of Jamestown, Virginia, the earliest successful English settlement in the Americas, plan to begin excavations at the spot of the 1907 Memorial Church on Jamestown Island. According to a recent published news update, beginning in the summer of 2016 they plan to excavate into the floor of the church in sections while keeping the historic church site open to visitors.
In what has been described as an "impressive" find, archaeologists have unearthed remains of a 2,700-year-old farm house and a 1,500-year-old monastery in Israel. The twin discoveries were made at a construction site in the Israeli city of Rosh Haayin, about 63km northwest of Jerusalem.
After spending thousands of years buried in ancient hills, remnants of buildings dating back to the Byzantine era and earlier emerged from hiding, excavated outside Rosh Ha'ayin in central Israel, about 10 miles (17 kilometers) inland from Tel Aviv.
A new Sandia National Laboratories accelerator called Thor is expected to be 40 times more efficient than Sandia's Z machine, the world's largest and most powerful pulsed-power accelerator, in generating pressures to study materials under extreme conditions.
Scientists have cleared one hurdle on the path to deriving hydrogen fuel from water affordably, a breakthrough that could drastically change the way we power vehicles.
You might think of mushrooms as something you put on pizza. But for a while, researchers have been looking at using some types of fungi as biological factories to produce a tough, durable material that could be used for everything from chairs to entire buildings.
Orchids are masters of deception. To lure potential pollinators, some resemble nectar-laden flowers, yet offer no sweet reward. Others smell like rotting meat. Still others look and smell like female insects. Now, sensory biologists have discovered orchids that emit an odor just like the human body.
New restrictions on private cars, which are being enforced to tackle hazardous pollution levels in Delhi, faced their first serious test on Monday as residents headed back to work following the New Year weekend.
A decades-long push to make Guinea-worm disease the first parasitic infection to be wiped out is close to victory. But a mysterious epidemic of the parasite in dogs threatens to foil the eradication effort.
Biologists at the universities of Exeter and York have published new research which shows that an ancient symbiosis is founded entirely on exploitation, not mutual benefit.
The researchers concluded that a single-celled protozoa called Paramecium bursaria benefits from exploiting a green algae which lives inside it, providing its host with sugar and oxygen from photosynthesis.
First, Zvonimir Dogic and his students took microtubules — threadlike proteins that make up part of the cell's internal 'cytoskeleton' — and mixed them with kinesins, motor proteins that travel along these threads like trains on a track. Then the researchers suspended droplets of this cocktail in oil and supplied it with the molecular fuel known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA—Most, if not all, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers surrounded by dense clouds of stars. Now, researchers have found one that seems to have lost almost its entire entourage. The team, which reported its find here today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, says it doesn’t know what stripped the stars away. But it has put forward a tantalizing possibility: The object could be an extremely rare medium-sized black hole, which theorists have predicted but observers have never seen.
A meteorite estimated to be 4.5 billion years old has been recovered by Perth researchers from a remote part of Lake Eyre in outback South Australia.
In a race against time, the geologists dug the 1.7 kilogram meteorite out just hours before heavy rains would have wiped away any trace of it.
Before it became a crater of saurian doom, the space rock that ended the age of the dinosaurs most likely was a near-Earth object (NEO), an asteroid that occasionally came within striking distance of our planet as it orbited the sun. NASA and other space agencies are now developing ways to deflect and redirect asteroids should they approach, but those techniques will be useful only if we find dangerous NEOs before they find us. Yet NASA's search is not going as planned.
A recently developed method for determining a star's age needs to be recalibrated for stars older than our sun, new work from a team of astronomers indicates. This is due to new information about the way older stars spin, as spin rate is one of the few windows into stellar ages. These findings have implications for our solar system, as they indicate the sun might be on the cusp of a magnetic field transition.
At a critical point in the life of a star like the Sun its rotation stops 'slowing down', according to research published in the journal Nature by University of Birmingham scientists today (Jan. 4, 2016). This discovery challenges existing theories and has implications for our understanding of how the Sun and other stars influence their local environments, including planets, as they age.
Strong magnetic fields are common in stars, an international group of astronomers has found, and are not rare as previously thought. These findings will dramatically impact our understanding of how stars evolve and potentially lead to a better understanding of the sun's 22-year magnetic cycle -- known to affect communication systems and cloud cover on Earth.
A newly released treasure trove of historical data reveals intriguing details about a secret Cold War project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
The U.S. Air Force's MOL program ran from December 1963 until its cancellation in June 1969. The program spent $1.56 billion during that time, according to some estimates.
It seems aliens have the potential to be a pivotal topic in the race to the White House. Mind you, not the illegal kind who cross the Southern border pursuing the mirage of the American dream --which Donald Trump and most of the GOP contenders have been sadly exploiting to fuel the fires of Fascism in America. I'm talking about the ones which enflame the passions of OUR little tin-foiled demographic.
Yeah. THOSE.
Alt: Aliens May Have Visited Earth Already, Hillary Clinton Says
HAT-P-26b is an inflated, Neptune-mass exoplanet located about 437 light years from Earth, which orbits its parent star HAT-P-26 every 4.23 days. The planet has a relatively low surface gravity that is well suited for atmospheric characterization. However, we still know very little about the gas layer around this distant alien world.
A new study reconstructing conditions at the end of the last ice age suggests that as the Antarctic sea ice melted, massive amounts of carbon dioxide that had been trapped in the ocean were released into the atmosphere.
Oxygen is crucial for the existence of animals on Earth. But, an increase in oxygen did not apparently lead to the rise of the first animals. New research shows that 1.4 billion years ago there was enough oxygen for animals - and yet over 800 million years went by before the first animals appeared on Earth.
A team of archaeologists in Egypt has discovered six rock cut statues inside two adjoining shrines, previously believed to be completely destroyed by an earthquake that shook the region centuries ago. The find occurred during a dig at Gebel el Silsila, an ancient major quarry site in Upper Egypt, by a group from Sweden’s Lund University. Led by Dr. Maria Nilsson and Associate Director John Ward, the archaeologists have been excavating the area since 2012.
Historical research using forensic fingerprinting techniques on the wax seals of thousands of medieval documents will reveal new insights into 12th to 14th century British society, help determine how unique fingerprints truly are, and uncover medieval crime.
New research suggests that it's not just the volume of emails that causes stress; it's our well-intentioned habits and our need to feel in control that backfires on us.
The high amounts of dietary sugar in the typical Western diet may increase the risk of breast cancer and metastasis to the lungs, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Our choices seem to be freer than previously thought. Using computer-based brain experiments, researchers studied the decision-making processes involved in voluntary movements. The question was: Is it possible for people to cancel a movement once the brain has started preparing it? The conclusion the researchers reached was: Yes, up to a certain point -- the 'point of no return'.
Strong, flawless ceramics in various shapes, including spirals and honeycombs, can now can be created using 3D printing, researchers say.
These new materials could find use in hypersonic aircraft and microscopic devices, scientists added.
A blind woman fitted with a “bionic eye” has spoken of her joy after she was able to tell the time for the first time in more than six years.
Rhian Lewis, 49, was given the retinal implant as part of an ongoing trial at Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital. Surgeons at the Oxford Eye hospital implanted a tiny electronic chip at the back of her right eye’s retina in an attempt to help her see.
A skeleton discovered under a primary school playground could be that of a 16th-century pirate, archaeologists have said. The remains of a man were uncovered by council workers during survey work for an extension at Victoria primary school in Edinburgh last year.
Archaeologists working in the western Kurdistan region of Iran have found what has been characterized as evidence of Stone Age hunters once inhabiting the area.
An archaeological survey of the Sirwan River, a region just east of the border between Iraq and Iran in an area known as Hawraman, has revealed a number of long-abandoned hearths, scorched animal bones, and discarded stone tools in several rock shelters and caves running alongside the river.
DNA from a genetically modified goat, a spritz of perfume, sculptures so small you need a microscope to see them.
They're all headed for the moon.
The MoonArk is a sort of eight-inch-tall portrait of humanity, with more than 200 artists and designers contributing to it. There's space reserved for it on one of the privately-funded Moon missions competing for the Google Lunar Xprize.
By looking at slight variations in the brightness of distant stars, scientists say they can determine their surface gravity, a technique that provides important clues to life-hosting properties of the planets that orbit them.
A sharp-eyed NASA spacecraft has spotted the final resting place of part of one of the rockets that took astronauts to the moon, more than 43 years after the booster slammed into the lunar surface.
The space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has finally found the crater created by the impact of the Apollo 16 mission's S-IVB rocket stage back in April 1972, NASA officials announced last month.
The government is to create a marine reserve almost as big as the UK in the Atlantic waters of Ascension Island.
Just over half of the protected area will be closed to fishing.