Newsdesk Archive

Australian authorities have approved a controversial plan to dump dredged sediment in the Great Barrier Reef marine park, potentially upsetting one of the world's most fragile ecosystems.The massive dredging operation would make way for deep-draft ships to enter the Abbot Point coal port in northern Queensland. About 106 million cubic feet of dredged mud will be dumped within the marine park under the plan.

Discussing five movies about relationships over a month could cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half, researchers report. The study, involving 174 couples, is the first long-term investigation to compare different types of early marriage intervention programs.The findings show that an inexpensive, fun, and relatively simple movie-and-talk approach can be just as effective as other more intensive therapist-led methods-reducing the divorce or separation rate from 24 to 11 percent after three years.

Although wolves and dogs are closely related, they show some striking differences. Scientists have undertaken experiments that suggest that wolves observe one another more closely than dogs and so are better at learning from one another. The scientists believe that cooperation among wolves is the basis of the understanding between dogs and humans.

Mosquitoes as weapons? It was nearly a real-life threat during World War II, new research suggests.Researchers now say that Nazi scientists were plotting to weaponize mosquitoes. The plan, which appears never to have been implemented, called for airplanes to release mosquitoes infected with malaria over enemy forces. Scary.

If you break a magnet in two, you don't get a north half and a south half - you get two new magnets, each with two poles."Monopoles" were famously predicted to exist by physicist Paul Dirac in 1931 - but they have remained elusive.

Issue 9 of the wonderful online magazine Nautilus is now available to read, and offers a fantastic collection of articles on the theme of 'Time'. One of the pieces I recommend checking out is George Musser's article "The Quantum Mechanics of Fate", which delves into the (possible) mystery of retrocausality in modern physics.

Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine would have formed far from its current location in the Star Wars universe, a new University of Bristol study into its real world counterparts, observed by the Kepler space telescope, suggests.

Earthlings may be extreme latecomers to a universe full of life, with alien microbes possibly teeming on exoplanets beginning just 15 million years after the Big Bang, new research suggests.Traditionally, astrobiologists keen on solving the mystery of the origin of life in the universe look for planets in habitable zones around stars. Also known as Goldilocks zones, these regions are considered to be just the right distance away from stars for liquid water, a pre-requisite for life as we know it, to exist.

Every winter, hundreds of millions of Chinese return home for the Spring Festival, the Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year (which this year lands on January 31).The mass migration, known in Chinese as chunyun, is on track to reach an unprecedented scale in 2014. According to Lian Weiliang, the deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission, an estimated 3.62 billion trips will be made during the 40-day period surrounding the holiday, an increase of roughly 5.8 percent, or 200 million trips, compared with 2013.

Introducing Yongjinglong datangi, a titanosaur that lumbered across the fields of China during the Early Cretaceous period some 100 million years ago. The specimen discovered, a juvenile not yet fully grown, measured nearly 60 feet in length, making it one of the largest species to ever walk the Earth.

Scientists say the fossils of an ancient "swamp monster" that roamed the wilds of West Texas are those of a new species.Two crocodile-like reptiles called phytosaurs died about 205 million years ago in an oxbow lake, where they were entombed for centuries.

An emaciated man, who claimed to have spent 16 months adrift at sea, has been rescued after being washed up on a remote Pacific atoll.The man, with a dishevelled appearance, was spotted by two locals on Thursday when his 24-foot fibreglass boat with propellerless engines washed up on to the reef at Ebon Atoll, after floating more than 12,500 kilometres (8,000 miles) from Mexico.

The Napoleon complex has been explained.Short people are mistrustful of others and prone to paranoia, according to a study published Wednesday by the journal Psychiatry Research. Oxford researchers sent 60 women on two simulated rides in London subways populated by both men and women, lowering their virtual vantage point by 25 centimeters in one of the rides.

When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900′s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.

The ultimate potential of precision gene-editing techniques is beginning to be realised. Today, researchers in China report the first monkeys engineered with targeted mutations1, an achievement that could be a stepping stone to making more realistic research models of human diseases.

Milan, January 29 - The remains of a pagan temple believed to have been devoted to the goddess Minerva have been found under the Milan Cathedral.The announcement was made Wednesday during the presentation of other archaeological finds, the remains of the ancient Mediolanum Forum discovered recently under the basement of the building housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Gene types that influence disease in people today were picked up through interbreeding with Neanderthals, a major study in Nature journal suggests.Related: Fifth of Neanderthals' genetic code lives on in modern humansAnd: Neanderthal Genes Helped Modern Humans Adapt to Cold

Is violence contagious? A recent spate of incidents in both Colorado and Maryland suggests that bad things tend to happen in clumps, a syndrome that psychologists have known about for decades.At-risk individuals, the young males who commit these violent events, may see something in the media and brood about it, according to Edwin Megargee, professor emeritus of psychology at Florida State University.

Low gravity may inhibit the growth and spread of thyroid cancer cells. In newly published research, experimental biologists describe the responses of thyroid cancer cell cultures to 22 seconds of simulated microgravity via a parabolic flight campaign (better known as the "vomit comet" to astronaut trainees), compared to 10 days orbiting in the real void, aboard China's unmanned Shenzou 8 spacecraft in 2011.

Yellowstone National Park's Giantess Geyser is erupting for the first time in two-and-a-half years, park rangers said today.The usually quiet geyser is shooting off bursts of water that reach 50 feet (15 meters) into the air, said Annie Carlson, the supervisory park ranger at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center. Giantess Geyser is nearby the more famous Old Faithful, but it is far less regular.

NASA engineers are looking for ways to reduce the wear and tear on the Mars rover Curiosity's wheels, which have accumulated an increasing number of dings and punctures over the last few months.Curiosity's handlers are driving the 1-ton rover more cautiously now and are checking the condition of its wheels frequently, NASA officials said.

A team of physicists has proposed a way of teleporting energy over long distances. The technique, which is purely theoretical at this point, takes advantage of the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement where two particles share the same existence.

Deforestation in Central America goes hand-in-hand with narcotics operations, which replace forests with airstrips, roads and money-laundering farms.

Moves across the US to legalise marijuana have been greeted by reformers as heralding the end of the "war on drugs". But what happens to people convicted of offences that no longer exist? And will the records of those arrested now be wiped clean?

Russian men who down large amounts of vodka have an "extraordinarily" high risk of an early death, a new study says.Researchers tracked about 151,000 adult men in the Russian cities of Barnaul, Byisk and Tomsk from 1999 to 2010. They interviewed them about their drinking habits and, when about 8,000 later died, followed up to monitor their causes of death.

For some children, even trace amounts of peanuts can be deadly. But so far, kids suffering from peanut allergies have no treatment options other than avoiding the legumes completely. The results of a new clinical trial may change that. Scientists have found that feeding allergic children small amounts of peanut protein every day, an approach known as oral immunotherapy, can help them lead a normal life.

A lot of us can agree that low-fat ice cream is a sad substitute for the real deal. It's not as creamy, and it just doesn't taste as good.Now researchers are saying it may even smell different.

A radical and remarkably easy way to make cells that can grow into any tissue in the body has been developed by scientists in Japan.The feat has been hailed as a major discovery by researchers familiar with the work, and if it can be repeated in human tissue, could lead to cheap and simple procedures to make patient-matched stem cells that could repair damaged or diseased organs.

Scientists have created a one-way sound machine.The device, called an acoustic circulator, runs counter to the principle that sound waves, and other types of waves, are a two-way street.

Conservationists in Pakistan have asked Unesco to stop part of a cultural event being held on a World Heritage site.The group of scholars and archaeologists say the opening ceremony of the Sindh cultural festival could damage the ruins of Mohenjo Daro.It is the world's oldest surviving city and dates back to the pre-Hindu Indus Valley civilisation.

Periodic high tides are brought on by special alignment of heavenly bodies.Last month, coastlines saw extreme high and low tides known as king tides, which are caused by a chance alignment of the moon, Earth, and the sun. Now the tides are back.

The Mail has been serialising intensive care nurse PENNY SARTORI's compelling research into near-death experiences. Here in part three she reveals how children can have such experiences and how this can affect their lives....Extracted from The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences by Dr Penny SartoriRelated: Graham's related post on facebook

By examining children's ideas about "prelife," the time before conception, researchers found results which suggest that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life. And the part of us that is eternal, we believe, is not our skills or ability to reason, but rather our hopes, desires and emotions.

The pesticide DDT was banned in Britain nearly 30 years ago but researchers have discovered people with Alzheimer's disease have much higher levels in their bloodstream.

A few years ago, Michael Ramscar, a linguistics researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany, came across a paper saying that cognitive decline starts as early as age 45. He was 45 himself and felt he hadn't yet peaked. He remembers thinking: "That doesn't make sense to me; 99 percent of the people I look up to intellectually, who keep me on my mettle, are older than I am.".

A new brain region that appears to help humans identify whether they have made bad decisions has been discovered by researchers.The size and shape of a large Brussels sprout, the ball of neural tissue seems to be crucial for the kind of flexible thought that allows us to consider switching to a more promising course of action.

The mystery of how flying snakes stay aloft may have been solved by scientists.These unusual reptiles, which are found in rainforests in Southeast Asia, are able to fling themselves from trees and elegantly glide through the air.

Earlier this week, we reported that NASA was being sued. The allegations? That the space agency had failed to conduct a proper examination of "life" on Mars, which had mysteriously appeared in front of the agency's Opportunity rover. (The space agency had already concluded it was a rock; the lawsuit alleges that NASA did not properly examine the object well enough to conclude that.)

A decline in the size of some species of fish in the North Sea could be due to a rise in water temperatures, according to research.Scientists found that the maximum length of haddock, whiting, herring, Norway pout, plaice and sole decreased by as much as 29% over a 38-year period when temperatures in the North Sea increased by between 1C and 2C.

The jaguar could soon become extinct in Brazil's tropical Atlantic forest, threatening the shrinking primitive forest itself, Brazilian scientists warn.A study by the Brazilian conservation authority Cenap indicates the adult jaguar population in the region may have fallen to just 250, "an 80 per cent slide over the past 15 years.".

Today, only few poems by the ancient Greek poetess Sappho have survived, but thanks to new findings, two new works have been recovered, giving experts hope to find even more.

Ancient Chinese scrolls may solve a dilemma for futuristic electronics: how to avoid curling. Hanging scrolls traditionally used in Chinese paintings are normally stored rolled up to protect their delicate artwork. But when unrolled, the long sides will curl, potentially causing damage.

Every day, thousands of visitors to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum crowd around a glass case on the second floor to gaze at the Hope Diamond, one of the world's most famous jewels. It's been the subject of dozens of books, documentaries and scientific inquiries, partly due to persisting legends that it's cursed. Despite all this attention, though, it seems that the inch-wide, 45.52-carat diamond still conceals secrets waiting to be uncovered.

One of the most amazing, inspiring museums a lot of people will (sadly) never get to visit is the National Museum Of Iraq in Baghdad.It has collections that include art and artifacts from ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Chaldean civilizations - collections that put the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre to shame. And, despite being looted in 2003, it also has the Nimrud gold collection.See photos here: http://www.abroadabroad.com/2014/01/27/oh-so-this-is-what-et-looks-like-proof-of-ancient-aliens-in-baghdad/

When I finished reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, I cried what seemed like an endless river of grief-stricken tears. If an innovation called "Sensory Fiction" ever takes wide hold, I could go back and read the post-apocalyptic father-son tale -- this time adding physical sensations of anguish to the experience to make myself feel even greater despair.

You may recall, NASA recently announced that a strange rock had somehow "appeared" in front of its Mars Opportunity rover. The explanations for the mystery rock were straight-forward: maybe some kind of nearby impact sent a rock toward the rover, or, more likely, the rover knocked the rock out of the ground and no one noticed until later.

China's new moon rover, the Jade Rabbit, may be dead. Chinese officials the rover was experiencing mechanical difficulties, and now observers believe it's done for.The rover was part of a headline-grabbing push by China to get to the moon. On December 14,. It was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing there in nearly four decades.

The North Star has remained an eternal reassurance for northern travelers over the centuries. But recent and historical research reveals that the ever-constant star is actually changing.After dimming for the last few decades, the North Star is beginning to shine brightly again. And over the last two centuries, the brightening has become rather dramatic.

The DNA of a Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave has been sequenced, thanks to a new technique that weeded out contamination from modern humans.The method, described today (Jan. 27) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seems to work on very contaminated samples, as well as on incredibly ancient remains. These benefits could help scientists finally analyze some of the most intriguing archaic human fossils, which have thus far been inaccessible because of contamination from modern DNA, said study co-author Pontus Skoglund, a paleogenomics researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"One-of-a-kind" Stone Age artefacts left by Swedish nomads 11,000 years ago have been discovered by divers in the Baltic Sea, prompting some to claim that Sweden's Atlantis had been found."What we have here is maybe one of the oldest settlements from the first more permanent sites in Scania and in Sweden full stop," project leader and archaeology professor at Södertörn University Björn Nilsson told The Local.

Why do so many people who have had a near death experience describe hauntingly similar visions? Intensive care nurse PENNY SARTORI has spent years investigating them. On Saturday she told how such experiences defy rational explanation. Here, in part two of a special series she reveals the stories of those who have foreseen the death of relatives - and how we may be able to control the timing of our own deaths.Extracted from The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences by Dr Penny Sartori

Discovery of new psychiatric medication, whether for the treatment of depression, autism or schizophrenia, is at a virtual standstill. As just one example, the antidepressants on the market today are no more effective at reversing the mood disorder than those that first became available in the 1950s.

Humans may be able to smell sickness, or at least detect a distinct odor in the sweat of people with highly active immune systems who are responding to infection, a new study from Sweden suggests.In the study, eight healthy people were injected with either lipopolysaccharide, a bacterial toxin that produces a strong immune response, or with salt water (which wasn't expected to have any effect). Four hours later, the researchers collected the participants' T-shirts (in which they had been sweating), cut out the armpits and put this fabric into bottles.

For the first time in history, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have captured how our brain makes memories in video, watching how molecules morph into the structures that, at the end of the day, make who we are. If there's a soul, this how it gets made.

Astronomers have discovered what could be a never-before-seen river of hydrogen flowing through space. This very faint, very tenuous filament of gas is streaming into the nearby galaxy NGC 6946 and may help explain how certain spiral galaxies keep up their steady pace of star formation.

Introducing ICCP-1, the world's first magma-enhanced geothermal system. Located in Iceland, it's an important proof-of-concept that could lead to a revolution in the energy efficiency of high-temperature geothermal areas across the globe.

At first glance, it certainly appears a bit too symmetrical for a natural object. Some Internet sites have speculated that this might be either an alien spaceship, a base used by aliens from which to study Earth, or that it could even be a top secret moonbase created by humans."I would suspect, from looking at it that [the original] object is a stitching artifact from Google Moon," said Marc Dantonio, chief photo and video analyst for the Mutual UFO Network.

What caused the fall of the Roman Empire? A devastating plague that struck during the reign of Emperor Justinian in 541 AD, killing a quarter of the population, seems to have landed the final blow, but the identity of the infection was a mystery.Now sequencing of DNA taken from two skeletons buried in Bavaria, Germany, in the 6th century has uncovered the complete genome of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria also blamed for the Black Death that struck Europe in 1348.

The Colorado River took the easy route when it carved the Grand Canyon through Arizona's ruddy sandstones and pastel limestones, a new study claims.Instead of slicing through thousands of feet of unblemished rock, the Colorado River recycled ancient canyons, at least one of which was 70 million years old, researchers report today (Jan. 26) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Forget arrying around a charger - you next mobile could be powere by the beating of your heart, researchers have revealed.A team of US and Chinese researchers has revealed a tint implantable battery they have used to power a pacemaker.

Using a smartphone to get more work done at night makes employees less productive the next day, new research suggests. Workers who monitored their smartphones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and less engaged the following day on the job, researchers found.

The word "core" conjures up an image of something strong. However, new experiments show that the iron found in the Earth's core is relatively weak. This finding is based on x-ray spectroscopy and diffraction measurements performed at high pressure and utilizing several x-ray beamlines at two U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science light sources including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.

Queues in the City, banks raising cash in a hurry from the authorities and a rush to obtain gold - sounds like September and October 2008?No, this was late July and early August 1914. Even before a shot had been fired by a British soldier, markets were gripped by fears of the consequences of war.

NEANDERTHALS, the early humans thought to have become extinct after the arrival of modern people, could be taking a form of posthumous revenge with the discovery that their genes might be linked to life-threatening diseases such as cancer and diabetes.Scientists have found that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for tens of thousands of years in Europe and Asia and often interbred.

A 42-year old electrician in California developed star-shaped cataracts in his eyes after a serious work-related accident caused electricity to run through his body, according to a new report of the case.

The ancient Mycenaeans have a reputation as palace-builders and warriors, but they were also quite sophisticated cooks. More than 3,000 years ago, they used portable grill pits to make souvlaki and non-stick pans to make bread, new cooking experiments suggest.The Mycenaean civilization, which was the backdrop for Homer's "Odyssey" and "Iliad," thrived in Greece during the late Bronze Age from around 1700 B.C. until the society mysteriously collapsed around 1200 B.C. The Mycenaeans left behind amazing palaces and gold-littered tombs at sites like Pylos and Mycenae, but in these places, archaeologists also have found less glamorous artifacts, such as souvlaki trays and griddles made from gritty clays.

Researchers from the Queen's University Belfast have found evidence of human intervention in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia.Forests located in Sumatra, Java, Thailand, Vietnam, and Borneo, which were previously believed to be unaffected by humans, were in fact shaped by men for at least 11,000 years.

A giant, long-vanished lake along the White Nile may have been a vital way station for early modern humans leaving Africa. Archaeologists say the 45,000-square-kilometre lake, which would be one of the ten largest lakes on Earth if it existed today, was in the right place at the right time for at least one of two key migrations. One exodus took people to what is now Israel before 100,000 years ago, and another peopled Eurasia 70,000 years ago.

Researchers have discovered that interplanetary dust particles could deliver water and organics to the Earth and other terrestrial planets. "It is a thrilling possibility that this influx of dust has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vessels containing both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life on Earth and possibly Mars," said Hope Ishii, study co-author.

Weightlessness weakens a key molecular pathway in a fruit fly's immune system, researchers report in a study that raises new questions for human space travelers as well as flies.The NASA-funded study, published Friday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, focuses on the genetic machinery that helps flies defend themselves against infections. The researchers found that when the flies grew up in orbit, as part of an experiment conducted in 2006 on the space shuttle Discovery, they were left more susceptible to fungal infections.

A team of government researchers in Samoa has announced that it has finally sighted a juvenile Manumea bird (also known as the tooth-billed pigeon or little dodo) during an intensive field search in the forests of Savai'i, Samoa's northern island.

A new kind of paper that is made of wood fibers yet is 96% transparent could be a revolutionary material for next-generation solar cells. Coming from plants, the paper is inexpensive and more environmentally friendly than the plastic substrates often used in solar cells. However, its most important advantage is that it overcomes the tradeoff between optical transparency and optical haze that burdens most materials.

New research from the Monell Center reveals humans can use the sense of smell to detect dietary fat in food. As food smell almost always is detected before taste, the findings identify one of the first sensory qualities that signals whether a food contains fat. Innovative methods using odor to make low-fat foods more palatable could someday aid public health efforts to reduce dietary fat intake.

In a pioneering project funded by the Mellon Foundation, scholars at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich are compiling a database of Arabic documents, many dating from the early years of Islam. The online resource affords unique insights into everyday life in Arab lands.

A 1,500-year-old mosaic floor with colorful images of animals, botanical and geometrical designs has been brought to light during the excavation of a Byzantine-era Christian church in southern Israel."The church probably served as a center of Christian worship for the neighboring communities," the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a news release about the find, issued Wednesday. The floor and other remains of the basilica were found over the past three months during preparations for the construction of a new neighborhood at Moshav Aluma, the agency said.

The largest so far known in the Middle East amount of grain of the Neolithic period in a perfect state of preservation has been discovered by Polish archaeologists in Catalhoyuk, a famous archaeological site in Turkey.Catalhoyuk is one of the largest urban centers of first farmers and one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.

Standing some 2,000 miles west of Chile, on the Easter Island, 887 mysterious giant statues have intrigued scientists and the public for years.For a long time it was believed that the massive statutes consisted of just the heads.However, in October 2011, when the Easter Island Statue Project began its Season V expedition, scientists could reveal remarkable photos showing that the bodies of the statues go far deeper underground than just about anyone had imagined.

DNA has helped solved a nearly 70-year-old hoax -- one that has haunted a family and its ancestors in the debacle over the identity of a girl who was said to have died on the Titanic.When the massive ship struck an iceberg more than 100 years ago, it was believed that only one child from the first class died in the sinking ship: Loraine Allison. The 2-year-old apparently didn't get safely on a life boat because her parents were said to have been frantically searching for her little brother, who unbeknownst to them was already on a life boat.

A major cold age that descended on Earth nearly 13,000 years ago is linked with a widely studied and debated mass extinction of large mammals, such as ground sloths, in North America. But the effects of this so-called "Big Freeze" weren't limited to North America: New research shows that forests throughout Europe vanished within two centuries of the onset of this frigid time.These findings highlight the way the environment can shift drastically over the course of just a few human lifetimes, the researchers said.

Any pilot flying holidaymakers between Manchester and Ibiza must be prepared for outlandish sights.But perhaps nothing so apparently unworldly as this.The captain of a Thomas Cook airliner flying tourists back from the Spanish holiday island to the north of England reported a "near miss" with a "rugby ball"-shaped UFO, which passed within feet of his jet.

Ball lightning is an odd phenomenon. The few, fortunate people who have seen an incident describe the lightning as a roughly spherical glowing object that travels horizontally for a few seconds before vanishing. However, while several experiments have reproduced something resembling the phenomenon, the physical mechanism behind ball lightning is somewhat mysterious.

Millions of years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was starved of carbon dioxide, and this scarcity seems to have prompted the trees to tighten their belts.In a paper titled "Weathering by tree root-associating fungi diminishes under simulated Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 decline" published in Biogeosciences, an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union, a team of researchers in the UK seek to explain how the planet's atmosphere and climate stabilized over the past 24 million years.

Light-intensity activities that get you off the couch may be beneficial to your health, even if you don't work up a sweat, a new study suggests.People in the study who spent more time moving around than sitting during the day generally had favorable insulin and triglyceride (blood fat) levels, even if they did not do the amount of exercise that national guidelines recommend.

Facebook has spread like an infectious disease but we are slowly becoming immune to its attractions, and the platform will be largely abandoned by 2017, say researchers at Princeton University.The forecast of Facebook's impending doom was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. Scientists argue that, like bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.

Our most recent common male ancestor emerged some 209,000 years ago -- earlier than many scientists previously thought, according to new research from the University of Sheffield.

Scientists have confirmed signs of water on the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.A team led by the European Space Agency detected water plumes spewing from two regions of the dwarf planet using the infrared Herschel Space Observatory telescope.Scientists have long suspected Ceres may hold significant amounts of water but have never been able to prove it.

The surface of Mars once flowed with water fresh enough to sustain life, according to data collected by two of NASA's Martian rovers.The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest freshwater rivers and streams once existed in the Meridiani Plains region near the Martian equator, 3.8 billion years ago.Related: Ancient Mars May Have Been Habitable for Hundreds of Millions of Years

For years, villagers who lived near the Sac Uayum sinkhole in Mexico's Yucatán peninsula refused to go near it, calling the underwater cave haunted. Turns out, they had good reason to be scared.Explorers from National Geographic sent to probe the natural well found a creepy surprise beneath the sinkhole's surface: chambers littered with human bones.

Today the magnificent 3,000 year old Shropshire hillfort of Old Oswestry is in the news while campaigners fight to halt several proposed housing developments that threatens both the setting and archaeology surrounding the monument. But, as if to highlight the importance of this place, a new discovery from 2008 has been dubbed the Oswestry Pegasus Stone.

A 35,000-year-old piece of carved bone found on Timor, an island between Java and Papua New Guinea, indicates that complex hunting weapons were manufactured much earlier than previously thought in Australasia.

Japanese fishermen have finished killing some of the 250 dolphins trapped recently in what environmental activists claim was the biggest roundup they have witnessed in the last four years.Sea Shepherd, best known for its anti-whaling activities, said the fishermen first selected 52 dolphins to keep alive for sale to aquariums and other customers. They included a rare albino calf and its mother.

The mysterious mass die-offs of honeybees that have wiped out roughly a third of commercial colonies each year since 2006 may be linked to a rapidly mutating virus that jumped from tobacco plants to soy plants to bees, according to a new study.

A study has found that homing pigeons' ability to remember routes depends on the complexity of the landscape below, with hedges and boundaries between urban and rural areas providing ideal landmarks for navigation.Researchers from Oxford University, the Zoological Society of London and Uppsala University, Sweden released 31 pigeons from four sites around Oxford for an average of 20 flights each.

Thousands of times a day, the brain stores sensory information for very short periods of time in a working memory, to be able to use it later. A research study carried out with the collaboration of SISSA has shown, for the first time, that this function also exists in the brain of rodents, a finding that sheds light on the evolutionary origins of this cognitive mechanism.

Maybe you're meandering, alone and lost, through an abandoned castle surrounded by a crocodile-filled moat. Suddenly, a flame-breathing dragon hurls towards you, snarling and gnashing its teeth, coming in for the kill. Do you wake up from this bizarro nightmare, covered in sweat and close to tears? Or do you stay in the dream, grab your imaginary sword, and walk boldly into battle?

Even water tastes sweeter when you're in love, new research finds.But not every emotion heightens the senses. Jealousy fails to bring out bitter or sour tastes, despite metaphors that suggest it might, researchers report in the December 2013 issue of the journal Emotion.

If you're terrified of spiders, feel free to click "close tab" now. Spiders in Peru have been caught on tape doing something unthinkable: they're using dead leaves and insects to build "sculptures" of themselves. Is it art? Who knows. Is it terrifying? Most definitely.

Imagine being able to lease a 3D printer to build your entire house.The technology, called Contour Crafting, is already here and can build a 2,500-square-foot home in 20 hours.The massive robot printer was invented by University of Southern California professor Behrokh Khoshnevis, who says that the technology is so versatile that it can be used to build homes in slums or human habitats on Mars.

Extreme air pollution in Asia is affecting the world's weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.Yuan Wang, a former doctoral student at Texas A&M, along with Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professors Renyi Zhang and R. Saravanan, have had their findings published in the current issue of Nature Communications.

Let this idea grow on you: using mushrooms to clean up dirty, polluted urban streams. That's what environmentalists are trying in Oregon. Volunteers for Ocean Blue Project, an ecological restoration nonprofit, are placing mushroom spawn in burlap sacks with a mixture of coffee grounds and straw to grow in. Then, they put the bags in the paths of storm drains, where contaminated water will filter through them.