Newsdesk Archive

Put it in the category of invisible but vital: The magnetic field that envelops the Earth shields life from harmful ions spat out by the sun. Although unseen, it’s not undetectable (try a compass); auroras displayed when geomagnetic storms hit the polar regions hint at its presence. Our magnetic field has protected us for eons, its existence recorded in minute crystals hidden in ancient rocks.

A Canadian PhD student has discovered a unique object – two massive stars with magnetic fields in a binary system. Matt Shultz of Queen's University, Ontario, Canada found the system – Epsilon Lupi – and will publish the new result in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The brightest spots on the dwarf planet Ceres gleam with mystery in new views delivered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. These closest-yet views of Occator crater, with a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, give scientists a deeper perspective on these very unusual features.

Researchers in the US have invented small, sponge-like implant that can detect and trap circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream. Breaking off from the primary tumour to grow elsewhere in the body, such as in the bones, liver, or lungs, CTCs can be difficult to detect until a new tumour has formed, with some patients displaying no symptoms at all until it's too late.

Research involving genetic modification of human embryos, though controversial, is essential to gain basic understanding of the biology of early embryos and should be permitted, an international group of experts said on Wednesday. The statement was issued by members of the so-called Hinxton Group, a global network of stem cell researchers, bioethicists and policy experts who met in the UK last week.

The scientific world was astonished when, in 2011, Chinese researchers claimed to have found evidence suggesting that minute fragments of plant genetic material - so-called microRNA molecules - of rice ingested from food could play a role in regulating physiological processes in the human body.

Pregnant male seahorses tend to develop embryos similarly to the way mammals do, new research shows. In the new study, scientists found a suite of genes that are "turned on" in the pouches of seahorses to keep the baby healthy and growing. Similar gene activity has been found in the wombs of mammals and even reptiles.

EU lawmakers backed calls Tuesday to tighten up a proposed ban on cloning animals for food so as to ensure they never find a place on European farms. The European Commission is ready to ban animal cloning in the 28-nation bloc but MEPs said it had to go further to halt all imports and the use of cloned products to ease public concerns about food safety.

It's nice to know that the great man we celebrate in this special issue had a warm sense of humor. For example, in 1943 Albert Einstein received a letter from a junior high school student who mentioned that her math class was challenging. He wrote back, “Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater.”

In a deception that likely has evolved over thousands of years, a caterpillar that feeds on corn leaves induces the plant to turn off its defenses against insect predators, allowing the caterpillar to eat more and grow faster, according to chemical ecologists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

A United States appeals court ruled on Thursday that federal regulators erred in allowing an insecticide developed by Dow AgroSciences onto the market, canceling its approval and giving environmentalists a major victory.

Researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt have unveiled a cost-effective desalination technology which can filter highly salty water in minutes. The technology is based on membranes containing cellulose acetate powder, produced in Egypt. The powder, in combination with other components, binds the salt particles as they pass through, making the technique useful for desalinating seawater.

New work demonstrates that the planet's remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 50- or 60-meter (160 to 200 foot) rise in sea level. Because so many major cities are at or near sea level, this would put many highly populated areas where more than a billion people live under water, including New York City and Washington, D.C.

The Tarim basin in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, which covers about 350,000 square miles, is one of the driest places you could imagine. Surrounded by mountains that block the passage of moist air from the ocean, it doesn’t get much rainfall — less than 4 inches annually. And the shallow, silt-laden Tarim river doesn’t provide much water, either.

A giant slab of ice as big as California and Texas combined lurks just beneath the surface of Mars between its equator and north pole, researchers say. This ice may be the result of snowfall tens of millions of years ago on Mars, scientists added.

Under one terraforming scenario that Elon Musk explained to Colbert a few night ago, the process of making Earth 2.0 starts with the apocalyptic nuclear bombardment of the Martian poles. Once you’ve basically converted much of the dry ice to vapor after 500 to 800 mushroom clouds finally dissipate, the hot steam could, in theory, start the runaway feedback loop that would puff up the atmosphere and trap enough sunlight to raise the planet’s average temperature to a toasty 15° C or 60° F, although there will be so much fallout that the plants needed to convert much of that to oxygen and nitrogen would have to wait at least a few centuries. And that’s the downside of this plan, really. It is a cheaper, easier way to start terraforming, but over the long term it would really slow things down.

UK researchers have identified a mutant plant that is able to thrive on soil contaminated with high concentrations of the explosive TNT. The finding opens the way to cleaning up the vast swathes of land throughout the world – principally military firing ranges—polluted with the highly toxic and persistent compound. In addition the team has pinpointed the mechanism by which TNT exerts its toxicity in plants, and say this could lead to the development of new herbicides.

Elon Musk is clearly in the 2016 race for Supervillain of the Universe, because on the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert," he suggested there were two ways to make Mars hospitable for humans. There's a slow way and a fast way, and both, said Musk, involve warming the planet.

China’s increasingly ambitious space programme plans to attempt the first-ever landing of a lunar probe on the moon’s far side, a leading engineer said. The Chang’e 4 mission is planned for sometime before 2020, Zou Yongliao, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ moon exploration department, told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Prions are the misshapen proteins that replicate by inducing normal proteins to misfold and aggregate in the brain, leading to rare diseases such as mad cow and kuru. In recent years, scientists have discovered that similar processes of protein misfolding are at work in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Now, a study in Nature reveals the first evidence for human-to-human transmission of the misfolded proteins that underlie the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease.

If you're about to dive into a piece of work that requires intense mental focus, you might find it helps to sit next to someone else who is concentrating hard. According to an ingenious new study published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, mental exertion is contagious: if a person near you is straining their synapses in mental effort, their mindset will automatically intensify your own concentration levels.

Increasing consideration is being given to 3,4-Methylene-dioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “ecstasy”) as a possible treatment approach for depression. In a review of current literature published in Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, authors Rachel Patel of Green Templeton College and Daniel Titheradge of St Hugh’s College discuss the pros and cons of treating depression with MDMA, noting that clinical trials already in place examining the utility of treating PTSD with MDMA have contributed to an interest in examining how MDMA may be used to treat depression. Related: Antidepressant causes different brain changes in depressed and non-depressed individuals

New research on the use of psychedelic drugs as treatment for a range of mental disorders appears to be throwing open doors of perception long closed within the medical community, says a new analysis in the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal. For several decades, the North American medical establishment has classified psychedelic drugs -- including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) -- as drugs of abuse with little to no medical purpose or means of safe use. That, four researchers argue, is changing.

Negative emotions have been linked to poor health outcomes, such as heart disease and even a shorter life span. Research suggests inflammation may be responsible for this link, at least in part. The molecules involved in inflammation are essential for our body's response to infection and injury, but high levels over the long term have been linked to everything from diabetes to depression.

Forcing staff to start work before 10am is tantamount to torture and is making employees ill, exhausted and stressed, an Oxford University academic has claimed. Before the age of 55, the circadian rhythms of adults are completely out of sync with normal 9-to-5 working hours, which poses a "serious threat" to performance, mood and mental health. Related: Sleep scientists' wake-up call for later school starts

Times are changing for the cannabis cousins. States are legalizing marijuana, and the U.S. is easing its ban on growing hemp. Will a hemp boom follow? The Declaration of Independence was drafted on paper made from it. Henry Ford built car parts with it. George Washington grew it. Now, as more farmers are allowed to harvest this multi-purpose plant, hemp might see a new heyday—in homes.

Archaeologists have discovered a 6th-century B.C. residence under a palazzo in central Rome, saying that it proves the ancient city was much bigger than previously thought. Officials said Wednesday that the area on the Quirinale Hill had long been thought to have only been used as a necropolis, with ancient Rome's residential zone further south and centered around the Roman Forum.

CROATOAN. The word was found written on a fencepost in the lost colony of Roanoke, and it still intrigues us after 425 years. But this 16th century settlement is more than a legend. It’s also the subject of archaeological and historical investigations that are now starting to yield answers.

Archeologists working in Turkey’s eastern province of Van have uncovered 2,800-year-old pithos, or large ceramic storage containers, that once contained grain, oil and wine in the ruins of Çavu?tepe Castle built by Urartu King Sarduri II.

When the National Geographic Society awarded its first archaeology grant to Hiram Bingham in 1912, the archaeologist headed off to Machu Picchu with one of the most advanced pieces of technology at the time: a Kodak panoramic camera. More than a hundred years later, archaeologists have a staggering array of technological tools to employ, from remote-sensing equipment that allows us to “see” beyond the visual bandwidth to computers so powerful that they can process in a second what it would take humans thousands of years to do. 1. Discovering previously unknown cities—or even civilizations—in Central and South America

As impressive as Stonehenge is, newly discovered stones at a site just two miles away may put it to shame in size, scope and purpose. The site is the Durrington Walls and new evidence suggests that it once had at least 90 stones standing in a straight line. Many of them are buried on their sides just feet below the surface and they may have been knocked over on purpose.

Experts have reconstructed the face of an ancient Egyptian priest using cutting edge forensic techniques. The mummy, called Kent, lived during the XVIII Dynasty and may have witnessed the reigns of Tutankhamen or Nefertiti. A CT scan of the mummy revealed that the man was around aged around 50 years when he died.

Ever since Darwin, the researchers who study human evolution have been preoccupied with the characteristics that set humans apart from the other great apes: our large brains, bipedalism, hunting, abstract thought, and the use of technology.

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star cave: lots and lots of old bones. Alt: Homo naledi: New species of human discovered after ancient skeletons unearthed in South Africa

Scientists say they will reanimate a 30,000-year-old giant virus unearthed in the frozen wastelands of Siberia, and have warned climate change in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions could awaken dangerous microscopic pathogens thought to be eradicated. Alt: Scientists to reanimate 30,000-year-old 'giant virus' found in Siberia

Culture on edge of Siberia was 'as advanced' as in Middle East, then considered to be the apex of development. The disclosure this week on the precise fixing of age of the ancient wooden carved statue known as the Shigir Idol is seen as groundbreaking to our understanding of the pre-historic world. As first revealed by The Siberian Times, the haunting monument is 11,000 years old, according to leading German scientists.

Excavations that have been continuing in Alacahöyük, one of the centers of Hittite civilization and considered Turkey’s first “national excavation field,” have unearthed nearly 3,700-year-old hair ties and jewelry made of animal horns.

Evidence of rickets – a disease of the urban poor during the Industrial Revolution – has been found in the remains of a woman who lived on a Hebridean island more than 5,000 years ago.

A team of researchers from several institutions in Europe and Peru has found evidence of an ancient ziphiid (toothed beaked whale) that unlike its modern ancestors, hunted near the surface of the sea. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their study of the whale fossil found in a dolomite concretion beneath the sea bed off the coast of Peru last year.

A sperm whale’s “click” is the loudest sound produced by any animal – and it has an identifying dialect. In fact, according to a study published in Nature Communications, the whales aren’t born with different vocal chords or a bit of the sea particularly suited to a certain kind of click. They simply acquire their dialects from one another in the same way you or I might have taken on our parents' accent – by copying what they hear.

Why, despite our frequent cruelty to them, do dolphins seem to actively seek out encounters with humans? Are they trying to tell us something? Do they think we have something in common? In her new book, Susan Casey explains all You'll have heard of Fungie, a male bottlenose who has forsaken the open sea to live inside the harbour mouth of Dingle in Ireland, a placid, shallowish inlet bordered by low verdant hills that are speckled with sheep. According to local legend, he has been swimming around in this area, not much bigger than a few city blocks, since October 1983.

NEW ORLEANS -- Captain Erik Rue of Calcasieu Charter Service first spotted the mysterious pink dolphin they affectionately call, "Pinky" in 2007 out while fishing on his boat with his company Calcasieu Charter Service.

Unusual precipitation doesn't just belong in myth and legend, and it's more common than you might think Earlier this year, a milky white rain coated cars, windows and people in parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The precipitation wasn’t dangerous, but it was a bit of a mystery.

New fossil evidence proves that turtles share a recent common ancestor with birds and crocodiles. The discovery may settle a longstanding argument about the origins of turtles, scientists say. At issue is the evolution of the turtle’s skull.

Its last meal wasn't pleasant. A mouse tail was lodged in its throat when it died. Semi-digested flesh and fur still remained in its stomach when it was wrapped in mummy bandages.

A dusty, windy desert in extreme northwestern Peru was once a grassland, replete with hundreds of songbirds. But this grassland, which may have been dotted with seasonal dry forests, was also a trap. The findings, published today (Sept. 9) in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances, hint at a landscape that was far more diverse than the one that exists there today.

On 17 September, a catamaran will set off into the Pacific Ocean on a week-long cruise back to the Pleistocene. Laden with sonar instruments, the research vessel Shearwater will probe the ocean bottom to find places that were beaches and dry land more than 13,000 years ago, when the sea level was around 100 metres lower. The researchers are hunting for evidence that ancient people lived along this now-sunken coastline as they colonized the New World.

The remains of a baby woolly rhinoceros found in Yakutia, Russia last year have now been dated to 34,000 years ago. Initial reports had indicated the 18-month-old was at least 10,000 years old, based upon the fact that that is about when the species went extinct, but subsequent testing has provided a better estimate, and an extra 24,000 years.

As the climate changes, history is emerging from the glaciers where it was preserved. But glaciers aren’t the only previously-frozen forms giving up their artifacts — even smaller ice patches contain discoveries. For Wyofile, Kelsey Dayton reports that in Yellowstone National Park, archeologists are racing to collect the emerging ice-encased trees, the bodies of animals and the ancient tools, spears and utensils that have been preserved high in the Rocky Mountains.

Stimulating drinks made from exotic plants, like the cocoa tree and a type of southern holly, were consumed much more widely across the prehistoric Southwest than was thought, according to new research. A recent study — the largest of its kind ever conducted — analyzed nearly 200 samples of pottery from Southwestern archaeological sites, ranging from Colorado to Chihuahua and spanning 650 years of human occupation.

A stash of 1,900-year-old Egyptian mummy paintings that sat mostly undisturbed for 100 years is helping researchers understand how ancient artists used a fashionable pigment called Egyptian blue. Researchers previously thought that ancient painters reserved Egyptian blue for eminent occasions because, as the first man-made blue pigment, it took effort to make it. But in an analysis of 15 paintings, scientists found five contained the pigment.

Little did Fred Flintstone on the coast of the Barents Sea know about his rock carvings potential trouble-making for a multi-billion oil terminal 7,000 years later in history. “For most archaeologist, this is not a once in a life-time discovery, it is a never in life-time discovery,” says Anja Roth Niemi when trying to explain the scoop of the discovery on the shores just outside Kirkenes in northern Norway.

If you find yourself along the Atlantic coastal border between Spain and France, here are some phrases that might come in handy: Urte askotarako! (“Pleased to meet you!”), Eskerrik asko! (“Thank you!”), and Non daude komunak? (“Where is the toilet?”). Welcome to Basque Country, where many people speak a musical language that has no known relationship to any other tongue.

Imagine the Big Bang in your mind. You're picturing galaxies hurtling past in all directions, like so much star shrapnel from a celestial pinata. I stole this cool expanding toy from my son. It'll help me explain what's going on. Here it is, closed up. That's the singularity. And then, Big Bang, and the universe expanded, getting bigger and bigger until it reached its current size which is not to scale. We know there are galaxies are pulling at each other with their mutual gravity, theoretically slowing each other down.

NASA's upcoming mission to Europa may actually touch down on the potentially life-harboring Jupiter moon. While the main thrust of the Europa mission, which NASA aims to launch by the mid-2020s, involves characterizing the icy satellite from afar during dozens of flybys, the space agency is considering sending a small probe down to the surface as well.

This image shows part of the Nili Fossae plains region, the largest known carbonate-rich deposit on Mars. Located in the northern hemisphere of the red planet, this area contains carbon sequestered from the early Martian atmosphere, when carbon dioxide reacted with surface rocks to form carbonate.

Five billion light years is a distance almost inconceivable, even on a cosmic scale. To better illustrate the extent of this physical quantity, it's enough to say that 35,000 galaxies the size of our Milky Way are needed to cover that distance. Thanks to a surprising discovery made by a Hungarian-U.S. team of astronomers, now we know that a structure this big really exists in the observable universe.

A team of Caltech researchers that has spent years searching for the earliest objects in the universe now reports the detection of what may be the most distant galaxy ever found. In an article published August 28, 2015 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Adi Zitrin, a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Scholar in Astronomy, and Richard Ellis—who recently retired after 15 years on the Caltech faculty and is now a professor of astrophysics at University College, London—describe evidence for a galaxy called EGS8p7 that is more than 13.2 billion years old. The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old.

Trained volunteers are as good as professional astronomers at finding jets shooting from massive black holes and matching them to their host galaxies, according to new research. Scientists working on citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo developed an online tutorial to teach volunteers how to spot black holes and other objects that emit large amounts of energy through radio waves.

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego demonstrated a new wireless communication technique that works by sending magnetic signals through the human body. The new technology could offer a lower power and more secure way to communicate information between wearable electronic devices, providing an improved alternative to existing wireless communication systems, researchers said.

Famed science-fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906–1972) delighted in creating the shortest of short stories. “Answer,” published in 1954, encapsulated a prescient meditation on the future of human-machine relations within a single double-spaced, typewritten page.

Brits are getting into electric cars more and more. Sales jumped up 366% in the first quarter of 2015. Still, when the U.K. government surveyed consumers and businesses, they found the chicken-and-egg problem that haunts EVs elsewhere. Some consumers don't want to buy an electric car without a full infrastructure for charging in place. But the business case for building that infrastructure is weak without more EV drivers on roads.

Conversion of tropical forests to farms is a big driver of wildlife extinctions. But a new study shows that some farming practices have the potential to simultaneously protect natural habitats and boost farm yields

Going on the palaeo diet? Don’t put down your porridge just yet. Hunter-gatherers ate oats as far back as 32,000 years ago – way before farming took root. This is the earliest known human consumption of oats, say Marta Mariotti Lippi at the University of Florence in Italy and her colleagues, who made the discovery after analysing starch grains on an ancient stone grinding tool from southern Italy.

Talk of a maze of underground tunnels beneath the Colonial city of Puebla in Mexico have long been disregarded as mere urban legend. However, city authorities have now confirmed that their existence is no myth. Believed to date back as early as 1531, when the city was founded, the subterranean tunnels are believed to reach up to 10 kilometers in length beneath the historic center of the city.

If you are in a special relationship with another person, thank grandma -- not just yours, but all grandmothers since humans evolved. The grandma hypothesis holds that the key to why moms can have next babies sooner is not because of dad bringing home the bacon but because of grandma helping feed the weaned children, the authors explain.

People would much rather have wind turbines near their house than fracking wells, a survey suggests. Asked if they would prefer a wind turbine erected or a shale gas well drilled near their home, 65% of more than 2,000 people polled favoured the turbine, with just 14% backing the shale gas operation.

In an infamous set of experiments performed in the 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel sat pre-school kids at a table, one by one, and placed a sweet treat – a small marshmallow, a biscuit, or a pretzel – in front of them. Each of the young participants was told that they would be left alone in the room, and that if they could resist the temptation to eat the sweet on the table in front of them, they would be rewarded with more sweets when the experimenter returned.

Gillian Spence plunges her hand into a shallow tray of 10,000 writhing mealworms. She comes up with a handful of the inch-long, beige-colored grubs, which squirm over and between her fingers. Most are destined to become bait for fish or food for reptilian pets. But not all of them. "A lot of orders now are going to restaurants," she says.

Spotted by researchers from Cambodia’s Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, the fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) – a medium-sized wild cat which prefers wetland habitats – has not been recorded in the country since 2003.

An international team of researchers working in a part of Arizona has found evidence of a hummingbird species benefiting by building nests in trees beneath hawk hunting grounds. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team describes the study they carried out and just how much safer the hummingbirds appeared to be when living in close proximity to hawks.

Sometimes evolution just doesn’t have a choice. Reptiles have evolved to resist toad poisons four separate times, and each time they have made precisely the same biochemical changes to do it. What’s more, an even wider range of animals show similar adaptations in response to these toxins, giving us by far the most extensive illustration of so-called convergent evolution to date.

Scientists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have described the world's oldest fossil sea turtle known to date. 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. The study was published today in the scientific journal PaleoBios.

Members of the public are being invited to help hunt for fossils in the Kenyan desert, in an online citizen science initiative called Fossilfinder. Volunteers will sift one million images from the arid Turkana Basin, a key area for fossils of early human ancestors.

The Philistines – one of the so-called Sea Peoples, and mentioned in the Bible and other ancient sources – were a seafaring Indo-European people who appeared in the southern coastal area of modern-day Israel around 1,250 BC, most probably from the Aegean region. They brought to the region not just themselves but also their plants, says a team of archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

DNA from ancient remains seems to have solved the puzzle of one of Europe's most enigmatic people: the Basques. The distinct language and genetic make-up of the Basque people in northern Spain and southern France has puzzled anthropologists for decades.

For centuries, the black obsidian spear points and other Native American artifacts remained near the shore of Clear Lake, where their creators had left or buried them. Then, a few weeks ago, a 41-year-old man dug them up, stashed them in a satchel and carried them away, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said. While the man kept detailed notes on his finds, he was no archaeologist, officials said, but a drifter high on methamphetamine and living in a van.

The so-called Islamic State continues to wreak a human toll in the Middle East. And in addition to that suffering, the militant organization continues its assault on Syria's cultural heritage.

THE character of the ancient Rollright Stones could be under threat if plans to build a car park go ahead. The Rollright Trust, which owns the stone circle near the villages of Great and Little Rollright as well as the nearby Whispering Knights monuments, wants to create a 55-space overflow car park to be used when the lay-by next to the popular site fills up.

There is, it seems, nothing hotter than news that dates back 5,000 years. The announcement that there are up to 90 15ft-high standing stones – admittedly no longer standing – buried at Durrington Walls just northeast of Stonehenge has produced a burst of pre-historical hysteria. “This is archaeology on steroids,” proclaims Vince Gaffney, head of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which has been using scanning techniques to see what lies beneath Salisbury Plain.

Nearly 100 stone monoliths found buried near Stonehenge could be the largest neolithic monument built in Britain, archaeologists believe. The 4,500-year-old stones, some measuring 15ft (4.5m) in length, were discovered under 3ft of earth at Durrington Walls "superhenge". Alt: 'Archaeology on steroids': huge ritual arena discovered near Stonehenge

A piece of red, glossy pottery found in the rugged highlands of Papua New Guinea has been shown to be the oldest-known pottery in New Guinea.

Domestic cats do not generally see their owners as a focus of safety and security in the same way that dogs do, according to new research. Related: Your cats don't care about you as much as you'd like to think

In the latter part of 1870, the area around New Zealand’s Porter’s Creek became the scene for a bizarre series of sightings of a creature that was described as some sort of gorilla-like creature. Related: Another Skunk Ape Spotted in Florida

Tiny, strangely hardy animals called water bears—or tardigrades—have led researchers to discover a new type of glass. The tardigrade’s remarkable ability to withstand extreme environments of hot and cold, and even the vacuum of space inspired Juan de Pablo, professor in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago.

We invariably imagine electronic devices to be made from silicon chips, with which computers store and process information as binary digits (zeros and ones) represented by tiny electrical charges. But it need not be this way: among the alternatives to silicon are organic mediums such as DNA.

We've all done a double take when mistaking a random person on the street for someone we know or know of, like the celebrity look-alikes Will Ferrell and Chad Smith — the actor and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer, respectively.

Over a century ago, the ability to draw was a necessity. No cameras, printers, copiers, or online images - if you wanted to convey information visually, you had to do it yourself.

As it gets harder to tear our eyes away from smartphones, televisions, tablets or computers, concerns are growing over a blue light emitted by their screens, blamed for harming the retina and causing interrupted sleep. Electronics giants are turning crisis into an opportunity—quickly declaring that their latest products feature "safe" screens.

By reading a "signature" based on 150 of a person's genes, researchers can determine the individual's biological age, which may be different from his or her chronological age, according to a new study.

How long will I live? It’s more than just an existential question – think how useful the knowledge would be: we could decide whether to save, stick or blow our savings in one mad rampage. It’s only once we go into noticeable decline that can doctors help with predictions of how long we have left, and even then it’s a notoriously inexact science as they try to apply population data to an individual case.

Researchers from CSIRO and Imperial College London have assessed how widespread the threat of plastic is for the world's seabirds, including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins, and found the majority of seabird species have plastic in their gut.

A mobile phone app that applies a small electric current to the scalp through a headset could soon be used to alleviate sea sickness and other kinds of motion nausea, scientists believe.

You don't name a sea creature after an ancient Greek warship unless it's built like a predator. That's certainly true of the recently discovered Pentecopterus, a giant sea scorpion with the sleek features of a penteconter, one of the first Greek galley ships. A Yale University research team says Pentecopterus lived 467 million years ago and could grow to nearly six feet, with a long head shield, a narrow body, and large, grasping limbs for trapping prey. It is the oldest described eurypterid—a group of aquatic arthropods that are ancestors of modern spiders, lobsters, and ticks.

SAN ANTONIO — The shrine of Texas liberty has become the target of a vandal. A man is accused of using a car key to carve his name inside the Alamo.

Evidence from the tropical lowlands of Central America reveals how Maya activity more than 2,000 years ago not only contributed to the decline of their environment but continues to influence today's environmental conditions, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Legend states that he fought his major battles across Britain, sat at the Round Table and handled the sword Excalibur. But a British academic claims King Arthur was a general rather than a monarch in the fifth or sixth century, who fought his battles in southern Scotland and northern England.

If Persian walnut trees could talk, they might tell of the numerous traders who moved along the Silk Roads' thousands of miles over thousands of years, carrying among their valuable merchandise the seeds that would turn into the mighty walnut forests that are spread across Asia.

Ancient rocks harbored microbial life deep below the seafloor, reports a team of scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Virginia Tech, and the University of Bremen. This new evidence was contained in drilled rock samples of Earth's mantle - thrust by tectonic forces to the seafloor during the Early Cretaceous period. The new study was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.