Newsdesk Archive
How much sleep do you really need?Experts generally recommend seven to nine hours a night for healthy adults. Sleep scientists say new guidelines are needed to take into account an abundance of recent research in the field and to reflect that Americans are on average sleeping less than they did in the past.
Treating depression should always be of the utmost importance because of its tendency to drive some people to consider suicide. But for people with bipolar disorder, who experience extreme highs and lows more severe than the typical mood swings of others, getting treatment becomes even more urgent. They need to feel better fast.
In earlier times, when English-speaking people wanted to get down and dirty, they might say they were playing at couch quail, engage in pup-noddy, make butter with one's tale, or ride a dragon upon Saint George. Want to brush up on your historical sexy slang? These charts can help.
An ancient skeleton unearthed in Israel may contain the oldest evidence of brain damage in a modern human.The child, who lived about 100,000 years ago, survived head trauma for several years, but suffered from permanent brain damage as a result, new 3D imaging reveals.Given the brain damage, the child was likely unable to care for himself or herself, so people must have spent years looking after the little boy or girl.
Scientists have found the fossilized remains of the brain of the world's earliest known predators, from a time when life teemed in the oceans but had not yet colonized the land. The discovery reveals a brain much simpler than those known in some of the animal's prey and helps answer questions surrounding the evolution of arthropods.
The collective noun is a terror of tyrannosaurs: a pack of the prehistoric predators, moving and hunting in numbers, for prey that faced the fight of its life.That tyrannosaurs might have hunted in groups has long been debated by dinosaur experts, but with so little to go on, the prospect has remained firmly in the realm of speculation.
The seafaring empire of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean once spanned more than a thousand miles, serving as the hub through which distant settlements exchanged artifacts and ideas, researchers say.This finding could help explain the rise of monumental structures throughout the Pacific starting about 700 years ago, scientists added.
Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds. By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for gases like oxygen and methane that only coexist if replenished by life. But those gases come from simple life forms like microbes. What about advanced civilizations? Would they leave any detectable signs?They might, if they spew industrial pollution into the atmosphere.
Scientists searching for planets where E.T. may live have homed in on places where liquid water could exist. But a livable world may require not just water, but oceans, a new study suggests.A team of scientists created a computer simulation of ocean circulation on a hypothetical Earth-like planet. The findings show that oceans play a vital role in establishing a habitable and stable climate, according to the study published Sunday (July 20) in the journal Astrobiology.
When it comes to ancient pyramids, the massive structures erected by the Egyptians on the Giza Plateau receive much of the focus. But on the other side of the world, at Caral in Peru, lies another pyramid complex of similar antiquity, constructed by the Norte Chico people ca. 2600-2000 BCE. The fact that people on both sides of the planet happened to build pyramids at the same time in history is, we are told, a coincidence...your mileage may vary!
Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth, and always has been, with new research showing the previous "mega-lake theory" holds no water.Researchers from The University of Queensland have refuted previous theories that the Victoria Valley in Antarctica's Trans-Antarctic Mountains was filled with a mega glacial lake between 20,000 and 8000 years ago.
Wine lovers might treasure the oaky, full-bodied taste of a cabernet sauvignon or the light and fruity aroma of a pinot grigio. But if the bottle is stopped with a low-quality cork, they can kiss that meticulously cultivated flavor goodbye.Many people may only worry about corks when it's time to pop the Champagne, but some experts are worried about wine cork quality, which has been mysteriously in decline for almost 20 years.
According to research conducted by the University of Cincinnati, the fuzzy relatives of modern-day elephants liked living in Greater Cincinnati long before it became the trendy hot spot it is today- at the end of the last ice age. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans enjoyed the area to such an extent that they probably resided there year round and were not the nomadic migrants as previously thought.
For now, it seems like a novelty - cars that can operate independently of human control, safely cruising down streets thanks to an array of sensors and pinpoint GPS navigation.But if the technology avoids getting crushed by government regulators and product liability lawsuits, it could prompt a cultural shift similar to the early 20th century move away from horses as the primary means of transportation.
Scientists say they have turned thin air into an 'optical fibre' that can transmit and amplify light signals without the need for any cables.In a proof-of-principle experiment they created an "air waveguide" that could one day be used as an instantaneous optical fibre to any point on earth, or even into space.
The development of passenger aircraft over the past century mirrors the evolution of flying animals, and shows that evolution is not just a biological phenomenon, according to a paper published today in the Journal of Applied Physics.Adrian Bejan, a mechanical engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, argues that evolution is a physical phenomenon, with changes in animals driven by physical laws. In the case of birds, the factors include aerodynamics.
A photograph showing a strange, cigar-shaped object over the top of Mount Washington showed what appeared to be an alien spacecraft - in 1870.Debate has reignited this week over what may be among the oldest evidence of alien visitors to our world.The picture, taken with a stereo photography camera (used at the time to create images with an illusion of depth, when viewed through a special stereoscope) is thought to be near-impossible to fake or manipulate.
The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved. The researchers believe the answer may be hidden in some currently unknown physical process that governs how gas flows in the universe, although, as yet, there is no obvious mechanism that can guide dwarf galaxies into narrow planes.
Sunswift, a team of engineering students from the University of New South Wales, designed and built a car that holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest solar-powered vehicle. In 2011, that car reached a top speed of 88 km/h (55 mph). The team hopes that its newest vehicle, eVe, will break a 20-year-old electric vehicle record for the highest average speed over a 500 km (310 mi) distance.
Within the next five years, using mobile devices simply for communication will seem outdated. The Internet of Things (IoT) will allow consumers to interact with nearly every appliance and device they own. Your refrigerator will let you know when you're running low on milk, your dishwasher will inform you when it's ready to be emptied. It's possible that you will be getting more text messages from your devices than from human beings.
In the most advanced prosthetics--such as this crazy mind-controlled robotic arm--electronic hardware interfaces directly with nerves and muscles in the human body. But getting living tissue to play nice with a circuit board is anything but easy, for a number of reasons. One fundamental obstacle you may not have considered: electronics send signals via negatively charged electrons, whereas many of the communications carried out in living tissues take place through the movement of positively-charged particles, such as calcium and potassium ions.
Some seals prefer to forage for food at offshore wind farms, a study suggests. Researchers found a proportion of GPS tagged harbour seals repeatedly visited wind turbines in the North Sea.They deduced the mammals were attracted to these structures - which may act as artificial reefs - to hunt for prey.
Medieval graffiti of straw kings, pentagrams, crosses, ships and "demon traps" have been offering a tantalising glimpse into England's past. What do the pictures reveal about life in the Middle Ages?A project to record the graffiti, which began in Norfolk, has now been rolled out to other areas and is gradually spreading across England.
During ongoing excavations in northern Sudan, Polish archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Poznań, have discovered the remains of a settlement estimated to 70,000 years old. This find, according to the researchers, seems to contradict the previously held belief that the construction of permanent structures was associated with the so-called Great Exodus from Africa and occupation of the colder regions of Europe and Asia.
A Dutch cyclist, riding for the Terrengganu team in Malaysia, has escaped death twice after being scheduled to fly on both doomed Malaysian Airline flights but changing his plans at the last minute.Maarten de Jonge, 29, born in the Dutch town of Oldenzaal according to his website, was planning to travel back to Kuala Lumpur on flight MH17 from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on July 17 after visiting his home country to participate in national championships.
Sverker Johansson could be the most prolific author you've never heard of.Volunteering his time over the past seven years publishing to Wikipedia, the 53-year-old Swede can take credit for 2.7 million articles, or 8.5% of the entire collection, according to Wikimedia analytics, which measures the site's traffic. His stats far outpace any other user, the group says.
Researchers have made an important step in the race to discover whether other planets could develop and sustain life. New research shows the vital role of oceans in moderating climate on Earth-like planets Until now, computer simulations of habitable climates on Earth-like planets have focused on their atmospheres. But the presence of oceans is vital for optimal climate stability and habitability.
The Sea of Tranquility remains tranquil today, but it may not always be so. The site, where Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon 45 years ago this Sunday, has apparently been undisturbed since then. But a growing number of countries, including China and India, are planning moon missions, and new commercial space players may make lunar landings well. Some historians and archaeologists want the areas protected from visitors, both human and robotic, but there is no legal framework for safeguarding anything on the moon.
California businessman Russ George made headlines in 2012 when he, in cooperation with a group from a Native Canadian community, dumped more than 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific, some 200 miles off shore. The iron then triggered a bloom of plankton. He apparently didn't ask anybody's permission, violated two United Nations conventions, and was widely condemned for taking on such a large project, a type of geoengineering, to alter the environment as he saw fit.
There are a whole lot of unsavory lifestyles in the animal kingdom. The pearlfish has to swim up sea cucumber butts to escape predation. All manner of birds must fly thousands and thousands of miles each year with the change of the seasons. And hyenas have to deal with giving birth through their six-inch-long clitorises.But no lifestyle is as lowly as that of the dung beetle, which spends its days digging through turds, molding the stuff into balls, and rolling them around.
STICK an electrode in the ground, pump electrons down it, and they will come: living cells that eat electricity. We have known bacteria to survive on a variety of energy sources, but none as weird as this. Think of Frankenstein's monster, brought to life by galvanic energy, except these "electric bacteria" are very real and are popping up all over the place.
Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses.The married virologists at Aix-Marseille University had made a career of it. But pithovirus, which they discovered in 2013 in a sample of Siberian dirt that had been frozen for more than 30,000 years, was more bizarre than the pair had ever imagined a virus could be.
At a prehistoric site called Al Khiday, set along the White Nile in Central Sudan, archaeologist have uncovered evidence that shows prehistoric inhabitants there consumed significant quantities of a plant that contains both nutritional and medicinal qualities.
A long-standing debate about the source of the asteroid that impacted the Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs has been put to rest thanks to the Chelyabinsk meteorite that disintegrated over Russia in February 2013, a new paper published in the journal Icarus shows.Astronomers have debated whether the dinosaur killer was linked to the breakup of a large asteroid forming the Baptistina Asteroid Family (BAF) beyond Mars, some of which ended up on Earth-crossing orbits.
Images from the Mars rover Curiosity show ancient fossilized Earth-like soils that suggest the possibility of microbial life.The data and images gathered at the bottom of the Gale impact crater date to some 3.7 billion years ago and provide evidence that Mars was once a much warmer and wetter place.
Under its icy crust, Jupiter's moon Europa could harbor a vast ocean of potentially life-supporting liquid water, and NASA has issued a call for proposals for science instruments for mission that aims to study the mysterious moon like never before.Scientists have found evidence of giant waterspouts taller than Mount Everest on Europa and think the moon could hold a potentially habitable ocean with more water than all of Earth's oceans.
The world's largest particle collider has given us our first glimpse of the Higgs boson doing its job.For 50 years, the Higgs boson was the final missing piece in the standard model of particle physics, which elegantly predicts how fundamental particles and forces interact. The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, was one of the detectors that helped discover the Higgs in 2012.
The mystery behind the movements of flocking starlings could be explained by the areas of light and dark created as they fly, new research suggests.The research, conducted by the University of Warwick and published in the journal PNAS, found that flocking starlings aim to maintain an optimum density at which they can gather data on their surroundings. This occurs when they can see light through the flock at many angles, a state known as marginal opacity. The subsequent pattern of light and dark, formed as the birds attempt to achieve the necessary density, is what provides vital information to individual birds within the flock.
A kitty poop parasite has led to a treatment that wipes out cancer in lab tests, including aggressive melanoma and ovarian cancer, preliminary studies have found.By itself, the single-celled parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, is bad news because it can cause illness in infected people and cats. It thrives in the intestines of cats and then comes out the other end.
A new study, involving roundworms, shows that starvation induces specific changes in so-called small RNAs and that these changes are inherited through at least three consecutive generations, apparently without any DNA involvement.
Some folk stories and superstitions hold that a full moon affects people's sleep, and new research lends support to this idea.In the study, researchers found that people slept for 20 to 25 minutes less on average on nights with a full moon, compared with how long they slept on nights with a quarter moon.
Scientists may finally have an answer for why members of a family in a remote region of Turkey use both their hands and feet to walk.Related: Family That Walks On All Fours Not A Product Of 'Reverse Evolution'
Our sun has gone quiet. Almost too quiet.A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum -- the time in the sun's 11-year cycle when it is the most active.But now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight.
LIGHT is in crisis. The universe is far brighter than it should be based on the number of light-emitting objects we can find, a cosmic accounting problem that has astronomers baffled."Something is very wrong," says Juna Kollmeier at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.
Scientists are working to bring the multiverse hypothesis, which to some sounds like a fanciful tale, firmly into the realm of testable science. Never mind the Big Bang; in the beginning was the vacuum. The vacuum simmered with energy (variously called dark energy, vacuum energy, the inflation field, or the Higgs field). Like water in a pot, this high energy began to evaporate -- bubbles formed.
Build it and they will come. That was the message from the UK Space Agency today as it revealed ambitious plans to build a spaceport somewhere in the UK before 2018. However, no commercial space company has yet demonstrated a spaceplane that is capable of carrying paying passengers.The plan is to build a spaceport at a remote site where regular airline traffic is low.
Scientists are trying to determine what happens to matter when it is exposed to the immense pressures at the center of gas giant planets and stars. And to help them figure it out, they have hit a tiny sliver of a diamond with the largest laser system on Earth."The goal of the shots is to try and create planetary core conditions on Earth," said Ray Smith, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "And by that I mean very high pressure and relatively low temperature.".
GOT an overflowing wastepaper basket? Now there's a way to use unwanted printouts to store energy.Traditional batteries use chemical reactions to store large amounts of energy, but they take time to charge. Capacitors store it in an electric field, which means they can charge and release energy quickly. But they can only hold small amounts at a time.
The excavation at Ipplepen, run by the University of Exeter, is back on site following the discovery of a complex series of archaeological features thought to be part of the largest Romano-British settlement in Devon outside of Exeter.Wheel ruts found in the newly excavated road surface are thought to be like those at Pompeii caused by carts being driven over them. This is cause for excitement according to archaeologist Danielle Wootton, the Devon Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
A spectacularly well-preserved sea monster that once prowled the oceans during the Cambrian Period has been unearthed in China.The 520-million-year-old creature, one of the first predators of its day, sported compound eyes, body armor and two spiky claws for grabbing prey.
Cast into northern European wetlands, bog bodies have long appeared as opaque to archaeologists as their dark and watery graves. But new clues are coming in the centuries-old mystery of their origins.Over 500 Iron Age bog bodies and skeletons dating to between 800 B.C. and A.D. 200 have been discovered in Denmark alone, with more unearthed in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Feeding the world sustainably is a global challenge. But reforming food production in only a few regions could increase crop yields enough to feed an extra 3 billion people and reduce damage to the environment, researchers report today in Science.Ecologist Paul West of the University of Minnesota in St Paul and his colleagues used comprehensive calculations based on a cornucopia of disparate data and methods to estimate calories produced, used and wasted around the world.
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have found a successful way of identifying bird sounds from large audio collections, which could be useful for expert and amateur bird-watchers alike.The analysis used recordings of individual birds and of dawn choruses to identify characteristics of bird sounds. It took advantage of large datasets of sound recordings provided by the British Library Sound Archive, and online sources such as the Dutch archive called Xeno Canto.
A baby's first words may seem spur of the moment, but really, the little ones have practiced their "Mamas" and "Dadas" for months in their minds.Using what looks like a hair dryer from Mars, researchers from the University of Washington have taken the most precise peeks yet into the fireworks display of neural activity that occurs when infants listen to people speak.
Whenever we perceive something, we make an instant judgement on whether what we see, hear, taste, smell or feel is positive or negative. This subjective colouring of our perceptions is such a pervasive aspect of human experience that we are almost unable to sense anything without automatically valuing it according to its pleasantness or unpleasantness. Taking in the world this way means that even when we observe the same object or situation, we each form a unique and personal impression of it.
One of the central plot devices in Frank Herbert's 1965 science-fiction epic Dune is melange - colloquially known as 'spice' - a naturally-occurring drug found only on the planet Arrakis which has numerous positive effects, including heightened awareness, life extension, and prescience. These effects make it the most important commodity in the cosmos, especially as the prescience allows for faster-than-light interstellar starship navigation (and thus trade) by the 'Guild Navigators'.
Soil deep in a crater dating to some 3.7 billion years ago contains evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter, saysUniversity of Oregon geologist Gregory Retallack, based on images and data captured by the rover Curiosity.NASA rovers have shown Martian landscapes littered with loose rocks from impacts or layered by catastrophic floods, rather than the smooth contours of soils that soften landscapes on Earth.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom's famous Simulation Argument suggests it's highly probable that we live inside a supercomputer. But one philosopher takes this hypothesis to task, arguing in a new paper that there are other post-human scenarios that need to be taken into account.Before we get started, it's important to note that this discussion is limited to the philosophical arguments in support of the simulation hypothesis. But the day is coming when physicists may be able to prove or disprove it more scientifically.
Scientists running the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful "atom smasher," report the first evidence of a process that can be used to test the mechanism by which the recently discovered Higgs particle imparts mass to other fundamental particles.
What is it with Russia and explosive events of cosmic origins? The 1908 Tunguska Explosion, the Chelyabinsk bolide of February 2013, and now this: an enormous 80-meter wide crater discovered in the Yamal peninsula in northern Siberia!To be fair, this crater is not currently thought to be from a meteorite impact but rather an eruption from below, possibly the result of a rapid release of gas trapped in what was once frozen permafrost.
Mount Fuji, or Fujisan as it is known in Japanese, is the highest point on the archipelago (rising to 3,776 metres) and the national emblem, immortalised in countless etchings. In June last year Unesco added it to the World Heritage list as a "sacred place and source of artistic inspiration". But it is still an active volcano, standing at the junction between the Pacific, Eurasian and Philippine tectonic plates. Though it has rarely stirred in recorded history, it is still potentially explosive.
A new global survey of human development finds people have settled more of the Earth than previously estimated, according to researchers with the German Remote Sensing Data Center."The number and proportion of human settlements in many areas in the world has been significantly underestimated so far," said Thomas Esch, a scientist with the Remote Sensing Data Center, which is part of the German Aerospace Center.
Talking to animals, including baby human animals, is a waste of time. They don't know what you're saying. But there has been an experiment that proves certain animals they do know what language you're saying it in.Scientists at the University of Barcelona have figured out that animals can distinguish between different human languages. How did they do this?.
Dolphin attacks on porpoises in Cardigan Bay have left marine scientists scratching their heads.Three out of four attacks by bottlenose dolphins noted in recent weeks by volunteers from New Quay-based Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre were fatal.
The mysterious spotted green pigeon was a relative of the dodo, according to scientists who have examined its genetic make-up. The authors say their results support a theory that both birds are descended from 'island hopping' ancestors.The only known example of the spotted green pigeon is the Liverpool pigeon, which is currently in the World Museum, Liverpool. The only other known specimen has been lost, and there are no records of the bird in the wild.
Neuroscientists from the University of Texas have used genetic engineering to create worms incapable of getting drunk no matter how much alcohol they ingest.The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience this week, could be used to create drugs that treat the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and perhaps one day block intoxication altogether in humans.
Fifty-five million years ago, when scientists believe the Earth was in a near-runaway state, dangerously overheated by greenhouse gases, the Arctic Ocean was also a very different place. It was a large lake, connected to the greater oceans by one primary opening: the Turgay Sea.When this channel closed or was blocked nearly 50 million years ago, the enclosed body of water became the perfect habitat for a small-leaved fern called Azolla. Imagine the Arctic like the Dead Sea of today: It was a hot lake that had become stratified, suffering from a lack of exchange with outside waters. That meant its waters were loaded with excess nutrients.
Animals have used the same technique to search for food that's in short supply for at least 50 million years, a study suggests.Researchers analysed fossilised Eocene-era sea urchin trails from northern Spain and found the tracks reflect a search pattern still used by a huge range of creatures today.But this is the first example of extinct animals using such a strategy.
A wall painting, dating back over 4,300 years, has been discovered in a tomb located just east of the Great Pyramid of Giza.The painting shows vivid scenes of life, including boats sailing south on the Nile River, a bird hunting trip in a marsh and a man named Perseneb who's shown with his wife and dog.
A group calling themselves biohackers, from the San Francisco Bay area has created an Indiegogo project called "Real Vegan Cheese!" Their goal is to create cheese that is every bit as good as that made from mammalian milk, without using the mammal.Those who adhere to veganism eschew anything made from animal parts, thus in addition to avoiding eating meat, they also stay away from dairy products such as cheese. Many people have tried to create a palatable substitute, but most would agree, the results have been less than satisfactory.
Europe's Rosetta probe has acquired some sensational new images of the comet it is chasing through space.The pictures show that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko appears to be not one but two objects joined together. It is what scientists call a "contact binary".How the comet came to take this form is unknown.
NASA says it's setting aside $25 million for designing scientific instruments to address questions about the habitability of Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. Europa is thought to have a hidden ocean that could sustain life. The agency's announcement of opportunity calls for scientists to propose experiments for a Europa probe that could be launched in the 2020s. Next year, about 20 proposals will be chosen to receive shares of the $25 million for further study.
Chhattisgarh state department of archaeology and culture plans to seek help from Nasa and Isro for research on 10,000-year-old rock paintings depicting aliens and UFOs in Charama region in Kanker district in tribal Bastar region."The findings suggest that humans in prehistoric times may have seen or imagined beings from other planets which still create curiosity among people and researchers."
Political favoritism can quite literally be seen from space, according to a new study that finds the home regions of leaders become brighter at night after the person comes to power.The findings apply mostly to countries with weak political institutions and limited public education. One prominent example was Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during the reign of Mobuto Sese Seko. Mobuto, who was president between 1971 and 1997, was born near the small town of Gbadolite. While he was in power, the town flourished.
The world will get its first good look at Pluto a little more than a year from now, possibly reigniting the debate over the object's planetary status.In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons probe will fly by frigid and faraway Pluto, which was demoted to "dwarf planet" in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union. (Despite the ruling, many scientists still regard Pluto as a planet).
One of the world's deepest earthquakes was also a rare supersonic quake, upending ideas about where these unusual earthquakes strike.Only six supersonic (or supershear) earthquakes have ever been identified, all in the last 15 years. Until now, they all showed similar features, occurring relatively near the Earth's surface and on the same kind of fault. But last year, a remarkably super-fast and super-deep earthquake hit below Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, breaking the pattern.
People tend to choose friends that are genetically similar to themselves, so much so that a person's social circle could be made up of their fourth cousins, scientists say.The research is based on the Framingham Heart Study in the northeastern US state of Massachusetts, which contains both extensive genetic detail - 1.5 million markers - and information about friends and connections.
The website of Scientific American currently has an excellent feature and interview with 'maverick biologist' Rupert Sheldrake, via science writer John Horgan. Though he considers himself a 'psi skeptic', Horgan's piece is warm and open-minded (we find out that Sheldrake does a good impression of his late friend, Terence McKenna) - very pleasant to see these 'heretical' topics discussed in such a convivial manner for a change.
When the going gets tough, the tough get... prejudicedPeople perceive race differently during an economic downturn, a recent study suggests, and become subconsciously more prejudiced against dark-skinned people when times are tight.
No jeweler on the planet can beat the string of pearls spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope: The merger of two elliptical galaxies has created a "necklace" of infant stars stretching for 100,000 light-years.Everything about this picture is big: The stellar string would stretch from one end of our Milky Way galaxy to the other, between two galaxies that are both three times wider than our own. The galaxies are contained in a cluster known as SDSS J1531+3414, a formation that's so massive its gravitation field bends the images of background galaxies into bluish arcs.
How does your skin smell? Pretty well, as it turns out, thanks to receptors dotted all over you. What's more, they could help you heal.There are more than 350 types of olfactory receptors in the nose, tuned to different scents. About 150 are also found in internal tissues such as those of the heart, liver and gut, but they are hard to study.
Google Glass has been hacked so that it can be controlled by brainwaves.By combining the smart glasses with an electroencephalography (EEG) headset, the software makes it possible to take a picture without moving a muscle.
The discovery of buckyballs -- soccer-ball-shaped molecules of carbon -- helped usher in the nanotechnology era. Now, researchers have shown that boron, carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, can form a cage-like molecule similar to the buckyball. Until now, such a boron structure had only been a theoretical speculation. The researchers dubbed their new-found nanostructure 'borospherene.'
Biophysics researchers at the University of Michigan have used short pulses of light to peer into the mechanics of photosynthesis and illuminate the role that molecule vibrations play in the energy conversion process that powers life on our planet.The findings could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. They also inject new evidence into an ongoing "quantum biology" debate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient.
Archaeologists in Peru say they have unearthed the previously unknown tomb of a nobleman from a pre-Inca civilization known as the Moche. The tomb contained the remains of an adult male, plus artifacts indicating the man's elite status, according to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio.Among the most intriguing artifacts are ornamental metal pieces fashioned to look like feline paws with claws.
Scientists are investigating what may be the oldest identified race war 13,000 years after it raged on the fringes of the Sahara.French scientists working in collaboration with the British Museum have been examining dozens of skeletons, a majority of whom appear to have been killed by archers using flint-tipped arrows.
Organic produce certainly costs more than conventionally grown food, but is it better for you?Existing evidence suggests there are no real health benefits from eating organic food compared to conventionally grown produce. Now a review of the scientific literature concludes that organic consumers may be getting their monies worth; it claims that organic food is more nutritious than conventionally grown fodder.Related: Study of Organic Crops Finds Fewer Pesticides and More Antioxidants
The incidence of inflammatory bowel diseases is rising sharply -- particularly among young people. However, new research indicates that growing up on a livestock farm may have a protective effect. "It is extremely exciting that we can now see that not only allergic diseases, but also more classic inflammatory diseases appear to depend on the environment we are exposed to early in our lives," says one expert.
A new study suggests that under-exercising, rather than overeating, may be at the heart of America's obesity epidemic.Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine report a strong correlation between the rise in obesity and a striking drop in the amount of time Americans spend exercising when not at work over the last 22 years.Related: Exercise is the best medicine, study shows
The secret to more productive meetings? You might simply need to stand up.This we know, to some degree. Just take as examples the growing popularity of standing desks, which took off after a flurry of reports found that sitting for long periods of time can significantly, negatively, impact employees' health.
Loredana Paglialonga leans across her father's prone body and whispers in his ear: "Spinta, Papi, spinta" ("Push Daddy, push"). It is impossible to tell whether Anselmo Paglialonga, a former major in the Italian carabinieri, has heard. Paralysed from head to toe with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Anselmo is completely "locked in". Unable to speak or open his eyes, his only hope of communicating is via a state-of-the-art neuroheadset attached to his scalp.
Imagine having an ultra high-resolution display built directly into a pair of contact lenses. This could be the future of digital displays thanks to scientists at Oxford University, who have adapted a material currently used to store data on DVDs and transformed it into a radical new display technology.Writing in Nature today, they say the material could usher in a new generation of displays that are thinner, lighter, with higher resolution and lower power consumption than any existing technology.
In a surprising sighting, Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) like orbs spotted sparkling the skies of Italy. The magnificent glowing objects appeared more like a group of angels to the residents of Milan, who spotted them on 6 July.The beautiful, but strange sighting was captured in a nine minute 31 seconds video clip and was posted on YouTube.Related 'UFO' spotted over southern France
Specific stars and constellations are used by some Aboriginal language groups to help them remember key waypoints along a route, detailed oral histories reveal.The research, reported in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, documents how people from two language groups in north-central New South Wales and south-central Queensland use the night sky.
The massive megaliths found at the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek always make for my all-time favourite "WTF?!" images of ancient sites. I posted the historical image above a while back here on the Grail just to share the love, but now we've perhaps got an even better one: our good friend Graham Hancock has posted an image to Facebook of him atop one of the Baalbek megaliths, taken by his wonderful photographer wife, Santha Faiia.
Repeated high-resolution observations made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) indicate the gullies on Mars' surface are primarily formed by the seasonal freezing of carbon dioxide, not liquid water.The first reports of formative gullies on Mars in 2000 generated excitement and headlines because they suggested the presence of liquid water on the Red Planet, the eroding action of which forms gullies here on Earth.
A surprising amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas of interest to scientists tracking climate change, comes from livestock, which accounted for 70 percent more emissions than the oil and gas industry, a new study shows.The finding, based on satellite data collected in 2004, shows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sorely underestimated the amount of methane gas from cattle, pigs and other animals. The EPA also overestimated emissions from the oil and gas industry.
Rats change the way they use their whiskers in a similar way to how humans use their hands, scientists have shown.Rats explore the world around them by moving their facial whiskers backwards and forwards, called "whisking".Researchers found that rats in familiar environments changed from exploratory whisking to pushing their whiskers forward to detect obstacles instead.
Cooking might not be rocket science, but it has taken a rocket scientist from Oxford University to reinvent the humble saucepan.Dr Thomas Povey, who usually works designing cooling systems for jet engines, has come up with a new pan which heats up more quickly, cooks food faster and uses 40 per cent less energy.
India will install a 50 megawatt solar power plant on a 1.27 million square metre floating platform by the end of the year.Having already started on their plan to install 10 megawatt (MW) solar plants on top of several canals, India has taken the creative use of space one step further and is planning on floating a power station on one of the large stretches of water in Kerala, a state in south-western India.