Newsdesk Archive
I HAVE been struggling with an addiction to opiates for the past three years. It started with prescription painkillers and progressed to full-blown heroin dependence.In an attempt to kick the habit I signed up for a traditional 30-step inpatient treatment that involved individual and group counselling, and which cost about $30,000. That was a year ago, and it didn't work. I felt unable to stay away from heroin.
Willpower may be plentiful
More details continue to emerge on the UK government's two recent anti-journalist actions. The Guardian reports that the order to (pointlessly) smash up Guardian hardware came from the top.A spokesman for Clegg made clear that Heywood was acting on the authority of both the prime minister and his deputy.Related: WikiLeaks: Govts attacks on media
The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies." This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided.
A few months ago, internet entrepreneur Avi Freedman received an unexpected email from a prince. A decade earlier, Freedman had been part of an effort to create a data haven
News emerged this week that an indigenous tribe in the Peruvian Amazon, the Mashco-Piro, has been trying to make contact with outsiders. In the past, the Mashco-Piro have always resisted interaction with strangers, avoiding
ALMOST a tenth of children are given a mobile phone before age five, new research shows.A uSwitch.com report found the average child gets their first mobile aged 11 years and eight months
When you see them on the beach, spinach-like plops of green sprawled on the sand, you'd never guess their teeny nervous systems are imprinted with beach-ness. They are the ultimate Beach Boys. For them it's always summer.They don't look like it at first, but they are worms.
In Pennsylvania, the closer you live to a well used to hydraulically fracture underground shale for natural gas, the more likely it is that your drinking water is contaminated with methane. This conclusion, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in July, is a first step in determining whether fracking in the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania is responsible for tainted drinking water in that region.
Long ago, when the Earth had only one continent and one ocean, an earthquake rippled through western North America's great sand sea. The early Jurassic earthquake left its mark in the vast dunes that now form the famous red cliffs of Zion National Park in Utah, a new study finds.
There's a joke among scientists: Prediction is difficult, especially about the future. For Ross Stein, it wasn't a joke after the Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004. It killed some 275,000 people. "I just felt almost a sense of shame," Stein says, "that this tragedy could have been so immense in a world where we have so much intense research effort."
A Japanese committee today recommended a site in Japan's Tohoku region for the International Linear Collider (ILC) -- if the country ends up hosting the facility, which could cost $10 billion.The ILC is expected to pick up where Europe's Large Hadron Collider leaves off in studies of the Higgs boson and other exotic particles.
Scientists have harnessed the tools needed to stage Earth
Researchers from Michigan State University and Imperial College London have just received $1.87 million in funding to conduct a treasure hunt. It will take them from Germany to Hawaii in the US and elsewhere, in search of the smallest needle
New research has linked deformed insects to pesticide pollution from intensive tobacco cultivation around the Oven
Every time a scientist thinks he
One night as she lay down to sleep, a 60-year-old woman suddenly started having strange hallucinations. She told her doctors she heard music that seemed like it was playing from a radio at the back of her head.Within a few months, she was hearing music all the time, with some songs on repeat for up to three weeks. Curiously, she did not recognize many of the tunes that dogged her, but they had full vocals and instrumentals; and when she sang or hummed the melodies for her husband, he identified them as popular songs.
The dentist who purchased John Lennon's rotten molar for $31,000 at a 2011 auction now has plans for the tooth: He's getting it genetically sequenced in the hopes of cloning the musician, who died in 1980.Seriously. Dr. Michael Zuk has started up a website, JohnLennonDNA.com and put out a press release with all the gory details. "I am nervous and excited at the possibility that we will be able to fully sequence John Lennon's DNA, very soon I hope,".
I HAVE been struggling with an addiction to opiates for the past three years. It started with prescription painkillers and progressed to full-blown heroin dependence.In an attempt to kick the habit I signed up for a traditional 30-step inpatient treatment that involved individual and group counselling, and which cost about $30,000. That was a year ago, and it didn't work. I felt unable to stay away from heroin.
The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies." This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided.
When you see them on the beach, spinach-like plops of green sprawled on the sand, you'd never guess their teeny nervous systems are imprinted with beach-ness. They are the ultimate Beach Boys. For them it's always summer.They don't look like it at first, but they are worms.
In Pennsylvania, the closer you live to a well used to hydraulically fracture underground shale for natural gas, the more likely it is that your drinking water is contaminated with methane. This conclusion, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in July, is a first step in determining whether fracking in the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania is responsible for tainted drinking water in that region.
Long ago, when the Earth had only one continent and one ocean, an earthquake rippled through western North America's great sand sea. The early Jurassic earthquake left its mark in the vast dunes that now form the famous red cliffs of Zion National Park in Utah, a new study finds.
There's a joke among scientists: Prediction is difficult, especially about the future. For Ross Stein, it wasn't a joke after the Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004. It killed some 275,000 people. "I just felt almost a sense of shame," Stein says, "that this tragedy could have been so immense in a world where we have so much intense research effort."
A Japanese committee today recommended a site in Japan's Tohoku region for the International Linear Collider (ILC) -- if the country ends up hosting the facility, which could cost $10 billion.The ILC is expected to pick up where Europe's Large Hadron Collider leaves off in studies of the Higgs boson and other exotic particles.
One night as she lay down to sleep, a 60-year-old woman suddenly started having strange hallucinations. She told her doctors she heard music that seemed like it was playing from a radio at the back of her head.Within a few months, she was hearing music all the time, with some songs on repeat for up to three weeks. Curiously, she did not recognize many of the tunes that dogged her, but they had full vocals and instrumentals; and when she sang or hummed the melodies for her husband, he identified them as popular songs.
The dentist who purchased John Lennon's rotten molar for $31,000 at a 2011 auction now has plans for the tooth: He's getting it genetically sequenced in the hopes of cloning the musician, who died in 1980.Seriously. Dr. Michael Zuk has started up a website, JohnLennonDNA.com and put out a press release with all the gory details. "I am nervous and excited at the possibility that we will be able to fully sequence John Lennon's DNA, very soon I hope,".
Marine life is on the move. A groundbreaking study reveals that over the last several decades, warming ocean temperatures have caused many marine species to shift closer and closer to the poles. Some types of fish and plankton are moving at a rate of 45 miles per decade, 12 times faster than terrestrial animals. As the base of the marine food web moves, people will have to follow or risk losing a resource.
NOT everything to do with pollution is ugly. This abstract art was created using paints made from the metallic run-off collected from polluted rivers in Ohio. The artwork is a collaboration between environmental engineer Guy Riefler and artist John Sabraw, both of Ohio University in Athens.When water from abandoned coal mines flows into local rivers, it can pollute them with iron, as well as making the water acidic. Once exposed to air at the surface, the iron oxidises to form a disgusting yet colourful orange sludge that kills off much aquatic life.
Scientists have devised a better way to protect groundwater from acids, heavy metals and toxic chemicals, helping to secure the Earth's main freshwater supply.The advance is a major step towards shielding groundwater from mining, industrial and domestic waste, all of which can contaminate the water for decades, rendering it unusable and undrinkable.
Puddles with extremely high radiation levels have been found near water storage tanks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan's atomic regulator and operator said Monday, according to a report.The radiation level, measured around 50 centimetres (20 inches) above the toxic water, was about 100 millisieverts per hour, Kyodo news agency reported, citing the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
Residents in a southern Japanese city were busy washing ash off the streets Monday after a nearby volcano spewed a record-high smoke plume into the sky.Ash wafted as high as 3 miles above the Sakurajima volcano in the southern city of Kagoshima on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006.
Protests against proposed fracking operations in southern England culminated today with the arrest of Caroline Lucas, a Green Party member of parliament. Meanwhile, new geophysical research concludes that over 100 small earthquakes were triggered in a single year of fracking-related activities in one region of Ohio.
We share a deep and abiding passion for and fascination with the ocean that has led us since childhood to wander the world under the waves. We also share an increasing concern that the health of the ocean is rapidly deteriorating under the strain of human pressure and neglect. The evidence is everywhere, from plastic waste at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to flattened remains of deep ocean reefs hundreds of miles from land, bulldozed by bottom trawlers. No part of the ocean, no matter how deep or remote, is safe anymore.
Colombia on Wednesday more than doubled the size of a huge nature reserve as it fights to protect the Amazon from deforestation.Environment Minister Juan Gabriel Uribe said deforestation of the Colombian Amazon is a worrisome problem, mainly because of land being cleared for growing coca leaves, logging, illegal mining and agriculture.
When next you meet a rat or raccoon on the streets of your city, or see a starling or sparrow on a suburban lawn, take a moment to ask: Where did they come from, so to speak? And where are they going?In evolutionary terms, the urban environments we take for granted represent radical ecological upheavals, the sort of massive changes that for most of Earth
Copper appears to be one of the main environmental factors that trigger the onset and enhance the progression of Alzheimer's disease by preventing the clearance and accelerating the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain.That is the conclusion of a study appearing today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Few animals can rival the amazing regeneration abilities of the flatworms known as planarians: When the worms' tails or heads are cut off, they grow new ones, and even a tiny piece of planarian tissue can regrow an entire animal.
A small, native-Irish marine animal with remarkable powers of regeneration has provided stem cell scientists studying congenital defects and cancer biology with significant new leads.Hydractinia echinata has the power to regenerate any lost body part, can clone itself, does not age biologically, and, according to Dr Uri Frank, who is leading the research at NUI Galway
Bullying can have harmful effects on childhood development, and the latest research reveals those detrimental influences may even stretch into adulthood, depending on how victims handle the trauma.Studies have documented higher rates of anxiety and panic attacks among victims of bullying, and such experiences are increasingly linked to mental health and behavior problems later in life. The latest look at the legacy of bullying reveals its more practical consequences on everything from employment to social relationships.
The chemicals bisphenol A and phthalates are linked to obesity and insulin resistance in adolescents in two new studies, but the findings cannot yet answer whether the hotly debated hormone-like compounds are causing the negative health effects they are linked with, experts say.In one study, the researchers measured the levels of DEHP, a phthalate found in processed foods, in the urine of 766 adolescents ages 12 to 19. They found that teens with higher amounts of DEHP in their urine had increased rates of insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to Type 2 diabetes.
About 6,100 years ago, an unnamed Stone Age chef made culinary history when she flavored a simple dish of deer meat or fish, cooking in clay pot over an open wood fire, with the pungent ground seeds of the garlic mustard plant.Perhaps it was inventive genius at work, perhaps it was a stroke of luck
Debunking decades of myths, new research says psychedelics are not linked to mental illness and may in fact have positive residual effects on users.Comedian Bill Hicks famously said,
American scientists have achieved a new maximum in atomic clock precision using ytterbium atoms cooled down to near absolute zero temperatures.Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, developed and tested two sets of atomic clocks, synchronising them to nearly absolute values. By substituting conventional cesium by atoms of ytterbium, they have achieved ten times better stability.The findings published in the recent issue of the Science journal are believed to open new possibilities in high-precision timekeeping, which is crucial, for example, for GPS satellites and related applications.
Marine life is on the move. A groundbreaking study reveals that over the last several decades, warming ocean temperatures have caused many marine species to shift closer and closer to the poles. Some types of fish and plankton are moving at a rate of 45 miles per decade, 12 times faster than terrestrial animals. As the base of the marine food web moves, people will have to follow or risk losing a resource.
NOT everything to do with pollution is ugly. This abstract art was created using paints made from the metallic run-off collected from polluted rivers in Ohio. The artwork is a collaboration between environmental engineer Guy Riefler and artist John Sabraw, both of Ohio University in Athens.When water from abandoned coal mines flows into local rivers, it can pollute them with iron, as well as making the water acidic. Once exposed to air at the surface, the iron oxidises to form a disgusting yet colourful orange sludge that kills off much aquatic life.
Scientists have devised a better way to protect groundwater from acids, heavy metals and toxic chemicals, helping to secure the Earth's main freshwater supply.The advance is a major step towards shielding groundwater from mining, industrial and domestic waste, all of which can contaminate the water for decades, rendering it unusable and undrinkable.
Puddles with extremely high radiation levels have been found near water storage tanks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan's atomic regulator and operator said Monday, according to a report.The radiation level, measured around 50 centimetres (20 inches) above the toxic water, was about 100 millisieverts per hour, Kyodo news agency reported, citing the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
Residents in a southern Japanese city were busy washing ash off the streets Monday after a nearby volcano spewed a record-high smoke plume into the sky.Ash wafted as high as 3 miles above the Sakurajima volcano in the southern city of Kagoshima on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006.
Protests against proposed fracking operations in southern England culminated today with the arrest of Caroline Lucas, a Green Party member of parliament. Meanwhile, new geophysical research concludes that over 100 small earthquakes were triggered in a single year of fracking-related activities in one region of Ohio.
We share a deep and abiding passion for and fascination with the ocean that has led us since childhood to wander the world under the waves. We also share an increasing concern that the health of the ocean is rapidly deteriorating under the strain of human pressure and neglect. The evidence is everywhere, from plastic waste at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to flattened remains of deep ocean reefs hundreds of miles from land, bulldozed by bottom trawlers. No part of the ocean, no matter how deep or remote, is safe anymore.
Colombia on Wednesday more than doubled the size of a huge nature reserve as it fights to protect the Amazon from deforestation.Environment Minister Juan Gabriel Uribe said deforestation of the Colombian Amazon is a worrisome problem, mainly because of land being cleared for growing coca leaves, logging, illegal mining and agriculture.
When next you meet a rat or raccoon on the streets of your city, or see a starling or sparrow on a suburban lawn, take a moment to ask: Where did they come from, so to speak? And where are they going?In evolutionary terms, the urban environments we take for granted represent radical ecological upheavals, the sort of massive changes that for most of Earth
Copper appears to be one of the main environmental factors that trigger the onset and enhance the progression of Alzheimer's disease by preventing the clearance and accelerating the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain.That is the conclusion of a study appearing today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Few animals can rival the amazing regeneration abilities of the flatworms known as planarians: When the worms' tails or heads are cut off, they grow new ones, and even a tiny piece of planarian tissue can regrow an entire animal.
A small, native-Irish marine animal with remarkable powers of regeneration has provided stem cell scientists studying congenital defects and cancer biology with significant new leads.Hydractinia echinata has the power to regenerate any lost body part, can clone itself, does not age biologically, and, according to Dr Uri Frank, who is leading the research at NUI Galway
Bullying can have harmful effects on childhood development, and the latest research reveals those detrimental influences may even stretch into adulthood, depending on how victims handle the trauma.Studies have documented higher rates of anxiety and panic attacks among victims of bullying, and such experiences are increasingly linked to mental health and behavior problems later in life. The latest look at the legacy of bullying reveals its more practical consequences on everything from employment to social relationships.
The chemicals bisphenol A and phthalates are linked to obesity and insulin resistance in adolescents in two new studies, but the findings cannot yet answer whether the hotly debated hormone-like compounds are causing the negative health effects they are linked with, experts say.In one study, the researchers measured the levels of DEHP, a phthalate found in processed foods, in the urine of 766 adolescents ages 12 to 19. They found that teens with higher amounts of DEHP in their urine had increased rates of insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to Type 2 diabetes.
About 6,100 years ago, an unnamed Stone Age chef made culinary history when she flavored a simple dish of deer meat or fish, cooking in clay pot over an open wood fire, with the pungent ground seeds of the garlic mustard plant.Perhaps it was inventive genius at work, perhaps it was a stroke of luck
Debunking decades of myths, new research says psychedelics are not linked to mental illness and may in fact have positive residual effects on users.Comedian Bill Hicks famously said,
American scientists have achieved a new maximum in atomic clock precision using ytterbium atoms cooled down to near absolute zero temperatures.Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, developed and tested two sets of atomic clocks, synchronising them to nearly absolute values. By substituting conventional cesium by atoms of ytterbium, they have achieved ten times better stability.The findings published in the recent issue of the Science journal are believed to open new possibilities in high-precision timekeeping, which is crucial, for example, for GPS satellites and related applications.
Marine life is on the move. A groundbreaking study reveals that over the last several decades, warming ocean temperatures have caused many marine species to shift closer and closer to the poles. Some types of fish and plankton are moving at a rate of 45 miles per decade, 12 times faster than terrestrial animals. As the base of the marine food web moves, people will have to follow or risk losing a resource.
NOT everything to do with pollution is ugly. This abstract art was created using paints made from the metallic run-off collected from polluted rivers in Ohio. The artwork is a collaboration between environmental engineer Guy Riefler and artist John Sabraw, both of Ohio University in Athens.When water from abandoned coal mines flows into local rivers, it can pollute them with iron, as well as making the water acidic. Once exposed to air at the surface, the iron oxidises to form a disgusting yet colourful orange sludge that kills off much aquatic life.
Scientists have devised a better way to protect groundwater from acids, heavy metals and toxic chemicals, helping to secure the Earth's main freshwater supply.The advance is a major step towards shielding groundwater from mining, industrial and domestic waste, all of which can contaminate the water for decades, rendering it unusable and undrinkable.
Puddles with extremely high radiation levels have been found near water storage tanks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan's atomic regulator and operator said Monday, according to a report.The radiation level, measured around 50 centimetres (20 inches) above the toxic water, was about 100 millisieverts per hour, Kyodo news agency reported, citing the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
Residents in a southern Japanese city were busy washing ash off the streets Monday after a nearby volcano spewed a record-high smoke plume into the sky.Ash wafted as high as 3 miles above the Sakurajima volcano in the southern city of Kagoshima on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006.
Protests against proposed fracking operations in southern England culminated today with the arrest of Caroline Lucas, a Green Party member of parliament. Meanwhile, new geophysical research concludes that over 100 small earthquakes were triggered in a single year of fracking-related activities in one region of Ohio.
We share a deep and abiding passion for and fascination with the ocean that has led us since childhood to wander the world under the waves. We also share an increasing concern that the health of the ocean is rapidly deteriorating under the strain of human pressure and neglect. The evidence is everywhere, from plastic waste at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to flattened remains of deep ocean reefs hundreds of miles from land, bulldozed by bottom trawlers. No part of the ocean, no matter how deep or remote, is safe anymore.
Colombia on Wednesday more than doubled the size of a huge nature reserve as it fights to protect the Amazon from deforestation.Environment Minister Juan Gabriel Uribe said deforestation of the Colombian Amazon is a worrisome problem, mainly because of land being cleared for growing coca leaves, logging, illegal mining and agriculture.
When next you meet a rat or raccoon on the streets of your city, or see a starling or sparrow on a suburban lawn, take a moment to ask: Where did they come from, so to speak? And where are they going?In evolutionary terms, the urban environments we take for granted represent radical ecological upheavals, the sort of massive changes that for most of Earth
Copper appears to be one of the main environmental factors that trigger the onset and enhance the progression of Alzheimer's disease by preventing the clearance and accelerating the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain.That is the conclusion of a study appearing today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Few animals can rival the amazing regeneration abilities of the flatworms known as planarians: When the worms' tails or heads are cut off, they grow new ones, and even a tiny piece of planarian tissue can regrow an entire animal.
A small, native-Irish marine animal with remarkable powers of regeneration has provided stem cell scientists studying congenital defects and cancer biology with significant new leads.Hydractinia echinata has the power to regenerate any lost body part, can clone itself, does not age biologically, and, according to Dr Uri Frank, who is leading the research at NUI Galway
Bullying can have harmful effects on childhood development, and the latest research reveals those detrimental influences may even stretch into adulthood, depending on how victims handle the trauma.Studies have documented higher rates of anxiety and panic attacks among victims of bullying, and such experiences are increasingly linked to mental health and behavior problems later in life. The latest look at the legacy of bullying reveals its more practical consequences on everything from employment to social relationships.
The chemicals bisphenol A and phthalates are linked to obesity and insulin resistance in adolescents in two new studies, but the findings cannot yet answer whether the hotly debated hormone-like compounds are causing the negative health effects they are linked with, experts say.In one study, the researchers measured the levels of DEHP, a phthalate found in processed foods, in the urine of 766 adolescents ages 12 to 19. They found that teens with higher amounts of DEHP in their urine had increased rates of insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to Type 2 diabetes.
About 6,100 years ago, an unnamed Stone Age chef made culinary history when she flavored a simple dish of deer meat or fish, cooking in clay pot over an open wood fire, with the pungent ground seeds of the garlic mustard plant.Perhaps it was inventive genius at work, perhaps it was a stroke of luck
Debunking decades of myths, new research says psychedelics are not linked to mental illness and may in fact have positive residual effects on users.Comedian Bill Hicks famously said,
American scientists have achieved a new maximum in atomic clock precision using ytterbium atoms cooled down to near absolute zero temperatures.Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, developed and tested two sets of atomic clocks, synchronising them to nearly absolute values. By substituting conventional cesium by atoms of ytterbium, they have achieved ten times better stability.The findings published in the recent issue of the Science journal are believed to open new possibilities in high-precision timekeeping, which is crucial, for example, for GPS satellites and related applications.
Marine life is on the move. A groundbreaking study reveals that over the last several decades, warming ocean temperatures have caused many marine species to shift closer and closer to the poles. Some types of fish and plankton are moving at a rate of 45 miles per decade, 12 times faster than terrestrial animals. As the base of the marine food web moves, people will have to follow or risk losing a resource.
NOT everything to do with pollution is ugly. This abstract art was created using paints made from the metallic run-off collected from polluted rivers in Ohio. The artwork is a collaboration between environmental engineer Guy Riefler and artist John Sabraw, both of Ohio University in Athens.When water from abandoned coal mines flows into local rivers, it can pollute them with iron, as well as making the water acidic. Once exposed to air at the surface, the iron oxidises to form a disgusting yet colourful orange sludge that kills off much aquatic life.
Scientists have devised a better way to protect groundwater from acids, heavy metals and toxic chemicals, helping to secure the Earth's main freshwater supply.The advance is a major step towards shielding groundwater from mining, industrial and domestic waste, all of which can contaminate the water for decades, rendering it unusable and undrinkable.
Puddles with extremely high radiation levels have been found near water storage tanks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan's atomic regulator and operator said Monday, according to a report.The radiation level, measured around 50 centimetres (20 inches) above the toxic water, was about 100 millisieverts per hour, Kyodo news agency reported, citing the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
Protests against proposed fracking operations in southern England culminated today with the arrest of Caroline Lucas, a Green Party member of parliament. Meanwhile, new geophysical research concludes that over 100 small earthquakes were triggered in a single year of fracking-related activities in one region of Ohio.
We share a deep and abiding passion for and fascination with the ocean that has led us since childhood to wander the world under the waves. We also share an increasing concern that the health of the ocean is rapidly deteriorating under the strain of human pressure and neglect. The evidence is everywhere, from plastic waste at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to flattened remains of deep ocean reefs hundreds of miles from land, bulldozed by bottom trawlers. No part of the ocean, no matter how deep or remote, is safe anymore.
Colombia on Wednesday more than doubled the size of a huge nature reserve as it fights to protect the Amazon from deforestation.Environment Minister Juan Gabriel Uribe said deforestation of the Colombian Amazon is a worrisome problem, mainly because of land being cleared for growing coca leaves, logging, illegal mining and agriculture.
Copper appears to be one of the main environmental factors that trigger the onset and enhance the progression of Alzheimer's disease by preventing the clearance and accelerating the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain.That is the conclusion of a study appearing today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Few animals can rival the amazing regeneration abilities of the flatworms known as planarians: When the worms' tails or heads are cut off, they grow new ones, and even a tiny piece of planarian tissue can regrow an entire animal.
The chemicals bisphenol A and phthalates are linked to obesity and insulin resistance in adolescents in two new studies, but the findings cannot yet answer whether the hotly debated hormone-like compounds are causing the negative health effects they are linked with, experts say.In one study, the researchers measured the levels of DEHP, a phthalate found in processed foods, in the urine of 766 adolescents ages 12 to 19. They found that teens with higher amounts of DEHP in their urine had increased rates of insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to Type 2 diabetes.
American scientists have achieved a new maximum in atomic clock precision using ytterbium atoms cooled down to near absolute zero temperatures.Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, developed and tested two sets of atomic clocks, synchronising them to nearly absolute values. By substituting conventional cesium by atoms of ytterbium, they have achieved ten times better stability.The findings published in the recent issue of the Science journal are believed to open new possibilities in high-precision timekeeping, which is crucial, for example, for GPS satellites and related applications.
The Faroe Islands were colonised much earlier than previously believed, and it wasn't by the Vikings, according to new research.New archaeological evidence places human colonisation in the 4th to 6th centuries AD, at least 300-500 years earlier than previously demonstrated.
A new article is now available on the articles page titled:Genetic Evidence for Paleolithic Exploration of the Americas by Europeans during the Ice AgeOpening lines:Lightly pigmented skin and red hair are traits that originally appeared in humans as a result of a random mutation in the nucleotide sequence of a gene known as MC1R. According to genetic studies, the first hint of this mutation, which acted to alter the complex molecular pathways that deposit pigments in epithelial tissue, occurred approximately 100,000 years ago in Europe.
A team of scientists say they have uncovered evidence of early humans in China dating back at least 1.6 million years, the oldest signs of early humans in North China.In a paper published in the scholarly journal Scientific Reports, Chinese Academy of Sciences geologist Hong Ao and his team determined that tools and other artifacts found at the Shangshazui Paleolithic site in China's Nihewan Basin were deposited there between 1.6 and million 1.7 million years ago. Previously, the artifacts were thought to be 1 million years old.
A study by a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton has found that Neanderthals were more culturally complex than previously acknowledged. Two cultural traditions existed among Neanderthals living in what is now northern Europe between 115,000 to 35,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,000-year-old man preserved in an Irish peat bog, marking the oldest European body ever found with skin still intact.The cool, waterlogged conditions of Northern European bogs (a type of wetland) create low-oxygen, highly acidic environments ideal for body preservation. As a result, hundreds of "bog bodies" dating back thousands of years have been uncovered in the region, but many have shriveled down to mostly skeletons and tend to be closer to 2,000 years old.