Newsdesk Archive
Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but a new study has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way.Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Zurich discovered that the chestnut-crowned babbler - a highly social bird found in the Australian Outback - has the ability to convey new meaning by rearranging the meaningless sounds in its calls.
For more than a decade, he was the self-styled Indiana Jones of Egypt, presiding over its antiquities and striding through temples and tombs as the star of TV documentaries that made him an international celebrity.But four years after the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and nearly ended his own career, Zahi Hawass can be found in a cramped Cairo office, lamenting the state of the antiquities bureaucracy he once ruled like a pharaoh and dreaming of a new museum whose fate lies in limbo.
Around 30 percent of China's Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities -- including stealing the bricks to build houses -- erode the UNESCO World Heritage site, state media reported.The Great Wall is not a single unbroken structure but stretches for thousands of miles in sections, from Shanhaiguan on the east coast to Jiayuguan in the windswept sands on the edge of the Gobi desert.
An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa has discovered a milk-and ochre-based paint dating to 49,000 years ago that inhabitants may have used to adorn themselves with or to decorate stone or wooden slabs.While the use of ochre by early humans dates to at least 250,000 years ago in Europe and Africa, this is the first time a paint containing ochre and milk has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and lead study author.
An etching of a band on a piece of pottery, made by a 5,000-year-old seal, is thought to be the most ancient musical scene in the world.The artefact, discovered in Israel, shows three female figures, one of whom is playing an ancient harp-like instrument.Experts believe the image sheds light on an ancient ritual known as the 'sacred marriage' which included, music, feasting and sex.
A horrific spinal injury caused by a bronze arrowhead didn't immediately kill an Iron Age warrior, who survived long enough for his bone to heal around the metal point, a new study of his burial in central Kazakhstan finds."This found individual was extremely lucky to survive," said study researcher Svetlana Svyatko, a research fellow in the school of geography, archaeology and paleoecology at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. "It's hard to get a vertebral wound without damaging the main blood vessels, which would have resulted in an immediate death.".
If you want to try the shamanic healing methods of Amazonian shamans, you generally have to go to the Amazon and find a shaman. That may change with the publication of a 500-page Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia, reports Acate Amazon:Deep in the farthest reaches of the Amazon rainforest, the last remaining elder shamans of the Matsés tribe came together from distant villages in a quest to save their ancestral knowledge from the edge of extinction. This meeting concluded over two years work and culminated in the first encyclopedia of indigenous knowledge written by Amazonian tribal shamans ever produced.
By contributing to obesity and, through that, to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks appears to claim the lives of about 25,000 American adults yearly and is linked worldwide to the deaths of 180,000 each year, new research says.
A new study carried out by the University of Exeter and Tokyo University of the Arts has found that songs from around the world tend to share features, including a strong rhythm, that enable coordination in social situations and encourage group bonding.Despite decades of skepticism about the presence of cross-culturally universal aspects of music, the study provides strong evidence for the existence of common features in global music.
UFO seekers are riled up over another alleged instance of NASA cutting their live transmission to keep the "existence of aliens a secret" which has surfaced online via a video claiming to show UFOs blasting out of Earth's atmosphere.Alt: Did Nasa cut a live ISS stream when ALIENS appeared? Probably not: Random specks of light in atmosphere spark UFO claimsRelated: Does this look like an alien ship? 'Flying saucer' UFO is captured hovering over Stonehenge, claim conspiracy theorists
A new study of 33 Kepler stars with solar-like oscillations to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The 33 Kepler stars have been selected for their solar like oscillations and a set of basic parameters have been determined with high precision showing that stars even older than 11 billion years have Earth-like planets.
Spanish settlement of the Middle Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico changed the way people lived, but a new paper in the journal "The Holocene" by UNM Assistant Professor of Anthropology Emily Jones, suggests the change did not come quickly."The Columbian Exchange and landscapes of the Middle Rio Grande Valley, AD 1300-1900" is an examination of the impact of Spanish colonization including what people were eating, and an indication of what animals and plants were abundant in the area.
Land surveyors discovered a mummy that could be 2,000 years old on the site of the controversial Singleton Stone quarry in south Lake County, and archaeologists will investigate whether they stumbled onto a Native American burial ground.And that wasn't even the only set of old remains to turn up in Lake County. A Highland man was digging in his yard at the 8100 block of East Fourth Place on Friday when he found what appeared to be remains, according to the Lake County coroner's office.
Archaeologists think 16-inch-high statuette found in southern Israel may have been part of larger sculpture, wonder how it ended up in Byzantine floorYou would think that 12 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea is the last place to find a dolphin clutching a fish between its jaws.
The fossilized remains of a bizarre-looking reptile are giving scientists new insights into how turtles got their distinctive shells.Some 240 million years ago, this early turtle-like creature lived in a large lake, in a fairly warm, subtropical climate. But it didn't have the kind of shell modern turtles have, says Hans-Dieter Sues, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Fish that lived long before the dinosaurs featured the world's first known teeth, according to a new study.The findings suggest all teeth -- including those of humans -- originally evolved from fish scales.The earliest teeth date to at least 410 million years ago, according to the study, published in the journal Biology Letters.
Think of an object made of iron: An I-beam, a car frame, a nail. Now imagine that half of the iron in that object owes its existence to bacteria living two and a half billion years ago.That's the upshot of a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The findings have meaning for fields as diverse as mining and the search for life in space.
Genetic analysis of the mandible of an anatomically modern Homo sapiens who lived in what is now Romania between 42,000 and 37,000 years ago reveals that early humans interbred with Neanderthals when they first came to Europe.41,000 years ago but they have contributed up to 3 percent of the DNA of present-day Eurasians.
You might think that young children would first learn to recognize sounds and then learn how those categories of sounds fit together into words. But that isn't how it works. Rather, kids learn sounds and words at the same time. Now, researchers present evidence from European starlings showing that songbirds learn their songs in much the same way.
Curling up to look like a pile of poop might not sound appealing, but it's a useful strategy that some species of caterpillars use to hide from hungry birds, a new study finds.The moment the caterpillar uncurls, birds are more likely to realize that it's not a pile of excrement but rather a tasty snack, said study researcher Toshitaka Suzuki, a postdoctoral fellow of evolutionary studies at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Kanagawa, Japan.
Chimpanzees may have a sense of right and wrong that echoes human concepts of morality, a study has found.Two groups of the apes paid more attention to film clips of an infant chimp being killed by its own kind than clips showing other acts of violence.
When a bad mood strikes, it's tempting to lean into the emotions and just ride it out. But there are ways to take a more proactive approach -- even with what you eat. Emerging research suggests that the bacteria living in your gut may be impacting your mood, and changing what you eat can be the bad-mood-buster you've been looking for.
It is seen as a defining feature of civilisation that emerged relatively recently from the intellectual crucible of ancient Greece.New research, however, suggests the roots of democracy can be traced back more than a million years and that it played a key role in the evolution of our species.In a new scientific paper, a group of anthropologists suggest human political systems began evolving as soon as our primate ancestors began living in groups.
One of the earliest known pieces of metalwork in Britain, found just a few miles from Stonehenge, has gone on display to the public for the first time.The gold sun-disc, which was forged around 4,500 years ago at around the same time the main circle of Stonehenge was erected, was discovered in the Bronze Age burial mound of a local chieftain.Thought to represent the sun, the thin sheet of embossed gold features a cross at the centre surrounded by a circle. Each is decorated with dots that glint in the sunlight.
Our knowledge of the people who worshiped at Stonehenge and worked on its construction is set to be transformed through a new project led by the University of Reading.This summer, in collaboration with Historic England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Wiltshire Museum, archaeologists are embarking on an exciting three-year excavation in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire.
Using the high-resolution science camera on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, scientists have identified more than a hundred patches of water ice a few metres in size on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.Rosetta arrived at the comet in August 2014 at a distance of about 100 km and eventually orbited the comet at 10 km or less, allowing high-resolution images of the surface to be acquired.
WE HAVE been aware of the need for dark matter since the 1930s. Without this stuff, we can't make sense of the rotation of galactic clusters, or how galaxies formed in the first place. And yet, to date, we have found nothing. Even CERN's Large Hadron Collider, our best and by far most expensive tool for finding it, has so far drawn a blank. How much longer can we keep looking?
Over the past week, ESA's Integral satellite has been observing an exceptional outburst of high-energy light produced by a black hole that is devouring material from its stellar companion.X-rays and gamma rays point to some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe, such as stellar explosions, powerful outbursts and black holes feasting on their surroundings.
Many know the phrase "the big bang theory." There's even a top television comedy series with that as its title. According to scientists, the universe began with the "big bang" and expanded to the size it is today. Yet, the gravity of all of this matter, stars, gas, galaxies, and mysterious dark matter, tries to pull the universe back together, slowing down the expansion.Now, two physicists at The University of Southern Mississippi, Lawrence Mead and Harry Ringermacher, have discovered that the universe might not only be expanding, but also oscillating or "ringing" at the same time.
For someone suffering from paralysis or limited mobility, visiting with other people is extremely difficult. Scientists have been working on a revolutionary brain-machine approach in order to restore a sense of independence to the disabled. The idea is to remotely control a robot from home with one's thoughts. The research, involving numerous subjects located in different countries, produced excellent results in both human and technical terms.
British scientists came to Iceland with a machine that reportedly keeps the weather temporarily sunny and dry, and it was used for the Secret Solstice festival.Vísir reports that this is actually the second year the scientists have come here with the express purpose of ensuring good weather at the festival. While it is unknown how the machine works, it allegedly changes the air pressure in an area for a limited time, thereby reducing the chances that clouds will gather.
Rocks store information about the temperatures that they have experienced. Wageningen University researchers and international colleagues are the first to develop a method that reveals low-temperature information (from 35 °C and higher) on a relatively short timescale of thousands of years. The new method might find application in locating geothermal reservoirs and in maintaining underground tunnels.The deeper you go into the Earth, the warmer it gets.
City College of New York researchers led by chemist George John have developed an eco-friendly biodegradable green "herding" agent that can be used to clean up light crude oil spills on water.Derived from the plant-based small molecule phytol abundant in the marine environment, the new substance would potentially replace chemical herders currently in use. According to John, professor of chemistry in City College's Division of Science, "the best known chemical herders are chemically stable, non-biodegradable, and hence remain in the marine ecosystem for years."
Humans could save the Great Barrier Reef from global warming by transplanting corals that survive heat stress, say scientists.A new joint study by the Australian institute of marine science (AIMS) in Townsville and the University of Texas has found a genetic basis for tolerance of higher temperatures in coral.
From flower emblazoned cemeteries to rooftop gardens and balconies, Norway's capital Oslo is creating a "bee highway" to protect endangered pollinators essential to food production."We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our needs, forgetting that other species also live in it," Agnes Lyche Melvaer, head of the Bybi, an environmental group supporting urban bees, which is leading the project.
When rats rest, their brains simulate journeys to a desired future such as a tasty treat, finds new UCL research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society.The researchers monitored brain activity in rats, first as the animals viewed food in a location they could not reach, then as they rested in a separate chamber, and finally as they were allowed to walk to the food. The activity of specialised brain cells involved in navigation suggested that during the rest the rats simulated walking to and from food that they had been unable to reach.
New work on the skeletal remains of scarlet macaws found in an ancient Pueblo settlement indicates that social and political hierarchies may have emerged in the American Southwest earlier than previously thought.Researchers determined that the macaws, whose brilliant red and blue feathers are highly prized in Pueblo culture, were persistently traded hundreds of miles north from Mesoamerica starting in the early 10th century, at least 150 years before the origin of hierarchy is usually attributed.
An international team of scientists led by Duke University researchers has uncovered key structural differences in the brains of parrots that may explain the birds' unparalleled ability to imitate sounds and human speech.Reported June 24 in PLOS ONE, these brain structures had gone unrecognized in studies published over the last 34 years. The results also may lend insight into the neural mechanisms of human speech.
How a chimpanzee views a video of an infant chimp from another group being killed gives a sense of how human morality and social norms might have evolved. So says Claudia Rudolf von Rohr of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, lead author of a paper in Springer's journal Human Nature. It provides the first evidence that chimpanzees, like humans, are sensitive to the appropriateness of behaviors, especially those directed toward infants. It also shows that these primates might only take action when a member of their own group is being harmed.
Most people have heard of great white, hammerhead and tiger sharks but there are many other species - and every year a number of new ones are discovered. One enthusiast has, so far, identified 24 types of shark and related fish that were previously unknown.Dave Ebert has a favourite market in Taiwan. He's been going there since he was a student 30 years ago.
There is no scientific definition of picky eating, but parents say they know it when they see it, and according to new research, they are likely to be right. Their kids are different. But picky eaters are not all the same, this study finds. What parents call picky eating is actually a broad spectrum of behaviors, and knowing which category a child falls into may help parents develop constructive responses.The researchers gathered 170 two- to four-year-olds, about half of whom were described by parents as choosy.
Sitting down for long periods of time and engaging in less-than-social behaviour such as working at a computer, watching television, and playing video games could lead to an increased risk of anxiety, according to the first systematic review of research into the association between sedentary behaviour and anxiety.Related: A Pickle A Day May Keep Your Anxiety At Bay
The chronic neurodegenerative Parkinson's disease affects an increasing number of people. However, scientists still do not know why some people develop Parkinson's disease. Now researchers from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital have taken an important step towards a better understanding of the disease.
"Cancer is a Gift"I have heard this glib phrase many times before, and it always sounded just a touch trite and even more disrespectful. Any cancer is unpleasant, and when the words terminal and palliative are attachment to the prognosis, there seems to be no joy whatsoever. Even more so when my wife was told she had a very advanced primary liver cancer and there was no possible way for her to recover, and a stay of six months at most was all the medical experts could guarantee.
The typical American diet is loaded with fat and sugar, and it may be hurting not only our physical health, but also our ability to think clearly.New research from Oregon State University finds a high-sugar, high-fat diet causes changes in gut bacteria that seem to lead to significant losses in cognitive flexibility, a measurement of the brain's ability to switch between thinking about one concept to another, and to adapt to changes in the environment.
In a world first, Melbourne scientists have captured on video each stage of death of a human white blood cell, a phenomenon never seen before and which reveals the cells apparently try to alert their immune system allies that they are dying.White blood cells are the critical, disease-fighting cells of the immune system which fight bacterial and fungal infections, as well as viruses.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Babraham Institute have found that a naturally occurring modified DNA base appears to be stably incorporated in the DNA of many mammalian tissues, possibly representing an expansion of the functional DNA alphabet.The new study, published today (22 June) in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, has found that this rare 'extra' base, known as 5-formylcytosine (5fC) is stable in living mouse tissues. While its exact function is yet to be determined, 5fC's physical position in the genome makes it likely that it plays a key role in gene activity.
A recipe for the perfect, life-yielding, primordial soup has eluded science for decades. But a team of biochemists say they now have a key ingredient.Charles Carter and Richard Wolfenden, both of the University of North Carolina, have uncovered new evidence of abiogenesis, the process by which life arises from non-living chemical matter. Their study, published Thursday in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, suggests that a single ancient gene may have used each of its opposite DNA strands to code for different chemical catalysts.
Are there pyramids on Mars? Or is it just one pyramid-shaped rock?On May 7, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover took a snapshot of an atypical stone on the Red Planet.A raw image from the mission shows a rock that appears to be pyramid-shaped, leading some to speculate that it may be the result of intelligent sculptors. NASA, for its part, says it's just an ordinary rock.
A Neptune-size planet appears to be masquerading as a comet, with a gargantuan stream of gas flowing behind it like a comet's tail.The bizarre find is the first of its kind ever discovered by astronomers. The strange, cometlike planet, known as GJ 436b, is orbiting a red dwarf star and is about 22 times as massive as Earth. Astronomers detected the giant gas cloud around the planet using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The latest batch of pics from the New Horizons spacecraft has revealed a previously unseen surface feature on Charon, a prominent dark splotch located at one of its poles.The new image of Charon was captured on June 18 at a distance of 31,500,000 miles (50,700,000 km). It shows significant surface details, including the mysterious dark spot.Related: Pluto just 4 weeks, 20 million miles away for spacecraft
Since last September, scientists using NASA's Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO) on the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft have generated maps of the distribution of water in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as the comet's orbit brings it closer to the sun.Related: Philae probe still talking to Earth from surface of comet, say Rosetta scientists
For the last decade, astronomers have observed curious "hotspots" on Saturn's poles. In 2008, NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back close-up images of these hotspots, revealing them to be immense cyclones, each as wide as the Earth. Scientists estimate that Saturn's cyclones may whip up 300 mph winds, and likely have been churning for years.
A solar storm hit the earth Monday afternoon, pushing shimmering solar auroras to places where they might be visible to more people.A blast of magnetic plasma shot out of the sun at a speed far faster than usual, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, causing the biggest solar storm the earth has seen definitely since March, but potentially since September 2005.
Lightning dart across the sky in a flash. And even though we can use lightning rods to increase the probability of it striking at a specific location, its exact path remains unpredictable. At a smaller scale, discharges between two electrodes behave in the same manner, streaking through space to create electric arcs where only the start and end points are fixed. How then can we control the current so that it follows a predetermined path? Professor Roberto Morandotti and his colleagues have discovered a way to guide electric discharges--and even steer them around obstacles--through the clever use of lasers.
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but a company has created a working, honest-to-god-it's-real hoverboard. It's called "Slide," and it's made by Lexus.There's not much information about it aside from a microsite, a promotional video, and a few photos of the thing. The marketing stunt is part of a broader art-meets-technology type of campaign currently being run by the company. The Slide site says the board creates "frictionless movement" using magnetic levitation. Inside the board you'd find magnets, it says, some of which are liquid nitrogen-cooled superconducting.
Children as young as age 3 will intervene on behalf of a victim, reacting as if victimized themselves, scientists have found.With toys, cookies and puppets, Keith Jensen, a psychologist at the University of Manchester in England, and his colleagues tried to judge how much concern 3- and 5-year-olds had for others, and whether they had a sense of so-called restorative justice.
A number of different approaches have been taken to attempt to solve the problem of poaching, from military protection to emotional pleas. Now Pembient, a biotech company originally based in Seattle, is taking a new approach to stop poaching by making 3D-printed horns. The company plans to flood the market with horns a fraction of the price of real horns, forcing poachers out.
Racehorses are continuing to get quicker, a study of winning times spanning 165 years of racing indicates.This may come as a surprise to many in the racing industry who believe that racehorse speed has reached its limit.
The ancient Greeks believed in ghostly versions of the dead who would rise from their graves and stalk the living, according to deviant burials unearthed in the necropolis of a Greek colony in Sicily.Known as Passo Marinaro, the cemetery near the coastal town of Kamarina in southeastern Sicily, was in use from the 5th through 3rd centuries B.C. The necropolis has yielded approximately 2,905 burials; more than half contained grave goods, mostly terracotta vases, but also figurines and metal coins.
An ancient shipwreck doesn't give up all its secrets at once. Greek authorities have approved a five-year extension for an international team of explorers to continue probing the remains of a 2,085-year-old shipwreck known for holding what is considered the world's oldest computer.The ship, which likely sank between 70 B.C. and 60 B.C. as it trekked west from Asia Minor to Rome, holds plenty of treasure: During the first phase of the project "Return to Antikythera," which ended in October 2014, undersea explorers found tableware, a lead anchor, a giant bronze spear that may have been part of a statue of a warrior or the goddess Athena, and other artifacts.
Paravian theropods are all the rage right now, and not just because of the phylotarded, retrofitted ones that appear in a certain blockbuster movie. This week sees the publication of a lengthy paravian-themed paper by long-time collaborator Andrea Cau, former student Tom Brougham and myself on the enigmatic and wonderful Romanian paravian Balaur bondocBalaur got a rightful amount of press coverage following its discovery, with much of the attention being focused on the fact that it was regarded as an especially close relative of the east Asian, desert-dwelling dromaeosaurid Velociraptor.
An investigation into how owls fly and hunt in silence has enabled researchers to develop a prototype coating for wind turbine blades that could significantly reduce the amount of noise they make.Early tests of the material, which mimics the intricate structure of an owl's wing, have demonstrated that it could significantly reduce the amount of noise produced by wind turbines and other types of fan blades, such as those in computers or planes. Since wind turbines are heavily braked in order to minimise noise, the addition of this new surface would mean that they could be run at much higher speeds - producing more energy while making less noise.
When graduate student Natasha Wright began her PhD program in mechanical engineering, she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable, nor had she ever been to India, where this is an ongoing need.Now, three years and six trips to India later, this is the sole focus of her work.
Pepper, the humanoid robot that its makers say can recognise and respond to human emotions, goes on sale in Japan this weekend.SoftBank, the company behind the robot, is planning to release 1,000 robots every month.Related: Pepper, the emotional robot, sells out in one minute
Welcome to a psychedelic universe where aqueducts surrounded by glaciers fold in on themselves. This kaleidoscopic image, created by a quirk of brain-mimicking software, started out as something much less spectacular: random noise.The software is an artificial neural network developed by Google, called the Inception module.
Astronauts visiting Mars in the future will be awed by dazzling auroral displays in the planet's southern hemisphere, a new study suggests.While previous research had confirmed the presence of beautiful "southern lights" on Mars, the new study predicts for the first time that the auroras of the Red Planet may be visible to the human eye.
Sensational images have emerged of the remains of a perfectly-preserved mummified puppy, found sealed in the Siberian permafrost after more than 12,400 years.Taken during a post-mortem examination by scientists, they show incredible detail about the prehistoric beast including its fur, savage teeth and even what it ate during its last moments.The dog - believed to be a three-month-old female - was unearthed by accident by two brothers searching for woolly mammoth tusks in the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia.
About 16 million years ago, a giant bat used all four of its limbs to stalk around the subtropical rainforest of modern-day New Zealand, a new study finds.The bat, a newly discovered species (Mystacina miocenalis), is large, about three times heavier than a modern bat, the researchers said. It's related to Mystacina tuberculata, a bat that still lives in New Zealand's old-growth forests.
Cambodia is training an elite squad of rats, imported from Africa, to sniff out landmines and other unexploded ordnance in the once war-wracked kingdom, authorities said on Friday.A team of 15 rats, some weighing more than 2 1/2 pounds, were imported from Tanzania in April with the help of a Belgian non-governmental organization, which trains rats to sniff out mines, Heng Ratana, director general of Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), told AFP.
Through a rare mixed-species association observed between a carnivorous predator and a potential prey, Dartmouth-led research has identified that solitary Ethiopian wolves will forage for rodents among grazing gelada monkey herds. Through consistent non-threatening behavior, the Ethiopian wolves have habituated gelada herds to their presence, foregoing opportunities to attack the juvenile geladas in order to better capture the rodents.
Barney was a fairly normal chimpanzee. A 24-year-old, low-ranking member of a group of five adult male chimpanzees raised at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, he generally showed stereotypical behaviors: he played, he banged bottles, he climbed trees. Then, one January day, he walked away from his group and sat down outside, placing an upturned bucket between his feet. He then rattled off the only-known spontaneous, unsolicited chimpanzee drum solo. Primatologists at the center were taken completely by surprise. With no camera nearby, they recorded the five-minute performance with a simple voice recorder.
Women are known for being the weepier sex. But it seems men are more likely to cry tears of joy.When reacting to upsetting events, women cry up to four times as often as men, according to Professor Ad Vingerhoets, a leading authority on crying.However men let the tears flow more often when they experience something positive, for example when their sports team wins an important match.
I have always wondered why our species Homo sapiens, that evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago, seemed to do nothing special for the first 150,000 years. Because it is not until about 50,000 years ago that the first sign of creative thinking emerged with beautiful cave paintings found in Spain, France and Indonesia.Around the same time a new sub-species referred to as anatomically modern humans or Homo sapiens sapiens appears.
Evidence of what could be the oldest family camping trip in North America has been discovered below the shoreline of a remote British Columbia island.Remnants of an ancient campfire were found nearby.Alt: Could These Be the Oldest Human Footprints in North America?
At a mosque in parched, sunny Chino on Saturday evening, roughly 500 people of many faiths and ages gathered to try a less concussive tack to end the Golden State's four-year drought.Invoking the power of prayer, they beseeched God, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva to make it rain, already.Related: NASA Satellites Show World's Thirst For Groundwater
Sediment gathered from a lake in Romania has recorded the environmental changes linked to changes in the political landscape, a study shows.Analysis of the deposits revealed higher erosion rates of topsoil, linked to intensive farming, during the post-war Communist era.
Hidden beneath a thick atmosphere, volcanoes may still be erupting on the surface of Venus, a new study finds.The findings, described in the journal Geophysical Review Letters, reveal that our nearest planetary neighbor could be far more active than previously thought.Related: "Not a Coincidence" --The Largest Rocky Planet in Our Solar System is the Only One with Life - "Plate tectonics are essential to life as we know it"
Saturn's moon Titan is home to seas and lakes filled with liquid hydrocarbons, but what forms the depressions on the surface? A new study using data from the joint NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) Cassini mission suggests the moon's surface dissolves in a process that's similar to the creation of sinkholes on Earth.Apart from Earth, Titan is the only body in the solar system known to possess surface lakes and seas, which have been observed by the Cassini spacecraft.
Scientists at UCL have observed how a widespread polar wind is driving gas from the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. The team analysed data gathered over seven years by the international Cassini probe, and found that the interactions between Titan's atmosphere, and the solar magnetic field and radiation, create a wind of hydrocarbons and nitriles being blown away from its polar regions into space. This is very similar to the wind observed coming from the Earth's polar regions.
Landing humans on Mars won't wreck the search for life on the Red Planet. That's according to researchers who simulated the impact of a crewed mission to a pristine world by driving across the Canadian Arctic.Space agencies currently take great care to sterilise spacecraft bound for Mars, to avoid contaminating the planet with Earth microbes that could make it harder to find native Martian life.
Could Mars, of all places, be the place to look for early life on Earth?It's an intriguing thought and one that astrobiologists take seriously as they consider the conditions during the early days of Solar System when both planets experienced frequent bombardments by asteroids and comets that resulted in debris exchange between one body and the other.
A robotic "cryobot," designed to tunnel down through thick ice caps and penetrate subterranean seas, is undergoing tests on the Matanuska glacier in Alaska. It paves the way towards one day exploring the underground oceans of Jupiter's moon, Europa, or other icy moons of the Outer Solar System.Related: All Systems Go for NASA's Mission to Jupiter Moon Europa
This historic image shows what could be some of the very first stars to form in the universe.These stars seeded the universe with the heavier elements on the periodic table, forming later generations of stars and even us!The newly found galaxy -- named CR7 -- dates back to approximately 800 million years after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.
Scientists have provided the first direct experimental evidence for how primordial proteins developed the ability to accelerate the central chemical reaction necessary to synthesize proteins and thus allow life to arise not long after Earth was created.Before there were cells on Earth, simple, tiny catalysts most likely evolved the ability to speed up and synchronize the chemical reactions necessary for life to rise from the primordial soup. But what those catalysts were, how they appeared at the same time, and how they evolved into the two modern superfamilies of enzymes that translate our genetic code have not been understood.
Extreme music, such as heavy metal, can positively influence people who are feeling angry, new research reveals.In contrast to previous studies linking loud and chaotic music to aggression and delinquency, the study shows listeners mostly became inspired and calmed.
Parents who worry that their children are lying to them should not be too concerned, because it shows they have excellent memories and thinking skills, researchers have found.Psychologists at the University of Sheffield who tested 135 children found that those who lied did far better on a trivia test than their honest peers.Related: British children reluctant to cheat, US study shows
If the English King Richard III was the "king in a car park," King Henry I may prove to be the "king in a playground."In the wake of an archaeological dig that found the bones of Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, British historians and archaeologists are turning to a church and school yard in the town of Reading in search of the remains of Henry I, who ruled England from 1100 to 1135.
The remains of an ancient Celtic prince or princess found still wearing a solid gold torque and lavish bracelets in a grave filled with riches has left archaeologists baffled.The 2,500 year old royal grave, which is thought to date to the fifth century BC, was discovered in Lavau, near Troyes, is thought to have belonged to a member of a Celtic royal family.Lying at the centre of the tomb, the skeleton had been laid to rest inside an ornate two-wheeled chariot with a 580g (1.2lbs) golden torque decorated with elaborate winged monsters around its neck.
A mysterious skeleton discovered in Tehran last year proved the city is much more ancient than first thought.Now experts have reconstructed the face of the 7,000-year-old remains to reveal the Iranian capital's oldest known resident for the first time.According to their reconstruction, she had a strong rounded chin, large lips and black hair.
The above video is a nice and short compendium of the mystery surrounding the legendary Hy'Brasil, a mythical island which has been popularized as 'the other Atlantis.'The fact that it was portrayed in several ancient maps, and that there's even some first-person accounts of actual mariners who claimed to have visited the island, is nowadays dismissed by modern historians and cartographers as nothing but folklore. The same reason behind why those maps also showed the customary warning "Here Be Monsters" on regions still uncharted.
Government officers from Chengkou county, Chongqing province recently discovered an ancient sword that had been used as a kitchen knife by an elderly farmer for several years.The 60-year-old farmer, named Yi Shouxiang, found the sword while digging on his farmland five years ago.
Yes, this is for real.No, there isn't dinosaur DNA trapped in amber, waiting to be replicated and cloned.But that's not the only way to make a dino, said Jack Horner, the paleontologist who worked on "Jurassic World" (and the rest of the "Jurassic Park" films), and he wants to make it happen.Related: Preserved dinosaur cells found, but scientists still can't build Jurassic World
The question of whether you are a righty or a lefty no longer applies just to humans and great apes. It turns out that kangaroos prefer one hand over the other as well. Most kangaroos prefer to use their left hand to pick up leaves, move food into their mouths, and groom their bodies, according to a study published Thursday in Current Biology.
Being the daddy isn't important for male gorillas when it comes to their relationships with the kids; it's their rank in the group that makes the difference, says new research published in Animal Behaviour. The authors of the study, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), say this supports the theory that for most of their evolution, gorillas lived in groups with one male and several females.Related: Daddy's Here! Why Fathers Call Themselves 'Dad' Around Children
Call it the ultimate sunshade. During the hottest part of the day, tiny hairs on the back of the Saharan silver ant repel the sun's rays and also shed excess heat back toward the sky.It was their metallic look that intrigued Nanfang Yu from Columbia University in New York. On desert sands they remind him of "a droplet of mercury", he says.
Getting food can be tough for all sorts of animals, but the hawkmoth has a particular challenge. It feeds at dusk by inserting a long proboscis into a flower to drink nectar. One of the ways the moths seem to cope with near darkness is to slow visual processing in their brains, as if they were using a slower shutter speed in a camera, they are able to allow their brains to gather more light.Related: Why whistling caterpillars scare birdsRelated: Do butterflies hold the answer to life's mysteries?
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence.That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
Neuroscientists have discovered that artificially stimulating a positive memory can cause mice to snap out of depression-like behaviour.Brain cells storing a good memory were labelled and then later re-activated, after the mice were stressed."Turning on" the memory for just a few minutes eliminated signs of depression.
Cutting-edge brain imaging technology has offered the first glimpse into how new concepts develop in the human brain.The research, carried out at Carnegie Mellon University and published in Human Brain Mapping, involved teaching people a new concept and observing how it was coded in the same areas of the brain through neural representations.