Newsdesk Archive

Dark matter has never been seen directly, but scientists know that something massive is out there due to its gravitational effects on visible matter. One explanation for how such a large amount of mass appears to be right in front of our eyes yet completely invisible by conventional means is that the dark matter is hiding in the centers of stars.

It’s unusual to see one UFO hovering in the sky. It’s highly unusual to see a fleet of UFOs. It’s extremely unusual when this event is seen by multiple witnesses and recorded on video. It’s mind-blowing when these witnesses watch the UFOs melt into plasma and drip from the sky. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Related: UFO Over New York?

The paradox of Schroedinger’s Cat famously demonstrates that a quantum cat sealed in a box is both alive and dead at the same time until we look inside, at which point it becomes one or the other. Such is the weirdness of quantum mechanics. But if a mere act of observation determines the outcome of an experiment, what happens if we never look away? Answer: time effectively stands still. That’s the conclusion of a new paper accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

Invisibility cloaks are a staple of science fiction and fantasy, from Star Trek to Harry Potter, but don’t exist in real life, or do they? Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have devised an ultra-thin invisibility “skin” cloak that can conform to the shape of an object and conceal it from detection with visible light. Although this cloak is only microscopic in size, the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up to conceal macroscopic items as well.

Researchers at Stanford University have fabricated a stretchable, color-changing, pressure-sensitive material–basically the closest thing yet to an artificial chameleon skin. Touching the new electronic skin (e-skin) with varying amounts of pressure causes it to change colors, as the pressure indirectly alters the chemical structure, and subsequently the optical properties, of the "electrochromic" material. The e-skin could have applications in interactive wearable devices, artificial prosthetics, and smart robots.

What's the fastest you've ever gone on a bicycle? Maybe 20, close to 30 miles per hour on a hill? The AeroVelo team just more than doubled that in their bullet-shaped "speedbike," reaching a speed of 85.71 miles per hour and breaking the world record for fastest human-powered vehicle at the same time.

Hyperloop Technologies is working on a project to move people and cargo at nearly the speed of sound, and its engineers believe they're approaching a transportation breakthrough not seen in ages, reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans. In 1903, the Wright brothers launched the age of aviation in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with their experimental flying machine. It connected the world, pushing the limits of what many believed possible.

Yeast, the sugar-gobbling microorganism that’s filled our bellies with beer and bread for millennia, has a new, increasingly important, role to play in society: serving as a therapeutic drug factory.

You may think you know what peace and quiet sounds like, but you don't - not really. In fact, in the total absence of noise, the human brain can start inventing sounds of its own, because it relies so much on the audio cues we usually hear around us. With that in mind, consider the new system developed by scientists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which is capable of absorbing almost all the sound that hits it - 99.7 percent of that sound, to be precise.

Legendary singer Billie Holiday will return to the New York stage posthumously this year as the Apollo Theater launches hologram performances. The Apollo, the iconic cradle of jazz located in Harlem, announced it would be the first theater in the United States to feature regular programming by hologram.

Some automakers tease concept cars with autonomous-driving modes, lounge-style interiors, and augmented-reality windshields and windows, while others tout automatic cruise control, lane-keep systems, and automated parking features as technologies that are the gateway to autonomous driving.

A Swedish retirement home may seem an unlikely setting for an experiment about the future of work, but a small group of elderly-care nurses in Sweden have made radical changes to their daily lives in an effort to improve quality and efficiency. In February the nurses switched from an eight-hour to a six-hour working day for the same wage – the first controlled trial of shorter hours since a rightward political shift in Sweden a decade ago snuffed out earlier efforts to explore alternatives to the traditional working week.

It's no secret that slugging down caffeinated drinks in the evening can disrupt sleep. But a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England shows for the first time that evening caffeine delays the internal circadian clock that tells us when to get ready for sleep and when to prepare to wake up. The research team showed the amount of caffeine in a double espresso or its equivalent three hours before bedtime induced a 40-minute phase delay in the roughly 24-hour human biological clock.

Yogis with arthritis had better physical health, less joint pain and less depression Exercise works all kinds of wonders on the human body, from stabilizing joints to improving muscle mass to reducing inflammation. That’s pretty motivating when your body feels good—but less so when it aches. 44% of people with arthritis say they don’t exercise, and close to 80% aren’t active enough.

Children who have no access to a garden are more likely to become obese, according to a recent study. Researchers found that no access to a garden between the ages of 3 and 5 years is linked to a nearly 40 percent increased risk of developing obesity by age 7 years old.

Children who spend more time outdoors may have a lower risk of becoming nearsighted, new research suggests. Related: Technology doesn't make school pupils smarter, study says

A new study by UC Berkeley researchers establishes for the first time a link between infection with the bovine leukemia virus and human breast cancer. In the study, published this month in the journal PLOS ONE and available online, researchers analyzed breast tissue from 239 women for the presence of bovine leukemia virus (BLV), comparing samples from women who had breast cancer with women who had no history of the disease.

It's 30,000 years old and still ticking: A giant virus recently discovered deep in the Siberian permafrost reveals that huge ancient viruses are much more diverse than scientists had ever known.

Three-dimensional, free-standing, and life-size, the chacmool is a male figure carved from a single stone. He is reclined on his back with feet and elbows down, stomach horizontal, knees, chest, and head up, and head turned 90 degrees. From chacmool to chacmool details vary, but the form remains fairly constant. The actual name given by the Maya/Toltec for this statuary is unknown.

The Holocene began approximately 11,700 years ago, and encompasses the entire history of human civilization, all known written records, the epochs of human migrations, and the development of modern urban civilization. In the absence of written records from deep human history, paleohistorians have only the archaeological record to establish the spread of humanity across time and space, and there are known gaps in our knowledge of human expansion. Some of those gaps in the historical record occurred around the time that the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets retreated and allowed human colonization of North America.

GRAKLIANI, Georgia—Sophia Paatashvili, a third-year graduate student in archaeology at Ivane Javakashvili Tbilisi State University, was excavating an ancient temple at an Iron Age site called Grakliani last month when she noticed something strange: a series of marks carved into a stone slab just below the temple’s collapsed altar.

Scientists have been illuminating the vital role played by the Arabian Peninsula in humankind's exodus from Africa. Far from being a desert, the region was once covered by lush vegetation and criss-crossed by rivers, providing rich hunting grounds for our ancestors.

The remains of 16 pyramids with tombs underneath have been discovered in a cemetery near the ancient town of Gematon in Sudan. They date back around 2,000 years, to a time when a kingdom called "Kush" flourished in Sudan. Pyramid building was popular among the Kushites. They built them until their kingdom collapsed in the fourth century AD.

Here's a breathtaking finding: Scientists say they’ve discovered an ancient vestigial lung in the coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish that’s related to the ancient swimmer that went on to evolve into all tetrapods, humans included. The find, described in the journal Nature Communications, helps to fill in some gaps in this mysterious lineage in the fishy family tree, and sheds light on how such fish might have looked around 410 million years ago.

Researchers reveal that, under certain circumstances, the process of evolution can be highly predictable, especially when there are limited solutions to a particular problem, such as resistance to dangerous toxins This new study found that resistance to heart-stopping cardiac glycoside toxins produced by some plants and animals for defensive purposes has independently converged across several lineages of insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, after following a highly predictable evolutionary pathway.

Monique Udell, a researcher with Oregon State University, has found via experimentation, that domestic dogs appear to have lost some of their problem solving abilities as a result of their long history with humans. In her paper published in the journal Biology Letters, she describes a study she carried out and offers some theories on why she believe domesticated dogs may have lost some of their natural skills.

Neuroscientists have used ultrasound to stimulate individual brain cells in a worm, and hope that the technique — which they call ‘sonogenetics’ — might be adapted to switch on neurons in mice and larger animals. Related: How video games can change your brain

"Chess, after all, is special; it requires creativity and advanced reasoning. No computer could match humans at chess." That was a likely argument before IBM surprised the world about computers playing chess. In 1997, Deep Blue's entry won the World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov.

As with so many things, “The Jetsons” has proven prescient yet again. A proposal from the London architecture firm NBBJ suggests rethinking the city’s underground subway system entirely — replacing the trains with a system of moving sidewalks.

French 3D-printing company Fabulous has brought together a team of scientists and architects to imagine a bubble-shaped habitat for Mars that can be printed on the red planet. The Sfero house features an internal and external dome, with a protective pocket of water between the two.

Astronaut pioneers on the moon and Mars might live and work in cozy homes that build themselves. That's the vision of the Self-deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) project, which is developing domiciles that could be useful both here on Earth and on alien worlds such as Mars.

It could bring samples from Mars to Earth for the first time. Nasa employees have revealed details of a 'budget' plan to send a SpaceX capsule to the red planet in 2020 to return samples.

The apocalypse is still on, apparently — at least in a galaxy about 3.5 billion light-years from here. Last winter a team of Caltech astronomers reported that a pair of supermassive black holes appeared to be spiraling together toward a cataclysmic collision that could bring down the curtains in that galaxy.

Lightning is beautiful and sprites delightful, but pulsating blue jets are even more fascinating when zapping out the top of an epic storm. Astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured the first-ever video of blue jets as seen from the International Space Station.

Astronomers have discovered large discs of dust around two nearby red dwarf stars that could point to the birth of a new solar system. The discovery, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society challenges existing ideas about how planets are formed.

In case we forget, NASA's graphic reminds us: "Your feces will not be shooting stars." To mark the halfway point of the organization's "Year in Space" mission, NASA released some incredible facts and figures about what American astronaut Scott Kelly is going through during his 342 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

If there are superadvanced civilizations out there in the nearby universe, they’re hiding themselves pretty well. So concludes an astronomer in the Netherlands who looked at a sample of galaxies that shine unusually brightly at midinfrared wavelengths—a sign that they may harbor a so-called Kardashev type III civilization, one that has the technology to harvest energy from stars across an entire galaxy.

Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time. In a research paper published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers describe surprising findings in their observations of the parent star, which is called HD 100546.

A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA's Cassini mission. Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present.

By analyzing data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have found that, on average, Mercury spins on its axis 9 seconds faster than had previously been anticipated. “Before the MESSENGER mission, we had insufficient information about Mercury, despite the three flybys of Mariner 10 spacecraft and measurements from Earth,” said Dr Alexander Stark from the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Planetary Research, lead author of a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The quest for potentially habitable planets is often interpreted as the search for an Earth twin. And yet, some rocky planets outside our Solar System may in fact be more promising candidates for further research. Scientists from KU Leuven, Belgium, have run 165 climate simulations for exoplanets that permanently face their 'sun' with the same side. They discovered that two of the three possible climates are potentially habitable.

Earth's gravity has influenced the orientation of thousands of faults that form in the lunar surface as the moon shrinks, according to new results from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. In August, 2010, researchers using images from LRO's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) reported the discovery of 14 cliffs known as "lobate scarps" on the moon's surface, in addition to about 70 previously known from the limited high-resolution Apollo Panoramic Camera photographs. Due largely to their random distribution across the surface, the science team concluded that the moon is shrinking.

Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny roundworm, spends much of its lifetime searching for soil bacteria to eat. This humble creature possesses 302 neurons, which may not seem like a lot compared to the billions of nerve cells that make up the human brain. Nonetheless, it uses sophisticated strategies to reach nutritionally promising places.

In a move that will make life better, longer and quieter for whales, dolphins, oarfish and other underwater creatures, the U.S. Navy has finally agreed to restrict its usage of sonar, particularly around naval bases in California and Hawaii. The settlement is the result of actions brought against the Navy by the environmental groups Earthjustice, Greenpeace and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who alleged that sonar and underwater explosions affect migration patterns, feeding locations, breeding and the ability of marine animals to hear and communicate.

Which way? Neonicotinoid pesticides can disrupt bee navigation (Image: Zhang Bo/Getty) A worldwide dispute over the threat to bees posed by the class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, took a dramatic new turn last week, when a US court overturned federal approval for a new formulation called sulfoxaflor. Judges found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had relied on “flawed and limited” data, and its green light was unjustified given the “precariousness of bee populations”.

Around the world, from Alaska to Indonesia, more than 200 ancient myths tell of a human civilisation brought to an end by flood and fire. Compelling scientific evidence, which began to emerge only in 2007, indicates that these stories, such as the tale of Noah and his Ark, are based on hard fact. A cataclysm rocked our planet 12,800 years ago, causing mass extinctions of large animals such as the mammoth and sloth bears, and all but wiping out our own race. An entire episode in the human story was rubbed out, a chapter not of unsophisticated hunter-gatherers but of advanced technology. Get your copy of Magicians of the Gods, by Graham Hancock: Pre-order from Amazon.com Buy now from Amazon.co.uk

Around one million years ago, early humans were skilful at using the landscape features of the Kenyan Rift to ambush and kill their prey, according to new research published in Scientific Reports. The area was a popular grazing site for larger animals (e.g., giant gelada baboons, elephants, hippopotami and the spotted hyenas) due to its locally high nutrient levels and the presence of an ancient freshwater lake, together with the relative lack of dangerous predators, such as lions.

A team of researchers in the U.S. has found that our early human ancestors expanded their diet to include savannah grasses and other food sources approximately a quarter of a million years earlier than had been previously thought. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team explains how they tested a variety of fossilized teeth, what they found and the impact the change in diet likely had on the ability of our ancestors to thrive.

When an old beech tree toppled over during winter storms in Ireland this year, a skeletal surprise was hiding in the gigantic mass of roots pulled from the ground: the remains of a medieval boy. The 215-year-old tree was uprooted in May in Collooney, a town in the county of Sligo, on the northwest coast of Ireland.

In the summer of 430 B.C., a mass outbreak of disease hit the city of Athens, ravaging the city’s population over the next five years. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, the historian Thucydides, who witnessed the epidemic, described victims’ “violent heats in the head,” “redness and inflammation in the eyes,” and tongues and throats “becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.” Patients would experience hot flashes so extreme, he wrote, that they “could not bear to have on [them] clothing or linen even of the very lightest description.” In the later stages of infection, the disease would end with “violent ulceration” and diarrhea that left most too weak to survive.

In 1900 Greek sponge divers located the wreck of an ancient Greek ship near Antikythera Island, which is thought to have sunk over 2000 years ago. They salvaged a large number of treasures from the wreck, including hundreds of bronze and marble statues, and more famously, the remains of a mysterious device that has become known as the 'Antikythera Mechanism'. This advanced clockwork machine turned out be "a complex mechanical 'computer' which tracked astronomical phenomena and the cycles of the Solar System."

In 2010, scientists discovered a new kind of human by sequencing DNA from a girl’s pinky finger found in Denisova Cave in Siberia. Ever since, researchers have wondered when the girl lived, and if her people, called Denisovans, lingered in the cave or just passed through. But the elusive Denisovans left almost no fossil record—only that bit of bone and a handful of teeth—and they came from a site that was notoriously difficult to date. Related: Mexican cave paintings restored

An English historian has come across the word ‘f***’ in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word. Dr Paul Booth of Keele University spotted the name in ‘Roger Fuckebythenavele’ in the Chester county court plea rolls beginning on December 8, 1310. The man was being named three times part of a process to be outlawed, with the final mention coming on September 28, 1311.

Cambridge University Library recently added selections from its Chinese collections to its Digital Library site. Among the ancient oracle bones used as a method of divination, a 19th-century “Manual of Famine Relief,” and a 14th-century mulberry paper banknote threatening decapitation for any forgery, is the 17th-century Manual of Calligraphy and Painting (Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu). The book is so fragile that until digitization no one was allowed to open it.

The oldest Egyptian leather manuscript has been found in the shelves of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for more than 70 years. Dating from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom (2300-2000 B.C.), the roll measures about 2.5 meters(8.2 feet) and is filled with texts and colorful drawings of the finest quality.

They are one of our closest human relatives and dominated Europe and much of Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, but Neanderthals may be far older than previously thought. A new study by geneticists has revealed a collection of fossilised bones discovered in a cave in northern Spain belonged to an early member of the Neanderthal family. It is the oldest partial genome from early human fossils ever to be sequenced and pushes back the date for the origins of the Neanderthal branch of our evolutionary tree by up to 300,000 years.

The 4,000-year-old Hittite cuisine was cooked in Alacahöyük, an important Neolithic settlement and Turkey's first nationally excavated area. Aykut Ç?naro?lu, the head of the excavations and professor of archaeology at Ankara University, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Chef Ömür Akkor, an excavation team member, prepared a special Hittite menu in light of the available archaeological findings. "We conducted research on kitchen culture, food and bread of Anatolian-Hittite cuisine dating back 4,000 years," he said. Akkor added that the food was cooked by imitating the period's conditions. "

What do tomorrow’s dinners look like, and how will you adjust? Our special feature sheds light on a world of algae, cowless beef, insect lollies and even an mouthwatering recipe for jellyfish salad... With numbers booming in UK waters, jellyfish could become an attractive addition to our cuisine – edible species are already tucked into in other parts of the world, including China.

A new advanced robotic hand that is wired directly into the brain has been successfully tested, allowing paralysed man to “feel”. The hand, developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins university, is part of a research project into advanced replacement limbs funded by the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

The science of brain-machine interface, or BMI, has made enormous leaps in the last few decades. For patients with significant motor impairments, BMI tech allows the use of artificial limbs by way of electrodes connected to the brain. With training, patients can move and control their arms or legs again, literally by thinking about it.

Have you ever touched a loved one’s arm and marveled at the softness of his or her skin? Turns out it’s probably all in your head, a new study shows. Researchers from the University College London found that people rated others’ skin as softer than theirs, regardless of whether it actually was.

Humans are extremely choosy when it comes to mating, only settling down after a long screening process involving nervous flirtations, awkward dates, humiliating rejections and the occasional lucky strike. But evolution is an unforgiving force -- isn't this choosiness rather a costly waste of time and energy when we should just be 'going forth and multiplying?' What, if anything, is the evolutionary point of it all? A new study may have the answer.

We think of psychological disorders like anxiety and depression as uniquely human problems, but many other species could be suffering from them too We have tended to think of psychological illnesses as a uniquely human trait. But that may be wrong. There is growing evidence that many animals can suffer from mental health disorders similar to those seen in humans. These unfortunate animals could help us understand how and why humans become mentally ill, and why these debilitating disorders ever evolved at all.

Dolphins have long been considered to be intelligent, but scientists are only now starting to unravel the true complexity of their brains and behaviour. In many ways they behave like humans - they form social groups and cliques, they have previously been taught to recognise 'alphabets' of symbols and many have even attempted to befriend us. Now, a book discusses how this high level of intelligence could stem from the mammals having what's known as a collective consciousness, with the author claiming they 'may know something that we don't'.

With bows, arrows, GPS trackers and camera traps, an indigenous community in northern Brazil is fighting to achieve what the government has long failed to do: halt illegal logging in their corner of the Amazon. The Ka’apor – a tribe of about 2,200 people in Maranhão state – have organised a militia of “forest guardians” who follow a strategy of nature conservation through aggressive confrontation.

California’s aquifers are shrinking as more growers pump groundwater to keep crops alive. But that fertile farmland may also provide the means for replenishing groundwater to benefit everyone in the drought-stricken state. UC Davis researchers are encouraged by early results from tests to see if deliberately flooding farmland in winter can replenish aquifers without harming crops or affecting drinking water.

Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. Related: Millions of plastic particles exist in cosmetic products

An isolated, iron-rich bay in the heart of East Africa is offering scientists a rare glimpse back into Earth's primitive marine environment, and supports theories that tiny microbes created some of the world's largest ore deposits billions of years ago.

The world's longest chain of continental volcanoes has been discovered stretching for more than 2,000 kilometres along eastern Australia. Related: First digital geological map of the world’s ocean floor Related: CT scan of Earth links deep mantle plumes with volcanic hotspots

Tides flowing in a subsurface ocean of molten rock, or magma, could explain why Jupiter's moon Io appears to have its volcanoes in the 'wrong' place. New NASA research implies that oceans beneath the crusts of tidally stressed moons may be more common and last longer than expected.

Quakes deep inside the moon have been unearthed in seismic data recorded during the Apollo 16 mission. The algorithm behind the find could help NASA’s next Mars mission study similar quakes on the Red Planet. We have known that the moon shakes since shortly after Neil Armstrong’s first step.

Lewis Datrnelll, a UK Space Agency research Fellow, believes early microscopic forms of life may well have formed on Mars billions of years ago, but a major environmental event later made the Red Planet completely inhospitable even to the single-celled organisms that may have formed. Related: The Mars Mystery, by Graham Hancock

Mixing a brew of biblical prophecies, the Hebrew calendar, a volatile economy, world politics, a reported near-death experience and astronomical occurrences, hordes of Utahns have become convinced that calamitous events are imminent — maybe by month's end — and are taking every precaution.

In the Swedish county of Jämtland, two large craters mark the site of a rare event: a double meteorite impact. The larger crater of the pair, a few miles south of the city of Östersund, is about 4.7 miles wide. A few miles away lies a smaller crater, nearly half a mile wide. The two craters are the first proven site of a double impact that researchers have identified so far.

In a remarkable technical feat, researchers have sequenced DNA from fossils in Spain that are about 300,000 to 400,000 years old and have found an ancestor—or close relative—of Neandertals. The nuclear DNA, which is the oldest ever sequenced from a member of the human family, may push back the date for the origins of the distinct ancestors of Neandertals and modern humans, according to a presentation here yesterday at the fifth annual meeting of the European Society for the study of human evolution.

An ancient aqueduct system, which has been part of a historical castle, has been uncovered in Borujerd in Lorestan Province during construction work. An official with Lorestan Provincial Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization has said that the ancient water transfer installations were discovered during the excavations. Hojjat Yar-Mohammadi further said that pottery crocks were used in this system to clean up and purify water.

Archaeologists working near Redmond Town Center have unearthed stone tools crafted at least 10,000 years ago by some of the region’s earliest inhabitants. The project started off as nothing special — just a standard archaeological survey to clear the way for construction.

Underwater archaeological work carried out by Konya Selçuk University (SU) in the southern province of Mersin’s Silifke district has unearthed a 5,000-year-old sea route. The SU Underwater Research Center’s Selçuk-1 Scientific Research Vessel observed the coasts of Mersin, located in the eastern Mediterranean, where traces of the world’s first maritime route and earliest harbors were found.

Social media users have become accustomed to growing their personal networks on Facebook, but one paleoanthropologist used the social network to help expand the entire human race's family tree. Berger’s ad called for someone experienced in paleontology or archaeology, unafraid of cramped places, and willing to drop everything and fly to South Africa within the month, The Atlantic reports. “The catch is this – the person must be skinny and preferably small,” he wrote. “They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience, climbing experience would be a bonus.” Related: Homo naledi: Unanswered questions about the newest human species

Russian archaeologists also found signs of human activity where the mummified dog was discovered in Siberia, suggesting it had been tamed by early man. Scientists believe it is the sibling of a similar dog carcass - a three-month-old female - found in 2011 in the area, the Ust-Yansky district of the Sakha Republic on a steep bank of River Syalakh.

The world's oldest fossil sea turtle known to date has been found by scientists. The fossilized reptile is at least 120 million years old -- which makes it about 25 million years older than the previously known oldest specimen. The almost completely preserved skeleton from the Cretaceous, with a length of nearly 2 meters, shows all of the characteristic traits of modern marine turtles.

A famous fossil of an early primate shares more in common with modern lemurs based on how its teeth erupted, according to new model developed at U of T Scarborough.

At some point back in deep time, a group of fish were washed into a limestone cave somewhere in northeastern Mexico. With no way out and little more than bat droppings to eat, the fish began to adapt to their new troglodytic lifestyle. Unable to see other members of their group in the dark, they lost their colourful pigmentation. Then they lost their eyesight, their eyes gradually got smaller, and then disappeared altogether.

It's a frog-eat-frog world out there. While it may seem like frogs are insectivores (a long tongue snatching a fly comes to mind), these amphibians are actually "generalist" carnivores. They will eat just about any small critter they can swallow, including other frogs, according to a new study.

Leafcutter ants in the rainforests of South America beat us to the invention of farming by some 50 million years. Now it seems that their fungus crop has undergone the same genetic changes as human crops. As people selectively bred new crop plants, they often inadvertently made changes to their genomes. Wheat, bananas, tobacco and strawberries are all polyploid – meaning they have three or more copies of each chromosome rather than the usual two.

They don’t use microphones or seranade like Don Quixote. But scientists have known for a long time that male mice belt out something like love songs to females when the time seems right to them. What they didn’t know, until a University of Delaware researcher developed a sophisticated array of microphones and a sound analysis chamber, was that female mice were singing back.

A study of aggression in monk parakeets suggests that where they stand in the pecking order is a function of the bird's carefully calibrated perceptions of the rank of their fellow-feathered friends.

Pointing and pantomime are important components of human communication but so far evidence for referential communication in animals is limited. Observations made by researchers Pamela Heidi Douglas and Liza Moscovice of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, make important contributions to this research topic: To solve social conflicts female bonobos invite other females to engage in a socio-sexual behaviour by using pointing gestures and mimicking hip swings.

Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero grabbed the world’s attention this past winter when he announced his plans to perform the first human head transplant. Many doubted that such an outrageous procedure would ever see the light of day. Now, Canavero has a date on the books.

Jeanne Calment, the French doyenne believed to be oldest person in the world when she died at the extreme age of 122, was known for three things: her quick wit, her fondness for bicycling around the small city where she grew up -- and the fact that she was a daily smoker.

As we grow older, we lose strength and muscle mass. However, the cause of age-related muscle weakness and atrophy has remained a mystery. Scientists at the University of Iowa have discovered the first example of a protein that causes muscle weakness and loss during aging. The protein, ATF4, is a transcription factor that alters gene expression in skeletal muscle, causing reduction of muscle protein synthesis, strength, and mass.

Women who get migraines have different levels of certain fats in their blood than women who don't get these headaches, a small new study suggests. If confirmed, the new findings could lead to a blood test that could diagnose patients with migraines, the researchers said.

“Feeling blue” might be more than just a metaphor. Indeed, how we feel about the world can play a huge role in how we see it, according to a study in the journal Psychological Science. Feeling sad can keep us from seeing in certain colours, as though we live in Dorothy’s Kansas. But a good mood can bring those colours back into the world, just like a tornado trip to Oz.

Human intelligence and knowledge depends on how we collect and use sharable resources, according to scientists from The University of Manchester. Marco Smolla and Dr Susanne Shultz say in contrast with humans, the impact of competition means it is often costly for animals to learn from, or share information with others.

Homophobic attitudes may say a lot about the person who holds them, new research suggests. A new study of university students in Italy revealed that people who have strongly negative views of gay people also have higher levels of psychoticism and inappropriate coping mechanisms than those who are accepting of homosexuality.

American scientist, Dave Whitlock, thinks showering every day is a pointless practice. “No one did clinical trials on people taking showers every day,” he said. “I have not taken a shower in 12 years.”

There don’t appear to be any official records of a UFO ever shutting down a major airport in the U.S. In China on the other hand, it’s happened three times in five years. Are Chinese air traffic controllers more respectful of UFO airspace … or more fearful? Related: Alien Abductions: Skeptics, Debunkers, and the Facts at Hand Related: UFO Follows Boy Home and He Has Video to Prove It Related: 'It's time to get the truth out there': UFO aficionado’s documentary claims to have more than 2000 eerie pictures of extra-terrestrial activity in Australia

A network of UK researchers has decided to compose a message to aliens - but they are divided over whether such a message should be sent into space. The group will enter the Breakthrough Message contest, which offers a $1m prize for creating a digital missive that represents human civilisation.

Tides flowing in a subsurface ocean of molten rock, or magma, could explain why Jupiter's moon Io appears to have its volcanoes in the "wrong" place. New NASA research implies that oceans beneath the crusts of tidally stressed moons may be more common and last longer than expected. The phenomenon applies to oceans made from either magma or water, potentially increasing the odds for life elsewhere in the universe.

Pluto baffled scientists, again. New high-res photos of the dwarf planet show a terrain that NASA scientists didn't expect to find. Possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows, mountainous regions, plains and networked valleys show a surprisingly diverse geological history — the complexity resembles Mars surface, NASA said.