Newsdesk Archive
To make ships more eco-efficient, engineers have been working with alternative fuels. A Norwegian engineer is currently pursuing a new approach: With VindskipTM, he has designed a cargo ship that is powered by wind and gas. Software developed by Fraunhofer researchers will ensure an optimum use of the available wind energy at any time.International shipping is transporting 90 percent of all goods on earth.
By wearing clothes that have been dip-coated in a silver nanowire (AgNW) solution that is highly radiation-insulating, a person may stay so warm in the winter that they can greatly reduce or even eliminate their need for heating their home. Considering that 47% of global energy is spent on indoor heating, and 42% of that specifically for residential heating, such highly insulating clothing could potentially have huge cost savings.
An experimental flexible implant that connects directly to the spinal cord might someday lead to a treatment for people with spinal cord injuries, and could possibly help people with paraplegia move again, researchers say.Now, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have built such an implant.
The song of the swamp sparrow -- a grey-breasted bird found in wetlands throughout much of North America -- is a simple melodious trill. But according to a new study swamp sparrows are capable of processing the notes that make up their simple songs in more sophisticated ways than previously realized -- an ability that may help researchers better understand the perceptual building blocks that enable language in humans.
Unlike humans and great apes, rhesus monkeys don't realize when they look in a mirror that it is their own face looking back at them. But, according to a new report, that doesn't mean they can't learn. What's more, once rhesus monkeys in the study developed mirror self-recognition, they continued to use mirrors spontaneously to explore parts of their bodies they normally don't see.
Tilda, a female orangutan at the Cologne Zoo in Germany, appears to have figured out that if she communicates like a person, she can better grab the attention of zookeepers.She is the first wild-born Bornean orangutan known to produce novel human-like vocalizations, according to a paper published in PLOS ONE. She is also the only wild born orangutan that can whistle tunes, just as humans do.Related: Cows communicate using individual sounds like human names
The moon may offer pay dirt with a rewarding mother lode of resources, a celestial gift that is literally up for grabs. But what's really there for the taking, and at what cost?A new assessment of whether or not there's an economic case for mining the moon has been put forward by Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College, London. His appraisal is to appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Progress in Physical Geography.
Altruism has been a hot topic since it was first proposed in the 19th century. Psychologists have wondered: are people born preprogrammed to be nice to others?By recreating a classic experiment, psychologists find that altruistic behavior may be governed more by relationships, even brief ones, than instincts.
Could it be that when Ludwig van Beethoven composed some of the greatest masterpieces of all time that he was quite literally following his heart?The striking rhythms found in some of Beethoven's most famous works may have been inspired by his own heartbeat, says a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Washington that includes a cardiologist, medical historian, and musicologist.
These songs are examples of how art and science can come together to create something incredible. Musician Stef Conner learned to read several ancient Babylonian and Sumerian tablets written in cuneiform script, using historians' research to figure out likely pronunciation. Just listen to the results.
The long lost location of Genghis Khan's tomb may finally be uncovered through the use of satellite imagery.Albert Yu-Min Lin, from the University of California, San Diego, set up a project asking anyone interested to tag potential sites of the burial through images taken from space.Related: Chinese archaeologists find 2,800-year old burial of chariots and horses
Along the French Riviera, close to the town of Falicon, stands one of the most curious monuments found anywhere in Europe.Built from small, roughly-shapen limestone slabs, a topless, ruined pyramid can be seen rising amidst the foliage on the hill of Mont Chauve just outside Nice. The strange ruins, portions of which were likely removed over the years for use in the construction of homes nearby, sits directly over the entrance to a cave, known locally as la bauma die ratapignata (The Cave of the Bats), which may once have been sealed off with a heavy door or other fabricated entrance.
Gleaming cast metal called orichalcum, which was said by Ancient Greeks to be found in Atlantis, has been recovered from a ship that sunk 2,600 years ago off the coast of Sicily.The lumps of metal were arriving to Gela in southern Sicily, possibly coming from Greece or Asia Minor. The ship that was carrying them was likely caught in a storm and sunk just when it was about to enter the port."Nothing similar has ever been found," Tusa said. "We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects.".
An alien world that orbits a distant star in the constellation of Lyra may be the most Earth-like planet ever found outside the solar system.The planet, named Kepler 438b, is slightly larger than Earth and circles an orange dwarf star that bathes it in 40% more heat than our home planet receives from the sun.
A machine on Earth capable of recreating the conditions inside the sun's heart is helping scientists study how iron behaves at mind-boggling temperatures. The results of the experiment, so far, have defied expectations and just might help settle a long-standing solar puzzle, researchers say.Recreating conditions inside the sun, with temperatures topping 3.9 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 billion degrees Celsius), is no easy task, but it's something scientists have been doing for a decade at the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratory. This machine creates some of the most powerful X-rays found on Earth.
A nine-ton block of sandstone that was pulled from a Utah mountain late last year holds the biggest fossil trove ever found of the giant predatory dinosaur known as Utahraptor. Covered in feathers, with a huge sickle claw on each second toe, Utahraptor looked like a pumped-up version of the Jurassic Park star Velociraptor.
Rock soil droplets formed by heating most likely came from Stone Age house fires and not from a disastrous cosmic impact 12,900 years ago, according to new research. The study, of soil from Syria, is the latest to discredit the controversial theory that a cosmic impact triggered the Younger Dryas cold period.
A team of researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil has developed a new levitation device that can hover a tiny object with more control than any instrument that has come before.Featured on this week's cover of the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, the device can levitate polystyrene particles by reflecting sound waves from a source above off a concave reflector below. Changing the orientation of the reflector allow the hovering particle to be moved around.
The first known Chinese kingdom may have been destroyed when its lands rapidly transformed into deserts, possibly driving its people into the rest of China, a new study finds.This new finding suggests that the kingdom may have been more important to Chinese civilization than experts had thought, researchers say.
Among the treasures found when Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1923 were two ornate trumpets, one made of silver and the other of bronze. In 1939, BBC radio broadcast the sound of the trumpets to listeners around the world. And, thanks to the internet, now you can too.
Two researchers are taking a new twist on long-published research about what an ancient civilization did for a living.W. Flint Dibble, a University of Cincinnati doctoral student in the Department of Classics, and Daniel J. Fallu, a doctoral student in archaeology at Boston University, will present their new discoveries surrounding a key site from the Greek Dark Age on Jan. 9, at the joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Society for Classical Studies (SCS, formerly known as the American Philological Association), in New Orleans.
When University of Utah biologists fed mice sugar in doses proportional to what many people eat, the fructose-glucose mixture found in high-fructose corn syrup was more toxic than sucrose or table sugar, reducing both the reproduction and lifespan of female rodents.Related: Vitamin B may counter negative effect of pesticide on fertility
A small bowl of porridge each day could be the key to a long and healthy life, after a major study by Harvard University found that whole grains reduce the risk of dying from heart disease.Although whole grains are widely believed to be beneficial for health it is the first research to look at whether they have a long-term impact on lifespan.
Red meat has been linked to cancer for decades, with research suggesting that eating large amounts of pork, beef or lamb raises the risk of deadly tumours.But for the first time scientists think they know what is causing the effect. The body, it seems, views red meat as a foreign invader and sparks a toxic immune response.
Diet drug tested in mice mimics signals produced at start of meal, burning fat, reducing blood sugar and increasing metabolism.Alt: 'Imaginary meal' tricks body into losing weight
In a search for genes that fight off aging, researchers have now charted the bowhead whale genome.Bowheads are filter feeders found only in the Arctic, and are some of the largest mammals on Earth. Old harpoon points found in bowheads suggest the whales live for some 200 years.
Are chimpanzees sensitive to the effect of an object's properties on nut-cracking efficiency and plan their tool selection accordingly? An international team of researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has now investigated the selection of hammers used for cracking Coula edulis nuts by wild chimpanzees in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, taking into account the availability of potential tools at the site and time at which each tool selection episode occurred.
Most radio reporters, I think it's fair to say, think about their voices a lot, and work to sound powerful and authoritative. I know my voice has changed since my very first radio story 10 years agoThat's why I was intrigued by a recent study in the journal Psychological Science on the voice of authority. Scientists wanted to hear if people's voices change in predictable ways when they are put into positions of power. Plus, they wondered if listeners could detect those changes.
Talk about big!A dark hole hundreds of times bigger than the Earth has been spotted on the surface of the sun. A photo of the enormous "coronal hole" (below) was snapped by a camera aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on Jan. 1, 2015.
Looking for movement could complement chemical searches for extraterrestrial life.When we look for life beyond Earth, we usually search for its chemical signatures. The recent discovery of methane emissions on Mars, for example, is a possible sign of bacterial life. But there IS another way to detect life. See if it moves.
Czech archaeologists have unearthed the tomb of a previously unknown queen believed to have been the wife of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled 4,500 years ago, officials in Egypt said Sunday.The tomb was discovered in Abu Sir, an Old Kingdom necropolis southwest of Cairo where there are several pyramids dedicated to pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty, including Neferefre.Alt: Archaeologists discover tomb of previously unknown queen in Egypt
Men who find themselves in the company of fertile women are more likely to make creative attempts at sentence structure to signify their mating fitness, a study has found.Researchers discovered that when young men talk with a woman who is in the fertile period of her menstrual cycle, they react to small changes in her facial skin tone, vocal pitch and scent. The changes activate their mating goals and cause them to shift the way they speak.
Gazing at images of the great outdoors has been linked with a range of benefits, including pain relief, stress recovery and mood improvement. Now a study published in May 2014 in PLOS ONE adds impulse control to that list. Researchers at Utah State University asked three groups of participants to complete a task that tests whether they could resist instant gratification for a better reward later on.
Scientists have uncovered the unconventional way that the cholera bacterium stabs and kills other bacteria to steal their DNA, making it potentially more virulent. Cholera is caused when the bacterium Vibrio cholerae infects the small intestine. The disease is characterized by acute watery diarrhea resulting in severe dehydration.
Researchers have developed a way for teaching robots how to properly use tools by having the robots watch videos on YouTube.The researchers that developed the method are from NICTA, which is Australia's Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence, and the University of Maryland. The researchers published a paper regarding the study, which the team will be presenting within the month at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's 29th annual conference.
Great balls of cells! Scientists are developing mock human organs that can fit in the palm of your hand.These organs-on-a-chip are designed to test drugs and help understand the basics of how organs function when they are healthy and when they are diseased.
Fed up with constantly having to recharge or replace batteries in your ever-expanding trove of electronic gadgets? The solution may be just a few steps away."Energy harvesting" promises to power innumerable consumer devices, often with nothing more than your body's movement or heat. Dozens of companies around the world already offer such products, primarily for controlling lighting and temperature-control systems, but many experts believe the market for the technology could explode thanks to electronic gadgets being developed for the Internet of Things.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has begun approaching Ceres ahead of a historic March arrival at the mysterious dwarf planet.Dawn has officially entered the Ceres approach phase, after recently emerging from behind the sun relative to Earth and thus coming back into reliable communication range. The probe is now about 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres and is cruising toward the 590-mile-wide (950 km) object at 450 mph (725 km/h), NASA officials said.
One day, when humans have arrived on Mars, we might credit a children's toy for getting us there.Inspired by the classic stacking rings toy, Nasa engineers at the Langley Research Centre in Hampton have built an inflatable heat shield that could help land large spacecraft on the surface of Earth's nearest neighbour.
The discovery of a previously unknown ancient city came as a late Christmas present for archaeologists in Turkey when they made a major find on Dec. 28.A series of ruins that contain buildings, hidden churches and water channels was found in the Turkish town of Nevsehir, which is known for 'fairy chimney' rock formations.
New research centered on the world famous "Blue Hole" in Belize suggests the ancient Mayan civilization died out due to a massively long drought.According to Live Science, researchers found minerals in the underwater cave that indicated a past drought that lasted for approximately 100 years, from 800 A.D. to 900 A.D. For the past several centuries, the Mayans were prospering on the Yucatan Peninsula, but their decline began in 700 A.D.
A trove of ancient Byzantine ships found in waters near Istanbul, Turkey, displayed more advanced construction than scholars previously knew for that era. The ships include two unique Byzantine galleys propelled by oars, which are the first of their kind to be salvaged and were previously known only from text and images.Officials are planning a large museum to show the ships, which date back between 800 and 1,500 years, but it may be several years before their hulls are prepared to the point that they may be exhibited.
Archaeological findings show that Vikings from mid- and western Norway were among the first to make the trip to the British Isles.Vikings living in Trøndelag, a region in the middle part of Norway, were among the first in Scandinavia to travel west.
It is Darwin folklore that right before Cyclone Tracy hit the city on Christmas Eve 1974, Aboriginal people had already deserted the town.Historians have struggled to find facts to back up the rumour, and even suggested it may have been a way authorities avoided their duty of care to Aboriginal people.But from time to time some people have suggested it could be true.
There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the New Year - and in fact, scientists say the end of the year was relatively quiet on the solar surface.However, the sun has started 2015 with a mysterious event - a huge hole has appeared.Known as a coronal hole, the phenomenon occurred near the south pole - and is seen as a dark area covered all of its base in these stunning images.
A mystery object at the center of the galaxy has astronomers scratching their heads, and a new piece of information won't be solving the case before the New Year.In yet another twist to a saga of astronomical proportions, astronomers now say a gas cloud called G1 made a tight orbit around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy 13 years ago. The object could be one in a series of gas clouds, the second of which may soon become a snack for the black hole.
How habitable was Mars in the past? Since NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on Mars in August 2012, it has helped answer a few of these questions in the area surrounding its equatorial landing site of Gale Crater.Most notably, in March 2013, Curiosity investigators announced extensive evidence of a lake bed or river system in a region that NASA dubs "Yellowknife Bay.".
A MERTK gene defect responsible for a recently identified form of progressive retinal atrophy in Swedish vallhund dogs has been found by an international team of scientists. This discovery opens the door to the development of therapies for diseases that cause blindness both in dogs and humans.
Regular mental imagery exercises help preserve arm strength during 4 weeks of immobilization, researchers have found. Strength is controlled by a number of factors -- the most studied by far is skeletal muscle. However, the nervous system is also an important, though not fully understood, determinant of strength and weakness. In this study, researchers set out to test how the brain's cortex plays into strength development.
Dozens of foreign missions carried out over three decades using the latest high-tech instruments failed to find the causeway of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Now, unexpectedly, the passage has finally been located by a local resident living near the Giza Plateau, who was illegally digging beneath his home when he discovered a tunnel leading to the Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three pyramids in Giza.
Cosmologists celebrated the new year by launching a new experiment on a balloon in Antarctica to investigate the Big Bang.A set of six telescopes known as Spider, for Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the Epoch of Reionization, will circle the continent for the next 20 days, observing a haze of faint microwave radio waves that envelop space and are thought to be the fading remnants of the primordial fireball in which it all started 13.8 billion years ago.
When it comes to manned spaceflight, a manned mission to Mars has been the ultimate goal since the 1960s; after the Moon, it's the most logical place to go. But what about Venus?We can't land on the surface of Venus. At least, it would be almost impossibly difficult to design a spacecraft that could survive the planet's hellish environment. With a carbon dioxide rich atmosphere at a pressure about 92 times what we feel on Earth and an average surface temperatures upwards of 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it's not a welcoming environment. But about 31 miles above the surface, Venus becomes almost Earthlike.
Feel like experiencing an earthquake? The VuePod can take you there. It is a curved wall of 12 large, high-definition, 3D televisions, and the visuals it displays can be navigated with a Wii controller.The immersive system, designed by Dan Ames at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and a team of students, was created to allow environmental engineers to make virtual site visits. It uses 3D lidar data, captured at sites of interest during extreme weather events, to let researchers experience the effect of natural disasters.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have solved a 70 year old mystery in traffic research: an until now inexplicable jerkiness when we steer a vehicle. The discovery may lead to safety systems in cars that can correct dangerous steering movements before they occur.The ability to predict what a driver is going to do in the near future and to be able to prepare the car's system for this sounds a little bit like science fiction, and it would naturally be a dream come true for the safety departments at car manufacturers. The dream is now one step closer to becoming reality.
THE teachers at Summit Public Schools in California don't stand in front of the class and deliver the same lesson. In fact, they don't teach lessons at all. Instead, semi-autonomous software guides children through the syllabus, with a teacher on hand to answer questions and explain more complicated concepts.The idea is that children work best when setting their own goals and moving at a pace that suits them. Evidence from early pilot studies shows that pupils learn more effectively this way than with traditional teaching.
Investigators working to unravel the impact of genetics versus environment on traits such as obesity may also need to consider a new factor: when individuals were born. A new study finds that the impact of a variant in the FTO gene that previous research has linked to obesity risk largely depends on birth year, with no correlation between gene variant and obesity in study participants born in earlier years and a far stronger correlation than previously reported for those born in later years.
Fat cells just under a person's skin may be the first responders to invading bacteria, buying time until the white blood cells arrive at a wound site, according to a new study.The new findings suggest that the task of fighting infections is not solely the responsibility of the immune system, the researchers said. Moreover, fat cells may fight infections by producing antimicrobial compounds, lab experiments in mice and human fat cells showed.
The carcasses of thousands of small birds called Cassin's auklets have been washing ashore over the last few months from Northern California up to the north coast of Washington.Scientists along the Pacific Coast have been trying to determine what is causing the large die-off of the birds this winter.
Massive earthen structures once sheltered clans from warlords and bandits. Can they be prototypes for "green" buildings?It started like a game. How many of these strange, fortress-like structures could I tally from a vehicle window? They were so big, looming like spaceships in the countryside of Fujian Province in southeastern China. Every village seemed to have at least one, two, more.
IN LATE November, a court case in Calgary, Canada, set an unusual record. Lawyers representing a personal trainer injured in an accident were the first to wield data from a wearable device in the courtroom. They planned to use the sluggish activity levels recorded by their client's Fitbit fitness tracker to prove the lasting effect of her accident.Evidence gleaned from sources like email, social media and GPS trackers has already become common in trials.
The cracked and broken bones of a 1.8-million-year-old crocodile, elephant and giant tortoise are now recorded in meticulous detail, thanks to cutting-edge 3D scanners.When the bones were discovered at the Turkana Lake Basin in northern Kenya in the 1970s, they were in considerably better shape than they are now. But at the time, the fossils were too large to safely transport to Nairobi, a 3.5-day boat trip from the site.
Ancient coyotes hunted large prey, and had larger jaws and sharper teeth to bring down their choice meals than modern-day coyotes do, a new study reports.The fierce coyotes of the past (Canis latrans) likely ate the young of large animals that roamed North America during the Pleistocene epoch, including juvenile llamas, camels and horses. But climate change and, to a small extent, human hunters, likely killed off these large animals as the Pleistocene ended about 11,500 years ago.
An ancient, two-sided amulet uncovered in Cyprus contains a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backwards as it does forwards.Archaeologists discovered the amulet, which is roughly 1,500 years old, at the ancient city of Nea Paphos in southwest Cyprus.
Were he alive today, E.H. Sellards, Florida state geologist in the early 1900s, would likely have revelled in the validation of his controversial theory that humans co-existed with large prehistoric animals some 14,000 years ago in Vero Beach, Florida.
Archaeologists working in Turkey have unearthed a 1.2-million-year-old stone tool.The new tool, a flaked piece of quartz discovered in the town of Gediz, is the oldest reliable evidence of ancient humans living in what is now Turkey. The piece could help scientists recreate early humans' migrations from Africa.
How did you start making ancient drinks?One of the first we made was the Midas beverage, based on residues in bronze vessels recovered from the Midas tomb in Turkey, which dates from 700 BC. These pointed to an unusual drink combining wine, barley beer and mead. There were also food remains in the tomb that suggested a barbecued lamb or goat stew with lentils and spices. We tried to recreate the funerary feast as a way of bringing the past to life.
Frogs and other amphibians lay eggs, but mammals give birth to live young, right? Not always. A newly described species of frog gives birth to live tadpoles, and is the only known frog to do so, researchers say.The discovery happened one night last summer, when researcher Jim McGuire was tromping through the rainforest in Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo. McGuire stumbled across what looked like a single male frog. But when he reached out to grab it, he found himself holding much more.
If a space rock were to hit the Earth at just the right location in the oceans, it could cause massive waves that could inundate U.S. coastlines, a new computer simulation suggests.For instance, if an asteroid were to hit the continental shelf off the Maryland coast, it could produce 23-foot-high (7 meters) waves, causing flooding from New York to Georgia that would take hours to recede. A similar impact off the coast of California could flood major power plants along the coast, the research also suggests.
In the adversarial, macho environment of the courtroom, a booming voice might seem like a good trait for a lawyer to cultivate. Not so - men who sound very masculine are actually less likely to win a US Supreme Court case than their more gentle-sounding peers.It's well known that the sound of our voice shapes how people perceive us, which in turn may affect how successful we are in various walks of life.
Children with autism have stronger social skills when they live with pets, according to a recent study from the University of Missouri-Columbia.Previous studies have shown that dogs play an important role in individuals' social lives, and they can act as catalysts for social interaction, previous research has shown. Although much media attention has focused on how dogs can improve the social skills of children with autism.
And just when we thought it was all bad news, a study recently led by NASA experts has revealed that the Earth's tropical forests are somehow absorbing more carbon dioxide (CO2) than experts thought possible, taking the harmful greenhouse gas from our atmosphere at unprecedented rates.Alt: Carbon dioxide emissions help tropical rainforests grow faster: Study shows trees absorb more greenhouse gas than expected
A member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacker network claims to have cloned a thumbprint of a German politician by using commercial software and images taken at a news conference.Jan Krissler says he replicated the fingerprint of defence minister Ursula von der Leyen using pictures taken with a "standard photo camera".
Cold and windy with a chance of dust storms, that's what a weather forecaster might say about Mars. But if we want our colonization plans of the Red Planet to be successful, a better understanding of Martian weather patterns is needed. A team of students of the Arizona State University (ASU) has developed a tool named Sensing Pressure and Atmospheric Research Console (SPARC), to make it possible, and they aim to put it on Mars to conduct a series of weather experiments.
Lettuce could be the first life to land on Mars if a team of students succeeds in their plan to grow salad on the planet in 2018.The project has been launched by a team from the University of Southampton and is asking for votes from the public to allow it go ahead.
The ruins of Pompeii in Italy are a popular tourist attraction, but it appears some visitors leave with more than just memories and photos.Thieving visitors, who have been taking artefacts from the ancient site for decades, have now begun returning their stolen wares to the museum.In October, a 70-year-old woman returned an ancient decoration that she took from the attraction back in 1964 - and local archaeologists claim this is a common occurrence.
A massive volcanic eruption about 40,000 years ago probably wasn't big enough to wipe out the Neanderthals as previous research suggested, new research finds.Although the eruption, which occurred in what is now Italy, blanketed nearby areas in lava and ash, it wouldn't have lowered temperatures enough throughout Europe to be a significant cause of the Neanderthals' demise, said study co-author Benjamin Black, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
City dwellers should visit parks more often and take advantage of this free and easy way to boost their physical and mental health, environmental scientists have urged.New research from the National Environmental Research Program's Environmental Decisions Hub (NERP's EDH) shows that despite the abundance of parks in Australian cities, only 60 per cent of the urban population are using these facilities in any week.
Prospects of developing computing and communication technologies based on quantum properties of light and matter may have taken a major step forward thanks to research by City College of New York physicists led by Dr. Vinod Menon.In a pioneering study, Professor Menon and his team were able to discover half-light, half-matter particles in atomically thin semiconductors (thickness ~ a millionth of a single sheet of paper) consisting of two-dimensional (2D) layer of molybdenum and sulfur atoms arranged similar to graphene.
Is there life on other planets? While the massive number of exoplanets we've discovered has expanded the focus of this question outward, at the moment, our best chance for answering it remains within the Solar System. Here, we've floated above Europa, landed on Titan, and roved Mars, all of which have been put forward as possible homes for life. But so far, our attempts to get at the issue of life indirectly, by sensing its distinctive chemistry, have not provided a definitive result.
The largest and most complex organic molecule ever seen in interstellar space has been detected by the Atacama large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA Telescope). the molecule, isopropyl cyanide, was spotted 27,000 light-years (10 trillion kilometres) from earth, inside a star-forming giant gas cloud named sagittarius B2.As stars are born in the cloud, they heat up microscopic grains of dust. chemical reactions on the surface of this dust can result in the formation of complex molecules.
Archaeologists from the University of Basel discovered eggs of intestinal parasites in samples from the former Celtic settlement 'Basel-Gasfabrik,' and concluded that its population lived in poor sanitary conditions. Using special geoarchaelogical methods, they found three different types of parasites, as reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Archaeologists exploring the remains of a 6,000 year old temple in Ukraine have found evidence of complex sacrificial practices at the site.The temple, thought to belong to the ancient Trypillian culture, was found near the modern-day city of Nebelivka and originally unearthed in 2009.
It's a question that's caused more than a few brawls among academics: Just why do humans engage in bloody combat when the risk to life and limb is so high?Some anthropologists have argued that warfare must confer an evolutionary benefit to warriors, or else why would they take part?Alt: The biological spoils of war: Study finds those who take part in violent conflict have more wives, children
In this article Alann de Vuyst explains why he as an artist must oppose the war on drugs.Today it occurred to me that something is at stake. Something very important to me: art produced in a shamanic way. At the beginning of the foundation of this group, I believe I mentioned that a gallery in Spain decided not to exhibit my works because a French agency that curates the artists and art works for the gallery would not choose an artist if he or she would consume substances that are prohibited in the EU or classified as class A drugs.
Learning to play an instrument may be more effective for treating childhood psychological problems than pills, a study has found.Children who play musical instruments are more focused, emotionally controlled and less anxious.Brain scans found playing music altered the motor areas of the brain, because the activity requires control and coordination of movement.
The microbes that live in and on humans may have evolved to preferentially take down the elderly in the population, a new computer model suggests.That, in turn, could have allowed children a greater share of food and resources, thereby enabling an extended childhood. Such a microbial bias may also have kept the first human populations more stable and resilient to upheavals, the findings suggest.
Venus may have once possessed strange oceans of carbon dioxide fluid that helped shape the planet's surface, researchers say.Venus is often described as Earth's twin planet because it is the world closest to Earth in size, mass, distance and chemical makeup. However, whereas Earth is a haven for life, Venusis typically described as hellish, with a crushing atmosphere and clouds of corrosive sulfuric acid floating over a rocky desert surface hot enough to melt lead.
Bright stars top Christmas trees in Christian homes around much of the world. The faithful sing about the Star of Wonder that guided the wise men to a manger in the little town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. They're commemorating the Star of Bethlehem described by the Evangelist Matthew in the New Testament. Is the star's biblical description a pious fiction or does it contain some astronomical truth?
As species blink into extinction all around the world, environmental scientists in Australia have come up with a way to decide 'which of the books we rescue from the blazing library of life'.Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) have developed a cost-effective way to save a wide range of threatened species, including rare old ones that may be costly to protect.
Not many would jump at the chance to drink their own urine, but professor Gerardine Botte hopes her "pee power" technology will have astronauts on Mars doing just that.Botte, director of Ohio University's Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research, said she realized that hydrogen and water could be extracted from urine while working on fuel-cell technology in 2002. The fuel-grade hydrogen can be used to power an iPod or a small electronic device.
Tourists from all over the world flock to Yellowstone's geothermal pools, like Morning Glory (seen above), to witness their brilliant hues. But according to a new study, those same visitors completely changed the pools' appearance.The study, by researchers from Montana State University, used a mathematical model to analyze measurements taken at geothermal pools across Yellowstone to reconstruct what the pools might have looked like before humans first set foot in the area.
Robots are becoming an ever-increasing presence in our lives, and today one will board a commercial airline as a passenger for the first time. According to the Los Angeles International Airport's Twitter feed, a humanoid robot named Athena will take off on a commercial Lufthansa flight to Germany this afternoon as a paid passenger. Athena is going to be accompanied by two scientists and is a full humanoid robot with a head, arms, and legs.Alt: More images here
Whooping cough may be evolving to outsmart the currently used vaccine, say researchers.Analysis of strains from 2012 shows the parts of the pertussis bacterium that the vaccine primes the immune system to recognise are changing.
Adults with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have poorer hearing than those without the HIV infection, according to a recent study.Researchers from San Diego State University in California found that high-frequency pure-tone average (HPTA) and low-frequency (LPTA) were significantly higher (i.e. poorer hearing) for adults with HIV compared with adults without the infection for the better ear.
The forests surrounding the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia are once more echoing to the eerie, whooping calls of the pileated gibbon, a species, like so many in south-east Asia, that has been decimated by hunting and deforestation.Conservationists have reintroduced the gibbons as part of an ambitious project for the "re-wilding" of Angkor Wat, a vast "temple city" that was once surrounded by forests teeming with deer, monkeys, birds and big cats before the arrival of commercial hunters with guns, traps and an appetite for money.
A team of archaeologists led by Dr Mykhailo Videiko of the Kyiv Institute of Archaeology has discovered the remains of a 6,000-year-old temple at a Trypillian culture village near modern-day Nebelivka, Ukraine.Trypillian culture derives its name from the village of Trypillia in Kyiv region, Ukraine, where artifacts of this ancient civilization were first discovered in 1896.
Japan's top research institute on Friday hammered the final nail in the coffin of what was once billed as a ground-breaking stem cell study, dismissing it as flawed and saying the work could have been fabricated.The revelations come a week after a young researcher at the centre of the scandal, which has rocked the country's scientific establishment, said she would resign after failing to reproduce the successful conversion of an adult cell into a stem cell-like state, known as "STAP" cells.
Some 22,000 years ago, they were the largest group of humans on earth: the Khoisan, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.Today, only about 100,000 Khoisan, who are also known as Bushmen, remain. Stephan C. Schuster, professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has published new research about the tribe, many of whom now live in poverty, their cultural traditions endangered.How did it happen that a group that was once in the majority is now so small?
People with a tendency to feel guilty for disappointing their coworkers are among the most ethical and hard-working people to work with. However, these highly guilt-prone people may be the most reticent to enter into partnerships.By understanding this phenomenon, managers can make the best decisions about team-building and increase productivity.
A team of scientists has found a way to conquer the global bedbug epidemic. By lending their own arms for thousands of bed bug bites, they have finally found the solution -- a set of chemical attractants, or pheromones, that lure the bedbugs into traps, and keep them there.