Newsdesk Archive
Painted pebbles are a bit of a conundrum. These decorated, white beach-worn quartz pebbles have been the subject of much thought and discourse since the nineteenth century. The presumed emblematic value of quartz in prehistory may have been important in portable material culture.
A geochemical analysis of prehistoric stone artifacts has revealed that Tonga was once the hub of a Pacific trading empire as large as 500,000 square kilometers. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Geoffrey Clarke of Australian National University and his team analyzed Tongan stone artifacts and found that two-thirds of them came from outside Tonga, one from as far as 2,500 kilometers away. The researchers believe Tonga served as a trade hub.
Children's skulls found at the edges of Bronze Age settlements may have been a gruesome gift for the local lake gods.The children's skulls were discovered encircling the perimeter of ancient villages around lakes in Switzerland and Germany. Some had suffered ax blows and other head traumas.
Giovanni della Porta was an Italian polymath and scientist back in the 1500s, when agents of the Inquisition were locking people up, including his friends. When he needed to get messages to them, he came up with an ingenious solution that involves writing secret codes inside an egg.della Porta came up with a method that you can make from kitchen ingredients, although one of those ingredients, alum, is quite rare. Alum is a compound that gets its name from the aluminum in it.
The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves by scientists using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that appear to come from deep in outer space.The finding by an international team of astronomers, published July 10 in The Astrophysical Journal, marks the first time that a so-called "fast radio burst" has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Although the curves and ripples of spacetime are suspected to be full of intriguing secrets about the history of the universe, they are also extremely difficult to study. For this reason, some physicists are turning to the lab to attempt to recreate spacetime geometries where they can be more easily analyzed.In a new paper published in the New Journal of Physics, Niclas Westerberg, et al., from institutions in the UK and Italy have proposed a new way to construct artificial spacetime in the lab.
The next couple of years will be make or break for the next big theory in physics called supersymmetry - SUSY for short. It might make way for a rival idea which predicts the existence of a 'fifth force' of nature.Next Spring, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) resumes its experiments, scientists will be looking for evidence of SUSY. It explains an awful lot that the current theory of particle physics does not.
Celtic redheads are an endangered species thanks to the global climate change crisis, according to scientists.A new report in Scotland says the red hair gene could be on the way out as it is thought to be a response to cloudy weather.The London Independent newspaper says the reduction in cloudy weather in Scotland and Ireland will lead to a reduction in the number of redheads.
It has long been said that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But now the fruit has been shown to be an aphrodisiac after researchers found eating one apple a day can improve the sex lives of women.The researchers believe the reason for this may lie in the compound phloridzin, which is found in apples and is similar to the female sex hormone estradiol. Estradiol plays a large role in sexual arousal.
At first glance one might not notice anything particularly odd about the village of Kodinhi. It is a small, remote village located in the Malappuram district in Kerala, India. With only 2,000 families, it is a sleepy, quiet place that one could drive by without giving a second thought. It is a backwater, nondescript village not unlike countless others dotting the Indian countryside. However, spend enough time walking through its modest streets you may start to notice something peculiar about this village.
Some call it dowsing, water witching or divining. Others call it flaky.Whatever it's called, the ancient method of discovering water underground is finding new life in drought-ridden states such as California."I've found at least eight wells for our vineyard, and hundreds of wells for farmers and homes," said Marc Mondavi, who not only helps run the family-owned Charles Krug Winery in California's Napa Valley, but is also a dowser for hire.
If you found out that someone had died in a house you were planning to rent or buy, what would you do? Go ahead and move in without a thought, or leave the possibly ghost-ridden place for some other sucker? What if it wasn't just a death, say, from accident or sickness, but a murder? Would that change your mind? What about multiple homicides?For many people these sorts of questions aren't just fun hypothetical quandaries.They're real-life dilemmas.
The widespread use of a type of insecticide that has been blamed for honeybee deaths is linked to a marked decline in bird numbers in Europe, a report says.Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid chemical, is widely used in agriculture to exterminate pests.Dutch scientists say their data shows that the chemical is associated with a collapse in common bird species.
Water could have flowed on the surface of Mars with the help of salts in the Martian soil that can melt ice, just as salts on Earth can be used to melt ice on slippery winter roads and sidewalks, researchers say.These findings suggest "the shallow subsurface of Mars could be habitable," study co-author Nilton Rennó, a planetary and atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, told Live Science.
As anybody who has started a campfire by rubbing sticks knows, friction generates heat. Now, computer modeling by NASA scientists shows that friction could be the key to survival for some distant Earth-sized planets traveling in dangerous orbits.The findings are consistent with observations that Earth-sized planets appear to be very common in other star systems. Although heat can be a destructive force for some planets, the right amount of friction, and therefore heat, can be helpful and perhaps create conditions for habitability.
Streaking across the sky at more than 50 kilometers per second at atmospheric heights of more than a 90 kilometers high, researchers using the first station of University of New Mexico's Long Wavelength Array (LWA) saw something new that had never been seen before; something that could hold a treasure trove of new information in the world of physics.
Astronomers watching a supernova may have found out where the dust that makes up much of the Universe came from.Cosmic dust is crucial to the birth of stars and rocky planets, and provides the elemental ingredients for life. But its origin is obscure. Many astrophysicists think that dust is forged during the explosive supernova deaths of massive, short-lived stars, yet some observations of supernovas near our galaxy indicate that they produce too little material to account for the copious amounts of dust present in the young Universe.
A massive telescope array in the Utah desert detected a hotspot of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays coming from a region of the sky near the Big Dipper.It's still not clear exactly what is causing the rays, but the hotspot could help researchers understand how the highest-energy particles in the universe are formed.
A tiny, unassuming little alga may hold the secret to how the sexes evolved.A single gene that determines male or female sex in multicellular algae evolved from a more primitive version found in a single-celled ancestor that doesn't have sexes, according to a new study.The new discovery could point to one of the key genetic steps involved in the origin of the sexes.
The re-examination of a sparrow-sized fossil from China challenges the commonly held belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs that gained the ability to fly. The birdlike fossil is actually not a dinosaur, as previously thought, but much rather the remains of a tiny tree-climbing animal that could glide, say American researchers Stephen Czerkas of the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, and Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina. The study appears in Springer's Journal of Ornithology.
A "world-class" dinosaur track site discovered in Alaska's Denali National Park shows that herds of duck-billed dinosaurs thrived under the midnight sun."We had mom, dad, big brother, big sister and little babies all running around together," said paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, who is studying the dinosaur tracks. "As I like to tell the park, Denali was a family destination for millions of years, and now we've got the fossil evidence for it.".
Japanese scientists say they have found a way to slow down the ageing process in flowers by up to a half, meaning bouquets could remain fresh for much longer.Researchers at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation in Tsukuba, east of Tokyo, said they had found the gene believed to be responsible for the short shelf-life of flowers in one Japanese variety of morning glory.
NASA's Voyager I spacecraft has been steadily journeying away from the sun to the outer reaches of the solar system since its 1977 launch. As it travels farther out and enters a different region of the solar system, it's occasionally affected by coronal mass ejections -- shock waves caused from massive violent eruptions from our sun.There have been three of these space "tsunamis" since 2012, and the third one -- described by NASA on Monday -- has helped the space agency confirm something it posited in late 2013: that Voyager is the first Earth craft to travel into interstellar space.
Aligning the results of classical biological studies and those in palaeontology is rarely easy. The fossil record is great for demonstrating many things about past life on Earth over large timescales and that involve big changes such as the origins of major groups of organisms. Biology is generally the reverse, with even long-term studies on fast-breeding species unlikely to get through too many generations and observe the major changes that are routine in studies of fossils that span millions of years.
The DNA of dinosaurs could unlock the key to a powerful method of healing for humans. According to reports, researchers from Manchester University have discovered evidence while examining ancient dinosaur fossils.Lead researcher Professor Phil Manning, along with colleagues, studied the fossilised remains of a gorgosaurus, a dinosaur believed to be 72 million years old and an ancient ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus rex. They had found that the 26-feet high creature had the ability to heal from serious illness and restore broken bones.
Was this the biggest bird ever to grace the skies? With a wingspan of about 6.4 metres, Pelagornis sandersi was nearly twice the width of a wandering albatross, the living bird with the greatest wingspan, at 3.5 metres.Its size puts it on a par with the similarly whopping Argentavis, which was estimated to have a wingspan of 7 metres but may have been smaller than that. Either way, they were all dwarfed by the extinct flying reptile Quetzalcoatlus northropi, perhaps the largest pterosaur, with a wingspan of up to 11 metres.
A poor diet can eat away at brain health. Now a study in Neurology helps elucidate why. It suggests that eating a lot of sugar or other carbohydrates can be hazardous to both brain structure and function.Diabetes, which is characterized by chronically high levels of blood glucose, has been linked to an elevated risk of dementia and a smaller hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory.
A newly discovered wasp has been keeping a gruesome secret: It stuffs ant corpses into the walls of its home.As far as scientists know, the behavior is unique in the animal kingdom. The new creature has been named Deuteragenia ossarium, or the "bone-house wasp," after the historical ossuaries piled high with human skeletons found in monasteries or graveyards.
The colorful little guy pictured above puts the eyes of every other animal to shame. Whereas humans receive color information via three color receptors in our eyes, mantis shrimp (Neogonodactylus oerstedii) have 12. Six of these differentiate five discrete wavelengths of ultraviolet light, researchers report online today in Current Biology.
Imagine you're a bee and you just located a prime nectar source. You want to alert your hivemates, but not attract competitors. What should you do?Some bees devise a special "whisper" to discretely let bees in their colony know about a food source, but others, new research has shown, "shout" it out loud with a message along the lines of, "This is good nectar and it's all ours or -- watch out!"In the case of bees, the insects aren't actually shouting, but signalling to each other and outside bees using information-rich pheromone trails.
Most of our studies of Mars so far have focused on whether water could have once existed on its surface millions or billions of years ago.But now researchers at the University of Michigan say small amounts of liquid water could form on the planet today - despite its below-freezing temperatures.To come to the conclusion they created chambers that mimic the conditions on Mars, and found that they were able to make liquid water form for brief periods of time.
An incredibly detailed new map of Mars' southern highlands shows how profoundly liquid water sculpted the region long ago, scientists say."This map depicts the complicated sequence of geologic processes that have served to modify ancient, rugged highland terrains surrounding the Hellas impact basin and shows evidence for the persistent effects of water and ice in degrading the Martian surface," David Crown, of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing an audio reading device to be worn on the index finger of people whose vision is impaired, giving them affordable and immediate access to printed words.The so-called FingerReader, a prototype produced by a 3-D printer, fits like a ring on the user's finger, equipped with a small camera that scans text. A synthesized voice reads words aloud, quickly translating books, restaurant menus and other needed materials for daily living, especially away from home or office.
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it's a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core.With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele's exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Human skin can smell itself as well as other odors, according to a new study that also determined a common and pleasant-smelling odor promotes skin healing.The paper, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, strengthens prior research that found olfactory receptors -- proteins specialized to detect odors -- don't just exist in the nose.
Children of same-sex parents have above average health and wellbeing, according to new research.However, the study also identifies stigma as an ongoing challenge for these children, which could have an impact on their health and wellbeing.The research is based on data from the Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families (ACHESS), the largest of its kind in the world, which involved input from 315 same sex parents with a total of 500 children.
Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology (IAE) in Szczecin, Poland, have discovered a meteorite fragment inside the remains of a hut dating back more than 9,000 years at Bolków by Lake Swidwie in Western Pomerania.The pyrite meteorite fragment is cylindrical shape and measures only 8 cm long and 5-3.5 cm wide.
Re-examination of a circa 100,000-year-old archaic early human skull found 35 years ago in Northern China has revealed the surprising presence of an inner-ear formation long thought to occur only in Neandertals.Related: Interbreeding Common? Ancient Human Had Neanderthal-Like Ear
Swathes of the Amazon may have been grassland until a natural shift to a wetter climate about 2,000 years ago let the rainforests form, according to a study that challenges common belief that the world's biggest tropical forest is far older.The arrival of European diseases after Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492 may also have hastened the growth of forests by killing indigenous people farming the region, the scientists wrote in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
A series of square, straight and ringlike ditches scattered throughout the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon were there before the rainforest existed, a new study finds.These human-made structures remain a mystery: They may have been used for defense, drainage, or perhaps ceremonial or religious reasons. But the new research addresses another burning question: whether and how much prehistoric people altered the landscape in the Amazon before the arrival of Europeans.
A second prehistoric circle on a Norfolk beach has been dated to the same summer more than 4,000 years ago as its famous neighbour, Seahenge.Archaeologists believe the two circles, which originally stood inland in boggy freshwater but are now being eroded gradually by the tides, were part of the same monumental complex connected with rites to honour the dead.Related: Second 4,000 year old timber circle revealed
An excavation in Dovedale, Derbyshire by archaeologists from the National Trust, Leicester University and the Defence Archaeology Group (Operation Nightingale) has unearthed a hoard of Late Iron Age and Republican Roman coins, the first time coins of these two origins are thought to have been found buried together in a cave in Britain.
For most archaeology students finding a piece of broken pottery or a glass bead is the highlight of their first dig.But undergraduates at Bournemouth University have stumbled upon a major find which could rewrite Roman history in Britain.For the first time the skeletons of a family have been uncovered at a Roman villa in Dorset field.
A team of scientists has discovered that a giant 'burp' of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the North Pacific Ocean helped trigger the end of last ice age, around 17,000 years ago.A recent study, led by Dr James Rae of the University of St Andrews, found that changes in ocean circulation in the North Pacific caused a massive 'burp' of CO2 to be released from the deep ocean into the atmosphere, helping to warm the planet sufficiently to trigger the end of the ice age.
The oldest confirmed case of Down's syndrome has been found: the skeleton of a child who died 1500 years ago in early medieval France. According to the archaeologists, the way the child was buried hints that Down's syndrome was not necessarily stigmatised in the Middle Ages.Down's syndrome is a genetic disorder that delays a person's growth and causes intellectual disabilitye.
In August 2005, a tiny mummified body was found in the ancient Persian village of Makhunik in what is now Iran. The discovery caused an international sensation when researchers reported that the remains belonged to an adolescent dwarf and that excavations of the ancient town revealed architecture that suggested it was a city of little people. The story has now resurfaced, following a report in PressTV, and is making its way rapidly around alternative news sites. Here we explore whether an ancient city of dwarfs really existed, or whether it is all just media sensation.
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how much are two pictures worth, especially if they show an odd-looking, allegedly descending light heading to the surface of Mars?These are real pictures, taken by the Curiosity rover -- some reports say it took place on June 23, but according to information on the raw Jet Propulsion Laboratory images, it was June 20.
The mysterious makeup of the solar system's innermost planet may be due to a massive "hit and run" collision billions of years ago, a new study reports.A colossal but glancing smashup with a roughly Earth-size planet could have stripped away much of proto-Mercury's rocky mantle, explaining why the tiny, sun-scorched world has such a huge iron core today, researchers say.
Astronomers have for the first time detected a rocky alien world in an Earth-like orbit around just one star in a two-star system.The new find suggests that such worlds may be common, and the strategy used to discover the planet could help reveal more exoplanets in the future, researchers say.
Asteroid and comet impacts can trigger widespread havoc, killing off life on a global scale. Now, one new study reveals that the molten wreckage of these explosions can entomb the remains of life that once dwelt in the blast zones and preserve them for millions of years, while another study hints that these impacts could even create novel habitats where life can flourish.These findings suggest that impact craters on alien worlds might be good places to look for past and present signs of life, researchers say.
Right now, a couple of feet above the surface of the Moon, a layer of dust is levitating. This is not a new development. Early photos of the Moon show the same phenomenon. What makes this dust float without air?If we see dust floating around on Earth, we imagine that the wind is picking it up and throwing it around.
PARACHUTES made of plasma trapped in a magnetic field could soon be helping space probes glide safely back to Earth.Two private aerospace companies have won NASA contracts to demonstrate magnetoshell aerocapture, a way of shrouding a falling spacecraft in a magnetic bubble akin to the plasma shield around Earth. But whereas Earth's magnetosphere protects it from solar radiation, a similar bubble around a spacecraft creates drag, slowing it down. If a test next year proves successful, the technique could help future probes land heavy loads on Mars or bring back human missions to deep space.
Massive injections of wastewater from the oil and gas industry are likely to have triggered a sharp rise in earthquakes in the state of Oklahoma.Researchers say there has been a forty-fold increase in the rate of quakes in the US state between 2008-13.
A review of research on whales shows that they have more a powerful influence on the function of oceans, global carbon storage, and the health of commercial fisheries than has been commonly assumed. The continued recovery of great whales from centuries of overhunting may help to buffer marine ecosystems from destabilizing stresses, including climate change, reports a global team of scientists.
Indigenous people with no prior contact to the outside world have just emerged from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and made contact with a group of settled Indians, after being spotted migrating to evade illegal loggers, advocates say.The news, which was released yesterday (July 2), comes after sightings of the uncontacted Indians in Brazil near the border with Peru, according to the group Survival International. Officials with the organization had warned last month that the isolated tribes face threats of disease and violence as they moved into new territory and possibly encountered other people.
Today, more than half of the human population lives in hive-like warrens called cities. Does this mean we are on the tipping point of becoming colony animals the way bees and ants did? It's not entirely impossible. We talked to scientists to find out whether urban humans are evolving into superorganisms.Before we consider whether humans could form hive minds or colony societies, we first need a working definition of what it means to be an individual.
From the cold Arctic to the sweltering Sahara, from the high Himalayas to the deep reaches of the Amazon, humans are everywhere. Our ability to adapt and even thrive in a variety of environments is one of the hallmarks of our species.In fact, adaptability might be THE defining characteristic of our broader genus, Homo. According to new research published in Science, the ability of early humans to adjust to wild climate fluctuations likely enabled them to diversify, differentiate, and spread out of Africa 1.85 million years ago.
Scientists have described the communications of chimpanzees and bonobos in new and unsurpassed detail, offering a lexicon for our closest living relatives and even a glimpse into the origins of human language.The research, contained in two new studies published July 3 in Current Biology, focuses on physical gestures. These are the primary form of communication in bonobos and chimps, used more readily than vocalizations.Related: Chimpanzee language: Communication gestures translated
The government office investigating UFOs in Chile has released an analysis of two high quality photos showing what appear be genuine unidentified flying objects above a remote copper mine. The office, known as the CEFAA (Committee for the Studies of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena), is located within the Ministerial Department of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC), the equivalent of our FAA, under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force.Related: This UFO is Real, According to a Government Agency
The Catholic Church recently formally recognized The International Association of Exorcists, a group of 250 priests worldwide who claim to drive demons and devils out of possessed individuals.An ABC News report notes that "The International Association of Exorcists was originally founded in 1990 and one of their leaders has been housed in the Vatican for years, but this is the first time that they have been given formal approval by the highest order of the Roman Catholic Church. According to The Vatican's official newspaper 'L'Osservatore Romano', the Congregation for Clergy announced Tuesday that the Church's canon law now formally recognizes the group.".
Various manual tasks in everyday life require the use of the right hand or are optimized for right-handers. Around 90 percent of the general population is right-handed, only about 10 percent is left-handed.
Researchers believe they are closer to discovering why adults cannot remember the first few years of childhood, after a study found the increased rate that new cells are produced at in the brains of babies could increase forgetfulness.Scientists from the University of Toronto in Canada found that 'infantile amnesia', or the inability to recall memories from early childhood, could be exacerbated by the higher rate the human brain generates new cells at in early life.
If you are stuck in a highly repetitive, altogether routine job with no alternative employment options, then Scott Herriott of the Maharishi University of Management, in Fairfield, Iowa, suggests you take 20 minutes twice a day to experience your inner "unbounded awareness" and reduce the stress associated with boredom.Writing in the International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, Herriott explains that repetitive and monotonous work commonly leads to the familiar psychological consequences of mental fatigue, boredom, apathy, and alienation, which in turn lead to diminished motivation, reduced creativity and poor job satisfaction.
Plants respond defensively to the sounds that caterpillars make when eating their leaves, research has discovered.Scientists at the University of Missouri (UM) found that plants produce more mustard oil, a chemical that is unappealing to many caterpillars, when exposed to the feeding vibrations caused by caterpillars chewing.For the study, caterpillars were placed on Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard.
If telepathy and precognition are real abilities, why is it that nobody has cashed in on them by using their 'psi' talents to predict or mind-read sporting results, casino games, or changes in stock markets? It's a common criticism leveled by skeptics, but there is actually research out there showing that people *have* done exactly that - and made some serious money!
One in four people in the UK suffer from hay fever, with GPs reporting a doubling of cases since June last year. So why didn't anyone even know it existed 200 years ago?The start of summer is the worst time of the year for some people. As temperatures rise sufferers of hay fever sneeze their way through each day, bothered by itchy eyes, blocked sinuses, tickly throats. It affects up to 16 million people in the UK.
Before you read this book review, know that I not only intend to offer my opinion on the novel, but also explore the historical events of the Mexican Conquest in some depth. If you are a complete neophyte in the topic & want to enjoy Graham's War God without 'spoilers', then I suggest you close this link & open the Amazon page to order it instead, since my ultra-ultra short review is "I liked it, get the book" anyway --same goes for anyone daunted by the prospect of reading a 3000+-word-long essay, which will only reinforce your decision to buy War God. For the undecided (and the masochists) please enjoy.
The remarkable 1300 year old mural The Battle, found at the archaeological site of Cacaxtla in Tlaxcala (East-Central Mexico), has been subjected to comparative analysis by the researcher Claudia Brittenham, who managed to identify ten separate painting styles.The specialist from the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, carried out a detailed study in situ using a comparative approach that catalogued and examined the small details that often get repeated by a specific individual allowing her to see the individuality of each artist.
Unlike most hunter-gatherer societies of the Bronze Age, the people of the Baikal region of modern Siberia (Russia) respected their dead with formal graves.These burial sites are a treasure trove for archeologists and one particular specimen was so unique that bioarchaeologist Angela Lieverse traveled across the world just to bring it back to the Canadian Light Source synchrotron for examination.
A new four article series by Steven & Evan Strong is now available on GrahamHancock.comAustralia's Stonehenge: the History of an Ancient Stone Arrangement 40 Kilometres from Mullumbimby NSWAustralia's Stonehenge (Part 2): Indigenous Elders & Custodians Share the Truth About Ancient Stone Arrangement SiteThe Basis of All Knowledge? Australia's Stonehenge May Re-Write World HistoryDiscovery of the First Sacred Language: Fact or Fiction?
Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn's largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as Earth's Dead Sea. The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini's repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years.
While investigating how mindfulness meditation affects people's ability to be resilient under stress, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania found that brief mindfulness meditation practice -- 25 minutes for three consecutive days -- alleviates psychological stress."More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,".
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Exorcists now have a legal weapon at their disposal.The Vatican has formally recognized the International Association of Exorcists, a group of 250 priests in 30 countries who liberate the faithful from demons.The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Tuesday that the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy had approved the organization's statutes and recognized the group under canon law.
Sex differences in the body's response to medication have long been overlooked. In fact, until the 1990s women were banned from participating in clinical trials in the U.S. Yet women are now almost twice as likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication as men, and research suggests that their different hormones, body composition and metabolism may make them more sensitive to certain drugs. Further, women are between 50 and 75 percent more likely to experience side effects.
With only about one-sixth of the original coral cover left, most Caribbean coral reefs may disappear in the next 20 years, primarily due to the loss of grazers in the region, according to a new report. The results show that the Caribbean corals have declined by more than 50% since the 1970s.
Kangaroos use their tail as an extra leg when they walk, according to new research.The study, reported in Royal Society Biology Letters, found that the animals use their tail more than their forelimbs when they walk.The findings provide new insights into kangaroo locomotion, and could also have applications in advanced robotics.
A beautifully preserved fossil Archaeopteryx, the flightless bird from the age of the dinosaurs, adds to the evidence that feathers evolved well ahead of the ability to fly.Long seen as one of the first birds, Archaeopteryx has been joined by a flock of fellow feathered dinosaurs discovered in recent decades.
In a cave in northern Spain a team of scientists has retrieved the remains of 28 prehistoric humans, members of an enigmatic species that could be described as a little bit Neanderthal.They had Neanderthal faces, with heavy brows and protruding noses. They had powerful mandibles and mouths that could open extremely wide, indicating they used their teeth as gripping tools. But they didn't have the large skulls or other robust skeletal features seen in the prototypical Neanderthals who, hundreds of millennia later, roamed Ice Age Europe.
The evolution of the ribosome, a large molecular structure found in the cells of all species, has been revealed in unprecedented detail in a new study.Around 4 billion years ago, the first molecules of life came together on the early Earth and formed precursors of modern proteins and RNA. Scientists studying the origin of life have been searching for clues about how these reactions happened. Some of those clues have been found in the ribosome.
Previous studies have suggested that plant growth can be influenced by sound and that plants respond to wind and touch. Now, researchers, in a collaboration that brings together audio and chemical analysis, have determined that plants respond to the sounds that caterpillars make when eating plants and that the plants respond with more defenses.
Government agencies have looked into using animals as secret agents, and have even wired up a cat to try their luck. But I think coolest-looking spy animal ever must have been a raven.Ravens have advantages as spies; they're solitary, but also common enough to blend in nearly everywhere. Being corvids, they're smart, and can be trained to do many things.Some ravens were audio spies only. They could carry radios in their mouths, swoop up to a window, put the radios down, and fly away.
A new study shows that devil rays plunge nearly 2km below the ocean surface, making some of the deepest and fastest dives ever observed in the sea.Scientists tracked 15 of the large, winged fish, previously thought to be surface dwellers, for several months.
A new, tiny species of elephant shrew, also called a round-eared sengi, has been discovered in the Namib Desert in Africa, scientists say.The newbie, now called Macroscelides micus, is the smallest member of the scientific order Macroscelidea, which now includes 19 known sengis. Like other sengi, the creature sports a narrow, trunk-like snout.
Great spotted cuckoos lay their eggs while magpie mothers are still sitting on their nests, a study has shown.Cuckoos are known for deceiving other birds into raising their young by depositing their eggs into host nests.
Ever since childhood, when he saw his father descend into alcoholism, evolutionary physiologist Robert Dudley has been curious about humans' strong attraction to booze.The notion crystallized one day 18 years ago in the monkey-filled jungles of Panama, when he observed an abundance of rotting fruit littering the forest floor, fragrant with the smell of alcohol. Perhaps, he thought, the odor of alcohol in fermenting, overripe fruit actually draws monkeys to the trees, normally hidden among the lush greenery, where nourishing fruit are most abundant.
Dogs do have a unique way of seeing the world. But despite what you might have heard, the canine perspective isn't black and white. Dogs, like the humans who love them, can see colors. They just can't see as many colors as their handlers. This is because dogs only have two kinds of color-detecting cells (or cones) within their retinas.Most human retinas, by contrast, contain three kinds of cones, allowing them to see more of the wavelengths along the visible spectrum.
African cichlid fish have a memory span of up to twelve days, a new study has shown.Researchers trained the fish to go to one end of a tank for food before they then rested them for 12 days.
The monkey roadmap out of Africa has a new timetable and route, thanks to a tiny tooth plucked from the Arabian desert.Yale anthropologist Andrew Hill and a group of international colleagues found the fossil, a monkey molar 6.5 to 8 million years old, in the sand on Abu Dhabi's Shuwaihat Island, in the United Arab Emirates. They determined it belonged to the earliest known guenon, a group of monkeys previously known only on the African continent.
Figuring out how to survive on a lean-season diet of hard-to-reach ants, slugs and other bugs may have spurred the development of bigger brains and higher-level cognitive functions in the ancestors of humans and other primates, suggests research from Washington University in St. Louis."Challenges associated with finding food have long been recognized as important in shaping evolution of the brain and cognition in primates, including humans."
When you get up in the morning, take a moment to curse the ancient Greeks. One of them, Plato, invented the thing that torments you. Learn the story of the earliest alarm clocks.Despite their love of logical rigor, people weren't always exact in the ancient world. Without easy access to precise time-keeping, it was difficult to be exact. But even back then, some people weren't fans of waiting around for a crowd to show up, and Plato was one of those people. He needed to find a way to get himself, and his students, up at a certain time. And so he invented one.
Among the many lessons to be found in the Bible, prominent among them is "Look, but don't touch." When an Israelite named Uzzah laid hands upon the Ark of The Covenant, he was struck down by God. But, in 1933, an engineering professor theorized that the real cause of death was 10,000 volts of static electricity.
At first glance, Titan has little in common with Earth. The largest moon of Saturn, temperatures on Titan's surface dip nearly 300 F below zero, its seas slosh with liquid methane, and its sky is a murky shade of creamsicle. And yet, fresh analysis of mysterious features spotted on the moon indicates that it experiences one of the same global processes that is important here on Earth.
A potentially habitable Earth-like planet that is only 16 light years away has been discovered. The "super-Earth" planet, GJ 832 c, takes 16 days to orbit its red-dwarf star, GJ 832, and has a mass at least five times that of Earth. It receives about the same average stellar energy as Earth does and may have similar temperatures to our planet. These characteristics put it among the top three most Earth-like planets.
A fossil meteorite unlike anything seen before has been uncovered in a Swedish quarry. The mysterious rock may be the first known piece of the "bullet" that sparked an explosion of life on early Earth.Roughly 100 fossil meteorites have emerged from the limestone quarry west of Stockholm, which is being mined for flooring. All of the meteorites are part of an iron-poor class called the L chondrites. They date back about 470 million years to the Ordovician period, when Earth experienced a mysterious burst of new species.
The nonprofit organization that has raised eyebrows with its plans to send people on a one-way mission to Mars is now accepting proposals for scientific payloads that could fly aboard an unmanned mission to the Red Planet in 2018.The Netherlands-based Mars One foundation aims to send a total of seven payloads: four demonstration payloads, one payload selected in a worldwide university competition and two payloads for sale to the highest bidder.
Subliminal learning in your sleep is usually dismissed as pseudo-science at best and fraud at worst, but a team of Swiss psychologists say you can actually learn a foreign language in your sleep.Well, not from scratch, but a research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex by the Swiss National Science Foundation claims that listening to newly-learned foreign vocabulary while sleeping can help solidify the memory of the words.
Lead is well known for causing permanent behavioral and cognitive problems in children, but a study says it may also cause less obvious problems like depression, too, even at low levels.That's the word from a study tracking the health of 1,341 children in Jintan, China, where the health effects of pollution from rapid development have become a national concern.
Two new articles are now available on GrahamHancock.com:Eternal Knowledge - Bronze Age to the Modern Age by Lucy WyattFukushima: The Genocide of the Human Race by Sergey Baranov
Have a look at any ancient artefact and there's probably something there that you cannot see: stone corners that have long since chipped off; carvings rubbed away by time; or once-glorious colours that have faded. Now those missing features can be brought back to life, thanks to Revealing Flashlight, a system that projects computer-generated models on to real objects, filling in missing details wherever its spotlight lands.
Researchers have sketched out one of the greatest baby booms in North American history, a centuries-long 'growth blip' among southwestern Native Americans between 500 to 1300 A.D. It was a time when the early features of civilization -- including farming and food storage -- had matured to where birth rates likely 'exceeded the highest in the world today,' the researchers write. A crash followed, offering a warning sign to the modern world about the dangers of overpopulation.