Newsdesk Archive
A specialist team of scientists from the University of Leicester has isolated viruses that eat bacteria -- called phages -- to specifically target the highly infectious hospital superbug Clostridium difficile (C. diff).
Any textbook will tell you that oxygen is essential for advanced life to evolve. For example, ancient dinosaurs and modern large-brained mammals need a lot of oxygen to keep their large and sophisticated organisms running. But why did life not explode when oxygen levels rose dramatically 2.1 billion years ago? This is the big question after a Danish/Swedish/French research team, led by University of Southern Denmark, has shown that the oxygen content 2.1 billion years ago was probably the same as when life exploded 500 million years ago.
The Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, a traveler who stops on the road to help a badly wounded robbery victim that others had passed by, is a story that we see repeated again and again in the news.In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a woman lost control of her car on an Interstate freeway and flipped into a water-filled ditch, a man jumped in to rescue her from drowning.
In the US, more people seek treatment for marijuana abuse than for abuse of cocaine or heroin. However, there are no approved treatments for marijuana addiction. Robert Schwarcz of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and his colleagues, including a group from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, have found a drug that appears to decrease the pleasurable effects of THC, marijuana's active ingredient, and could therefore prevent a psychological addiction to marijuana.
A peptide prevents the brain of a smoker from registering satisfaction from a cigarette.The hormone GLP-1 is released when we eat and makes us feel full or sated toward the end of the meal.GLP-1 receptors are also activated in parts of the brain that are linked to satisfaction or a sense of reward. This indicates the hormone is directly involved in our experience of gratification.
You'll never look at Dumbo in the same way again. Elephants, cows, goats and dogs all take roughly 21 seconds to empty their bladders. A "law of urination" now explains the physics behind what happens when you just gotta go.Patricia Yang and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta use high-speed video to study how fluids and animals interact; they have previously investigated how dogs shake themselves dry.
The clear waters around Bermuda are as picturesque as you can imagine, and the brilliantly colored fish swimming around are like something from a crayon box. But a serious problem lurks behind the beautiful facade: the lionfish.Lionfish are not native to the Atlantic Ocean. The venomous, fast reproducing fish are aggressive eaters and will consume anything and everything, gorging so much they are actually getting liver disease. With no known predators -- except human beings -- they can wipe out 90% of a reef.
LIMA (Reuters) - Peru said on Friday that it might restrict shark fishing to curb the illegal slaughter of up to 15,000 dolphins per year - used as bait by informal fisherman - following the release of footage documenting the practice.Video taken by NGO Mundo Azul broadcast on Thursday shows Peruvian fisherman harpooning dolphins, whose capture is banned under Peruvian law, before skinning and throwing their bloodied parts back into the ocean to lure sharks.
Forty years ago today, a four-man crew of an Army Reserve helicopter was flying over Mansfield, Ohio, around 11:00 p.m. when they "encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object," according to the official report, signed and submitted by the crew after the incident.
Stone-age hand prints on the walls of Spanish and French caves have long been assumed to be those of men and adolescent boys, but new research shows they are mostly those of women.The discovery starts with the work of British physician John Manning who gathered hand and digit measurements of patients to see if there were significant differences between men and women, as well as people from different populations in other parts of the world.
Herod the Great, the king of Judea who ruled not long before the time of Jesus, seems to have eluded historians once again.In 2007 archaeologists announced they had found the great king's tomb, a surprisingly modest mausoleum that was part of the Herodium, a massive complex built by Herod on a cone-shaped hill in the desert outside Jerusalem.
While the brain sleeps, it clears out harmful toxins, a process that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's, researchers say.During sleep, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain increases dramatically, washing away harmful waste proteins that build up between brain cells during waking hours, a of mice found.
Regular exercise may lower the risk that a person's sense of smell will fade, which tends to happen as people age, a new study finds.The study included about 1,600 people ages 53 to 97 who didn't have any problems with their sense of smell at the study's start, and were followed for up to 10 years. Researchers tested the participants' ability to detect eight odors, including chocolate and coffee, three times over the course of the study. Participants also reported their exercising habits.
A little lovin' may make your dessert more delicious, according to a recent series of experiments from the University of Singapore. Not only do we correlate the word love with sweetness, but thinking about romance might make us perceive the things we eat and drink as sweeter, too.
An international team of astronomers has observed part of the final death throes of the largest known star in the Universe as it throws off its outer layers. The discovery, by a collaboration of scientists from the UK, Chile, Germany and the USA, is a vital step in understanding how massive stars return enriched material to the interstellar medium - the space between stars - which is necessary for forming planetary systems.
If you enjoy leaves turning, pumpkin patches and other rites of autumn, thank the giant impact event early in Earth's history which knocked our planet's axis off kilter, creating the seasons we that know and love today. But was there just one planet-tilting impact?University of Western Ontario geologist Grant Young thinks there were two, separated by billions of years. He has been studying rocks from the Ediacaran Period, 540 to 635 million years ago and says he sees signs of massive changes to Earth's seasons and climate that can best be explained by a axis-shifting collision of a small planetary body into the ocean about 570 million years ago.
Russian divers Wednesday pulled from a murky lake in the Urals a half-tonne suspected meteorite said to have been part of a meteor whose ground-shaking shockwave hurt 1,200 people in February.The dramatic recovery operation came eight months after a piercing streak of light lit up the morning sky in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk in scenes some locals said made them think of the onset of a nuclear war.
Astronomers say they've found a bizarre star system where two of the planetary orbits are 45 degrees out of whack, but do just fine.The secret to the planets' success appears to be the harmony of those misaligned orbits, plus the influence of a third object that's even bigger and farther away from the parent star.
We now have the technology to go snooping for extraterrestrials in our own backyard. No, not as close as little green men cutting up crop circles; instead, we should be able to detect an alien device positioned somewhere between the sun to 30 times farther out than Pluto.What would aliens place 100 billion miles from the sun? Michael Gillon of the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland wrote in a recent paper that extraterrestrials who are surveying our solar system with one or more artificially intelligent probes would need to set up a very powerful transmitter to the send data back to their home plane.
For the second time this week, Southern California has seen a rare sea beast washed ashore, far from home waters.This time, it's a saber-toothed whale, better known to live in deep Alaskan waters than in the warm surf of tourist-choked Venice Beach in Los Angeles where it stranded Wednesday.
There's Wi-Fi on the International Space Station, so why not at the bottom of the ocean? The problem: Radio waves, which carry wireless signals, are sluggish in water.Now researchers from the University at Buffalo have a solution, and it's about to make the ocean a noisy place. Their wireless Internet prototype relies on sound waves.
Archaeologists have begun digging for treasure beneath a 19th-century fort in northern India, after a Hindu holy man said a king had appeared to him in a dream and told him about the cache.The swami said the spirit of King Rao Ram Baksh Singh, who was hanged in 1858 after rising up against British colonial forces, had told him to take care of the 1,000-ton treasure worth almost £30bn hidden under the fort in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
In recent years, scientists have discovered that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, are capable of all sorts of human-like behaviors that go far beyond tool use.They self-medicate, eating roughage to clear their intestines of parasites. Baby chimps use human-like gestures to convey their needs to adults. Studies suggest even that chimps have a seemingly innate sense of fairness and go through mid-life crises.
Enhanced growth of Earth's leafy greens during the 20th century has significantly slowed the planet's transition to being red-hot, according to the first study to specify the extent to which plants have prevented climate change since pre-industrial times. Researchers based at Princeton University found that land ecosystems have kept the planet cooler by absorbing billions of tons of carbon, especially during the past 60 years.
Despite being home to about 16,000 tree species, just 227 "hyperdominant" species account for half of Amazonia's total trees, a study suggests.An international team of researchers found that the region was, in total, home to an estimated 390 billion trees.Writing in Science, they added that the rarest 11,000 species made up only 0.12% of tree cover.
The Musician Wren (Cyphorhynus arada) is aptly-named, because these birds use the same intervals in their songs that are heard as consonant in many human cultures. This is what composer and musicologist Emily Doolittle and the biologist Henrik Brumm found out in their zoomusicological study.
Polar bears serve as the poster children for climate change. But global warming also threatens many other species that don't get as much news coverage.Moose in the Rocky Mountains become the latest climate change catastrophe icon recently, as their populations have plummeted with warming temperatures. But it's not just heat stress that is killing them off. Biologists are finding brain worms, liver flukes and ticks, as many as 150,000 on a single moose, are infecting the population to death.
The air we breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and is being officially classified as carcinogenic to humans, the World Health Organization's cancer agency said on Thursday.The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited data indicating that in 2010, 223,000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide resulted from air pollution, and said there was also convincing evidence it increases the risk of bladder cancer.
The Wari, an ancestor culture to the Incas that flourished throughout the Andean Highlands, expanded their reign largely through trade and semiautonomous colonies, rather than through the iron fist of conquest and centralized control, new research suggests.To reach that conclusion, detailed this month in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, researchers looked at the settlement patterns of the pre-Columbian culture.
Scientists have proposed that the most recently discovered ancient human relatives -- the Denisovans - somehow managed to cross one of the world's most prominent marine barriers in Indonesia, and later interbred with modern humans moving through the area on the way to Australia and New Guinea.
An archaeologist at the University of Sheffield has found evidence that, contrary to a widely held theory, ancient Syrians made their stone tools locally instead of importing finished tools from Turkey.The discovery, newly published online in Journal of Archaeological Science, has implications for our understanding of how early cities developed in these regions and how the geographic origins of raw materials affect developing states.
Which came first: fangs or bony armour? For years, palaeontologists have thought that the first bones to emerge were teeth, and that the protective armour coverings of early fish, made of similar material, followed. But now, a study1 reveals that the truth is the other way around.The work focuses on a group of ancient jawless animals known as conodonts, which died out during the late Triassic period, about 200 million years ago.
Removing food scraps trapped between the teeth one of the most common functions of using toothpicks, thus contributing to our oral hygiene. This habit is documented in the genus Homo, as early as Homo habilis, a species that lived between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago. New research based on the Cova Foradà Neanderthal fossil shows that this hominid also used toothpicks to mitigate pain caused by oral diseases such as inflammation of the gums (periodontal disease). It is the oldest documented case of palliative treatment of dental disease done with this tool.
Plant material found on Neanderthal teeth suggests they had a better understanding of their food than previously thought.In a new article published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, Museum anthropologists Laura Buck and Prof Chris Stringer propose that evidence of bitter root plants found on Neanderthal teeth may point to a practice of eating the stomach contents of their prey.
A record of Neanderthal archaeology, thought to be long lost, has been re-discovered by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel island of Jersey.The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Quaternary Science, reveals that a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago.
Oxford University genetics professor Brian Sykes tested DNA samples he said matched an ancient polar bear. The most likely explanation for his discovery, he said, is that the Yeti is some sort of brown bear and polar bear hybrid."I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive... may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it," he said. "It may be some sort of hybrid and if its behavior is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend.".
The idea that there were several different human species walking the Earth two million years ago has been dealt a blow.Instead, scientists say early human fossils found in Africa and Eurasia may have been part of the same species.Writing in Science, the team says that Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus are all part of a single evolving lineage that led to modern humans.
Humans evolved their very large brains in response to the dramatic shifts in the climate of East Africa, the cradle of humanity where man's ancestors are thought to have originated about two million years ago, a study has suggested.Scientists have matched exceptionally wet periods and very dry periods in the East African Rift Valley to sudden spurts in the evolution of the hominid ancestors of Homo sapiens, which resulted in the evolution of the modern human brain.
Research by a British scientist has concluded that the legendary Himalayan yeti may in fact be a sub-species of brown bear.DNA tests on hair samples carried out by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes found that they matched those from an ancient polar bear.He subjected the hairs to the most advanced tests available.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - Charles Hickson never regretted the notoriety that came his way after he told authorities he encountered an unidentified flying object and its occupants 40 years ago on the banks of the Pascagoula River. Until his death in 2011, Hickson told his story to anyone who would listen.But Calvin Parker Jr., the other man present for one of the most high-profile UFO cases in American history, has never come to terms with what he still says was a visit with gray, crab-clawed creatures from somewhere else. He says the encounter on Oct. 11, 1973, turned his life upside down.
Think back to your first childhood beach vacation. Can you recall the color of your bathing suit, the softness of the sand, or the excitement of your first swim in the ocean? Early memories such as this often arise as faded snapshots, remarkably distinct from newer memories that can feel as real as the present moment. With time, memories not only lose their rich vividness, but they can also become distorted, as our true experiences tango with a fictional past.
The human brain treats rejection in a similar way to the way it process physical pain, new research has suggested.A scientific study conducted by the University of Michigan Medical School has shown that the brain uses a similar reaction to ease the pain of social rejection as it does to deal with pain caused by physical injury.
New research has shown that the non-hallucinogenic components of cannabis could act as effective anti-cancer agents.The anti-cancer properties of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary hallucinogenic component of cannabis, has been recognised for many years, but research into similar cannabis-derived compounds, known as cannabinoids, has been limited.
In China, cosmetics are big business. China is the fourth-largest cosmetics market in the world, worth an estimated $22 billion. Yet, for a country in which science and technology is advancing rapidly in so many areas, when it comes to cosmetics safety, China is still operating in the dark ages. That's because China still requires cosmetic products, as well as raw ingredients, to be tested on live animals.
Never let your dog walk first through a doorway. Don't let your dog win tug-of-war. To establish yourself as the pack leader, flip your dog on its stomach and hold it by the throat.This is some of the advice from the so-called "top" dog-training school, where the philosophy is that owners should establish a dominant relationship over their dogs to ensure that their canines are obedient.
A snorkeler off the coast of California found more than she bargained for on the ocean floor Sunday, when she saw the large eyes of an 18-foot fish staring back at her. It turned out to be a dead oarfish, a mysterious creature known to live in waters thousands of feet deep.The discovery at the bottom of Toyon Bay at Catalina Island came as a shock to Jasmine Santana, an instructor at the , who approached the ribbon-like animal with care before realizing it was dead. Its body was "almost perfectly intact," the institute says. It may have died of natural causes.
Scientists have discovered the best-preserved nervous system in an ancient fossil.Dating back 520 million years, the clawed spider-like fossil shows clear evidence of a brain and of nerve cords running through the creature's trunk.The specimen now confirms that the ancestors of spiders and scorpions were related, but branched off more than half-a-billion years ago.
You've heard the arguments. Insects are cheap to grow, easy on the environment, and high in protein and minerals. In contrast, livestock such as pigs and cows are expensive, produce noxious chemicals such as methane and ammonia, and take up land and grains that humans could use directly. The United Nations has been urging people in Western countries to eat insects for years.
I worked at a university donations call center for a while in college. I asked graduates (a lot of graduates) for money (usually not a lot of money).By and large, people were friendlier than you'd expect, considering I'd be calling them at 9:30 p.m. and requesting they open their wallets for a place many were still in debt to. Could be worse. But here's what made the gig occasionally nerve-wracking: you never knew which kind of person you were calling.
The exploding hills really give the game away: We've always known the Earth is a smoker. The true extent of its habit, though, is only just beginning to surface.Before the human species found its talent for pyromania, atmospheric levels of the Earth's greenhouse superstar, carbon dioxide (CO2), were controlled, for the most part, by volcanoes.
Grandma's death by acid is a highlight of the 1997 camp classic "Dante's Peak." The disaster epic chronicles the race to save a small town from a deadly volcanic eruption.In the movie, volcanic gases quickly turn a placid lake into an acidic death trap as a family escapes burning-hot lava by boat, aided by a volcanologist played by Pierce Brosnan. Grandma sacrifices herself and jumps into the lake to push their dissolving aluminum boat the last few feet to safety.
More than 90% of people living in European cities breathe air that the UN's World Health Organisation says leads to respiratory problems, heart disease and shortened lives, according to a study published on Tuesday.But because EU legal limits or targets for some pollutants still lag well behind UN recommendations, most countries have been able to downplay the hazards of dirty air despite evidence that it leads to 430,000 shortened lives in Europe every year and costs governments tens of billions of pounds in hospital admissions.
Nearly every body of water, from a puddle or a pond to a vast ocean, contains microscopic organisms that live attached to rocks, plants, and animals. These so-called sessile suspension feeders are critical to aquatic ecosystems and play an important role in cleaning up environmental contaminants by consuming bacteria. A study published by Cell Press on October 15 in the Biophysical Journal reveals that by actively changing the angle of their bodies relative to the surfaces, these feeders overcome the physical constraints presented by underwater surfaces, maximize their access to fresh, nutrient-rich water, and filter the surrounding water.
A solar power company capable of "printing" colourful glass that can generate electricity from the sun's energy announced a £2m funding boost on Tuesday.Oxford Photovoltaics, a spin-off from the University of Oxford, said the investment from clean-tech investors MTI Partners will help its solar glass, which can be dyed almost any colour, take a step closer to the commercial market.
With all the advancements in prosthetic limbs' everyday workability, all that is left perhaps is to restore a person's sense of touch, which may not too far off, accoridng to a press release.Researchers at the University of Chicago are making those technological advances that could one day lead to prosthetic limbs that could allow the person to once again feel.
When NASA, or in this case the European Space Agency (Esa), needs a new satellite, will the space agency be able to print one out?That's the ultimate goal for the multi-nation project known as AMAZE, an acronym that stands for a full mission statement: Additive Manufacturing Aiming Towards Zero Waste and Efficient Production of High-Tech Metal Product, as per the BBC.
Diamonds big enough to be worn by Hollywood film stars could be raining down on Saturn and Jupiter, US scientists have calculated.New atmospheric data for the gas giants indicates that carbon is abundant in its dazzling crystal form, they say.Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond.
A Malaysian court has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in their own faiths, overturning a 2009 lower court ruling.The appeals court said the term Allah must be exclusive to Islam or it could cause public disorder.People of all faiths use the word Allah in Malay to refer to their Gods.
Although Christopher Columbus is associated with discovering America, the 15th century explorer actually first set foot upon modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But people were inhabiting both North and South America for thousands of years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.Historians commonly believe that humans first crossed to the Americans from Asia 12,000 years ago. But a new exhibit in Brazil features artifacts dating back as far as 30,000 years ago, 18,000 years earlier than previously believed.
An alien planet thought to be made largely of diamond may be less than glittering inside, new research shows.The notion of a diamond planet hinges on an abundance of carbon. A few years ago, scientists reported that the star at the center of a solar system 40 light-years from our own had a carbon-to-oxygen ratio greater than one.
Exposure to the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) during early pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, preliminary research suggests.Researchers collected blood from 114 women when they were four to five weeks pregnant. The researchers later measured blood levels of BPA in women who gave birth, and in those who had a first-trimester miscarriage. Women were divided into four groups based on the amount of BPA in their blood.
Neurons that process sensory information such as touch and vision are arranged in precise, well-characterized maps that are crucial for translating perception into understanding. A study published by Cell Press on October 14 in the journal Developmental Cell reveals that the actual act of birth in mice causes a reduction in a brain chemical called serotonin in the newborn mice, triggering sensory maps to form. The findings shed light on the key role of a dramatic environmental event in the development of neural circuits and reveal that birth itself is one of the triggers that prepares the newborn for survival outside the womb.
Young bonobos that are are more "socially competent" are more likely to cuddle and calm other apes that are in distress, research has revealed.Scientists working at an African sanctuary found that bonobos that recovered quickly from an upsetting experience, such as a fight, were also more likely to comfort others.This mirrors findings from studies in children, and suggests bonobos manage their emotions in a very similar way.
A sense of touch lets you connect with loved ones, makes your limbs feel your own, and helps you to interact with your surroundings. But people who are paraplegics or have lost limbs have to navigate the world without this most fundamental of sensory inputs.Sliman Bensmaia at the University of Chicago, Illinois, is working to change that with a new model for transmitting a sense of touch to the brain that bypasses regular routes. He hopes it will be a blueprint for constructing prosthetics that convey touch in the same way that natural limbs do.
Young children who don't have a regular bedtime behave worse than kids who go to sleep at the same time each night, a new study suggests.British researchers found that both mothers and teachers rated 7-year-olds who had inconsistent bedtimes as being more hyperactive than their better-rested peers, and as having more social, emotional and conduct problems.
It was September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, was on duty at Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker outside Moscow. His job: to monitor Oko, the Soviet Union's early-warning system for nuclear attack. And then to pass along any alerts to his superiors. It was just after midnight when the alarm bells began sounding. One of the system's satellites had detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. And they were heading toward the USSR. Electronic maps flashed; bells screamed; reports streamed in. A back-lit red screen flashed the word 'LAUNCH.'"
As per a new report, it is a thought of deep worry that if the urgent actions will not be taken then the world's only existing Bronze Age metropolis could disappear in next 20 years.The province of Sindh in southern Pakistan is situated on the west bank of the Indus River. It contains 5,000 -year- old remains of the ancient city of Mohenjodaro. The government neglected the issue, causing a drop in the tourism and security issues within the country. This also led to the delay in the settlement of the place in the past many years.Images here
No next-of-kin was around to claim the frozen 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman when it was found in the Italian Alps in 1991, but researchers now report that there are at least 19 genetic relatives of Ötzi living in Austria's Tyrol region."These men and the 'Iceman' had the same ancestors," Walther Parson, a researcher at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, told the Austrian Press Agency last week.
For the first time, a chemical essential for the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in a far-off part of the solar system: Saturn's largest Titan.The discovery, made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, found that the atmosphere of Titan contains propylene, a key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth. NASA scientists announced the discovery with a video describing the propylene find on Titan.
With so much news coming from the asteroid capture and determent sector, we're starting to think that there's something somebody isn't telling us. It was only last month that new details surfaced about the EU's plans to redirect massive asteroids with suicidal satellites. This month, the asteroid redirection plan is even more awesome, because that's what happens to a plan when you add lasers to it.
Dave Stevenson, professor of planetary science at Caltech, gave an intriguing speech at the Origin of the Moon conference in London this week. The most widely accepted theory about the Origin of the Moon is called the "giant impact theory," which is pretty much what you think it is: two giant objects smashed into each other in the early days of our solar system.
Space may be called "the final frontier," but anyone who has seen a picture of a goblin shark or a vampire squid will agree that the ocean can be downright alien. Both realms are ripe for exploration, offer extensive potential benefits and come at a hefty price.So which wins in a battle between the two for the title of the final frontier? Which area of exploration will result in the greater good for humanity?.
A French climber scaling a glacier off Mont Blanc got more than satisfaction for his efforts when he stumbled across a treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires that had been buried for decades.The jewels, estimated to be worth up to 246,000 euros ($332,000), lay hidden in a metal box that was on board an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years ago.
Ozone loss over the South Pole might be the reason for a two-decade rise in early summer temperatures across southern Africa, according to research published today in Nature GeoscienceDesmond Manatsa, a climate scientist at Bindura University of Science in Zimbabwe, and colleagues analysed data sets of southern African climate from 1979 to 2010, covering the years before and after the development of the ozone hole over the Antarctic.
Ancient DNA recovered from a time series of skeletons in Germany spanning 4,000 years of prehistory has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern-day Europeans.The study, published in Science, reveals dramatic population changes with waves of prehistoric migration, not only from the accepted path via the Near East, but also from Western and Eastern Europe.
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the immune system attacks the nervous system. The result can be a wide range of debilitating motor, physical, and mental problems. No one knows why people get the disease or how to treat it."Inflammation is part of the body's natural immune response, but in cases like MS it gets out of hand," says Kozela. "Our study looks at how compounds isolated from marijuana can be used to regulate inflammation to protect the nervous system and its functions." Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science co-authored the study.
While marijuana use by teens has been increasing since 2005, an analysis of data from 1993 through 2009 by economists at three universities has found no evidence to link the legalization of medical marijuana to increased use of the drug among high school students."There is anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is finding its way into the hands of teenagers, but there's no statistical evidence that legalization increases the probability of use," said Daniel I. Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver.
Eating popcorn in the cinema may be irritating not just for fellow movie goers, but for advertisers: a group of researchers from Cologne University has concluded that chewing makes us immune to film advertising.The reason why adverts manage to imprint brand names on our brains is that our lips and the tongue automatically simulate the pronunciation of a new name when we first hear it. Every time we re-encounter the name, our mouth subconsciously practices its pronunciation.
After losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle accident four-and-a-half years ago, 32-year-old Zac Vawter has been fitted with an artificial limb that uses neurosignals from his upper leg muscles to control the prosthetic knee and ankle. The motorized limb is the first thought-controlled bionic leg, scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago reported Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Experiments on samples of iron and rock held at immense pressures have led to new ideas of how Earth's core formed.Scientists from Stanford University have shown that iron metal will flow through rocks 1,000km beneath our feet.Using sophisticated X-ray imaging, they watched molten metal moving through rocks, squeezed to huge pressures between the tips of pairs of diamonds.
The mystery of a series of strange, knobby pillars of rock that formed in Iceland has been solved.A creeping lava flow and a stream of water mixed to create hollow, rough pillars that dot the Skaelinger Valley in Iceland. The surprise is that these towers could form at all on land. Until now, researchers thought that whenever water and lava met on land, either explosive steam or pillow-shaped lava formed.
Renewable energy has been on a tear the past few years, with growth in many countries spurred by subsidies for wind and solar power. Now the heads of 10 European utility companies say EU subsidies should end, because they've got more renewable energy than they know what to do with.
"Increased hydropower generation and larger salmon stocks are not necessarily a contradiction in terms," says senior scientist Atle Harby.Harby leads the CEDREN research centre -- one of Norway's "national teams" in environmentally friendly energy, which is manned by scientists from SINTEF Energy, NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and NINA (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research ).
A group of archaeologists is undertaking a major dig in Wiltshire, which it is hoped could explain why Stonehenge was built where it was.The team, which comprises of leading experts in the Mesolithic period, also hopes to confirm Amesbury as the oldest continuous settlement in the UK.The site already boasts the biggest collection of flints and cooked animal bones in north-western Europe.
Along the scenic coast of the northern Aegean Sea, archaeologists have uncovered a Greek portico, which, 2,500 years ago, would have been a bustling public space, something like an ancient strip mall.The seaside portico, or stoa, stretches 130 feet (40 meters) across with seven rooms inside, each bearing the distinct architectural touches of their ancient shop owners, the site's excavators say. Strewn about the ruins, archaeologists found coins, vases and other artifacts that hold clues to when and how people lived in the archaic city.
The ability to see using one's back, magnetic fingers or an ultraviolet sense of sight?Those abilities may sound like the domain of X-Men mutants, but such innovations may not be far off, researchers say.Because the sensations that humans (and other animals) experience from sense organs like the nose are all processed and interpreted similarly in the brain, those organs could be augmented, replaced and transformed to create human superpowers.
Lots of people say they do. They're "carrying guilt" or "weighed down by guilt." Are these just expressions, or is there something more to these metaphors?Princeton researcher Martin Day and Ramona Bobocel, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, recently published the results of a series of studies that begin to offer answers to that question.
The explosive death of a star seeded matter into the solar system soon after its birth, analysis of a meteorite now reveals.Earth and the rest of the solar system coalesced from a giant cloud of gas and dust more than 4.5 billion years ago. Many of the details about the galactic neighborhood in which the solar system arose still remain a mystery.
A LONG time ago, in a solar system far, far away, a planet a bit like Earth was destroyed by a death star. And the same will one day happen to us.Evidence of an apocalypse in a planetary system similar to our own has been uncovered by astronomers studying a dying star.
While NASA works on a multibillion-dollar, decades-long space exploration plan that relies on monster rockets, an informal cadre of engineers is laying out a different vision that would take advantage of cheaper, smaller spacecraft that can fuel up at "truck stops" along the way.
A team of Peruvian and Polish research has examined an unknown Inca object, discovering an astronomical observatory. It said Prof. Mariusz Zió³kowski, head of pre-Columbian Research Center at the University of Warsaw. The monument was built with stones ben worked has been identified in an inaccessible part of the National Park of Machu Picchu Park Director, the anthropologist Fernando Astete Victoria, during the inventory conducted work on the slopes of Mount Huayna Picchu."Despite the difficult terrain we were able to run 3D laser scans, which we then used to prepare a precise model of this incredible complex...
The US Army is working to develop "revolutionary" smart armour that would give its troops "superhuman strength".It is calling on the technology industry, government labs and academia to help build the Iron Man-style suit. Other exoskeletons that allow soldiers to carry large loads much further have already been tested by the army.The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (Talos) would have such a frame but would also have layers of smart materials fitted with sensors. The suit would also need to have wide-area networking and a wearable computer similar to Google Glass, the US Army said.
CAMBRIDGE, England, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Water in an asteroid orbiting a distant exhausted star suggests the star may once have had potential to host Earth-like exoplanets, British scientists say.Cambridge University astronomers say they've found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained significant amounts of water orbiting a white dwarf star at the end of its life 150 light years from Earth.The discovery marks first time that both water and a rocky surface -- two "key ingredients" for habitable planets -- have been found together beyond our solar system, they said.
DNA from ancient skeletons has revealed how a complex patchwork of prehistoric migrations fashioned the modern European gene pool.The study appears to refute the picture of Europeans as a simple mixture of indigenous hunters and Near Eastern farmers who arrived 7,000 years ago.The findings by an international team have been published in Science journal.
The killing of a rare white "spirit" moose, considered to be sacred by some Canadian aboriginal groups, sparked outrage Thursday.But the hunters at the center of the controversy said they had been unaware of its significance and are trying to make amends.The animal was shot last week in Nova Scotia. It was brought to Hnatiuk's Hunting & Fishing Ltd. in the town of Lantz, which snapped a photo of the carcass and posted it on its Facebook page.
A Japanese town that became synonymous with the mass slaughter of dolphins after it was the subject of a harrowing Oscar-winning documentary is to open a marine park that will allow visitors to swim with the animals - and then eat them.Residents of Taiji, in Wakayama Prefecture on the south-west coast of Honshu, continue to hunt small whales and dolphins after commercial whaling was suspended in 1988.
Birds, such as great and blue tits, search for food in the morning but only return to eat it in late afternoon, scientists have found.The team believe the behaviour maximises their chances of avoiding predators during the day without starving to death overnight.Researchers from the University of Oxford tracked the birds' winter foraging movements using tiny tags.
You've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, as the saying goes. New research suggests the cliché is true on an evolutionary level.Kissing might have evolved as a way to assess the quality of potential mates, according to two new studies. Women, who tend to be pickier about romantic entanglements than men, also care more about kissing in the first phases of a relationship, suggesting that make-outs may weed out duds. What's more, women are especially attuned to the importance of kissing during fertile phases of the menstrual cycle.
The iron in the Earth's inner core weakens dramatically before it melts, explaining the unusual properties that exist in the moon-sized solid centre of our planet that have, up until now, been difficult to understand.
Earth's magnetic field shields the planet from charged particles streaming from the sun, keeping it from becoming a barren, Mars-like rock. For more than 300 years, scientists have recorded a westward-drifting feature in the field that models have been unable to explain.By relying on insights gleaned from previous work, as well as data collected over nearly four centuries, an international team of scientists has been able to provide a model that accounts for the western drift of the magnetic field on one side of the planet.