Newsdesk Archive

A new study should put the final nail in the coffin for any lingering beliefs that calcium supplements are good for you. The new study finds that people over 50 don't get stronger bones either by taking supplements or from eating extra servings of calcium-rich foods such as dairy products.

Consider the plastic foam cup. Every year, Americans throw away 2.5 billion of them. And yet, that waste is just a fraction of the 33 million tons of plastic Americans discard every year. Less than 10 percent of that total gets recycled, and the remainder presents challenges ranging from water contamination to animal poisoning.

Drones could monitor the success of forest regeneration in the tropics, suggests a new study published in Biological Conservation. The researchers say automating the monitoring process leads to equally accurate results and could save a significant amount of time and money.

Anyone who has seen The Day After Tomorrow knows the dangers of the thermohaline circulation shutting down. But who’d-a-thunk that it was actually evidenced to be happening in the North Atlantic? It’s almost like some scientific models can accurately predict future conditions…! Alt: Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean

Climate change is already wreaking havoc on wildlife in a number of ways, from destroying habitats to throwing off circadian schedules. Mutualism—win-win ecological partnerships honed over evolutionary timescales—is a lesser-known ecological relationship that is also vulnerable to the effects of a rapidly changing planet.

Minuscule snails defy current knowledge and scientific terminology about terrestrial "microsnails". While examining soil samples collected from the base of limestone rocks in Guangxi Province, Southern China, scientists Barna Páll-Gergely and Takahiro Asami from Shinshu University, Adrienne Jochum, University and Natural History Museum of Bern, and András Hunyadi, found several minute empty light grey shells, which measured an astounding height of less than 1 mm.

Deep-diving whales can remain active while holding their breath for up to two hours. Figuring out how they do it may help scientists create lifesaving synthetic blood for human trauma patients. For a new study, researchers compared the muscle protein myoglobin from humans, whales, and other deep-diving mammals.

Chimpanzees' personality traits are linked to the anatomy of specific brain structures, according to researchers. The researchers studied 107 chimpanzees' brains using magnetic resonance image (MRI) scans and also assessed each chimpanzee's personality by using a 41-item personality questionnaire. They found chimpanzees who were rated as higher for the personality traits of openness and extraversion had greater gray-matter volumes in the anterior cingulate cortex in both hemispheres of the brain.

On a diving expedition, marine biologists found a glowing hawksbill sea turtle – the first instance of a reptile observed to be biofluorescent Related: New Venomous Snake Found: Death Adder Hiding in Plain Sight

Cutting-edge gene-editing techniques have produced an unexpected byproduct — tiny pigs that a leading Chinese genomics institute will soon sell as pets. BGI in Shenzhen, the genomics institute that is famous for a series of high-profile breakthroughs in genomic sequencing, originally created the micropigs as models for human disease, by applying a gene-editing technique to a small breed of pig known as Bama.

It's a typical morning at the Dupont Veterinary Clinic in Lafayette, La. Dr. Phillip Dupont is caring for cats and dogs in the examining room while his wife, Paula, answers the phone and pet owners' questions. Their two dogs are sleeping on the floor behind her desk.

About 20 million years ago a single flea became entombed in amber with tiny bacteria attached to it, providing what researchers believe may be the oldest evidence on Earth of a dreaded and historic killer - an ancient strain of the bubonic plague.

Imagine the untold misery caused by telling the wrong family that their loved one is dead while another family is left in blissful ignorance. That's why accurately identifying bodies is of paramount importance.

Ancient Britons may have intentionally mummified some of their dead during the Bronze Age, according to archaeologists at the University of Sheffield. The study is the first to provide indications that mummification may have been a wide-spread funerary practise in Britain.

Two large stashes of bronze weapons and jewelry, from the eighth century B.C., have been discovered in southern Transylvania, in Romania. The hoards date back to a time before minted currency had been invented or writing had spread to this part of Europe.

The Antikythera shipwreck off the coast of Greece is the gift that keeps on giving for underwater treasure hunters. This summer alone, divers recovered more than 50 artifacts from the wreckage: the remains of a bone flute, fine glassware and ceramics, a chess-like piece from an ancient board game, and even a bronze armrest that researchers say may have once fit on a throne.

Walrus tusks. They may not mean a lot to us these days, but 1,000 years ago in the early Middle Ages, it was a rare commodity that was valuable enough to be a gift fit for a king. But was it enough to motivate people from northern Europe to uproot their entire lives and sail thousands of kilometres across the Atlantic sea to settle down in Greenland--just to get a share in the lucrative walrus tusk trade? Related: New study on the use of imported objects in Viking Age Scandinavia

Carbon dating of walrus bones found in Snæfellsnes peninsula indicates that the bones are at least 2000 years old. A large number of walrus skulls and walrus tusks have been found around Garðafjara beach on the south coast Snæfellsnes. The first skull was discovered 1884. All in all the bones of 50 walruses have been found, most in the past 50 years. Biologists argue this indicates Snæfellsnes was the home of a sizable walrus colony prior to the settlement of Iceland.

Now having completed the tenth season of excavations, an archaeological team headed by Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University, New Mexico, has unearthed a goldmine of ancient monumental structures and artifacts that are revealing a massive Bronze Age city-state that dominated the region of Jordan’s southern Jordan Valley, even during a time when many other great cities of the “Holy Land” region were either abandoned or in serious decline.

A 1,500 year old mosaic, depicting a map with streets and buildings, was exposed about two years ago in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted together with school children and employees from the Qiryat Gat Industrial Park.

Nearly a century after the rediscovery of King Tut’s tomb ignited a worldwide craze for Egyptology, new findings could turn out to be almost as stunning. On Monday, after a group of Egyptian and foreign archaeologists examined the famous tomb, Egypt’s antiquities minister confirmed that they found evidence suggesting the existence of two previously undiscovered rooms. “This indicates that the western and northern walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb could hide two burial chambers,” minister Mamdouh Eldamaty told the Egyptian state press.

Maamoun Abdulkarim is tasked with protecting Syrian antiquities, but as the fighting continues he fears more sites and artefacts could be lost forever Old Queen Zenobia came to Damascus the other day and was winched into place in a prime spot on Umayyad Square, opposite the ­al-Assad national library. The replica brass statue of the 3rd-century heroine was representing Palmyra, her realm on the eastern edge of the Roman empire, now in the hands of Islamic State. Zenobia’s ceremonial arrival in the capital was a pledge that Syria’s heritage has not been abandoned.

What if the future of law enforcement doesn’t involve faster, more forceful responses to crime—but rather, a surefire way to predict it? Hitachi, the Japanese tech giant that makes everything from elevators to security systems, seems to have faith in the latter. It announced today (Sept. 29) that it’s developed a robust new technology that can pinpoint where and when a crime will occur.

Scientists have a pretty good theory for how life on Earth began: Meteorites that bombarded our planet brought simple carbon-based compounds called amino acids. Eventually, slowly, these chemicals combined to make cells, which were then able to replicate and become the increasingly complex forms of life that we have today. But researchers didn't quite understand the mechanisms through which the earliest life forms evolved; though these cells were able to replicate, they were not yet alive.

The study, which will appear on Monday 28 September in the journal Nature Chemistry, describes how peptides and proteins can be used to create materials that exhibit dynamic behaviors found in biological tissues like growth, morphogenesis, and healing.

British surgeons have taken a “big step forward” towards curing the most common form of blindness by developing and successfully performing a ground breaking operation. Surgeons at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital carried out the first operation on a female patient with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), characterised by leaking blood vessels.

Killjoy physicists have long pointed out the sheer unlikelihood of building a working light saber. But now, they’ve taken a small step toward realizing the dream of Star Wars fans worldwide, by figuring out how to get photons to stick together like molecules in a super-chilled gas.

Aliens do exist, according to a top secret FBI memo found by researchers into UFOs. Investigators at the Hakui Centre for UFO Research in Tokyo, Japan, claim they have discovered a document that proves there is extra-terrestrial life. Related: Is it FINALLY proof: 'Abducted' woman draws star map of exact constellation of alien home Related: New Booms Over Britain and British Columbia

Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research from astronomers at the University of Washington. A planet's magnetic field emanates from its core and is thought to deflect the charged particles of the stellar wind, protecting the atmosphere from being lost to space. Magnetic fields, born from the cooling of a planet's interior, could also protect life on the surface from harmful radiation, as the Earth's magnetic field protects us.

Nasa scientists may still be celebrating their discovery of liquid water on Mars, but they now face some serious questions about how they can investigate further and look for signs of life on the red planet. The problem is how to find life without contaminating the planet with bugs from Earth. Alt: Why NASA Didn't Just Send Over A Rover To Look For Water On Mars

NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least some parts of the Red Planet, seeping from slopes to accumulate in what might be life-nurturing pools at the bases of equatorial hills and craters. These remarkable sites on Mars may be the best locations in the solar system to search for extant extraterrestrial life—but doing so will be far from easy. Related: Water on the red planet: Nasa reveals major discovery – in pictures

Ah, Mars. The place that dreams are made of. As long as those dreams involve a poisonous, tenuous atmosphere, inhospitable cold and lots and lots of red. Still, people seem to want to go there. But will we ever make it? "Yes," if you ask Elon Musk. I agree, but it probably won't be as easy as you might think, even if you think it's going to be really really hard.

The rubber duck-shaped comet being followed by Europe's Rosetta probe used to be two separate objects. Scientists say pictures of 67P show its two lobes to have "onion skin" layers that intersect in a way that can only be the result of two different bodies having collided and stuck together.

Almost a hundred years since Albert Einstein proposed gravitational waves as part of his general theory of relatively, we are still no closer to finding them. Astronomers have spent 11 years searching for evidence of the waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time, using high-precision telescopes. But rather than detecting the background 'rumbles' created as galaxies merge, they heard nothing.

Picture the scenario - a sentient machine is "living" in the US in the year 2050 and starts browsing through the US constitution. Having read it, it decides that it wants the opportunity to vote. Oh, and it also wants the right to procreate. Pretty basic human rights that it feels it should have now it has human-level intelligence.

Some people who have lost their vision find a “second sight” taking over their eyes – an uncanny, subconscious sense that sheds light into the hidden depths of the human mind. When Daniel first walked into London’s National Hospital, ophthalmologist Michael Sanders could have had little idea that he would permanently alter our view of human consciousness.

There is a strong correspondence between a particular set of connections in the brain and positive lifestyle and behavior traits, according to a new study. The researchers point out that their results resemble what psychologists refer to as the 'general intelligence g-factor': a variable first proposed in 1904 that's sometimes used to summarize a person's abilities at different cognitive tasks.

It is possible to identify an individual's ancestral background based on his or her fingerprint characteristics, new research shows -- a discovery with significant applications for law enforcement and anthropological research.

Emerging evidence ties endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure to two of the biggest public health threats facing society -- diabetes and obesity. EDCs contribute to health problems by mimicking, blocking or otherwise interfering with the body's natural hormones. By hijacking the body's chemical messengers, EDCs can alter the way cells develop and grow.

Researchers have analyzed data on pre- and postnatal exposure to tobacco in the homes of 5,200 primary school children, and have found that early exposure to tobacco can lead to behavioral problems in children.

Cells were discovered in 1676, and almost immediately afterward scientists began wondering why cells are so perfectly small. More than three centuries later, a team of Stanford biologists have zeroed in on a previously unknown mechanism within the cell growth cycle that controls cell size. The fundamental finding was made by studying yeast cells, but could provide insight to basic human biology as well as diseases such as cancer that thrive by manipulating this mechanism.

Scientists from Virginia Tech and the University of Bristol have revealed how pigment can be detected in mammal fossils, a discovery that may end the guesswork in determining the colors of extinct species. The researchers discovered the reddish brown color of two extinct species of bat from fossils dating back about 50 million years, marking the first time the colors of extinct mammals have been described through fossil analysis.

And just like that, it was over. After years of botched attempts, mountains of red tape, billions of dollars, and countless face-offs with protestors, Royal Dutch Shell announced today that it is pulling the plug on all oil and gas exploration in the Arctic Ocean "for the foreseeable future."

New Zealand has revealed plans to turn an area of the South Pacific about the size of France into a marine reserve. The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary lies north of the mainland and includes a chain of islands and underwater volcanoes.

Monkeys perceive visual illusions in the same way great apes and humans see them, according to researchers at Georgia State University. The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition in August, indicate humans and monkeys perceive and misperceive the world similarly, which reflects resemblances in these species' perceptual systems and their interpretation of their physical worlds.

Just in case you've been living under a megalith, the internet's abuzz over the discovery of a "circle" of stones on Mars. Dubbed Marshenge, by commenter Jeff Taylor at Facebook's Journey to the Surface of the MARS, this formation's triggered a deluge of speculation. It was originally imaged by by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on September 24, 2012 in Nilosyrtis Mensae (28.064°N, 75.956°E).

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars. Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

The childhood tradition of a bedtime story is in serious peril, as experts warn that parents are not making the time to read to their children at the end of the working day and stop reading to them at too young an age. “Parents lead very, very busy lives,” said Diana Gerald, chief executive of the Book Trust, which encourages children and families to enjoy books and develop their reading skills. Related: Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It's the last privilege of a free mind

In a remote mountain village high above Turkey's Black Sea coast, there are villagers who still communicate across valleys by whistling. Not just whistling as in a non-verbal, "Hey, you!" But actually using what they call their "bird language," Turkish words expressed as a series of piercing whistles. The village is Kuskoy, and it's inhabited by farmers who raise tea, corn, beets and other crops, and also keep livestock. The landscape is unusual by Turkish standards, and the residents are also considered a bit eccentric by other Turks.

A study of tiny fossilised bones taken from two early species of human has given an insight into how ancient man would have heard the world around them. Using CT scans, the researchers found that the hearing of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus was perfectly suited for short-range vocal communication in open landscapes, and they could hear frequencies used in speech.

Underwater archaeologists have returned to the ancient shipwreck of Antikythera to learn more about its luxurious and extravagant artefacts. During the latest dive experts spent a total of 40 hours on the sea bed to unearth more than 50 new treasures.

In the early 19th century, a Russian-American Company ship called the Neva gained worldwide fame for its role in the first-ever Russian circumnavigation of the globe. But in January 1813, the ship gained notoriety for something else — its wreck. Now, Stephanie Pappas reports for LiveScience, scientists think they’ve unearthed a camp that’s full of clues about just how the shipwrecked crew survived.

Every wine is unique to the place where it is produced. Take the same vines, plant them on a hill a couple counties away, and the resulting vino just won’t be the same. Climate, soil, terrain and, in some cases, traditional methods all combine to produce what’s known as terroir. Related Content But scientists now argue that there’s another factor that’s been largely overlooked: microbes.

A new analysis supports the hypothesis that viruses are living entities that share a long evolutionary history with cells. A new study offers the first reliable method for tracing viral evolution back to a time when neither viruses nor cells existed in the forms recognized today, the researchers say.

A macaque named Naruto holds the rights to a photograph that he snapped of himself in 2011, according to a lawsuit filed by PETA today in San Francisco. The lawsuit isn’t just about the famous selfie, which went viral, but instead challenges our views on what constitutes property and ownership, PETA holds.

Dogs bark, sheep bleat and mice squeak, but what sounds do giraffes make? They hum, but only during the nighttime, a new study finds.

Adapted from The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion, by Wendy Williams Some time around 35,000 years ago, when much of Europe was locked up in sheets of ice, an artist acquired a bit of mammoth ivory and began carving. A masterpiece emerged in the form of a two-inch-long horse. Its magnificently arched stallion's neck combines muscular potency and natural grace. Its head, slightly cocked, gives the animal an air of deep contemplation. One can almost hear him snort and see him toss his head, warning rivals to take care. No one knows who created this miniature marvel, dubbed the “Vogelherd horse” after the cave in Germany in which it was found, but it is clear that this ivory carver spent a lot of time watching wild horses, studying their social interactions and learning their body language. Related: The Last Wild Horses on Earth: Photos

Thousands of rare forest turtles have been rescued from horrifying conditions of captivity in the Philippines, saving the critically endangered animals from possible extinction, wildlife experts said Wednesday. More than 4,000 live freshwater turtles and 90 dead ones were found in a pond inside a remote warehouse on the western island of Palawan four weeks ago in one of the country's biggest wildlife rescues, they said. Related: Sumatran rhino dangerously close to extinction, conservation charity warns Related: After 60 million years of extreme living, seabirds are crashing

Tiny zooplankton animals, each no bigger than a grain of rice, may be playing a huge part in regulating climate change, research involving the University of Strathclyde has found.

The Swedish government announced this week that they will be spending an extra US$546 million on renewable energy and climate change action in their 2016 budget, with the aim of becoming one of the world's first nations to end its dependence on fossil fuels. They haven't set a deadline for this ambitious goal just yet, but last year the country announced plans to make its capital Stockholm fossil fuel-free by 2050, so we're imagining a similar time frame.

Dreamed up by French architect Jacques Rougerie, this is the City of Mériens - a giant floating city designed to give scientists a place to live while they conduct research on the surrounding ocean. The futuristic research facility would stretch 900 metres by 500 metres, and would house up to 7,000 scientists and students from all over the world, offering them an array of laboratories, classrooms, lecture halls, living quarters, and dedicated areas for leisure activities and sports, to facilitate long-term research projects.

A great swathe of Pluto that features a strange rippling terrain is perhaps the highlight of the latest image release from the New Horizons mission. The Nasa probe, which flew by the dwarf planet in July, continues to downlink its data, and as it comes in, the scientists get to work on it.

Nasa is preparing to unveil a "major science finding" from its Mars exploration programme, amid speculation it could have found water flowing on the Red Planet. The space agency has scheduled a press conference for Monday, in which it promises to announce a "Mars Mystery Solved". Alt: Nasa to reveal major Mars finding, prompting water speculation

The Moon is shrinking, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Researchers led by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Thomas R. Watters first reported the shrinkage, which has taken place over a billion years, as the Moon’s core cooled and contracted, in 2010. Alt: Earth Blamed for Cracks in Moon

Overlapping lunar eclipse and supermoon have some religious leaders warning of a major turning point on Earth, though the details vary On Sunday, millions of people around the world will enjoy the sight of a “blood moon”, as a lunar eclipse combined with a “supermoon” combines to make our natural satellite appear red in colour.

Research into human fossils dating back to approximately two million years ago reveals that the hearing pattern resembles chimpanzees, but with some slight differences in the direction of humans. Rolf Quam, assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, led an international research team in reconstructing an aspect of sensory perception in several fossil hominin individuals from the sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans in South Africa.

In “Magicians of the Gods”, investigative journalist, and archaeological gadfly, Graham Hancock follows up his investigations into humanities deepest history first presented in the 1995 bestseller “Fingerprints of the Gods”. As in its’ predecessor, “Magicians of the Gods” poses the questions; what if our civilization is not the first and was instead a legacy of an earlier advanced culture that had a firm grasp on architecture, astronomy, and all the related knowledge that directly influenced the civilizations in the Fertile Crescent and beyond in the earliest days of their seemingly abrupt beginnings? What evidence do we have that this may be the case? What form would it be likely to take? What might this evidence tell us, both about those who first created it and about ourselves?

According to the ancient Egyptians, the entire universe was made up of masculine and feminine elements, maintained in a state of perfect balance by the goddess Maat. Her numerous fellow deities included a male earth god and female sky goddess. While the green-hued Geb lay back, his star-spangled sister Nut stretched herself high above to form the expanse of sky, hold back the forces of chaos, and give birth to the sun each dawn.

The literature of Egyptology is extensive. It is, however, drowned in the –isms: skepticism, relativism, materialism, presentism, obscuritarianism, and scientism. Nevertheless, some theories in outer circles do make sense or actually make more sense than the conventional ones. We have the Orion Correlation Theory (1993) advanced by Robert Bauval that suggests the three pyramids at Giza plateau were built mirroring the three stars in the Orion constellation, also known as Orion’s belt. Not only that, but Bauval goes further to observe that a shaft within the Great Pyramid was, at some point in the past, oriented towards the middle star of Orion’s belt, which is the star representing the same pyramid.

Prof. Patrick Nunn of the University of the Sunshine Coast and Dr Nick Reid of the University of New England analyzed Aboriginal stories from 21 places around Australia’s coastline, each describing a time when sea levels were significantly lower than today. “The present sea levels in Australia were reached 7,000 years ago and as such any stories about the coastline stretching much further out to sea had to pre-date that time,”

A rare 3,000-year-old seal, from the time of King David in the 10th century BCE, was recently discovered by a 10-year-old Russian volunteer at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount Sifting Project. Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder and director of the project – which sifts through thousands of tons of illegally removed earth from the contested holy site in 1999 by the Wakf religious trust to build a mosque – said that the finding is unprecedented.

This week millions of Americans are navigating crushing crowds and spending hours traveling in order to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis on his first visit to this country. To those who are devoutly religious, the pope's U.S. trip presents a unique opportunity to get papal blessings, receive mercy and feel closer to God. But even those devoted Catholics who aren’t in the front row seat for Francis' visit may see benefits to their belief.

Terrence Howard, Lindsay Lohan and Jim Carrey all have imbibed a tea from the Amazon (rain forest, not company) that also has made its way onscreen ('Wanderlust,' 'While We're Young'). Now, a critical mass of L.A.'s urban hippies are gathering in groups and projectile vomiting (and worse) on their way to enlightenment.

In an advance that helps clarify the role of a cluster of neurons in the brain, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that these neurons not only control hunger and appetite, but also regulate bone mass.

By measuring how worms move toward an appealing, food-like scent, researchers at the Salk Institute were able to predict whether the worms would be long-lived. The finding, publishing September 22, 2015 in the journal eLife, shows how nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) process information about the environment and how circuits in the brain change as an animal ages.

One of the world’s oldest drugs which was first mentioned by Hippocrates in the 5th Century BC could help restore memory in Alzheimer’s patients, scientists hope. Salsalate, which comes from the same family as aspirin, was typically used to treat inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.

The news from ETH Zurich is upbeat over work in methods and techniques for robotic aerial construction—in other words, what if we could build structures with flying machines? The title of the project is fittingly called the Aerial Construction Project. ETH Zurich is never afraid of accepting a task where disciplines cross one another, in this instance, architecture and dynamic systems and control.

The design team behind the Bloodhound Super-Sonic Car has put its near-complete vehicle on show in London. Some 8,000 people are expected to come and view it in Canary Wharf over the next three days.

If you dream of an off-grid house powered by the sun, plan on a battery to store energy for cloudy days—ideally, one that won’t catch fire. Harvard researchers might have just the fix. In the race to build the battery of the future, they’re unveiling a unique option. They say their flow battery is the first made with cheap, non-toxic, non-corrosive, non-flammable, high-performance materials.

Fusion energy may soon be used in small-scale power stations. This means producing environmentally friendly heating and electricity at a low cost from fuel found in water. Both heating generators and generators for electricity could be developed within a few years, according to new research.

An international team of scientists has devised a hemodynamic brain scan using MRI that can empirically measure a person’s sexual attraction, whether to male/female, adult/child. This test is much like a polygraph test, except using blood flow in the brain instead of skin conductivity/blood pressure to quantify a test subjects’ attraction to different images. The full publication can be viewed here.

In the 1990s, French scientists wanted to see what happened to a mouse brain when they messed with the creature's mitochondria, the structures that generate energy inside most complex cells. The team looked at two mouse strains, called H and N, that carry slightly different mitochondrial-DNA sequences.

A team including the scientist who first harnessed the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 system for mammalian genome editing has now identified a different CRISPR system with the potential for even simpler and more precise genome engineering.

Well, that’s cutting it close. Researchers from the U.S. National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, have created a hyper-detailed digital image of the human body by using more than 5,000 slices from a frozen female cadaver donated to science more than two decades ago.

When it comes to helping each other out, it turns out that some fish are better at it than one might imagine. New research has found that pairs of rabbitfishes will cooperate and support each other while feeding.

Standing 2 meters tall and weighing as much as 1000 kilograms, European bison (Bison bonasus) are impressive animals. These cousins of the American bison—nearly driven to extinction in the last century—are being reintroduced in small herds across Europe, leading some farmers and forest managers to worry that the large herbivores will destroy their habitat.

Researchers have sequenced the complete genomes of eleven Przewalski's horses, including all of the founding lineages and five historical, museum specimens dating back more than a century, and compared them to the genomes of 28 domesticated horses to provide a detailed look at the endangered animals, both past and present.

Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history. The march of human progress is strewn with dead animals. Even tens of thousands of years ago, our stone age ancestors were already responsible for a series of ecological disasters. When the first humans reached Australia about 45,000 years ago, they quickly drove to extinction 90% of its large animals. This was the first significant impact that Homo sapiens had on the planet’s ecosystem. It was not the last.

A full moon, harvest moon, super moon, and total eclipse of the moon—this one has it all. Everyone with clear skies across the Americas will have a front-row seat Sunday night to a rare total eclipse of the super-harvest moon. On the evening of September 27, three separate lunar events converge.

NASA is preparing to reveal a “major science finding” regarding Mars on Monday, with the agency planning a special news conference to announce the findings. The event will take place at 11.30 a.m. EDT (4.30 p.m. BST) on Monday, and you will be able to watch it live on NASA TV, which we have handily embedded below. Reporters will be onsite and asking questions by phone, while the public can get involved via #AskNASA.

The brightest galaxies in our universe are fuelled by what their gravity sucks in, not through explosive mergers of star systems as scientists previously argued, researchers said Wednesday. In what may be the most complete explanation yet of how these enormous collections of stars and dust came to be, scientists found the galaxies pulled in hydrogen gas and then used it to pump out the equivalent of up to 2,000 Suns per year, according to a study in Nature.

Lawrence Livermore scientists have come up with a new theory that may identify why dark matter has evaded direct detection in Earth-based experiments. A group of national particle physicists known as the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration, led by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team, has combined theoretical and computational physics techniques and used the Laboratory's massively parallel 2-petaflop Vulcan supercomputer to devise a new model of dark matter.

The central supermassive black hole of a recently discovered galaxy has been found to be far larger than should be possible, according to current theories of galactic evolution. New work shows that the black hole is much more massive than it should be, compared to the mass of the galaxy around it.

Pairs of black holes circling around each other, getting closer and closer to crashing together, may create ripples in space and time — but new research suggests that these ripples are milder than previously thought. A new paper searching for signs of these space-time ripples — known as gravitational waves — came up empty, suggesting that theorists need to rethink their models of these monster pairs. The new work affects searches for gravitational waves using pulsars — dead stars that appear to create regular pulses of light, not unlike a lighthouse.

A pair of physicists, one with Tsinghua University in China, the other with Perdue University in the U.S. has come up with what they believe is a viable way to cause a living organism to be in two places at the same time. In the paper they have posted to the arXiv server, Zhang-Qi Yin and Tongcang Li suggest that an experiment conducted at the University of Colorado recently, could be modified by placing a living organism into a superposition state, rather than using just a piece of metal.

Teleportation isn’t real, at least not as it’s depicted in fiction. No one has ever made a material object -- be it Harry Potter or Captain Kirk -- physically disappear from one location and reappear elsewhere. But information … that’s a different story. This week, scientists set a new record for quantum teleportation distance, instantaneously sending a message from one particle of light to another particle at the end of an optical fiber more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) long.

Physicists broke the record for quantum teleportation this week, transferring information from one photon to another across 60 miles of fiber-optic cable. In their paper published in Optica, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), outline how their newly designed photon detectors allow accurate measurements to be taken even when the light particles emit weak signals.

Comets are celestial bodies comprising a mixture of dust and ices, which they periodically shed as they swing towards their closest point to the Sun along their highly eccentric orbits. As sunlight heats the frozen nucleus of a comet, the ice in it – mainly water but also other 'volatiles' such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide – turns directly into a gas.

This Sunday night moon observers have the chance to see a lunar triple treat, weather permitting. First, the moon will be full, as it always must be for a lunar eclipse to occur. This is a special full moon, because this is the Harvest Moon. Because the angle of the ecliptic —the path the moon and planets follow across the sky —is low to the horizon, the moon rises about the same time every night, giving farmers an extra supply of light when they most need it, at harvest time.

The dark, fingerlike features that creep down steep Martian slopes in warm weather continue to puzzle scientists. These "recurring slope lineae" (RSL), which have been spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) at low and middle latitudes on the Red Planet, fade during cooler months but come back again annually at nearly the same locations over multiple Martian years.