Newsdesk Archive
Amputees will soon be able to 'feel' using their artificial limbs thanks to a breakthrough in prosthesis.The technology wires remaining nerve endings to healthy tissue in the leg or arm and then uses sensors to simulate the sensation of touch.When the wearer applies pressure, these sensors send signals to the brain - and the researchers said the breakthrough could also fight phantom pain often experienced by amputees.
Researchers in Switzerland have designed a system where children teach robot students how to write, and in the process improve their own handwriting skills. This learning by teaching paradigm, they say, could engage unmotivated students as well as boost their self-confidence.
Inventing a world without drunk driving would make life safer for everyone. A path leading to better driver safety is under way. An alcohol detection system for driver safety comes by way of a research program. The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) has been on a mission to advance alcohol detection technology in vehicles.They have been at work on a safety feature to protect against drunk driving. Their system is designed to measure the alcohol in a driver's blood in less than a second.
Not content with having created over 1,000 hybrid mice with different heads, some a different colour from their bodies, controversial doctor Xiaoping Ren next wants to perform pioneering transplants on primates.Shadowing him during a 10-hour operation, the Wall Street Journal witnessed a mouse with a new head move and breathe on its own following the procedure, even opening its eyes and drinking.
Neurobiologists have discovered cells in the crow brain that respond to a specific number of items. The study provides valuable insights into the biological roots of counting capabilities. What makes this finding even more interesting is that a long evolutionary history separates us from birds; as a consequence, the brains of crows and humans are designed very differently.
Chimpanzees are capable of metacognition, or thinking about one's own thinking, and can adjust their behavior accordingly, researchers at Georgia State University, Agnes Scott College, Wofford College and the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York have discovered.Their findings, published June 6 in the journal Cognition, suggest chimpanzees share with humans the capacity for metacognitive monitoring, which reflects a form of cognitive control that underlies intelligent decision-making across species.
When thinking about the extinction of Neanderthals some 30,000 years ago, rabbits may not be the first thing that spring to mind. But the way rabbits were hunted and eaten by Neanderthals and modern humans -- or not, as the case may be -- may offer vital clues as to why one species died out while the other flourished.
An ancient underground tunnel that links the Colosseum with the remains of a gladiatorial training barracks could be restored and opened to the public thanks to a donation from Kuwait.Generations of gladiators lived and trained in the Ludus Magnus or Great Gladiatorial Training School, the largest such facility in Rome, which was located just a few hundred yards from the amphitheatre.
Beside the Aghakhan mausoleum on Aswan's west bank, a collection of six ancient Egyptian tombs from the 26th Dynasty was uncovered today by an Egyptian archaeological mission.Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty describes the discovery as "distinguished" in being the first discovery in that area of tombs from the Late Pharaonic period. All the tombs previously discovered there are dated to the Old and Middle kingdoms.
A couple of toy planes are out to catch illegal loggers and miners in the Amazon.It's an awesome responsibility.Every year, illegal logging and mining in the Peruvian Amazon destroy tens of thousands of acres of rain forest. The deforestation in remote parts of the jungle is difficult to detect while it's going on.
Wi-fi signals have been used to beam power to a surveillance camera.The battery-free camera was modified so it could scavenge power from ambient wi-fi signals, store it and then use it to take photos.
Talking about people behind their backs might seem like an underhand activity which should be frowned upon by society but it is what sets us apart from the animals, academics have claimed.Gossip is what makes people human, according to Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, because it allows us to pass on vital information about who to trust, and helps us bond with family and friends.
"Those with the condition are 'over-sensitive to the world - and not impaired'"It is a theory that challenges conventional views of autism.The mere mention of the condition evokes a stereotype - a socially-awkward child who struggles to comprehend the world around them.
A new study suggests the long-held industry assumption that bisphenol-A breaks down safely in the human body is incorrect. Instead, researchers say, the body transforms the ubiquitous chemical additive into a compound that might spur obesity.Related: Study shows many US canned goods still contain cancer-linked BPA
After about a century of research, scientists in Switzerland have finally solved the mystery of the holes in Swiss cheese.Despite what you may have been told as a child, the holes are not caused by mice nibbling away inside cheese wheels.
New farmland-mapping research published today (June 1) shows that up to 90 percent of Americans could be fed entirely by food grown or raised within 100 miles of their homes.Professor Elliott Campbell, with the University of California, Merced, School of Engineering, discusses the possibilities in a study entitled "The Large Potential of Local Croplands to Meet Food Demand in the United States.".
Are you ready for your smellfie? Photo captions on visual social networks like Flickr and Instagram can be used to create detailed smell maps of urban areas.The system might lead to some unusual location-based technology: automatically generated online maps that let us plot routes not by shortest distance, but by the smells we prefer to experience (or avoid) on a walk, jog or bike ride. The name for these personalised maps? "Smellfies".
A perilous expedition in northwestern Australia that had researchers wading through lakes, ponds and creeks stalked by meat-eating crocodiles has ended with the discovery of a stunning new species of waterlily.Scientists from Australia and Kew Gardens in London covered hundreds of miles of Western Australia by helicopter and jeep on a three week mission to collect species of waterlilies.
Getting astronauts to Mars will take all the spacefaring expertise the United States can muster, including advanced propulsion technologies such as solar-electric engines and perhaps even nuclear rockets, according to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.In statements made during a visit to the Aerojet Rocketdyne plant here last Thursday (May 28), Bolden stressed that he'd like to slash the travel time required to send astronauts to Mars.
Planets are just like people: what they reveal on the outside can help you read what's going on inside. Space rocks bombarding Mars's surface could soon be telling us about seismic activity deeper down.Sometime in the past, the Red Planet had a global magnetic field and active volcanoes, and it may also have had plate tectonics and underground tremors called marsquakes. On Earth, such phenomena are linked to the planet's molten iron core and movement in the mantle, both of which Mars might still have.
Seven new species of miniature frog, smaller than bumblebees, have been discovered clinging to survival on isolated mountaintops in Brazil.The largest of the new discoveries has a maximum adult length of just 13mm. The frogs, which are among the smallest land vertebrates, have evolved with fewer fingers and toes in order to reduce their size.
Port officials in an Oregon city have gone to creative lengths to see off hundreds of sea lions from their docks - by shipping in a fake orca whale.The 32ft-long fibreglass whale was brought to rid Astoria's port of the sea lions after they failed to leave as expected once the weather got warmer.
Using less than a drop of blood, a new test can reveal nearly every virus a person has ever been exposed to, scientists reported on Thursday.The test, which is still experimental, can be performed for as little as $25 and could become an important research tool for tracking patterns of disease in various populations, helping scientists compare the old and the young, or people in different parts of the world.
If Alaska is anything like HGTV makes it out to be, it's a beautiful, serene landscape full of glistening glaciers, towering spruce trees, and vast lakes. There's one fact HGTV left out, though: Sometimes horrifying monster fish fall from the sky.KTUU reports that eel-like fish called Arctic lampreys have rained down from the sky on several occasions, landing on neighborhood lawns and freaking out anyone with eyes.
Triceratops is known for its distinguished trio of horns, but the dinosaur's teeth are just as distinctive, a new study finds. An analysis of 66-million-year-old Triceratops' teeth shows they are more complex than reptilian teeth, and rival the complexity of chompers found in mammals' mouths."These are really sophisticated teeth, in fact more sophisticated then I'd thought they'd be," said the study's co-researcher Gregory Erickson, a professor of paleobiology at Florida State University.
How did life on Earth begin? It's been one of modern biology's greatest mysteries: How did the chemical soup that existed on the early Earth lead to the complex molecules needed to create living, breathing organisms? Now, researchers say they've found the missing link.Between 4.6 billion and 4.0 billion years ago, there was probably no life on Earth.
It's rare to find a mummy wearing an outfit. But this exceptionally preserved body spent more than 350 years fully clothed in a lead coffin before being undressed during an autopsyThe mummy was discovered a few years ago by the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research while investigating the burial grounds of a convent in Rennes, France.
A Report by Andrew CollinsSunday, May 31st, 2015. I have just returned from southeast Turkey having visited Göbekli Tepe as part of a tour organised by myself and Hugh Newman of Megalithomania. This incredible proto-Neolithic stone temple complex, arguably the oldest of its type in the world, continues to undergo its transformation into an open-air museum. A new visitors' centre is in the process of opening around one kilometre (just over half a mile) from the site, and from this to the main archaeological area a causeway has been built to ferry visitors, presumably in golf carts, to their destination, just like at Stonehenge in England.
A team of researchers with affiliations to Princeton University and the Smithsonian Institution has found what they believe to be the answer to how it is that the African savannah is able to support such a wide variety of herbivores. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their field study, their analysis of their findings and what it may mean for conservation efforts in Africa.
A method for making elastic high-capacity batteries from wood pulp was unveiled by researchers in Sweden and the US. Using nanocellulose broken down from tree fibres, a team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stanford University produced an elastic, foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.
A battery-life extender has been announced, claiming up to 800 percent additional performance. The company believes it will have a significant impact on disposable energy market and the environment.The company is Batteroo and the product is Batteriser. What is Batteriser? It's a sleeve that fits over new or most used batteries. It's stainless-steel at less than .1 millimeters thin. Batteriser is reusable. Writing about the Batteriser, Jon Phillips, editor in chief of PCWorld, said, "It's essentially a voltage booster that sucks every last drop of useable energy from ostensibly spent batteries.".
A new study led by UC Santa Cruz researchers has found that a protein associated with cancer cells is a powerful suppressor of the biological clock that drives the daily ("circadian") rhythms of cells throughout the body. The discovery, published in the June 4 issue of Molecular Cell (and online now), adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting a link between cancer and disruption of circadian rhythms, while offering new insights into the molecular mechanisms of the biological clock.
Listening to Mozart can give your brain a boost, according to a new study.People who heard the classical composer's music showed an increase in brain wave activity linked to memory, understanding and problem-solving, researchers found.However, no such increases were found after the group listened to Beethoven, suggesting there is something specific about the effect of Mozart's music on our minds, they said.
An altruism experiment found that four-year-olds from less well-off families donated more of their prize than their wealthy peersEven as four-year-olds, poor people are more generous than their richer counterparts, an altruism experiment suggests.
Mexico has one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world, with 12% of the population suffering from the condition, compared with 9% of people in the United States. The Mexican government is so worried that it recently declared a state of emergency and introduced a tax on soda and junk food. But a new study shows that some Mexicans may be at higher risk for developing diabetes, no matter how healthy their diets are. The reason may be their Maya ancestry, which carries with it genetic variations associated with the disease.
The destruction of a 600-year-old geoglyph in Trujillo made headlines in April after agricultural invaders attempted to erase the structure to make room for crops.Since the incident was discovered investigators have searched the region to find out that hundreds in the area have been destroyed and remain in danger.
Archaeologists at the University of Southampton have found evidence of an ancient gold trade route between the south-west of the UK and Ireland. A study suggests people were trading gold between the two countries as far back as the early Bronze Age (2500BC).
Researchers said a set of newly discovered 12,000-year-old artifacts in southeastern Connecticut is one of the oldest in New England.The site located at Mashantucket Pequot Reservation was occupied by the Paleoindians and it is the fourth and oldest Paleoindian site found on tribal lands.
Are animals more human than we thought? Or is it humans who are more animal-like?Scientists are moving toward a startling conclusion: humans can no longer claim that they are the only ones with an elevated sense of morality. For instance, studies have found that chimpanzees will give food to one another when given the opportunity. So will dogs.
A giant shark the size of a two-story building prowled the shallow seas 100 million years ago, new fossils reveal.The massive fish, Leptostyrax macrorhiza, would have been one of the largest predators of its day, and may push back scientists' estimates of when such gigantic predatory sharks evolved, said study co-author Joseph Frederickson, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Oklahoma.
About 10 years ago, Peter Hews stumbled across some bones sticking out of a cliff along the Oldman River in southeastern Alberta, Canada. Now, scientists describe in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 4 that those bones belonged to a nearly intact skull of a very unusual horned dinosaur--a close relative of the familiar Triceratops that had been unknown to science until now.
At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones.The study of ancient rabbit populations at a Baja California site may help scientists better understand how mammals that range from the coast to the interior will respond to climate change, says anthropology doctoral student Isaac Hart. He is first author of the study to be published in the July issue of the journal Quaternary Research.
Two volcanic islands recently born in the Red Sea have yielded stunning images, providing scientists with new insights about a little-known rift in Earth's crust.Both islands emerged in the Zubair Archipelago, a small chain of volcanic islands, owned by Yemen, that rise from the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The first of the new islands, now called Sholan Island, appeared in December 2011. The second island, called Jadid, surfaced in September 2013.
Buffalo flies are a serious problem for dairy cattle in tropical and sub-tropical Australia. An individual cow can be bitten by hundreds of these blood-sucking insects every day. They cause great discomfort and irritation to the animals, which often injure themselves as they rub against trees and fences in order to scratch the bites.
Love the great outdoors, but not quite ready to go Into The Wild-style and give up hot water and electricity just yet? Slovakian architects have just revealed a super-compact capsule that promises to deliver a nomadic lifestyle, with all the renewable-powered comforts of home. And we really want one.The whole thing is pretty cramped, measuring just 2.55 m x 4.45 m x 2.25 m, but it's designed to be entirely self-sufficient for two adults.
For the first time, scientists have discovered a mechanism in humans that could explain how your lifestyle choices may impact your children and grandchildren's genes.Mounting evidence suggests that environmental factors such as smoking, diet and stress, can leave their mark on the genes of your children and grandchildren. For example, girls born to Dutch women who were pregnant during a long famine at the end of the second world war had twice the usual risk of developing schizophrenia. Likewise, male mice that experience early life stress give rise to two generations of offspring that have increased depression and anxiety, despite being raised in a caring environment.
IT MIGHT look like an amputated rat forelimb, but the photo above is of something much more exciting: the limb has been grown in the lab from living cells. It may go down in history as the first step to creating real, biologically functional limbs for amputees."We're focusing on the forearm and hand to use it as a model system and proof of principle," says Harald Ott of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who grew the limb.
The caves of Cappadocia (also spelled Kapadokya) in Turkey have attracted people for thousands of years. The strange peaks and valleys are now a tourist destination and a World Heritage Site, but they used to be a refuge for people fleeing violence and persecution. Seeking to live unobtrusively, these refugees carved homes and even churches into the landscape. But even solid rock can only hold up for so long under the relentless tramp of human feet, and a few of the most delicate ancient sites are too perilous for tourists to visit.
You might not need to remember those complicated e-mail and bank account passwords for much longer. According to a new study, the way your brain responds to certain words could be used to replace passwords.In "Brainprint," a newly published study in academic journal Neurocomputing, researchers from Binghamton University observed the brain signals of 45 volunteers as they read a list of 75 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD.
Happy birthday, caesium clock. Now move over. As the atomic clock used to define time itself turns 60, tests are set to begin on a new generation of clocks that are designed to give the caesium version a run for its money.Such timekeepers would enable a variety of experiments, including testing whether the fundamental constants of nature really are constant over time, and, eventually, a more precise official definition of the second.
It started about five years ago with a practical chemistry question.Little did Bill Poirier realize as he delved into the quantum mechanics of complex molecules that he would fall down the rabbit hole to discover evidence of other parallel worlds that might well be poking through into our own, showing up at the quantum level.
Astronomers have discovered a disc of planetary debris surrounding a young sun-like star that shares remarkable similarities with the Kuiper Belt that lies beyond Neptune, and may aid in understanding how our solar system developed.An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, has identified a young planetary system which may aid in understanding how our own solar system formed and developed billions of years ago.
Geoscientists have solved a decade-long mystery of how some of the large lakes that sit atop the Greenland ice sheet can completely drain billions of gallons of water in a matter of hours.In 2006, Greenland's North Lake, a 2.2 square-mile (5.6 square kilometers) supraglacial meltwater lake, drained almost 12 billion gallons of water in less than two hours. In a study published two years later, researchers determined that this astonishing phenomenon is possible because giant hydro-fractures(water-driven cracks) can form directly beneath the lake.
In fact, the blue regions in the image--which was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter--are dark sediments that look like liquid water because of the way the image was processed, according to the agency's website.Water is known to exist on Mars, but the Red Planet is so cold that, with the possible exception of some transient melting, it's all frozen solid.
Outer space might be the toughest environment for life, but some hearty microbes have been able to survive in it for surprising amounts of time. How long they can do so and why they are able to withstand the difficulties of space remains a topic of controversy.Persistent strains of microbes have been discovered in spacecraft clean rooms. In 2014, Russian reports emerged of plankton surviving on the exterior of the International Space Station, a claim that NASA officials objected to for lack of evidence.
Sightings of a mystery object in the skies above Wiltshire 50 years ago have been immortalised in a mural.The reports of the UFO, known as "The Warminster Thing", came from many people who heard mysterious sounds and saw objects in the night sky in 1965.
Haven't libraries gone the way of the dodo bird? In Germany, they're securing their future by expanding opening hours and campaigning for better access to e-books. And it appears to be working.Is an e-book as much a book as a "book book"? Libraries in Germany would say yes. It seems they're coming to grips with what many readers take for granted.
Why do some people immediately burst into laughter after a humorous moment, while others can barely crack a smile? New research examining emotional reactivity suggests one of the answers may lie in a person's DNA.In a new study linking a gene to positive emotional expressions such as smiling and laughing, researchers demonstrated that people with a certain genetic variant -- those with short alleles of the gene 5-HTTLPR -- smiled or laughed more while watching cartoons or subtly amusing film clips than people with long alleles.
Washington State University researchers have found that the more hunter-gatherers smoke cannabis, the less they are infected by intestinal worms. The link suggests that they may unconsciously be, in effect, smoking medical marijuana.Ed Hagen, a WSU Vancouver anthropologist, explored cannabis use among the Aka foragers to see if people away from the cultural and media influences of Western civilization might use plant toxins medicinally.
Remains of a Dinosaur Age bird with two tail feathers shaped like arrows have been found in Northeast Brazil.The hummingbird-sized specimen, described in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, reveals that early feathers were not just for flying, since the arrow-shaped feathers were not at all aerodynamically optimized.
New research helps us understand why 40% of honeybee colonies in the US have vanished.The sharp decline in honeybee populations over the past 10 years has left scientists baffled, leading them to propose a variety of causes from cell phone signals to pesticides. Now, scientists say they have found another puzzle piece.
A 500-year-old engraving may show Leonardo da Vinci playing a musical instrument called a lira da braccio. If verified, the engraving would represent just the third contemporary depiction of da Vinci (created while he was alive) still in existence.An artist named Marcantonio Raimondi created the engraving in 1505. But only recently did Ross Duffin, a music professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, identify the man in the engraving as Leonardo da Vinci, publishing the findings in the magazine Cleveland Art.
Astronomers have witnessed two big blobs of plasma, shot into space by a black hole, cannoning into each other in a dramatic cosmic billiard-shot.The supermassive black hole sits at the heart of an elliptical galaxy called NGC 3862, blasting out a jet of plasma at 98% of the speed of light.
A giant eruption from the sun that scientists thought would hit Earth in 2014 missed because the sun's magnetic field channeled it away from the planet in an unexpected way, researchers say.This finding could lead to better modeling and forecasting of disruptive solar storms in the future, the scientists added.Solar eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections, are the hurricanes of space weather. These explosions can drive on the order of a billion tons of super-hot matter out from the sun.
Most of us think of bacteria as the enemy, but each of our bodies harbors trillions of microbes, most of them beneficial or benign. Now, you can add two new friendlies to the list. This week, two groups of synthetic biologists seeking to repurpose living microbes for human benefit report genetically modifying bacteria to detect cancer in mice and diabetes in humans.
TWO artificial DNA "letters" can link up just like the natural versions, paving the way for incorporating the newcomers into living cells.Synthetic biologists are racing to come up with artificial versions of the building blocks of life. "We have been basically reinventing the genetic alphabet from the bottom up," says Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida. Hopes for such fake DNA range from developing new drugs to creating artificial life.
Wearing contact lenses may change the community of bacteria living in your eyes, according to a small new study.In the study, the surface of the eye in the people who wore contact lenses had triple the proportion of certain bacteria species, on average, compared with the people in the study who did not wear the lenses, researchers found.
In the United Kingdom, desk-bound workers may soon be following the advice of reggae master Bob Marley, who urged people everywhere to "Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight!"In a consensus statement published Monday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a panel convened by England's public health services and a British community interest company urged employers initially to get "predominantly desk-based workers" up from their seats, engaging in "standing and light activity" for two hours a day.
The mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart is still hotly debated.Some say she ran out of gas over a vast stretch of the Pacific, while others argue she landed on an island now called Nikumaroro, before dying.Alt: Hunt for Amelia Earhart Resumes in Pacific
A virgin birth is normally taken as a sign of divine intervention, but the phenomenon may be more common than we thought - at least in certain fish species.Scientists have discovered that female sawfish appear to be routinely reproducing without any male input through an alternative form of reproduction known as parthenogenesis.
Being unable to feel pain may sound appealing, but it would be extremely hazardous to your health. Pain is, for most of us, a very unpleasant feeling, but it serves the important evolutionary purpose of alerting us to potentially life-threatening injuries. Without it, people are more prone to hurting themselves and so, because they can be completely oblivious to serious injuries, a life without pain is often cut short.
They are known as man's best friend and the British are famously dotty about them. But how can you tell if your dog is happy, lonely, anxious or sad?The answer is in the volume, length and pitch of their bark, according to scientists who have developed a computer program that can translate woofs.
Nasa has given details on how it hopes to find life on Jupiter's moon Europa in a mission launching in the 2020s that will seek to determine if the satellite is habitable.It is thought that beneath Europa's icy surface there is an ocean sitting on a rocky bed punctured by hydrothermal vents that could circulate heat and nutrients.
Outer space might be the toughest environment for life, but some hearty microbes have been able to survive in it for surprising amounts of time. How long they can do so and why they are able to withstand the difficulties of space remains a topic of controversy.Persistent strains of microbes have been discovered in spacecraft clean rooms. In 2014, Russian reports emerged of plankton surviving on the exterior of the International Space Station, a claim that NASA officials objected to for lack of evidence.
An international team of researchers has for the first time predicted the occurrence of aurorae visible to the naked eye on a planet other than Earth.Mars' upper atmosphere may be indeed closer to Earth's than previously thought.Related: NASA prepares to test supersonic spacecraft for Mars mission
Mars is a large enough planet that astrobiologists looking for life need to narrow the parameters of the search to those environments most conducive to habitability.NASA's Mars Curiosity mission is exploring such a spot right now at its landing site around Gale Crater, where the rover has found extensive evidence of past water and is gathering information on methane in the atmosphere, a possible signature of microbial activity.
A study of three mice that spent 91 days on the International Space Station has found abnormalities in their skin.This is a record stay for any animal in space; due to their short lifespan it equates to about seven "mouse years".Alt: Mice develop thinner skin after just three months in space
A team of scientists has used X-ray and gamma-ray observations of some of the most distant objects in the universe to better understand the nature of space and time. Their results set limits on the quantum nature, or "foaminess," of spacetime at extremely tiny scales.This study combines data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope along with ground-based gamma-ray observations from the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array (VERITAS).
Physicists and mathematicians have long sought a Theory of Everything (ToE) that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics. General relativity explains gravity and large-scale phenomena such as the dynamics of stars and galaxies in the universe, while quantum mechanics explains microscopic phenomena from the subatomic to molecular scales.The holographic principle is widely regarded as an essential feature of a successful Theory of Everything. The holographic principle states that gravity in a three-dimensional volume can be described by quantum mechanics on a two-dimensional surface surrounding the volume.
Built to look for gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space itself that were predicted by Einstein in 1916, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is the most ambitious project ever funded by the National Science Foundation. LIGO consists of two L-shaped interferometers with four-kilometer-long arms; at their ends hang mirrors whose motions are measured to within one-thousandth the diameter of a proton. Managed jointly by Caltech and MIT, Initial LIGO became operational in 2001; the second-generation Advanced LIGO was dedicated on May 19.
Who hasn't looked up at the star-studded night sky and wondered, "Where did everything come from?"There are many ways to address this question. It was Edwin Hubble whose telescopic observations of galaxies in 1929 led to the major discovery that the universe is expanding, and that the rate of expansion is proportional to how far the galaxies are from one another. The farther apart they are, they faster they are going. This result implies there was a time about 13.75 billion years ago when the universe began in an event we now call the Big Bang.
The DNA encoding all life on Earth is made of four building blocks called nucleotides, commonly known as 'letters,' that line up in pairs and twist into a double helix. Now, two groups of scientists are reporting for the first time that two new nucleotides can do the same thing -- raising the possibility that entirely new proteins could be created for medical uses.
A new bionic lens implant could give patients the unique ability to see three times better than standard 20/20 vision for the rest of their lives.Dr. Garth Webb, founder and CEO of Ocumetics Technology Corp, a company committed to eliminating glasses and contact lenses for patients, invented the Ocumetics Bionic Lens, which resembles a small button.
Sleepiness and stress are perennial risks for the long distance lorry driver, and accidents are sadly too frequent.However, a radical new driverless truck being trialled by Daimler may offer a solution.
Robots that are damaged in action can now quickly "heal" themselves by tapping into experiences from simulated lives, according to a new study. It may sound like science fiction, but these abilities could lead to more robust, effective and autonomous robots, researchers say.Alt: Adaptable robots 'on their way' to the home
Although many of us take for granted the fact that we can simply hit a switch and be flooded with artificial light, around one billion people in the world still live without electricity. This means a lot of people are relying on dangerous and expensive kerosene lamps to provide them with light to study, work and cook after dark.But a team of engineers from the UK has now come up with a new device called GravityLight that runs simply using the force of gravity.
In June 2012, a network of 16,000 computers trained itself to recognize a cat by looking at 10 million images from YouTube videos. Today, the technique is used in everything from Google image searches to Facebook's newsfeed algorithms.The feline recognition feat was accomplished using "deep learning," an approach to machine learning that works by exposing a computer program to a large set of raw data and having it discover more and more abstract concepts.
Holding cynical beliefs about others may have a negative effect on your income according to research using survey data from the United States and Europe. The reviews looked at cynicism (as measured by responses to a questionnaire) in national surveys of Americans (1,146 and 497 participants respectively) and income level at a later date. In both studies, a high level of cynicism was associated with lower income.Alt: Why optimists will earn nearly £2,000 a year more than cynics
The remains of three colorful dragon heads made of clay have been discovered in a huge palace in Xanadu, a city constructed by the grandsons of Genghis Khan.The palace sprawls over 9,000 square meters (about 100,000 square feet), or nearly twice the floor space of the modern-day White House.Archaeologists have been excavating the palace, learning how it was designed and decorated.
A skull found by two walkers at a popular seaside park in Bergen may have belonged to an iron age woman who had been ritually decapitated in a human sacrifice, archeologists have concluded.Police launched an immediate murder investigation after the skull was reported last Wednesday at Kyrkjetangen, a seaside park just north of the city, raising hopes that the discovery might clear up one of the city's many outstanding missing person cases.
How much would you spend on a few strands of a dead man's hair? How about $15,000? That's how much you'll have to shell out if you want to take home a bit of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's mane.The 18th century composer's blond locks hit the auction block Thursday (May 28) at Sotheby's auction house in London, where they're expected to fetch between $14,800 and $17,800 (10,000 - 12,000 pounds). Also for sale: a few of Ludwig van Beethoven's gray hairs.
An ancient seal unearthed in northern Israel may depict a woman playing a musical instrument during a sacred marriage rite between a king and a goddess. The mysterious seal, which decorates a shard of a 5,000-year-old clay storage vessel, could be the oldest known depiction of a musical performance in Israel, archaeologists say."This is the first time it is definitely possible to identify a figure playing an instrument on a seal impression from the third millennium B.C.," the researchers said in a statement.
The Israeli Antiquities Authority says revelers at a Burning Man festival famous for its pyrotechnic spectacles have accidentally torched some remnants of prehistoric man.Archaeologist Yoram Haimi says organizers of Midburn, an Israeli affiliate of the Nevada carnival, burned a wooden temple Saturday on a hilltop scattered with flint tools from the Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.
Legal restrictions imposed on medical use of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin (the compound found in 'magic' mushrooms), are making trials almost impossible and authorities should 'downgrade their unnecessarily restrictive class A, schedule 1 classification,' writes a psychiatrist.Related: Psychoactive substances ban will 'end brain research' in Britain, experts warnAlso: Neuroscientist Explains The Similarities Between The Brains Of Praying Nuns And Psychedelic Drug Users
Antidepressant drugs that work in hours instead of weeks could be on the market within three years, researchers say."We're getting closer and closer to having really, truly next-generation treatments that are better and quicker than existing ones," says Dr. Carlos Zarate, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health.
Next Friday at 8:30 a.m., if you happen to be an inmate at the Boulder County Jail in Colorado, consider going to the animal behavior class taught by Marc Bekoff. But be prepared to stand, because seats fill up quickly. It turns out that guys in prison love learning about animals, and sometimes it changes their lives.Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, has been teaching "Animal Behavior and Conservation" to male prisoners for over a decade (that's more than 600 classes). It's part of Jane Goodall's global Roots & Shoots Program, and has been a model for similar projects at other jails.
At least 120,000 of the animals have died in Kazakhstan since mid-May. Environmental and biological factors could be at play, but the exact cause is a mystery.Experts are scrambling to understand how almost 120,000 saiga antelopes have died off in Central Asia at an unprecedented rate, harming recent efforts to protect the endangered species.Alt: Mysterious Deaths of Saiga Antelopes May Have Sinister Cause
Scientists are planning to ship ice to the Antarctic. They're afraid that mountain glaciers around the world are melting as a result of climate change and want to store samples of ice in a new vault in the coldest place on Earth.At 4,350m the Col du Dome sits just below the summit of Mont Blanc.
Faced with a dearth of logistical support and challenges related to climate change, human-powered trips to the North Pole may be on the brink of extinction."North Pole expeditions are going the way of the passenger pigeon," says Eric Larsen, a Colorado-based polar explorer who has completed three North Pole expeditions.
Today through Saturday marks a biannual solar event called Manhattanhenge, where the rising or setting sun aligns with the east-west grid of Manhattan streets.Related: INDIEGOGO: The Sophia Project: How was Stonehenge built? - "Help us recreate the lost ancient science that made the construction of Stonehenge possible"