Newsdesk Archive

Antarctica was once a balmier place, lush with plants and lakes. Figuring out just how long the continent has been a barren, cold desert of ice can give clues as to how Antarctica responded to the effects of past climates and can perhaps also indicate what to expect there in the future as Earth's atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide grows. Related: North Slope permafrost thawing sooner than expected

Researchers are proposing a new "hydricity" concept aimed at creating a sustainable economy by not only generating electricity with solar energy but also producing and storing hydrogen from superheated water for round-the-clock power production. "The proposed hydricity concept represents a potential breakthrough solution for continuous and efficient power generation,"

Planes may be making a high-altitude icy haze that is brightening US skies, according to a group of scientists. They have been looking for a reason why the total amount of solar radiation reaching the surface has been increasing over time.

First announced back in 2013, with an upgraded prototype unveiled earlier this year, Terrafugia's TF-X flying car is about as close as the world’s gotten to our collective dream of someday commuting via cloud alleys. And now the Massachusetts-based aircraft company has hit its next big milestone - the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given it special permission to run in-air tests with an autonomous drone version of its flying car.

A startup inspired by the tech visionary's idea will soon begin testing the radical transportation concept in Nevada The futuristic hyperloop transportation system championed by Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk will have early tests in the deserts of Las Vegas.

Tesla Motors Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and other prominent tech executives are pouring $1 billion into a non-profit aimed at creating artificial intelligence that augments humans' capabilities, rather than making them obsolete. "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,"

At the 2015 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo’s Big Sight convention center, businessmen pinballed between two visions of a robotic future. One was found in the sprawling Industrial Robot Zone, which featured distinctly machine-like machines designed for efficiency.

Psychologists at the University of York and University of St Andrews have uncovered the first evidence of tool use by greater vasa parrots (Coracopsis vasa). Studying ten captive parrots, researchers in the Department of Psychology at York observed the birds adopt a novel tool-using technique to acquire calcium from seashells and also the active sharing of tools among themselves.

Giant pandas that are crazy about each other produce more cubs than panda couples lacking that mysterious spark, according to new research. Even a one-sided romance has better odds of producing a baby than a mutually indifferent union.

The love affair between humans and dogs has been going on for thousands of years. But when and where dogs first branched off from wolves is the source of scientific debate. Over the past decade, various groups have posited different locations as the birthplace of the dog, including Europe and the Middle East.

The discovery of a spaniel-size ceratopsian that walked on its two hind legs reveals that Late Jurassic horned dinosaurs were much more diverse than previously thought, a new study finds. Researchers uncovered the remains of the 160-million-year-old, plant-eating creature in China’s Gobi desert.

The president of Colombia's Dec. 5 announcement that a 300-year-old Spanish shipwreck had been discovered made headlines around the world, largely because of the price tag attached to the wreck: somewhere between $4 billion and $17 billion. The galleon, named the San José, was carrying a large load of gold, silver and precious stones from the mines of Peru back to Spain in 1708 when it was destroyed in a sea battle with the English.

A small team of researchers from several institutions in France, studying 6000 year-old skeletal remains found in a pit in eastern France is reporting that the remains included a bottom layer of just arm bones and a top layer consisting of the full skeletons of several adults and children. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the researchers describe the arrangement of the bones and their condition and offer some ideas regarding how the bones likely came to be in the pit.

The remains of a Roman skeleton found almost 40 years ago is continuing to provide researchers with a wealth of information about ancient genetic diversity. DNA analysis on the skeleton of what is believed to be a wealthy Roman woman has revealed that while she has physical traits of a female, she has male chromosomes.

British scientists, assisted by Israeli archeologists, have re-created what they believe is the most accurate image of the face of Jesus in human history. And they have managed to do this as a result of forensic anthropology, which uses methods similar to those police have developed to solve crimes. Alt: Is this the REAL face of Jesus? Forensic experts use ancient Semite skulls to reveal what Christ may have looked like

Surprising archaeological finds are breaking new ground in our understanding of Jesus’s time—and the revolution he launched 2,000 years ago What archaeology is still untangling, as the professors John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed put it in their book Excavating Jesus, is “Why did Jesus happen when and where he happened?” For many of the devout, the most meaningful answer is that God willed it so. But archaeologists and historians are searching for the man of history as much as the figure of faith, and in the Fifth Gospel they’re finding a clearer picture of how first-century Galilee may have set the stage for a messianic figure—and for a group of people who’d drop everything to follow him.

An odd assemblage of pottery, stone points, and other artifacts found among the sand dunes of southern Oregon is posing a “conundrum” for archaeologists. The pieces were discovered at what appears to be a hunting campsite dating back at least 800 years, in a windblown expanse of sand known as the Skull Creek Dunes.

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of 'multi-crop' agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say 'forgotten' millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today's food security debate.

Paleoclimatologists have shed new light on how the tilt of the Earth affects the world's heaviest rainbelt. They analyzed data from the past 282,000 years that shows, for the first time, a connection between the Earth's tilt called obliquity that shifts every 41,000 years, and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth's largest source of heat and moisture -- the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.

Ask the average person to name a living fossil, the chances are they will think of the coelacanth, or perhaps horseshoe crabs. However, plant examples of living fossils are all around us, surviving from long before the rise of today’s dominant plants. The flowering plants, or angiosperms, are the basis of our food chain and include grasses and broad-leaved trees.

Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.

This critically endangered Brazilian butterfly had only been seen twice before In late 2014 the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul added a monkey, a tapir, a weasel-like species called the tayra and 18 butterflies to its red list of endangered species.

The dodo is dead. The passenger pigeon has passed on. But Lonesome George, the iconic Galápagos tortoise whose death marked the end of his species, is in post-mortem luck. A scientific expedition has discovered some of his close blood relations alive and well. With careful breeding, biologists now hope to revive George’s species and reintroduce the tortoises to the island on which they evolved.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) gives pigs a fever and cough, but it costs American swine farmers over $600 million a year. Vaccines have been ineffective at fighting it, as has breeding pigs to be resistant. Last year, researchers in the Midwest used CRISPR-Cas9-based gene engineering to generate pigs that lack CD163, the protein that PRRS uses to infect its target cells in pigs. Now, the same team just demonstrated that the pigs lacking the receptor don't get sick when exposed to PRRS.

Exposure to farm animals in early childhood modifies the key allergy-related immunological mechanisms, shows a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. The study provides new insight into the role of dendritic cells and cytokine production in particular.

Scientists have discovered a universal human truth about our bodies: they all, without exception, have mites. A landmark new study, led by scientists at Bowdoin and the California Academy of Sciences, explores the fascinating, little-known natural history of the face mite species Demodex folliculorum, using genetic testing to link the microscopic animal's evolution to our own ever-evolving human story.

Insomniacs take heart: Humans get by on significantly less sleep than our closest animal relatives. The secret, according to a new study of slumber patterns across 21 species of primates, is that our sleep is more efficient.

Those who are liberal in their use of swear words are not the lazy and uneducated individuals they are often made out to be, a new study claims. In fact, a well-stocked vocabulary of swear words is actually a healthy indicator of other verbal abilities.

Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves,"

The grave of a medieval 'witch' who appears to have been burnt alive before being hurriedly tossed into a pit has been unearthed in Italy. The teenager's remains were covered with heavy stone slabs, which archaeologists believe were put in place to prevent her spirit rising.

The massive temple complex known as Angkor Wat, located in Cambodia, might be even larger and more complex than previously thought, according to a recently published research study of the religious monument. Using targeted excavation, ground-penetrating radar and airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) techniques, researchers with Cambodia’s Greater Angkor Project have discovered that the site was much more expansive than originally thought.

Russian investigators have opened the tomb of 19th century Tsar Alexander III, in search of evidence that may help confirm the remains of his grandchildren, who were executed shortly after the Russian Revolution. Alexander III, who went by the title "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias," died in 1894.

Scattered hand bones, severed arms, cracked skulls: if one thing is clear from this Neolithic burial pit, it’s that some some serious shit went down 6,000 years ago. Circular burial pits like the one shown above were common during the Neolithic period in Central and Western Europe some 6,500 to 5,500 years ago.

Drink up. The first moisture farm on Mars will be part of a mission blasting off in 2018. Earlier this year, Javier Martin-Torres of Luleå University of Technology in Kiruna, Sweden, and his colleagues reported results from NASA’s Curiosity rover suggesting that liquid water pools just beneath the surface of Mars at night before evaporating during the day.

A German nuclear fusion experiment has produced a special super-hot gas which scientists hope will eventually lead to clean, cheap energy. The helium plasma - a cloud of loose, charged particles - lasted just a tenth of a second and was about one million degrees Celsius. Alt: 'Stellarator' is a SUCCESS: Strange twisted design that could finally make fusion power a reality is switched on for the first time taking us one step closer to physics' Holy Grail

On the edge of the Sahara desert, engineers make final checks to a sea of metal mirrors turned towards the sun, preparing for the launch of Morocco's first solar power plant. The ambitious project is part of the North African country's goal of boosting its clean energy output with what it says will eventually be the world's largest solar power production facility.

France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the U.K., Germany and Mexico are among more than two dozen countries that have signed on to an agreement that one day may be recognized as the most significant climate initiative in history. Related: COP21 climate change summit reaches deal in Paris Related: Future of farming could look very different says regenerative farmer Related: Meat industry ignores FDA, health experts, buys more antibiotics

“Monster” is a relative term (who doesn’t have a relative who’s a monster – bada-bing!) but it aptly fits a creature found recently in a cave in southwest China. It’s an extremely rare giant Chinese salamander that weighed in at 52 kg (114 pounds) and measured 1.4 meters (55 inches) in length. Related: New snake species with pitch black eyes from the Andes highlights hidden diversity

Scientists have discovered that the chirps of some crickets could be a cunning way to "startle" potential mates into revealing their location. The Dartmouth College team discovered the insects' communication system and studied females' reactions to the males' songs.

Researchers have discovered that swans' wariness is partly determined by their genes. The research, which is published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, suggests that swans which are genetically predisposed to be timid are more likely to live in non-urban areas, and the findings could have important implications for releasing animals bred in captivity into the wild.

A team of researchers from several institutions in France and one in Germany has found that emperor penguin huddles are more complicated than has been thought by many in the science community. In their paper published in the journal Animal Behaviour, the team describes their study of the penguins over three separate breeding seasons and what they learned by looking at video of penguin huddling.

Every bird alive today can trace its ancestry to creatures that lived about 95 million years ago on a chunk of land that split off from the supercontinent Gondwana, a new study suggests. The new family tree, compiled using information from fossils and from genetic analyses of modern birds, also reveals that this lineage underwent a major burst of evolution after an asteroid slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago and killed off the rest of their dinosaurian kin. Alt: Influence of Earth's history on the dawn of modern birds

From afar, the Rhone glacier looks pristine, but on closer inspection the surface is covered with white blankets to slow the melting of the rapidly retreating ice. The dusty, white fleece covers stretch out over a huge area near the glacier's edge, some in rumpled piles alongside sand, rocks, a few wooden planks and a ladder on its side.

Scientists are studying past changes in sea level in order to make accurate future predictions of this consequence of climate change, and they're looking down to Earth's core to do so. 'In order to fully understand the sea-level change that has occurred in the past century, we need to understand the dynamics of the flow in Earth's core' says one of the researchers.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing pictures of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with those captivating water jets and plumes at its South Pole. And this new images from the Cassini mission is just stunning – and intriguing. Carolyn Porco, the Cassini imaging team lead described the image on Twitter: “Be moved by crescent Enceladus with its ghostly geysers floating above Saturn’s glowing rings.”

A spacecraft designed to study Venus's atmosphere that missed its target 5 years ago has apparently succeeded in entering an orbit around the planet, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Mission controllers will confirm the trajectory in the coming days.

Astronomers believe they have discovered two of the most distant objects ever found in our solar system. One of the objects, they say, could be a 'Super Earth' located six times farther away than Pluto. Alt: Report of discovery of large object in far outer edges of solar system incites skeptical reactions

One day nearly 20 years ago, Stephen Bassett realized UFO abductees needed a lobbyist. He had spent four months working for the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research out of a modest townhouse in Cambridge, Mass., when he had the epiphany: He could continue his research with John Mack, the leading authority on the alien abductions, for the rest of his life — but it would never make a difference. Related: Steve Bassett on UFO / ET / Alien Disclosure Related: Dancing UFOs Hula Over Honolulu Related: Five decades later, the Kecksburg UFO is identified (probably)

A team of eight engineering students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have built a personal flying machine, dubbed 'Snowstorm'. It could only be demonstrated by flying it indoors, due to Singapore's legal requirements for personal aerial vehicles. Alt: 'Snowstorm' personal flying machine lifts off in Singapore (images)

A pair of socks embedded with miniaturized microbial fuel cells and fueled with urine pumped by the wearer's footsteps has powered a wireless transmitter to send a signal to a PC. This is the first self-sufficient system powered by a wearable energy generator based on microbial fuel cell technology.

The development of a reusable microfluidic device for sorting and manipulating cells and other micro/nano meter scale objects will make biomedical diagnosis of diseases cheaper and more convenient in regions where medical facilities are sparse or cost is prohibitive. Researchers at Penn State have recently filed a patent to develop such a device.

For artificial intelligence and smart machines to really take off, computers are going to have to think more like people, according to experts in the field. Now, US scientists have created a computer model, or algorithm, that captures the unique human ability to grasp new concepts in a study that involved learning unfamiliar handwritten alphabet characters.

Several big-name Silicon Valley figures have pledged $1 billion to support a non-profit firm that on Friday said it would focus on the "positive human impact" of artificial intelligence. Backers of the OpenAI research group include Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk, Y Combinator's Sam Altman, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

A group of researchers from the University of Michigan may have found a better way to detect whether you’re lying – and it’s not the polygraph test. Using videos from high-stakes court cases, the researchers have built a lie-detecting software database that uses a person’s words and gestures to detect behavioral patterns that may be out of the norm.

How do you quantify something as complex and personal as humour? University of Alberta researchers have developed a mathematical method of doing just that—and it might not be quite as personal as we think. "This really is the first paper that's ever had a quantifiable theory of humour," says U of A psychology professor Chris Westbury, lead author of the recent study. "There's quite a small amount of experimental work that's been done on humour."

William Shakespeare teamed up with a group of actors armed with daggers, swords and axes to steal an entire theatre and rebuild it as The Globe, a 400-year-old document has revealed. The tale of how Shakespeare’s company flattened its first theatre on the banks of the River Thames and rebuilt it into one of the most famous in the world following a row with the landlord has been told many times over the years.

Archaeologists claim to have proved that Julius Caesar set foot on what is now Dutch soil, destroying two Germanic tribes in a battle that left about 150,000 people dead. The tribes were massacred in the fighting with the Roman emperor in 55BC, on a battle site now in Kessel, in the southern province of Brabant.

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient Roman vessel laden with 3000 jars of delicious Roman fish sauce – or garum – on the seabed off the coast of Italy. The find was presented on Thursday by archaeologists, who spent almost two years searching for the 25-meter wreck in the deep blue waters five miles of the coast of Alassio, in the northeastern Liguria region.

A hoard of Viking silver that casts new light on Alfred the Great and the one-time ally he virtually obliterated from history has been found by a metal detectorist in a field in Oxfordshire. The hoard, described when it arrived at the British Museum as “a greasy haggis with bits of treasure sticking out at the corners”, was buried in the late 870s, the period in which the hit television series Last Kingdom is set.

A new study published in the latest issue of Biological Psychiatry reports the successful and instant reduction of fear in spider-fearful participants following a 2-minute exposure combined with a single dose of a regular pharmacological treatment. Alt: How to cure YOUR phobia in just 2 minutes: Single dose of a beta blocker taken while holding a tarantula 'instantly reduces fear in terrified volunteers'

A pesticide used prior to the early 1980s and found in milk at that time may be associated with signs of Parkinson's disease in the brain, according to a study published in the December 9, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Sharing a drink with friends could prevent early death from Alzheimer’s disease a new study suggests. Scientists discovered that drinking around a glass of wine a day appears to lower the risk of death from dementia by 77 per cent. Related: Singing is beneficial for memory and mood especially in early dementia

A medicine derived from marijuana may help treat children with severe epilepsy, new studies suggest. However, more research is needed to determine whether the medicine is effective and safe for use in patients with the condition, experts say.

A single dose of psilocybin, the major hallucinogenic component in magic mushrooms, induces long-lasting decreases in anxiety and depression in patients diagnosed with life-threatening cancer according to a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

LSD is known to cause changes in consciousness, including "ego-dissolution", or a loss of the sense of self. Despite a detailed knowledge of the action of LSD at specific serotonin receptors, it has not been understood how this these pharmacological effects can translate into such a profound effect on consciousness.

Brazilian researchers from D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) have demonstrated in laboratory that apigenin, a substance found in parsley, thyme, chamomile and red pepper, improves neuron formation and strengthens the connections between brain cells.

Researchers have discovered a new approach to the production of fuels. Their new method can be used to produce much cleaner diesel. It can quickly be scaled up for industrial use. In five to 10 years, we may see the first cars driven by this new clean diesel.

And it worked! You probably didn't notice, but a few hours ago, the world took a huge step towards the goal of achieving clean, limitless energy through nuclear fusion. Related: Chile plans hydropower plant—in desert

The US is set to ban personal care products that contain microbeads after the House of Representatives approved a bill that would phase out the environmentally-harmful items. Related: Montreal bans single-use plastic bags as of 2018

Melting ice triggered by global warming may make Earth whirl faster than before and could shift the axis on which the planet spins, researchers say. This could also affect sunset times, as the length of Earth's day depends on the speed at which the planet rotates on its axis. Prior research found the rate at which Earth spins has changed over time.

Data recovered from seismometers in Antarctica are giving scientists the first detailed look at the Earth beneath the region. “Our understanding of what’s going on is really hampered because we can’t see the geology,” says Andrew Lloyd, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis. “We have to turn to geophysical methods, such as seismology, to learn more.”

In Hollywood's version of the events that inspired the classic novel Moby Dick, a giant sperm whale terrorises the crew of a whaling ship and eventually destroys the vessel. Based on the true story of the sinking of the Essex in 1820, the film, In the Heart of the Sea, portrays the whale as a merciless monster that pushes its shipwrecked victims to the brink of madness.

The dinosaur extinction 66m years ago was most likely caused by a comet or big asteroid hitting the Earth. But given that asteroids don’t actually hit our planet very often, could this really be the whole story? Many scientists are now asking whether some sort of cosmological event could have boosted the number of comets at the time, making such a collision more likely. In a recent book, American cosmologist Lisa Randall suggests that a huge disk of “dark matter” – a type of invisible matter that is five times more common than “normal” matter – could have been responsible.

Scientists have spotted a superflare, a massive solar flare, on a star quite similar to our sun. And, given the similarities of the stars, they say our sun too could produce such a brilliant and potentially destructive flash. The properties of the superflare on KIC9655129, the other star, are similar to the sun's smaller solar flares, suggesting the physics causing the flares could be the same, the researchers point out in a paper published this fall in The Astrophysical Journal.

For decades astronomers have searched for a possible “Planet X” in the far outer reaches of our solar system, speculating that something big and dark may be lurking out there, its gravitational influence occasionally stirring up trouble in the orbits of the objects that we do see. There are major incentives to look: When astronomers sought a Planet X beyond Uranus in 1846, they discovered Neptune; when they looked for one beyond Neptune in 1930, they found Pluto. Since then, the search for a Planet X beyond Pluto has almost been too successful—astronomers have found so many new and Plutolike “trans-Neptunian objects” (TNOs) that it became more sensible to demote Pluto from planethood rather than swell the solar system’s planetary population into the hundreds.

A team of researchers, encouraged by the latest discovery of ESA's Rosetta spacecraft of molecular oxygen (O2) on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, are going over comet 1P/Halley (known as Halley's Comet) with a fine-tooth comb, searching for the traces of this essential molecule. The new study, led by Martin Rubin of the University of Bern, Switzerland, shows that molecular oxygen is also present on 1P/Halley and therefore might be common on other comets.

The star KIC 8462852 exploded into the public consciousness in October when it was suggested that mysterious signals could be explained by a gigantic artificial structure drifting in front of the star and blocking some of its light. Astronomer Jason Wright, from Penn State University, told the Atlantic, “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”

Alas, life is pretty much guaranteed a quick trip to vaporization if it tried to live in the atmosphere of a star like our own. Stars like our sun have a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 5800 Kelvin), which is hot enough to keep iron suspended in a plasma, and to melt even the hardiest known compounds and alloys.

Our home galaxy isn’t as hospitable to life as you might think. Cosmic radiation, supernova explosions, and collisions with small galaxies make much of the Milky Way too hellish for biology. But a detailed new simulation locates quiet and fertile neighborhoods, including a surprising locale: wispy streams of stars flung far beyond the main body of the Milky Way.

An international consortium that wants to build the world's biggest telescope on the Big Island of Hawaii says it's deciding what to do next, after the state's Supreme Court invalidated the project's building permit. Related: Darkness is disappearing and that's bad news for astronomy

Astronomers wanting more accurate measurements of distant black holes have some new assistants -- robots that can tackle the tedious task of monitoring black hole neighbor clouds’ glow. The technique, known as reverberation mapping, has been in astronomers’ toolkits for decades, but it required much labor and telescope time.

The Associated Press is using Automated Insights’ software to produce thousands of articles about corporate earnings each year, freeing up staff for other reporting. Humans expand and polish a few of the most important articles. Don’t panic: Though the AI Revolution is underway, it is unlikely to eliminate many office jobs within the next five to 10 years. But history shows that employment usually recovers after a technological revolution — though the directions it can take may be unexpected.

Don't put that controller down just yet. Playing three-dimensional video games - besides being lots of fun - can boost the formation of memories, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists. Along with adding to the trove of research that shows these games can improve eye-hand coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia.

Concentrating attention on a visual task can render you momentarily 'deaf' to sounds at normal levels, reports a new UCL study funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that the senses of hearing and vision share a limited neural resource.

Many people are familiar with the friction enigma of two interleaved phonebooks, in which all of the pages of two phonebooks are overlapped, one by one, with the books' spines facing outward. Trying to separate the books by pulling on their spines is incredibly difficult due to the massive amount of friction between the pages.

A “frog-like” swastika made of nephrite has been discovered during archaeological excavations of the 8,000-year-old Slatina Neolithic Settlement in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. The swastika is 3 cm wide and 3.5 cm long, and dates back to the beginning of the Slatina Neolithic Settlement, i.e. 6000-5500 BC, reports the Bulgarian daily Trud.

Before Buddhism reigned supreme in the high tableland of the Tibetan Plateau, there prevailed another spiritual regime, one ruled by a pantheon of gods with one named Gekhö at the helm. These gods, unlike the nontheistic, philosophically-oriented religion of Buddhism, were closely aligned to the stars, moon, sun, planets, and celestial dragons.

Vandals who wrote "kill" and "die" on an ancient monument in Jersey apologised after a heritage group posted pictures on Facebook. The Mont Ubé Dolmen, a Neolithic passage grave, was originally built about 3,500 BC and 2,800 BC.

Eight buried towers and the remains of a massive spiral structure created from sand have been discovered at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The massive structure — almost a mile long — contains a spiral design, with several rectangular spirals that form a giant structure, archaeologists say.

Remains of the tomb of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who died in 1566 while his troops were besieging the fortress of Szigetvar in southern Hungary, are believed to have been found, a Hungarian historian has said. Norbert Pap, of the University of Pecs, said the tomb is understood to have been built over the spot where Suleiman’s tent stood and where he died.

About 6,000 years ago in France some hostiles in an apparent act of warfare and trophy-taking killed a group of adults and children, amputated their arms and buried the limbs in a circular pit underneath some other bodies. It was a common practice to bury people in circular pits at the time in a large area of Europe, but this gruesome case stands out from the rest as the only one with violence done to those buried.

The verdict is in — mostly. The bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are probably made of salt, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has found. Mixed with the salt are bits of rock and frozen water. When sunlight hits the blend, the ice sublimates into a misty haze above two of Ceres’s craters, researchers report in the 10 December issue of Nature.

Vampires are ancient undead entities that are able to maintain a youthful appearance by feeding off the blood of the living. This is, of course, what folklore and teen fiction novels would have us believe. It appears, however, that the cosmos plays host to its own “blood-sucking” stars that feed off other stars, rejuvenating their appearance. But these vampires are far from fictional; they are known as “blue stragglers” and their true parasitic nature has finally been revealed.

In a new study, physicists at Penn State University have for the first time proposed a way to test a little-understood form of quantum mechanics called nonassociative quantum mechanics. So far, all other tests of quantum mechanics have dealt with the associative form, so the new test provides a way to explore this relatively obscure part of the theory. Related: Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Godel and Turing enter quantum physics

Around ten years ago researcher Dave Bacon, now at Google, showed that a time-travelling quantum computer could quickly solve a group of problems, known as NP-complete, which mathematicians have lumped together as being hard. The problem was, Bacon's quantum computer was travelling around 'closed timelike curves'.

Can you imagine a future where your car is fueled by iron powder instead of gasoline? Metal powders, produced using clean primary energy sources, could provide a more viable long-term replacement for fossil fuels than other widely discussed alternatives, such as hydrogen, biofuels or batteries, according to a study in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Applied Energy.

SAN DIEGO — With its cavernous cargo holds and gleaming white superstructure, the 730-foot Perla del Caribe, which is nearing completion at a shipyard here, looks like any midsize container ship. But at the stern, visible through cutouts in the superstructure, are two huge steel tanks that show this is no typical vessel.

Jakarta, Indonesia’s fast-growing capital of 10 million people, is embarking on one of history’s biggest seawall projects—to be shaped like a Garuda, a mythical bird. “The city cannot keep up with the sinking,” says the Dutch physical geographer during a tour of the town, noting it’s dropping 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) each year on average and up to 10 inches in some areas—exponentially faster than Venice, the famous “City of Water.”

A new study shows that if the European Union lifted the pigswill ban imposed following 2001's foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, and harnessed technologies developed in East Asian countries for 'heat-treating' our food waste to safely turn it into pig feed, around 1.8 million hectares of land could be saved from being stripped for grain and soybean-based pig feed production—including over quarter of a million hectares of Brazilian forest and savannah.

Yesterday, the US government approved a genetically modified chicken. Its purpose? To make a drug in its eggs. The drug in question is called Kanuma, reports Nature.