Newsdesk Archive
A fragile quantum memory state has been held stable at room temperature for a "world record" 39 minutes - overcoming a key barrier to ultrafast computers."Qubits" of information encoded in a silicon system persisted for almost 100 times longer than ever before.
A new book by American ecologist Dr Ellis Silver argues that humans may well not be from Earth - and may have arrived separately. Silver offers arguments, based on human physiology, that suggest we may not have evolved alongside other life on Earth - but arrived from elsewhere, brought here by aliens as recently as a few tens of thousands of years ago.
There are plenty of ways to study history. You can conduct archaeological digs, examining the artifacts and structures buried under the ground to learn about past lifestyles. You can read historical texts, perusing the written record to better understand events that occurred long ago.But an international group of medical researchers led by Andrés Moreno-Estrada and Carlos Bustamante of Stanford and Eden Martin of the University of Miami are looking instead at a decidedly unconventional historical record: human DNA.
Critics say Holy Basin archaeology is being exploited to advance Israeli claims to its 'eternal city'.Jerusalem - The Holy Basin - containing Jerusalem's Old City and its surrounding territories - may be the most contested piece of property in the world. Sacred to Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths, it is both the centre of Jerusalem and the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A search for treasure beneath a 19th-century Indian fort has ended, yielding a few bones and terracotta bricks but none of the gold predicted by a Hindu holy man's dream, an official said on Friday.
The skeleton of an ancient aristocratic woman whose head was warped into a deformed, pointy shape has been unearthed in a necropolis in France.The necropolis, found in the Alsace region of France, contains 38 tombs that span more than 4,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Dark Ages.
Scientists have revealed what they believe to be the oldest fossil ever discovered - belonging to foul-smelling, single-celled microbes that lived 3.5 billion years ago, and is a likely distant ancestor of human beings.The minuscule remains were found inside a lump of sandstone rock in Western Australia by scientists from OId Dominium University in the US and are thought to be 300 million years older than the previous oldest example of life on Earth.
Starting next fall, astronauts on the International Space Station won't have to wait months for replacement parts to be launched from Earth. Instead, they can use a newly arrived 3D printer to fabricate the tools and materials they need.
An asteroid or comet smashing into the surface of a planet can spell doom for living creatures, but if the impact isn't large enough to completely decimate a planet's inhabitants, then the crater can ultimately provide a habitat for life. That's the finding of a new study reported at the European Planetary Science Congress in September by Iain Gilmour of the Open University in the United Kingdom.
Tons of plastic floats in the oceans, and it's covered in microscopic life. But a new study reveals plastic-loving species that have never been seen before, and ecosystems entirely new to science. Say hello to life in the 'plastisphere.'For the study, which now appears in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers Tracy Mincer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, used fine mesh nets to collect pieces of plastic ranging in size from 1-5 mm in diameter from multiple locations in the North Atlantic Ocean.
When a clam was dredged up from the bottom of the sea of Iceland, a team of scientists eagerly cracked it open - killing the oldest animal in the world.The mollusc was 507 years old - when it was born, Michelangelo was just about to start work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.Related: Ming the clam was not the only really ancient living thing on Earth
It should not be a surprise that East Africa was a hotbed of evolution, because over the last five million years everything about the landscape has changed.The extraordinary forces of plate tectonics and a changing climate have transformed East Africa from a relatively flat, forested region to a mountainous fragmented landscape dominated by the rapid appearance and disappearance of huge, deep-water lakes. And from this highly variable landscape emerged an ape smart enough to question its own existence.
European settlers transformed America's Northeastern forests. From historic records and fossils, researchers know the landscape and plants are radically different today than they were 400 years ago.But little direct evidence exists to prove which tree species filled the forests before they were cleared for fields and fuel. Swamp-loving plants, like sedges and tussocks, are the fossil survivors, not delicate leaves from hardwood trees.
Remains of the oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, described in a new paper, are so ancient that they actually predate the earliest known fossils for our species by 85,000 years.There are a couple possible implications, and both are mind-blowing. The first is that our species could be much older than previously thought, which would forever change the existing human family tree.
Flowering plants of the genus Capsicum are usually referred to as chili peppers. There are relatively few sites in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America that contain remains of Capsicum, and therefore, we know little about how pre-Columbian people used chili peppers in those regions.
Queen honeybees not only mate with lots of males, but they also brag about it to the whole hive.A chemical signal from queen bee glands lets the female worker bees know that her mating dalliances were successful, and hint at just how fruitful they were, according to a study published Wednesday in the online journal PLOS One.
Music could be used to track human migration patterns over history, new research suggests.That conclusion, described Tuesday (Nov. 12) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, came from examining a genetic analysis of indigenous populations in Taiwan along with the people's folk music. Populations with more similar folk music also tended to be more closely related, the researchers found.
Evolutionary analysis can be used to study similarities among folktales, according to new research published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jamshid Tehrani at Durham University in the United Kingdom.Since the Brothers Grimm published their compilation of folktales 200 years ago, academics have noted that many plots from those European stories are similar to those from other stories all over the world.
Hunger can make people emotional, that's for sure. Some people get "hangry" when their blood sugar levels drop and their irritability rises. Others get greedy.But new research suggests that we may have another, innate response to hunger: a desire to encourage others to share what they have.
Probiotics are not new, but their status as a nutritional buzzword is. Most folks have now heard and seen the term countless times in commercials and advertisements, as yogurt, dietary supplement, natural food product, and even cosmetic companies promote their probiotic-containing products.
Every decade fishers looking to catch tuna, shrimp, snapper and other marine creatures unintentionally pull millions of sea turtles out of the oceans, according to one recent estimate, most of them vulnerable to extinction. This kind of accidental capture, researchers believe, is a leading cause of sea turtle mortality.
Residents of towns near Chesapeake Bay have complained about the brackish groundwater in the region for years. Hydrologists now say that an aquifer, about a mile under parts of Virginia and Maryland, is older than dirt, and part of an ancient sea that's stayed trapped for the past 145 million years.
When scientists drilled deep into the center of a huge crater beneath the Chesapeake Bay, they discovered ancient seawater that had been locked up in sediments since the early Cretaceous Period. The water, which is also twice as salty as the water in today's oceans, is thought to be more than 100 million years old.
New research suggests that the Amazon rainforest may be more able to cope with dry conditions than previously predicted. Researchers at the University of Exeter and Colorado State University used a computer model to demonstrate that, providing forest conservation measures are in place, the Amazon rainforest may be more able to withstand periods of drought than has been estimated by other climate models.
In space, astronauts go for years without a fresh supply of water. Floating in a capsule in outer space they wash and drink from the same continuously recycled source. So why, asked Swedish industrial designer Mehrdad Mahdjoubi, do we not do the same on Earth?
A planet-hunting NASA spacecraft has detected no sign of moon-size black holes yet in the Milky Way galaxy, limiting the chances that such objects could make up most of the "dark matter" that has mystified scientists for decades.
We know Mars as a dusty seemingly dead planet. But there is growing evidence that it was not always so.Most planetary scientists believe the Red Planet was once not unlike the Earth. There is evidence that it was once habitable - a world that had a thick atmosphere and water that flowed across its surface.
Paleontologists have described a new species of giant, spineless hedgehog that lived in what is today the Gargano peninsula of Italy during the late Miocene, about 10-7 million years ago.From the early Oligocene to the late Miocene, the Gargano peninsula was an island home to many endemic, now-extinct animals.
The year was 241BC and on the 10th of March a massive naval battle took place off the coast of Sicily between the Romans and Carthaginians. The defeat of the Carthaginians brought about an end to the First Punic War and set the Roman Republic on its militaristic path to establishing an Empire.The Battle of the Egadi Islands is the first ancient naval battle site ever to discovered in its entirety and is now being surveyed in minute detail.
Can sea life evolve fast enough to cope with changing ocean chemistry? That's the question researchers like Gretchen Hofmann are trying to answer. The marine biologist is applying her years of experience with sea urchins to determining how marine animals might evolve or adapt to ocean acidification: the lowering of the ocean's pH due to human-propelled fossil fuel emissions.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield is a reasonable man, a former commander of the International Space Station, and a social media superstar. He recently went on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show to discuss his life and career when a caller asked him about the existence of "alien life.""I don't know of any astronauts who think we're alone in the universe," Hadfield replied.
India's mission to Mars has hit a snag, after a planned engine burn failed to raise the spacecraft's orbit around Earth by the intended amount.The problem occurred during a manoeuvre designed to boost the craft's maximum distance from 71,623km to 100,000km.
A Russian mission to the Martian moon Phobos, launching in 2020, would return samples from Phobos that contain bits and pieces of Mars itself. A new study calculates how much Martian material is on the surface of Phobos and how deep it is likely to go.
The Curiosity rover is like a rolling science lab, using its suite of onboard instruments to analyze the samples of martian soil and rock it scoops. But as much as scientists learn from robotic explorers, they could learn much more if they could get their hands on extraterrestrial material.
An electrical current capable of charging a mobile phone has been created from microwave signals.A team from Duke University said the technology they had used had been as efficient as using solar panels.The device they created used metamaterials, which capture various forms of wave energy and convert them for other applications.
If scientists can clone sheep and 3D-print human ears, surely they can figure out how to make our bodies heal themselves like Wolverine's does.Thanks to a curious accidental discovery from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital researcher George Daley, we may be closer than we previously thought.
One of the rarest and most threatened mammals on earth has been caught on camera in Vietnam for the first time in 15 years, renewing hope for the recovery of the species, an international conservation group said on Wednesday.The saola, a long-horned ox, was photographed in a forest in central Vietnam in September, WWF said.
Nasa has released a video revealing what Mars may have looked like as a young planet billions of years ago.It appears to have had a thick atmosphere that was warm enough to support oceans of liquid water - a crucial ingredient for life.
Six million years ago, the Himalayas were still pretty darn cold. The terrain was probably a bit rougher than they are nowadays, having had less time to weather. Yet, just as they do today, animals lived in that inhospitable climate, navigating the rocky terrain and ambushing prey among the bluffs. One such resident was Panthera blytheae, a newly discovered animal that's now the oldest-known big cat by about three million years.
Music skills evolved at least 30 million years ago in the common ancestor of humans and monkeys, according to a new study that could help explain why chimpanzees drum on tree roots and monkey calls sound like singing.The study, published in the latest issue of Biology Letters, also suggests an answer to this chicken-and-egg question: Which came first, language or music? The answer appears to be music.
It had been considered extinct for nearly 80 years, but the Tasmanian tiger has been declared alive and kicking by an intrepid group of British naturalists.A team of investigators from the Centre for Fortean Zoology, which operates from a small farmhouse in north Devon, is currently in Tasmania hunting down clues to prove the thylacine, commonly known as the Tassie tiger, still exists.
An expedition to probe the deep recesses of a cave that may contain fossilized specimens of early humans is currently underway in South Africa.An international team of paleoanthropologists is exploring the Rising Star Cave at a site in South Africa dubbed the Cradle of Humankind, which is located roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Johannesburg. The Cradle of Humankind is one of the richest fossil sites in Africa, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.
Evidence of complex microbial ecosystems dating back almost 3.5 billion years has been found in Western Australia's Pilbara region by an international team including UWA Research Assistant Professor David Wacey.The research, published this week in the journal Astrobiology has revealed the well-preserved remnants of a complex ecosystem in a 3.5 billion-year-old sedimentary rock sequence.
The Sahara wasn't always a desert. Trees and grasslands dominated the landscape from roughly 10,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago. Then, abruptly, the climate changed, and north Africa began to dry out.Previous research has suggested that the end of the African Humid Period came gradually, over thousands of years, but a study published last month in Science says it took just a few hundred.
In case it wasn't already clear, there is now consensus that climate change will have a significant impact on the world's food systems.Increasingly, it is not a question of if or when a changing climate will impact our food, but rather how farms and agricultural systems will choose to adapt.
Seed dispersal by animals is important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land. Usually bugs, birds, or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list. A new study reviewed the diets of crocodiles and showed that 13 of 18 species ate fruit of some sort and a wide variety of plants.
In the field of animal behaviour, there is one topic that is almost guaranteed to get your study in the popular press: showing how an animal behaves just like humans.Yet people usually only consider this comparison from one side: they are amazed that any other animals can be as intelligent, emotional or altruistic as humans can be. They never really consider what this comparison means for how we understand ourselves.
A US company that has developed an "electronic backpack" that fits onto a cockroach allowing its movements to be controlled by a mobile phone app has defended itself against cruelty claims.The Backyard Brains company says that the device is intended to get children to be interested in neuroscience.But critics say that the company's stance is "disingenuous".
Australian researchers have found that zinc can 'starve' one of the world's most deadly bacteria by preventing its uptake of an essential metal.The finding, by infectious disease researchers at the University of Adelaide and The University of Queensland, opens the way for further work to design antibacterial agents in the fight against Streptococcus pneumoniae.
The sun's polarity is getting closer to flipping. The star's northern hemisphere's polarity has already reversed, and the southern hemisphere should follow suit soon, scientists say.Every 11 years or so, the two hemispheres of the sun reverse their polarity, creating a ripple effect that can be felt throughout the far reaches of the solar system. The sun is currently going through one of those flips in its cycle, scientists working at Stanford University's Wilcox Solar Observatory, which has monitored the sun's magnetic field since 1975, said.
A study led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine shines a new light on molecular tools our cells use to govern regulated gene expression. The study was published on line in advance of print November 10 in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
Researchers from the University of Iowa have developed a remarkable new procedure for regenerating missing or damaged bone. It's called a "bio patch" -- and it works by sending bone-producing instructions directly into cells using microscopic particles embedded with DNA.In experiments, the gene-encoding patch has already regrown bone fully enough to cover skull wounds in test animals.
The whir of a dentist's drill might bring on the shakes and a racing heart, but what happens in the brain has long been a mystery.Now researchers in Japan believe they are closer to an answer after scanning people's brains while playing them sounds of dental drills and suction instruments.
The presence of gun violence in films rated PG-13 has tripled since the rating was invented in 1985, according to a new study conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University, VU University - a Dutch school - and the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Babies have a natural proclivity for banging, but what may seem like haphazard movements (and a lot of noise) are actually providing researchers at Tulane University with important data on how humans learn to use tools.
Women who exercise in pregnancy boost the brain development of their newborn babies, according to researchers who claim the effect could benefit children for the rest of their lives.Babies' brains showed more mature patterns of activity, linked to better mental performance in later life, when their mothers took at least three 20-minute sessions of moderate exercise a week.
The sun fired off its strongest solar flare of the year Tuesday, though the massive sun storm should not post a major concern for Earth, space weather experts say.The powerful X3.3 solar flare peaked at 5:12 p.m. EST on Tuesday from the sunspot AR1890. NASA's Solar Dynamics Orbiter captured high-definition video of the X-class solar flare as it erupted from the sun.
Belting out classic numbers from hit musicals can boost the brain function of people with Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers who worked with elderly residents at a US care home.Over a four-month study, the mental performance of patients who took part in regular group singing sessions improved compared with others who just listened.
The European Space Agency says one of its research satellites that had run out of fuel caused no known damage after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.ESA said the satellite re-entered the atmosphere at about 0000 GMT Monday on a descending orbit pass that extended across Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.
Humanity should start thinking about how to interact with alien species long before coming into contact with extraterrestrial life, experts say.Coming up with a strict set of guidelines that govern the way people on future interstellar space missions study and interact with aliens is imperative before anyone blasts off to a distant world, according to attendees at Starship Congress in August.
Human actions that were not intended to limit the greenhouse effect have had large effects on slowing climate change. The two world wars, the Great Depression and a 1987 international treaty on ozone-depleting chemicals put a surprising dent in the rate at which the planet warmed, says research published today in Nature Geoscience.
Crows don't often hang out in hospitals, where the overuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant germs. Yet crows in some areas of the U.S. carry drug-resistant bacteria in their bodies, according to a new study. Poop from about 2.5 percent of the crows studied had microbes that were resistant to a drug of last resort for infections in hospitals, Environmental Health News reports.
Hundreds of sea turtles are washing up dead on the beaches of Central America and scientists don't know why.One hypothesis is that the killer is a potent neurotoxin that can be produced by algae during red tides, which are large accumulations of algae that turn sea water red or brown.
An evolutionary alliance between trees and the ants that guard them has a sinister explanation, a new study suggests, finding ants hooked on nectar.In Central America, ants act as bodyguards for acacia trees, defending them from weeds and hungry animals in exchange for room and board, one of the most iconic alliances in nature.
Scientists have managed to reconstruct the genome of giant animals which roamed the world more than 780,000 years ago, using a new technique which could boost our understanding of ancient man.Through DNA analysis researchers were able to create the genome - which contains a mammal's hereditary information - of a huge cave bear and a large horse that had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years.
Indians share a gene with Europeans that plays a significant role in coding for lighter skin, new research suggests.The study, published today (Nov. 7) in the journal PLOS Genetics, also revealed that the gene, which is responsible for 27 percent of skin color variation in Indians, was positively selected for in North, but not South Indian populations.
A replica of King Tutankhamun's tomb is about to open in Egypt, and the authorities are hoping tourists will choose to visit this copy instead of the original. It's not the first time such steps have been taken to protect a historical site - and some reproductions are very popular.
Tiny bubbles of air buried deep in the ice of Eastern Antarctica may contain bits of the Earth's atmosphere as it was 1.5 million years ago, according to a new report."Ice is a great medium for trapping air," said Ed Brook of Oregon State University, one of several authors of a paper in the journal Climate of the Past that describes where this ancient ice might be. "It traps it without altering it very much.".
Whether they're cracking open rocks or scanning tiny changes in topography, geologists already work in three dimensions. But one of the most popular attractions at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver last week was a 3D printer spitting out fossils, globes and fractured rocks.
The "paleo diet" -- which supposedly mimics what our caveman ancestors ate -- has become a new health craze. But many scientists doubt that this hunter-gatherer cuisine of meat, veggies and fruit is as healthy as advertised, or even historically correct.
The Olympic torch has ben was held aloft in space for the first time, as two Russian cosmonauts took the relay before the 2014 Winter Games beyond the Earth's atmopshere.
Throughout our universe, tucked inside galaxies far, far away, giant black holes are pairing up and merging. As the massive bodies dance around each other in close embraces, they send out gravitational waves that ripple space and time themselves, even as the waves pass right through our planet Earth.
Changes in solar activity have contributed no more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century, a new study has found.The findings, made by Professor Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, find that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming.
A dog learning a thousand words is nothing to sniff at. But what is truly remarkable about Chaser, the border collie who has taken the world by storm, is how she learns words.Chaser makes inferences in a similar way to human children. When Chaser played the game that tested the same ability in the citizen science project Dognition, not surprisingly, she was off the charts.
Dogs are traditionally seen as "man's best friend," but an expert on canine cognition says the origin of the species may not have been all that warm and fuzzy: Dogs could have started out as mutant wolves that rooted around in the garbage like rats."Those dogs are not our best friends," says Clive D.L. Wynne, who heads up Arizona State University's Canine Science Collaboratory. "They are vermin, along with other nasty things that are in the trash. But then a second phase kicks in." Humans discovered that dogs could be very useful. And tasty, too.
Wildlife Conservation Society biologists have discovered cave paintings made by hunter-gatherers between 10,000 to 4,000 years ago while studying wild animals in the Taboco region, the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
An international team of researchers, co-led by scientists at the University of York and Yunnan Normal University, has produced the first multi-disciplinary evidence for management of cattle populations in northern China, around the same time cattle domestication took place in the Near East, over 10,000 years ago.
Deep within the heart of the African nation of Mozambique there stands a mountain. Unknown to scientists and mostly undisturbed by humans since, well, since perhaps the dawn of our species, this mysterious mountain, clothed in dense green virgin rainforest, rises up from a golden ocean of savannah.
A project aimed at protecting internationally important seabird populations on two of the Isles of Scilly by killing more than 3,000 brown rats, is under way.The islands, which are located off Cornwall, are home to breeding populations of 14 seabird species and approximately 20,000 birds.
Millions of acres of U.S. forest lands are carpeted with stands of unsightly reddish-brown trees that were killed by voracious beetles the size of rice grains. A $10 million, five-year research program launched this week aims to determine if the beetle-killed trees can be turned into biofuel for cars and trucks without breaking the bank or exacerbating climate change, which is aiding the beetle mania.
Portland, Maine, voters on Tuesday approved legalizing recreational marijuana for residents 21 and older. The measure, Question 1, passed with about 70 percent of the vote, making Portland the first East Coast city to legalize recreational pot.
A 10-year-old boy got a surprise bonus after being treated for leukemia: The very same procedure that cured his cancer also may have cured his severe peanut allergy.The boy remains cancer-free, and peanut-allergy free, following a bone marrow transplant to treat his acute lymphoblastic leukemia, said the doctors who presented his case today (Nov. 8) at the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) in Baltimore.
King Tutankhamun was just a teenager when he died. For an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, presumably well fed and fiercely protected, this was a premature demise.It was also momentous, for his death meant the beginning of the end for ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty.How could this have happened?.
Normally, intentionally elongated or flattened skulls are associated with ancient Mesoamerican cultures. But this exquisite specimen, which dates back some 1,500 years, was recently found at a dig in Alsace, France.There's an industrial park in Pays de Sainte Odile, France, that's about to be developed, prompting archaeologists to perform a major search over 7.5 acres.
A team of researchers associated with the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA) at Texas A&M University observe that dispersal of Homo sapiens across the Americas is one of the greatest chapters in the history of our species, but major questions about this late Pleistocene diaspora remain unanswered.
The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest known complete composition of music in existence, a Hellenistic Ionic song with complete notation likely inscribed in the first century AD. And its notation have allowed modern music scholars to play the song in the modern day.Although there are certainly older musical texts and fragments, the very brief Seikilos epitaph is a complete song, found engraved on a tombstone near Aidin, Turkey, along with the inscription, "I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.".
One out of every five sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy has a planet about the size of Earth that is properly positioned for water, a key ingredient for life, a study released on Monday showed.The analysis, based on three years of data collected by NASA's now-idled Kepler space telescope, indicates the galaxy is home to 10 billion potentially habitable worlds.
Former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin pioneered a "faster, better, cheaper" approach to America's space program, but he would have been hard-pressed to deliver a Mars mission for the bargain-basement price of India's first probe to the red planet, which blasted off Tuesday.
A graphic released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has sparked fears of a massive, Texas-sized "island" of toxic debris heading toward the United States from Japan.While the map has certainly provided fodder for catchy -- if slightly cataclysmic -- headlines, it now appears the fears it prompted are overblown.
2012 may go down in history as a remarkable year. For the first time, the maddening pace of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions showed signs of a global slowdown."These are very positive signs," says Niklas Höhne of energy analysts Ecofys in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
A new advance in robotics is putting the Pee in C-3PO.Researchers at the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol recently designed a robotic heart-like pump powered by urine. The robot, which also pumps the urine as it is drawing power from it, is likely to be implemented in a line of eco-friendly robots that run on biological waste.
Technology is bringing the reality of having Jetson-like helpers in everyday life ever closer. Before we know it, there will be robots ringing up our groceries at the supermarket and washing the dishes before they pile up in the sink.But there's one hold-up: how does a robot know when it is handling a sharp knife, rather than a dull dinner plate or a fragile carton of eggs?
Sleeping well, lately? This will cure that: Imagine a snake the length of a school bus, with a mouth that opens wider than you can spread your arms. Not only could such a snake exist, it did exist ... and may exist again in the future as temperatures warm.
ZHENGZHOU, China, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Three flutes made from bird bones found in an tomb in central China are evidence remote ancestors played music long before they could write, archaeologists say.Made of bones of red-crowned cranes, the flutes were excavated at an ancient tomb in Henan province, China's state run Xinhua news agency reported.
The temple of Angkor Wat, the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the famous statues on Easter Island were all built without the conveniences of modern technology. Ancient peoples didn't have access to forklifts, hydraulic cranes, or flatbed trucks. So how did they build the temples and statues that we admire today?
Researchers in the Netherlands will next year test a GPS navigation system aimed at preventing the international curse of motorway traffic jams by telling drivers which lane to move to.Tests will be carried out as early as April on a 75-kilometre (around 50 mile) stretch of motorway passing through the Netherlands, from Germany to Belgium, which is popular with freight lorries.
The Woodland Trust's chief executive has said increasing people's access to green spaces could cut billions of pounds from the NHS healthcare bill.Sue Holden said it had been calculated that the NHS could save £2.1bn a year if everyone had access to green spaces.
In an article appearing in Medical Hypotheses on September 20, a New York-based physician-researcher from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine has called for the testing of umbilical cord blood for levels of a growth protein that could help predict an infant's propensity to later develop autism.
Engaging in extra-curricular activities during school years might prove beneficial even in later years. While playing team sports improves attention skills and fights off obesity and egoism, music lessons maintain the sharpness of the brain and prevent cognitive decline in later life, according to a Northwestern University study.