Newsdesk Archive

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.

On a calm winter's day in Norway two years ago, the sea suddenly started to boil and rise, sending freak waves rolling onto nearby shores and mystifying residents. Turns out, the massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan in 2011 also triggered these surprise seiche waves, a new study shows.Seiche (pronounced saysh) waves are standing waves that form in closed or semi-enclosed water basins, such as Norway's narrow, steep-walled fjords. Smaller examples of standing waves include water sloshing in a bathtub from a wriggly child, or in a swimming pool after an earthquake.

The Maya and the Aztecs believed that cacao was discovered by the gods in a mountain and was to be given to the people following their creation. The Maya held a yearly festival to honor the cacao god Ek Chuah, which included several offerings and rituals to him. Although sustaining the high possibility that is was not a native Mesoamerican crop, the cacao tree was one of the ancient Maya and Aztec

While everyday Web users can load information onto a smartphone using a QR code, artist Anthony Antonellis simply holds his phone within 1 to 2 centimeters of his hand. Thanks to a tiny chip underneath his skin, Antonellis has created the world's first Net art implant."It's 1 to 2KB of storage, and I'm using that to store an animated GIF," he told the New York-based culture Web site Animal. "It works with mobile phones and card readers, and it's usually used for privacy, and I'm using it for a public purpose, which is to distribute artwork."

An environmentally focused think tank has announced that Earth will be living in what they referred to as an ecological deficit for the remainder of the year.As of Tuesday, humans officially exhausted the planet

Astronomers have captured stunning images of a star in the process of being born, and they are as beautiful as they are counterintuitive.In the images above, you are not seeing the young star itself, but rather massive jets of gases such as carbon monoxide and ionized oxygen that are shooting away from the forming star at speeds of up to 1 million kilometers per hour (about 621,000 mph).When these gas jets crash into the material surrounding the protostar, they begin to glow, creating what is known as the Herbig-Haro effect.

Advances in science could offer hope for the world's besieged coral reefs. Gavin Haines investigates.Whether we are blowing them up with dynamite, dropping anchors on them or warming up the oceans they live in, mankind is leading a sustained attack on the world's coral reefs.A recent report revealed that coral coverage on the Great Barrier Reef has declined by as much as 50% in the last three decades, while reefs in the Caribbean have seen reported losses of 80%.

A genetic-modification technique used widely to make crops herbicide resistant has been shown to confer advantages on a weedy form of rice, even in the absence of the herbicide. The finding suggests that the effects of such modification have the potential to extend beyond farms and into the wild.Several types of crops have been genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide first marketed under the trade name Roundup. This glyphosate resistance enables farmers to wipe out most weeds from the fields without damaging their crops.

Scientists have discovered a vast plume of iron and other micronutrients more than 1,000 km long billowing from hydrothermal vents in the South Atlantic Ocean. The finding, soon to be published in the journal Nature Geoscience, calls past estimates of iron abundances into question, and may challenge researchers' assumptions about iron sources in the world's seas."This study and other studies like it are going to force the scientific community to reevaluate how much iron is really being contributed by hydrothermal vents and to increase those estimates, and that has implications for not only iron geochemistry but a number of other disciplines as well," says Mak Saito, a WHOI associate scientist and lead author of the study.

On the Antarctic island of South Georgia, in February, toward the middle of what passes for summer at the bottom of the world, I hurried through the ruined whaling station of Grytviken.I had an appointment at the British Antarctic Survey station on the opposite side of King Edward Cove. I was to interview a marine ecologist working on krill. I did not want to be late.

Scotland's red deer are breeding earlier each year, according to scientists studying the impact of climate change on the species.It is thought to be the result of improved grazing, due to the longer growing season in spring and summer.Scientists have been studying the red deer population on the Isle of Rum since 1953.

The ability of Europe's aging forests to absorb carbon dioxide is heading towards saturation point, threatening one of the main defences against global warming, a new study shows.Forests from Spain to Sweden are getting older, packed with trees less good at soaking up the emissions blamed for rising world temperatures, mounting sea levels and increasing numbers of heatwaves and floods, experts warn.

The lack of water is a growing, global problem that seems intractable. While the UN estimates that a large majority of the water we use goes on irrigation, researchers have been working on a range of ideas that make the water we use in agriculture last longer.There has been a great deal of excitement and some dramatic headlines in recent weeks about a product that is said to have the potential to overcome the global challenge of growing crops in arid conditions.

Climate change combined with rapid population increases, economic growth and land subsidence could lead to a more than nine-fold increase in the global risk of floods in large port cities between now and 2050."Future Flood Losses in Major Coastal Cities," published in Nature Climate Change, is part of an ongoing project by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to explore the policy implications of flood risks due to climate change and economic development. This study builds on past OECD work which ranked global port cities on the basis of current and future exposure, where exposure is the maximum number of people or assets that could be affected by a flood.

Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.Food webs are used to map feeding relationships. By describing the structure of these webs, scientists can predict how plants and animals living in an ecosystem will respond to change. Coauthor Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, comments, "Given the degraded state of the world's rivers, insight into food webs is essential to conserving endangered animals, improving water quality, and managing productive fisheries."

Macaque monkeys that have developed the ability to use stone tools to open shellfish are in danger of losing the skill because of human development.Scientists found that illegal palm oil and rubber plantations in Thailand are disrupting the monkeys' feeding behaviour.Dogs brought in to protect the farms are repelling the macaques from the shoreline, which inhibits their tool-using activities.The study is published in Oryx.

The mournful, curiously repetitious yet ever-changing songs of male humpback whales have long puzzled scientists. The tunes are part of the males

Birds cannot read road signs, but they know that some roads have higher speed limits than others. They will take off further away from an approaching car on a faster road than on a slower road

A newly declassified CIA document confirms the existence of famed Area 51 in Nevada, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed the spy agency offers no proof of alien spaceship landings in the desert.Area 51 has long been fodder for science fiction films and wild UFO tales claiming the US government imposed secrecy over the site northwest of Las Vegas to cover up evidence of extra-terrestrials touching down on Earth.

Quantum teleportation has taken a great leap forward

Concentrated laser light in the universe may singal the presence of a technological civilizations that might be living on distant planets or in a spacecraft nearby.

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.

On a calm winter's day in Norway two years ago, the sea suddenly started to boil and rise, sending freak waves rolling onto nearby shores and mystifying residents. Turns out, the massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan in 2011 also triggered these surprise seiche waves, a new study shows.Seiche (pronounced saysh) waves are standing waves that form in closed or semi-enclosed water basins, such as Norway's narrow, steep-walled fjords. Smaller examples of standing waves include water sloshing in a bathtub from a wriggly child, or in a swimming pool after an earthquake.

The Maya and the Aztecs believed that cacao was discovered by the gods in a mountain and was to be given to the people following their creation. The Maya held a yearly festival to honor the cacao god Ek Chuah, which included several offerings and rituals to him. Although sustaining the high possibility that is was not a native Mesoamerican crop, the cacao tree was one of the ancient Maya and Aztec

While everyday Web users can load information onto a smartphone using a QR code, artist Anthony Antonellis simply holds his phone within 1 to 2 centimeters of his hand. Thanks to a tiny chip underneath his skin, Antonellis has created the world's first Net art implant."It's 1 to 2KB of storage, and I'm using that to store an animated GIF," he told the New York-based culture Web site Animal. "It works with mobile phones and card readers, and it's usually used for privacy, and I'm using it for a public purpose, which is to distribute artwork."

Astronomers have captured stunning images of a star in the process of being born, and they are as beautiful as they are counterintuitive.In the images above, you are not seeing the young star itself, but rather massive jets of gases such as carbon monoxide and ionized oxygen that are shooting away from the forming star at speeds of up to 1 million kilometers per hour (about 621,000 mph).When these gas jets crash into the material surrounding the protostar, they begin to glow, creating what is known as the Herbig-Haro effect.

A genetic-modification technique used widely to make crops herbicide resistant has been shown to confer advantages on a weedy form of rice, even in the absence of the herbicide. The finding suggests that the effects of such modification have the potential to extend beyond farms and into the wild.Several types of crops have been genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide first marketed under the trade name Roundup. This glyphosate resistance enables farmers to wipe out most weeds from the fields without damaging their crops.

Scientists have discovered a vast plume of iron and other micronutrients more than 1,000 km long billowing from hydrothermal vents in the South Atlantic Ocean. The finding, soon to be published in the journal Nature Geoscience, calls past estimates of iron abundances into question, and may challenge researchers' assumptions about iron sources in the world's seas."This study and other studies like it are going to force the scientific community to reevaluate how much iron is really being contributed by hydrothermal vents and to increase those estimates, and that has implications for not only iron geochemistry but a number of other disciplines as well," says Mak Saito, a WHOI associate scientist and lead author of the study.

On the Antarctic island of South Georgia, in February, toward the middle of what passes for summer at the bottom of the world, I hurried through the ruined whaling station of Grytviken.I had an appointment at the British Antarctic Survey station on the opposite side of King Edward Cove. I was to interview a marine ecologist working on krill. I did not want to be late.

Scotland's red deer are breeding earlier each year, according to scientists studying the impact of climate change on the species.It is thought to be the result of improved grazing, due to the longer growing season in spring and summer.Scientists have been studying the red deer population on the Isle of Rum since 1953.

The ability of Europe's aging forests to absorb carbon dioxide is heading towards saturation point, threatening one of the main defences against global warming, a new study shows.Forests from Spain to Sweden are getting older, packed with trees less good at soaking up the emissions blamed for rising world temperatures, mounting sea levels and increasing numbers of heatwaves and floods, experts warn.

The lack of water is a growing, global problem that seems intractable. While the UN estimates that a large majority of the water we use goes on irrigation, researchers have been working on a range of ideas that make the water we use in agriculture last longer.There has been a great deal of excitement and some dramatic headlines in recent weeks about a product that is said to have the potential to overcome the global challenge of growing crops in arid conditions.

Climate change combined with rapid population increases, economic growth and land subsidence could lead to a more than nine-fold increase in the global risk of floods in large port cities between now and 2050."Future Flood Losses in Major Coastal Cities," published in Nature Climate Change, is part of an ongoing project by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to explore the policy implications of flood risks due to climate change and economic development. This study builds on past OECD work which ranked global port cities on the basis of current and future exposure, where exposure is the maximum number of people or assets that could be affected by a flood.

Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.Food webs are used to map feeding relationships. By describing the structure of these webs, scientists can predict how plants and animals living in an ecosystem will respond to change. Coauthor Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, comments, "Given the degraded state of the world's rivers, insight into food webs is essential to conserving endangered animals, improving water quality, and managing productive fisheries."

Macaque monkeys that have developed the ability to use stone tools to open shellfish are in danger of losing the skill because of human development.Scientists found that illegal palm oil and rubber plantations in Thailand are disrupting the monkeys' feeding behaviour.Dogs brought in to protect the farms are repelling the macaques from the shoreline, which inhibits their tool-using activities.The study is published in Oryx.

A newly declassified CIA document confirms the existence of famed Area 51 in Nevada, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed the spy agency offers no proof of alien spaceship landings in the desert.Area 51 has long been fodder for science fiction films and wild UFO tales claiming the US government imposed secrecy over the site northwest of Las Vegas to cover up evidence of extra-terrestrials touching down on Earth.

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.

On a calm winter's day in Norway two years ago, the sea suddenly started to boil and rise, sending freak waves rolling onto nearby shores and mystifying residents. Turns out, the massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan in 2011 also triggered these surprise seiche waves, a new study shows.Seiche (pronounced saysh) waves are standing waves that form in closed or semi-enclosed water basins, such as Norway's narrow, steep-walled fjords. Smaller examples of standing waves include water sloshing in a bathtub from a wriggly child, or in a swimming pool after an earthquake.

While everyday Web users can load information onto a smartphone using a QR code, artist Anthony Antonellis simply holds his phone within 1 to 2 centimeters of his hand. Thanks to a tiny chip underneath his skin, Antonellis has created the world's first Net art implant."It's 1 to 2KB of storage, and I'm using that to store an animated GIF," he told the New York-based culture Web site Animal. "It works with mobile phones and card readers, and it's usually used for privacy, and I'm using it for a public purpose, which is to distribute artwork."

Some of the earliest iron artefacts ever found - funeral beads strung around bodies in a 5000-year-old Egyptian cemetery - came from outer space, archaeologists have confirmed.High-tech scanning of the beads, discovered by British archaeologists in the Lower Egypt village of el-Gerzeh in 1911, shows the metal came from a meteorite that landed on Earth.

One second left on the clock, and the basketball star who seems to be able to make any shot from anywhere on the court has just been fouled. His team is two points behind, but no worry.All he has to do is make two free throws, a piece of cake for someone of his talents. The fierce action on the floor freezes as players on both sides take a mandatory breather. There's nothing the defense can do.

Thanks to two studies published in Nature last Thursday, the chance of successful teleportation has considerably increased. Which is a good thing, right?Whether or not you

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma

Finding shows complex nature of Earth's climate interactionsThree atmospheric patterns came together above the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2010 and 2011. When they did, they drove so much precipitation over Australia that the world's ocean levels dropped measurably.Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all its precipitation from flowing into the ocean.

Several associative studies have drawn vastly different conclusions about the connections between psychedelic drugs and mental health. Today (August 19) the field gets even hazier, as researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) suggest that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD),

England's chief medical officer has said drug addiction should be seen as a medical problem, but that society chooses to treat it as a criminal justice issue.Professor Dame Sally Davies's comments came as she told BBC Radio 3's Private Passions that she ate hash cookies at university.Davies said of her university days in the 1970s: "I never smoked so I couldn't smoke joints but I did have some cookies, until on the third or fourth occasion I had hallucinations and I've never touched it since.

The traffic light in the middle of Tomioka flashes red: proceed with caution. The authorities have started to allow evacuated residents of some parts of this small Japanese coastal town to come back for belongings they were forced to leave behind after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, about 16 km away. But no one is around.

Readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter, a TEPCO report stated, according to Nikkei newspaper. It marks the highest tritium level in the measurement history.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has detected the highest radiation level in seawater collected in the harbor of the crippled nuclear plant in the past 15 days, Nikkei reports.

The editor of the Guardian, a major outlet for revelations based on leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, says the British government threatened legal action against the newspaper unless it either destroyed the classified documents or handed them back to British authorities.Related: U.K. government thought destroying Guardian hard drives would stop Snowden stories

LONDON

Signed dedicated bookplates offer renewed, Tuesday 20 August through Tuesday 27 August, in response to many requests.For one week only, buy the paperback edition of my novel War God about the Spanish conquest of Mexico from Amazon US or the hardback edition from Amazon Canada, write to me at [email protected] with your name and postal address and I will, at my own expense, airmail you a personally signed, dedicated bookplate (a label designed to go on the title page) to place inside your copy.Buy War God in paperback here from Amazon USBuy the hardback edition of War God here from Amazon CanadaWrite to me at [email protected] confirming your order anytime between today, Tuesday 20 August, and midnight your time on Tuesday 27 August, be patient with me for up to a month as I get the bookplates dedicated and signed and off in the post to you, and I will fulfil this promise.Full information here: http://www.grahamhancock.com/wargod/.

How far would you go to get your cinnamon fix? If you lived in the Levant 3,000 years ago (a region that includes modern day Israel), very far indeed new research indicates.Researchers analyzing the contents of 27 flasks from five archaeological sites in Israel that date back around 3,000 years have found that 10 of the flasks contain cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives cinnamon its flavor, indicating that the spice was stored in these flasks.

Could a blood test predict whether a person is at risk of committing suicide? For the first time, a set of proteins in the blood have been linked to suicidal behaviour. People who commit suicide appear to share a number of biological traits, regardless of any underlying conditions. This hints that suicidal behaviour may be a distinct disorder.

Did the US government test a flying saucer at double-super-secret Area 51?We ask that question because the US military did work on building its own flying saucer in the 1950s, and a recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency report for the first time publicly acknowledged Area 51, the cold war-era test site in Nevada near Groom Lake.

Astronomers have discovered a scorching-hot "lava world" whose year lasts just 8.5 hours and determined that another planet candidate with an even tighter orbit is likely composed almost entirely of iron.The newfound Earth-size exoplanet Kepler-78b is so close to its host star that its surface is likely an enormous ocean of lava, researchers said. Further, the discovery team was able to detect light emitted by the planet

A new study of desert plants living on the slopes of Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains has uncovered a startling fact: many trees and shrubs have moved a long way up-slope over the last 50 years. The shift could be caused by a warming trend in recent decades in the Arizona desert, or perhaps the 20-year drought.The study was done by surveying the varied plants and plant communities lined up along the Catalina Highway, which climbs from low desert to mountain top. The data was compared to that of a 1963 survey the famous botanist Robert H. Whittaker and his colleague William Niering did along the same stretch of road.

Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.

Members of one of the most isolated tribes on Earth have briefly emerged from the Peruvian jungle to ask for food, according to local activists.A group from the Mashco-Piro tribe made contact with villagers, apparently sparking a tense stand-off.The tribe, which numbers in the hundreds, has had virtually no contact with the wider world.Campaigners say logging and urban development have diminished the area in which the tribe can live.

Some of the earliest iron artefacts ever found - funeral beads strung around bodies in a 5000-year-old Egyptian cemetery - came from outer space, archaeologists have confirmed.High-tech scanning of the beads, discovered by British archaeologists in the Lower Egypt village of el-Gerzeh in 1911, shows the metal came from a meteorite that landed on Earth.

One second left on the clock, and the basketball star who seems to be able to make any shot from anywhere on the court has just been fouled. His team is two points behind, but no worry.All he has to do is make two free throws, a piece of cake for someone of his talents. The fierce action on the floor freezes as players on both sides take a mandatory breather. There's nothing the defense can do.

Thanks to two studies published in Nature last Thursday, the chance of successful teleportation has considerably increased. Which is a good thing, right?Whether or not you

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma

Finding shows complex nature of Earth's climate interactionsThree atmospheric patterns came together above the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2010 and 2011. When they did, they drove so much precipitation over Australia that the world's ocean levels dropped measurably.Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all its precipitation from flowing into the ocean.

Several associative studies have drawn vastly different conclusions about the connections between psychedelic drugs and mental health. Today (August 19) the field gets even hazier, as researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) suggest that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD),

England's chief medical officer has said drug addiction should be seen as a medical problem, but that society chooses to treat it as a criminal justice issue.Professor Dame Sally Davies's comments came as she told BBC Radio 3's Private Passions that she ate hash cookies at university.Davies said of her university days in the 1970s: "I never smoked so I couldn't smoke joints but I did have some cookies, until on the third or fourth occasion I had hallucinations and I've never touched it since.

The traffic light in the middle of Tomioka flashes red: proceed with caution. The authorities have started to allow evacuated residents of some parts of this small Japanese coastal town to come back for belongings they were forced to leave behind after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, about 16 km away. But no one is around.

Readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter, a TEPCO report stated, according to Nikkei newspaper. It marks the highest tritium level in the measurement history.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has detected the highest radiation level in seawater collected in the harbor of the crippled nuclear plant in the past 15 days, Nikkei reports.

The editor of the Guardian, a major outlet for revelations based on leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, says the British government threatened legal action against the newspaper unless it either destroyed the classified documents or handed them back to British authorities.Related: U.K. government thought destroying Guardian hard drives would stop Snowden stories

LONDON

Signed dedicated bookplates offer renewed, Tuesday 20 August through Tuesday 27 August, in response to many requests.For one week only, buy the paperback edition of my novel War God about the Spanish conquest of Mexico from Amazon US or the hardback edition from Amazon Canada, write to me at [email protected] with your name and postal address and I will, at my own expense, airmail you a personally signed, dedicated bookplate (a label designed to go on the title page) to place inside your copy.Buy War God in paperback here from Amazon USBuy the hardback edition of War God here from Amazon CanadaWrite to me at [email protected] confirming your order anytime between today, Tuesday 20 August, and midnight your time on Tuesday 27 August, be patient with me for up to a month as I get the bookplates dedicated and signed and off in the post to you, and I will fulfil this promise.Full information here: http://www.grahamhancock.com/wargod/.

How far would you go to get your cinnamon fix? If you lived in the Levant 3,000 years ago (a region that includes modern day Israel), very far indeed new research indicates.Researchers analyzing the contents of 27 flasks from five archaeological sites in Israel that date back around 3,000 years have found that 10 of the flasks contain cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives cinnamon its flavor, indicating that the spice was stored in these flasks.

Could a blood test predict whether a person is at risk of committing suicide? For the first time, a set of proteins in the blood have been linked to suicidal behaviour. People who commit suicide appear to share a number of biological traits, regardless of any underlying conditions. This hints that suicidal behaviour may be a distinct disorder.

Did the US government test a flying saucer at double-super-secret Area 51?We ask that question because the US military did work on building its own flying saucer in the 1950s, and a recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency report for the first time publicly acknowledged Area 51, the cold war-era test site in Nevada near Groom Lake.

Astronomers have discovered a scorching-hot "lava world" whose year lasts just 8.5 hours and determined that another planet candidate with an even tighter orbit is likely composed almost entirely of iron.The newfound Earth-size exoplanet Kepler-78b is so close to its host star that its surface is likely an enormous ocean of lava, researchers said. Further, the discovery team was able to detect light emitted by the planet

A new study of desert plants living on the slopes of Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains has uncovered a startling fact: many trees and shrubs have moved a long way up-slope over the last 50 years. The shift could be caused by a warming trend in recent decades in the Arizona desert, or perhaps the 20-year drought.The study was done by surveying the varied plants and plant communities lined up along the Catalina Highway, which climbs from low desert to mountain top. The data was compared to that of a 1963 survey the famous botanist Robert H. Whittaker and his colleague William Niering did along the same stretch of road.

Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.

Members of one of the most isolated tribes on Earth have briefly emerged from the Peruvian jungle to ask for food, according to local activists.A group from the Mashco-Piro tribe made contact with villagers, apparently sparking a tense stand-off.The tribe, which numbers in the hundreds, has had virtually no contact with the wider world.Campaigners say logging and urban development have diminished the area in which the tribe can live.

Some of the earliest iron artefacts ever found - funeral beads strung around bodies in a 5000-year-old Egyptian cemetery - came from outer space, archaeologists have confirmed.High-tech scanning of the beads, discovered by British archaeologists in the Lower Egypt village of el-Gerzeh in 1911, shows the metal came from a meteorite that landed on Earth.

One second left on the clock, and the basketball star who seems to be able to make any shot from anywhere on the court has just been fouled. His team is two points behind, but no worry.All he has to do is make two free throws, a piece of cake for someone of his talents. The fierce action on the floor freezes as players on both sides take a mandatory breather. There's nothing the defense can do.

Thanks to two studies published in Nature last Thursday, the chance of successful teleportation has considerably increased. Which is a good thing, right?Whether or not you

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma

Finding shows complex nature of Earth's climate interactionsThree atmospheric patterns came together above the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2010 and 2011. When they did, they drove so much precipitation over Australia that the world's ocean levels dropped measurably.Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all its precipitation from flowing into the ocean.

Several associative studies have drawn vastly different conclusions about the connections between psychedelic drugs and mental health. Today (August 19) the field gets even hazier, as researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) suggest that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD),

England's chief medical officer has said drug addiction should be seen as a medical problem, but that society chooses to treat it as a criminal justice issue.Professor Dame Sally Davies's comments came as she told BBC Radio 3's Private Passions that she ate hash cookies at university.Davies said of her university days in the 1970s: "I never smoked so I couldn't smoke joints but I did have some cookies, until on the third or fourth occasion I had hallucinations and I've never touched it since.

The traffic light in the middle of Tomioka flashes red: proceed with caution. The authorities have started to allow evacuated residents of some parts of this small Japanese coastal town to come back for belongings they were forced to leave behind after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, about 16 km away. But no one is around.

Readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter, a TEPCO report stated, according to Nikkei newspaper. It marks the highest tritium level in the measurement history.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has detected the highest radiation level in seawater collected in the harbor of the crippled nuclear plant in the past 15 days, Nikkei reports.

The editor of the Guardian, a major outlet for revelations based on leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, says the British government threatened legal action against the newspaper unless it either destroyed the classified documents or handed them back to British authorities.Related: U.K. government thought destroying Guardian hard drives would stop Snowden stories

LONDON

Signed dedicated bookplates offer renewed, Tuesday 20 August through Tuesday 27 August, in response to many requests.For one week only, buy the paperback edition of my novel War God about the Spanish conquest of Mexico from Amazon US or the hardback edition from Amazon Canada, write to me at [email protected] with your name and postal address and I will, at my own expense, airmail you a personally signed, dedicated bookplate (a label designed to go on the title page) to place inside your copy.Buy War God in paperback here from Amazon USBuy the hardback edition of War God here from Amazon CanadaWrite to me at [email protected] confirming your order anytime between today, Tuesday 20 August, and midnight your time on Tuesday 27 August, be patient with me for up to a month as I get the bookplates dedicated and signed and off in the post to you, and I will fulfil this promise.Full information here: http://www.grahamhancock.com/wargod/.

How far would you go to get your cinnamon fix? If you lived in the Levant 3,000 years ago (a region that includes modern day Israel), very far indeed new research indicates.Researchers analyzing the contents of 27 flasks from five archaeological sites in Israel that date back around 3,000 years have found that 10 of the flasks contain cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives cinnamon its flavor, indicating that the spice was stored in these flasks.

Could a blood test predict whether a person is at risk of committing suicide? For the first time, a set of proteins in the blood have been linked to suicidal behaviour. People who commit suicide appear to share a number of biological traits, regardless of any underlying conditions. This hints that suicidal behaviour may be a distinct disorder.

Did the US government test a flying saucer at double-super-secret Area 51?We ask that question because the US military did work on building its own flying saucer in the 1950s, and a recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency report for the first time publicly acknowledged Area 51, the cold war-era test site in Nevada near Groom Lake.

Astronomers have discovered a scorching-hot "lava world" whose year lasts just 8.5 hours and determined that another planet candidate with an even tighter orbit is likely composed almost entirely of iron.The newfound Earth-size exoplanet Kepler-78b is so close to its host star that its surface is likely an enormous ocean of lava, researchers said. Further, the discovery team was able to detect light emitted by the planet

A new study of desert plants living on the slopes of Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains has uncovered a startling fact: many trees and shrubs have moved a long way up-slope over the last 50 years. The shift could be caused by a warming trend in recent decades in the Arizona desert, or perhaps the 20-year drought.The study was done by surveying the varied plants and plant communities lined up along the Catalina Highway, which climbs from low desert to mountain top. The data was compared to that of a 1963 survey the famous botanist Robert H. Whittaker and his colleague William Niering did along the same stretch of road.

Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.

Members of one of the most isolated tribes on Earth have briefly emerged from the Peruvian jungle to ask for food, according to local activists.A group from the Mashco-Piro tribe made contact with villagers, apparently sparking a tense stand-off.The tribe, which numbers in the hundreds, has had virtually no contact with the wider world.Campaigners say logging and urban development have diminished the area in which the tribe can live.

Some of the earliest iron artefacts ever found - funeral beads strung around bodies in a 5000-year-old Egyptian cemetery - came from outer space, archaeologists have confirmed.High-tech scanning of the beads, discovered by British archaeologists in the Lower Egypt village of el-Gerzeh in 1911, shows the metal came from a meteorite that landed on Earth.

One second left on the clock, and the basketball star who seems to be able to make any shot from anywhere on the court has just been fouled. His team is two points behind, but no worry.All he has to do is make two free throws, a piece of cake for someone of his talents. The fierce action on the floor freezes as players on both sides take a mandatory breather. There's nothing the defense can do.

Finding shows complex nature of Earth's climate interactionsThree atmospheric patterns came together above the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2010 and 2011. When they did, they drove so much precipitation over Australia that the world's ocean levels dropped measurably.Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all its precipitation from flowing into the ocean.

England's chief medical officer has said drug addiction should be seen as a medical problem, but that society chooses to treat it as a criminal justice issue.Professor Dame Sally Davies's comments came as she told BBC Radio 3's Private Passions that she ate hash cookies at university.Davies said of her university days in the 1970s: "I never smoked so I couldn't smoke joints but I did have some cookies, until on the third or fourth occasion I had hallucinations and I've never touched it since.