Newsdesk Archive
A chemical used in dry cleaning and fire extinguishers may have been phased out in recent years but NASA said Wednesday that carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is still being spewed into the atmosphere from an unknown source.The world agreed to stop using CC14 as part of the Vienna Convention on Protection of the Ozone Layer and its Montreal Protocol, which attained universal ratification in 2009.
Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers. The researchers evaluated an emerging method of power generation called pressure retarded osmosis (PRO), in which two streams of different salinity are mixed to produce energy.
Your chairs, synthetic rugs and plastic bags could one day be made out of cocoa, rice and vegetable waste rather than petroleum, scientists are now reporting. The novel process they developed and their results could help the world deal with its agricultural and plastic waste problems.
Those with desk jobs may be constantly looking for innovative ways to sit less, but Zurich-based startup noonee has configured a wearable technology that would allow workers who are constantly on their feet to sit more.The "Chairless Chair" attaches to users' legs like an exoskeleton. When it's not being used as a seat, the device allows wearers to run and walk like normal.
What happens when you take about 50 sixth-graders and send them to a nature camp with no access to computers, tablets and mobile phones? A new study suggests that after just five days their ability to understand nonverbal social cues improves.Related: For City Dwellers, Stargazing Can Make For A Stellar Vacation
It's said that a bag of used mobile phones contains a gram of gold. There are a lot of mobile phones in the world, so how much of the gold we need can we get from them, asks William Kremer."The business case is clear," he said, as he launched revised waste and recycling targets for the EU. "There's gold in waste - literally. It takes a ton of ore to get 1g of gold. But you can get the same amount from recycling the materials in 41 mobile phones."
A copper awl is the oldest metal object unearthed to date in the Middle East. The discovery reveals that metals were exchanged across hundreds of miles in this region more than 6,000 years ago, centuries earlier than previously thought, researchers say.The artifact was unearthed in Tel Tsaf, an archaeological site in Israel located near the Jordan River and Israel's border with Jordan.
A new study of 9- and 10-year-olds finds that those who are more aerobically fit have more fibrous and compact white-matter tracts in the brain than their peers who are less fit. 'White matter' describes the bundles of axons that carry nerve signals from one brain region to another. More compact white matter is associated with faster and more efficient nerve activity.
The way children draw at the age of four can be a predictor of later intelligence, a study has suggested.Researchers asked 7,752 pairs of twins to draw a picture of a child which was then scored by the number of features such as head, legs, hands and feet.The children were also asked by the King's College, London team to complete intelligence tests at age four and 14.
Many driver's licenses and passports have holograms and other types of sophisticated security embedded in them, but for the most part, people still heavily rely on ID cards to prove who they are. Biometric identification technologies, such as fingerprinting and iris scanning, are already being used to speed up security clearance at several airports in the United States. Iris scanning is also gaining support in the health care industry, as a way to prevent fraud and combat identity theft. Now, ID tech is moving into new realms, with devices that could distinguish individuals by their veins, brain waves and even body odor.
Struggling with chapter 3? Adaptive textbooks will give you extra, personalised help when you need itTIRED of learning from a dusty old textbook? Try a book that learns from you. Students in Houston, Texas, are about to get their hands on the first digital schoolbooks that use artificial intelligence to personalise lessons. The aim, says the books' creator, is to "explode the book" and rethink how students learn from texts."We want to be able to create the perfect book for every person,".
Researchers have developed methods for electronically manipulating the flight muscles of moths and for monitoring the electrical signals moths use to control those muscles. The work opens the door to the development of remotely-controlled moths, or 'biobots,' for use in emergency response.
BLAME the marine mammals. Seals and sea lions may have brought a form of tuberculosis to the Americas, centuries before the Spanish did so.There's little doubt that the Spanish carried measles, malaria, influenza and smallpox to the New World, when the conquistadores followed in Columbus's wake and began conquering the native peoples. Many assumed that they also brought Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium behind TB. But in the 1970s, 1000-year-old skeletons were found in Peru with apparent signs of TB. The Spanish didn't arrive until 1492, so how they became infected was a mystery.
Paleolithic inhabitants of modern-day Spain may have eaten snails 10,000 years earlier than their Mediterranean neighbors, according to a study published August 20, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.Snails were widespread in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, but it is still unknown when and how they were incorporated into human diets. The authors of this study found land snail shell remains from ~30,000 years ago at a recently discovered site in Cova de la Barriada, Spain.
Neanderthals and modern humans were both living in Europe for between 2,600 and 5,400 years, according to a new paper published in the journal, Nature. For the first time, scientists have constructed a robust timeline showing when the last Neanderthals died out.Related: Neanderthals and humans had 'ample time' to mixRelated: Neanderthal demise traced in unprecedented detail
The task of classifying pieces of fine art is hugely complex. When examining a painting, an art expert can usually determine its style, its genre, the artist and the period to which it belongs. Art historians often go further by looking for the influences and connections between artists, a task that is even trickier.So the possibility that a computer might be able to classify paintings and find connections between them at first glance seems laughable. And yet, that is exactly what Babak Saleh and pals have done at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
One year ago today, researchers announced that they had discovered a new species - Bassaricyon nbelina, nicknamed the olinguito. It was the first time that scientists had named a new carnivous mammal found in the Americas in 35 years.Discovering the olinguito, which lives in Ecaduor and Colombia and belongs to the same family as raccoons, took scientists a decade. It turned out that museum collections throughout the world had mislabeled olinguito skulls for years.
The Antarctic midge is a simple insect: no wings, a slender black body and an adult life span of not much more than a week.So perhaps it's fitting the bug is now on record as the owner of the tiniest insect genome ever sequenced. At just 99 million base pairs of nucleotides (DNA's building blocks), the midge's genome is smaller than that of the body louse and far more miniscule than the human genome, which has 3.2 billion base pairs. (Though the midge's genome still dwarfs the smallest of all genomes on record, which belongs to a bacterium that lives inside insects and contains just 160,000 base pairs.).
Japanese technology firms are applying their expertise in energy-saving and cloud technology to help farmers cope with shifting weather patterns, an onslaught of cheaper imports and a shrinking workforce.Companies are also converting factories into farms: Toshiba Corp is to start growing vegetables at a former floppy disk plant near Tokyo, while Panasonic is growing radishes and lettuce inside a Singapore factory, and Sharp Corp is trialling an indoor strawberry farm in Dubai.
The Iceland Meteorological Office has increased the risk level of an eruption at the Bárðarbunga (or Bardarbunga) volcano after hundreds of earthquakes were reported over the weekend. The risk level has been set to orange, which is the fourth-highest rating on a five-level scale.Related: Thousands of intense earthquakes rock Iceland
Volcanic activity was present on small asteroids in the first few million years after the solar system's birth, according to a new study.The results, reported in the journal PNAS, are based on an analysis of one of the most unique meteorites ever found."We found rocks were being produced by volcanism on small asteroids just six-and-a-half million years after the formation of the first solid material in the solar system,".
Black holes are some of the strangest objects in the universe, and they typically fall into one of two size extremes: "small" ones that are dozens of times more massive than the sun and other "supermassive" black holes that are billions of times larger than our nearest star. But until now, astronomers had not seen good evidence of anything in between.Related: Mysterious Shifting Lights Observed Near Huge Black Hole
A meteorite that crashed into a California house in 2012 can be traced back to the giant impact that formed Earth's moon 4.5 billion years ago, a new study reveals.NASA's Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance system captured photos of the meteorite's fiery fall from space on Oct. 17, 2012, allowing researchers to determine that it likely fell in the city of Novato, just north of San Francisco. This supposition was confirmed after Novato residents Lisa Webber and Glenn Rivera followed up on an odd noise from their garage roof.
It's not quite extraterrestrial life, but scientists have discovered sea plankton growing in space.Russian space officials have confirmed traces of plankton and other micro-organisms were found living on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS), and it appears they've been living there for years.Russian astronaut Olek Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov made the discovery after a routine spacewalk around the ISS.
In an icy lake half a mile beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have discovered a diverse ecosystem of single-celled organisms that have managed to survive without ever seeing the light of the sun.The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature is not so much a surprise as a triumph of science and engineering. The research team spent 10 years and more than $10 million to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that life did indeed exist in subglacial lakes near the South Pole.
The calls of many animals, from whales to wolves, might contain more language-like structure than previously thought, according to study that raises new questions about the evolutionary origins of human language.The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, analyzed the vocal sequences of seven different species of birds and mammals and found that the vocal sequences produced by the animals appear to be generated by complex statistical processes, more akin to human language.Chimp Chat Recordings Reveal Wide Range of Sounds
A rare adoption has taken place in New Zealand, where a bottlenose dolphin has taken up the rearing responsibilities for a common dolphin.The New Zealand Herald reports that in the waters of Bay of Islands, a baby common dolphin was spotted nursing from its new mom from another species.The baby, known locally as "Pee-Wee," is an orphaned calf. The mom, meanwhile, is known as "Kiwi" and lost her own calf five years ago, when she became stranded at the Kerikeri Inlet of Aroha Island while her poor young one was still out at sea.
For dog lovers, comparative psychologists Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi have an unsettling conclusion. Many researchers think that as humans domesticated wolves, they selected for a cooperative nature, resulting in animals keen to pitch in on tasks with humans. But when the two scientists at the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna studied lab-raised dog and wolf packs, they found that wolves were the tolerant, cooperative ones.
Pity the hearts beating in Russian chests. The death rate from heart disease for men and women of all ages in Russia is six times higher than in France, according to data on heart and stroke deaths from 52 nations in Europe and northern Asia.Death rates are steadily declining across the entire area studied.
A recent study by the British Geological Survey, in association with researchers at the University of Leicester, has delved into the bone and tooth chemistry of King Richard III and uncovered fascinating new details about the life and diet of Britain's last Plantagenet king. The study, published in Elsevier's Journal of Archaeological Science indicates a change in diet and location in his early childhood, and in later life, a diet filled with expensive, high status food and drink.
Ancient winged reptiles called pterosaurs were so successful that they ruled Earth's skies for tens of millions of years, according to a study published in the journal ZooKeys.The fearsome fliers, part of a family of pterosaurs named Azhdarchidae, get their name from azdarha, the Persian word for "dragon." Unlike earlier pterosaurs, they had no teeth, and they dominated from late in the Cretaceous period (around 90 million years ago) until the extinction event that also killed off the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.
Pop quiz (that you will never be given within the halls of academia):Choose the best answer:a) Vedism came from the sacred myths of ancient Egypt.b) The sacred myths of ancient Egypt came from Vedism.c) They both came from some even earlier, now unknown predecessor civilization (which, for want of a better term, some have called "Atlantis").d) None of the above.
A furious international dispute has erupted over the publication of a paper that claims the hobbit man of Flores was a modern human who had Down's syndrome. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this month, the research has been denounced by scientists around the world. The tiny Homo floresiensis, discovered on Flores, an island in Indonesia, is definitely a member of a distinct ancient species of hominins, they insist.
Consider this, if you would: a network of far-flung, powerful, high-tech civilizations closely tied by trade and diplomatic embassies; an accelerating threat of climate change and its pressure on food production; a rising wave of displaced populations ready to sweep across and overwhelm developed nations. Sound familiar?While that laundry list of impending doom could be aimed at our era, it's actually a description of the world 3,000 years ago. It is humanity's first "global" dark age as described by archaeologist and George Washington University professor Eric H. Cline in his recent book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Chemicals once found in hairspray may serve as signs of alien life on faraway worlds, researchers say.These compounds may reveal that extraterrestrials have disastrously altered their planets, scientists added.
In the 19th century, astronomers believed that solar systems formed in nebular clouds throughout the universe. But 20th century scientists rejected that idea, arguing that our solar system was an aberration. This mistake derailed the search for exoplanets, and extraterrestrials, for decades.Scientists of the early 20th century argued that tidal forces had caused the sun to spit out the planets when a rogue star passed too close. It was a kind of drive-by shooting theory of planetary formation known as the "Planetesimal Hypothesis."
In a new documentary, US government agents claim they spent decades giving fake evidence of extraterrestrials to gullible ufologists. But why? And how can we trust them now?Hidden among the avalanche of documents leaked by Edward Snowden were images from a Powerpoint presentation by GCHQ, entitled The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations.
A video shot outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, during a forest fire unexpectedly captured a lot more than firefighting efforts.Update: Canadian UFO May Be a Meteor But Second Object UnidentifiedRelated: New report compiles 25 years of UFO sightings in Canada
Could a UFO have visited Texas this week?Several people have taken it to Twitter to post pictures showing a strange object floating through the Houston clouds during a storm last Monday.Some of the pictures show a bright oval object hovering. An unrelated picture shows a similar object through clouds.
A new study has, for the first time, reconstructed solar activity during the last ice age. The study shows that the regional climate is influenced by the sun and offers opportunities to better predict future climate conditions in certain regions.For the first time, a research team has been able to reconstruct the solar activity at the end of the last ice age, around 20,000-10,000 years ago.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Under threat from rising sea levels and tsunamis, the authorities of a provincial capital in the Solomon Islands have decided to relocate from a small island in the first such case in the Pacific islands.Choiseul, a township of around 1,000 people on Taro Island, a coral atoll in Choiseul Bay, is less than two meters (6.6 feet) above sea level. Its vulnerability to storm surges and tsunamis caused by earthquakes is expected to be compounded in the future by rising seas.
Oil and water don't mix. Despite that age-old axiom, it sure is hard to get spilled petroleum out of seawater, as was evident during BP's blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. But what if you could make oil magnetic?That thought came to physicist Arden Warner while he watched coverage of the spill back in 2010.
Fleets of self-driving lorries could be tested on UK roads as soon as next year, according to reports.The technology allows a convoy of lorries to travel just a few feet from each other, with just the driver at the front in control.The initiative would cut fuel consumption, backers said.
Based on the camouflage abilities of octopuses and cuttlefish, engineers in the US have built a flexible material that changes colour to match its surroundings.The new design features a grid of 1mm cells, containing a temperature-driven dye that switches colour on demand.
Mummies are old. No, really: the ancient Egyptians were deliberately mummifying their dead as many as 2000 years earlier than previously thought.It had been assumed that before about 2500 BC, when Egyptians wanted to mummify their dead, they placed the wrapped bodies outside and let the hot, dry air and desert sand do the hard work. Deliberate mummification with preserving oils and resins was thought to be a much later development.
A site in southwestern France found to be rich in the bones of horses and other large herbivores has provided important insights into the hunting and scavenging habits of Neanderthals.A team of archaeologists from the French archaeological agency Inrap have unearthed hundreds of bones at the Middle Paleolithic site in Quincieux dating back 35,000 to 55,000 years.
Farmers in China have unearthed the nearly complete skeleton of a juvenile armored dinosaur that may be one of the largest ankylosaurs. The finding suggests that this group of beasts grew to be big early in their evolutionary history, researchers say.The new finding is in line with the growth trend seen among dinosaurs beginning in the Cretaceous Period, the heyday of the dinosaurs, when they reached their greatest diversity, the researchers said.
An ancient flying reptile with a bizarre, butterflylike head has been unearthed in Brazil.The newfound reptile species, Caiuajara dobruskii, lived about 80 million years ago in an ancient desert oasis. The beast sported a strange bony crest on its head that looked like the wings of a butterfly, and had the wingspan needed to take flight at a very young age.
Waseda researchers have described the earliest example of a true dolphin in the known fossil record.In an article published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Waseda Department of Earth Sciences researchers (lead author Mizuki Murakami) conclude that the specimen, which was originally categorized in 1977 as Stenella kabatensis, actually belongs to the Eodelphis kabatensis species. This means that true dolphins existed 2 to 7 million years earlier than had been previously suggested by fossil records, and aligns with the results of molecular studies.
Researchers in Wales are using cutting-edge techniques to catalogue species from tiny sections of genetic material. And these DNA 'barcodes' are now being used to catch plant and animal smugglers worldwideAs I rattle across the Welsh countryside in an early morning train, a verdant landscape bounces into view. A blurred jumble of grass, trees, brambles and bushes flies past the window.
Water may appear to be an abundant resource, but in some parts of the world clean water is hard to come by.That could change through the work of Deshawn Henry, a University at Buffalo sophomore civil engineering major, who researched how to improve a 6-foot-tall, self-sustaining magnifying glass.
Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown, biological samples were obtained only after extensive delays, limiting the information that could be gained about the impacts of that historic disaster. Determined not to repeat the shortcomings of the Chernobyl studies, scientists began gathering biological information only a few months after the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan in 2011.
What does an endangered lemur have to do with a malnourished child in Madagascar? How does deforestation in Indonesia affect a Singapore businessman's cardiopulmonary system? Why could a marine conservation area improve a woman's health oceans away?Christopher Golden researches and quantifies the often surprising connections between environmental trends and human health.Related: Why the Scientific Case Against Fracking Keeps Getting Stronger
Sweden has not actively taken part in a war since 1814 - breaking even Switzerland's record for peace. One peace and conflict expert has told The Local that Swedes learned the hard way to take the non-confrontational stance.Precisely 200 years ago, on August 15th, 1814, Sweden entered a new era of peace. The last battle took its final breath on August 14th after the signing of the Convention of Moss, ending a brief war with Norway sparked by the nation declaring its independence.
With the downing of flight MH17, tensions between Russia and the United States over Ukraine have reached a new high. New tougher sanctions have been put in place, targeting Russia's finance, defence and energy sectors. But Russia may have found a way to hit back - and America's space industry is its target.When Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface in 1969, it was the pivotal point in a space race that had lasted for more than a decade.
Small "nanoflares" erupting from the sun might be the key to unlocking a cosmic mystery, according to a new study.Scientists have found that the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, can reach temperatures 1,000 times higher than those at the surface of the star, but solar physicists previously had no explanation for why this temperature discrepancy is so great. Now, researchers think the relatively tiny flares may be the "smoking gun" that explains this mysterious cosmic occurrence.
It could be the most exotic material on the planet. Seven particles of dust brought back to Earth by a spacecraft nearly a decade ago appear to have come from beyond our solar system.The specks have all the hallmarks of being created in interstellar space. If confirmed, it would make them the first material from outside the solar system to be brought to Earth for study.Related: Exotic grains from cosmos identified
Asteroids have pounded Earth in the past and will continue to do so in the future. If a big one lines the planet up in its crosshairs, civilization itself could be imperiled.Now, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has taken a step toward combating the asteroid threat. A special U.N. action team on near-Earth objects (NEOs) has recommended the creation of an International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), which is designed to gather and analyze NEO data and provide timely warnings to national authorities if a potentially hazardous NEO were to threaten Earth.
Scientists have made incredible 3D images of the ghostly atmospheres surrounding comets ISON and Lemmon. These new observations provided important insights into how and where comets forge new chemicals, including intriguing organic compounds.
Scientists have captured an extreme and rare event in the regions immediately surrounding a supermassive black hole. A compact source of X-rays that sits near the black hole, called the corona, has moved closer to the black hole over a period of just days.
It may be common for psychiatric patients who are Muslim to attribute their hallucinations or other symptoms to "jinn," the invisible, devilish creatures in Islamic mythology, researchers in the Netherlands have found.The findings demonstrate one way in which culture may influence how people perceive their psychotic symptoms, and could help Western psychiatrists better understand patients who have an Islamic background.
Along the Grand Canyon section of the Colorado River sits a canyon that was carved out of redwall limestone by flowing water. There, the rocks contain fossils of the orthocone nautioloid, which lived 500-200 million years ago. But a prominent young-Earth creationist says they're solid proof of Noah's flood.
A four billion-year-old mystery surrounding the one common ancestor of all life on Earth has been solved by scientists.All life evolved from a single celled organism known as life's Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). However, few details are known about what it looked like, how it lived and how it evolved.
A grant of £250,000 from The Leverhulme Trust has been awarded to a team of scientists led by the University of Lincoln, UK, to study how a group of insects evolved incredible ultrasonic hearing abilities.A cochlear organ for frequency selectivity was thought to be unique to hearing in mammals until a similar mechanism for frequency analysis was found in the ears of bushcrickets in South American rainforests two years ago.
A new study provides fresh insights into the life of early modern humans before they left Africa following a massive comparative study of stone tools.Researchers have carried out the biggest ever comparative study of stone tools dating to between 130,000 and 75,000 years ago found in the region between sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. They have discovered there are marked differences in the way stone tools were made, reflecting a diversity of cultural traditions. The study has also identified at least four distinct populations, each relatively isolated from each other with their own different cultural characteristics.
For hundreds of thousands of years humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, eating wild plants and animals. Inequality in these groups is thought to have been very low, with evidence suggesting food and other resources were shared equally between all individuals. In fact, in the hunter-gatherer societies that still exist today we see that all individuals have a say in group decision making. Although some individuals may act as leaders in the sense of guiding discussions, they cannot force others to follow them.But it seems that with the beginning of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, this changed.
ASUKA, Nara Prefecture--Researchers determined that an ancient burial mound here is shaped like a step pyramid, the first such discovery in Japan.The Miyakozuka Tomb is believed to date from the latter half of the sixth century. The square-shaped tumulus is built of stones in stepped levels like stairs.
To most of us in the 21st century, the architectural ruins of the past possess somewhat of a magical aura. While the humans who built them have long since turned to dust, the buildings they left behind act as a portal through which we might better understand our long-dead ancestors - or, alternatively, allow us to mistakenly overlay our own beliefs upon them.
A monster mouth doorway, ruined pyramid temples and palace remains emerged from the Mexican jungle as archaeologists unearthed two ancient Mayan cities.Found in the southeastern part of the Mexican state of Campeche, in the heart of the Yucatan peninsula, the cities were hidden in thick vegetation and hardly accessible.Photos here
A 200-year-old stoneware seltzer bottle that was recently recovered from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea contains alcohol, according to the results of a preliminary analysis.Researchers discovered the well-preserved and sealed bottle in June, while exploring the so-called F53.31 shipwreck in Gdańsk Bay, close to the Polish coast. Preliminary laboratory tests have now shown the bottle contains a 14-percent alcohol distillate, which may be vodka or a type of gin called jenever, most likely diluted with water.
Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle, Bob Hope, the comedian, quipped.But now scientists have discovered what causes the middle-aged spread, and more importantly, how to turn it off.Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that signals in the brain, which tell us to stop eating when full, become less efficient as we age.
With testing already happening in the US and trials given the green light in the UK, the autonomous car seems like more of a possibility than ever. Aside from the early adopters who want to be part of the newest technology trend, the autonomous car has enormous potential to help those who, for whatever reason, can't drive themselves.We've seen over the past few decades that technology can have a transformative effect on the lives of disabled people. But these benefits can only be realised if the technology itself is designed and regulated with the needs of all users in mind.
A sweaty gym workout is not only good for your health - it could also energise your phone.A tattoo that produces power from perspiration has been unveiled at the American Chemical Society meeting.The biobattery is fuelled by lactate - which is naturally present in sweat after vigorous exercise.
Scientists have moved closer to being able to stop a huge asteroid colliding with the Earth and potentially wiping out human life.Researchers at the University of Tennessee have discovered that blowing the space rock up could make the collision worse by causing several devastating impacts.Instead, small changes could be made to its surface to disrupt the forces keeping it together and cause it to break up in outer space.
Results of the study indicate that violence decreases as spirituality increases in persons who received the non-alcohol beverage. However, quite unexpectedly, violence actually increased as spirituality increased in persons who received the alcoholic beverage.Related: Drunk words really ARE sober thoughts: Alcohol doesn't impair our ability to control our actions - it just makes us care less
Liberalised drug laws should be introduced to legalise the widespread use of cannabis to relieve symptoms of certain medical conditions, including the side effects of chemotherapy, the drugs minister Norman Baker will say.Amid concerns that "credible people" are having to break the law to secure the only substance that can help to relieve their condition, Baker is writing to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to call for a review of the medicinal properties of cannabis.
New survey data from Colorado indicate that marijuana legalization so far has not led to an increase in pot smoking by teenagers, as prohibitionists warned it would. In the 2013 Healthy Kids Colorado survey, 37 percent of high school students reported that they had ever tried marijuana, down from 39 percent in 2011.Related: The UN says this country is smoking the most marijuana
Bacteria that cause life-threatening bloodstream infections in critically ill patients may be growing increasingly resistant to a common hospital antiseptic, according to a recent study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins. The study was published in the September issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
Mice exposed to disinfectants in commercial-grade cleaning products took longer to get pregnant, had fewer pups and suffered more miscarriages and distressed fetuses, researchers reported today.The little-known chemicals, called quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats, are common ingredients of cleaners used by hospitals, restaurants and food processing plants. Quats also are found in some shampoos, disinfectant wipes and nasal sprays.
Long courses of antibiotics may put babies and toddlers at higher risk of obesity when they grow up, according to US researchers.Low doses of penicillin early in life can alter natural populations of gut microbes, which in turn may affect metabolism and lead to higher rates of obesity later in life, the scientists said.
Pushed out of their home territory by violence, a second wave of people who had been living in voluntary isolation in the Amazon rainforest has made contact with villagers in Brazil, according to an advocacy group.These 24 men, women and children belong to the same tribe as the "uncontacted" people who emerged in a Brazilian village in late June, claiming that they had suffered violent attacks from outsiders, according to Survival International, a group that advocates for tribal people's rights.
It's ancient medicine with a sci-fi-sounding twist.A scientist at the University of Illinois, Dipanjan Pan, and his team say they may have found a way to stop cancer cell growth, according to a paper presented at the American Chemical Society conference this week.The work is in very early stages, but has shown success in stopping breast cancer and melanoma cell growth in lab tests. Pan's technique uses nanotechnology to deliver a synthesized element similar to the venom found in bees, snakes and scorpions.
A Virginia Tech scientist has discovered a potentially new form of plant communication, one that allows them to share an extraordinary amount of genetic information with one another.The finding by Jim Westwood, a professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, throws open the door to a new arena of science that explores how plants communicate with each other on a molecular level. It also gives scientists new insight into ways to fight parasitic weeds that wreak havoc on food crops in some of the poorest parts of the world.
Humans today may have developed softer, more feminine faces as society became friendlier and less aggressive centuries ago, a new study suggests.As humans began to form cooperative communities, craft tools and work together, their aggression levels began to decrease, resulting in less of a need for the robust facial features of a caveman. The result? Thinner skulls, lighter brows and rounder heads, the researchers said. Such changes can be traced to testosterone levels acting on the human skeleton, they added.
A six-year-old's discovery of a flint tool in a Neolithic ditch was the first of a "significant number" of thrilling finds at a Cardiff hill fortArchaeologists hoping to discover Roman and Iron Age finds at a Welsh hillfort were shocked to unearth pottery and arrowheads predating their predicted finds by 4,000 years at the home of a powerful Iron Age community, including flint tools and weapons from 3,600 BC.
REMAINS of a prehistoric monument similar to Stonehenge are being excavated by Faversham experts.SWAT Archaeology made the discovery while making a preparatory dig ahead of a planned housing development at Iwade Meadows, in Sittingbourne.Related: Kent's 'Stonehenge' discovered: 'Sacred' path that leads to a Neolithic circular ditch discovered in Sittingbourne
ONE day in 1922, near Broken Hill, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a skull was found. When it came to the attention of the British Museum, the curators were pleased.It was, in fact, a Neanderthal skull, and Neanderthal bones did not exactly come ten-a-penny.But the Broken Hill skull was special for other reasons. On the left side of the cranium was a small, perfectly round hole. At first it was assumed that it had been made by a spear, or other sharp implement, but further investigation proved that this had not been the case.
Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the universe, and nearly every one of these stars may have a planet located in its habitable zone where life has the best chance of existing, a new study concludes.This discovery may increase the chances that alien life could exist elsewhere in the cosmos, researchers say. They detailed their findings in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
Scientists hunting for life beyond Earth have discovered more than 1,800 planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, in recent years, but so far, no one has been able to confirm an exomoon. Now, physicists believe following a trail of radio wave emissions may lead them to that discovery.
China will launch its first recoverable moon orbiter later this year, the government announced, in the latest step in its ambitious space programme.The mission will be launched before the end of the year and will travel to the moon before returning to earth, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said in a statement on Sunday.
A recent high level meeting at the headquarters of Chile's Civil Aviation Department will likely be the envy of those Americans desiring open government participation in UFO investigations, rather than the familiar blanket dismissal.The question of whether UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) pose any danger to civilian and military air operations was up for discussion. An official video about the event (the first 4 minutes), posted on Friday, is telling. You don't need to understand a word of Spanish to take note of the serious expressions on the faces of the participants.
The online community of UFO true believers is bustling with excitement.Twice in the past week, dedicated UFO watchers have reported spotting an Unidentified Flying Object near the International Space Station, via NASA's live webcam.TThe first such sighting was Aug. 4, when blogger Scott Waring of UFO Sightings Daily saw a "glowing disk" on the live feed.
Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a model that explains how geckos, as well as spiders and some insects, can run up and down walls, cling to ceilings, and seemingly defy gravity with such effortless grace.The solution, outlined today in the Journal of Applied Physics, is a remarkable mechanism in the toes of geckos that use tiny, branched hairs called "seta" that can instantly turn their stickiness on and off, and even "unstick" their feet without using any energy.
Genetically modified flies could be released into the wild to save crops from being damaged by pests following a breakthrough by British scientists.Researchers at the University of East Anglia have tweaked the DNA of fruit flies so that they only produce male flies after mating.
Dolphins and whales squeal after pleasant moments, researchers noticed long ago, such as receiving a tasty fish treat. A new study supports that these happy sounds are genuine expressions of delight.The discovery, published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, not only helps to explain the meaning of these sounds but also provides evidence that dolphins and whales experience joy.
Long before ancient Egyptians swaddled their pharaohs in balm-and-resin-soaked linens and placed them in treasure-bedecked tombs, their more egalitarian predecessors were using essentially the same embalming recipe.The finding, published in PLoS ONE, pushes back known use of the multi-ingredient ointment by about 2,000 years, the authors estimate. The early blend includes a resin that probably came from at least 1,000 kilometres away from the gravesites, hinting that the region already had an established and extensive trade network.
A 2,000-year-old cemetery with several underground tombs has been discovered near the Nile River in Sudan.Archaeologists excavated several of the underground tombs, finding artifacts such as a silver ring, engraved with an image of a god, and a faience box, decorated with large eyes, which a researcher believes protected against the evil eye.
Some 15 million yellowed pages of text and images from arcane 19th-century medical books are about to go digital.Nine British universities and research institutions are sending their collections of important texts from the history of medicine and science to the London-based Wellcome Library so that their rare books and pamphlets can be made freely available online.
A 22,000-year-old mastodon skull and tool dredged from the seafloor in the Chesapeake Bay hints of early settlers in North America.The two relics, which were pulled up together, may come from a place that hasn't been dry land since 14,000 years ago. If so, the combination of the finds may suggest that people lived in North America, and possibly butchered the mastodon, thousands of years before people from the Clovis culture, who are widely thought to be the first settlers of North America and the ancestors of all living Native Americans.
The waste fibres from hemp crops can be transformed into high-performance energy storage devices, scientists say.They "cooked" cannabis bark into carbon nanosheets and built supercapacitors "on a par with or better than graphene" - the industry gold standard.