Newsdesk Archive

One of the enduring mysteries of the human experience is how and why humans moved from hunting and gathering to farming. From their beginnings humans, like other mammals, depended on wild resources for sustenance. Then between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, in a transitional event known as the Neolithic Revolution, they began to create and tend domestic ecosystems in various locations around the world, and agriculture was born.

Growing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are threatening the effectiveness of radiocarbon dating, according to new research. The dating method has been used for decades to accurately determine the age of a wide range of artefacts.

The negative health effects of international air travel are well documented but now it seems that the common elderberry can provide some relief. Associate Professor Evelin Tiralongo and Dr Shirley Wee from Griffith's Menzies Health Institute Queensland (MHIQ) have completed a clinical trial showing that an elderberry supplement can provide some protection from cold and flu-like symptoms following long-haul flights.

Rumors of a supernatural phenomenon circulated among residents of two Indian states, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, over the past few weeks. Residents were baffled by white or light gray marks that have been inexplicably appearing on mortar and pestle and grinding stones, common in Indian homes.

A biological mechanism explaining part of the mystery of acupuncture has been pinpointed by scientists studying rats. Stimulation with electroacupuncture – a form of the therapy in which a small electric current is passed between a pair of needles – blunted activity in a key hormonal pathway linked to stress, chronic pain and mood, the researchers found.

Researchers studying wild banded mongooses in Uganda have discovered that these small mammals have either cooperative or selfish personalities which last for their entire lifetime. The findings of the 15-year study are published today in the journal Animal Behaviour.

It's likely no surprise to dog owners, but growing research suggests that man's best friend often acts more human than canine. Dogs can read facial expressions, communicate jealousy, display empathy, and even watch TV, studies have shown. They've picked up these people-like traits during their evolution from wolves to domesticated pets, which occurred between 11,000 and 16,000 years ago, experts say.

Baboons live together in hierarchical groups. However, important decisions are not dictated by the highest-ranking group members but are instead made democratically. This was discovered by a team of scientists including Iain Couzin from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell. The researchers monitored the movements of a baboon community using GPS devices with to-the-second precision. This enabled them to observe how the animals make decisions and the direction in which the group moves

Ants are capable of remarkable feats of coordination. They can forge complex paths through the jungle, build sophisticated structures, and adapt foraging patterns to fit their environment, all without orders from a centralized source. Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University, hopes to uncover the simple rules that produce complex patterns from simple individual actions.

Scientists studying microscopic organisms in a seawater sample found a creature that appeared to be a tiny floating eyeball staring back at them. Although the creature is a single-celled organism, it possesses many of the features of the human eye, including a lens, cornea and retina.

An insecticide currently in development targets a specific gene so it kills only those bugs that threaten crops and avoids collateral damage to beneficial insects. Though the technology is still in its infancy, the RNA-based insecticide can be effective for at least 28 days when sprayed on a leaf. That finding dispels concerns that the genetic material will quickly degrade in rain and sunlight.

It’s not only carnivorous plants that bugs have to watch out for. Sure, if an ant tumbles into a pitcher plant or a spider stands in the open maw of a Venus flytrap, we know what’s coming next. But certain innocent-looking plants—perhaps very many of them, even including ones in your own yard—murder hosts of insects that they have no plans to eat. They lure passing bugs into a slow death, then exchange their corpses with other insects for protection.

A rare "corpse flower" which emits the smell of rotting flesh is expected to attract thousands of people after it bloomed for the first time in 11 years. The titan arum flowered on Saturday afternoon at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Weird, "hybridized" animal skeletons, including a cow-horse and a six-legged sheep litter the bottom of storage pits in an Iron Age site in England, archaeologists have found. One pit even holds the bones of a woman with a slit throat laid on top of animal bones, the scientists said.The unusual remains belong to an ancient people who lived in southern England from about 400 B.C. until just before the Roman invasion, in A.D. 43, said dig co-director Paul Cheetham, a senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.

Chicken bones unearthed in Israel may mark a turning point in human cuisine: They could be the earliest evidence of people raising chickens for food, rather than cockfighting or use in ceremonies.The city, now an archaeological site, is called Maresha. It flourished in the Hellenistic period from 400 to 200 BCE.

Virtual unwrapping software has revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus in a charred parchment scroll, making it the oldest biblical text after the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Monday.Found 45 years ago inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, the 2.7-inch scroll was dated by C14 analysis to about 500 AD.

New research provides mathematical evidence that Michelangelo used the Golden Ratio of 1.6 when painting The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Golden Ratio is found when you divide a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the longer part.

Throughout human history, intelligence and consciousness have been two closely allied concepts. If you have lots of the former, you are assumed, in some ill-defined way, to be more conscious than the dim-witted guy down the street. A smart gal would also be a very conscious one, somebody who could tell you in detail about her experiences (for that is what consciousness is, the ability to experience something, anything, whether it's a toothache, the sight of a canary-yellow house or searing anger). But this intimate relation may be unraveling.

It might not be long before consumers can just hit "print" to create an electronic circuit or wireless sensor in the comfort of their homes.Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University, are expanding the already impressive portfolio of 3D printing technology to include electrical components, such as resistors, inductors, capacitors and integrated wireless electrical sensing systems.

Imagine a town with crosswalks but no pedestrians, cars and trucks but no drivers. Welcome to Mcity, a fake "town" built by researchers who are testing out the driverless cars of the future.The controlled test environment, which opened today (July 20) at the University of Michigan (U-M) in Ann Arbor, covers 32 acres (the size of about 24 football fields) and contains all the trappings of a real suburb or small city. There is an entire network of roads lined with sidewalks, streetlights, stop signs and traffic signals. There's even a "downtown" area complete with fake building facades and outdoor dining areas.

Music training, begun as late as high school, may help improve the teenage brain's responses to sound and sharpen hearing and language skills, suggests a new Northwestern University study.The research, to be published the week of July 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicates that music instruction helps enhance skills that are critical for academic success.

Trees are known to improve air quality by capturing six common air pollutants and toxic gases: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and lead. In fact, a single tree can absorb 10 pounds of air pollutants per year. In a study published in 2014, U.S. Forest Service scientists and collaborators calculated that trees are saving more than 850 human lives a year and preventing 670,000 incidents of acute respiratory symptoms. The researchers valued the human health effects of the reduced air pollution at nearly $7 billion every year

After more than two weeks of silence, the European Philae lander on the surface of a comet phoned home once again this month in a long-distance call routed through its Rosetta mothership.The Philae lander was in hibernation for months after its rocky landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkolast November, which saw the probe drift off course for two hours before landing in a shadier spot than its solar panels were designed to handle. It was carried to the comet by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, which has been orbiting 67P since August 2014.

Galaxies in a cluster roughly 300 million light years from Earth could contain as much as 100 times more dark matter than visible matter, according to an Australian study.The research, published today, used powerful computer simulations to study galaxies that have fallen into the Coma Cluster, one of the largest structures in the Universe in which thousands of galaxies are bound together by gravity.

In the 1960s, NASA launched six satellites to study the Earth's atmosphere, magnetosphere and the space between Earth and the moon. Using observations from those satellites, Christopher Russell, a UCLA graduate student at the time, detected mysterious plasma waves in the Van Allen radiation belts, the donut-shaped rings surrounding the Earth that contain high-energy particles trapped by the planet's magnetic field.

The United States has a problem with painkillers. During the past 15 years, America has seen a tremendous growth in both the sales of prescription opiates and the number of people who die each year from abusing them. More than 16,000 people fatally overdosed on prescription painkillers in 2013, accounting for 60% of all overdose deaths, according to the Center for Disease Control. But a new study suggests that some states have already stumbled onto a means of curbing this fatal epidemic: Easily-accessible marijuana.Related: Marijuana can heal broken bones, says new study

Give me a hammer, and I'd probably end up bashing my thumb with it. When it comes to tool use, dexterity counts. So when Saturday's Weird Animal Question of the Week heard about the famous nut-crushing monkeys of Brazil, we took the prerogative to ask: "How can these monkeys crack nuts so accurately?"First off, these bearded capuchins open tough palm nuts by putting them on "anvils," including logs and boulders, and hammering at them, according to research by National Geographic explorer Dorothy Fragaszy of the University of Georgia at Athens.

Some of the ancient mausoleums of Timbuktu, shrines and tombs of Sufi saints which were a place of pilgrimage for centuries have been restored through a local and international project, three years after they were deliberately destroyed by armed groups linked to al-Qaida.Related: An Attempt to Keep the Dying Gottschee Culture Very Much Alive

The Kitora Tomb, located near the village of Asuka in Japan's Nara Prefecture, is known for gorgeous, colourful paintings at the four cardinal points of the compass. A black tortoise guards the north of the ancient tumulus, which has been standing since the seventh or eighth century. A red phoenix stands at the south, a white tiger at the west and a blue dragon at the east.According to Kazuhiko Miyajima, a professor at Doshisha University who studied the chart after the tomb was discovered in 1998, this makes it possibly the oldest astronomical chart of its kind in the world.Alt: Star chart in Kitora Tomb likely depicts the heavens observed in ancient China

You can fake a smile, but your phone knows the truth. Depression can be detected from your smartphone sensor data by tracking the number of minutes you use the phone and your daily geographical locations, reports a small Northwestern Medicine study.The more time you spend using your phone, the more likely you are depressed. The average daily usage for depressed individuals was about 68 minutes, while for non-depressed individuals it was about 17 minutes.

A new study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex suggests people who speak two languages have more gray matter in the executive control region of the brain.In past decades, much has changed about the understanding of bilingualism. Early on, bilingualism was thought to be a disadvantage because the presence of two vocabularies would lead to delayed language development in children.

For those who believe that birth order influences traits like personality and intelligence, a study of 377,000 high school students offers some good news: Yes, the study found, first-borns do have higher IQs and consistently different personality traits than those born later in the family chronology. However, researchers say, the differences between first-borns and 'later-borns' are so small that they have no practical relevance to people's lives.

People who live in fracking zones appear to suffer a higher rate of heart conditions and neurological illnesses, according to new research.Although the US study was unable to determine a specific reason, it suggests there may be a link between drilling and ill health, scientists said.

A scientist who claims waning solar activity in the next 15 years will trigger what some are calling a mini ice age has revived talk about the effects of man-made versus natural disruptors to Earth's climate.Related: Science Confirms 2014 Was Hottest Yet Recorded, On Land And Sea

Researchers have uncovered findings in the Southern Ocean that reaffirm the importance of plankton to our planet's temperatures.The answer lies in the activities of plankton, tiny sea creatures more commonly associated with feeding whales than promoting climate change, according to a NASA-funded study that was released Friday in Science Advances journal.Alt: Sea Creatures Make Brighter Clouds to Cool the Earth

After nearly quarter century camping out by the banks of Scotland's Loch Ness hoping to glimpse "Nessie", the most dedicated hunter of the legendary monster has given up, concluding it is just a very big catfish.Steve Feltham, who gave up his girlfriend, house and job in southwest England in 1991 to spend his life looking for the Loch Ness monster, believes he has solved the mystery behind its many sightings, the Times newspaper reported on Thursday.

The largest known shark known to have lived, Megalodon, had teeth that were unlike those of any living animal, according to new research.Large and powerful Megalodon, which grew up to 66 feet long, flashed teeth that were heavily comprised of fluoride, the new study determined. Modern sharks only have fluoride on the surface, or enamel, of their teeth. The findings are published in the journal RSC Advances.

Mammals were evolving up to ten times faster in the middle of the Jurassic than they were at the end of the period, coinciding with an explosion of new adaptations, new research shows.Early mammals lived alongside the dinosaurs during the Mesozoic era (252-66 million years ago). They were once thought to be exclusively small nocturnal insect-eaters, but fossil discoveries of the past decade - particularly from China and South America - have shown that they developed diverse adaptations for feeding and locomotion, including gliding, digging, and swimming.

Pluto's big moon Charon keeps getting more and more interesting.A newly released Charon photo, which was taken by NASA's New Horizons probe during its epic Pluto flyby Tuesday (July 14), reveals a mountain rising out of a big hole on the 750-mile-wide (1,200 kilometers) moon's surface.

Pluto's atmosphere has an extended reach. Data collected by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveals that the gas surrounding the dwarf planet extends as far as 1,000 miles outward into space. That's more than 13 times farther than Earth's atmosphere, which tapers off at around 75 miles above our planet's surface. Previous observations from Earth have only been able to record Pluto's atmosphere reaching 170 miles out into space.

Scientists in the country have found remnants of a historically important port on Goa's Zuari River which is expected to be amongst the oldest signs of human trade on the central west coast and may be contemporary to Dwarka in Gujarat.The researchers say they may discover a dockyard similar in structure to Lothal dockyard (4500 years old), discovered by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Gujarat in 1954.

Wrapped in reindeer hide and fur, the 6-to-7 year old was protected by a child-sized bronze axe and bear's pendant.Scientists this week opened the mummified child's remains cocooned in birch bark and copper which - combined with the permafrost - produced an accidental mummification.The child - seen here in these remarkable pictures for the first time - appears to be from a higher social strata that previous remains unearthed at the site, the mysterious Zeleny Yar necropolis, close to the Siberian Arctic, which had ancient links to Persia.

In the US and other industrialized nations, testing for infectious diseases and cancer often requires expensive equipment and highly trained specialists. In countries where resources are limited, performing the same diagnostics is far more challenging. To address this disparity, scientists are developing a portable, low-cost 'paper machine' for point-of-care detection of infectious diseases, genetic conditions and cancer.

Medical evidence supports the potential for acupuncture to be significantly more effective in the treatment of dermatologic conditions such as dermatitis, pruritus, and urticaria than alternative treatment options, "placebo acupuncture," or no treatment, according to a review of the medical literature published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The review article is available free on the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website until August 14, 2015.

Cannabis -- marijuana, hashish -- was used as a go-to medical remedy by societies around the world for centuries. But the therapeutic use of marijuana was banned in most countries in the 1930s and '40s due to a growing awareness of the dangers of addiction. The significant medical benefits of marijuana in alleviating symptoms of such diseases as Parkinson's, cancer, and multiple sclerosis have only recently been reinvestigated.

A new computational model of how the brain makes altruistic choices is able to predict when a person will act generously in a scenario involving the sacrifice of money. The work, led by California Institute of Technology scientists and, appearing July 15 in the journal Neuron, also helps explain why being generous sometimes feels so difficult.The reason people act altruistically is well contested among academics. Some argue that people are innately selfish and the only way to override our greedy tendencies is to exercise self-control.

Chimpanzees can quickly identify the faces of other chimps, as well as those of human adults and babies. These new findings could shed light on human and chimp evolution, scientists say.Faces are key to human social lives, conveying key data about how one feels. As such, humans are wired to pay special attention to faces. For example, when pictures of faces are mixed in with pictures of other items such as cars and houses, people can detect the faces effortlessly.

Biologists have succeeded in teaching wild birds to understand a new language.After only two days of training, fairy wrens learnt to flee when they heard an alarm call that was foreign to them, showing that birds can learn to eavesdrop on the calls of other species.

A robot in New York has passed the classic King's Wise Men puzzle which serves as a test of the awareness of the self.The induction puzzle goes as follows:'The King called the three wisest men in the country to his court to decide who would become his new advisor.Alt: Uh-oh, a robot just passed the self-awareness test

Researchers are embarking on an ambitious project to bring part of Iraq's destroyed heritage back to life.Over the past few years the world has watched as the Islamic State has destroyed historical monuments and committed acts of genocide in Iraq and Syria. While the group labels itself "Islamic," they've been destroying both Islamic and Christian holy sites along with sites that predate the founding of both religions, said archaeologist Clemens Reichel, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a presentation he gave last spring.

The discovery was made during the excavation of a several meters deep shaft of a tomb of a dignitary from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000 BC) in the necropolis Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. In the sixth century, the location was adapted by hermits - Christian monks - for housing purposes.Related: Polish Researchers Discover Ancient Egyptian BurialRelated: A glimpse beneath the bandages: Egyptian child mummy gets a CT scan in a bid to uncover its secrets

A team led by Brian Redmond of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is excavating a 4,000-year-old site in northeastern Ohio. So far, they have uncovered a three-inch-thick floor made from layers of yellow clay that was carried to the site. A basin was built into the floor, along with cooking pits and storage holes that held hickory nuts. Post holes show where hickory saplings were placed and then tied together to create a framework covered with cattail mats.Related: Maize Domestication Seen on a Molecular Level

You might just call it the vampire of the deep seas.Scientists at NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History say they have discovered a species of black coral that can live to be more than 4,000 years old, making it the oldest marine organism living on Earth.

Oregon State University researchers have patented a new strain of a succulent red marine algae called dulse that grows extraordinarily quickly, is packed full of protein and has an unusual trait when it is cooked.This seaweed tastes like bacon.Dulse (Palmaria sp.) grows in the wild along the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines. It is harvested and usually sold for up to $90 a pound in dried form as a cooking ingredient or nutritional supplement.

Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner has only been Director General of the European Space Agency for a week, but he already has some pretty bold plans.Asked by the BBC what his vision was for the future of space exploration is, he avoided hackneyed responses about the economic and social benefits of it and answered the question directly.

With the help of a rock-zapping laser, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected Red Planet rocks similar to Earth's oldest continental crust, researchers say.This discovery suggests that ancient Mars may have been more similar to ancient Earth than previously thought, scientists added.

NASA scientists and planet lovers everywhere are cheering the Pluto space probe, which is now sending images of the dwarf planet back to Earth.The cost of the 10-year voyage is raising eyebrows, but not for the reasons you might think.The 10-year voyage by the New Horizons satellite was never a sure thing. So when the little space probe phoned home from Pluto, it caused celebration and questions.

A long-sought particle with no mass proposed more than 85 years ago has finally been created in the lab.The mysterious particle, called a Weyl fermion, emerged from a crystal of a material called a semi-metal. By bombarding the crystal with photons, the team produced a stream of electrons that collectively behaved like the elusive subatomic particles.

A new report suggests UFO sightings in Manitoba are older than the province itself.Ufology Research, based in Winnipeg, says there have been just over 2,000 reports of unidentified flying objects in Manitoba over the past 200 years.Related: Crop Circles and Confiscated Computers

Challenging the idea that addiction is hardwired in the brain, a new UC Berkeley study of mice suggests that even a short time spent in a stimulating learning environment can rewire the brain's reward system and buffer it against drug dependence.

New research conducted at the University of Kansas Medical Center indicates that older adults can improve brain function by raising their fitness level.Related: Weight lifting might reverse bone loss in menRelated: Found: Trick for Getting Into an Exercise Routine

More than 95 per cent of women who have had abortions did not regret terminating their pregnancies, according to a new study.Out of 667 American women carefully questioned by researchers over several years, only five per cent felt negative emotions of regret, anger, guilt and sadness.Alt: Most Women Who Have Abortions Don't Regret Them

Wild animals including wolves, lynx and wild boar could be reintroduced to British forests as part of a campaign to restore species hunted to extinction.Plans put together by Rewilding Britain would see the animals roaming Scotland and other parts of the UK in an attempt to allow "native forests to regenerate, while giving the seas a chance to recover from industrial fishing".

An ancient feathered creature dug up in northeastern China is the largest winged dinosaur ever found, researchers say.The fossil of the prehistoric raptor is so well preserved that scientists have been able to reconstruct its impressive plumage, from the tiny feathers on its head and neck, to the larger quill pen-like feathers that sprout from its tail and substantial wings.

Head-butting and canine display during male-male combat first appeared some 270 million years ago.This is what researchers from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits found when they conducted an updated and more in-depth study of the herbivorous mammalian ancestor, Tiarajudens eccentricus, discovered four years ago.

Two fossilised dinosaur teeth found in southern Japan are the first evidence that huge tyrannosaurs once roamed the area, it's reported.The teeth were discovered in an 81 million-year-old layer of rock in Nagasaki Prefecture last year, and now palaeontologists have announced that they're likely from the lower jaw of a 10m (33ft) long dinosaur, the Asahi Shimbun website reports.

An infected tooth partially cleaned with flint tools represents the oldest known dentistry, says a new international study on a 14,000-year-old molar.The find represents the oldest archaeological example of an operative manual intervention on a pathological condition, according to researchers led by Stefano Benazzi, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Bologna.

While environmentalists look for ways to protect the planet from climate change from the ground up, a teenager has aimed for the stars... quite literally.Danila Kuznetsov, 14, from Ukraine has proposed a plan that would involve generating screens of dust from orbiting asteroids to shield Earth from the sun's radiation.He is one of 90 regional finalists in the annual Google Science Fair which also include gloves that help with hand tremors, wearable microscopes and software that identifies Alzheimer's.

Melting ice in West Antarctica may not be just another product of global warming as previously thought, a recent study suggested.Instead, new evidence points to a different, more literal kind of global warming: the naturally high temperature of the Earth itself, not just the air and water around it, may be what is causing ice to melt, according to researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

A team of researchers aboard an ocean-going research vessel called RV Investigator has discovered a cluster of 50-million-year-old volcanoes off the coast of Sydney, Australia.Related: Sharks Discovered Inside the Underwater Volcano, Kavachi

A study carried out by researchers from Robotics and Cybernetics Research Group (RobCib) at Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR) has used a drone to measure the temperature, humidity, luminosity and carbon dioxide concentration in a greenhouse. The capacity of an aerial vehicle to move in three-dimensional space and to place the sensor at any point have clear advantages over other alternatives such as the sensor networks. Thus, the use of this technology can help improve the climate control systems and monitor crops.

Road surfacing may not be the first application that comes to mind for recycled plastic bottles, but Dutch construction firm VolkerWessels has plans to use the material for a pilot scheme in the city of Rotterdam. While the idea is still at the conceptual stage for now, the company says that its plastic, environmentally friendly roads could be in place within three years.Related: Bubble Wrap is dead, long live Bubble Wrap

New evidence has been gathered to back up claims a UFO landed near a US airbase in Suffolk, a former deputy commander has claimed.Col Charles Halt told the BBC he saw unidentified objects at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980.Related: Rendlesham UFO 'controlled by mothership'

Plutonium is a metal, but it won't stick to a magnet, puzzling scientists for decades. Now researchers may have found this "missing magnetism."The hideout? Electrons that surround every atom of plutonium, finds the group, led by Marc Janoschek of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Stunning mosaics have turned up during an archaeological dig of a fifth-century synagogue in northern Israel.Tiny earth-hued stones in the mosaics swirl to form images of women surrounded by cupids holding discs, mythological creatures, a rooster, expressive theater masks and symbols of Dionysus (Bacchus), the Greco-Roman god of wine. And painted ivy crawls up columns covered with plaster. These recent discoveries add context and scenes to previously uncovered mosaics and inscriptions on the same and adjacent panels.

Infections with one of the most troublesome and least understood antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are increasing at alarming rates, particularly in health-care settings.But new research, published July 13 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, suggests it may be possible to rein in the spread of such infections without the need to develop new antibiotics, reports a team at Washington University School of Medicine​ in St. Louis.

The medical world is filled with bizarre, unusual (and sometimes not completely understood) phenomenon. Most people reading this post will be familiar with the various stories of individuals who fall victim to accident or injury, only to recover baring seemingly supernatural gifts. In 2002 Jason Padgett, an average Joe furniture store employee, was mugged by two men and suffered severe brain injury. When he eventually recovered he become obsessed with mathematics and physics and discovered that his vision allowed him to "see" the equations and formulas all around him. There are more such stories ranging from sudden mathematical genius to musical prowess or artistic abilities. This sudden onset of these abilities has been dubbed 'Acquired Savant Syndrome'.Related: Ancient Stone of Strength is lifted by Welshman for the first time in living memory

Living near a wind turbine could harm emotional wellbeing after scientists discovered that low frequency sounds generated by rotor blades trigger a part of the brain which senses danger.Wind farm critics have long complained of the detrimental impact of turbines on their mental health, sleep patterns and physical wellbeing.

The first results have been released from a major new dark matter survey of the southern skies using ESO's VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The VST KiDS survey will allow astronomers to make precise measurements of dark matter, the structure of galaxy halos, and the evolution of galaxies and clusters. The first KiDS results show how the characteristics of the observed galaxies are determined by the invisible vast clumps of dark matter surrounding them.

85 years ago, American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered a distant planet in our Solar System - the tiny world of Pluto. In less than an hour's time, his ashes will whiz past the now 'minor planet' at almost 50,000km/hr, aboard the New Horizons space probe.If you'd like to track the probe as it makes its fly-by, go download NASA's 'Eyes on Pluto' app, which gives you a simulated real-time telemetry and view of the progress of the mission.

A solar system including five Earth-sized planets has been discovered which is so ancient it was born not long after the dawn of time - and experts say it could help find life on planets far older than we expected.The system's parent star, named Kepler-444, is 117 light years from Earth and 11.2 billion years old.When the sun-like star was formed out of a primordial cloud of gas and dust, the universe was just a fifth of its current age.

With less than 24 hours to go before NASA's New Horizons probe makes its close flyby of Pluto, scientists are already learning more about the dwarf planet than ever before, including the fact that it is bigger than previously thought.New Horizons' latest views of Pluto have shown the dwarf planet to be 1,473 miles (2,370 kilometers) across, making it the largest body in the icy Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system.Related: Hello, Pluto! NASA Spacecraft Makes Historic Dwarf Planet Flyby

Rocks similar to some of the oldest continental crusts on Earth have been discovered on the surface of Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover.The findings, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, provide new insights into how Mars formed and evolved early in its history.Alt: Mars Rock Samples Point to Earth-Like Crust

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of a new particle called the pentaquark.It was first predicted to exist in the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson particle before it, the pentaquark eluded science for decades until its detection at the LHC.

The human eye is an amazing instrument and can accurately distinguish between the tiniest, most subtle differences in color. Where human vision excels in one area, it seems to fall short in others, such as perceiving minuscule details because of the natural limitations of human optics.

A Tasmanian tiger enthusiast has stirred the debate on whether the large carnivorous dog is actually extinct, by claiming there have been numerous sightings of the animal on mainland Australia.World-renowned thylacine hunter Michael Moss truly believes that the striped dogs are still out there, despite them being declared extinct and having not been conclusively sighted for the past 70 years.

Racing towards the edge of the solar system at 31,000 miles per hour, the New Horizons space probe has sent back colour images that finally bring the mysterious moon orbiting Pluto into focus.The strange brown and grey world of Charon had appeared to be a featureless lump of rock but the new images suggest it may also be made from a significant amount of water ice.Related: Pluto 'Totally Different' from Big Moon Charon, New Photos Show

The discovery of an Iron Age settlement has forced a re-think of the early history of the south of Scotland.Archaeologists believe that the group of round houses found in Dumfries and Galloway date back to the fifth century BC. Julia Muir-Watt, of the Whithorn Trust, said the discovery of the round houses has had a significant impact on the accepted history of the region.

New research suggests that smoking cigarettes could contribute to the development of a psychotic illness.Researchers at King's College London found that daily smokers are three times more likely to develop schizophrenia, a disorder "symbolized by a withdrawal from reality and a sense of mental fragmentation," and at a younger age, The Financial Express reported.

After a long and intense struggle, the German Government has been forced to make its UFO research public. Until 2008, the existence of this report was denied by the German parliament --the Bundestag -- who have fought hard to keep the files private.According to The Express however, two years later UFO enthusiast Robert Fleischer from Exopolitic.org discovered that the Government had in fact tasked its scientific department with the job of researching the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The middle classes from developing countries are more susceptible than western Caucasians to obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in today's changing environment. New research published in Cell Metabolism from the University of Sydney in Australia, the National Centre for Cell Science and the DYP Medical College in Pune, India reveals this may be a result of the nutrition endured by their ancestors.

Men tend to be more assertive when working for a woman because they feel threatened by having a female boss, psychologists have found.A deep-seated fear of their masculinity being questioned could explain why many men react against a female colleague in a more senior role by behaving in a more self-assured and difficult manner, the scientists suggest.Related: Why don't men live as long as women?

When you have a friend who loves karaoke but isn't exactly Mariah Carey, you can still be nice and say "You sing like a bird!"They don't have to know you mean this bird.Saturday's Weird Animal Question of the Week has been mulling the multiplicity of birds sounds since Elzbieta Zaba asked via Facebook, "Why do some little birds sing so beautifully and the big ones don't?".

When dolphins dive deep below the water's surface, they avoid succumbing to decompression sickness, or "the bends," likely because the massive sea creatures have collapsible lungs, a new study finds. These lungs allow dolphins to inhale and exhale two to three times quicker than humans.Understanding how dolphins breathe rapidly and maintain lung functionality under immense pressure could help scientists keep humans safe when they are in similarly extreme situations, such as under anesthesia during surgeries, the researchers said.

A documentary film crew hit upon a novel technique to attract great white sharks - blasting death metal through an underwater speaker.The Discovery Channel crew, filming for the Shark Week show Bride of Jaws, were on the hunt for a large great white, wonderfully nicknamed 'Joan of Shark'.

Ancient gelatinous animals that resemble Christmas tree ornaments were protected by hard, spiny skeletons and lacked the trademark tentacles of today's jellies, fossils of the long-dead jellyfishlike creatures suggest.This is a startling snapshot of extinct comb jellies, whose modern relatives today are at least 95 percent water and sport soft bodies with no skeletons that are typically trailing tentacles.

The amount of heat flowing toward the base of the West Antarctic ice sheet from geothermal sources deep within the Earth is surprisingly high, according to a new study led by UC Santa Cruz researchers. The results, published July 10 in Science Advances, provide important data for researchers trying to predict the fate of the ice sheet, which has experienced rapid melting over the past decade.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Egypt's embassy in London, the Ministry of Antiquities succeeded to recover a piece of a column that was stolen and illegally smuggled out of the country many years ago.Ali Ahmed, head of the Antiquities Repatriation Department, told Ahram Online that the returned piece is carved of sandstone and engraved with a scene depicting the god Amun Re. It was a part of a column found at Tutmosis hall at Karnak Temple on Luxor's east bank.

Add this to the distant-doomsdays file. Earth's continental crust, which forms the land we live on, has been slimming down, according to a new estimate. If the slimming rate holds, the continents might disappear into the sea within a couple of billion years.Related: Global sea levels have risen six meters or more with just slight global warmingRelated: Climate 'vice' constricts bumblebees' natural ranges - researchers

The building blocks to create another Earth are found at solar systems across our Milky Way galaxy, a new study reveals.By saying that carbon, oxygen, magnesium and silicon are in rocky planets everywhere, this new study contradicts previous research that's said only some rocky planets have this recipe. Previously, scientists said there were three kinds of rocky planets: those similar to Earth, those that had more carbon, and some that had a lot more silicon than magnesium.