Newsdesk Archive

Exercising, meditating, scouring self-help books... we go out of our way to be happy, but do we really know what happiness is? Wataru Sato and his team at Kyoto University have found an answer from a neurological perspective.

In TV series Star Trek, the crew of the Starship Enterprise overcome communication barriers with alien lifeforms with the help of a universal translator. Now, electronics giant Panasonic has unveiled a megaphone that makes at least part of this fictional technology a reality. Described as 'magic', the megaphone automatically translates what is being spoken into the microphone into three different languages that are then played out through the speaker.

It could be just what HIV researchers the world over have been waiting for – a non-toxic drug that will drive the virus from its hiding places around the body. What is it? The well-known anti-alcohol drug, Antabuse. The drug, also called disulfiram, has been given to alcoholics for decades, making them vomit if they drink at the same time – a strong disincentive. But now a small clinical trial suggests this drug also flushes out dormant HIV from its hiding places in infected people.

Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have created analog and digital electronics circuits inside living plants. The group at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE), under the leadership of Professor Magnus Berggren, have used the vascular system of living roses to build key components of electronic circuits.

Entanglement is one of the strangest phenomena predicted by quantum mechanics, the theory that underlies most of modern physics. It says that two particles can be so inextricably connected that the state of one particle can instantly influence the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are.

A high-performance computing researcher has predicted a physical effect that would help physicists and astronomers provide fresh evidence of the correctness of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Sorry to break it to you, Einstein, but it looks like the universe is one big dice game. Two recent studies have confirmed that the "spooky action at a distance" that so upset Albert Einstein — the notion that two entangled particles separated by long distances can instantly affect each other — has been proven to work in a stunning array of different experimental setups.

An international team of physicists including theorists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has published the first calculation of direct "CP" symmetry violation—how the behavior of subatomic particles (in this case, the decay of kaons) differs when matter is swapped out for antimatter. Should the prediction represented by this calculation not match experimental results, it would be conclusive evidence of new, unknown phenomena that lie outside of the Standard Model—physicists' present understanding of the fundamental particles and the forces between them.

The fundamental constants of nature—such as the speed of light, Planck's constant, and Newton's gravitational constant—are thought to be constant in time, as their name suggests. But scientists have questioned this assumption as far back as 1937, when Paul Dirac hypothesized that Newton's gravitational constant might decrease over time.

Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke than those who speak just one language, a study has found. Although the ability to converse in a second language may seem irrelevant to physical health, it appears to protect the brain against devastating damage to mental functions.

Ever wonder why that diet didn't work? An new study tracking the blood sugar levels of 800 people over a week suggests that even if we all ate the same meal, how it's metabolized would differ from one person to another. The findings demonstrate the power of personalized nutrition in helping people identify which foods can help or hinder their health goals.

Researchers in the US have turned taste on and off in mice simply by activating and silencing certain brain cells. This demonstrates for the first time that taste is hardwired in the brain, and not dictated by our tastebuds, flipping our previous understanding of how taste works on its head.

If you're a man, how much you eat may have more to do with the gender of your dining companions than your appetite. A new Cornell University study, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, found that men will eat significantly more food in the company of women than they will with other men.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet put hammer to stone on an Andean mountaintop on Wednesday evening to mark the start of construction for one of the world's most advanced telescopes, an instrument that may help shed light on the possibility of life on distant planets. Related: Hawaii court halts construction of world’s largest telescope on volcano

If you think Pluto is out there, try getting to V774104, the newly minted most distant object in the solar system. The New Horizons spacecraft took 9.5 years to reach Pluto; getting to V774104 would add nearly 20 years to its journey.

The world could be powered almost entirely by clean, renewable energy sources in the space of a few decades, and two engineers in the US say they've have figured out exactly how it can be done. Blueprints for 139 countries around the world, including the US, Japan, and Australia, break down exactly how many wind turbines, solar farms, hydroelectric dams, and other facilities are required to cover each nation’s personal, business, industry, agriculture, and transport power needs, and how much it would cost.

The production of energy from natural gas without generating carbon dioxide emissions could fast become a reality, thanks to a novel technology developed by researchers of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Related: Earth's climate more sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought

Earth’s biggest volcano, its peak nearly two kilometers beneath the Pacific Ocean waves, is beginning to reveal its secrets. New magnetic data suggest that the gigantic underwater mountain known as Tamu Massif, 1,600 kilometers east of Japan, is a kind of volcanic hybrid—a mash-up of long chains of volcanoes and one enormous eruption. Related: When did the Andes mountains form?

A British-led project called "Frozen Ark" is preserving the DNA of endangered species before they disappear as the Earth undergoes what scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction. "Many of these species are going to go extinct before we even know they exist," said John Armour, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Nottingham, which is host to the project.

The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed. Related: New Resistant Superbug Spreading

Parasitic worms bore into our organs, steal our nutrients, and sup on our blood—but their effects aren’t all harmful. A new study of people living in the Amazon rainforest suggests that certain intestinal worms increase the number of babies women give birth to. “This is a very original study,” says parasite immunologist Rick Maizels of the University of Edinburgh, who wasn’t connected to the research. “I think it’s going to spark a lot of other investigations” on the reproductive impact of the worms.

Scientists have analyzed the genomes of two acorn worm species and found that approximately two-thirds of human genes have counterparts in the ancestors of these marine animals. These ancient genes, and their organization within the genome, were already in place in the common ancestor of humans and acorn worms that lived over half a billion years ago.

A new form of secret light communication used by marine animals has been discovered by scientists. The findings may have applications in satellite remote sensing, biomedical imaging, cancer detection, and computer data storage.

Graham Hancock is an English author and journalist, well known for books such as "Fingerprints Of The Gods" & his new book "Magicians of the Gods" is available now. Randall Carlson is a master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar.

Archaeologist Tom Dillehay didn’t want to return to Monte Verde. Decades ago, his discoveries at the famous site in southern Chile showed that humans occupied South America by 14,500 years ago, thousands of years earlier than thought, stirring a long and exhausting controversy.

An ancient, 3-foot-tall (0.9 meters) human whose diminutive stature has earned it the nickname "hobbit" has puzzled evolutionary scientists since its little bones were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Some have suggested the individual was a Homo sapien with some miniaturizing disorder.

Medical researchers were surprised when they discovered a new way to turn stem cells into bone cells—and ultimately trigger bone growth in mice. The team expected the stem cells to become fat cells.

In the beginning, there was chaos. Hot, dense, and packed with energetic particles, the early universe was a turbulent, bustling place. It wasn't until about 300,000 years after the Big Bang that the nascent cosmic soup had cooled enough for atoms to form and light to travel freely. This landmark event, known as recombination, gave rise to the famous cosmic microwave background (CMB), a signature glow that pervades the entire sky.

NASA recently reported that a cloud of dust was surrounding Mars high above its atmosphere. The authors of the study ruled out Mars itself and its moons Phobos and Deimos as the sources of the dust and concluded that it must come from a larger dust cloud floating around between the planets in our solar system. This "interplanetary dust" is hugely important. It is thought to have played a crucial role in the formation and evolution of our solar system. What's more, it may even have provided our planet with water – and kick-started life.

In the blockbuster movie The Martian, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a brainy botanist who coaxes spuds to sprout in otherwise lifeless dirt. As the population rises here on Earth, there are plenty of harsh, foodless environments that could be improved with a little ingenuity. And in a plot rooted in plausible science, it turns out that much of what Damon’s character did to turn his Martian "hab" into a makeshift greenhouse is applicable here.

For the first time, scientists have witnessed planets being born. The two — or possibly three — protoplanets are in orbit around a young sun-like star that is about 430 light-years from Earth. Their discovery could give scientists new insight on how planets come to be and what they are like in their formative years.

We're only a couple of decades removed from the first discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. But with greater attention and some improved technology, we're increasingly able to learn things about the nature of the planets themselves. In the latest success in this area, researchers have measured the winds in an atmosphere of an exoplanet and found that our models of exoplanet atmospheres seem to get things right.

The most Earth-like planet could have been made uninhabitable by vast quantities of radiation.The atmosphere of the planet, Kepler-438b, is thought to have been stripped away as a result of radiation emitted from a superflaring red dwarf star, Kepler-438. Regularly occurring every few hundred days, the superflares are approximately 10 times more powerful than those ever recorded on the sun and equivalent to the same energy as 100 billion megatons of TNT.

Since the first laser was invented in 1960, they've always given off heat, either as a useful tool, a byproduct or a fictional way to vanquish intergalactic enemies. Researchers are the first to solve a decades-old puzzle -- figuring out how to make a laser refrigerate water and other liquids.

In a big step towards the development of prosthetic limbs that feel real, two research groups have developed artificial skin containing touch and heat sensors Related: Glove allows to feel heat and cold in virtual reality apps

Artificial intelligence is now smart enough to be accepted into most Japanese universities. The National Institute of Informatics said Saturday that its AI program, developed with university and corporate researchers, achieved an above-average score on a college entrance exam for the first time. The test covered five subjects including math, physics and English.

Would you rather have a human or pigeons scrutinize medical images to detect the presence of cancer? At first blush, it seems like an absurd question. But if you went out on a limb and chose pigeons, their diagnoses, surprisingly, would rival a human’s in accuracy.

After a six-year effort, biologists say they have for the first time managed to rid a wild toad species of a lethal fungal disease that threatens amphibians around the world. Midwife toads on the Spanish island of Mallorca are now free of the chytrid fungusBatrachochytrium dendrobatidis, says Jaime Bosch, an evolutionary biologist at Spain's National Museum of Natural History in Madrid.

It takes a long time and a lot of effort to help shepherd an endangered species from near-extinction to the point of recovery. That’s probably why it doesn’t happen very often.

Two years after retiring most of its research chimpanzees, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is ceasing its chimp programme altogether, Nature has learned. In a 16 November e-mail to the agency's administrators, NIH director Francis Collins announced that the 50 NIH-owned animals that remain available for research will be sent to sanctuaries.

China’s western Shaanxi Province is known for rugged windswept terrain and its coal and wool, but not necessarily its science. Yet at the Shaanxi Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center for Shaanbei Cashmere Goats, scientists have just created a new kind of goat, with bigger muscles and longer hair than normal. The goats were made not by breeding but by directly manipulating animal DNA—a sign of how rapidly China has embraced a global gene-changing revolution.

A team led at Newcastle University, UK, has shed light on the evolutionary roots of language in the brain. Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by Dr Ben Wilson and Professor Chris Petkov explain how using an imaging technique to explore the brain activity in humans and monkeys has identified the evolutionary origins of cognitive functions in the brain that underpin language and allow us to evaluate orderliness in sequences of sounds.

Laughter has many functions, and whilst language is a key part of human humour, psychologists think certain animals show signs of being in on the joke There’s a video on YouTube (above) with over three and half million views, in which a girl appears to make a dolphin giggle by doing repeated cartwheels and handstands in front of its tank at a sea world centre.

In the cells of fruit flies, Chinese scientists say that they have found a biological compass needle: a rod-shaped complex of proteins that can align with Earth’s weak magnetic field. The biocompass — whose constituent proteins exist in related forms in other species, including humans — could explain a long-standing puzzle: how animals such as birds and insects sense magnetism.

The flying mammals have some of the heaviest wings in nature, which has made their acrobatic feats a puzzle for scientists—until now. Related: Why Female Vampire Bats Donate Blood to Friends

New research suggests breathing slowly and evenly can help you get the most out of your meal. Tasting food relies on food volatiles moving from the back of the mouth to the nasal cavity, but researchers have wondered why airflow doesn’t carry them in the other direction, into the lungs.

Drinking coffee daily was associated with a lower risk of deaths from Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological diseases in nonsmokers. Regular consumption of coffee can be included as part of a healthy, balanced diet.

Perhaps you could care less, but newly spotted differences in how our brains work could explain why some people are apathetic and lazy. Scientists say motivation could be more about biology than attitude. Related: Frontal brain wrinkle linked to hallucinations

Research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) has found that people's honesty varies significantly between countries. It also suggests that honesty is less important to a country's current economic growth than during earlier periods in history.

When scientists falsify data, they try to cover it up by writing differently in their published works. A pair of Stanford researchers have devised a way of identifying these written clues. Even the best poker players have "tells" that give away when they're bluffing with a weak hand. Scientists who commit fraud have similar, but even more subtle, tells, and a pair of Stanford researchers have cracked the writing patterns of scientists who attempt to pass along falsified data.

A Nigerian professor has claimed to have solved a maths conundrum that had stumped scholars for more than 150 years. Dr Opeyemi Enoch, from the Federal University in the ancient city of Oye Ekiti, believes he has solved one of the seven millennium problems in mathematics.

Chemists have created single-molecule submersibles that contain just 244 atoms, are powered by ultraviolet light, and move incredibly fast. With each full revolution, the motor’s tail-like propeller moves the sub forward 18 nanometers. And with the motors running at more than a million RPM, that translates into speed.

The combination of a rigid organic cage molecule and a bulky solvent has allowed researchers to produce liquids with permanent porosity. This new class of porous material combines the benefits of a liquid with those of a solid adsorbent framework and may find applications in important areas such as catalysis or carbon capture.

So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden. On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.

Molecular-based moisture indicators, remains of midges and climate simulations have provided climate scientists with the final piece to one of the most enduring puzzles of the last Ice Age. For years, researchers have struggled to reconcile climate models of the Earth, 13,000 years ago, with the prevailing theory that a catastrophic freshwater flood from the melting North American ice sheets plunged the planet into a sudden and final cold snap, just before entering the present warm interglacial.

An ancient island where the Athenians and the Spartans battled in 406 BC has been discovered by an international group of geo-archaeologists. The scientists, led by researchers from the German Archaeology Institute, examined underground rock layers from an Aegean Sea peninsula near Bademli village in the western Izmir province of Turkey and discovered that it was once an island, according to reports from Do?an News Agency.

Geneticists have detected a fourth ancestral "tribe" which contributed to the modern European gene pool. Research shows Europeans are a mixture of three major ancestral populations - indigenous hunters, Middle Eastern farmers and a population that arrived from the east in the Bronze Age.

A tooth fossil discovered in a Siberian cave has yielded DNA from a vanished branch of the human tree, mysterious cousins called the Denisovans, scientists said Monday. Their analysis pushes back the oldest known evidence for Denisovans by 60,000 years, suggesting that the species was able to thrive in harsh climates for thousands of generations. The results also suggest that the Denisovans may have bred with other ancient hominins, relatives of modern humans whom science has yet to discover. Alt: The mysterious big-toothed cousin who lived alongside Neanderthals AND Homo sapiens: DNA shows Denisovans were far more widespread than thought

Pieces from a mysterious board game that hasn't been played for 1,500 years were discovered in a heavily looted 2,300-year-old tomb near Qingzhou City in China. There, archaeologists found a 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them and a broken tile which was once part of a game board.

Surgeons in the US have announced that they will begin trialling uterus transplants in the coming months in order to help women who no longer have a uterus fall pregnant. This is the first time the procedure will be performed in the US.

A team of medical professionals in New York City has successfully performed the most ambitious facial transplant ever attempted, involving the transfer of eyelids, scalp, ears and subcutaneous bony structures, to restore normal facial figures to a volunteer firefighter whose entire head was grievously burned while responding to a Mississippi house fire.

We’re hardwired to focus on bad news stories, but that is not the whole truth. Ed Cumming meets the optimistic statisticians and economists using facts to reveal why more people are healthier and happier than ever before Not every problem has an obvious solution, which is why during the 1850s Britain bought 300,000 tons of bird poo a year from Peru. This was guano, the wonder fertiliser that had been discovered by Europeans at the start of that century. It was shipped back to the motherland, where it helped to feed the burgeoning and rapidly industrialising population, mainly through the medium of turnips.

Supervolcanoes, such as the one dormant under Yellowstone National Park, may erupt when cracks form in the roofs of the chambers holding their molten rock, according to a new study. If scientists want to monitor supervolcanoes to see which ones are likely to erupt, this finding suggests they should look for telltale signs, such as earthquakes and other factors that might crack the magma chambers of these giant volcanoes.

It's big. It's cold. And it's melting into the world's ocean. It's Zachariae Isstrom, the latest in a string of Greenland glaciers to undergo rapid change in our warming world. A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat. The consequences will be felt for decades to come. Related: Microplate discovery dates birth of Himalayas

Groundwater: it's one of the planet's most exploited, most precious natural resources. It ranges in age from months to millions of years old. Around the world, there's increasing demand to know how much we have and how long before it's tapped out. For the first time since a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the global volume of groundwater was attempted in the 1970s, an international group of hydrologists has produced the first data-driven estimate of the Earth's total supply of groundwater.

Earth may have stolen away water that would otherwise have gone to the moon. New research suggests that after the impact that formed the Earth and its moon, our planet may have snatched up easily vaporized material known as volatiles, including water and other molecules. As the newly formed moon moved away, it may have spurned the remaining material available, casting it back toward Earth.

An atmospheric haze around a distant planet—like the one which probably shrouded and cooled the young Earth—could show that the world is potentially habitable, or even be a sign of life itself. Astronomers often use the Earth as a proxy for hypothetical exoplanets in computer modeling to simulate what such worlds might be like and under what circumstances they might be hospitable to life.

Researchers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in a galaxy other than our own. The object sets a new record for the most luminous gamma-ray pulsar known. The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky Way and is located 163,000 light-years away. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest, most active and most complex star-formation region in our galactic neighborhood.

One of the weirdest aspects of quantum mechanics is entanglement, because two entangled particles affecting each other across vast distances seems to violate a fundamental principle of physics called locality: things that happen at a particular point in space can only influence the points closest to it. But what if locality — and space itself — is not so fundamental after all? Author George Musser explores the implications in his new book, Spooky Action at a Distance.

When we read about celestial objects and events, it is sometimes difficult to relate what scientists say happens “out there” in space to life “down here” on Earth. Exotic entities like dark matter do not seem to have any direct impact on terrestrial affairs. But in her new book, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe (Ecco, 2015), particle physicist Lisa Randall proposes a connection between this dark matter, the mysterious material thought to make up around 27 percent of our universe, and the impact that spelled the dinosaurs’ demise about 66 million years ago. Although scientists have largely assumed that dark matter interacts with other matter only via the gravitational force and resides in spherical “halos” around galaxies, Randall suggests that a fraction of dark matter not only interacts gravitationally but also experiences a force analogous to electromagnetism, which she dubs “dark light.”

A small, unusual skeleton in fossilized dinosaur yak discovered back in 1989 might not be the creature we thought it was after all. So what actually got caught in this prehistoric upchuck? Italian scientists tackle one heck of a cold case.

In the 19th century, Darwin's most vocal scientific advocate was Thomas Henry Huxley, who is also remembered as a pioneer of the hypotheses that birds are living dinosaurs. He noticed several similarities of the skeleton of living birds and extinct dinosaurs, among them, a pointed portion of the anklebone projecting upwards onto the shank bone (aka drumstick). This "ascending process" is well known to specialists as a unique trait of dinosaurs.

For hundreds of years, the long-accepted traditional location of the temple of Solomon and the later Second Temple expanded upon by Herod the Great in Jerusalem has placed them within the precinct that now contains the famous Haram al-Sharif (Dome of the Rock), otherwise known as the “Noble Sanctuary”. It has been a sacred space for three major world religions for centuries.

Centuries before the Swedes started flat-packing their furniture, the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian had his own version, sending self-assembly churches to newly conquered parts of his empire. Now one of the “Ikea-style” churches, which spent more than 1,000 years on a seabed after the ship carrying it sank, is to be reconstructed for the first time in Oxford.

The strange pillar-like formation emerged after Crowley Lake reservoir was completed in 1941: stone columns up to 20 feet tall connected by high arches, as if part of an ancient Moorish temple. They had been buried and hidden for eons until the reservoir's pounding waves began carving out the softer material at the base of cliffs of pumice and ash.

Biologists have long puzzled over why neurons have thousands of synapses. Now neuroscientists have shown they are crucial not just for recognizing patterns but for learning the sequence in which they appear.

Aerospace Boeing has invented the lightest metal ever, called microlattice. The product is 99.99 per cent air and will be used as a primary component in aerospace engineering - it'll be used to make space rockets. By utilizing microlattice, Boeing could find ways to cut down on the weight of its jets and save substantially on fuel costs. It's an important invention, because although it is lighter than foam, as it is made of metal it is very strong.

High-performance lithium ion batteries face a major problem: Lithium will eventually start to run out as batteries are deployed in electric cars and stationary storage units. Researchers have now discovered an alternative: the “fool’s gold battery”. It consists of iron, sulfur, sodium and magnesium – all elements that are in plentiful supply. This means that giant storage batteries could be built on the cheap and used stationary in buildings or next to power plants, for instance.

The plans sound like something out of the handbook of a James Bond villain: generate artificial volcanic eruptions, seed colossal clouds that shade the planet, cover the oceans in immense algal blooms visible from space. Despite seeming outrageous, such Earth-altering schemes, some argue, may be the only viable way to stave off threats posed by climate change. In The Planet Remade, journalist Oliver Morton presents the need for a real-life “Greenfinger” to cool the planet.

Monarch butterfly populations are expected to nearly quadruple thanks to efforts made by North American countries, said Mexican authorities. The population had witnessed a 90 percent plunge since peaking in the 1990s.

Research has found that two weeks of three exercise sessions reduced fear in bodily sensations the same as 12 weekly therapy sessions. More study is needed, but doctors are cautiously optimistic about its application Related: A Cure for PTSD? Related: Grow kids' brains through sport

On 15 February 1787, a young woman at a Lancashire cotton mill decided to scare one of her co-workers with a mouse. The prank made medical history. Terrified of the rodent, the woman on the receiving end had a fit that lasted hours. The next day, three more workers suffered violent fits. The day after, six more. On Wednesday, more than two centuries later, and 65 miles up the A59 from Lancashire, 40 pupils at the Outwood academy in Ripon had treatment for dizziness and nausea after four fainted in an Armistice Day service.

The last Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf was believed to have died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936 and no confirmed sightings have occurred since. A news team visiting a remote village in Thailand found a strange barking cat with stripes. Is this the return of the Tasmanian Tiger or a hybrid of one? Related: The Beast of Bolton is Back Related: The Hunt For Bigfoot In Oklahoma

When forced to choose, some songbirds prefer the company of their mates to a good meal. Social living entails some compromise; that’s as true for birds as it is for people. Foraging in flocks often means that some birds get a little less food than they might by flying solo, but there is also safety in numbers: flocks provide better defense against predators and more eyes to watch for danger.

Cockroaches “turbocharge” their mandibles when chewing through tough material to generate a bite force 50 times greater than their own body weight, scientists have discovered. Related: Spiders perform female genital mutilation to ensure faithfulness.

A Yale paleontologist is blending fossil studies and bird genes to trace the ways dinosaurs transformed into today's feathered flocks Look out your window, and you may just spot a living dinosaur. Instead of slipping into total annihilation 66 million years ago, the avian line of dinosaurs managed to not only survive but thrive in the aftermath of a mass extinction, giving rise to modern birds.

Giant, lizardlike beasts with teeth strong enough to puncture clamshells and equipped with short limbs and a long, paddle-shaped tail populated waterways some 200 million years ago. And now, two new species of these thalattosaurs have been added to the ranks. The two thalattosaurs, discovered by separate groups of scientists, are from different sides of the world — one from central Oregon and the other from China's southwestern Guizhou province.

The producers of the cult classic documentary "Magical Egypt" are announcing a new run of episodes, with the first episode scheduled for release for in December 2015. The much anticipated new series promises to reveal several discoveries that answer some of the longest standing mysteries of this ancient civilization.

“At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact recovered same for your arrival congratulations,” scribbled Howard Carter in a hurriedly written message to George Herbert, encouraging him to join him on the expedition. It was 1922 and Carter had just stumbled on the exquisitely preserved tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. Related: Researchers Say There May Be Undiscovered Tomb at Great Pyramid of Giza

Researchers have designed a nanoscale device that, under ideal conditions, can confine a "bit" of light (that is, light with a single precise energy value) for an infinite amount of time. Although a physically realized device would inevitably lose some of the trapped light due to material imperfections, the researchers expect that it should be possible to completely compensate for this loss by incorporating some form of optical gain like that used in lasers, so that in principle the lifetime can be infinitely large even in a real device.

Always envious? Got a non-existent social life and struggle to concentrate? All this might be down to Facebook if you believe a study showing those who go a week without using the social network feel happier than others. Carried out by the Happiness Research Institute, the study involved a sample of 1,095 people in Denmark who were divided into two groups, half of whom continued using Facebook while the others stopped.

When brain scientists at Oxford University studied apathy, they didn't expect to see less motivated people making more effort. Their results suggest that for some people traditionally perceived as lazy, it's biology -- not attitude -- that might be the cause.

An increasingly twisted sense of humour could be one of the early signs of dementia, a new study has found, including laughing at inappropriate moments. The University College London research, published in the Journal of Alzeheimer’s disease, questioned the families and friends of 48 dementia patients, who had known them for more than 15 years before their disease took hold. Many of them noted that their relatives’ sense of humour had changed.

It is estimated that Central California’s Wukchumni tribe—part of the larger Yokuts Native Americans ethnic group—numbered in the tens of thousands during the years prior to European contact. Today, there are fewer than 200 remaining, and of those two hundred Wakchumni peoples, only one actually knows their native tongue. But 81 year old Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wakchumni language, isn’t letting her culture disappear without a fight. Instead, Wilcox, a great-grandmother, has spent much of the last decade creating the world’s first complete Wakchumni dictionary.

If you’ve ever tried to hold a conversation with a chatbot like CleverBot, you know how quickly the conversation turns to nonsense, no matter how hard you try to keep it together. But now, a research team led by Bruno Golosio, assistant professor of applied physics at Università di Sassari in Italy, has taken a significant step toward improving human-to-computer conversation.

Babies learn how to identify and pick up objects in their world through trial and error. Now a computer scientist is trying the same approach with robots. Robots have been around for decades, so you'd think by now they'd be able to do some useful things, such as put away the groceries or unload the dishwasher. It turns out these tasks are devilishly hard for robots.

If you’ve ever had a bit of a play with a consumer drone unit you’ll know that their power supplies don’t necessarily last all that long. After spending some time in the air, you need to keep an eye on your device’s battery levels (in addition to watching out for trees) to make sure things don’t come to an abrupt, ground-smacking end. Related: Drone Cubes Become Flying, 3-D Pixels

Applications to be firefighters in Dubai could be about to climb to new heights, as firefighters are being given actual, working jetpacks. The city has 916 high-rise buildings and when fires take hold of them winds fan the flames up the high-rise blocks. So officials in the country have decided to team-up with manufacturer Martin Jetpack to provide both manned and unmanned jetpacks to firefighters.

From a village in Rwanda to a rock cave in France, sightings of the Virgin Mary have been reported across the globe since A.D. 40. Since 1531, the Roman Catholic Church has investigated these reports and offered approval to multiple sites where bishops believe miracles occurred, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Paris.

The mystery of the black spheres falling from the sky in Spain is getting deeper as yet another of these space balls fell from the sky in the same area where two others appeared in less than two weeks. No explanation has been given for these strange objects dropping from space as if someone or something is targeting Murcia. The area has been quarantined … is it time for terrified residents to evacuate? Related: Mysterious Spheres Fall From the Sky in Spain Related: ‘Alien found after UFO sighting' appears to be a deer foetus, picture from before California test missile launch