Newsdesk Archive

The way a person's brain responds to a single disgusting image is enough to reliably predict whether he or she identifies politically as liberal or conservative. As we approach Election Day, the researchers say that the findings come as a reminder of something we all know but probably don't always do: 'Think, don't just react.'.

Magic mushrooms may give users trippy experiences by creating a hyperconnected brain.The active ingredient in the psychedelic drug, psilocybin, seems to completely disrupt the normal communication networks in the brain, by connecting "brain regions that don't normally talk together," said study co-author Paul Expert, a physicist at King's College London.Related: Mushroom Extract May Be Helpful in Treating HPV

The software on your smartphone may be able to recognize your voice, but it probably can't pick up nuances like sarcasm or outrage. But research on how to detect opinions and attitudes in everyday speech could enable tomorrow's computers to pick up on these subtle cues.The research aims to address some conundrums about verbal and textual communication.

All objects' colors are determined by the way that light scatters off of them. By manipulating the light scattering, scientists can control the wavelengths at which light is transmitted and reflected by objects, changing their appearance.In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers have developed a new method for manipulating light scattering. They theoretically show how to induce transparency in otherwise opaque materials using the complex dipole-dipole interactions present in a large number of interacting quantum emitters, such as atoms or molecules.

YOUR smartphone is amazing, but ask it to do something it doesn't have an app for and it just sits there. Without programmers to write apps, computers are useless.That could soon change. DeepMind Technologies, a London-based artificial-intelligence firm acquired by Google this year, has revealed that it is designing computers that combine the way ordinary computers work with the way the human brain works. They call this hybrid device a Neural Turing Machine. The hope is it won't need programmers, and will instead program itself.

A genetic analysis of almost 900 offenders in Finland has revealed two genes associated with violent crime.Those with the genes were 13 times more likely to have a history of repeated violent behaviour.Alt: Murderers May Be Hardwired to Kill

New research by the University of California, Davis, shows that chimpanzees plan ahead, and sometimes take dangerous risks, to get to the best breakfast buffet early.The study co-authored by Leo Polansky, an associate researcher in the UC Davis anthropology department, reveals that chimpanzees will find a place to sleep en route to breakfast sites and risk travel in the dark when predators are active to obtain more desired, less abundant fruits such as figs.

Where once there were 15, now more than 1,000 giant tortoises lumber around Espanola, one of the Galapagos Islands.After 40 years' work reintroducing captive animals, a detailed study of the island's ecosystem has confirmed it has a stable, breeding population.

On a recent visit to Crystal Ice Cave in Idaho, climate and cave researchers had to wade through frigid, knee-deep water to reach the ice formations that give the cave its name. Cavers are good-humored about the hardships of underground exploration, but this water was chilling for more than one reason: it was carrying away some of the very clues they had come to study.Ice is an invaluable source of information about the earth's past.

New multi-scenario modelling of world human population has concluded that even stringent fertility restrictions or a catastrophic mass mortality would not bring about large enough change this century to solve issues of global sustainability.Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ecologists Professor Corey Bradshaw and Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute say that the "virtually locked-in" population growth means the world must focus on policies and technologies that reverse rising consumption of natural resources and enhance recycling, for more immediate sustainability gains.

A new idea about the origin of complex life turns current theories inside out. In the open access journal BMC Biology, cousins Buzz and David Baum explain their 'inside-out' theory of how eukaryotic cells, which all multicellular life -- including us -- are formed of, might have evolved.Scientists have long pondered the question of how simple "prokaryotic" cells, like bacteria, which are little more than a membrane-bound sack, evolved into more complex eukaryotic cells, which contain numerous internal membrane compartments.

Between the 9th and 19th centuries, Arabic-speaking scholars translated Greek, Latin and even Sanskrit texts on topics such as medicine, mathematics and astronomy, fostering a vibrant scientific culture within the Islamic world. Some of the most influential texts are now available at the Qatar Digital Library.The library, a joint project of the British Library and the Qatar Foundation, offers free access to 25,000 pages of medieval Islamic manuscripts.

Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Sprajc is behind discovery of three significant ruins in the remote jungles of the Yucatan peninsulaThere are days when Ivan Sprajc gets fed up with his job. Hacking pathways through the Mexican jungle with machetes is exhausting. Keeping a constant eye out for deadly snakes can be nerve-racking. The risk of finding nothing to show for all the effort is real.

Some of humankind's earliest and most mysterious artistic achievements -- including prehistoric cave paintings, canyon petroglyphs and megalithic structures such as Stonehenge -- may have been inspired by the behaviors of sound waves being misinterpreted as "supernatural.".

Nostalgic for the halycon days of the 'alternative Egypt' craze of the 1990s? It seems that two decades later, it's due for a comeback. We already know that Graham Hancock is revisiting the areas covered in his hugely influential Fingerprints of the Gods - presumably including ancient Egypt - in a 2015 release titled Magicians of the Gods. And now two other big names of alternative Egyptology, Robert Bauval and Robert Schoch, have announced they are teaming up to write a book on the 'Age of the Sphinx' controversy.

A 2,600-year-old two-handled wine cup currently on display at the Lamia Archaeological Museum in Greece has long been thought to depict a random assortment of animals.But the piece of ancient pottery, called a skyphos,may actually contain one of the earliest Greek depictions of the constellations, a new analysis shows.

The largest sunspot observed on the sun in more than 20 years has been firing off powerful solar flares for the past week, and it's still producing strong solar storms.Today, the huge sunspot erupted with a large solar flare, peaking at around 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT). The flare caused a strong radio blackout on Earth, according to the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center. This solar flare is the fourth X-flare (the most powerful kind of solar storms) in as many days.

Spending a lot of time in the space may damage sperm cells and can also lead to infertility, reveals a new study.Researchers at the University of Kansas have found that zero gravity situations in the space can affect male as well as female reproductive organs.Alt: Space may make astronauts infertile, scientists fear, telegraph.co.uk

Surgeons in Australia say they have performed the first heart transplant using a "dead heart".Donor hearts from adults usually come from people who are confirmed as brain dead but with a heart still beating.

Late night cocoa has never looked so appealing. A component of chocolate has been found to reverse age-related memory loss in healthy adults aged 50-69. The rejuvenating effect can be traced to increased blood flow in a specific region of the brain, say the researchers.This is the first direct link that age-related forgetfulness is caused by changes in a specific part of the brain. It is also the first piece of evidence that memory decline can be reversed by a change in diet.

At 17:09 UT (12:09 p.m. EDT) today (Saturday), active region (AR) 2192 erupted with another X-class flare directed at Earth. This is the second powerful eruption in less than 24 hours to be triggered from the large sunspot that occupies the region. Today's flare registered at X1 on the solar flare Richter Scale, the most powerful class of flare, but weaker than Friday's X3-class flare. Further radio black-outs have been recorded on the daytime side of the Earth, but, once again, today's flare did not generate a significant coronal mass ejection (CME).

NASA scientists have identified an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud on Saturn's moon Titan that is similar to exotic clouds found far above Earth's poles.This lofty cloud, imaged by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, was part of the winter cap of condensation over Titan's north pole. Now, eight years after spotting this mysterious bit of atmospheric fluff, researchers have determined that it contains methane ice, which produces a much denser cloud than the ethane ice previously identified there.

A spectacular multi-colored UFO light show illuminated the skies over parts of Brazil last week, turning night into day for five seconds at about 10:20 pm. Besides being seen by scores of eyewitnesses, the UFO and its subsequent aerial flash was captured on numerous traffic cameras. It was the best light show since Carnaval do Brasil. Was there anything else besides the flash?

On October 6th, I find myself in the gleaming office of a Boston biotech. I've been seated in a clear plastic chair, where I am about to try an experimental medicine for a brain disorder I don't have.The space is home to PureTech Ventures, the parent company of Akili Interactive Labs, which makes the new medicine. Since December, children in Florida and North Carolina have also tried the treatment as part of a formal clinical trial for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The medicine is unusual because of its delivery system: an iPad or iPhone.Related: Can Video Games Curb Racism?

From its roots in rap, graffiti, DJing and breakdancing in the Bronx borough of New York in the 1970s, hip-hop has grown to become a global cultural and commercial powerhouse. But now UK researchers believe they have found a new use for it: as a treatment for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression.

Robert Scott was a British explorer who died with his several of his companions on his second expedition to the Antarctic due to starvation, exhaustion and the extremely cold weather. More than 100 years after his death, an artifact from his ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition of 1910-1913 has emerged.In a statement released on Oct. 20, New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust said that a notebook from Scott's last expedition was discovered trapped in ice in a hut.

The analysis of artifacts from a 325,000-year-old site in Armenia shows that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought.The study, published today in the journal Science, examines thousands of stone artifacts retrieved from Nor Geghi 1, a unique site preserved between two lava flows dated to 200,000-400,000 years ago. Layers of floodplain sediments and an ancient soil found between these lava flows contain the archaeological material.

Britons have worse oral health today than they did in Roman times despite the advent of toothbrushes and dentists, a study has found.A study of 303 skulls held at the Natural History Museum dating from the years 200 to 400 AD found only 5 per cent showed signs of moderate to severe gum disease (periodontitis), compared to about 15 to 30 per cent of adults today.

A combined team of researchers from Nagoya University and the University of Tokyo has discovered that a certain type of fern plant communicates with others of its kind using pheromones as a means of choosing the gender of maturing plants. In their paper published in the journal Science, the researchers describe how their study of the Japanese climbing fern, led to a better understanding of the role that the pheromone gibberellin plays in its reproduction process.

Imagine discovering a plant that has the potential to help alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts and paralyzing anxiety. That's what some believe ayahuasca can do, and this psychedelic drink is attracting more and more tourists to the Amazon.

Scientists say they have identified the underlying reason why some people are prone to the winter blues, or seasonal affective disorder (SAD).People with Sad have an unhelpful way of controlling the "happy" brain signalling compound serotonin during winter months, brain scans reveal.

Gravitational waves, invisible ripples in the fabric of space and time, might be detected by looking for the brightening of stars, researchers say.These mysterious ripples were first proposed by Albert Einstein as part of his theory of general relativity. The waves' size depends on the mass of the objects creating them.

Excavations at the 10,000-year-old Boncuklu mound have unearthed finger prints on kiln objects.The fingerprints are being examined by Dr. Lori Hager, a specialist on the subject.The fingerprints have been found on broken, nail-sized objects made in a kiln.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as water bottles, dental composites and resins used to line metal food and beverage containers, and also is used in thermal paper cash register receipts. Now, research conducted at the University of Missouri is providing the first data that BPA from thermal paper used in cash register receipts accounts for high levels of BPA in humans.

Scientists from Harvard Medical School have discovered a way of turning stem cells into killing machines to fight brain cancer.In experiments on mice, the stem cells were genetically engineered to produce and secrete toxins which kill brain tumours, without killing normal cells or themselves.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a robot which they plan to land on the Moon to act as eyes for Earth-bound space enthusiasts.It works in tandem with an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

As Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko moves closer to the Sun, it becomes more "active," as gases escape from its nucleus through cracks and pores. The Rosetta spacecraft's mass spectrometers have identified the chemical composition of these emissions. If you could smell them, you'd probably wish you hadn't.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 6:24 PM - Venus may be known best for its sulphuric acid rain, crushing atmospheric pressures and hellish temperatures, but the planet is turning out to be even more bizarre, as researchers discover that its mountains are covered in heavy metal frost, and perhaps something even stranger, which is sparking a mystery about our sister world.

Exposure to sunshine could slow down weight gain and the development of type 2 diabetes, research on mice suggests.Writing in Diabetes, scientists from Edinburgh, Southampton and Australia found that shining UV light on overfed mice made them gain less weight.

Moderate cannabis use among teenagers may not lead to a lower IQ and poorer exam results, a large study of UK schoolchildren has found.Related: How marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington is making the world a better placeRelated: Why Oregon is about to be the poster child for how to legalize and regulate marijuana

Remains of a 750-year-old city, founded by the descendents of Genghis Khan, have been unearthed along the Volga River in Russia.Among the discoveries are two Christian temples one of which has stone carvings and fine ceramics.

After 5 years of scouring the Andes mountains, two graduate students have found the oldest solid evidence that humans were living at extreme elevations by 12,800 years ago. These early settlers of the Americas, known as Paleoindians, camped in a rock shelter and manufactured stone tools in an open-air workshop almost 4500 meters above sea level, indicating that humans lived at least for part of the year at high elevations 1000 years earlier than previously thought.Alt: Oldest High-Altitude Human Settlement Discovered in Andes

People may have been making their way from Easter Island to the Americas well before the Dutch commander Jakob Roggeveen arrived with his ships in 1722, according to new genomic evidence showing that the Rapanui people living on that most isolated of islands had significant contact with Native American populations hundreds of years earlier. The findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 23 lend the first genetic support for such an early trans-Pacific route between Polynesia and the Americas, an impressive trek of more than 4,000 kilometers (nearly 2,500 miles).The findings are a reminder that "early human populations extensively explored the planet,".

Scientists working on islands in Florida have documented the rapid evolution of a native lizard species -- in as little as 15 years -- as a result of pressure from an invading lizard species, introduced from Cuba.After contact with the invasive species, the native lizards began perching higher in trees, and, generation after generation, their feet evolved to become better at gripping the thinner, smoother branches found higher up.

World population will likely peak at around 9.4 billion around 2070 and then decline to around 9 billion by 2100, according to new population projections from IIASA researchers, published in a new book, World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century. Alternative scenarios included in the projections range from 7 billion to almost 13 billion by 2100. The book was officially launched today at an event at the Wilson Center in Washington DC."As women become more educated," says Lutz, "They gain more power over their reproductive decisions and family size, which almost always translates to having fewer children.".

The UK's wind farms generated more power than its nuclear power stations on Tuesday, the National Grid says.Wind made up 14.2% of all generation and nuclear offered 13.2%.

The invisible force that pulls in the Millennium Falcon spacecraft to the Death Star in "Star Wars" movies is still far from becoming a reality, but physicists have developed a miniature version of sorts: a tractor beam that can reel in tiny particles.Alt: Tractor beam breaks distance record

Sixty years ago a football match ground to a halt when unidentified flying objects were spotted above a stadium in Florence. Did aliens come to earth? If not, what were they?It was 27 October 1954, a typically crisp autumn day in Tuscany. The mighty Fiorentina club was playing against its local rival Pistoiese.

A strange disc pouring smoke and hovering over buildings has been found in a monastery wall painting thought to date from the 16th century - and UFO researchers claim it is just one of many old paintings which seem to show evidence of visitors from another world.The image is painted on the wall on a 14th century church in Sighisoara - thought to the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, the historical figure on whom the Dracula legend is based.

In February of 1960, the American magazine Look ran a cover story that asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And as we all know, the proposal fell short.Alt: As a NASA guinea pig, I verified that women would be cheaper to launch than men

With about 4,000 planet candidates from the Kepler Space Telescope data to analyze so far, astronomers are busy trying to figure out questions about habitability. What size planet could host life? How far from its star does it need to be? What would its atmosphere need to be made of?Look at our own solar system, however, and there's a big gap in the information we need. Most of the planets have moons, so surely at least some of the Kepler finds would have them as well. Tracking down these tiny worlds, however, is a challenge.

Fresh information is being obtained on the Philae obelisk, the stone monument that played such a key role in helping to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.Today, the pink granite shaft stands on the UK National Trust's Kingston Lacy estate in Dorset, where it was brought from the Nile in the 1820s.

The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe of Siberian. Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes that the structure's faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'.

A fired-clay disk from the Second Millenium B.C. may finally have had some of its markings decoded.The mysterious "Phaistos disk," found in 1908 in a palace called Phaistos on the island of Crete, contains symbols on both sides, in a spiral configuration meant to be read from the outside toward the center. It is estimated to date from about 1,700 B.C.Alt: The 'first CD-ROM': 4,000-year-old Phaistos Disk 'stores' a spiral-shaped prayer to a mother, expert claims

Roman gladiators had a diet that was mostly vegetarian, according to an analysis of bones from a cemetery where the arena fighters were buried.The study has been carried out by academics from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria and the University of Bern in Switzerland. They found the gladiator diet was grain-based and mostly meat-free.

A powerful earthquake in Alaska sent towering waves up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall crashing down on Hawaii about 500 years ago, leaving behind fragments of coral, mollusk shells and coarse beach sand in a sinkhole located on the island of Kauai, new research finds.The quake, likely a magnitude 9.0, sent the mighty waves toward Hawaii sometime between 1425 and 1665, the study found. It's possible that another large Alaskan earthquake could trigger a comparable tsunami on Hawaii's shores in the future, experts said.

Over the past 30 years, land managers in the eastern US and Canada have spent countless man-hours and millions of dollars trying to tame a pernicious, invasive reed known as Phragmites australis.Toxic herbicides, controlled burns, and even bulldozers have been the go-to solutions to the problem. But recent research out of Duke University suggests another, less aggressive fix: goats.Related: 'Shrinking Goats' the Next Side Effect of Climate Change

Scientists announced Tuesday they've solved the mystery of the Mongolian ostrich dinosaur.The mystery began in 1965, when fossil hunters found a pair of 6-foot-long, heavily clawed arm bones in Mongolia's Gobi desert. Nobody had seen anything like them before. Now, scientists say, they've got the rest of the beast ... and dinosaur textbooks may need to be rewritten.Alt: Humpback Dino Was Literally Unsinkable

A shrewlike creature in Madagascar that can hibernate for at least nine months of the year without waking may help reveal how mammals survived the cataclysm that ended the age of dinosaurs, researchers suggest.These findings could also help lead to a way to put astronauts in a state of suspended animation on journeys in deep space and for victims of medical emergencies, scientists added.

An Italian lab has cooled a copper vessel with a volume of a cubic meter to within a tiny fraction of "absolute zero", setting a world record, the National Nuclear Physics Institute said Tuesday."No experiment on Earth has ever cooled a similar mass or volume to temperatures this low; similar conditions are also not expected to arise in Nature".

Ancient humans found with red hair weren't necessarily redheads in life, but may have acquired their carrot tops after death, a new study finds.A team of researchers examined the processes that degrade locks, ranging from exposure to the sun's powerful rays or being eaten away by microbes. These processes, many of which begin while a person or animal is still alive, can leave hair with an unnatural, reddish hue.

In many sports, mastery of the ball is crucial to success. But what happens if the ball disobeys the laws of physics? Researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory and the University of Tokyo are working on just such a device: HoverBall.HoverBall is a 90-millimeter-wide quadcopter enclosed in a cage a bit bigger than a bocce ball.

A man who was completely paralysed from the waist down can walk again after a British-funded surgical breakthrough which offers hope to millions of people who are disabled by spinal cord injuries.Polish surgeons used nerve-supporting cells from the nose of Darek Fidyka, a Bulgarian man who was injured four years ago, to provide pathways along which the broken tissue was able to grow.

Scientists at The University of Manchester hope a major breakthrough could lead to more effective methods for detoxifying dangerous pollutants like PCBs and dioxins. The result is a culmination of 15 years of research and has been published in Nature. It details how certain organisms manage to lower the toxicity of pollutants.The team at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology were investigating how some natural organisms manage to lower the level of toxicity and shorten the life span of several notorious pollutants.

How did life originate? And can scientists create life? These questions not only occupy the minds of scientists interested in the origin of life, but also researchers working with technology of the future. If we can create artificial living systems, we may not only understand the origin of life - we can also revolutionize the future of technology.Protocells are the simplest, most primitive living systems, you can think of. The oldest ancestor of life on Earth was a protocell, and when we see, what it eventually managed to evolve into, we understand why science is so fascinated with protocells. If science can create an artificial protocell, we get a very basic ingredient for creating more advanced artificial life.

A longstanding question among scientists is whether evolution is predictable. A team of researchers from University of California Santa Barbara may have found a preliminary answer. The genetic underpinnings of complex traits in cephalopods may in fact be predictable because they evolved in the same way in two distinct species of squid.

Looking down from space in earth orbit, the Nefud Desert appears as an arid oval depression across the northern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula. On the ground, it is known for its sudden violent winds, large crescent-shaped dunes, and brick-red colored sand. It is 290 km (180 miles) long and 225 km (140 miles) wide, with an area of 103,600 km² (40,000 square miles). It sees rain only once or twice a year.But in antiquity, there were lakes scattered across this otherwise unforgiving land.

Plans to build a tunnel underneath Stonehenge are again being considered by the government.Similar proposals were dropped seven years ago on cost grounds.The plans are being discussed by a working group that has been looking at ways to reduce congestion on the A303 since the spring.

It's one of those so-called facts that everyone knows: Bram Stoker's character Count Dracula was loosely based on Vlad the Impaler. But while there's no doubt that Stoker took the name from Vlad III's patronymic, it's doubtful that the Impaler was actually the basis for the famous vampire.It certainly makes sense that scholars and other readers have connected Count Dracula with the Wallachian warlord Vlad III, nicknamed "Vlad Tepes" or, in English, "Vlad the Impaler." After all, Vlad III was a member of the House of Draculesti, and is one of a handful of historical figures whose title is rendered as "Voivode Dracula" in English-language texts.

A suspected witch bottle has been unearthed by archaeologists during a dig at the site of the new Civil War Centre in Nottinghamshire.The green bottle, which is about 15cm (5.9in) tall, was probably used in the 1700s to ward off evil spells cast by witches, researchers believe.The witch bottles were usually filled with fingernails, hair and even urine.

I've persuaded the US publishers of my War God series of novels to offer the Kindle editions of both Volume 1 (War God: Nights of the Witch) and volume 2 (War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent) for just US$2.99 for a limited period. This special price, equivalent to less than the cost of a gallon of gas or a cup of coffee per book, will only be available for the next few days, and in the US only. Please note --You don't need to own a Kindle to read a Kindle book -- the Kindle app is available free of charge for many other mobile devices.Links to all editions (print and Kindle) of the War God series, along with chapters free to read online, a video trailer and other background material, can be found here: http://www.grahamhancock.com/wargod/And here are the specific links to the US Kindle editions, currently under special offer:Volume 1: War God: Nights of the Witch: http://amzn.to/1tIZQ1DVolume 2: War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent http://amzn.to/1onsu6o1 minute 40 secs video trailer for the "War God" series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL55JKleYA4

New research shows that the season you are born has a significant impact on your risk of developing mood disorders. People born at certain times of year may have a greater chance of developing certain types of affective temperaments, which in turn can lead to mood disorders.Seasons of birth have traditionally been associated with certain personality traits, such as novelty seeking, and various folklore justifications, such as astrology, have sought to explain these associations. Now a group of researchers from Budapest, Hungary, are presenting a study which links birth season with temperament.

When they first set foot on the Moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts painted a picture of the landscape as a bone-dry desert. So astronomers were naturally surprised when in 2009, three probes showed that a lot of water is locked up in minerals in the soil. There has been some debate as to where the water came from, but now two researchers with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, have determined that most of the water in the soil on the surface of the Moon was formed due to protons in the solar wind colliding with oxygen in lunar dust, rather than from comet or meteorite impacts.

The Earth has been left with a huge blind spot for potentially devastating comet strikes after the only dedicated comet-spotting program in the southern hemisphere lost its funding, leading astronomers have warned.The program, which discovered the Siding Spring comet that narrowly missed Mars on Sunday, was shut down last year after losing funding.

Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat."When I turned on the light, I couldn't quite understand what I was seeing," said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Bee colonies in Brisbane are waging war for months on end, sending waves of workers who collide, grapple and die.A genetic analysis of the battlefield fatalities showed that two different species of stingless bees were fighting for control of a single hive.The attacking swarm eventually took over the hive entirely, placing a new queen of its own in the usurped nest.

A 6,000-year-old temple holding human-like figurines and sacrificed animal remains has been discovered within a massive prehistoric settlement in Ukraine.Built before writing was invented, the temple is about 60 by 20 meters (197 by 66 feet) in size. It was a "two-story building made of wood and clay surrounded by a galleried courtyard," the upper floor divided into five rooms, write archaeologists Nataliya Burdo and Mykhailo Videiko in a copy of a presentation they gave recently at the European Association of Archaeologists' annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

It was supposed to have been the definitive piece of scientific evidence that finally exposed the true identify of Jack the Ripper after he had brutally murdered at least five women on the streets of Whitechapel in the East End of London, 126 years ago.A 23-year-old Polish immigrant barber called Aaron Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man who carried out the atrocities in 1888, according to a detailed analysis of DNA extracted from a silk shawl allegedly found at the scene of one of his murders.

The DNA from ancient human bones is shedding new light on the prehistory of Europe, such as when changes in skin color and lactose tolerance occurred, researchers say.This research unexpectedly revealed that ancient Europeans started dairying thousands of years before they evolved genes to make the most of milk in adulthood, investigators added.

The Sun is more spirited than previously thought. Apart from the solar eruptions, huge bursts of particles and radiation from the outer atmosphere of our star, also the cooler layer right below can be the site of explosions: in some areas magnetic energy builds up and discharges within only a few minutes in temperature eruptions of up to 100000 degrees. Researchers under the lead of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have now for the first time found evidence of such short-lived heat pockets in data from NASA's space telescope IRIS.

Mark Thursday (Oct. 23) on your calendar as "Solar Eclipse Day," for if the weather cooperates, you should have no difficulty observing a partial eclipse of the sun.Nearly all of North America, except for a portion of eastern Canada and a slice of eastern New England, will experience the partial solar eclipse this week. People who live east of a line running from roughly Quebec City to Montauk Point, New York, will miss out on the solar show, since the sun will set before the dark disc of the moon begins to encroach upon it.

Amid the once-tranquil village of Sanxingdui, in a quiet part of Sichuan province in China, a remarkable discovery took place which immediately attracted international attention and has since rewritten the history of Chinese civilisation. Two giant sacrificial pits were unearthed containing thousands of gold, bronze, jade, ivory and pottery artifacts that were so unusual and unlike anything ever found in China before, that archaeologists realised they had just opened the door to an ancient culture dating back between 3,000 and 5,000 years.

Three years ago, the oldest batch of still-drinkable beer was discovered off the coast of Finland, with living bacteria inside. Scientists have analysed the bacteria to successfully recreate the beer, which they're now selling locally.Back in 2010, five bottles of beer and 168 bottles of champagne were found in a submerged schooner near the Åland Islands off the coast of Finland. The shipwreck is believed to have been down there since 1842, and the discovery remains the oldest batch of still-drinkable beer.

She was a scrappy sea mongrel who went down with her ship. Now nearly 500 years after Hatch the crossbreed drowned with the crew of the Mary Rose, it has emerged that the world's most famous sea dog, and the only known female aboard, was male.Hatch's remains went on display four years ago at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, where some of the 19,000 objects from Henry VIII's ill-fated flagship are on show. She quickly became a popular attraction, but ongoing DNA testing of the crew has revealed the true sex of the unfortunate hound, which was named after divers discovered her remains near the hatch entrance to the Mary Rose's carpenter's cabin.

Blind cave fish may not be the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to understanding human sight, but recent research indicates they may have quite a bit to teach us about the causes of many human ailments, including those that result in loss of sight. A team of researchers, led by Suzanne McGaugh, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences, is looking to the tiny eyeless fish for clues about the underpinnings of degenerative eye disease and more.

The sexual act where two creatures physically join together to create new life first began 385 million years ago, according to a new fossil study.The extinct Devonian-age armoured fish Microbrachius dicki, a kind of antiarch placoderm (the first jawed animals), had genital structures that enabled it to reproduce by internal fertilisation -- where the male inserts semen into the female.Alt: Sex 'emerged in ancient Scottish lake'

A comet the size of a small mountain is about to skim past Mars, and NASA hopes its spacecraft will be able to photograph the once-in-a-million-years encounter.The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 88,000 miles (141,600 kilometers).The closest pass is expected to happen Sunday at 2:27 pm (1827 GMT).

A team of scientists from the United Kingdom and Greece led by Dr Elias Chatzitheodoridis of the National Technical University of Athens has found a mysterious oval structure embedded deep within a famous Martian meteorite called Nakhla.Multiple fragments of the Nakhla meteorite fell to Earth on June 28, 1911 near the village of El-Nakhla in Egypt. Its crystallization age has been determined to be 1.38 billion years.

There is such a thing as man flu, with men less resistant to pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses, according to new research.Scientists from Harvard University have discovered that the female sex hormone oestrogen fortifies the immune system, and men are suffering for its absence.

ESTONIA flung open its digital borders last week. The eastern European country invited anyone, anywhere, to open a bank account or start a business. By the end of the year, anyone with an internet connection will be able to live their financial life in Estonia, all without being physically present.Such e-residency, as it is known, is a step towards a world where a person's online identity matters just as much as their offline identity; where the location of data, rather than documents, is more important."This is the beginning of the erosion of the classic nation state hegemony".

When it comes to building high-speed trains Japan is continuing to embarrass the rest of the world, with the latest line, approved by the government this Friday, capable of travelling the 178 miles from Tokyo to Nagoya in just 40 minutesThis is less than half the time it currently takes the celebrated Shinkansen bullet train to travel the route, with trains on the Chuo Shinkansen line reaching speeds of 300 mph thanks to their maglev (magnetic levitation) technology.

Over the past couple of decades, tornado season has seen a lot more variation than it used to. Not only have some of the earliest and latest starts to the tornado season been recorded since the mid-1990s, but tornadoes are seeming to cluster together so that there are fewer days with tornadoes, but more tornadoes on the days that do have them, a new study finds.Related: NASA now says vast methane cloud over U.S. southwest is for real

Some 230,000 years ago, concurrent with a warm interglacial period, Darband Rashi Caves were a safe haven for humans who used them as makeshift shelters. What is left behind by the ancient hunters offers the oldest evidence [the age of which can be determined by modern-day dating methodologies in archeology] about the early inhabitants of Iran.

Stuffing down a burger and coke may be more harmful for men than women, if the results of a new mouse study apply to humans.The detrimental impact of junk food seems to be connected to inflammation in the brains of male mice, with the brains of females protected by oestrogen.Related: Are male brains wired to ignore food for sex?

When it comes to dieting, the conventional wisdom holds that losing weight gradually is more sustainable in the long run than losing weight quickly. But new results from a long-term clinical trial show that this is just another dieting myth.Both fast and slow weight loss produced pretty modest results over the long term. But in some respects, the rapid weight-loss regimen tested in the study worked better than its slow-but-steady counterpart.

A German documentary investigating the sightings on July 8, 1947 claims it has uncovered new evidence, claiming the mysterious flying saucer was in fact a top secret Nazi ROCKET.Distinguished German aeronautical engineer Georg Klein said: "I don't consider myself a crackpot or eccentric or someone given to fantasies. "This is what I saw, with my own eyes - a Nazi UFO."Related: UFO SIGHTING: Strange Objects Zipping Across The MoonRelated: 'UFO' appears to watch NASA astronauts on ISS spacewalk

Researchers have made the first experimental observation of piezoelectricity and the piezotronic effect in an atomically thin material, molybdenum disulfide, resulting in a unique electric generator and mechanosensation devices that are optically transparent, extremely light, and very bendable and stretchable.

Australian engineering students have set a new world record for the fastest electric vehicle over a distance of 500 kilometres.With a speed of 106.966 kilometres an hour, a solar car known as eVe is now officially the fastest electric vehicle over a distance of 500 kilometres in the world - and it was built entirely by undergraduate engineering students from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.

Space robots are about to get a whole lot sleeker and slinkier.Researchers are developing new types of robotic systems inspired by elephant trunks, octopus arms and giraffe tongues. These flexible, maneuverable "tentacle robots" could have a variety of space applications, from inspecting hard-to-reach gear on the International Space Station to exploring crevices on Mars, scientists say.

Hidden for more than 90 years beneath the rolling sand dunes of Guadalupe, California, an enormous, plaster sphinx from the 1923 blockbuster movie "The Ten Commandments" has been rediscovered and is now above ground.The roughly 15-foot-tall (4.6 meters) sphinx is one of 21 that lined the path to Pharaoh's City in the 1923 silent hit.