Newsdesk Archive

Ancient Greek vases have revealed the hidden names of Amazons, mythology's warrior women, in a report deciphering ancient languages unspoken for millennia.In the forthcoming study of pottery dating from 550 B.C. to 450 B.C., study lead author Adrienne Mayor and J. Paul Getty Museum assistant curator David Saunders translated Greek inscriptions into their phonetic sounds for 12 ancient vases from Athens. The inscriptions appear next to scenes of Amazons fighting, hunting, or shooting arrows.

Several professional athletes have made the news recently for charges of domestic violence, including athletes in the National Football League and the U.S. women's soccer team. But are elite athletes actually more prone to domestic violence than other people?It's difficult to know for sure.

Large scale study says group nature walks linked with significantly lower depression and perceived stress, enhanced mental well-beingThey are common suggestions to remedy stress: You just need a breath of fresh air. Walk it off. Get out and see people.

A four-year-old Norwegian girl has terrified her family by sleepwalking over 5km (3 miles) to a nearby town on a stormy night, wearing just her underwear and a pair of thin boots.Police found the girl unharmed in the town of Honningsvag on the northern island of Mageroeya after locals called at 06:30 on Monday, the Finnmark Dagblad reports. Her aunt - who is looking after the girl and her three young siblings while their mother went on holiday - thought her niece was asleep in bed when the police rang.

Different types of meditation have qualitatively different effects on the mind and body, report researchers. Whereas the Vajrayana style of Buddhist meditation produces an arousal response, the Theravada style produces a relaxation response.In particular, the research team found that Vajrayana meditation, which is associated with Tibetan Buddhism, can lead to enhancements in cognitive performance.

As the international ITER project to develop an experimental nuclear fusion reactor eats into research budgets around the world, an advisory panel to the US Department of Energy recommends mothballing at least one of three major experiments and focusing on research necessary to bring ITER online.

Engineers in the US have invented a battery, made of three molten metals, which could help smooth the power supply from renewable energy sources.Previous battery designs have largely been too expensive to help store energy on the scale of a national power grid.

Deep in the Cambodian jungle lie the remains of a vast medieval city, which was hidden for centuries. New archaeological techniques are now revealing its secrets - including an elaborate network of temples and boulevards, and sophisticated engineering.In April 1858 a young French explorer, Henri Mouhot, sailed from London to south-east Asia. For the next three years he travelled widely, discovering exotic jungle insects that still bear his name.

More than 50 geoglyphs with various shapes and sizes, including a massive swastika, have been discovered across northern Kazakhstan in Central Asia, say archaeologists.Pictures here

A new study released Monday found that warming temperatures in Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of North America over the past century closely followed natural changes in the wind, not increases in greenhouse gases related to global warming.The study compared ocean surface temperatures from 1900 to 2012 to surface air pressure, a stand-in for wind measurements, and found a close match.

Liberia is to become the first nation in Africa to completely stop cutting down its trees in return for development aid.Norway will pay the impoverished West African country $150m (£91.4m) to stop deforestation by 2020.

Visitors from outer space or a natural phenomena? Surfers and early morning walkers were stunned to find thousands of 'alien eggs' on a Sydney beach this weekend.Locals in Dee Why, on the city's North Shore, reported seeing a large number of the strange objects which had washed ashore overnight.But rather than the green spheres being something from another planet, scientists explained they were a type of sponge-like seaweed that forms egg shapes possibly to protect themselves from predators.

[Excerpted from DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible by Rick Strassman, MD.]The notion of Hebrew Bible prophecy as a model for the DMT experience, and for the Western psychedelic drug experience in general, started forming in my mind several years after completing my drug studies in the mid-1990s. That research project represented the culmination of a decades-long interest in the biology of spiritual experience that began during my undergraduate training in the late 1960s. In these next two chapters, I trace the impetus for my research; its intellectual, biological, personal, and spiritual backdrops; the data that the project generated; and how those data forced me to search outside my preexisting models for more adequate ones. That search ultimately led to the Hebrew Bible and its notion of prophecy.

A team of Stanford researchers has developed a protein therapy that disrupts the process that causes cancer cells to break away from original tumor sites, travel through the blood stream and start aggressive new growths elsewhere in the body.This process, known as metastasis, can cause cancer to spread with deadly effect.

New research from North Carolina State University finds that young people who have had mentors are more likely to find work early in their careers that gives them more responsibility and autonomy -- ultimately putting them on a path to more financially and personally rewarding careers."We wanted to look at the long-term impacts on mentees in naturally occurring mentorship relationships, rather than participants in formal mentorship programs,".

Astronomers using three of the world's most powerful telescopes say they've found no change in one of nature's fundamental forces over the past 10 billion years.The study, reported on ArXiv.org, examined the strength of the electromagnetic force -- one of the four fundamental forces of nature and the one responsible for holding atoms and molecules together.

Looking for extraterrestrial life is akin to a search for a cosmic needle-in-a-haystack, as evidenced by the above incredible Hubble Space Telescope image showing approximately 10,000 galaxies.In large part, thanks to NASA's Kepler spacecraft, more than 1,400 planets have been identified beyond Earth.

Brazil is building a giant observation tower in the heart of the Amazon to monitor climate change and its impact on the region's sensitive ecosystem, a newspaper has reported.Related: New Photos Show Another Troubling Contact with Isolated Tribe

The Codex Zacynthius is regarded as a crucial text in studying the development of the New Testament.It features a sixth or seventh century script which has been partially scraped away and written over to make way for a 13th century entry.Now scholars are hoping to uncover this hidden script after securing over £1 million to keep it at a British university.

A huge ancient tomb belonging to the grandmother of China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang has been found in Xi'an during excavations to expand the Xi'an University of Finance and Economics campus in Shaanxi province, northwest China.According to China.org.cn, the tomb complex covers an area measuring 173,325 square metres, stretching 550m in length and 310 meters in width, and is the second largest tomb to have ever been discovered in the country.

A team of scientists have uncovered large stone cutting tools (LCTs) in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region (DRR) of central China.The tool assemblage, discovered and analyzed by Kathleen Kuman of the University of the Witwatersrand and colleagues Chaorong Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hao Li of the University of the Witwatersrand, were excavated at a site on the southeastern edge of the Qinling Mountains.

Analysis of ancient human bones supports the idea that the first inhabitants of Vanuatu developed horticulture as they ran out of wild resources.Around 2500 years ago there was a shift in the Lapita people towards a greater reliance on cultivated plants such as yam, taro and banana, according to an isotopic analysis of bones reported in a recent issue of PLOS ONE.

Here's my latest appearance on the Joe Rogan experience. Joe had a surprise in store for me about two thirds of the way through the interview. It was all very spontaneous and on the spot but I'm still thinking through the implications of my first smoke in three years!-Graham

Recent surveys have shown that a significant portion of the population believes in ghosts, leading some scholars to conclude that we are witnessing a revival of paranormal beliefs in Western society. A Harris poll from last year found that 42 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts. The percentage is similar in the U.K., where 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts in a recent poll.

A 'UFO' has been built to mark the spot where an alleged landing took place in one of the UK's biggest UFO mysteries.In December 1980, there were reports of phenomena in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk near a United States Air Force base.Related: Military Eyewitness Captures 'Transparent UFO' On Night Vision

The largest body of liquid on Saturn's moon Titan is the formidably named Kraken Mare, a sea of methane that sprawls some 400,000 km 2 across the moon's north polar region. Next week, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will perform a flyby of Titan in search of wave activity atop this colossal sea of hydrocarbon.

At a press conference earlier this year, former Nasa astronaut Dr Edward Lu announced that there are around 1m asteroids in the Earth's vicinity "with the potential to destroy a major metropolitan area". He teed up an animated graphic to demonstrate how unprepared we are. The graphic showed the Earth in orbit among the dangerous asteroids we knew about and were tracking, around 10,000 of them.

He says when you look at aerial pictures of the Martian surface, you see unmistakable signs that Mars was once upon a time a fairly wet planet."We see evidence for lakes, for river channels, a lot of evidence for liquid water that required a very different climate from the one we have today," Jakosky says.Related: Martian rush hour: two spacecraft arrive this week

For decades, polymer scientists and synthetic chemists working to improve the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells were hampered by the inherent drawbacks of commonly used metal electrodes, including their instability and susceptibility to oxidation. Now for the first time, researchers have developed a more efficient, easily processable and lightweight solar cell that can use virtually any metal for the electrode, effectively breaking the 'electrode barrier.'.

In this month's issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a study was published that confirms what we all suspected: internet trolls are horrible people.Let's start by getting our definitions straight. An internet troll is someone who comes into a discussion and posts comments designed to upset or disrupt the conversation. Often, it seems like there is no real purpose behind their comments except to upset everyone else involved. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response.

While exploring ancient copper factories in southern Jordan, a team of archaeologists picked up an Egyptian amulet that bears the name of the powerful pharaoh Sheshonq I.The tiny artifact could attest to the fabled military campaign that Sheshonq I waged in the region nearly 3,000 years ago, researchers say.

Plate tectonics is the movement of the crust that builds mountains and opens ocean basins. How this gargantuan process got started on early Earth has been quite a mystery. Now, a new computer model suggests the motion started because of gravity: Whole continents flattened out under their own weight.That's not how the Earth's crust gets jostled today. Currently the continents and ocean basins all float on the mantle, the layer beneath the crust, which flows like putty.

Once the realm of science fiction, a Japanese company has announced they will have a space elevator up and running by the year 2050.If successful it would revolutionise space travel and potentially transform the global economy.The Japanese construction giant Obayashi says they will build a space elevator that will reach 96,000 kilometres into space.

Researchers twist four radio beams together to achieve high data transmission speeds. The researchers reached data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5 meters of free space in a basement lab. For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour-and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless.

Mystery surrounds a strange pattern carved into the ground near Coventry.The spiral shape was spotted on satellite maps by a historian researching the fabled Knights Templar, who founded the tiny hamlet of Temple Balsall, near Balsall Common, 1,000 years ago.

Engineers in Canada have built a chin strap that harnesses energy from chewing and turns it into electricity.They say the device could one day take the place of batteries in hearing aids, earpieces and other small gadgets.

Nestled between Ireland and England is the Isle of Man, a self-governing country with a population of just over 80,000. Despite its small size it has its own parliament and sets its own laws; the Queen appears on the back of bank notes here, but tellingly does so without her crown.This freedom has advantages. It attracted a thriving financial services industry in the 1970s with low taxation, then with a permissive attitude to gambling during the last decade it lured lucrative online betting companies. It's now attempting a hat-trick with crypto-currencies like Bitcoin.

For the first time, scientists have turned human skin cells into transplantable white blood cells, soldiers of the immune system that fight infections and invaders. The work could let researchers create therapies that introduce into the body new white blood cells capable of attacking diseased or cancerous cells or augmenting immune responses against other disorders.

The DNA of every organism on Earth is a right-handed double helix, but why that would be has puzzled scientists since not long after Francis Crick and James Watson announced the discovery of DNA's double-helical structure in 1953.It's a puzzle because no one has been able to think of a fundamental reason why DNA couldn't also be left-handed.

A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental stresses can cause changes in gene expression that are transmitted from parents to their offspring, making 'epigenetics' a hot topic. Epigenetic modifications do not affect the DNA sequence of genes, but change how the DNA is packaged and how genes are expressed. Now, scientists have shown how epigenetic memory can be passed across generations and from cell to cell during development.

When it comes to a happy marriage, a new Rutgers study finds that the more content the wife is with the long-term union, the happier the husband is with his life no matter how he feels about their nuptials."I think it comes down to the fact that when a wife is satisfied with the marriage she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life,".

Birds have been found to display superior judgement of their body width compared to humans, in research to help design autonomous aircraft navigation systems.A University of Queensland (UQ) study has found that budgerigars can fly between gaps almost as narrow as their outstretched wingspan rather than taking evasive measures such as tucking in their wings.

Scientists have defrosted a colossal squid in a bid to unlock the mysteries around this rarely seen monster of the deep.The creature is one of the ocean's most elusive species and this specimen is the length of a minibus.Dr Bolstad said it is possible ancient sightings of the species gave rise to tales of the legendary kraken sea monster.

A particle detector floating 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth has analyzed 41 billion cosmic-ray particles, and the data have revealed new insights into the mysterious and invisible dark matter that physicists believe makes up 27 percent of the universe.The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) detector aboard the International Space Station already gathered evidence of dark matter last year, but the new results are the most precise measurements of cosmic-ray particles yet.

The discovery of a supermassive black hole inside a tiny dwarf galaxy has shed new light on the potential number of black holes in the universe.An international team of researchers has discovered a supermassive black hole in M60-UCD1, a dwarf galaxy some 54-million light years away. M60-UCD1 is about 500 times smaller than our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and 1,000 times less massive. The researchers published their findings Wednesday in Nature.

The precision with which people make decisions can be predicted by measuring pupil size before they are presented with any information about the decision, according to a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology this week.The study, conducted by Peter Murphy and colleagues at Leiden University, showed that spontaneous, moment-to-moment fluctuations in pupil size predicted how a selection of participants varied in their successful decision making.

Could we grow a garden in the soils of Mars and the Moon? A new study digs down deep into the interstellar dirt and says that, yes, the soil up there is capable of supporting plant germination. In fact, it might even be as good as some of the poorer soils here on Earth.Related:1- Four Handy Tips for Growing Your Garden on Mars2- Download, print, build your Martian home in 24 hours

If you ask a dog "How are you?" it will probably just wag its tail and wait for you to start playing. "Optimist" would be a fair label for dogs in general. But are some pups, notwithstanding all of the tail-wagging, inherent pessimists?New PhD research out of the University of Sydney by Dr. Melissa Starling, from the school's Faculty of Veterinary Science, sought to find out if dogs had underlying personalities that tended toward either optimism of pessimism.

An experiment Nakajima conducted in 2009 showed that people were, at a rate significantly higher than chance, able to match dogs and their owners simply by looking at photographs of their faces. His findings were similar, he says, to those of previous studies. Taken together, he told The Huffington Post in an email, the evidence from his and other scientists' research shows that the popular belief in dog-owner physical resemblance is empirically valid.

Monkeys, chimps and other primates go ballistic when they receive unequal pay, much in the way that humans fume under similar circumstances, according to a new study that also helps to explain the reaction.The angry response to perceived unfairness evolved in order to support long-term cooperation, according to the research, published in the journal Science.

The first blood test to diagnose major depression in adults has been developed, providing the first objective, scientific diagnosis for depression. The test also predicts who will benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy, offering the opportunity for more effective, individualized therapy. The test also showed the biological effects of the therapy, the first measurable, blood-based evidence of the therapy's success and showed who is vulnerable to recurring episodes of depression.

QUANTUM networks are quietly spreading across the world. With secure quantum connections linking up cities, people can communicate in the knowledge that the laws of physics will prevent eavesdropping. Eventually, there may even be a global quantum internet.When former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden uncovered the extent of government spying, that underlined the need for more secure communications, says Don Hayford of Battelle, a research organisation in Columbus, Ohio. "Even before Snowden we decided there were things coming up in the future that meant people should start looking at something better.".

When a dog is left alone, it can be scary for them. Some dogs get so anxious that they destroy your stuff, scratch up your front door, and bark so loud it annoys your neighbors. But now it looks like there might be a solution - and it involves a simple placebo.The placebo effect is traditionally thought to require some sort of conscious awareness. The sugar pill you just took helps your headache only because you think it will work. Recent research with rats challenged that assumption, and now it looks like placebos can fool dogs too.

Scientists believe that some 4,000 years ago children as young as 10 wrecked their eyesight embellishing weapons and jewellery with minute scraps of gold, creating dazzling pieces so fine that the detail can barely be picked out with the naked eye. They were some of the best prehistoric metal work ever found in Britain.The children may have been working in Brittany, where the largest concentration of daggers decorated with the tiny gold pins have been found, but the finest of all was excavated more than 200 years ago from a burial mound half a mile from Stonehenge.

The modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed within the last 7,000 years, Nature journal reports.Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East.

From bug eyes to aquiline noses, square jaws to chin dimples, no two faces are alike. That diversity may have evolved to make it easier to recognize other people, researchers reported on Tuesday.Related: Human faces are so variable because we evolved to look unique

Drug and alcohol use among America's teens continues to trend downward, according to new numbers released today by the Department of Health and Human Services. From 2002 to 2013, the average American teenager's odds of regular (at least monthly) tobacco use nearly halved. Recreational use of prescription painkillers saw a similar decline.Teen marijuana use, a contentious topic now that several states have legalized marijuana sales, is also on the decline.

A new study reveals that people find the smell of others with similar political opinions to be attractive, suggesting that one of the reasons why so many spouses share similar political views is because they were initially and subconsciously attracted to each other's body odor.

As drugs - both legal and illegal - pass through us, they enter the UK's waterways. But can this really lead to a change in the feeding habits, and even the sex, of wildlife?"At a biochemical, molecular level, a fish is extraordinarily similar to you and I," he explains. "So almost every drug target in a human - receptors, enzymes, ion channels - is present in fish. And they do the same thing."Related: Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium?

A microbe developed to clean up nuclear waste and patented by a Michigan State University researcher has just been improved.In earlier research, Gemma Reguera, MSU microbiologist, identified that Geobacter bacteria's tiny conductive hair-like appendages, or pili, did the yeoman's share of remediation. By increasing the strength of the pili nanowires, she improved their ability to clean up uranium and other toxic wastes.

Each tree species has its own bacterial identity. That's the conclusion of University of Oregon researchers and colleagues from other institutions who studied the genetic fingerprints of bacteria on 57 species of trees growing on a Panamanian island."This study demonstrates for the first time that host plants from different plant families and with different ecological strategies possess very different microbial communities on their leaves".

A material that mimics shark skin, covered with tiny ridges and groves, may help reduce the spread of bacteria in hospitals, a new study suggests.The study examined how well the shark skin-like material which has bumps that are too small for the eye to see could prevent the growth and spread of disease-causing bacteria, including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria, which are resistant to the antibiotics typically used to treat staph infections, and are known for causing infections in hospitals.

Chimpanzees and humans share much in common, including cooperating to kill perceived rivals, and now a new study finds that this kind of lethal aggression -- at least among chimps -- is "normal" and sadly all too common."Normal," in this case, means that the behavior results from natural and evolved tendencies and does not, as some other researchers have suggested, emerge in response to human pressures, such as habitat loss.

More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest.She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head"Photos here

The warm Atlantic water continued to flow into the icy Nordic seas during the coldest periods of the last Ice Age.An Ice Age may sound as a stable period of cold weather, but the name can be deceiving. In the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, the period was characterized by considerable climate changes. Cold periods (stadials) switched abruptly to warmer periods (interstadials) and back.

When whales die, their bodies sink to the seafloor. But surprisingly few of their natural graves have ever been found.The rare "whale falls" that have been seen by scientists aren't exactly grim pictures of death; rather, they're often teeming with life. Sharks, eels, bacteria and bone-eating "zombie worms" gather around these nutrient-rich graveyards. The number of new species discovered around whale falls in deep water suggests the carcasses can host distinct, complex ecosystems.

The killer meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs also torched North America's forests and plants. The harsh conditions after the impact favored fast-growing flowering plants, nudging forests toward a new pecking order, a new study reports.As a result, today's forests would baffle a Brachiosaurus. Most of the slow-growing trees and shrubs that were munched by dinosaurs are minor players in modern forests, because the plants couldn't adapt to post-impact climate swings, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology.

The questions are as big as the universe and (almost) as old as time: Where did I come from, and why am I here? That may sound like a query for a philosopher, but if you crave a more scientific response, try asking a cosmologist.This branch of physics is hard at work trying to decode the nature of reality by matching mathematical theories with a bevy of evidence. Today most cosmologists think that the universe was created during the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago, and it is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.

DARK energy, the mysterious force thought to be responsible for the fact the universe's expansion is accelerating, might come from a series of exotic fields. This notion, which has its origins in string theory, could explain why it was only after galaxies formed that the rate of expansion began to increase.Dark energy could simply be a property of space-time, called the cosmological constant, which appears as a term added into the equations of general relativity.

Sharks behave as though they are brilliant mathematicians, finds new research, although they may be more sensible than clever.The mathematician-like behavior attributed to sharks and certain other marine predators, animals and organisms is known as Lévy flight. It is a seemingly complex form of random walk comprising clusters of short step lengths with longer movements between them.

With their powerful jaws and their ability to grow up to 10 feet long, this South Asian crocodile looks like a powerful hunter. But its not just their size or their teeth that makes their hunting style so successful. It's their strategy. They're using tools.The Mugger (Crocodylus palustris) is medium-sized crocodile that is found mostly in India, but also surrounding countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and even as far north as Iran.

Earthworm presence in the soil increases crop yield, shows a new study that was published this week in Scientific Reports. "This is not unexpected," says Jan Willem van Groenigen, associate professor in the Soil Biology group of Wageningen University, and lead author of the study. "People have known for millennia that earthworms can be good for plant growth. However, we did not know how strong this effect is, nor how it works. That is what we studied."

Genetic engineering lags behind conventional breeding in efforts to create drought-resistant maize.Old-fashioned breeding techniques seem to be leading genetic modification in a race to develop crops that can withstand drought and poor soils.As the climate warms and rainfall becomes more erratic, farmers worldwide will increasingly need crops that can thrive in drought conditions.

Less than an hour's drive from the heart of Mexico City lies the expansive ruins of Teotihuacan, a massive city of nearly 120,000 people who built pyramids, temples and palaces before disappearing around 650 A.D.This civilization, which pre-dates the Aztecs, remains a mystery in many ways. But new research has found they brewed a tequila-like drink called pulque as a source of food and nutrition, not just to forget their woes.Related: Ancient People of Teotihuacan Drank Milky Alcohol, Pottery Suggests

One of Saturn's iconic rings looks much different today than it did just a few decades ago, and scientists aren't sure why.NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft spotted many bright clumps in Saturn's F ring when they flew by the gas giant in the early 1980s. But observations made by the space agency's Cassini probe from 2004 to 2010 reveal relatively few of the features, a new study reports.

When Steve Macknik and I talk to audiences about our research on magic and neuroscience, one question that often comes up during Q&A is whether animals can experience magic. There is no easy answer: animals can certainly be deceived, and numerous research studies show that virtually every species, from bower birds to bees, is susceptible to illusions. But do animals feel wonderment, awe, or sense that they are experiencing the impossible?

Decoys successfully attract and kill emerald ash borer beetles, study findsWhen trying to curb the the spread of invasive insect species, one of the most important steps is actually being able to catch them. Typical traps, such as those use to catch the tree-ravaging emerald ash borer, use scents such as pheromones to attract males (males are easier to catch because of their mating behavior, which consists of following and landing on females). But scent-based traps aren't ideal.

Think you've never hallucinated? You're wrong. Almost every modern person in a developed country has had this hallucination - some populations have it so predictably that within a few months, ninety-five percent experience it.Hallucinations are far more common than most people suppose. People suppose they happen very rarely because we associate the word "hallucination" with dancing pink elephants or ghostly women in white. In reality, hallucinations are not dramatic scenes in which people wail, "Is this a dagger I see before me?" Instead they are more like, "Is that a black cat in the room? Oh, no, it's just a shadow.".

Walking to work is not only good for your body; it may also benefit your psychological health, a new study from England suggests.In the study, the researchers analyzed information from nearly 18,000 commuters in England who answered questions about their well-being, such as whether they experienced feelings of worthlessness, unhappiness or sleepless nights in the last few weeks. Based on those answers, the researchers gave each participant a well-being score. Participants completed the survey for at least three consecutive years between 1991 and 2009.

Archaeologists set out Monday to use a revolutionary new deep sea diving suit to explore the ancient shipwreck where one of the most remarkable scientific objects of antiquity was found.The so-called Antikythera Mechanism, a 2nd-century BC device known as the world's oldest computer, was discovered by sponge divers in 1900 off a remote Greek island in the Aegean.

Each summer, leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) migrate thousands of kilometers from their tropical breeding grounds to feed in cooler waters. Yet how the animals know when to begin their long journey back south at the end of the season has mostly remained a mystery. New findings, to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, suggest that leatherback sea turtles may be able to sense seasonal changes in sunlight by means of an unpigmented spot on the crown of their head.

Were you a little chilly last winter? So were Alex Huang and Jason Yakimovich. And they did something about it.Then students slogging through bitter drifts to fourth-year classes, the two were so unimpressed by the polar vortex that they decided to take matters into their own hands by inventing the world's first intelligent heated base layer.

Popeye's energy source, spinach, can decrease cravings and aid weight loss, according to a recent study.Researchers from Lund University in Sweden found that a spinach extract containing green leaf membranes called thylakoids decreases hedonic hunger with up to 95 percent -- and increases weight loss with 43 percent.

A research study published in 1896 looked at the prevalence of different sensory experiences in dreams. It found the following occurrence frequency (percent of dreams featuring each sense):Visual - 85%Auditory - 69%Touch - 11%Smell - 7%Taste - 6%So visual experience dominates dreaming, while touch, smell, and taste are quite low. But why? No one has actually tried to find out why experimentally. But here are some possible reasons based on what is known about the brain.

What does an atom sound like? Apparently it's a "D-note."That's according to scientists at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, who have revealed in a new study that they've captured the sound of a single atom."We have opened a new door into the quantum world by talking and listening to atoms".

Making fuel on site for a return trip to Mars may be a step closer. A cunning way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen in two distinct steps could be a boon to both astronauts and future Earthlings, enabling them to use renewable energy sources for making hydrogen fuel.Hydrogen fuel cells can power vehicles ranging from cars to submarines and rockets.

The farside of the moon may have had some extremely explosive volcanic eruptions hundreds of millions of years ago.In 2011, scientists identified rare, silica volcanoes in a highly reflective plain called the Compton-Belkovich region. A reanalysis of thorium in that region shows that the element spreads 300 kilometers farther east than originally thought.

"Clouds are part of the planet's climate system," explained Haberle. "Their behavior tells us about winds and temperatures." Studying weather and clouds on Mars today can shed light on processes that have shaped the planet's climate through time."Some studies suggest that clouds in the past may have significantly warmed the planet through a greenhouse effect. A warmer environment is more conducive to life," said Haberle.

Researchers have examined whether 3-D film is more effective than 2-D when used as a research method for evoking emotion. Both were effective, and 3-D did not add incremental benefit over 2-D, with implications for emotional research as well as entertainment.

The row goes to the heart of well-worn theories over whether Shakespeare actually wrote the plays and poems attributed to him almost 400 years ago.Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley and Roger Manners have all been identified as possible alternative authors, while the most popular theory of recent times has centred around the 17th century Earl of Oxford.

Further tests will be conducted on skeletons initially recovered from a centuries-old mass grave in Durham City, in the UK, in 2013.Initial analysis on the bones of 28 individuals recovered from the site provided some evidence regarding their origins and identity, but was inconclusive.

Scientists today are still searching jungles, oceans and other corners of the world for microorganisms that make medicines. But in a new study published Thursday in the journal Cell, Dr. Fischbach and his colleagues suggest that we should also be looking inward.Analyzing the bacteria that live in our bodies, the scientists identified genes for making over 3,000 previously unknown molecules that may prove to be useful drugs.Related: Vaginal microbe yields novel antibiotic

Surgeons implanted retinal tissue created after reverting the patient's own cells to 'pluripotent' state.A Japanese woman in her 70s is the world's first recipient of cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, a technology that has created great expectations since it could offer the same advantages as embryo-derived cells but without some of the controversial aspects and safety concerns.

The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that small chunks of matter sometimes seem to behave like particles, sometimes like waves. For most of the past century, the prevailing explanation of this conundrum has been what's called the "Copenhagen interpretation" -- which holds that, in some sense, a single particle really is a wave, smeared out across the universe, that collapses into a determinate location only when observed. But some founders of quantum physics championed an alternative interpretation, known as "pilot-wave theory".

Imagine standing in an open field with a bucket of water balloons and a couple of friends. You've decided to play a game called "Mind." Each of you has your own set of rules. Maybe Molly will throw a water balloon at Bob whenever you throw a water balloon at Molly. Maybe Bob will splash both of you whenever he goes five minutes without getting hit -- or if it gets too warm out or if it's seven o'clock or if he's in a bad mood that day. The details don't matter.

People with blood type AB may be more likely to develop memory loss in later years than people with other blood types, according to a study. AB is the least common blood type, found in about 4 percent of the U.S. population. The study found that people with AB blood were 82 percent more likely to develop the thinking and memory problems that can lead to dementia than people with other blood types.

DON'T mind the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without anyone realising she was missing a large part of her brain. The case highlights just how adaptable the organ is.The discovery was made when the woman was admitted to the Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in Shandong Province complaining of dizziness and nausea. She told doctors she'd had problems walking steadily for most of her life, and her mother reported that she hadn't walked until she was 7 and that her speech only became intelligible at the age of 6.

Meditation might be a path to migraine relief, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center."Stress is a well-known trigger for headaches and research supports the general benefits of mind/body interventions for migraines, but there hasn't been much research to evaluate specific standardized meditation interventions," said Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study published in the online edition of the journal Headache.

Just two or three experiences with the hallucinogenic drug known as magic mushrooms helped a dozen long-term smokers quit, succeeding in a study where numerous other approaches failed.Related: Why Psychedelics Are So Important To Veterans

The moral high ground seems to be a crowded place. A new study suggests that religious people aren't more likely to do good than their nonreligious counterparts. And while they may vehemently disagree with one another at times, liberals and conservatives also tend to be on par when it comes to behaving morally.Researchers asked 1,252 adults of different religious and political backgrounds in the United States and Canada to record the good and bad deeds they committed, witnessed, learned about or were the target of throughout the day.