Newsdesk Archive

Dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes but there has been nothing quite so unusual as a species found in the Patagonian fossil fields of Chile, scientists have said.A study of the 150m-year-old remains of a Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur showed that although it shares many of the features of its more fearsome carnivorous cousin, it grazed exclusively on plants.

The adult brain that was awash in alcohol during its formative years looks different and acts differently than an adult brain that skipped the youthful binge drinking, says a new study conducted on rats.All grown up, the brain exposed to periodic alcoholic benders during adolescence and young adulthood shows persistent abnormalities in the structure and function of the hippocampus, the region most closely associated with learning and memory.

The mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are back in view. Nasa's Dawn spacecraft, which arrived at the mini-world on 6 March, is now settling into its first science orbit some 13,500km above the surface.The probe's approach took it around the back of the dwarf and on to the night side, hiding the spots from the camera system and remote sensing instruments.

As the search continues for Earth-size planets orbiting at just the right distance from their star, a region termed the habitable zone, the number of potentially life-supporting planets grows. In two decades we have progressed from having no extrasolar planets to having too many to search.

The vibrational theory of olfaction explains several aspects of odorant detection that theories based purely on receptor binding do not. It provides for additional selectivity through receptors that are tuned to specific vibrational bands of the odorants they bind, and also through the subsequent conduction of electrons across the odorant, presumably by a tunneling mechanism. A lot of people seem like the theory, or at least its main theorist, Luca Turin. Over the years, efforts to prove, or disprove the vibrational theory have progressed through a long series of olfactory touchstones.

UK scientists may have uncovered a natural way of avoiding the use of pesticides and help save plants from attack by recreating a natural insect repellent.Scientists from Cardiff University and Rothamsted Research have, for the first time, created tiny molecules which mirror a natural occurring smell known to repel insects.The scientists were able to make similar smelling insect repellent molecules, by providing the enzyme, ((S)-germacrene D synthase), which creates the smell, with alternative substrate molecules.

People with lower back problems are more likely to have a spine similar in shape to the chimpanzee, our closest ape ancestor.A lesion which forms in the disc between the bones of the spine is the reason for the differing shape.

A new study pinpoints the devastating effects of climate change on ancient Maya civilization, despite attempts to adapt to it.Researchers found that markers of historic droughts in Central America match the patterns of disruption to Maya society during centuries of hardship. The new information provides answers to longstanding questions about the role climate change played in Maya cultural collapse between 800 and 950 A.D.

Nepal's devastating magnitude-7.8 earthquake on Saturday was primed over 80 years ago by its last massive earthquake in 1934, which razed around a quarter of Kathmandu to the ground and killed over 17,000 people.This latest quake follows the same pattern as a duo of big tremors that occurred over 700 years ago, and results from a domino effect of strain transferring along the fault, geologists say.

There's more to Yellowstone National Park than meets the eye. Much more, as it turns out.You might already know that a supervolcano dominates the famous park that is situated on land in Wyoming and Montana. A shallow subsurface magma chamber has long been known.

Our genomes are riddled with the detritus of ancient viruses. They infected our hominid ancestors tens of millions of years ago, inserting their genes into the DNA of their hosts.Today, we carry about 100,000 genetic remnants of this invasion. So-called endogenous retroviruses make up 8 percent of the human genome.

Researchers say that using a new visa-selling economic model could help governments eradicate human smuggling.The policy, designed by economists at City University London and the Toulouse School of Economics, involves pricing criminals out of the market while raising funds for improving traditional border controls.

Imagine a family of drugs that could treat addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress: sicknesses of the soul for which modern medicine, in all its surgical wizardry, has few cures. Substances that were a fillip to creativity and could provide those who took them with an experience comparable to seeing God or witnessing the birth of a child. Say these wonder chemicals were found: why would a society make them illegal?

A new technique has been developed that does not depend on finding a planetary transit, so it can potentially be used to study many more exoplanets. It allows the planetary spectrum to be directly detected in visible light, which means that different characteristics of the planet that are inaccessible to other techniques can be inferred. The challenge is similar to trying to study the faint glimmer reflected off a tiny insect flying around a distant and brilliant light.

In the Ardeche gorge in southern France lies one of the most important prehistoric sites ever discovered.It's locked away behind a thick metal door, hidden halfway up a towering limestone cliff-face.

An entrepreneur has engineered a sandal, called The Shoe That Grows, that expands with a child in order to prevent them from growing out of them so quickly. It's an incredible idea no matter where you live, but it's particularly important in countries such as Kenya, where many families can't afford to replace shoes every couple of months.

Kyocera is in the news this month. Two floating solar power plants in two reservoirs in Kato City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, are complete. This is a joint venture. The two players are Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing, which is in the business of equipment leasing. Construction started last year in September. They use 255-watt Kyocera modules, 11,256 modules in total.

Mice, and now touchscreens, have become a daily part of our lives in the way we interact with computers. But what about people who lack the ability to use a mouse or touchscreen? Or situations where these would be impractical or outright dangerous?Many researchers have explored eye-gaze tracking as a potential control mechanism. These tracking mechanisms have become sophisticated and small enough that they currently feature in devices such as smartphones and tablets.

A study from the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health finds students with standing desks are more attentive than their seated counterparts. In fact, preliminary results show 12 percent greater on-task engagement in classrooms with standing desks, which equates to an extra seven minutes per hour of engaged instruction time.The findings, published in the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, were based on a study of almost 300 children in second through fourth grade who were observed over the course of a school year.

Food. Sex. They're primal preoccupations for humans and our close relatives, chimpanzees. For years Homo sapiens scientists have watched those appetites play out among Pan troglodytes with mixed results.Female chimps average five to six years between births, one of the longest intervals of any mammal. To raise the odds of reproducing, a female will mate "with most or all of the males she knows," says primatologist Melissa Emery Thompson of the University of New Mexico, while a male will compete or fight with other would-be sires.

A trio of researchers with the University of California has found that marmosets learn to wait for others to stop making noise before they vocalize, at a very young age. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Cecilia Chow, Jude Mitchell and Cory Miller describe a study they undertook with young marmoset twins and their parents and what they learned by doing so.Related: Kermit the Frog Look-Alike Discovered in Costa Rica

A study that asked a few dozen pairs of twins to brave a swarm of hungry mosquitoes has revealed another clue to the cluster of reasons the insects are more attracted to some people than others: Genes matter."Twins that were identical were very similar in their level of attractiveness to mosquitoes, and twins that were [not identical] were very different in their level of attractiveness," says James Logan, a medical entomologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led the study.

Bees may become addicted to nicotine-like pesticides in the same way humans get hooked on cigarettes, according to a new study, which was released as a landmark field trial provided further evidence that such neonicotinoids harm bee populations.Related: Poor diet may contribute to the decline in British bees

It may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that bacteria have an immune system -- in their case to fight off invasive viruses called phages. And like any immune system -- from single-celled to human -- the first challenge of the bacterial immune system is to detect the difference between 'foreign' and 'self.'

A team of researchers with members from Belgium, China, Peru and the U.S. has found evidence of bacterial DNA in the genome of the cultivated sweet potato. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes their findings as an example of a naturally occurring transgenic food crop.

Scientists in China have genetically modified human embryos in a world first that has re-ignited the debate over the ethics and safety of genetic therapies that have the potential to prevent inherited diseases.The work raises fresh questions over whether restrictions should be placed on a new wave of genetic techniques that are rapidly gaining ground in labs across the world.Alt: Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos

WHAT'S on your mind? For £79, anyone can buy a headset that reads the electrical activity of their brain. It's called an electroencephalogram, or EEG, and you can use it to control devices with the power of your mind. But there's a drawback: they don't work when the wearer is moving and they look silly, so no one wants to wear them.The solution could be a kind of EEG system that does away with the cumbersome electrodes, annoying gels and wires of its predecessors, replacing them with a flexible electronic skin that conforms to the body.

The simple act of thinking can accelerate the growth of many brain tumors.That's the conclusion of a paper in Cell published Thursday that showed how activity in the cerebral cortex affected high-grade gliomas, which represent about 80 percent of all malignant brain tumors in people."This tumor is utilizing the core function of the brain, thinking, to promote its own growth," says Michelle Monje, a researcher and neurologist at Stanford who is the paper's senior author.

Keeping a secret is a bigger burden than you might imagine.In fact, new research suggests that keeping a secret makes you feel weighed down -- literally -- and even limits your ability to get things done."Spending effort to keep your secret leads you to feel [like] you have less effort and energy for other tasks, and so they seem more challenging and forbidding,".

The most complete genetic information assembled on woolly mammoths is providing insight into their demise, revealing they suffered two population crashes before a final, severely inbred group succumbed on an Arctic Ocean island.Scientists unveiled the first two full genomes of these mighty elephant relatives emblematic of the Ice Age, showing they experienced an extensive loss of genetic diversity before perishing roughly 4,000 years ago.

Modern humans have developed a reputation for being somewhat destructive and keen to separate themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom.However, a recent excavation of a cave in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain is suggesting our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, were more in tune with nature.Archaeologists have discovered evidence that Neanderthals regularly inhabited the Cave of Llenes, near Senterada in Catalonia, around 200,000 years ago but were not alone.

Ancient teeth from Italy suggest that the arrival of modern humans in Western Europe coincided with the demise of Neanderthals there, researchers said.This finding suggests that modern humans may have caused Neanderthals to go extinct, either directly or indirectly, the scientists added.

From Graham Hancock:Self-styled "world's most famous Egyptologist" Zahi Hawass had agreed to participate with me on 22 April 2015 in what was billed and advertised as "the first open debate between the representatives of two completely different versions of history." Each of us was to give a one-hour presentation, followed by a debate in which the audience would join in with questions. In the event the debate never happened. Zahi refused to accept a coin-toss to decide the speaking order and insisted that I speak first. I agreed to this, despite the fact that the first speaker is at a slight disadvantage in any debate since he does not have the opportunity to hear the other speaker's presentation before giving his own.Before most of the audience had arrived, I was checking the focus on the slides in my PowerPoint presentation prior to giving my talk and I put up on the screen an image which shows the Orion/Pyramids correlation and the Sphinx/Leo correlation at Giza in the epoch of 10,500 BC. Rightly and properly since the Orion correlation is Robert Bauval's discovery I included a portrait of Robert Bauval in the slide. As soon as Zahi saw Robert's image he became furiously angry, shouted at me, made insulting and demeaning comments about Robert, and told me that if I dared to mention a single word about Robert in my talk he would walk out and refuse to debate me. I explained that the alternative view of history that I was on stage to represent could not exclude the Orion correlation and therefore could not exclude Robert Bauval. At that, again shouting, Zahi marched out of the debating room. Frantic negotiations then took place off stage between the conference organisers and Zahi. Finally Zahi agreed to return and give his talk and answer questions from the audience, but he refused absolutely to hear or see my talk, or to engage in any debate with me. I therefore gave my talk to the audience without Zahi present (he sat in a room outside the conference hall while I spoke). When I had finished I answered questions from the audience. Then Zahi entered, gave his talk, answered questions from the audience and left.One of the few members of the audience who had arrived early did manage to record part of the scene of Zahi storming out of the conference room -- see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ziu2ygE_Wc.Likewise during Zahi's Q&A he was asked a question about the 11,600-year-old megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and whether it had any impact on his assessment of the disputed age of the megalithic Great Sphinx of Giza (which I and my colleagues have long argued might be of similar antiquity). Unfortunately it appeared that Zahi was completely ignorant of the existence or implications of Gobekli Tepe, arguably the most important archaeological site in the world, so he was unable to answer the question which he passed on to the moderator who also happened to be an Egyptologist. I did at that point have a brief opportunity to stand up and give my own point of view on Gobekli Tepe and on its implications for the age of the Sphinx -- see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4NnCAZcxHgI had high hopes for this debate -- that it might bring about some sort of civil dialogue between alternative and mainstream views of history but I was sadly disappointed. Here is a link to a post I made on Facebook 24 hours before the "debate" which will help to put what happened on 22 April into context.

It was a gruesome death that is the stuff of most people's nightmares.Now scientists have identified the unfortunate individual whose bones were found fused to the walls of a cave in Lamalunga, near Altamura, in southern Italy.Using analysis of DNA extracted from the bones sticking out from the limestone rock, researchers have found he was a Neanderthal who fell down a sinkhole around 150,000 years ago.

In their second study to be published in just over a year, an SFU led team of scientists has discovered that ancient coastal Indigenous people were more than hunter-gatherers.Lepofsky's research team has discovered that Northwest Coast Indigenous people didn't make their living just by gathering the natural ocean's bounty. Rather, from Alaska to Washington, they were farmers who cultivated productive clam gardens to ensure abundant and sustainable clam harvests.

During the 19th century Inuits in Greenland would have entertained polite company in their settlements while wearing a thong made of seal fur.Traditionally known as a 'naatsit', the underwear is adorned with beads and would have been sewn together by a woman using strips of seal pelt.It is currently on display at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen as part of its animal-skin clothing collection.

As the elected Iraqi government seeks diplomatic respect and struggles to save its ancient sites from the rampages of the Islamic State group, American military members, contractors and others caught with culturally significant artifacts they brought home from the war there are going largely unprosecuted.Years after the war, swords, artifacts and other items looted from Saddam Hussein's palaces are still turning up for sale online and at auctions, and in some cases U.S. agents have traced them to American government employees, who took them as souvenirs or war trophies.

The Turin Shroud, one of Christianity's most celebrated and hotly-debated relics, went on display to the public on Sunday for the first time in five years.More than one million people have already booked their slots to see the piece of linen that devotees believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ between now and June 24.'Whether you believe or don't believe, there is no doubt it is something special,' said an Italian man who was among the first visitors following the opening mass in the Italian city of Turin.

The famous Vitruvian Man, which was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, pictures the canon of human's proportions. However, humans have become bilaterally symmetric not at once. There are two main points of view on the last common bilaterian ancestor, its appearance and the course of evolution.It is likely that the ancestor of Bilateria appeared at the end of the Vendian period which is the last geological period of the Neoproterozoic Era preceding the Cambrian Period. It lasted from approximately 635 to 541±1 million years ago. The organisms, which lived in the Vendian sea, were mostly radially symmetrical creatures.

New analysis of world-famous 3.46-billion-year-old rocks is set to finally resolve a long running evolutionary controversy. The new research shows that structures once thought to be Earth's oldest microfossils do not compare with younger fossil candidates but have, instead, the character of peculiarly shaped minerals.

The male Stegosaurus had billboard-like back plates that it used to attract potential mates, while females had prickly spikes that kept predators at bay, scientists have discovered.The finding is the most convincing evidence to date that male and female dinosaurs differed in appearance, and suggests that they may have had mating selection rituals comparable to those of modern species such as birds.Related: Dozens Of Dinosaur Eggs Discovered In China

Wolves are inherently more tolerant than dogs are, according to new research that helps explain why wolves are so good at cooperating with each other.The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, runs counter to the idea that domestication has made dogs more social and tolerant. Since the ancestor of dogs and wolves likely already had those skills, other factors, such as losing fear of humans and readily accepting us as social partners, could explain why dogs make better pets than wolves.

A Japanese maglev that is the fastest passenger train in the world has broken its own speed record.Operator JR Central said the train reached 603 kilometers per hour (375 miles per hour) in a test run on Tuesday, surpassing its previous record of 361 mph (581 kph) set in 2003. The train traveled for just over a mile (1.8 kilometers) at a speed exceeding 600 kph (373 mph).

When cosmic carbon leaves home, it may move in a real rush, according to the first sighting of a star spewing it into space.Ageing stars build elements like carbon in their core. These are eventually shed when stars throw off their surface layers. It's a crucial process for seeding the universe with carbon and oxygen, which are important for life. "All of organic chemistry and life depends on these elements,".

The expansion of the universe might not be accelerating quite as fast as researchers thought. Type 1a supernovas, exploding stars used as yardsticks to measure distances to other galaxies, come in two flavors, new research indicates. That complication could lead to overestimates of how remote the most far-flung supernovas are.

As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies' supermassive black holes will form a "binary," or two black holes in such close orbit they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries.

A new census of charged particles buzzing through space includes a puzzling feature that challenges predictions about how these particles originate. The results, presented April 15 at a conference in Geneva, may force scientists to rethink theories that focus on supernovas as the producers of these speedy particles.

A robotic mission's search for life on Mars may seem worlds away from human scientists wandering around hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. But a study of the Yellowstone hot springs has revealed new clues about how organic materials might get preserved in similar environments on the Red Planet, bettering our chances of finding possible signs of life.

Newton's gravitational constant, G, has been measured about a dozen times over the last 40 years, but the results have varied by much more than would be expected due to random and systematic errors. Now scientists have found that the measured G values oscillate over time like a sine wave with a period of 5.9 years. It's not G itself that is varying by this much, they propose, but more likely something else is affecting the measurements.

Hiding a hangover in ancient Egypt would've taken some work. Rather than popping an ibuprofen for a pounding drunken headache, people in Egypt may have worn a leafy necklace.That's according to a newly translated and published papyrus written in Greek with the recipe for a "drunken headache" cure. The alcohol victim would have strung together leaves from a shrub called Alexandrian chamaedaphne (Ruscus racemosus L.), possibly wearing the strand around the neck, the text revealed.

Neanderthals may have died off because they failed to harness the power of fire to the extent their human cousins did, a new data analysis suggests.Using fire for cooking would have allowed these other groups of ancient human relatives to get more calories from the same amount of food, thereby edging out the Neanderthal population. Over time, the anatomically modern human population would have risen, while the Neanderthal population plummeted toward extinction, according to the model.

Deep sea vampire squid live long and breed repeatedly like fish, in stark contrast to all other known squid species that die after only a single breeding season.The discovery suggests that the life patterns of coastal and shallow-water organisms may not apply to deep-sea species, say researchers, led by Dr Henk-Jan Hoving from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany.

In Japanese folklore, Ryujin is the dragon god of the sea, Ryugu-jo is its undersea palace and the oarfish is its messenger. The message brought by dead oarfish is impending earthquakes and that appeared to be the case in 2011 when 20 oarfish came up on beaches in the area where the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the most damage.Coincidence? Maybe. Dragon god? Who knows? Science? A good possibility. Earthquakes release large quantities of carbon monoxide that can affect large deep sea creatures like the oarfish.

This year has seen a rash of massive dust storms around the world that have led to travel chaos and blocked out sunlight - but experts cannot pinpoint the reason behind the spate.This week incredible footage showed the moment an unusual 'apocalyptic' dust storm, known in Arabic as a haboob, struck Belarus, turning day to night, and China has suffered four massive sandstorms since the start of the year.

Air pollution levels in some of China's smoggiest cities fell by nearly a third in the first quarter of this year, environmental campaign group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.But pollution levels remain a major public health threat, linked to thousands of early deaths, and the group said they continue to increase in other parts of the country.

A generation ago Ethiopia's Tigray province was stricken by a famine that shocked the world. Today, as Chris Haslam reports, local people are using ancient techniques to turn part of the desert green.In the pink-streaked twilight, a river of humanity is flowing across Tigray's dusty Hawzien plain. This cracked and desiccated landscape, in Ethiopia's far north, occupies a dark corner of the global collective memory.

A Dutch energy firm is trailing a scheme that offers both the promise of free energy to home-owners and a cheap alternative to large data centers for computing firms.Dutch start-up Nerdalize has teamed up with energy providers Eneco to launch its e-Radiator prototype, which is being tested in five Dutch homes as an alternative heating device. The e-Radiator is a computer server that crunches numbers for a variety of Belgian firms - while the resultant heat will heat the rooms in which they're situated. Nerdalize believes the scheme could be a commercially viable alternative to traditional radiators.

She can smile, she can sing and this robot receptionist who started work in Tokyo on Monday never gets bored of welcoming customers to her upmarket shop."My name is ChihiraAico. How do you do?" she says in Japanese, blinking and nodding to customers in the foyer of Mitsukoshi, Japan's oldest department store chain.

Human emotion can be transferred by technology that stimulates different parts of the hand without making physical contact with your body, a study has shown. For example, short, sharp bursts of air to the area around the thumb, index finger and middle part of the palm generate excitement, whereas sad feelings are created by slow and moderate stimulation of the outer palm and the area around the 'pinky' finger.

Richer pupils achieve higher academic grades because their brains are different, according to research.Past research has shown pupils from low-income backgrounds fared worse than those from wealthier families.

The brains of babies 'light up' in a very similar way to adults when exposed to the same painful stimulus, a pioneering Oxford University brain scanning study has discovered. It suggests that babies experience pain much like adults.The study looked at 10 healthy infants aged between one and six days old and 10 healthy adults aged 23-36 years. Infants were recruited from the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and adult volunteers were Oxford University staff or students.

Do you like your steak rare or well done? The answer could influence how mentally sharp you stay as you age, new research suggests. Scientists have found that compounds known as glycotoxins, which form as we brown (or blacken) certain foods, may increase the risk of age-related dementia.Related: Cost of lab-grown burger patty drops from $325,000 to $11.36

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) may be just as effective as antidepressants in helping prevent people with chronic depression from relapsing, say UK scientists.Depression is one of the most common forms of mental illness, affecting more than 350 million people worldwide. It is ranked by the World Health Organization as the leading cause of disability globally.

The largest ancient galaxies stopped forming stars in their cores about three billion years after the Big Bang, with this end of star birth spreading from the inside out in so-called "dead" galaxies, scientists say.A new survey of 22 elliptical galaxies (most of which were the same size or larger than our own Milky Way) revealed that the most massive galaxies from about 10 billion years ago have stopped forming stars in their centers while formation continued on the outskirts.

A new study examined the galaxy cluster Abell 3827 and found indications that dark matter could be self-interacting. If confirmed, this would mark a significant step forward in the ongoing quest to understand the substance that helps structure the Universe.The team used the MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) along with images from the Hubble Space Telescope to map out the cluster. Because large masses such as galaxies and galaxy clusters bend the paths of light, they act as lenses, a process called (surprise!) gravitational lensing.

In the near future we may have household robots to handle cooking, cleaning and other menial tasks. They will be teachable: Show the robot how to operate your coffee machine, and it will take over from there.But suppose you buy a new, different coffee maker. Will you have to start over?"The robot already has seen two or three coffee machines; it should be able to figure out how to use this one,".

Step aside, home chefs! The kitchen of the future draws near.No, there's no hydrator from Marty McFly's kitchen in Back to the Future II. Right now, the chef of the future looks like a pair of robotic arms that descend from the ceiling of a very organized kitchen. And it makes a mean crab bisque.As well it should: The robot has been studying under Tim Anderson, a freelance chef who won the BBC's MasterChef competition in 2011.

"DRAGONS and fairies, giants and witches, have vanished from our nurseries before the wand of reason," wrote the poet Lucy Aikin in 1801, lamenting the triumph of facts over fancy in education. Her eulogy was premature. Although driven by science and technology, the Victorian era that followed was no enemy to fable. On the contrary, as Melanie Keene argues in Science in Wonderland, the 19th century was a golden age for fairy tales, and these tales also made scientific advances engaging for young audiences.

A former Canadian defence minister is heading a speaking tour about the alleged cover up of UFOs by world governments.A crowd of about 400 people attended the "Disclosure Canada Tour" stop at the University of Calgary Saturday, to hear keynote speaker Paul Hellyer. Hellyer served as Canada's defence minister in the 1960s.Related: UFOs Confront Soldiers During War, Says Ex-Air Force Intelligence Officer

Rice, the lifeblood of so many nations' cuisines, is perhaps the most ubiquitous food in the world. In Asia, where an estimated 90 percent of all rice is consumed, the pillowy grains are part of almost every meal. In the Caribbean, where the starch is often mixed with beans, it's a staple too. Even here in the United States, where people eat a comparatively modest amount of rice, plenty is still consumed.

A whale's journey across the Pacific Ocean is the longest recorded migration of any mammal, say scientists.The female gray whale made a round trip of 22,500 km (14,000 miles) from the east coast of Russia to breeding grounds off Mexico and back.

Screech! Bang! It's the sound we all dread when crossing busy roads. Now, it turns out that like us, wild chimpanzees learn to respect roads, adopting the same cautious drills as humans, including looking both ways to check for traffic.Hopefully, by studying how chimpanzees cope with roads, we can find ways to make them safer for wildlife, especially since road-building in Africa is on the increase.

An African monkey thought to be extinct has been spotted again by researchers, who returned from a remote Congo forest in March with the first-ever photos of the rare red primate.Until this year, scientists hadn't seen the Bouvier's red colobus monkey in the wild since the 1970s. The small primate lives in groups in swampy forests along the Congo River, in the Republic of the Congo. Hunting and logging decimated its population, leading some scientists to suggest the monkey was extinct.

The Yanomami people in the Venezuelan rainforest have the most diverse population of gut microbes ever seen, far more varied than Western guts. Does it matter?Hunter-gathering in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, the Yanomami eat a high-fibre diet based largely on cassava. For thousands of years, some groups have lived without contact with the rest of the world and are thought to be some of the few remaining communities never to have been exposed to antibiotics, which can wipe out the microbes in your gut.

The ability to make a Lower Paleolithic hand axe depends on complex cognitive control by the prefrontal cortex, including the 'central executive' function of working memory, a new study finds. The results knock another chip off theories that Stone Age hand axes are simple tools that don't involve higher-order executive function of the brain."For the first time, we've showed a relationship between the degree of prefrontal brain activity, the ability to make technological judgments, and success in actually making stone tools,".

Bronze artifacts discovered in a 1,000-year-old house in Alaska suggest trade was occurring between East Asia and the New World centuries before the voyages of Columbus.Archaeologists found the artifacts at the "Rising Whale" site at Cape Espenberg.

Workers cleaning in Peru discovered a mysterious mummy inside a cardboard box outside an archaeological site.The mummy was found Tuesday morning in a fetal position, tied with a rope, in a cardboard box near trash outside an archeological site in the Pre-Incancity of Chan Chan.

Polish archaeologists digging an ancient latrine in the Baltic city of Gdańsk have stumbled upon a 250-year-old sex toy.The phallic object is "large, thick, made of leather filled with bristles, and has a wooden tip," the Regional Office for the Protection of Monuments in Gdansk said in a press release.Dating from the second half of the 1700s, the artificial penis was found "preserved in excellent condition.".

Researchers studying the commonly used pain reliever acetaminophen found it has a previously unknown side effect: It blunts positive emotions. In the study, participants who took acetaminophen reported less strong emotions when they saw both very pleasant and very disturbing photos, when compared to those who took placebos.

A group of Mexican engineers from the Jhostoblak Corporate created technology to recover and purify seawater or wastewater from households, hotels, hospitals, commercial and industrial facilities, regardless of the content of pollutants and microorganisms in just 2.5 minutes.The system, PQUA, works with a mixture of dissociating elements, capable of separating and removing all contaminants, as well as organic and inorganic pollutants. "The methodology is founded on molecularly dissociating water pollutants to recover the minerals necessary and sufficient in order for the human body to function properly nourished," the researchers explained.

The hunt for sources of geothermal energy is getting a boost from new observations of the Earth made from space.Information about variations in gravity across the planet could help prospectors find promising locations where sub-surface heat can be exploited to generate electricity.

A type of deep-sea worm that eats whale bones has existed for 100 million years and may have chewed up chunks of the fossil record, a study suggests.Researchers found bore-holes indicative of Osedax worms in the fossilised flipper of a plesiosaur, and the rib and shell of an ancient sea turtle.

Karsten Erstad is a biologist from Norway. But despite his experience of the animal world, he couldn't believe his eyes when, whilst skiing, he came across thousands upon thousands of earthworms.So how does it rain worms? And why? Well, no one is entirely sure.

Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London have found that successful long-term learning happens after classroom teaching, after the learners have slept on the new material.Academics from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway taught a group of people new words from a fictional language, which unknown to them, was characterised by a rule relating the new words to one another. They found that although learners became aware of the rule within the new language shortly after being taught it, they were unable to apply it to understanding new, untrained words until after a period of rest.

For decades, frustrated parents and teachers have barked at fidgety children with ADHD to "Sit still and concentrate!"But new research shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks, according to a study published in an early online release of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

Health problems that blighted the Roman general Julius Caesar may have resulted from a spate of mini-strokes, according to a fresh review of his symptoms.The great military leader, who was instrumental in the rise of the Roman empire, suffered a host of medical ailments, from vertigo, dizziness and insensibility to limb weakness that on occasion caused him to fall over.

THE image of a Stone-Age man grasping the bony end of a bloody mammoth leg and chomping down on it with powerful gnashers is taking a bit of a battering. We already know that Neanderthals were partial to delicacies such as fish and small birds, with a healthy helping of plants. Now some are saying they might have flavoured their meaty feasts with wild herbs, too.

The warm start to 2014 boosted the number of some butterflies, including the critically endangered High Brown Fritillary, a survey has found.More than half of 56 species studied saw their numbers rise compared with the previous year, according to the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme.

Our western lifestyle, hygiene and diet may reduce the diversity of important gut bacteria, a new study shows.Scientists analysed the faecal bacteria of people living in the United States and rural Papua New Guinea, and found that Papua New Guineans had a greater number of different gut bacterial species.

To scratch an itch is to scratch many itches: placing nails to skin brings sweet yet short-lived relief because it often instigates another bout of itchiness. The unexpected culprit behind this vicious cycle, new research reveals, is serotonin, the so-called happiness hormone.

A new study co-written by a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law demonstrates that the value of creative works in the public domain such as books, images and music can be estimated at least as precisely as the value of commercially available copyrighted works.The implications of the study for both copyright term extension and orphan works legislation are substantial, says law professor Paul Heald.

A potentially game-changing breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis has been achieved with the development of a system that can capture carbon dioxide emissions before they are vented into the atmosphere and then, powered by solar energy, convert that carbon dioxide into valuable chemical products, including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to make trees grow bigger and faster, which could increase supplies of renewable resources and help trees cope with the effects of climate change.In the study, published in Current Biology, the team successfully manipulated two genes in poplar trees in order to make them grow larger and more quickly than usual.

The Moon was created 4.47 billion years ago, according to a new study of meteorites containing ancient fragments from the giant collision that formed the Earth and its lunar companion.The findings reported in the journal Science, also provide astronomers with a new tool for determining the age of major events in the early history of the solar system.

What does glitter have to do with finding stars and planets outside our solar system? Space telescopes may one day make use of glitter-like materials to help take images of new worlds, according to researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.Standard telescopes use solid mirrors to image far-away objects. But the large, complex mirrors needed for astronomy can be quite expensive and difficult to construct. Their size and weight also add to the challenges of launching a space telescope in the first place.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - When it comes to cats, those meows mean ... well, a lot of things.With each purr, yowl or even blink, felines are saying, "Hello," ''Let's snuggle" or "Beat it, Mom." For the increasing number of pet owners who want to connect with their often-aloof fur babies, experts say there's something to gain from those attempts at communication.

The seemingly calm cornfields of North America brim with courtship and seduction, but people rarely notice it. That's because the players are hairy wolf spiders that are more often squashed than studied.But new research suggests we're missing out on learning about the dramatic lives of spiders. In addition to cannibalism, ambushes, and the devouring of young, the study finds that when it comes to love, female wolf spiders take things into their own hands.

Neuroscientists have discovered how the powerful brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors -- findings that could lead to a better understanding of how oxytocin and other hormones could be used to treat behavioral problems resulting from disease or trauma to the brain.

Children who are good at reading other's minds are more popular among their peers at school, a new study has found.But the link between this ability and popularity is stronger in girls than in boys, according to the new research, published today in the journal Child Development.

A marijuana-derived compound may help reduce the frequency of seizures for epilepsy sufferers, according to a small study published today. More than half of the children and adults treated with cannabidiol (CBD) experienced fewer seizures over the course of a 12-week trial.