Newsdesk Archive

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, America's book publishers took an audacious gamble. They decided to sell the armed forces cheap paperbacks, shipped to units scattered around the globe. Instead of printing only the books soldiers and sailors actually wanted to read, though, publishers decided to send them the best they had to offer. Over the next four years, publishers gave away 122,951,031 copies of their most valuable titles.

A new survey has peered into our bookshelves, and it's revealing some good news about the reading habits of young Americans.Pew undertook a sweeping survey of the reading habits of millennials compared to older generations, and publishers should be pleased. 43% of all people under the age of 30 read a book almost every day, with that number increasing to just under 70% if you increase the timespan to once a week, the highest percentage of any age group to do so.

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have successfully funded on Kickstarter a new and improved version of CodeSpells, a first-person player game they developed that teaches players how to code.The game's previous iteration, developed by UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. students Sarah Esper and Stephen Foster, has been in use in dozens of schools throughout the world for more than a year.

A team of researchers has discovered a way to cool electrons to minus 228 degrees Celsius without external means and at room temperature, an advancement that could enable electronic devices to function with very little energy.

A robot unveiled today at the British Science Festival will be loading dishwashers next year, its developers claim."Boris" is one of the first robots in the world capable of intelligently manipulating unfamiliar objects with a humanlike grasp.

Could you leave everyone you love for the chance to settle on Mars? Sonia Van Meter describes herself as an "aspiring Martian" - she hopes to be one of the first humans on the planet in 10 years' time. But it would mean never seeing her husband again.

Congress is back in session and getting right down to work on pressing science and technology issues like education funding, Net neutrality and ... oh wait. Actually, the House is holding a hearing on Wednesday to discuss a new law to manage resource mining in space: the ASTEROIDS Act (PDF).No one seems to be asserting that managing mineral claims on asteroids is a pressing issue at the moment.

Kepler researchers want to understand how terrestrial planets like Venus, Earth and Mars and gas giant planets like Jupiter are distributed in planetary systems around other stars. Understanding how planetary systems form and where different types of planets form can shed light on whether our solar system is unique, or more likely, is a "standard" form of planetary system formation.

Researchers at Glasgow University have claimed a breakthrough in producing hydrogen fuel from water.They said their process is fast, clean and cheap. It can store energy from the sun and wind.

So that's what the sun sounds like.There may be no sound in deep space, but researchers are converting data from the sun into sound so that NASA scientists can listen to it as well as look at it.The result of this sonification process can be pretty eerie--just have a listen to the video above, which features the sounds of solar wind data from NASA's WIND spacecraft.

Powerful solar flares from the sun this week may amplify the northern lights displays over parts of the northern United States through the weekend, space weather scientists say.The forecast for potentially supercharged auroras comes after powerful solar storms fired off eruptions of solar material, first on Monday (Sept. 8), then again on Wednesday (Sept. 10).

Giant alien planets known as "hot Jupiters" orbit their stars much closer than Mercury does the sun. But the mystery of the origins of hot Jupiters deepened when astronomers recently discovered the scorching orbits of these worlds are often bizarrely skewed, tilted when compared with the equators of their stars.

In the visible spectrum, Jupiter is a bright, star-like point in the night sky. Viewing it with the naked eye, it would be easy to confuse it with a star except for the fact that it doesn't twinkle. At radio frequencies Jupiter appears very different. It doesn't have a simple round shape, for example, and it is extraordinarily bright. So bright that it can outshine the Sun at some radio frequencies.

A star cluster some 80,000 light-years from Earth looks mysteriously deficient in the element lithium, just like nearby stars, astronomers reported on Wednesday.That curious deficiency suggests that astrophysicists either don't fully understand the big bang, they suggest, or else don't fully understand the way that stars work.

Black holes are basically "game over, man," for anything that gets too close to them, but they aren't invincible. In fact, they're always in the process of self-destructing. We'll look at how they fizzle out, and see if we can help them do it faster.Realistically speaking, you are dead as soon as you get anywhere near a black hole.

According to legend, when Damocles declared that his king, Dionysius, must have a posh and easy life, Dionysius offered to trade places with Damocles. There was only one catch. Dionysius decreed that a sword be suspended over the throne by a single horse hair, so that Damocles would always know the peril of being king. Since then the Sword of Damocles has come to represent a threat of doom that could strike without warning. While the prospect of living under a hanging sword doesn't seem pleasant, stories of impending doom are quite popular, particularly within popular science.

A sprawling ancient flying reptile looked so much like a dragon that could have flown alongside the aerial predators called "ikran" in the film "Avatar" that its discoverers named the newfound beast after these mountain banshees.The pterosaur, now called Ikrandraco avatar ("draco" means "dragon" in Latin), may have stored food in a throat pouch like a pelican does, the researchers said.

Our ancient ancestors' ability to move around and find new sources of groundwater during extremely dry periods in Africa millions of years ago may have been key to their survival and the evolution of the human species, a new study shows.While water in rivers and lakes would have disappeared as the climate changed due to variations in Earth's orbit, freshwater springs fed by groundwater could have stayed active for up to 1000 years without rainfall.

The brain is still active while we are asleep, say scientists, who found people were able to classify words during their slumber.Researchers from Cambridge and Paris introduced participants to a word test while awake and found they continued to respond correctly while asleep.Related: Some Things You Can Do In Your Sleep, Literally

A dramatic change is taking place in the South China Sea where, since the beginning of this year, Beijing has created at least five new islands by dredging rock and sand and pumping it into reefs to form new land. By doing so, the Chinese are sending a blunt message to its neighbors and the U.S.: Keep out.

The ozone layer that shields the earth from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays is showing early signs of thickening after years of depletion, a UN study says.The ozone hole that appears annually over Antarctica has also stopped growing bigger every year.

Born in 1601, Athanasius Kircher has been hailed as the "last Renaissance Man" owing to his scholarly works in fields as diverse as biology, geology, medicine and technology. Among his most remarkable books was Mundus Subterraneus, a study of the Earth's interior that might have inspired Jules Verne.

Some days, it must not have been easy to be a hadrosaur. You're a dinosaur, sure, but it's hard to feel like a badass when your head resembles a duck. On the plus side, these herbivores outlasted more fashionable dinos such as the T-Rex in one respect: They had longer-lasting skin.Indeed a preponderance of dinosaur skin samples (not actual skin, of course, but fossilized impressions) belong to hadrosaurs. Matt Davis, a fifth-year graduate student in paleontology at Yale University, has suggested a new reason why that might be the case. He proposes in a paper that hadrosaur skin endured because it must have been tougher texturally -- built to last long enough to write itself into the fossil record.

In rocky outcroppings near a cornfield in northern China, paleontologists have unearthed three species of squirrel-like mammals that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.Related: Chisel-Toothed Beasts Push Back Origin of Mammals

Gibbons have such strange, scrambled DNA, it looks like someone has taken a hammer to it. Their genome has been massively reshuffled, and some biologists say that could be how new gibbon species evolved.Gibbons are apes, and were the first to break away from the line that led to humans. There are around 16 living gibbon species, in four genera. They all have small bodies, long arms and no tails. But it's what gibbons don't share that is most unusual.

UCLA biologists have identified a gene that can slow the aging process throughout the entire body when activated remotely in key organ systems.Working with fruit flies, the life scientists activated a gene called AMPK that is a key energy sensor in cells; it gets activated when cellular energy levels are low.Related: Roll back aging, win $1 million

Loneliness breeds wishful thinking, according to a new study that finds that eerily unrealistic faces seem more realistic to people when they feel isolated and alone.Related: Depression Alleviated By Feeling Connected to a Group

Being in a coma for week was reportedly a fast track method of learning Mandarin for this young man.Ben McMahon, from Melbourne, Australia, would have been happy to just wake up following a serious car crash but he also apparently found he was able to speak the foreign language.

We often describe songs using terms like "warm" and "dreamy" - but do these words mean anything to a computer?New software presented at the British Science Festival aims to give music producers the power to manipulate sounds more intuitively.

A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now. Their findings are published today by The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available here.

In dolphins and whales, the pelvis is widely considered to be a good-for-nothing remnant of legged days past. But that pelvic bone didn't become useless when the animals switched from walking to swimming: It may be downright vital for successful reproduction.A new study published in the journal Evolution reports that the bones have actually continued evolving. No longer adapted to support hind legs, the pelvis has been swayed by sexual selection.

Scientists have uncovered how crustaceans co-ordinate their curious Mexican wave-style swimming movement.A team of four mathematicians and a biologist from the US have shown that the creatures' technique is highly efficient and is hard-wired in a simple neural circuit.The work is one of only a few examples where a neural circuit underlying a particular behaviour has been understood.

One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found, Canada's prime minister says.Stephen Harper said it was unclear which ship had been found, but photo evidence confirmed it was one of them.

Experts say the famous outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor was not from Nottinghamshire but Doncaster or Pontefract.Officials in Doncaster say the public has been "hoodwinked" about Robin Hood and have launched a crusade to declare him as the son of the town.

You probably already knew that Islam was having a scientific golden age during Europe's middle ages, and making tons of scientific and medical discoveries. (Which is why we use words like "algebra.") But you might not know that some of the earliest proto-science fiction came from the Islamic world.

Around the world, there is more salty groundwater than fresh, drinkable groundwater. For example, 60 percent of India is underlain by salty water -- and much of that area is not served by an electric grid that could run conventional reverse-osmosis desalination plants. Sun-powered desalination could deliver clean water for off-grid villages.

In the typical textbook picture, volcanoes, such as those that are forming the Hawaiian islands, erupt when magma gushes out as narrow jets from deep inside Earth. But that picture is wrong, according to a new study from researchers who conclude that seismology data are now confirming that such narrow jets don't actually exist.

For the first time, it has been demonstrated that people with psychopathic tendencies who have high IQs can mask their symptoms by manipulating tests designed to reveal their personalities. It raises the possibility that large numbers of ruthless risk-takers are able to conceal their level of psychopathy as they rise to key managerial posts.

If you're European Jewish and meet another European member of the community, odds are you're at least 30th cousins.A study by an international team suggests the central and eastern European Jewish population, known as Ashkenazi Jews, from whom most American Jews are descended, started from a founding population of about 350 people between 600 and 800 years ago. Further, that group of Jews who experienced this "bottleneck" was of approximately evenly mixed Middle Eastern and European descent.

Thirteen lactic acid bacteria found in the honey stomach of bees have shown promising results in a series of studies. The group of bacteria counteracted antibiotic-resistant MRSA in lab experiments. The bacteria, mixed into honey, has healed horses with persistent wounds. The formula has previously been shown to protect against bee colony collapse.

People who sit for prolonged periods, for example office workers at a desk, have a higher chance of experiencing negative health conditions but a study by scientists at Indiana University suggests that just 3 walks of 5 minutes distributed throughout 3 hours of prolonged sitting reverses harm caused to leg arteries.

Stonehenge stood at the heart of a sprawling landscape of chapels, burial mounds, massive pits and ritual shrines, according to an unprecedented survey of the ancient grounds.Researchers uncovered 17 new chapels and hundreds of archaeological features around the neolithic standing stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, including forms of monuments that have never been seen before.Pictures here

Reports are quickly spreading of a "meteorite impact" near Managua, Nicaragua. Circumstantial evidence supports the impact theory, but just as equally supports an explosives mishap from the nearby military base. Here's what we know, and what we need to know to tell the difference.Related: Nicaragua Meteorite Impact Theory May Be Meteor-wrong

A spacecraft chasing a comet in deep space has found that its target is surprisingly dark in color.Instead of arriving at a bright, reflective, ice-covered heavenly body, the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe found that its target comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (or 67P/C-G), appears darker than charcoal in some wavelengths of light, according to new data collected by an instrument on the spacecraft. And, so far, scientists working with the Alice instrument on Rosetta have not found any large patches of water-ice on Comet 67P/C-G's surface.

A group of astronomers led by first author and graduate student Huan Meng from the University of Arizona at Tucson monitored a monster collision between two planetoids or asteroids orbiting a Sun-like star. This is the first and only such real time event detected of such large magnitude until now outside of our Solar System.

With it's rising temperatures, declining energy resources, and rapidly filing landfills, the earth sometimes gets a bad rap. Still, it's a pretty hard-to-beat combination of habitable oxygen-levels and replenishing food sources. So, what would make someone leave all that behind?In response to an article on the things we would need to get a space colony up and running within this century, a discussion began about how those colonies would be used, with some commenters asking, if we do build it, what would actually make us go?.

Former Presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland Join With Kofi Annan, Richard Branson, George Shultz, Paul Volcker And Others To Make Bold, New Recommendations for Major Paradigm Shift in Global Drug Policy on the Road to UN Special Session on Drugs in 2016.Related: Decriminalisation of drugs for personal use under review by Lib Dems

A bronze chariot made during the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-771 BC) has been found in Qishan county, Shaanxi province - and archaeologists believe it may be a ceremonial vehicle used by princes."We found the chariot, which was buried 1.2 meters underground, in farmland at the village of Hejia," Zhang Yawei, director of the county's Zhouyuan Museum, told China Daily on Saturday. "We were surprised that it is large with a high bronze content." .

Archeologists are intrigued by the discovery of the complete set of well-preserved bone armour which is seen as having belonged to an 'elite' warrior. The armour was in 'perfect condition' - and in its era was 'more precious than life', say experts.It was buried separate from its owner and no other examples of such battle dress have been found around Omsk. Analysis is expected to determine its exact age but Siberian archeologists say it dates from 3,900 to 3,500 years ago.

Images of lions, giraffes, wildebeests and other creatures depicted on ancient Egyptian artifacts have helped scientists create a 6,000-year record of local mammal extinctions, according to a new study. Several of the extinction episodes correlate with known periods of drought and rapid human population growth.Related: Climate and Civilization Killed Egypt's Animals

The International Botanical Congress has decided that for its publications newly discovered species will be named using English rather than the conventional use of Latin words.The International Botanical Congress, which meets on an annual basis. has been discussing, among other important topics, the future of plant nomenclature. The group has now decided that new species of plants, fungi, and algae will be named using English.

Two stunning statues have been unearthed holding up the entrance to the biggest ancient tomb ever found in Greece.The two female figures in long-sleeved tunics were found standing guard at the opening to the mysterious Alexander The Great-era tomb near Amphipolis in the Macedonia region of northern Greece, archaeologists said.Related: Mosaic Floor Revealed at Alexander the Great-Era Tomb

Archaeologists in Denmark have discovered a distinctive ring-shaped Viking fortress which historians believe may have been used to launch an invasion of England.The fortress found on the Danish island of Zealand, around 30 miles south of Copenhagen, is the fifth circular fortress to be unearthed, and the first in over 60 years.

A Chinese boy has made the discovery of a lifetime by stumbling across a 3,000-year-old bronze sword in a river in Jiangsu Province.Eleven-year-old Yang Junxi says he touched the rusty weapon's tip while washing his hands in the Laozhoulin River, in Gaoyou County, the state news agency Xinhua reports. After pulling it out he took it home, where it quickly became a sensation for curious locals, before the family decided to send it to officials for examination.

In 1958, archaeologists were digging through the ruins of a burned Iron Age citadel called Hasanlu in northwestern Iran when they pulled a spectacular, albeit crushed, golden bowl from the layers of destruction.The 3,000-year-old bowl became an object of fascination once word got to the press. The next year, it graced the pages of Life magazine in a full-color spread alongside an article about the discoveries at Hasanlu.

Some scientists have suggested that the Iberian Peninsula might have been one of the last refuge zones of the Neanderthals before their extinction. This is because certain sites in this region of Europe have, according to the researchers, revealed evidence of continued Neanderthal habitation less than 40,000 years ago.Recent findings of a team of scientists at a cave in Spain, however, have shed some additional light on the long-debated topic.

The shape of a centuries-old Buddhist singing bowl has inspired a Canberra scientist to re-think the way that solar cells are designed to maximize their efficiency.Dr Niraj Lal, of the Australian National University, found during his PhD at the University of Cambridge, that small nano-sized versions of Buddhist singing bowls resonate with light in the same way as they do with sound, and he's applied this shape to solar cells to increase their ability to capture more light and convert it into electricity.

It now appears that Tatooine-like planets are far more common than previously thought. A new analysis of 1,000 known exoplanets shows that planets with two suns are an exceedingly frequent occurrence. But what does this say to the prevalence of life in our galaxy?Binary star systems may account for as many as 50% of all stellar systems. But what's less known is the rate at which such systems can produce exoplanets.

Astronomers have found what they believe is a second protoplanet around HD100546, a youngster star that may also host a planet under formation that is the size of Jupiter.This new find is at least times the size of Jupiter and about the equivalent distance of Saturn to our own Sun, which means the planet would not be habitable as far as we can tell. It was spotted using a way of measuring carbon monoxide emission that seems to change its velocity and position in the same way that a planet would be expected to be orbiting the star.

Nicaragua's government said that a mysterious boom heard in the capital was made by a small meteorite that left a crater in a wooded area near Managua's airport.Government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said on Sunday that a committee formed by the government to study the event determined it was a "relatively small" meteorite that "appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth".Related: Was this 39ft-wide crater made by 'pitbull' asteroid that buzzed past Earth last night? Explosion in Nicaraguan capital may have been caused by rogue shard

California governor Jerry Brown said he will approve a ban on single-use plastic bags, in what would make the western US state the first to outlaw them.Lawmakers passed the bill late last Friday, and it now only requires Brown's signature to pass into law. The governor must do so before the end of September.

Beer lovers: there may be more to your brew than dazzling citrus overtones or a subtle chocolatey aroma.The authors of a new study went to a local supermarket in Germany and picked up 24 brands of beer, including the 10 most popular in the country. In the lab, they found plastic particles and other debris in everything they tested. The study was part of a larger investigation of plastic microfibres that are turning up all over the natural world as larger plastics break down. (In June, Illinois became the first state to ban plastic beads in cosmetics, which are thought to be one source of the pollution.)

Using only a few ingredients, the biophysicist Prof. Andreas Bausch and his team at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have successfully implemented a minimalistic model of the cell that can change its shape and move on its own. They describe how they turned this goal into reality in the current edition of the journal Science, where their research is featured as cover story.

Geologists in Ireland have rewritten the evolutionary history books by finding that oxygen-producing life forms were present on Earth some 3 billion years ago -- a full 60 million years earlier than previously thought. These life forms were responsible for adding oxygen to our atmosphere, which laid the foundations for more complex life to evolve and proliferate.

Australia may be known for its unique plants and animals, but how many do we actually know about?Jo Harding is the manager of Bush Blitz, a program supported by federal and state government agencies and research institutions, which documents plants and animals around Australia, leading to the discovery of hundreds of new species.Related: Dendrogramma: Two Unclassifiable Deep-Sea Animals Discovered off Australia

Plant physiologists have discovered that the shallow rooted plant Helianthemum squamatum, derives up to 90% of its fluid requirements from crystallization water trapped in gypsum rock. The finding represents a completely new kind of water source for life.The team of researchers, led by primary author Dr. Sara Palacio of the Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología in Spain, and senior author Dr. Juan Pedro Ferrio of the University of Lleida exploited differences in gypsum water and free soil water. The two kinds of water differ in their amounts of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes.

Infant rhesus monkeys receiving different diets early in life develop distinct immune systems that persist months after weaning, a study has shown. While the researchers expected different diets would promote different intestinal bacteria (microbiota), they were surprised at how dramatically these microbes shaped immunologic development. Specifically, breast-fed macaques had more "memory" T cells and T helper 17 (TH17) cells, which are known to fight Salmonella and other pathogens.

Homo sapiens were not always so special. In the ancient past, other human forms lived beside us. The Neanderthals in Eurasia. Small, hobbit-like humans in Indonesia. The mysterious Denisovans in the Ural mountains.But our time alone may be nearing its end. Through the power of technology, humans are set to take on the role of Intelligent Designer. We can upgrade ourselves and surmount evolution. Ultimately, we can become entirely new beings that set the stage for a posthuman future.

Quantum computing, secure wireless communication and advances in quantum teleportation could be closer to reality now that a team of researchers has developed a more efficient way of measuring wave functions that describe the strange behavior of these subatomic particles.In the realm of the very small, a field called quantum mechanics, particles can exist in multiple places at once, a phenomenon called superposition. To describe the huge numbers of positions and velocities a particle can have at any given moment, physicists use wave functions, which are essentially probability equations.

A weird theoretical cousin of the Higgs boson, one that inspired the decades-long hunt for the elusive particle, has been properly observed for the first time. The discovery bookends one of the most exciting eras in modern physics.But the idea was actually borrowed from the behaviour of photons in superconductors, metals that, when cooled to very low temperatures, allow electrons to move without resistance.

The huge plumes of water vapor erupting from Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa seem to have vanished, and scientists aren't sure why.In December 2013, researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope announced that they had spotted evidence of geysers blasting into space from Europa's south polar region. The discovery sparked a great deal of excitement among space scientists, as it suggested that a robotic flyby probe might be able to sample Europa's subsurface ocean of liquid water without even touching down.

There is a place on the northern shore of the Bay of Naples that has long been steeped in history, mystery, myth, and magic. Known as the Phlegræan Fields, it is a desolate place; a barren wasteland strewn with rubble and intersected by deep underground vents that belch out choking fumes and fire. Legends and strange phenomena cling to this hellish, smoke-wreathed landscape, so it is perhaps no wonder that these fields are a location believed since ancient times to hold a tunnel that leads to Hell itself.

Mark Booth, my editor, who writes as Jonathan Black in the UK, is the author of the bestselling "The Secret History of the World". His new book is "The Sacred History", released today in paperback in the UK. Here he shares a story his publishers found so so disturbing that they asked him to omit it from "The Sacred History": http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/BlackJ3.php.-Graham

The U.S. military doesn't just build big, scary tanks and giant warplanes; it's also interested in teeny, tiny stuff. The Pentagon's latest research project aims to improve today's technologies by shrinking them down to microscopic size.The recently launched Atoms to Product (A2P) program aims to develop atom-size materials to build state-of-the-art military and consumer products.

Earth is about to have a close encounter with a house-sized asteroid on Sunday (Sept. 7), when a space rock discovered just days ago will zoom by our planet at a range closer than some satellites. But have no fear, NASA says the asteroid won't hit Earth.The asteroid 2014 RC will safely buzz Earth at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT) on Sunday. At that time, the asteroid will pass over New Zealand and fly just inside the orbits of the geosynchronous communications and weather satellites orbiting Earth about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface, according to a NASA statement.

ESA has announced that on September 15, the team from the Rosetta mission will reveal the landing site for the Philae lander. After traveling on a 10-year, 6.4 billion kilometer journey, Rosetta has been gently captured by comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, an oddly-shaped and mysterious two-lobed comet. Yet, how will the small Philea attempt the landing?Related: Rosetta mission: Potential comet landing sites chosen.

"IT'S like having a new life," says Lucy Banda, a farmer in Mwambaso village in western Malawi. Over the past three years she has trebled her farm's output and increased her income 15-fold (see "A life transformed").Banda is one of 1.75 million African smallholder farmers, 40 per cent of them women, enrolled in a $180-million five-year programme run by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. AGRA was set up in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Researchers believe that California blue whales have recovered in numbers and the population has returned to sustainable levels.Scientists say this is the only population of blue whales to have rebounded from the ravages of whaling.The research team estimate that there are now 2,200 of these giant creatures on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean.

Archerfish hunt by shooting jets of water at unsuspecting insects, spiders, or even small lizards on leaves or twigs above, knocking them into the water below before gobbling them up. Now, a study in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 4 finds that those fish are much more adaptable and skillful target-shooters than anyone had given them credit for. The fish really do use water as a tool, the researchers say, making them the first known tool-using animal to adaptively change the hydrodynamic properties of a free jet of water.

Every second, people around the world drink more than 26,000 cups of coffee. And while some of them may care only about the taste, most use it as a way to deliver caffeine into their bloodstream. Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance in the world.Many of us get our caffeine fix in tea, and still others drink mate, brewed from the South American yerba mate plant. Cacao plants produce caffeine, too, meaning that you can get a mild dose from eating chocolate.

Whether people continue to pursue their goals in the face of setbacks, or give up, may depend on how much control they feel they have over a situation, a new study suggests.The study also found that changes in certain brain areas were related to persisting with goals after encountering setbacks.

For more than 50 years, anyone seeking proof that humans are capable of evil need only refer to the electric shocks administered by volunteers in the famous Milgram Experiment.Now psychologists have found that the study, which showed how ordinary people will inflict extraordinary harm upon others, if someone in authority gives the orders, may have been completely misunderstood.

Electronic chopsticks that can detect whether food is unsafe to eat have been unveiled by Chinese tech company Baidu.The search giant said the utensils could detect unsanitary cooking oil - a common concern in the country.

If you have any predictions about the state of space exploration a decade from now, NASA would like to hear them.The space agency is inviting the public to contribute messages and pictures to a "time capsule" aboard the Osiris-Rex spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in 2016. The probe will collect samples from an asteroid and return the material to Earth in 2023.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to launch a new probe into space to mine the asteroid 1999 JU3. This is the second attempt at mining an asteroid after the last spacecraft, Hayabusa, failed in its core mission.The new spacecraft, named Hayabusa 2, has been completed and is ready and waiting to ship to its launch site.

IN SPACE, junk can make you scream. The International Space Station (ISS)regularly changes orbit to avoid colliding with derelict satellites, rocket stages and other objects whizzing around Earth at thousands of kilometres per hour. Soon robots may fly out to assess the danger presented by the vast array of objects not already tracked by radar.

Mammals were long thought to have evolved nocturnal lifestyles as a way to co-exist with dinosaurs, but new research finds that nighttime behavior may have evolved 100 million years earlier than mammals did.The eye bones of ancestors of modern mammals that lived more than 300 million years ago, such as the sail-finned carnivore Dimetrodon, suggest that at least some of these animals were already active at night, researchers say.

A new technology being developed by Wake Forest researchers could help reverse the devastating effects of deforestation and mining on the world's largest rainforest.Few people grasp the importance of the Amazon. It drives the world's climate and weather patterns and annually absorbs 1.5 billion metric tons of C02.This priceless resource is nevertheless being destroyed at an alarming rate. Since 1978, over 289,000 square miles of Amazon Rainforest has been lost across South America.

The way we power our towns and cities is changing. Solar, wave and wind energy are just some of the renewable sources that could, with time, make our current reliance on fossil fuels a thing of the past.But what about clean, renewable energy from the planet's lawns, plants, paddy fields and wetlands? It sounds a little outlandish, but for nearly a decade researchers in the Dutch town of Wageningen have been painstakingly working towards that very goal.

This silk scarf and vest have a nice drape and pretty color, but that's not why everyone here at Popular Science covets them. No, we're wishing they were ours because they're made of super-strong, transgenic spider silk. Functional and good-looking! Our favorite.The clothes were woven from silk produced by silkworms with a spider gene engineered into them. A mix of spider and silkworm proteins actually emerges from the spinners in the silkworms' mouths. The resulting hybrid material is made up of less than 1 percent spider proteins, yet it's 53 percent tougher than regular silk.

Simply telling people that hard work is more important than genetics causes positive changes in the brain and may make them willing to try harder, a study shows. "Giving people messages that encourage learning and motivation may promote more efficient performance," said the lead investigator. "In contrast, telling people that intelligence is genetically fixed may inadvertently hamper learning.".

Approximately every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete personality change from quiet and calm to violently active. The height of the sun's activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of numerous sunspots, punctuated with profound eruptions that send radiation and solar particles out into the far reaches of space.Related: Have Scientists Solved The Mystery Behind The Sun's 11-Year Cycle?

We are part of a galactic supercluster called Laniakea, which contains a hundred million billion stars, according to a new study.The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, provides our most detailed cosmic address yet."This has been a work of decades, but it's a very human quality to want to know where we live in the bigger scheme of things,".

The first 3D printer ever to fly in space will blast off this month, and NASA has high hopes for the innovative device's test runs on the International Space Station.The 3D printer, which is scheduled to launch toward the orbiting lab Sept. 19 aboard SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo capsule, could help lay the foundation for broader in-space manufacturing capabilities, NASA officials said. The end result could be far less reliance on resupply from Earth, leading to cheaper and more efficient missions to faraway destinations such as Mars.

At almost the instant when humans started building cities, we figured out ways to put walls around them. The often violent history behind those walls is still affecting urban life today, in ways you may not realize.In the early 1960s, eminent scholar Lewis Mumford published a massive tome called The City in History. He argued that cities evolved largely as military entities, and their walls were the most obvious sign of their profoundly warlike character.

A mushroom-shaped sea animal discovered off the Australian coast has defied classification in the tree of life.A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom.

Sophisticated drug paraphernalia, complete with a hippy-looking headband, provide evidence that an elite, hallucinogen-using culture flourished at around 500 A.D. in the south-central Andes and lasted there for at least another 600 years.The items, described in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, shed light on the lifestyle and belief systems once held by the people of Tiwanaku, an ancient city-state located near Lake Titicaca, Bolivia.

What can yesterday's weather tell us about how the climate is changing today? That's what an army of volunteers looking at old ships' logs is trying to answer through the Old Weather project.Mariners have long kept meticulous logbooks of weather conditions and descriptions of life onboard, and the National Archives in Washington, D.C., has pages and pages and pages of them recorded by sailors on Navy and Coast Guard vesselsa.

The foundation of the human population explosion, commonly attributed to a sudden surge in industrialization and public health during the 18th and 19th centuries, was actually laid as far back as 2,000 years ago, suggests an extended model of detailed demographic and archeological data.

Economic development is driving the extinction of some languages, scientists believe.A study has found that minority languages in the most developed parts of the world, including North America, Europe and Australia, are most at threat.Related: From marvellous to awesome: how spoken British English has changed