Newsdesk Archive
New research, led by the University of Southampton, has questioned the role played by ocean acidification, produced by the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, in the extinction of ammonites and other planktonic calcifiers 66 million years ago.Ammonites, which were free-swimming molluscs of the ancient oceans and are common fossils, went extinct at the time of the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact, as did more than 90 per cent of species of calcium carbonate-shelled plankton (coccolithophores and foraminifera).
Eight polo sticks and three leather balls discovered in the Yanghai Tombs in northwestern China have been dated back between 2,400 and 2,800 years, potentially pushing back the origins of the game that is famed for being the sport of the elite around the world. The first mentions of Chinese polo in writing date from the period of the Han Dynasty, between 202 BCE and 221 CE. Although the balls found in the Yanghai Tombs have a design similar to others found in the tomb of a Han ruler in the Gansu province, also in northwestern China, they seem to be significantly older.
Scientists are beginning to tap into a wellspring of knowledge buried in the ancient stories of Australia's Aboriginal peoples. But the loss of indigenous languages could mean it is too late to learn from them.The Luritja people, native to the remote deserts of central Australia, once told stories about a fire devil coming down from the Sun, crashing into Earth and killing everything in the vicinity.
Priceless historical artefacts have been lost recently, to violence in Iraq and earthquakes in Nepal. But "cyber-archaeologists" are working with volunteers to put you just a few clicks away from seeing these treasures - in colourful, three-dimensional detail.The effort began with a conversation between two researchers in late February, days after shocking footage emerged of Islamic State militants tearing down and smashing artworks in the Mosul Museum in northern Iraq.
Your month of birth could affect whether or not you become a celebrity, according to one academic study.The implication is that astrological signs could indicate how likely a person is to be successful.While the study concludes that "distant star clusters do not exert mystical effects on earthly events", it does suggest that astrological signs may be a guide to potential celebrity.
Clumps of small, glassy particles may be responsible for the formation of giant asteroids and the planetary "embryos" that collided to form rocky planets like Earth, a new study suggests.Asteroid fragments that fall to Earth as meteorites often contain tiny, round pellets known as chondrules that formed when molten droplets quickly cooled in outer space during the solar system's early years. Chondrules are found in 92 percent of all meteorites.
Look, we know this sea turtle's prosthetic beak has a tragic backstory, but it sure makes the reptile look like it has a future as a badass pizza-loving mutant. According to 3D Printing Industry, Turkish animal rescuers found it almost lifeless at sea, after a boat propeller shaved off a huge part of its snout. It escaped the clutches of death thanks to those kind folks, but a turtle that has to be hand-fed can never survive back in the wild.
The mysterious lights on the dwarf planet Ceres are apparently of interest to more than just the Dawn spacecraft currently in orbit around it. New photographs of the lights show what appears to be a UFO circling the area and performing some impressive maneuvers. Is NASA going to make a statement on this one or resort to another viewer poll?Related: UFO Over San Diego Unexplained, TV Station UncooperativeRelated: Past Tense Oregon: UFO photos taken near McMinnville in 1950 still raise questionsRelated: UFO expert spots disk-shaped craft speeding high above the Australian desert - and says he has had 500 close encounters
ISIS closes in on World Heritage Site of Palmyra in Syria. Will this 2,000-year-old city face the same fate as Nimrud and Nineveh?A remote desert oasis that rose to become one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world is now on the front lines of a new battle between the Syrian army and the Islamic State.The Islamic militants, commonly known as ISIS, pushed into the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra on Saturday in central Syria.
Researchers working at CERN in Switzerland have detected a never-before-seen subatomic process that was "harder to find than the famous Higgs particle", and it could make or break our understanding of the Universe.Related: Quantum physics on tap: Nano-sized faucet offers experimental support for longstanding quantum theory
Even if you don't know it by name, everyone is familiar with Newton's third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This idea can be seen in many everyday situations, such as when walking, where a person's foot pushes against the ground, and the ground pushes back with an equal and opposite force.Even though it is one of the fundamental laws of physics, Newton's third law can be violated in certain nonequilibrium (out-of-balance) situations.
When galaxies stop making stars, their death is usually a slow process that chokes them of the necessary cool gases over about four billion years.That is the conclusion of astronomers who surveyed thousands of galaxies, living and dead, to assess whether the transition is rapid or slow.
Farms dotted with the gigantic spinning blades of wind turbines have become a standard sight on long-distance road trips, but what if there was another way to capture energy from the wind? A startup out of Spain is working on that very idea. The company's called Vortex Bladeless, and its turbines look like stalks of asparagus poking out of the ground.
The dry, red earth could almost be mistaken for a Martian landscape. It is in fact the Atacama desert in Chile, one of the driest places on Earth.Average rainfall here is les than 0.1mm (0.004 in) per year and there are many regions which have not seen any precipitation for decades.
Building repairs and potholes cost billions every year - and that's not to mention the amount of roadworks created by ongoing maintenance.But the days of crumbling structures and potholed roads are numbered after a microbiologist developed a self-healing concrete that mends cracks using bacteria.And this bacteria can also be added to a liquid and sprayed onto existing cracks formed by decades of wear and tear, as well as onto other materials.
A new study has found that traditional Aboriginal and Indian plant extracts could be used to manage type 2 diabetes by reducing instances of weight gain, hypertension and immune suppression.Diabetes is one of the fastest growing metabolic diseases in the world, so coming up with better treatment options has never been more important. Especially since current drugs are known to cause weight gain, making them far from optimal for patients to use long-term.
Chronic pain is known to cause brain anatomy changes and impairments, but yoga can be an important tool for preventing or even reversing the effects of chronic pain on the brain, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) official speaking at the American Pain Society's annual meeting.
Ecuador broke a world record for reforestation Saturday, as thousands of people pitched in to plant 647,250 trees of more than 200 species, President Rafael Correa said."I have just been informed that we have broken the Guinness record for reforestation," the president said in his weekly address.Correa said the seedlings were planted all over Ecuador, which boasts varied geography from its Pacific coast, high Andean peaks and low Amazon basin areas.
Looking like a drowned rat? Never fear, a dry rat may come to your rescue.An experiment testing whether empathy can drive behaviour in rats has found that, when a dry rat observes a distressed rat trapped in a wet chamber, it will free it from its cage.
Horses express their emotions through whinnies - and are surprising adept at it, researchers have found.Swiss researchers found horse whinnies are made of two different fundamental frequencies.This allows horses to express both positive and negative emotions, and at the same time convey the strength of these emotions.
In barns filled with classical music and lighting that changes to match the hues outside, rows of chickens are fed a diet rich in probiotics, a regimen designed to remove the need for the drugs and chemicals that have tainted the global food chain.As food giants face growing pressure to offer healthier produce, Southeast Asian poultry firm Kee Song Group says its use of "good" bacteria in feed and water means it can meet one the industry's biggest challenges: how to mass produce drug and hormone-free poultry at a reasonable price.
Hyenas long ago mastered one of the keys to Facebook success: becoming the friend of a friend. The most common large carnivore in Africa, spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), are known for their socially sophisticated behaviors. They live in large, stable clans (as pictured above), which can include as many as 100 individuals. They can tell clan members apart, discriminating among their maternal and paternal kin.
The dodo bird was not the only wacky animal inhabitant of the island of Mauritius: Bad-tempered parrots, wart-faced pigeons and several other now-extinct but noteworthy indigenous animals called this land home, new research suggests.Historians had previously identified the animals that lived on the island before Dutch settlers arrived in the 17th century, but the details about these creatures had remained largely unknown.
A new study by geneticists from the University of Leicester has for the first time identified the genetic clues behind what makes you a 'lark' or an 'owl'.Based on analysis of a fruit fly, the scientists have discovered nearly 80 genes associated with 'morningness' and 'eveningness'.
Skin wounds that are slow to heal are a clinical challenge to physicians all over the world. Every year, the NHS alone spends £1 billion on treating chronic wounds such as lower limb venous and diabetic ulcers. Wounds become chronic when they fail to heal and remain open for longer than six weeks.
A robotic arm inspired by octopus tentacles could make it easier for surgeons to access hard-to-reach parts of the body.A new robotic device uses a series of inflatable chambers to mimic how an octopus can twist, elongate and bend its limbs in any direction. The mechanical arm also imitates the way an octopus can change the stiffness of different sections of its tentacles, allowing the cephalopods to interact with objects.
An inflatable, propeller-powered aircraft, built from lightweight composites, could be a candidate to explore the dense, sulphur-rich skies around Venus on a multi-year mission.US-based aerospace and defence firm, Northrop Grumman, is developing the concept craft, and plans to enter NASA's fourth New Frontiers planetary science competition, which will begin accepting submissions from international teams in October.
We've seen the submarine that NASA wants to explore Saturn's moon Titan with, but compared to what the aeronautics outfit's looking at for icy climes like Jupiter's Europa it's downright pedestrian. The wormy-looking contraption up above is actually considered a type of amphibious rover and it's pretty different from the Deep-SCINI we've seen previously. Because there aren't exactly electrical outlets anywhere aside from Earth and relying on solar power might not always be feasible, it has to use alternative means for energy.
The reddish-brown lines that crisscross the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may be radiation-bombarded sea salt from an underground ocean, a new study suggests.Researchers probing the nature of the mysterious Europa features put run-of-the-mill salt (sodium chloride) and salt-water mixtures in a vacuum chamber chilled to minus 270 degress Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius), then blasted the samples with electrons.
Is the Red Planet giving off methane? The question has taunted scientists for nearly 50 years, ever since the Mariner 7 spacecraft detected a whiff of the gas near Mars' south pole. Researchers retracted the finding a month later after realizing that the signal was in fact coming from carbon dioxide ice.Then in 2003 and 2004, earthbound telescopes and orbiting spacecraft rekindled the mystery with reports of large methane clouds in Mars' atmosphere. Most of Earth's methane comes from living organisms, though a small fraction can form when rocks and hot water interact.
Giant magnetic spirals in the sky could explain why there is something rather than nothing in the universe, according to an analysis of data from NASA's Fermi space telescope.Our best theories of physics imply we shouldn't be here. The Big Bang ought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter particles, which would almost immediately annihilate each other, leaving nothing but light.
An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors.Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature (Tc) - "high" as in −135 °C as opposed to −243.2 °C.
Strange signals detected by a Nasa space telescope could answer the question of why matter exists in the universe at all.The Fermi space telescope has detected high-energy light that scientists claim could give clues to a magnetic field that existed very soon after the big bang. The exact nature of those gamma rays could be proof that there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe, as well as offering a clue to why it came about.
Hillary Clinton once famously said, "It takes a village to raise a child." It turns out that's been true for centuries: New research by a University of Utah anthropologist explains how and why mothers in ancient societies formed cooperative groups to help raise their children.Karen Kramer, an associate professor of anthropology, published a study in the Journal of Human Evolution titled, "When Mothers Need Others: Life History Transitions Associated with the Evolution of Cooperative Breeding.".
Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists.A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history.
Eating a Mediterranean diet that is rich in nuts and olive oil may help delay cognitive decline in older adults, according to a new study.In the study, researchers randomly chose about 300 people to follow a Mediterranean diet for four years, and asked 145 people to eat a low-fat diet for the same period. Following a Mediterranean diet means consuming many vegetables and fruits, and eating some seafood, while eating only a little meat and dairy.Related: 30 Minutes of Daily Exercise Helps Men Live Longer
Humans have become so obsessed with portable devices and overwhelmed by content that we now have attention spans shorter than that of the previously jokingly juxtaposed goldfish.Microsoft surveyed 2,000 people and used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor the brain activity of another 112 in the study, which sought to determine the impact that pocket-sized devices and the increased availability of digital media and information have had on our daily lives.
New research by NOAA Fisheries has revealed the opah, or moonfish, as the first fully warm-blooded fish that circulates heated blood throughout its body much like mammals and birds, giving it a competitive advantage in the cold ocean depths.The silvery fish, roughly the size of a large automobile tire, is known from oceans around the world and dwells hundreds of feet beneath the surface in chilly, dimly lit waters. It swims by rapidly flapping its large, red pectoral fins like wings through the water.
Creatures that venture out into the daylight can be damaged by the sun's ultraviolet rays. Humans produce melanin, a dark pigment, to help protect our skin. And now many of us slather on sunscreen, too.Bacteria, algae and fungi make their own chemicals that sop up UV rays. And there's one called gadusol that's been found in fish and their eggs.
People's personalities tend to vary somewhat depending on the season in which they are born, and astrological signs may have developed as a useful system for remembering these patterns, according to an analysis by UConn researcher Mark Hamilton. Such seasonal effects may not be clear in individuals, but can be discerned through averaging personality traits across large cohorts born at the same time of year.
If you thought meditation was only good for your emotional well-being, think again. A new study shows that meditation may actually alleviate the symptoms of two gut disorders by altering certain genetic signals.The study looked at people who had either irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or irritable bowel disease (IBD). It found that doing yoga and meditating regularly for two months eased the symptoms associated with the two gut disorders, the researchers said.
The eight intermountain states of the American West, sometimes called the Suicide Belt, have high elevations and the associated thin air. Now, researchers say the low oxygen in these areas is linked with signs of depression, and could potentially even contribute to suicides in some regions.In 2012, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico all had suicide rates exceeding 18 per 100,000 people, while the national rate was 12.5 per 100,000 people, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Let's say you're a young person, around 30 years old. And you're the kind of person who likes to take risks. So maybe you're taking risks in your sexual relationships. You're not practicing safe sex.What would make you change your behavior?That's a question that's long been pondered by public health officials. And now new research from a World Bank-funded team in Lesotho, a tiny country in southern Africa, has produced a surprising answer.
In a breakthrough that could lead to a treatment for thousands of infertile men, scientists have grown human sperm cells in a laboratory for the first time.The Kallistem laboratory, a private research facility based in Lyon, France, has turned spermatogonia into mature sperm in test tubes. This is a feat that scientists have been trying to tackle for the past 15 years.
The underlying physical process that creates striking "breaking wave" cloud patterns in our atmosphere also frequently opens the gates to high-energy solar wind plasma that perturbs Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, which protects us from cosmic radiation. The discovery was made by two University of New Hampshire space physicists, who published their findings in the online journal Nature Communications Monday, May 11, 2015.
Forget Earth as a pale blue marble, or perhaps a water planet, decades of satellite observations show Earth is actually dominated by clouds.A new global cloud map based on nearly a decade of NASA satellite data have found that about 67 per cent of Earth's surface is covered by clouds at any given time.
Archaeologists searching for real-life pirates of the Caribbean stumbled on a mysterious shipwreck in 2011. Now after years of historical detective work, they know what they discovered.In 1681, the Spanish merchant ship Encarnación sank during a storm near the mouth of the Chagres River on the Caribbean side of Panama. Built in Veracruz, Mexico, the cargo vessel was part of the Tierra Firme fleet, the economic lifeline of 17th-century Spain.
The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has discovered an uncharted shipwreck in the southern Indian Ocean.Peter Foley, who heads the search team, said the find was "fascinating... But it's not what we're looking for".
New research shows that chacma baboons within a troop spend more of their time with baboons that have similar characteristics to themselves: associating with those of a similar age, dominance rank and even personality type such as boldness. This is known as homophily, or 'love of the same'.
University of Melbourne animal welfare researcher Dr Jean-Loup Rault says the prospect of robopets and virtual pets is not as far-fetched as we may think.His paper in the latest edition of Frontiers in Veterinary Science argues pets will soon become a luxury in an overpopulated world and the future may lie in chips and circuits that mimic the real thing.Related: Why shaking hands matters (even when it's with a robot)
After years of testing, the Tokyo University of Science has announced that it's shipping a robotic muscle suit. The device, designed with people who regularly lift heavy objects in mind, purports to make it possible for everyday people to easily lift far more weight than they normally would.Known simply as the Muscle Suit, the technology is powered by compressed air that flows through rubber tubes.
Despite the fevered reports rocketing around the Internet recently, NASA is not on the verge of developing a fuel-free, faster-than-light propulsion system, space agency officials stress.A team based at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston reportedly tested a prototype engine system in a vacuum recently and determined that it produced a small amount of thrust.
"Cloudy for the morning, turning to clear with scorching heat in the afternoon."While this might describe a typical late-summer day in many places on Earth, it may also apply to planets outside our solar system, according to a new study by an international team of astrophysicists from the University of Toronto, York University and Queen's University Belfast.
The universe. It's the only home we've ever known. Thanks to its intrinsic physical laws, the known constants of nature, and the heavy-metal-spewing fireballs known as supernovae we are little tiny beings held fast to a spinning ball of rock in a distant corner of space and time.Doesn't it seem a little rude not to know much about the universe itself? For instance, if we could look at it from outside, what would we see? A vast blackness? A sea of bubbles? Snow globe? Rat maze? A marble in the hands of a larger-dimensional aliens or some other prog rock album cover?.
A new six-year analysis of water on Mars suggests that the Red Planet has lost the equivalent of an ocean's worth of water over the past four billion years. However, the question of whether Mars was ever warm enough to have hosted such an ocean has sparked debate.The research, conducted using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and supported by the WM Keck Observatory and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, both in Hawaii, has revealed how much water has escaped from Mars' atmosphere throughout its history.
British "redcoats" may have been helped to victory in the Battle of Waterloo by the colour of their uniforms, new research suggests.Men wearing red are seen as more aggressive, angry and dominant than those dressed in blue or grey, a study has shown.Alt: Hey dude, are you angry? Or is it just your red shirt?
Our mood, metabolism and sex lives are dependent on the seasons, and now it seems, so is our immune system.In a study published today, British and German researchers find almost a quarter of human genes are more or less active depending on the season.
Spider silk is already one of the toughest materials around, but scientists have now made it even stronger by spritzing spiders with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes.In fact, the resulting super silk that the spiders produced in their webs is the toughest material ever measured, demonstrating strength and toughness beyond "anything that has been possible before".Related: What if spiders could fly? In Chicago, perhaps they do
A whiff of air frozen in ice for 1 million years provides a new snapshot of Earth's ancestral climate.Scientists uncovered the ancient climate record from Antarctic blue ice. The ice core was drilled from a region called the Allan Hills, about an hour by plane from the McMurdo research station. Bubbles inside the ice are tiny windows into Earth's former atmosphere. Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane were trapped and preserved inside the bubbles when snow fell in the past.
Researchers excavating a site containing Australopithecus remains have announced that one of the fossils had skin on. The six fossils discovered so far have been dated to 2 million years ago and belong to the species Australopithecus sediba, which combined features of both the original Australopithecus, the first erect hominin species, and of modern Homo species. The find is all the more fascinating because, in addition to this being possibly the oldest hominin skin ever discovered, the fossils contain traces of organic matter from the food these ancient human ancestors ate.
A researcher from the University of Pennsylvania has identified a species of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor, the group of creatures made infamous by the movie "Jurassic Park." The newly named species likely possessed a keen sense of smell that would have made it a formidable predator.The specimen, roughly 75 million years old, was discovered by paleontologist Robert Sullivan in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area of New Mexico in 1999.
Researchers have analysed 100 recently discovered geoglyphs engraved into the Nazca Desert in southern Peru, as well as nearby shards of ancient ceramics, providing new clues about the creators of the mysterious Nazca Lines.It's believed that the huge, complex engravings, which range from simple geometric line drawings to detailed images of animals and extraterrestrial-looking beings, were created by the native local cultures between 200 BC and 600 AD, but very little detail is known about why they were drawn.
The height of the pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt supports historical records that they might have married their sisters and cousins, says new research into 259 mummies.It's known from historical sources that incestuous marriages were common among the ancient Egyptian royalty. The pharaohs believed they descended from the gods so inbreeding was seen as a way to retain the sacred bloodline.
Scientists say they have exposed a scandal at the heart of Ancient Egypt's animal mummy industry.A scanning project at Manchester Museum and the University of Manchester has revealed that about a third of the bundles of cloth are empty inside.Alt: Gallery of Egypt's Mysterious Animal Mummies
The Great Pyramid of Giza is undoubtedly one of the most well-known icons of ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, similar pyramids are found scattered all throughout Egypt and beyond. Egyptian-style pyramids have been found south of the border in modern day Sudan. These pyramids were built by the rulers of the Kingdom of Kush. In 30 BC, Egypt became a province in the Roman Empire, and the Romans even launched a military expedition into Kushite territory in 23 BC.
The highest stone circle in southern England has been found on a weather-battered slice of moorland in Devon.Situated 525 metres (1,722ft) above sea level, the ancient site is the first stone circle to be found on Dartmoor for more than a century.
A discovery in south-central Israel has raised interesting questions about the first human settlements in the Middle East and challenged the long-held belief that they all belonged to the Yarmukian culture. The figurine, found at a dig aimed at rescuing possible archaeological artefacts before a water company lays a pipe at the location, looks like a fertility goddess and was most probably used for ritualistic purposes, Haaretz reports, citing the archaeologists who took part in the dig.
One of the oldest brains ever discovered is providing clues on how the world's first heads evolved.The over 500-million-year-old brain, described in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, suggests that rudimentary brains emerged before defined heads. Defined heads likely emerged later to protect brains.The ancient brain belonged to a crustacean called Odaria alata, which had a pair of large eyes on stalks that made it look like the tiny organism was wearing deely boppers. Scientists also often say that Odaria alata looked like a submarine.
Other than dung beetles, most animals try their best to avoid poop. Humans typically build entire rooms designed to flush the stuff away. The ick factor evolved for good reason: fecal matter is a great place for microorganisms to live and grow, some of which can lead to serious infection and illness.Like us, many insects that live in colonies have evolved ways of keeping their nests and hives sanitary.
Scientists have discovered why you may experience that feeling of emptiness in your stomach after eating a fruit salad.Writing for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Southern California found that the naturally occuring sugar in fruit, fructose, leaves people feeling hungrier and desiring more food.
Eating junk food kills stomach bacteria which protect against obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, inflammatory bowel conditions and autism, fresh studies have found.The human gut contains around 3,500 difference microbial species, which together make up some three pounds in weight.
The food tech startup Freight Farms is giving new life to old shipping containers, and at the same time giving impetus to locally grown food.At the Collision technology conference in Las Vegas, the company showed off its basil sprouts nurtured in a used cargo container equipped to let crops flourish just about anywhere.
The Australian discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form."We have found a small star, with a giant planet the size of Jupiter, orbiting very closely," said researcher George Zhou from the Research School of Astrophysics and Astronomy at The Australian National University.
Humanity's path to Mars may go through the Red Planet's tiny moon Phobos.An incremental, multiple-mission approach that envisions getting astronauts to Phobos by 2033, then down to the Martian surface by 2039 could make manned Mars exploration technologically and economically feasible, said Firouz Naderi, head of the Solar System Exploration Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
When exposed to air, a luminescent 2D material called molybdenum telluride (MoTe2) appears to decompose within a couple days, losing its optical contrast and becoming virtually transparent. But when scientists probed further, they found that the disappearance is an illusion: the material remains structurally stable, and only its material properties change. The results reveal insight into the environmental stability and unusual properties of a newer class of 2D materials called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).
Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device.Related: Better than GPS: a history of cartography in 12 amazing maps
The word cooperation is self-explanatory -- two or more people working together toward a common goal or benefit.One Texas Tech University researcher wondered about the implications of teaming up with others in video games and how this differs from playing alone, competitively, or not at all. It seems playing video games cooperatively with others can lead to widespread benefits by making players think helpful behaviors are valuable and commonplace.
On a test of visual perception, children with autism perceive moving dots with more clarity than children without the disorder. The results, published in the May 6 Journal of Neuroscience, reveal a way in which children with autism see the world differently.When asked to determine the overall direction of a mess of dots moving in slightly different directions, children with autism outperformed children without the disorder.
WHAT is it like to be a bat? It's a question philosophers interested in consciousness like to ponder. Yet a few people already have something of a bat's world view.Brian Borowski, a 59-year-old Canadian who was born blind, began teaching himself to echolocate aged 3. He clicks with his tongue or snaps his fingers as he moves about, unconsciously decoding the echoes.
You've been granted a groundbreaking court order that means Stony Brook University in New York has to legally justify keeping two research chimpanzees. What happened?We filed a petition under a habeas corpus statute, which is usually used to bring a prisoner or detainee before a court to determine if detention is lawful. For the first time, a judge has ordered someone detaining chimpanzees to come to court and argue that it is legal. The arguments will hinge upon whether two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, are entitled to legal personhood rather than being viewed as legal things.
The burial of the so-called Red Lady, dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic, was discovered in El Mirón cave (Cantabria) in 2010. The Journal of Archaeological Science has devoted a special edition to all the studies conducted at this unique burial site, because there are hardly any Palaeolithic tombs like this one which is intact and which has not been contaminated.Alt: The 'Red Lady of El Mirón' was covered in FLOWERS: Scientists find 16,000-year-old fossilised pollen in mystery tomb
Intricately carved ancient Hero Stones can be found across India. These decorated stone markers serve as monuments to honorable deaths, commemorating fallen heroes and ferocious warriors who sacrificed themselves in order to protect lives and land. Archaeologists in Andhra Pradesh have found two Hero Stones dating to the ninth and tenth century A.D. which are still used in local worship during festivals.
A Russian spacecraft that started spiralling out of control after a failed attempt to resupply the International Space Station has come crashing back to Earth.The Progress M-27M craft burned through the atmosphere in a fireball on Thursday night, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.
Can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? As scientists discover older and older solar systems, it's likely that before long we'll find an ancient planet in a habitable zone. Knowing if life is possible on this exoplanet would have immense implications for habitability and the development of ancient life, one researcher says.
The headquarters of the ancient Egyptian army have been discovered on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.The find was announced by Egypt's Antiquities Ministry, with the fortress dating back around 3,500 years.
A unique green stone bracelet discovered beside ancient human remains in a Siberian cave is 'the oldest ever found' dating back around 40,000 years, say Russian experts.The intricate modern-looking piece of polished jewellery - perhaps belonging to a prehistoric princess - was made of chlorite by the Denisovans, a long extinct early human grouping, it is believed.
Underwater explorers in Madagascar say they have discovered treasure belonging to the notorious 17th-Century Scottish pirate William Kidd.A 50kg (7st 9lb) silver bar was brought to shore on Thursday on the island of Sainte Marie, from what is thought to be the wreck of the Adventure Galley.
Researchers have now sequenced the genome of the woolly mammoth and have concluded that the last members of the species probably died on an isolated island, where inbreeding may have led to a population too small to be sustainable.The scientists used DNA from two specimens, the 45,000-year-old soft tissue remains of a woolly mammoth found in northeastern Siberia, and a 4,300-year-old tooth from one found on Wrangel Island, a Russian territory in the Arctic Ocean that was separated from the mainland by rising sea levels about 12,000 years ago.
Newly discovered nerves in the mouths of massive whales can unfold, nearly doubling in length, and recoil like a bungee cord. These stretchy nerves could explain how the whales are able to eat by ballooning their mouths during dives.Researchers discovered the surprisingly elastic nerves after collecting samples from a commercial whaling station in Iceland.
Vaccines don't always make it into the people who need them the most. Many require a syringe and a needle to enter the bloodstream and create immunity. And that means a doctor or nurse has to do the job.But with if a vaccine could be delivered by simply applying a patch?Related: Scientists Crack A 50-Year-Old Mystery About The Measles Vaccine
Onions can bend, contract and elongate just like musclesImagine getting an onion transplant to replace an injured muscle. It may sound absurd, but new research published in the journal Applied Physics Letters suggests that onions have ideal properties for use as artificial muscles.
Common phobias in children of spiders, dogs or flying could be overcome with the help of an antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis, researchers say.Macquarie University researchers administered the drug D-cycloserine to 35 children aged between 6 and 14.
Later this week, a single-seat, solar-powered plane with a wingspan longer than that of a Boeing 747 will take off from Nanjing, China, headed for Honolulu. For a normal passenger jet, that's about a 12-hour flight. Solar Impulse 2, the 5,000-pound plane powered by nothing but sunshine, will take five days.
IT'S humans versus machine at the Rivers casino in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Four professional poker players are squaring up to an artificial intelligence over two weeks, duking it out by playing a total of 80,000 hands of poker for a $100,000 cash prize.This may turn out to be the latest instalment in a grand tradition of computers beating us at our own games.
A Stirling scientist who discovered a new Scottish flower has made an unexpected second finding which provides unique insight into our understanding of evolution.Dr Mario Vallejo-Marin, a Plant Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Stirling, first unearthed a new species of monkeyflower on the bank of a stream in South Lanarkshire, Southern Scotland in 2012.
Scientists at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and China have described the surprising discovery and function of a new DNA modification in insects, worms, and algae.Common DNA modifications occur through methylation, a chemical process that can dramatically change gene expression, which regulates the eventual production of proteins that carry out the functions of an organism.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the main component of our genetic material. It is formed by combining four parts: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (A, C, G and T), called bases of DNA. They combine in thousands of possible sequences to provide the genetic variability that enables the wealth of aspects and functions of living beings.In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth.
Maybe it's not such a dog-eat-dog world after all. A clever combination of two different types of computer simulations enabled a group of Illinois researchers to uncover an unexpectedly cooperative group dynamic: the spontaneous emergence of resource sharing among individuals in a community. Who were the members of this friendly, digitally represented collective? Escherichia coli, rod-shaped bacteria found in the digestive systems of humans and many other animals.
The recent earthquake in Nepal demonstrated yet again how difficult it is to reliably predict natural disasters. While we have a good knowledge of the various earthquakes zones on the planet, we have no way of knowing exactly when a big quake like the 7.8-magnitude event in Nepal will happen.But we know that many animals seem able to sense the onset of such events.
Fire ants are known to dig complex tunnels through sand and soil. Now videos reveal that they can work with several types of building materials, excavating pieces the same size as their heads as well as slippery particles.To test their abilities, Daniel Goldman from the Georgia Institute of Technology and colleagues filmed mini-colonies of 100 fire ants in the lab as they constructed underground nests out of spherical glass particles of different sizes and degrees of wetness.