Newsdesk Archive
Scientists using the Herschel space observatory have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly. Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet, a solar system body bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.
A European spacecraft circling Venus has captured high-resolution images of strange waves in the clouds whirring above Earth's nearest neighbor. These ripples could help scientists understand how Venus' hellish surface shapes its atmosphere.
Seismic waves penetrating to a depth of almost 200 miles report the discovery of an anomaly that likely is the volcanic mantle plume of the Galapagos Islands - it's just not where geologists and computer modeling had assumed.
Understanding who feeds on whom and how often is the basis for understanding how nature is built and works. A new study now suggests that the methods used to depict food webs may have a strong impact on how we perceive their makeup. Once similar techniques are applied to food webs across the globe, we may encounter major surprises.
A study led by Denis Duboule shows that limbs emerged during evolution by modernisation of a preexisting DNA structure.Our first four-legged land ancestor came out of the sea some 350 million years ago. Watching a lungfish, our closest living fish relative, crawl on its four pointed fins gives us an idea of what the first evolutionary steps on land probably looked like. However, the transitional path between fin structural elements in fish and limbs in tetrapods remains elusive.
Sloths are the quintessential couch potatoes of the rainforest, and these sluggish tree-dwellers also serve as a hotel for moths and algae.Three-toed sloths descend from the trees once a week to defecate, providing a breeding ground for moths that live in the animals' fur and nourishing gardens of algae that supplement the sloths' diet, new research finds. Leaving the trees burns energy and makes sloths easy prey for predators, but the benefits of a richer diet appear to be worth the perils.
Researchers have found evidence that jet lag causes "profound disruption" to more than 1,000 genes, including many that are normally drawn upon to maintain, repair and protect the body.The findings might help to explain why people with jet lag feel so miserable, with ailments ranging from nausea and anxiety to stomach complaints and memory problems, scientists said.
Who needs poker chips?There's a new currency coming to Las Vegas casinos: the Bitcoin.Starting Wednesday, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino will begin collecting the digital currency that merchants increasingly are starting to accept.
What happens to our cognitive abilities as we age? Traditionally it is thought that age leads to a steady deterioration of brain function, but new research in Topics in Cognitive Science argues that older brains may take longer to process ever increasing amounts of knowledge, and this has often been misidentified as declining capacity.
Regular cocaine users have difficulties in feeling empathy for others and they exhibit less prosocial behavior. A study at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Zurich now suggests that cocaine users have social deficits because social contacts are less rewarding for them. Social skills should therefore be trained during the treatment of cocaine addiction.
The number sequence "123456" has overtaken "password" as the most common worst password among internet users, an online security firm says.Releasing its annual Worst Passwords list, SplashData, whose company markets password management apps, said it was the first time "password" had lost its number-one position, changing places with its numerical rival.
A glacier was still in place in Scotland within the past 400 years - 11,000 years less than previously thought - it has been suggested.Dundee University geographer Dr Martin Kirkbride said a glacier may have survived in the Cairngorms as recently as the 18th Century.
The mystery of an ancient battle between two warring troops of elephants has been solved, thanks to a modern genetic analysis of the lumbering beasts.Researchers have now found that Eritrean elephants, which live in the northeastern portion of Africa, are savanna elephants, and are not related to the more diminutive forest elephants that live in the jungles of central Africa.
Climate change, violence and disease played a key role in the collapse of the Harappan civilization more than 3,000 years ago, according to a new study.Harappan civilization, or the Indus Valley civilization, developed in the middle of the third millennium BC, at the same time as contemporaneous civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It stretched over a million square kilometers of what is now Pakistan and India.
Just as ancient Greek and Roman propagandists insisted, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from the gods, according to a new study.
A research robot out on a routine test inadvertently stumbled upon a never-before-seen species of sea anemone living upside down in Antarctic ice. It's a remarkable discovery that could hint at the kind of life that might be found in the subsurface oceans of Europa.
Rosetta, Europe's comet-chasing spacecraft, has woken from its slumber.A signal confirming its alert status was received by controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, at 18:17 GMT.Rosetta has spent the past 31 months in hibernation to conserve power as it arced beyond the orbit of Jupiter on a path that should take it to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August.
A new approach to harvesting solar energy, developed by MIT researchers, could improve efficiency by using sunlight to heat a high-temperature material whose infrared radiation would then be collected by a conventional photovoltaic cell. This technique could also make it easier to store the energy for later use, the researchers say.
Mankind's primordial dream of flight is taking off with a new twist as a Slovak prototype of a flying car spreads its wings. Inspired by the books about flying by French authors Jules Verne and Antoine de Saint Exupery, Slovak designer and engineer Stefan Klein has been honing his flying machine since the early 1990s."I got the idea to start working on a vehicle of the future at university, but honestly, who hasn't dreamt of flying while being stuck in the traffic?" Klein told AFP.
In the quest for new treatments, U.S. researchers are looking to traditional Chinese medicines, some of the oldest remedies in the world.A recent discovery resulted in a better treatment for a type of leukemia that strikes about in the U.S. Another found a potential new painkiller in China's medicine chest. Other researchers are studying a traditional medicinal plant called "thunder god vine" for its anti-cancer properties.
Scientists have described a previously unknown species of dead-leaf toad in the Peruvian Andes.The species, which is a master of camouflage, is named Rhinella yunga after the Yungas, the montane forest ecoregion it inhabits. It lives in leaf litter, where it blends in with its cryptic coloration and leaf-like body shape.
Located within a windswept field near the village of Nevern in South-west Wales, a team of archaeologists from the Welsh Rock Art Organisation (WRAO) have been excavating a site known as Trefael and making exciting new discoveries.This monument was up until 2009 classified as a damaged standing stone probably of Early Bronze Age date (c 2,200 BC) and as a result received little attention.
When he is not watching his flock Silverio Chiquenayra-Quispe takes care of the Pumatalya weather station, located between the brightly coloured local council building, the chapel and the bovine artificial insemination centre. At 3,800 metres above sea level, on the high plateaus of the Andes, the little town is four hours by road from the provincial capital of Cusco in Peru.
A winter that lasts years isn't just a problem in Game of Thrones. Roughly 1500 years ago, our world was turned upsidown by a winter that witnesses say "never ended." Now there is scientific evidence that there really was a decade of winter.
The hidden tendrils of dark matter that underlie the visible Universe may have been traced out for the first time.Cosmology theory predicts that galaxies are embedded in a cosmic web of "stuff", most of which is dark matter.
A sprinkling of stardust is as magical as it sounds. The dust grains that float through our solar system contain tiny pockets of water, which form when they are zapped by a blast of charged wind from the sun.The chemical reaction causing this to happen had previously been mimicked in laboratories, but this is the first time water has been found trapped inside real stardust.
Have you heard of the Internet of Things? It's, like, the most important Internet since the first Internet.It's a series of connected devices. One day soon, when your alarm clock goes off, your coffee pot will turn on. When you're having a rough week, your toaster will deliver life-affirming aphorisms to your Kindle, probably. But there is a dark side to this Internet.
The University of Cumbria has become the world's first public educational institution to accept bitcoin as payment for tuition fees.The currency is being accepted as payment for two new courses linked to the study of crypto-currencies and complementary currencies, in a move similar to that of the private University of Cyprus, which began accepting bitcoins and started teaching about the currency last year.
Fragments of human bones that exhibit cut marks and prolonged exposure to fire have been discovered through various excavations in the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan (located in Mexico City). These skeletal remains are from individuals, such as children, slaves and captured warriors, who were sacrificed during religious festivals.
The Group of Photovoltaic and Optoelectronic Devices (DFO) at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, led by the professor of Applied Physics Juan Bisquert, together with researchers from the University of Oxford, have created and characterized a photovoltaic device based on a combination of titanium oxide and graphene as charge collector and perovskite as sunlight absorber. The device is manufactured at low temperatures and has a high efficiency.
Japanese scientists are getting ready to launch a test of a space junk-cleaning tether, according to press reports.Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) researchers are developing an electrodynamic tether designed to generate electricity that will slow down space-based debris, according to a report from Agence France Presse.
Exposing skin to sunlight may help to reduce blood pressure and thus cut the risk of heart attack and stroke, a study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggests.
Futurist Stewart Brand, founder of The Long Now Foundation, has a new mission in life. He wants to bring extinct species back from the dead. Some ecologists thing that's an awful idea. Here are the arguments on both sides of the de-extincting debate.
Small birds, butterflies, bees and fruitbats will be fitted with tiny radio transmitters and tracked throughout their lifetimes from space when a dedicated wildlife radio receiver is fitted to the International Space Station next year.
Exposure to a widely used pesticide causes worker bumblebees to grow less and then hatch out at a smaller size, according to a new study by Royal Holloway University of London.The research, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, reveals that prolonged exposure to a pyrethroid pesticide, which is used on flowering crops to prevent insect damage, reduces the size of individual bees produced by a colony.
Renewable tidal energy sufficient to power about half of Scotland could be harnessed from a single stretch of water off the north coast of the country, engineers say.
Egypt is currently in the news, and not for the most pleasant of reasons. Political disturbances are being felt in isolated pockets of the country, yet are clearly overblown by western media, and some foreign governments. But this land, and especially the fertile areas that border the Nile River has been a vital part of human history for thousands of years.
An unknown pharaoh named Woseribre Senebkay has been unearthed in southern Egypt.The rediscovered king's mummy was found in pieces in a pile of debris, ripped apart by tomb robbers. However, University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Josef Wegner, doctoral student Kevin Chahail and their colleagues were able to piece together the royal skeleton. They found that Senebkay was 5 feet, 10 inches (1.75 meters) tall and was in his mid- to late-40s when he died.
"I don't know why you're on Mars, but whatever the reason for going to Mars is, I'm glad you're there and I wish I was with you."That was a part of astrophysicist Carl Sagan's message, recorded a few months before he died in 1996, to the future human inhabitants of Mars.Some of the earliest science fiction imagined voyages to the Red Planet.
Scientists probing the icelands of West Antarctica have discovered a subglacial pit that is deeper than the Grand Canyon.The researchers were charting the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands-an ancient mountain range buried beneath several miles of Antarctic ice-by combining data from satellites and ice-penetrating radar towed behind snowmobiles and onboard small aircraft.
Long believed to be lost and scattered, King Alfred the Great's mortal remains may be about to make a re-appearance.A fragment of a male human pelvic bone which had lain unappreciated in a cardboard box in a museum store room in Winchester, once the capital of Anglo-Saxon England, has been identified as probably belonging to either King Alfred himself - or to his son King Edward the Elder. The crucial evidence, announced on Friday afternoon, was a radiocarbon date obtained from the bone by scientists at Oxford University.
Rio de Janeiro: Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the 30-metre-high statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the 700-metre Corcovado mountain.
New research shows chimpanzees to use gestures to communicate with one another while pursing a specific goal.According to a press release, researchers from Georgia State University (GSU) studied two language-trained chimps as they interacted with a human experimenter. Their task was devised for them to have to coordinate with each other to find a hidden piece of food.Related: Lost in the wild? Chimps can show you the way
At 10am GMT on Monday morning an alarm clock will rouse a snoozing spacecraft that is hurtling through the darkest reaches of the solar system. Launched 10 years ago, and in hibernation for the last three, the time for action has come at last.
URBAN warehouses, derelict buildings and high-rises are the last places you'd expect to find the seeds of a green revolution. But from Singapore to Scranton, Pennsylvania, "vertical farms" are promising a new, environmentally friendly way to feed the rapidly swelling populations of cities worldwide.
A mysterious rock has appeared in front of a robotic rover on Mars - and Nasa has no idea how it got there. The rock popped into existence in front of the six-wheeled rover Opportunity a few days ago, entirely out of the blue.The "jelly doughnut-sized" rock, nicknamed "Pinnacle Island", is now resting in front of the rover, and scientists are trying to decide what to do. "Mars keeps throwing new stuff at us!" said Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres.
The mysterious disintegration of a giant Antarctic ice shelf that had been stable for millennia was caused by a chain reaction of lakes draining on top of the ice, researchers say.This finding suggests that other ice shelves could be vulnerable to such abrupt collapses, the researchers said.
Dolphins routinely produce 10 times more power than the fittest human athletes do, concludes a new study on the herculean marine mammals.The discovery helps to explain why dolphins seem to swim with ease next to boats propelled by powerful engines. At first scientists thought dolphins always benefited from some kind of fluid-flow trickery, but now we know the truth: Dolphins are ultra strong.
Spider webs actively spring towards prey thanks to electrically-conductive glue spread across their surface, Oxford University scientists have discovered.
Comedians are able to make people laugh because they often display characteristics usually found in people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, research published on Thursday claims.Their talent to amuse people lies in having unusual personalities and displaying what researchers say are high levels of psychotic characteristics, according to findings which appear to support the widely held belief of a link between madness and creativity.
Two key Peruvian state institutions are blocking plans to establish a reserve for indigenous people living in "voluntary isolation" (IPVI) between the Napo and Tigre rivers in the Amazon rainforest.Related: Chile's Dakar Rally criticised by greens, archaeologists and indigenous groups
"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.
Beheadings and brutality aplenty marked the deaths of the Roman Empire's gladiators, criminals, and war victims, suggest forensic archaeologists looking at skulls from ancient London.The thriving capital of a Roman province by A.D. 100, Londinium (now London) held Roman legions, restive Britons, and an amphitheater for gladiatorial games. Along one of London's "lost rivers," the Walbrook stream, the city also held tanneries and burial pits.
A team involving researchers from the Spanish National Research Council has analyzed, for the first time, two cave figures of rock shelters located in the archaeological ensemble of Minateda, in Hellín (Albacete). They have different styles and are separated by several millenniums in time. The results show that the composition of the painting in Prehistory did not change in thousands of years and that there were no cultural or ritual connotations in its making.
It is one the oldest mathematical problems in the world. Several centuries ago, the twin primes conjecture was formulated. As its name indicates, this hypothesis, which many science historians have attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid, deals with prime numbers, those divisible only by themselves and by one (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc.). Under this assumption, there exists an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers whose difference is two, called twin primes (e.g., 3 and 5), but nobody has been able to confirm this so far.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) used secret technology to spy on computers that were not even connected to the internet, it has been reported.Citing documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the New York Times said 100,000 machines were fitted with small devices that emitted radio waves.
Australian scientists are gluing tiny sensors onto thousands of honey bees to track their movements in a trial aimed at halting the spread of diseases that have wiped out populations in the northern hemisphere.
Archaeologists have identified examples of the earliest use of steel in the British Isles from a site in East Lothian. The site, an Iron Age hill fort known as Broxmouth, was excavated in the 1970s, however the discoveries are only now being published.
Findings contradict assumption that old trees are less productive and could have important implications for carbon absorptionMost living things reach a certain age and then stop growing, but trees accelerate their growth as they get older and bigger, a global study has found.
Michael Levin is a regenerative and developmental biologist at Tufts University in Massachusetts. He has spent most of his career studying how electrical signals travel between cells in the body. Now, he thinks we could use those signals to program our cells to regrow arms, legs, and even faces.
EXACTLY what drove two men to pretend to be archaeologists and hack off pieces of the Great Pyramid? Atlantis. It's a tale of cranks, conspiracies and an ancient cartouche.The cartouche? It's an ancient red-pigment scribble deep inside the Great Pyramid said to be the linchpin in identifying who it was actually built for.
A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.
A thickening of the brain cortex associated with regular meditation or other spiritual or religious practice could be the reason those activities guard against depression -- particularly in people who are predisposed to the disease, according to new research led by Lisa Miller, professor and director of Clinical Psychology and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University.
The government has made no assessment of the extent to which crime levels in Yemeni and Somali communities will rise after khat is banned, a minister has admitted. Home Office minister Norman Baker said the ban would lead to rising street prices for the drug, but insisted it was "too early" to judge the extent to which this will lead to rising crime.Related: Khat: The final days in Bristol for the drug they chew all night
One recent evening six sovereign adults, taking full responsibility for their own consciousness and their own bodies, gathered for sacred ceremony with changa, a herbal mixture rich in monamine oxidase inhibitors and infused with the forbidden fruit of DMT. I was one of those adults and the two bowls I smoked were respectively my twelfth and thirteenth journeys with inhaled DMT.
The sting in a scorpion's tail has been connected to common defensive proteins by scientists.Defensins are proteins common to many plants and animals that fight off viral, bacterial and fungal pests.
Sex could make you smarter after new research has found it can encourage the growth of brain cells.Researchers in America and South Korea have found that sexual activity in mice and rats improved cognitive function.
After his 1902 trip to Yemen, scholar and naturalist Wilhelm Hein returned with a variety of plants and animals, which he donated to the Vienna Museum. One of these specimens, a shark, sat unnoticed for more than 80 years. In 1985 it was identified as the first (and only known) specimen of Carcharhinus leiodon, the smoothtooth blacktip shark.
An ancestor of humans -- albeit one that is at the root of our family tree -- shared the planet with dinosaurs, a new study concludes.This ancestor, the first placental mammal, lived between 88.3 to 91.6 million years ago, according to the study, published in the latest issue of Biology Letters. Placental mammals today include humans and all other mammals except those that lay eggs or have pouches (marsupials).
Sauropods, the largest land animals in Earth's history, are still mightily puzzling the scientists. These plant-eating dinosaurs with their long necks and small heads could reach a height of 10 meters or more and dominated all other land vertebrates in terms of size.
The mystery as to why humans outlive almost all other mammals may have finally been solved.An international team of scientists compared how much energy the average primate uses each day with the equivalent amount of energy other mammals use.
The idea that people make calculated decisions that allow them to obtain the most goods with the smallest amount of effort -- a complex hypothesis called 'economic man' for short -- often has been challenged.
By splicing genes from a bioluminescent bacteria with a common decorative plant called Nicotiana alata, engineers have created the first biological light source for your home. This is the first glimpse of a future world where synthetic biology transforms our lives.
Over the past few months, dozens of environmentalists in Iceland have staged a high-profile protest against a road scheduled to cut through an area of volcanic rock on the Álftanes peninsula, not far from the capital of Reykjavik. It is only one of countless eco-protests in the world, but the campaign has made international news, because some of the protesters claim the proposed road would disturb the habitat of elves who live among the rocks.
Ancient Scandinavians quaffed an alcoholic mixture of barley, honey, cranberries, herbs and even grape wine imported from Greece and Rome, new research finds.This Nordic "grog" predates the Vikings.
A reconstruction of the mausoleum belonging to Herod the Great, the king of Judea, formed the centrepiece of a major 2013 exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Herod the Great: the King's Final Journey. It was based on a discovery unearthed by Ehoud Netzer in May 2007 in the hills of Herodium, the tumulus south-east of Jerusalem.
Mount Vesuvius looms large in the story of Pompeii- but the temples of the ill-fated Roman town might have looked to loftier bodies. A preliminary survey of 11 temples in the ruins found evidence that at least nine were aligned with the rising of particular stars or with the position of the sun or moon on days of cultural significance.
New Article by Graham Hancock "Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong," says Danny Natawidjaja, PhD, senior geologist with the Research Centre for Geotechnology at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. "Old stories about Atlantis and other a great lost civilizations of prehistory, long dismissed as myths by archaeologists, look set to be proved true."I'm climbing with Dr Natawidjaja up the steep slope of a 300-ft high step-pyramid set amidst a magical landscape of volcanoes, mountains and jungles interspersed with paddy fields and tea plantations a hundred miles from the city of Bandung in West Java, Indonesia.
The worlds of Bigfoot and science collide tonight with the premiere of Spike TV's "Ten Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty."Actor Dean Cain hosts and leads an ambitious expedition to the Pacific Northwest of America to try and discover the elusive tall, hairy creature known as Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch.
Famous movie pundit Roger Ebert was often claimed by others as an atheist, although his own opinion was that he disliked his convictions being reduced to one word or label. Ebert's real 'religion', I think, was summed up by his admission that he had "spent hours and hours in churches all over the world...not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe".
In Peio, you feel, the First World War never quite ended. And in one very real sense, it lives on, thanks to the preserving properties of ice. For Peio was once the highest village in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and had a ringside seat to a little-known but spectacular episode of that conflict called the White War.
A new study might contain some bad news for companies hoping to mine asteroids for their valuable ores.In the last couple of years, start-ups - including one backed by Sir Richard Branson - have announced plans to extract resources from space rocks.
Scientists have built what they say is the first flying machine that hovers in a stable manner by flapping its wings.Previous designs for so-called flapping wing aircraft have mimicked the wing motions of insects, but the new design is based on the way jellyfish swim.
Solar energy has long been used as a clean alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil, but it could only be harnessed during the day when the sun's rays were strongest. Now researchers led by Tom Meyer at the Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have built a system that converts the sun's energy not into electricity but hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use, allowing us to power our devices long after the sun goes down.
Despite rumors, the singularity, or point at which artificial intelligence can overtake human smarts, still isn't quite here. One of the world's most powerful supercomputers is still no match for the humble human brain, taking 40 minutes to replicate a single second of brain activity.
Sending humans to Mars by the 2030s is affordable, a group of experts finds, but some key changes are needed if it is going to happen.A workshop group of more than 60 individuals representing more than 30 government, industry, academic and other organizations has found that a NASA-led manned mission to Mars is feasible if the space agency's budget is restored to pre-sequestration levels. Putting the first humans on the Red Planet would also require international cooperation and private industry support.
If not for life, Earth may not have possessed the continents it does now, instead becoming a planet covered nearly entirely in ocean, researchers say.These new findings suggest that any continents astronomers may one day see on alien worlds may potentially be signs of extraterrestrial life, scientists added.
Look at a picture of the Earth at night, and the world appears to be, quite literally, glowing. Now, scientists are starting to look for signs of advanced alien civilizations by the glow given off by technology used to harvest the energy from a star or even an entire galaxy.
Female capuchin monkeys have been filmed throwing stones at potential mates as a form of flirtation.The primates whine, pull faces and follow potential mates around in scenes reminiscent of the school playground.
You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China.Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm.
The fossilised remains of an ancient beast have revealed how prehistoric life hauled itself from the water and took its first unsteady steps along the path that led to four-legged land animals.
A new study indicates that the inhabitants of a remote peninsula in Southeast Asia can depict smells as easily as the rest of us pick colors.The study concerns the Jahai, nomadic hunter-gatherers who live in the mountain rainforests along the border between Malaysia and Thailand. Smell is very important to this society. Odors are often evoked in illness, or medicine, for example, and it is one of the few cultures to have words devoted exclusively to smells.
In Patagonia, at the southern end of South America, scientists have discovered 52.2-million-year-old fossils of a giant evergreen tree that now is only found thousands of miles away in Australia and Asia.
Tracking weather conditions on other planets is no easy task, but if we start playing close attention to dune formation, we could develop a means to at least know which way the wind is blowing.In research published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday, the work of Clément Narteau of the Global Institute for Physics in Paris and his team is discussed. In 2008, Clément bulldozed 160,000 square meters (16 hectares) of sand dunes in the Tengger desert of Inner Mongolia. Then, over the next three and a half years, the researchers watched how the desert winds re-formed the dunes, revealing information about the prevailing winds.
A team of astrobiologists has redefined conventional notions of where life can exist within a solar system. They've suggested that life could exist inside planets with inhospitable surfaces. Dubbed "subsurface habitable zones," this new definition of habitable zones means that alien life may be far more prevalent than we ever imagined.
The small and sleek clymene dolphin could be a barometer of how well ocean life is faring, given that the dolphin was recently determined to be the first known naturally occurring marine mammal hybrid.Molecular analysis, outlined in a study in the latest issue of the journal PLoS ONE, found that clymene dolphins, which live in the Atlantic Ocean and can grow to about 7 feet long, are a cross between closely related spinner and striped dolphins.
Does parenthood suck the joy out of life, or is it the key to happiness?It looks like it's a draw: People with children in the home are about as satisfied with their lives as those who don't have kids at home, a new study suggests.
Nine women in Sweden have received womb transplants, using organs donated from living relatives, according to news reports.Each woman who underwent the surgery was either born without a uterus, or had it removed because of cervical cancer. They will soon try to become pregnant.
Most dog owners can sense the difference between Fido's yip of joy and howl of discontent. Now, scientists find people use the same general rules to recognize doggy emotions as they do for fellow humans.By comparing how people perceive human and dog vocalizations, researchers found that people linked positive or negative emotions with the length of a vocalization, and the emotional intensity with a sound's pitch.
In a future Serengeti, illegal poaching continues to deplete the wildlife population, but conservationists have extraordinary new tools to protect endangered animals: robots that take the forms of those animals to blend in with the wildlife and capture poachers.