Newsdesk Archive

The bond between dogs and humans is so deep that dog hormones actually synchronize to match those of their owners and handlers, a new study finds.The study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physiology & Behavior, adds to the growing body of evidence that dogs and humans connect at both conscious and subconscious levels that can impact their core biochemistry.Related: Why female dogs are the friendliest: Maternal instincts mean they are much more likely to interact with humans than males

When it comes to rewards and punishments, which is more effective -- the carrot or the stick? A simple experiment suggests that punishments are more likely to influence behavior than rewards. The results stem from a study involving 88 students at a university.

NBOMe overdoses have been appearing in U.S. emergency rooms since around 2012, but little is known about the drugs. They are one of many designer drugs, produced as alternatives for classic but illegal substances such as cocaine, LSD and marijuana. Each one comes in versions that are more dangerous than the drugs they were made to replace.Related: Texas House panel approves full legalization of marijuana

It was a plot to rival Foucault's Pendulum: Police in Los Angeles arrested three people in connection with operating a fictitious police department they said was 3,000 years old and had jurisdiction over 33 states and Mexico.Alt: Group Claiming To Be Descendants Of Knights Templar Arrested In Impersonating Police Officers

Neanderthals occupying the Amud Cave in what is today northern Israel showed exploitation of different hunting territories depending upon the climate in which they lived, suggests researchers in a recent study.Gideon Hartman of the University of Connecticut and colleagues from an international group of universities and research institutions came to this conclusion by reconstructing the hunting ranges of Neanderthals who occupied the cave at two distinct Ice Age occupational phases separated by about 10,000 years.

Plans to rebuild one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Pharos Lighthouse, have been approved by Egyptian authorities, it's reported.The feat of ancient engineering, which is also known as the Lighthouse of Alexandria, was completed around 280BC, and is estimated to have been between 110m and 130m high.Alt: Alexandria Lighthouse to be reassembled in original location

Water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, just as it happened on Earth, new research strongly suggests.Published by the Royal Astronomical Society and led by the University of Warwick, the research finds evidence for numerous planetary bodies, including asteroids and comets, containing large amounts of water.

Scientists have found a 200-year lag time between past climate events at the poles.The most detailed Antarctic ice core provides the first clear comparison with Greenland records, revealing a link between northern and southern hemisphere climate change.

Dandelions deliver a desirable product: rubber. This is why the robust and undemanding plant has become the focus of attention of the rubber-producing industry. But how is rubber, contained in the plant's white milky fluid, actually formed? A team of scientists has now identified proteins, which play a key role in the production of rubber in the plant. Thus a biotechnological production of rubber comes closer.Related: Discovery of gene that determines cocoa butter melting point to have far-reaching effects

A NASA high-altitude balloon experiment run by graduate students in the US has captured some unexplained and strangely complex sounds at 36 km (22 miles) above the surface of Earth. Known as atmospheric infrasound, these sound waves dip below frequencies of 20 hertz, which is beyond the range of human hearing."It sounds kind of like The X-Files," Daniel Bowman, a doctoral candidate in geophysics at the University of North Carolina who, designed and built the equipment that recorded the sounds.

For 50 years, East Clearwater Lake and West Clearwater Lake in Québec have been considered twin craters formed together the moment a pair of star-crossed asteroids slammed into the Earth.But new radiometric dating of rocks and a detailed look at the impact sites suggests the two craters are a "false doublet," created by two separate asteroid impacts about 180 million years apart.

The nascent asteroid-mining industry is set to take its first steps into space this summer.Planetary Resources' Arkyd-3R probe currently sits aboard the International Space Station and is scheduled to be deployed sometime in July, representatives of the Washington-based asteroid-mining company have said.

Could water have carved channels on Mars as recently as 500,000 years ago? If that's the case, it would boost the case for relatively recent life on the Red Planet.There's abundant evidence showing that Mars was wet early in its 4.5-billion-year history, but new research suggests that the water comes in cycles, providing opportunities for life to take a hold in between the long, cold ice ages.

A meteorite may have been responsible for a water plume briefly spotted above Europa two years ago, implying it takes a very rare event to breach the ice on the Jovian moon.Astrobiologists worldwide received news in December 2013 that water vapor was detected in Hubble Space Telescope observations of Jupiter's moon Europa, which is considered one of the top potential locations in our solar system for life.

New work from a team including Carnegie's Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Their findings are an important step toward determining whether life could exist, or could have previously existed, on the sixth planet's sixth-largest moon.Alt: Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions'

DNA is synonymous with life, but where did it originate? One way to answer this question is to try to recreate the conditions that formed DNA's molecular precursors. These precursors are carbon ring structures with embedded nitrogen atoms, key components of nucleobases, which themselves are building blocks of the double helix.

People living at the La Quemada archaeological site 1,500 years ago would eat their enemies then hang up their bones for display.A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analysed human bones found at the Mexican site that was occupied between 500AD and 900AD.

Despite damage from war, looters and agricultural activity, a Roman temple and settlement high in the Lebanese mountains still hold clues about the ancient and medieval people who once lived there, a new study finds.Until now, little was known about Hosn Niha, a Roman-Byzantine village located in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, the researchers said. Built in approximately A.D. 200, the village was home to a Roman temple and a small settlement, they said.

Researchers have stumbled upon the oldest known ancestor of all modern birds after breaking open a lump of ancient rock near a town in north-eastern China.They discovered the fossilised remains of the prehistoric bird, complete with exquisitely preserved plumage, in silt rock that formed 130 million years ago in the region.

Backyard feeding of wild birds can decrease native species while boosting introduced species, new research suggests.The findings, from the longest-running study of its kind, are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These are the amazing scenes as a catfish manages to scale the wall of a cave to lick food from its roof.Scientists filmed the catfish performing the seemingly impossible task inside a cave near Tena in the Napo District of Ecuador.It is the first time the behaviour has ever been captured on camera.

They may not be on Facebook or Twitter, but dolphins do, in fact, form highly complex and dynamic networks of friends, according to a recent study. Dolphins are known for being highly social animals, and biologists took a closer look at the interactions between bottlenose dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon and discovered how they mingle and with whom they spend their time.Alt: Dolphins Living in Closer Quarters Are Friendlier

The evolution of western pop music, spanning from 1960 to 2010, has been analysed by scientists.A team from Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London looked at more than 17,000 songs from the US Billboard Hot 100.

Want to reduce your risk of dying at a young age? Try walking casually for as little as 2 minutes per hour.While it is well known that intense exercise can help you get fitter, a new study has found that even a little exercise can still go a long way. Study participants who traded time on the sofa for a total of 30 minutes of walking during the day reduced their risk of dying over a three-year period by 33 percent.

A new study provides strong support for the notion that the tendency to sleepwalk is hereditary, passed from parent to child through some as-yet-unidentified gene.Compared to children with no family history of sleepwalking, children with one parent who had ever been a sleepwalker were three times more likely to sleepwalk themselves, researchers found. If both parents had a history of sleepwalking, the odds that their child would be a sleepwalker as well rose by a factor of seven.

Legislation that one congressman plans to introduce in the near future would make space settlement a national goal and require NASA to take action to support it.The Space Exploration, Development, and Settlement Act of 2015, drafted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), would mark the second time in the last three decades that Congress has directed NASA to support efforts for permanent human settlements beyond Earth orbit.

NASA has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and maneuver planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.Last year's addition of two new spacecraft orbiting Mars brought the census of active Mars orbiters to five, the most ever. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and India's Mars Orbiter Mission joined the 2003 Mars Express from ESA (the European Space Agency) and two from NASA: the 2001 Mars Odyssey and the 2006 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Earth is bathed in water, but will there be enough for everyone in the future?The question doesn't have an easy answer.Humans are drawing down the resource too quickly for it to be replenished, which could lead to conflict and natural catastrophes, experts said April 27 at the 15th Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The strange signals detected by the Parkes telescope in central-west NSW were not intergalactic signals but instead, emissions escaping from a microwave in the site's kitchen, scientists say.Scientists at the radio telescope facility are researching "fast radio bursts" which could be intergalactic signals.

Data collected on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover and analyzed by University of Arkansas researchers indicate that water, in the form of brine, may exist under certain conditions on the planet's surface.The finding, published in the May 2015 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, is based on almost two years of weather data collected from an impact crater near the planet's equatorial region.

Not all that glitters is gold. But Earth would have a lot less of the glittery stuff if not for a massive rain of meteors about 3.9 billion years ago, according to a new study.Based on analysis of some of the world's oldest rocks, scientists have the first direct evidence that a cataclysmic meteor shower changed early Earth's chemical composition.

Forty light years from Earth, scientists have found an extreme planet where the atmospheric temperature was observed swinging wildly from 1,800 to 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of a two-year period.Astronomers cannot yet say for certain what might be responsible for these drastic shifts in temperature, but in a new study, they suggest massive volcanoes on the planet's surface may be to blame.

While fjords are celebrated for their beauty, these ecosystems are also major carbon sinks that likely play an important role in the regulation of the planet's climate, new research reveals.The finding is newly published in the international journal Nature Geoscience.

The main job of pollen is to help seed the next generation of trees and plants, but a new study from the University of Michigan and Texas A&M shows that the grains might also seed clouds.The unexpected findings demonstrate that these wind-carried capsules of genetic material might have an effect on the planet's climate. And they highlight a new link between plants and the atmosphere.

Probiotics, or "good bacteria," may be helpful to people with seasonal allergies, a new review suggests.Researchers analyzed the results from more than 20 previous studies and found that hay fever sufferers may get some benefits from using probiotics, improving their symptoms and quality of life.

In a country so wary of drug abuse that it limits the sale of aspirin, Pal-Orjan Johansen, a Norwegian researcher, is pushing what would seem a doomed cause: the rehabilitation of LSD.It matters little to him that the psychedelic drug has been banned here and around the world for more than 40 years. Mr. Johansen pitches his effort not as a throwback to the hippie hedonism of the 1960s, but as a battle for human rights and good health.

The world's oldest known blood cells have been found on Ötzi the Iceman, according to the latest research on the 5,300-year-old mummy.What's more, the discovery proves that the Stone Age homicide victim had a quick, if not painless, death.Ötzi has been the subject of extensive postmortem investigations ever since his corpse was discovered in an Alpine glacier on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991.

A pair of archeologists with Arizona State University has found evidence of different types of bone treatment among people that lived at the La Quemada archaeological site approximately 1,500 years ago in what is now modern Mexico. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ben Nelson and Debra Martin describe their findings after studying bones excavated from the site.

Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty has announced the discovery of an ancient Egyptian army camp in the Tjaru Fortress in North Sinai.A number of storage sites, dating back to Thutmose III and Ramses II, seals bearing the name of King Thutmose III, as well as mass graves of soldiers who died in battles during the 26th Dynasty have also been discovered.

Some scorpions are able to spray their venom, an ability they use defensively to try to temporarily disable predators, allowing the stinging arachnids to escape the jaws of death, a new study suggests.Related: Lazy sunfish are actually active predators

Although music may help some people relax when they're trying to concentrate; it doesn't help them remember what they're focusing on, according to a recent study.Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology challenged younger and older adults to listen to music while trying to remember names. College-aged participants had no problems -- the music didn't affect their performance.

Bacteria killed with silver can destroy living bacterial strains through a novel mechanism dubbed 'the zombie effect', a new study has found.In the study, strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were killed with silver nitrate solution, a common antibacterial agent.

A mysterious glow has been observed at the center of the Milky Way, and scientists are struggling to figure out exactly what's causing it.One possibility is that the high-energy X-rays that make up the baffling glow are "'howls' of dead stars as they feed on stellar companions." At least that's the way NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory put it in a rather playful news release entitled "NASA's NuStar Captures Possible 'Screams from Zombie Stars.".

Surprising gravitational similarities between spiral and elliptical galaxies have been discovered by an international team, including astronomers from Swinburne University of Technology, implying the influence of hidden forces.In the first such survey to capture large numbers of these galaxies, researchers have mapped out the motions of stars in the outer parts of elliptical galaxies using the world's largest optical telescope at W M Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Scientists have created microbe-sized beads that can utilize energy in the environment to self-propel upstream by purely physical means.Life is hard to define, but metabolism, mobility and replication are three commonly agreed elements. The beads are not alive, but they meet two of these three requirements.

Electric car pioneer Tesla unveiled a "home battery" Thursday that its founder Elon Musk said would help change the "entire energy infrastructure of the world."The Tesla Powerwall can store power from solar panels, from the electricity grid at night when it is typically cheaper, and provide a secure backup in the case of a power outage.

Left-handed people may be even more unique than first thought, thanks to a study that has linked one rare condition with another.100,000 people had their genes sequenced to determine handedness, and it seems that a condition called situs inversus may be able to provide clues behind what makes people use their left hand instead of the right.Related: Child Prodigies and Autism: Is There a Genetic Link?

Researchers have perfected a noninvasive "chemogenetic" technique that allows them to switch off a specific behavior in mice -- such as voracious eating -- and then switch it back on. The method works by targeting two different cell surface receptors.

Getting the best price for your unwanted wares online can seem like a fine art, but researchers have found a simple trick that could see your bids soar.Economists plotted how much goods listed on eBay sold for and discovered that items with precise prices attract higher offers than those with round numbers, such as $1,000.Related: Selling on eBay? Get higher bids with a red background

It took 15 years and hundreds of millions of vaccines. But North America and South America have officially eradicated rubella, health authorities said Wednesday. Rubella is only the third virus eradicated from people in the Western Hemisphere.Also known as German measles, rubella causes only a mild illness in children, with a rash and sometimes a fever.

In research report published in the May 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists report that a particular class of pesticides called "neonicotinoids" wreaks havoc on the bee populations, ultimately putting some crops that rely on pollination in jeopardy. Specifically, these pesticides kill bee brain cells, rendering them unable to learn, gather food and reproduce. The report, however, also suggests that the effects of these pesticides on bee colonies may be reversible by decreasing or eliminating the use of these pesticides on plants pollenated by bees and increasing the availability of "bee-friendly" plants available to the insects.

A new bird species has been discovered in central China by an international team of scientists. This shy brown bird, named the Sichuan bush warbler, Locustella chengi, breeds in the mountainous region of the Sichuan Basin at 1000-2300 m elevation. Its winter home is currently unknown. This bird was first noticed whilst singing its distinctive song in May 1992 by two members of the research team, who thought it might be something new.Related: Birds Are in a Tailspin Four Years After Fukushima

For the first time scientists have come up with a precise explanation for why lobsters change colour from blue/black to red when cooked.And the findings could have uses in the food industry and even in the delivery of some anti-cancer drugs.When alive and living in the sea, lobsters are naturally a dark-blue/black colour.

The asteroid that slammed into the ocean off Mexico 66 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs probably rang the Earth like a bell, triggering volcanic eruptions around the globe that may have contributed to the devastation, according to a team of University of California, Berkeley, geophysicists.

The Nazca Lines, a series of fantastical geoglyphs etched into the desert in Peru, may have been used by two separate groups of people to make pilgrimage to an ancient temple, new research suggests.But the purpose of the desert etchings may have changed over time. The earliest Nazca Lines were created so pilgrims could view the markings along a ritual processional route, the researchers said.

Climate change may be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2000 B.C.WSU archaeologist Jade D'Alpoim Guedes and an international team of researchers found that cooling global temperatures at the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a 4,000 year period of warm weather, would have made it impossible for ancient people on the Tibetan Plateau to cultivate millet, their primary food source.

Seven megalithic graves suggest that certain individuals were excluded from burial on the basis of age and sex. The research demographic evidence of selective burial in megalithic graves of northern Spain challenges the widely-held view that societies were egalitarian during the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic ages.

The early evangelist Paul became a Christian because of a dazzling light on the road to Damascus, but one astronomer thinks it was an exploding meteorNEARLY two thousand years ago, a man named Saul had an experience that changed his life, and possibly yours as well. According to Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the biblical New Testament, Saul was on the road to Damascus, Syria, when he saw a bright light in the sky, was blinded and heard the voice of Jesus. Changing his name to Paul, he became a major figure in the spread of Christianity.

Having more than one wife may cause some serious heartache.Men who are polygamous face more than quadruple the risk of having blocked heart vessels, compared with men married to one woman, new research suggests."We found an association between an increasing number of wives and the severity and number of coronary blockages,".

New research suggests that cocaine use could lead to "profound changes" in the brain that make relapse more common in addicts.Researchers at the University of East Anglia identified a molecular mechanism in the reward centre of the brain that influences how recovering cocaine addicts might relapse after stressful events.Related: Ecuador May Decriminalize All Illegal Drug Use

Marketers often use positive emotions such as hope, pride, love, and compassion interchangeably to encourage people to donate to charitable causes. But these distinct emotions can lead to different results, and love alone has the power to inspire giving to those with whom the giver has no connection, according to a new study.

Bilinguals get all the perks. Better job prospects, a cognitive boost and even protection against dementia. Now new research shows that they can also view the world in different ways depending on the specific language they are operating in.The past 15 years have witnessed an overwhelming amount of research on the bilingual mind, with the majority of the evidence pointing to the tangible advantages of using more than one language. Going back and forth between languages appears to be a kind of brain training, pushing your brain to be flexible.

Amongst the wider public, video gamers do not have the best reputation. They are perceived, somewhat unfairly, as socially awkward, bespectacled, pimply-faced geeks. However, new research provides them something of a "Revenge-of-the-Nerds moment": Action video gamers (AVGs) have more gray matter and better connectivity in certain subregions of the brain.Related: Playing 'Tetris' Can Change Your Brain. Here's How

What happens in the brain when a person has an out-of-body experience? A team of scientists may now have an answer.In a new study, researchers using a brain scanner and some fancy camera work gave study participants the illusion that their bodies were located in a part of a room other than where they really were. Then, the researchers examined the participants' brain activity, to find out which brain regions were involved in the participants' perceptions about where their body was.

We, and the world around us, may have a more important role in determining our inner sense of time than we thoughtTiming, that is our perception and estimation of time, is key in determining how we behave and in the decisions we make. New findings suggest that time in the brain is relative, not absolute.Related: Think days, not years, to fight procrastination

Regular exercise boosts brain health, and a fit brain is generally able to learn, think and remember better. But a few recent studies offer an additional exercise-related tip: time your workouts for just after a study session, and you might better retain the information you just learned.

Many things would be difficult about conducting a manned mission to Mars, from designing a spacecraft that could make the 34-million-mile journey, to stocking and fueling it, to keeping its astronauts from getting flabby and bored.On Friday, researchers shed light on another potential hurdle: figuring out a way to protect travelers' brains from the damaging effects of cosmic rays in outer space.Related: NASA has trialled an engine that would take us to Mars in 10 weeks

The 'holographic principle,' the idea that a universe with gravity can be described by a quantum field theory in fewer dimensions, has been used for years as a mathematical tool in strange curved spaces. New results suggest that the holographic principle also holds in flat spaces. Our own universe could in fact be two dimensional and only appear three dimensional -- just like a hologram.

What better way to pass a long stretch of time than by entering a deep sleep to shut down some bodily functions and conserve energy? Bears do it to get through cold winters. So do many smaller mammals, including squirrels and hedgehogs. Even the fat-tailed lemur (a primate cousin of Homo sapiens), living in warm Madagascar, slows down for months when its food supply runs low. But for us humans, hibernation has been an unnecessary and impossible goal. Until now.

The International Space Station could one day get armed with a laser to shoot down orbiting debris, researchers say.This concept could eventually lead to a laser-firing satellite that could get rid of a large percentage of the most troublesome space junk orbiting Earth, scientists added.

The reduction in air pollution achieved during the 2008 Beijing Olympics resulted in an increase in birth weight, new research has shown.Related: Toxic combination of air pollution and poverty lowers child IQ

"Airspace reserves" should be created to protect wildlife, scientists say.They warn that growing numbers of skyscrapers, wind turbines, power lines, planes and drones are threatening billions of flying animals.Researchers in Argentina and Wales have called for airspace zones where human activity is partially or totally restricted to reduce the aerial conflict.

Archaeologists in southern Denmark have found evidence showing that Stone Age people fished eels much like modern people, using three-pronged spears with a center point for spearing fish.The clue, a fragmented fishing spear, known as a leister, was unearthed during an archaeological survey for the construction of the Femern Belt link, an immersed tunnel that will connect the German island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland.

An ancient Mayan city followed a unique grid pattern, providing evidence of a powerful ruler, archaeologists working at Nixtun-Ch'ich' in Petén, Guatemala, have found.The city, which contains flat-topped pyramids, was in use between roughly 600 B.C. and 300 B.C., a time when the first cities were being constructed in the area. No other city from the Maya world was planned using this grid design, researchers say. This city was "organized in a way we haven't seen in other places," said Timothy Pugh, a professor at Queens College in New York.

A team of researchers with members from France, Ivory Coast, Switzerland and the U.K. has found that some monkeys of one species are able to listen in and respond to communications made by monkeys of another species. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers describe a field study they conducted with two monkey species and what they learned from it.Human beings are the only species known to have a complete language, though other animals make sounds that can be interpreted by others of their species, and now it appears that at least in one case, the sounds made by one species can be interpreted by members of another.

To relieve customers of backbreaking yard work, various manufacturers have rolled out their versions of the automatic, robotic lawnmower.Amazon, on the other hand, has a different solution: goats.Yes, the same company that wants to revolutionize its delivery capabilities with drones is currently testing a service that allows you to hire a goat to trim your shrubs.

Approximately 35% of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) come from agriculture. Some argues that human can reverse global worming by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 through regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use. Increasing the soil's organic content will not only fix carbon and reduce emissions, it will also improve the soil's ability to retain water and nutrients and resist pests and droughts.

Orchids, like humans, use their lips to attract and entice others, and now new research finds that intense competition underlies their formation and constant changes.Two competing groups of proteins are engaged in an evolutionary war that helps to explain why orchids are so beguiling and come in many different shapes and sizes, according to a new study published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Plants.

A small field on an island off the Netherlands' northern coast promises one answer to the problem of how to feed the world's ever-growing population: potatoes and other crops that grow in saltwater.Every day, swathes of farmland somewhere in the world become unusable because of salty soil, but farmers on windswept Texel are finding solutions using traditional methods.The team headed by farmer Mark van Rijsselberghe has planted around 30 types of potato and their approach is simple.

The first good view of the aftermath of Nepal's deadly earthquake from a satellite reveals that a broad swath of ground near Kathmandu lifted vertically, by about 3 feet (1 meter), which could explain why damage in the city was so severe.Related: Ancient temples, key to Nepal tourism, suffer severe quake damage

Antarctica may seem hostile to life, especially the continent's vast and largely ice-free Dry Valleys. But new research shows there may be an entire world underground, with rivers of liquid salt water flowing to subsurface lakes, all of which could be teeming with microbial life.One of the continent's most unique features, the rust-red Blood Falls, may even be a "portal" into that subterranean world.

Every day, thousands of people need donated blood. But only blood without A- or B-type antigens, such as type O, can be given to all of those in need, and it's usually in short supply. Now scientists are making strides toward fixing the situation. They report an efficient way to transform A and B blood into a neutral type that can be given to any patient.

How soon after the Big Bang could water have existed? Not right away, because water molecules contain oxygen and oxygen had to be formed in the first stars. Then that oxygen had to disperse and unite with hydrogen in significant amounts. New theoretical work finds that despite these complications, water vapor could have been just as abundant in pockets of space a billion years after the Big Bang as it is today.Related: The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water

With the killers hiding in the trees, heat-sensing drones are launched into the air. When their whereabouts are narrowed, the dogs are sent in. When it comes to protecting the world's supply of guacamole, no weapon can be spared.On subtropical farmland in South Florida, researchers are doing battle with the deadly fungus, laurel wilt, which is spread by a tiny beetle and has the potential to decimate Florida's avocado crop. The hashtag they have adopted for their mission: #savetheguac.

About 1% of all the tree species in the Amazon account for half of the carbon locked in the vast South American rainforest, a study has estimated.Although the region is home to an estimated 16,000 tree species, researchers found that just 182 species dominated the carbon storage process.

Like cars, some microbes use oil as fuel. Such microorganisms are a big reason why BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not far worse."The microbes did a spectacular job of eating a lot of the natural gas," says biogeochemist Chris Reddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The relatively small hydrocarbon molecules in natural gas are the easiest for microorganisms to eat. "The rate and capacity is a mind-boggling testament to microbes," he adds.

Scientists have long pondered whether hot vents on the seabed could have been where life on Earth began.And now chemists in London have discovered that such vents emit geothermally heated water that does create the kind of environment needed to produce organic molecules necessary for life.Their discovery about the chemistry of the vents could also create eco-friendly fuels and plastics made from carbon dioxide.

An airborne survey of a presumably dry Antarctic valley revealed a stunning and unexpected interconnected subsurface briny aquifer deep beneath the frozen tundra, a finding that not only has implications for understanding extreme habitats for life on Earth, but the potential for life elsewhere in the solar system, particularly Mars.Related: Remember that Time the Russians Found Scorpions on Venus?

Artificial lighting in harbours is attracting sea creatures that damage ships and boats, a study suggests.Scientists believe that the night-time illumination is altering the behaviour of some animals that attach to vessels' hulls. Keel worms, for example, are lured in by the lights.

On their arduous flights North to their breeding grounds, birds migrating up the US East Coast will have one less peril to worry about - bright lights from state-owned and -managed buildings in New York.New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that state buildings will turn off non-essential outdoor lighting from 11pm until dawn during peak migration in the spring and fall.

Imagine having a different accent from someone else simply because your house was farther up the same hill. For at least one species of songbird, that appears to be the case. Researchers have found that the mating songs of male mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli, shown) differ in their duration, loudness, and the frequency ranges of individual chirps, depending in part on the elevation of their habitat in the Sierra Nevada mountains of the western United States.

Male species of a West African monkey communicate using at least these six main sounds: boom-boom, krak, krak-oo, hok, hok-oo and wak-oo.Key to the communication by the male Campbell's monkey is the suffix "oo," according to a new study, which is published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.By adding that sound to the end of their calls, the male monkeys have created a surprisingly rich "vocabulary" that males and females of their own kind, as well as a related species of monkey, understand.

A citizen science project has found that penguins use their faeces to melt rocky breeding sites in order to lay their eggs.The project of 1.5 million online volunteers, organised by the University of Oxford, clicked through 175,000 images of penguins and flagged up images showing strange or surprising behaviour in order to aid scientific discovery.

Nine hundred kilometers off the east coast of Madagascar lies the tiny island paradise of Mauritius. The waters are pristine, the beaches bright white, and the average temperature hovers between 22°C and 28°C (72°F to 82°F) year-round. But conditions there may not have always been so idyllic. A new study suggests that about 4000 years ago, a prolonged drought on the island left many of the native species, such as dodo birds and giant tortoises, dead in a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces.

About five years after the footprint of the first Jamestown colony church was discovered, archaeologists and other specialists are busy partially reconstructing the structure. Believed to be the place where Pocahontas married the English tobacco planter John Rolfe, archaeologists hope that the reconstruction will provide the public with a real life, physical replica of the building that made history more than 400 years ago near the banks of the James River in southern Virginia.

The demise of Neanderthals may have nothing to do with innovative hunting weapons carried by humans from west Asia, according to a new study. The researchers say their findings mean that we may need to rethink the reasons humans survived Neanderthals - and that we may not have behaved as differently as we thought. The researchers looked at innovative stone weapons used by humans about 42,000-34,000 years ago. Traditionally, anthropologists believed that innovation in weapons enabled humans to spread out of Africa to Europe. However, the new study suggests that the innovation was not a driving force for humans to migrate into Europe as previously thought - they were no better equipped than the Neanderthals.

The small, steep pyramids rising up from the desert hills of northern Sudan resemble those in neighboring Egypt, but unlike the famed pyramids of Giza, the Sudanese site is largely deserted.The pyramids at Meroe, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Sudan's capital, Khartoum, are rarely visited despite being a UNESCO World Heritage site like those in Egypt.

Britain is experiencing the same decline as Rome in 100BC, with the collapse of civilisation inevitable, a scientist has warned.Dr Jim Penman, of the RMIT University in Melbourne, believes Britons no longer have the genetic temperament to advance because of decades of peace and a high standard of living.

New research shows that modern humans settled Europe in two waves along distinct routes, coincidentally arriving about the time the Neanderthals disappeared, writes Darren Curnoe.Fossils and DNA strongly suggest we shared a common ancestor with them, genetic clocks placing the split between us in the range of 550,000 to 765,000 years ago.

There has long been a debate among scholars about the origins of the first inhabitants of North America. The most widely accepted theory is that sometime before 14,000 years ago, humans migrated from Siberia to Alaska by means of a "land bridge" that spanned the Bering Strait. However, in the 1990s, a small but vocal group of researchers proposed that North America was first settled by Upper Paleolithic people from Europe, who moved from east to west through Greenland via a glacial "ice bridge." Now, researchers at the University of Missouri, working with colleagues the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and elsewhere, have definitively disproved the ice bridge theory.