Newsdesk Archive
A 10ft (3m) long fish which used to dominate the Amazon river has been fished to extinction in a number of areas, scientists have revealed.Arapaima populations were found to be extinct in eight of the 41 communities studied, and extremely low on average.
A Chinese zoo has unveiled newborn panda triplets billed as the world's first known surviving trio, in what it hailed as a "miracle" given the animal's famously low reproductive rate.The mother panda, named Juxiao, meaning "chrysanthemum smile", delivered the triplets at Guangzhou's Chimelong Safari Park in the early hours of July 29, but was too exhausted to take care of them afterwards.
Facial symmetry is sexy, but perhaps not for the reasons scientists had long thought.Humans have such a strong preference for faces and bodies that are symmetrical that evolutionary psychologists and other researchers who study human behavior have long theorized that symmetry might be a signal of good health.But now, a new study finds that facial symmetry is not linked with health, at least during early childhood.
As the Food and Drug Administration mulls over whether to rein in the use of common antibacterial compounds that are causing growing concern among environmental health experts, scientists are reporting that many pregnant women and their fetuses are being exposed to these substances. The compounds are used in more than 2,000 everyday products marketed as antimicrobial, including toothpastes, soaps, detergents, carpets, paints, school supplies and toys, the researchers say.
A brave scientist has sought to answer a question that has baffled for centuries: why do women get premenstrual syndrome (PMS)?Professor of Molecular Evolution, Michael Gillings, believes that in our evolutionary past there was a hidden selective advantage to PMS, because it increased the chance that infertile pair bonds would dissolve, thus improving the reproductive outcomes of women in such partnerships.
An extraordinary amount of ultraviolet light appears to be missing from the universe, scientists have found.One potential source of this missing light might be the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the mass in the cosmos. But a simpler explanation could be that ultra violet light escapes from galaxies more easily than is currently thought, according to the new research.
New evidence from liverworts and beetles shows how the rise of flowering plants 100 million years ago created ideal conditions for a boom in terrestrial life.Both beetles and liverworts (small moss-like plants) increased in species diversity in response to new ecosystems created by flowering plants, according to two new studies published this week co-authored by Museum scientists.
Is it a tree? Is it a fern? No, it's a rangeomorph, one of the first complex organisms to evolve on Earth. A new analysis of their fossils suggests that rangeomorphs' strange bodies evolved to absorb as much food as possible from the surrounding water.Rangeomorphs ruled the oceans for around 40 million years, beginning 575 million years ago, in a period called the Ediacaran.
Scientists have found between Greenland and Spitsbergen the scours left behind on the sea bed by gigantic icebergs. "Whenever icebergs run aground, they leave scours on the seabed. Depending on their depth and location, those markings may continue to exist over long periods of time," explained the lead author. Found at a depth of 1,200 metres, the newly found five lineaments are the deepest iceberg scours found to date in the Arctic.
Weather extremes in the summer -- such as the record heat wave in the United States that hit corn farmers and worsened wildfires in 2012 -- have reached an exceptional number in the last ten years. Human-made global warming can explain a gradual increase in periods of severe heat, but the observed change in the magnitude and duration of some events is not so easily explained.
Underwater fish "meadows" are being lost at the same rate as the Amazon rain forests, researchers have warned.Seagrass is a key habitat for feeding and sheltering young fish, including plaice, haddock and pollock.But every hour an area the size of two football pitches is destroyed.
For some, the irony is almost too much to bear. While Congress is eager to fund a $2 billion expedition to search for oceans beneath Europa, some 95% of Earth's oceans are unexplored. Given the role of oceans in regulating climate, and their untapped potential for food and health, is it time to rethink our priorities?This debate has been going on for half a century.
There was mournful news out of Sweden with the announcement that the world's oldest known European eel had passed away recently at the age of 155, after living through two world wars, the Cold War, disco, punk, grunge, and the advent of the Internet.'Ale' the Eel was thrown into the well of a cottage in the town of Brantevik in 1859, by a young boy who was merely following the common practice at the time of putting eels in wells so they would eat any insects that might contaminate the water source.
A two-headed dolphin has washed up on a beach in Western Turkey, local media has reported.The private Dogan news agency said the remains of conjoined dolphin calf were discovered on a beach in Dikili, near the Aegean city of Izmir last week by a Tugrul Metin, gym teacher who was holidaying in the area.
For decades, researchers have used the Turing test to evaluate how well a machine can think like a human. But this gauge of artificial intelligence is 60 years old, and is in dire need of an update, experts say.To develop a replacement, a group of scientists is planning a one-day workshop at the 2015 meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) January 25-29 in Austin, Texas.
WHEN someone shouts "Code Blue!" in a hospital, it usually means a patient needs immediate help. An algorithm may be able to make that call 4 hours earlier to head off dangerous situations.Code Blue events, which include cardiac or respiratory arrest, can be difficult to anticipate. Doctors use a scorecard, known as the Modified Early Warning Score, to estimate the severity of a patient's status by looking at vital signs like heart rate, blood pressure and temperature. Knowing that certain patients are at high risk helps hospitals to lower rates of arrest and shorten hospital stays.
BRANDEN GHENA pulls his car up under a traffic light in a city in Michigan. He plugs a radio transmitter into the car's power adapter, connects it to his laptop and, with a few keyboard strokes, takes control of every traffic light in town."We were able to advance the light," Ghena says of the experiment, which took place in May. "We could make it turn green."Ghena, an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan, and his team were exploiting a vulnerability in the light's traffic controller.
WHAT do two Twitter users who live halfway around the world from each other have in common? They might speak the same "super-dialect". An analysis of millions of Spanish tweets found two popular speaking styles: one favoured by people living in cities, another by those in small rural towns.Bruno Gonçalves at Aix-Marseille University in France and David Sánchez at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in Palma, Majorca, Spain, analysed more than 50 million tweets sent over a two-year period.
The rulers of ancient Egypt lived in glorious opulence, decorating themselves with gold and perfumes and taking their treasures with them to the grave.But how could such a hierarchical, despotic system arise from egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies? The reasons were part technological and part geographical: In a world where agriculture was on the rise and the desert was all-encompassing, the cost of getting out from under the thumb of the pharaoh would have been too high.
These days we can find out the temperature anywhere in the world by clicking on our closest device, so why do we need weather observations from over 100 years ago?Clement Wragge understood the importance of keeping weather records.The colourful 19th century Queensland meteorologist saw the possibility of forecasting and tracking the path of tropical cyclones using weather observations from ships' logs.
HUNDREDS of lights are being erected in a Danish industrial park in a suburb of Copenhagen. When ordinary citizens pass through the area, they'll be taking part in a massive experiment to work out how we should light our cities in the future.Street lamps can be a major drain on resources: lighting accounts for around 6 per cent of global greenhouse emissions. In 2009, for example, Los Angeles spent around $15 million and pumped out 111,000 tonnes of carbon to light up its streets. No wonder councils want to find ways of making lighting smarter and more efficient.
In our constantly connected, information-rich society, some drivers are jumping at the chance to let auto insurance companies monitor their driving habits in return for a handsome discount on their premiums.What these drivers may not know is that they could be revealing where they are driving, a privacy boundary that many would not consent to cross.
Summer is upon us and you are almost certainly planning at least one trip to the beach. This year, as you lie back in the sun, take a moment to reflect upon how much of the world economy is built on the stuff.I don't mean "built on sand" in a philosophical sense, however true that may be. I'm talking about three technological revolutions that are literally based on sand, one of which is only just beginning and, if it lives up to its potential, has mind-boggling implications.
Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have created a tractor beam on water, providing a radical new technique that could confine oil spills, manipulate floating objects or explain rips at the beach.The group, led by Professor Michael Shats discovered they can control water flow patterns with simple wave generators, enabling them to move floating objects at will.
New video footage showing a suspected triangular UFO hovering over the Germany sky has reignited the age-old debate of the existence of aliens.The video was recorded in June this year, but another two more similar videos showing UFOs flying over the Brazil sky only gives strength to those who believe in aliens.
A hospital in Holland has developed a breakthrough treatment for burns patients.Patients with severe burns usually need to be sedated so they can bear the pain. However, this has downsides because the drugs can interfere with other aspects of the treatment.Martini Hospital in Groningen, Holland, has developed a new pain management system that does not involve extra medication.
The pursuit of true happiness can lead to satisfying lifestyles and a healthier environment, according to a recent study.Researchers suggest that this can be achieved with less materialism."For decades, consumerism has been on a collision course with the environment, with consumer appetites draining the planet of natural resources and accelerating global warming. One view is that we need to change consumption in order to save the planet, but what if we approached it from the other way around? What if what's good for the consumer meets what's good for the environment?"
In 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of baby bottles that contain bisphenol A (BPA), a compound frequently found in plastics. The ban came in response to studies that found the chemical mimics estrogen and could harm brain and reproductive development in fetuses, infants and children. Since then store shelves have been lined with BPA-free bottles for babies and adults alike. Yet, recent research reveals that a common BPA replacement, bisphenol S (BPS), may be just as harmful.
British police raided an English country pub this week in search of a stolen wooden relic believed by some to be the Holy Grail - a cup from which, according to the Bible, Jesus is said to have drunk at his final meal before crucifixion.The Grail has captivated religious experts for centuries, spawning myriad theories about its location and inspiring numerous fictional accounts from the Middle Ages onwards.
Wrapping wound dressings around fingers and toes can be tricky, but for burn victims, guarding them against infection is critical. Today, scientists are reporting the development of novel, ultrathin coatings called nanosheets that can cling to the body's most difficult-to-protect contours and keep bacteria at bay.The researchers are speaking about their materials, which they've tested on mice, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Computer games could help in treating older people with depression who haven't been helped by antidepressant drugs or other treatments for the disorder, researchers say.In a study of 11 older patients, researchers found playing certain computer games was just as effective at reducing symptoms of depression as the "gold standard" antidepressant drug escitalopram. Moreover, those patients playing the computer games achieved results in just four weeks, compared to the 12 weeks it often takes with escitalopram (also known by its brand name, Lexapro).
Our universe may have emerged from a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe, propose a trio of Perimeter Institute researchers.The big bang poses a big question: if it was indeed the cataclysm that blasted our universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago, what sparked it?Three Perimeter Institute researchers have a new idea about what might have come before the big bang.
A research team working in Peru, with members from France, Peru and the U.S. has found a way to track the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) going back as far as ten thousand years. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team reports that their study of clam fossils has revealed clear patterns of the ENSO and report that it has not been increasing in intensity over the course of the Holocene as some have suggested.
During a four-year excavation of an Etruscan well at the ancient Italian settlement of Cetamura del Chianti, a team led by a archaeologist and art historian unearthed artifacts spanning more than 15 centuries of Etruscan, Roman and medieval civilization in Tuscany."They can provide a key to the history of wine in ancient Tuscany over a period from the third century B.C.E. to the first century C.E.," she said. "Their excellent preservation will allow for DNA testing as well as Carbon 14 dating."
After years of heated controversy over the rightful resting spot for King Richard III, officials have finally decided on the reinterment details for the remains of the 15th-century English ruler.His remains will be laid to rest on Thursday, March 26, 2015, in Leicester Cathedral during one of three services to honor the English king, the University of Leicester announced yesterday (Aug. 7).
OUR direct ancestors may have found their way out of Africa much earlier than we think. As new fossil remains emerge from China and south-east Asia, the traditional story of how we left Africa is being challenged.The accepted view is that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago and stayed there until 60,000 years ago, when they struck out through the Middle East and spread around the world.
The electrical power of the future just might be waiting in ashtrays across the world. Researchers in South Korea discovered that, with a one-step conversion process, cigarette filters turn into great supercapacitors. This is great news for anyone who wants new electronics that smell like Bourbon Street at 3 A.M.Supercapacitors are an electrical storage alternative to batteries.
This is the Oceansphere, a gigantic highly automated fish farm that will grow 1,000 tons of ahi and bluefin tuna from eggs to harvest size at a depth of 1,300 feet a few miles off the coast of Hawaii.There's lots to say here about the technology, which includes an automatic feeding system, water quality sensors, and thrusters that keep the sphere stationary, but let's all just marvel at the fact that the Fish Matrix is real and set to begin installation by the end of the year.
Or, at least, that you're in a duplicate town, house, and hospital. Reduplicative paramnesia victims believe that someone or something has constructed a duplicate structure, that looks exactly like the one they remember being in. What part of the brain can make you think you're on the set of your own life?
Astronauts putting their lives at risk on space missions because they are not getting enough sleep, a new study has found.A new study by Harvard Medical School has found many astronauts suffer serious levels of sleep deprivation that could be putting their lives in danger.
Alien planets could host life well into their old age if they have companion worlds tugging at them, researchers say.Such exoplanets could potentially be the longest-lived life-friendly areas in the universe, enduring for up to 10 trillion years, scientists added.
Receiving a Wi-Fi signal through a couple of thick walls is often a major headache, but researchers are trying to make the best of the signal's weakness. By measuring signal strength, researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara have figured out a way to use Wi-Fi to see through walls. Their method works by having two autonomous robots make their way around an unknown structure, with one sending a signal off to another.
IBM's latest brainlike computer chip may not be "smarter than a fifth-grader," but it can simulate millions of the brain's neurons and perform complex tasks using very little energy.Researchers for the computer hardware giant have developed a postage-stamp-size chip, equipped with 5.4 billion transistors, that is capable of simulating 1 million neurons and 256 million neural connections, or synapses. In addition to mimicking the brain's processing by themselves, individual chips can be connected together like tiles, similar to how circuits are linked in the human brain.
Pliable bricks that stick together like Lego could be the ultimate play set for advanced robotics.George Whitesides and his colleagues at Harvard University have developed a range of soft robots, from limbo-dancing squid to bendy tentacles, based on flexible plastics and powered by air. All of these had to be made with specialised moulds, and the team realised that they could be more creative if they used building blocks.
By day Arden Warner is a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, working on the next generation of particle accelerators. After hours, he has been devising a non-toxic way to clean up oil spills.It began in 2010. Warner and his wife were troubled by what they were hearing and seeing in the news about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Like many others around the country at the time, they wondered if the clean-up process could be improved technologically.
Could the world be approaching peak coal production?It sounds unlikely, given that demand for the black stuff has surged in the past decade. But Beijing is planning to ban coal burning in its six central districts from 2020. If energy-hungry China backs away from coal, the demise of the world's dirtiest fuel may be at hand.
In the "twilight zone" of the deep ocean, strange glowing sharks have evolved eyes that are adapted to see complex patterns of light in the dark, new research reveals.These bioluminescent sharks have a higher density of light-sensitive cells in their retinas, and some species have even developed other visual adaptations that help them see the glimmering lights they use to signal to each other, find prey and camouflage themselves in this region where little light penetrates.
Centuries of over-exploitation of whales for their meat and blubber has seen populations of most species plummet. But with no small amount of irony, the tables have turned with research discovering that we need whales for a healthy marine ecosystem, or at least their poop.Large areas of the Southern Ocean are known as high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) waters. This is where phytoplankton abundance is very low despite high concentrations of major nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate and silicate.
Sometimes nature comes up with elegant solutions to difficult problems, like how to gain weight and not get diabetes.Take, for instance, the grizzly bear. How does this 750-pound mammal survive long, lean winters? Well, it just gets really fat beforehand and then sleeps the hungry season away.
Extremely tiny newfound habitats hidden within oil could expand the potential for life in the universe, researchers say.Scientists have discovered microbes living in microscopic droplets of water inside a giant asphalt lake on Earth, suggesting that alien life could perhaps exist within ponds of sludge on distant landscapes such as Saturn's largest moon Titan.
The cloud that formed our solar system brewed for 30 million years before the birth of the Sun, a new study has found.The event coincided with the death of a giant red star, says one of the study's co-authors Professor John Lattanzio of Monash University in Melbourne.
After building a thriving society over centuries, one Native American society in the 12th century underwent a violent collapse that left the southwestern region of what is now the U.S. virtually depopulated.According to a report from WSU, the years between 1140 and 1180 A.D. were the bloodiest per capita years on North American soil, with an astonishing nine of ten corpses exhumed from the era showing signs of death by traumatic injuries to the head and arms.
Answers don't come easily when the mystery is 3,000 years old. Egyptologist Melinda Nelson-Hurst has spent two years researching the Egyptian artifacts that have resided at Tulane University since 1852. Her work is yielding surprising details about two mummies, two intact coffins and funerary materials that reside in Dinwiddie Hall.Nelson-Hurst, a research associate in the Department of Anthropology, and professor John Verano have written a scholarly paper on the topic for publication soon.
A Stone Age skull with what may be bits of brain clinging to it has been unearthed at an ancient hunter-gatherer site in Norway.The skeletal fragment, which is about 8,000 years old, may have once belonged to an infant or a small child, though it is so packed into the soil that researchers still haven't been able to remove most of it, said Gaute Reitan, an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, Norway, who is excavating the site in conjunction with the University of Oslo.
Neanderthals had the brains and guile to catch and eat birds, a skill many had assumed was beyond them. Bones found in Gibraltar suggest Neanderthals hunted wild pigeons, possibly by climbing steep cliffs to reach their nests.Related: Neanderthals ate barbecued pigeon
Almost every day the bodies wash ashore. Sleek, once-powerful swimmers now lie in the surf, wasted by disease and pocked by lesions. Sometimes fishermen spot the creatures in their final throes of illness, swimming erratically before stranding themselves on the beach. The death toll has now climbed to 1,441.But more than a year after the die-offs started to climb upward, scientists are still grasping for answers about the cause of the bottlenose dolphin deaths that have piled up since last summer along coastlines from New York State to Florida.
Bloodthirsty fictional zombies have become very popular in recent times, inhabiting everything from books, to TV shows, to movies, delighting and scaring many horror aficionados. Yet many people may not realize that in some cultures, zombies are considered to be very real. In these societies, zombies are not the stuff of imagination or fiction, but rather real flesh and blood creations that shamble through the shadows and our nightmares. However, how much truth is there behind these traditions of actual real-life zombies? Do real zombies actually exist somewhere out there in the dark corners of the world?
The human brain can judge the apparent trustworthiness of a face from a glimpse so fleeting, the person has no idea they have seen it, scientists claim.Researchers in the US found that brain activity changed in response to how trustworthy a face appeared to be when the face in question had not been consciously perceived.
Scientists from Australia and France have shown that electromagnetic stimulation can alter brain organization, which may make your brain work better. In a new study, the researchers demonstrated that weak sequential electromagnetic pulses (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation -- or rTMS) on mice can shift abnormal neural connections to more normal locations.
Tortoises have learned how to use touchscreens as part of a study which aimed to teach the animals navigational techniques. The brain structure of reptiles is very different to that of mammals, which use the hippocampus for spatial navigation.
Scientists have chosen the most fleeting of mediums for their groundbreaking work on biomimicry: They've changed the color of butterfly wings. In so doing, they produced the first structural color change in an animal by influencing evolution. The discovery may have implications for physicists and engineers trying to use evolutionary principles in the design of new materials and devices.
The first dinosaur found in Venezuela is one of the world's oldest, living right after the major extinction event at the end of the Triassic Period.The 200-million-year-old dinosaur, described in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has been named Laquintasaura venezuelae. The name was inspired by where it was discovered, the La Quinta Formation in Tachira State, Venezuela.
Scientists at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia are quite literally cleaning the skeletons out of their closets. Museum staff recently rediscovered a 6,500-year- old human skeleton that's been boxed up in the basement for 85 years.Tucked away in a storeroom, the wooden box had no identifying numbers or catalog card. But a recent effort to digitalize some of the museum's old records brought forth new information about the mysterious box's history and the skeleton, nicknamed "Noah," inside.
The world's largest solar-powered boat has arrived in southern Greece to participate in an ambitious underwater survey that will seek traces of what could be one of the oldest human settlements in Europe.The Swiss-Greek project starts next week and archaeologists hope it will shed new light on how the first farming communities spread through the continent. The area was once dry land and archaeologists operating off the MS Turanor PlanetSolar hope it may contain sunken remains of buildings from Neolithic times, when farming started, about 9,000 years ago.
It would be a great premise for a Hollywood apocalyptic disaster thriller. Imagine that after several years of devastating drought, California's supply of water gradually vanished. As the reservoirs went bone dry, in Los Angeles water would stop flowing from faucets, while in California's Central Valley, crops would wither as irrigation ceased.Related: 40 Million People Depend on the Colorado River. Now It's Drying Up.
Could it interfere with the "good" bacteria in your gut?The chlorination of municipal tap water is considered one of the 20th century's best public health ideas. The American Water Works Association credits the practice with increasing life expectancy by 50 percent over the past century by virtually eliminating water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever and cholera. But chlorine in drinking water can cause health risks of its own.
A spicy chemical may be able to slow down or reduce gut tumors, according to a recent study.Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine found that dietary capsaicin - the active ingredient in chili peppers - produces chronic activation of a receptor on cells lining the intestines of mice, triggering a reaction that ultimately reduces the risk of colorectal tumors.
A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to antidepressant medications, and new research suggests that acupuncture could be a promising option. One new study found the traditional Chinese practice to be as effective as antidepressants, and a different study found that acupuncture may help treat the medications' side effects.
A new technology that harnesses the power of ocean currents could provide a clean and limitless form of renewable energy, some scientists say.A group of scientists and engineers who describe themselves as "nerds in wetsuits and flippers" has launched a crowdfunding campaign, called Crowd Energy, to do just that. Their idea is to use giant underwater turbines to capture the energy from deep-ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida.
It's not just craters purportedly dug by aliens in Russia, it's also megaslumps, ice that burns and drunken trees. The ongoing meltdown of the permanently frozen ground that covers nearly a quarter of land in the Northern Hemisphere has caused a host of surprising arctic phenomena.Temperatures across the Arctic are warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the globe, largely due to the reduction in the amount of sunlight reflecting off of white, snow-covered ground.
After a journey that has lasted a decade, Europe's Rosetta spacecraft is now on its final approach to a comet.The tiny probe is set to rendezvous in a few hours with one of the strangest objects in the solar system.
Two years ago this week, much of the world held its breath as a rocket-powered sky crane lowered NASA's huge Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars on cables.The bold and unprecedented maneuver worked on the night of Aug. 5, 2012, eliciting high fives and raucous cheers at mission control at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as well as at viewing parties around the globe.
Playing video games for less than an hour a day can have a positive influence on kids' mental health, a new study suggests.A researcher in the United Kingdom found that young people ages 10 to 15 who spent less than an hour a day playing electronic games were better adjusted psychologically than boys and girls who spent no time playing.Related: A little video game-playing linked with better-adjusted children
The happiness of over 18,000 people worldwide has been predicted by a mathematical equation developed by researchers at UCL, with results showing that moment-to-moment happiness reflects not just how well things are going, but whether things are going better than expected.The new equation accurately predicts exactly how happy people will say they are from moment to moment based on recent events, such as the rewards they receive and the expectations they have during a decision-making task.
Researchers have developed a technique for generating acoustic bottles in open air that can bend the paths of sound waves along prescribed convex trajectories. These self-bending bottle beams hold promise for ultrasonic imaging and therapy, and acoustic cloaking, levitation and particle manipulation.
Well, this is a bit creepy: Researchers have shown that they can recover various types of audio, including human speech, by filming and analyzing the tiny vibrations that sound creates in objects nearby. In one example, a person recited words, and this sound vibrated a nearby bag of potato chips. The researchers filmed the bag of chips with a high-speed camera, through sound-proof glass, and were then able to reconstruct what the person was saying with relatively good quality--you can make out the words, and recognize the person's voice.
Japan is planning to launch a military space force by 2019 that would initially be tasked with protecting satellites from dangerous debris orbiting the Earth, a report said.The move is aimed at strengthening Japan-US cooperation in space, and comes after the countries pledged to boost joint work on monitoring space debris, Kyodo news agency said Sunday.
Horses use a silent form of communication that involves moving, and paying attention to, eyes and ears, a new study has found.The research, published in the journal Current Biology, shows how animal ears don't just move to better hear sounds. The movements have meaning to other horses."Most significantly, our results demonstrate that animals with large, mobile ears can use these as a visual cue to attention," co-authors Jennifer Wathan and Karen McComb wrote.
A 2,100-year-old mausoleum built for a king named Liu Fei has been discovered in modern-day Xuyi County in Jiangsu, China, archaeologists report.Liu Fei died in 128 B.C. during the 26th year of his rule over a kingdom named Jiangdu, which was part of the Chinese empire.
In October 2004, excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded what was called "the most important find in human evolution for 100 years." Its discoverers dubbed the find Homo floresiensis, a name suggesting a previously unknown species of human.No substantial new bone discoveries have been made in the cave since the finding of LB1.
A golden bat from Bolivia has been described as a new species by scientists.Myotis midastactus had previously been classified as another bat found in South America called Myotis simus.But examination of a collection of museum specimens suggested the existence of a different species, thought to live only in Bolivia.
Is it a large hybrid cat, leopard or an old dog with an off gait? Even more intriguing, could it be -- as some experts are speculating -- an African lioness?Grainy surveillance footage of the large animal strolling across a driveway late at night is fast becoming Norwalk's version of Bigfoot.
Here's some research which shows that, while superstitious behavior won't stop events from happening, it does have practical value to people. It won't stop bad things from happening to you - but it may stop you from feeling bad things.Would you hop on a free flight to Aruba? I'm guessing you would. Now, what if that flight were contingent on a coin toss? If the coin comes up heads, you will be on the plane. If the coin comes up tails, someone else gets your seat. Some of you are now more reluctant to get on that plane.
Researchers at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine conducted a study to find out why a small percentage of people appear to only need six hours of sleep whereas most everyone else needs between eight and nine hours for optimal functioning during the day.They worked with 100 pairs of twins and identified a gene mutation that allows one not only to function on less sleep but also to experience fewer effects of sleep deprivation even after an all-nighter.
Perovskite solar cells, considered one of the major scientific breakthroughs of recent years, could be made available in a spray can after the product was developed by scientists at the University of Sheffield.This means that solar cells could be applied to almost anything; an electric car could generate energy from its coat of perovskite solar paint.
Nasa is a major player in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion.
Thirty years ago, a peat cutter working in the Cheshire countryside spotted what he thought was a piece of wood trundling along a conveyor belt."Conserved for nearly 2,000 years by the acidic, anaerobic conditions, it was possible to make out his facial features, a distinctive furrowed brow with close-cropped hair and beard," she said."For the first time, it was possible to see the face of a person from Britain's prehistoric past.".
For over a century, researchers failed to explain how large stone slabs were moving across a dried lake in America's Death Valley, seemingly with no help. Here's how one man finally solved the mystery.Located above the northwestern side of Death Valley in Eastern California's Mojave Desert, an exceptionally flat dried lake called Racetrack Playa contains a peculiar phenomenon. Dozens of large stone stabs made of dolomite and syenite - often weighing as much as 318 kilograms - move across the cracked mud, leaving a series of smooth trails behind them.
Researchers have shown that BMP and WNT proteins are the so-called 'Turing molecules' for creating embryonic fingers. Findings explain why polydactyly -- the development of extra fingers or toes -- is relatively common in humans, affecting up to one in 500 births, and confirms a fundamental theory first proposed by the founding father of computer science, Alan Turing, back in 1952.
A recent study shows that the emission is dominated by the local hot bubble of gas -- 1 million degrees -- with, at most, 40 percent of emission originating within the solar system. The findings should put to rest the disagreement about the origin of the X-ray emission and confirm the existence of the local hot bubble.
Scientists have recently gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. The new observations of the small-scale extremely hot temperatures are consistent with only one current theory: something called nanoflares -- a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected -- provide the mysterious extra heat.
Earth and Mercury are both rocky planets with iron cores, but Mercury's interior differs from Earth's in a way that explains why the planet has such a bizarre magnetic field, UCLA planetary physicists and colleagues report. Measurements from NASA's Messenger spacecraft have revealed that Mercury's magnetic field is approximately three times stronger at its northern hemisphere than its southern one. In the current research, scientists have created a model to show how the dynamics of Mercury's core contribute to this unusual phenomenon. Mercury's peculiar magnetic field provides evidence that iron turns from a liquid to a solid at the core's outer boundary, say the scientists.
The icy Saturn moon Enceladus sports at least 101 geysers, which reach all the way down to the satellite's subsurface ocean, new research suggests.Scientists mapped out 101 geysers of water vapor and ice near Enceladus' south pole after analyzing images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft over a period of nearly seven years. This effort also helped astronomers trace the eruptions to their source, researchers said.
Europe is getting out of the outer space delivery business. The European Space Agency's final uncrewed Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is set to blast off tonight from Kourou, French Guiana, to the International Space Station. But lessons learned from operating the craft could help astronauts return to the moon.The final ATV mission will deliver a variety of experiments along with food, fuel and other supplies.
Big Bertha was all set to dig a nearly two-mile tunnel in Seattle, but just 1,000 feet into her journey she hit a mysterious object that halted her progress. Now, crews are beginning the process of rescuing her, in what could be the world's largest recovery mission.The New York Times has an in-depth account of exactly what needs to happen to get Bertha digging again, and it's a massive undertaking.
A talking robot assembled from household odds and ends is hitchhiking thousands of kilometers across Canada this summer as part of a social experiment to see if those of its kind can trust humans.Society is "usually concerned with whether we can trust robots," Frauke Zeller, co-creator of the "hitchBot," told AFP.
Mosul has long been known for its religious diversity. Iraq's second largest city has been home to Persians, Arabs, Turks, and Christians of all denominations since it was first believed to have been settled in 6000 B.C. The ruins of Ninevah, one of the greatest cities in antiquity and former seat of the Assyrian Empire, lie within its modern city limits.Related: Isis militants 'seize Iraq monastery and expel monks'
Chemotherapy will be obsolete within 20 years, scientists have predicted after launching a landmark project to map 100,000 genomes to find the genes responsible for cancer and rare diseases.By the time children born today reach adulthood, invasive drugs and their devastating side-effects, will have been replaced by sophisticated medicines that can fix individual faulty genes, according to those behind the project.
Even as he conquered rival kingdoms to create the first united Chinese empire in 221 B.C., China's First Emperor Qin Shihuang ordered the building of a glorious underground palace complex, mirroring his imperial capital near present-day Xi'an, that would last for an eternity.To protect his underworld palaces, the First Emperor issued instructions that his imperial guard be replicated, down to the finest details, in red-brown terracotta clay, poised to do battle.
Forget emperor penguins, say hello to the colossus penguin. Newly unearthed fossils have revealed that Antarctica was once home to the biggest species of penguin ever discovered. It was 2 metres long and weighed a hefty 115 kilograms.Palaeeudyptes klekowskii lived 37 to 40 million years ago.