Newsdesk Archive

Three Inca mummies found near the lofty summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina were so well preserved that they put a human face on the ancient ritual of capacocha

Archeologists have discovered a lunar calendar in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, that is nearly ten thousand years old. Their findings show that the calendar makers (1) thought about time and (2) figured out a means to follow it at a period in history that was still in the Stone Age. The discovery is considered both surprising and important because it now places a calendar nearly five thousand years before what was previously considered as the first formal calendar, created in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. But here, a discovery has been made of a calendar construct appearing to track the phases of the moon nearly 10,000 years ago.

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council

If salvage companies get their way, an underwater forest of 50,000-year-old trees only recently discovered could be destroyed to make high-end coffee tables.The primeval underwater forest, long buried under the sediments at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was probably uncovered by Hurricane Katrina and discovered by scuba divers.

Already ravaged by toxic algae, invasive mussels and industrial pollution, North America's Great Lakes now confront another potential threat that few had even imagined until recently: untold millions of plastic litter bits, some visible only through a microscope.Scientists who have studied gigantic masses of floating plastic in the world's oceans are now reporting similar discoveries in the lakes that make up nearly one-fifth of the world's fresh water. They retrieved the particles from Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie last year. This summer, they're widening the search to Lakes Michigan and Ontario, skimming the surface with finely meshed netting dragged behind sailing vessels.

Chile and Argentina may face critical water storage issues due to rain-bearing westerly winds over South America's Patagonian Ice-Field to moving south as a result of global warming.

Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.In early May, instruments at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii marked a new record: The concentration of carbon dioxide climbed to 400 parts per million for the first time in modern history.

Look to Venus, and gulp. On our planet's twin, the atmosphere is toxic and at 460 °C, the temperature is high enough to melt zinc. Earth was thought to be immune from such a fevered state, but a new study suggests we shouldn't be quite so complacent

Untold numbers of migratory birds are being caught and killed every year in Afghanistan, helping drive species like the Siberian Crane to the verge of extinction. Hunters say other bird populations are also declining rapidly, raising fears among environmentalists.

The re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the United States has had an unexpected benefit

A male kangaroo

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be marginalised but integrated into society.Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.

This line from Herman Hesse's 1922 novel Siddhartha came unbidden to me during a recent weeklong visit to Drepung Monastery in southern India. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had invited the U.S.-based Mind and Life Institute to familiarize the Tibetan Buddhist monastic community living in exile in India with modern science. About a dozen of us

The Leicester municipal car park that, amid much fanfare, yielded the remains of King Richard III has, it seems, yet to give up all its long-buried secrets. Barely a year after archaeologists from the University of Leicester uncovered a skeleton confirmed in February as that of England's last Plantagenet monarch, they have exhumed a second body.

Three Inca mummies found near the lofty summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina were so well preserved that they put a human face on the ancient ritual of capacocha

Archeologists have discovered a lunar calendar in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, that is nearly ten thousand years old. Their findings show that the calendar makers (1) thought about time and (2) figured out a means to follow it at a period in history that was still in the Stone Age. The discovery is considered both surprising and important because it now places a calendar nearly five thousand years before what was previously considered as the first formal calendar, created in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. But here, a discovery has been made of a calendar construct appearing to track the phases of the moon nearly 10,000 years ago.

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council

If salvage companies get their way, an underwater forest of 50,000-year-old trees only recently discovered could be destroyed to make high-end coffee tables.The primeval underwater forest, long buried under the sediments at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was probably uncovered by Hurricane Katrina and discovered by scuba divers.

Already ravaged by toxic algae, invasive mussels and industrial pollution, North America's Great Lakes now confront another potential threat that few had even imagined until recently: untold millions of plastic litter bits, some visible only through a microscope.Scientists who have studied gigantic masses of floating plastic in the world's oceans are now reporting similar discoveries in the lakes that make up nearly one-fifth of the world's fresh water. They retrieved the particles from Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie last year. This summer, they're widening the search to Lakes Michigan and Ontario, skimming the surface with finely meshed netting dragged behind sailing vessels.

Chile and Argentina may face critical water storage issues due to rain-bearing westerly winds over South America's Patagonian Ice-Field to moving south as a result of global warming.

Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.In early May, instruments at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii marked a new record: The concentration of carbon dioxide climbed to 400 parts per million for the first time in modern history.

Look to Venus, and gulp. On our planet's twin, the atmosphere is toxic and at 460 °C, the temperature is high enough to melt zinc. Earth was thought to be immune from such a fevered state, but a new study suggests we shouldn't be quite so complacent

Untold numbers of migratory birds are being caught and killed every year in Afghanistan, helping drive species like the Siberian Crane to the verge of extinction. Hunters say other bird populations are also declining rapidly, raising fears among environmentalists.

The re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the United States has had an unexpected benefit

A male kangaroo

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be marginalised but integrated into society.Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.

This line from Herman Hesse's 1922 novel Siddhartha came unbidden to me during a recent weeklong visit to Drepung Monastery in southern India. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had invited the U.S.-based Mind and Life Institute to familiarize the Tibetan Buddhist monastic community living in exile in India with modern science. About a dozen of us

The Leicester municipal car park that, amid much fanfare, yielded the remains of King Richard III has, it seems, yet to give up all its long-buried secrets. Barely a year after archaeologists from the University of Leicester uncovered a skeleton confirmed in February as that of England's last Plantagenet monarch, they have exhumed a second body.

Archeologists have discovered a lunar calendar in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, that is nearly ten thousand years old. Their findings show that the calendar makers (1) thought about time and (2) figured out a means to follow it at a period in history that was still in the Stone Age. The discovery is considered both surprising and important because it now places a calendar nearly five thousand years before what was previously considered as the first formal calendar, created in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. But here, a discovery has been made of a calendar construct appearing to track the phases of the moon nearly 10,000 years ago.

If salvage companies get their way, an underwater forest of 50,000-year-old trees only recently discovered could be destroyed to make high-end coffee tables.The primeval underwater forest, long buried under the sediments at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was probably uncovered by Hurricane Katrina and discovered by scuba divers.

Already ravaged by toxic algae, invasive mussels and industrial pollution, North America's Great Lakes now confront another potential threat that few had even imagined until recently: untold millions of plastic litter bits, some visible only through a microscope.Scientists who have studied gigantic masses of floating plastic in the world's oceans are now reporting similar discoveries in the lakes that make up nearly one-fifth of the world's fresh water. They retrieved the particles from Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie last year. This summer, they're widening the search to Lakes Michigan and Ontario, skimming the surface with finely meshed netting dragged behind sailing vessels.

Chile and Argentina may face critical water storage issues due to rain-bearing westerly winds over South America's Patagonian Ice-Field to moving south as a result of global warming.

Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.In early May, instruments at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii marked a new record: The concentration of carbon dioxide climbed to 400 parts per million for the first time in modern history.

Untold numbers of migratory birds are being caught and killed every year in Afghanistan, helping drive species like the Siberian Crane to the verge of extinction. Hunters say other bird populations are also declining rapidly, raising fears among environmentalists.

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be marginalised but integrated into society.Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.

Male primates may have become monogamous to protect their offspring from being killed by rival males, a new study finds. However, others disagree, saying monogamy evolved in mammals so that males could guard their mates.A team of British and Australian researchers compared data across 230 primate species over 75 million years, and found that the threat of infanticide -- specifically, the threat of baby primates being killed by unrelated males -- likely triggered monogamy.

Breast-feeding for a longer time improves a child's understanding of language at age 3, and their scores on intelligence tests at age 7, according to a new study.The study, which looked at the practice of breast-feeding in more detail and accounted for more potentially confoundingfactors that previous work, shows that breast-feeding indeed benefits children's cognitive development, the researchers said.

With 96% living at least another 10 years, curing the disease is 'almost a reality', says Cancer Research chiefAlmost every man in the UK diagnosed with testicular cancer is now beating the disease, new figures show.Ten-year survival rates have surged by almost 30% in the past 40 years, said Cancer Research UK.

A good state of mind -- that is, your happiness -- affects your genes, scientists say. In the first study of its kind, researchers from UCLA's Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and the University of North Carolina examined how positive psychology impacts human gene expression.What they found is that different types of happiness have surprisingly different effects on the human genome.

Team in China say their slightly unsavoury work could realise the 'final dream' of regenerating adult teeth to replace those lost through aging or decayScientists in China say they have successfully grown a human tooth using stem cells taken from urine.Researchers say the technique could one day be used as a way to replace teeth lost through aging and poor dental hygiene, with the added bonus that urine is deemed a less controversial source of stem cells than human embryos.

Elephants are so crafty they carry out their raids on plantations to coincide with the darkest nights, scientists have found.Scientists at Anglia Ruskin University in UK found the huge animals track the lunar cycle and avoid organising their raids when the moon is full.The findings show that elephants are aware that they are doing something risky, that humans are a threat and they work out a plan to minimise the risk of contact.

The British prime minister's internet filters will be about more than just hardcore pornography, according to information obtained by the Open Rights Group.As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on "violent material", "extremist related content", "anorexia and eating disorder websites" and "suicide related websites", "alcohol" and "smoking". But the list doesn't stop there. It even extends to blocking "web forums" and "esoteric material", whatever that is. "Web blocking circumvention tools" is also included, of course.Related: Chinese firm Huawei controls net filter praised by PM.

Foreign nuclear experts on Friday blasted the operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, with one saying its lack of transparency over toxic water leaks showed "you don't know what you're doing".The blunt criticism comes after a litany of problems at the reactor site, which was swamped by a quake-sparked tsunami two years ago.

Major earthquakes can topple buildings, cause landslides and spawn tsunamis. Now scientists say they can do something else: set off the release of methane gas from the seabed.In a study published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, European researchers report that an underwater quake off Pakistan nearly 70 years ago likely fractured seafloor sediments and created pathways for methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to bubble up from below. The researchers say the phenomenon may be widespread enough that climate scientists should take it into account when estimating the amounts of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

A runaway greenhouse Armageddon in which the oceans boil dry could theoretically happen on Earth, researchers claim.The good news is that human activity on its own will probably not be enough to trigger such an end-of-the-world scenario in the near future.But new calculations from Canadian and US scientists show that catastrophic warming can occur more easily than had been assumed.

Recently, climate change, including global warming, has been a "hot" news item as many regions of the world have experienced increasingly intense weather patterns, such as powerful hurricanes and extended floods or droughts. Often the emphasis is on how such extreme weather impacts humans, from daily heat index warnings to regulating CO2 emissions.

Researchers at the University of Leeds have discovered how plants set the angles of their branches.While the other principle features governing the architecture of plants such as the control of the number of branches and positioning around the main shoot are now well understood, scientists have long puzzled over how plants set and maintain the angle of their lateral branches relative to gravity.

Farmers who used weedkillers were more than twice as likely to be treated for depression than farmers who didn't use the chemicals in a new study from France.Whether the weedkillers are causing depression "is not clear," said Marc Weisskopf, the study's lead author and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "But (the result) suggests we should not be ignoring herbicides just because they're targeting plants.".

Independent book retailers might have a new secret weapon as they take on big booksellers like Barnes & Noble and e-commerce behemoths like Amazon. A new study from Belgium researchers at Hasselt University suggests that the smell of chocolate in bookstores encourages customers to spend more time browsing for books.

A huge mushroom that is almost the size of a tire weighing 33 pounds has been unearthed by locals from the township of Puxiong in China's Yunnan province.The giant mushroom that stretches across 36 inches in diameter may be one of the largest ever mushroom discovered. The finder proudly put the large mushroom on display, triggering great excitement among the locals eager to take photographs of the unusual mushroom.

This aerial view of a remote island could be one of the last sights Amelia Earhart saw as a pilot when she flew over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.Taken 18 months after the legendary aviator's disappearance, the photo shows a patch of the coast of Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, which is believed to be Earhart's final resting place by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).

History was made last night when citizen scientists detected Britain's first example of a lightning strike into space.When Richard Kacerek skimmed through his video recordings during breakfast this morning he could not believe what he saw. During last night's lightning storm he'd captured a photo showing lightning into space in the middle of the sky.

It's been raining at Gunung Padang, and the grass on the mountain's precipitous eastern slope is slick with water and mud. But geologist Danny Hilman, is undeterred. While others slip and fall around him, he trudges expertly down this hill tucked away among the volcanoes 120 kilometres south of Jakarta to show off two big holes he's dug.Hilman says it could predate the next oldest by a dozen millenniums or more, suggesting an advanced ancient civilisation in Java. ''It's older than 9000 [years] and could be up to 20,000,'' Hilman says, as he sits on a fallen column of stone. ''It's crazy, but it's data.''See also: Photos: Ancient pyramids in Indonesia and video.

Drinking some cheaper supermarket tea blends can push people's fluoride intake over daily recommended levels, and put them at increased risk of skeletal and dental illnesses, a University of Derby study has found.Levels of fluoride found in 38 tea products were compared with each other and to the US National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) daily dietary reference intake in the research by Laura Chan, Professor Aradhana Mehra and Professor Paul Lynch from the University of Derby. The study is published in journal Food Research International.

Scientists have discovered how allergic reactions to cats are triggered, raising hopes of preventative medicine.A University of Cambridge team has identified how the body's immune system detects cat allergen, leading to symptoms such as coughing and sneezing.New treatments to block this pathway raise hopes of developing medicines to protect sufferers, they say.

During an epoch of dramatic climate change 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) evolved in Africa. Several leading scientists are asking: Is the human species entering a new evolutionary, post-biological inflection point? Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines.

Octopuses offer an extreme engineering challenge: They are almost infinitely flexible, entirely soft-bodied and incredibly intelligent. Are we vertebrate humans ever going to be able to build anything as deformable and complex as a real octopus?Carmel Majidi, of the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, explored this question in a recent paper in the journal Soft Robotics.

An odd underwater ballet has been unfolding in the Mediterranean port of Toulon these past few days.Under the scrutiny of their masters, whose eyes are glued to computer screens, the world's first fleet of "marine drones" is being put through its paces.

A scientific controversy erupted this week over claims that methane trapped beneath the Arctic Ocean could suddenly escape, releasing huge quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas, in coming decades, with a huge cost to the global economy.The issue being debated is this: Could the Arctic seafloor really fart out 50 billion tons of methane in the next few decades?.

Ever tried making your own beer? Home brewing has been with us literally for millennia, and now the University of Chicago is getting in on the trend.They've teamed up with a micro brewery to hold their first beer tasting next month, and while the brew will be fresh, the recipe certainly isn't, it comes from an ancient hymn to a Sumerian goddess on a 4,000 year old clay tablet.

Scientists reconstruct the genome of medieval strains of the pathogen responsible for leprosy by exhuming centuries-old human graves.Why was there a sudden drop in the incidence of leprosy at the end of the Middle Ages? To answer this question, biologists and archeologists reconstructed the genomes of medieval strains of the pathogen responsible for the disease, which they exhumed from centuries old human graves. Their results, published in the journal Science, shed light on this obscure historical period and introduce new methods for understanding epidemics.

Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media, for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower.

Pope Francis took on the defense of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.

Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

Each year, more than 50,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder that attacks the central nervous system, causing tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement and loss of balance. Detecting it can be difficult, however, especially in early stages. Now, to detect and study neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, researchers have built a system that records signals from hand muscles during handwriting.

You probably tap on QWERTY keyboards more than you practice your penmanship, but even Google hasn't forgetten the manual method.For words you can't type using your regular keyboard, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, you can simply write them into Google's translate function, as explained in the video above. Just choose the handwriting selector in the translation field for compatible languages and use your mouse to form the characters.

Many early forecasts for Hurricane Sandy last year predicted that the system would fizzle over the Atlantic. Yet a model developed by researchers at the European Center for Medium-Range Forecasts showed a more alarming scenario: the storm would instead turn west to threaten the Eastern Seaboard. The model's refined predictions pinpointed the hurricane's landfall around the New Jersey area in time to allow residents to seek higher ground. The key to the more accurate forecast involved mathematical mastery of the storm's chaotic behavior.

In its latest attempt to keep up with the times the Vatican has married one of its oldest traditions to the world of social media by offering "indulgences" to followers of Pope Francis' tweets.The church's granted indulgences reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory after they have confessed and been absolved of their sins.

Rumours have resurfaced about a device being developed by Google that could act as an interpreter.Google's gadget would not be quite as high-tech as those seen in science fiction shows such as Star Trek and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but could convert spoken words into another language in real-time through a receiver.Google's vice president of Android, Hugo Barra, told The Times the device is an option and more recent developments in its Google Translate software could make it a reality.

A man known as "ThreeD Ukulele" on YouTube has posted a video that shows him (or a colleague) test firing a small rifle (named the "Grizzly" after a Canadian tank) that he claims was constructed by parts he printed on a 3D printer. If his claims turn out to be true, it will mark the first known instance of a rifle being constructed in such a way.

Several pieces of Viking jewelry, some of which contain gold, have been uncovered at a farm site in Denmark that dates as far back as 1,300 years.Although the Vikings have a popular reputation as being raiders, they were also farmers, traders and explorers, and the craftsmanship seen in this jewelry demonstrates their artistic skills.

According to a new study, led by University of Texas at Austin anthropologists Gabrielle A. Russo and Liza Shapiro, the 9- to 7-million-year-old ape from Italy did not, in fact, walk habitually on two legs.The findings refute a long body of evidence, suggesting that Oreopithecus had the capabilities for bipedal (moving on two legs) walking.

A study led by Dr Katerina Harvati from Tübingen University, Germany, suggests the small-brained Indonesian hominin was a distinct species of human, rather than Homo sapiens suffering from a developmental disorder.A joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists unearthed partial skeletons of nine small-bodied hominins on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.

No ark required. Animals survived just fine when vast quantities of ash rained down from the Toba supervolcano 74,000 years ago, plunging Earth into a volcanic winter. At least that's what a new gene study suggests.The new analysis casts doubt on a theory that humans were almost wiped out by the fall-out from the eruption. This comes from a pattern in genetic data called a bottleneck, which suggests that a population has rapidly expanded after recently collapsing.

The cosmic impact that ended the age of dinosaurs killed many living creatures on land and in the sea, but scientists have found, puzzlingly, that life in freshwater largely escaped this fate.Now new research, detailed online July 11 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, suggests freshwater life survived extinction because they were better adapted to withstand rapid changes in their surroundings, which helped them outlast the crises in the wake of the catastrophe.

The Colorado River is not exactly running on empty (in the immortal lyrics of Jackson Browne), but for the 40 million people who depend on its water, it is definitely running behind.Way behind.

While it seems like there's nothing crazier than a person who enjoys getting up early, psychologists have determined that night owls are likelier to bear psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian tendencies compared to their early-rising brethren.

A full Moon can disturb a good night's sleep, scientists believe.Researchers found evidence of a "lunar influence" in a study of 33 volunteers sleeping in tightly controlled laboratory conditions.When the Moon was round, the volunteers took longer to nod off and had poorer quality sleep, despite being shut in a darkened room, Current Biology reports.

Scientists have successfully implanted false memories of an event that never happened into a brain as part of a study showing how easy it is to create inaccurate recollections of what happened in the past.The study is based on research into the memories of laboratory mice but the scientists believe it could also explain false-memory syndrome in humans, such as cases where people honestly believe that something has happened even when they are told it did not.

Homing pigeons fly off from an unknown place in unfamiliar territory and still manage to find their way home.This ability has always been fascinating to humans and nothing would ever happen in "Game of Thrones" if birds couldn't deliver messages. Yet despite intensive research, it is not yet definitively clear where this unusual gift comes from. All we seem to know is that homing pigeons and migratory birds determine their flight direction with the help of the Earth's magnetic field, the stars and the position of the sun.

Genetic evidence linking early people in China with Native Americans has been unearthed in a cave with important implications for our understanding of how humanity spread across the globe.DNA from an early human who lived 40,000 years ago found at Tianyuan Cave just outside Beijing also reveals the man had genes from the now-extinct Neanderthal.

Before there was Jamestown and even before there was Roanoke, there was Spain's Fort San Juan, in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina.Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of the fort built by gold-hunting Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century and say it's the oldest European garrison ever found in the interior of the United States.

GALVESTON, Texas -- Marine archaeologists are excited about the discovery of what may be a well-preserved 200-year-old shipwreck more than three-quarters of a mile below the Gulf of Mexico.Researchers led by a team from Texas State University in San Marcos are calling it the deepest shipwreck -- 1.3 kilometres down -- that archaeologists have systematically investigated in the Gulf of Mexico and in North America.

Think all those tires, bags, shoes and bottles discarded into the ocean somehow make it back to land?Instead of washing ashore, much of what we throw in the ocean stays there, slowly sinking to the bottom, releasing pollutants into the water, wrapping around corals, or, in some cases, becoming part of a critter-covered landscape. In the deep sea, low oxygen levels, scarce sunlight, and freezing water limit the rate at which items decompose: Something that might survive a few years on land could exist for decades underwater.

Halliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.The government said Halliburton's guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill and requires the world's second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine.

The extent to which the North Pole's ice cap is melting and forming a fast-growing lake is shown in images released by scientists.Pictures taken within the past two weeks show the beginnings of a large pool of water.It is not the first time this has happened - but the snow is melting at rates not seen before, according to the North Pole Environmental Observatory.

Here's an interesting idea: What if the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by power plants while they generate electricity could be converted into a source of additional electricity?That's the idea behind a new paper published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Written by a team of researchers in the Netherlands, the paper describes how CO2 could be mixed with a fluid electrolyte, generating electrical energy in the process.

With the catchy name S/2004 N 1, a tiny 20 kilometer (12.4 mile) wide chunk of rock became the 14th moon to be identified in orbit around the giant planet Neptune. A little closer to home, however, the debate continues as to exactly how many moons Earth has, but there is one whose identity cannot be mistaken.It has been seen by nearly every human being who has ever lived and its often mystical appearance has inspired artists and musicians over the centuries. Without it, our planet and lives would be very different indeed.

An ultradense ("hypermassive") neutron star is formed when two neutron stars in a binary system finally merge. Its short life ends with the catastrophic collapse to a black hole, possibly powering a short gamma-ray burst, one of the brightest explosions observed in the universe.

The narrative of the first few things put in orbit generally focuses on the space race between the US and Soviet Union. So it's often forgotten that some of the first objects put into space actually discovered something new: the Van Allen belts. These areas of high-energy particles are held in place by the Earth's magnetic fields, and they pose a radiation hazard to any people and equipment that orbit within them.

Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer has been given the go-ahead to build the world's biggest dinosaur park on the grounds of his Sunshine Coast resort - as long as they don't roar too loudly.The Sunshine Coast regional council voted unanimously to approve the plans which include 149 life-size dinosaur models to join the already existing eight-metre tall T-Rex named Jeff, and a vintage car museum, all within the grounds of Palmer's Coolum resort.

In the blink of an eye, an enormous bright red light flashes above a thundercloud, spreading energetic branches that extend five times taller than Mount Everest and look like jellyfish tendrils and angel's wings.These mysterious phenomena are known as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), and are usually invisible to the naked eye because they happen on millisecond timescales, too fast to be seen.

A collection of seven masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and other legendary artists were thought to be lost to an incinerator, after a Romanian woman, Olga Dogaru, claimed she burned them. She said she destroyed them in an effort to protect her son, allegedly responsible for stealing them from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam.In court Monday, offering a window of hope that the paintings, valued at tens of millions of dollars, may yet be recovered.

If you have trouble falling asleep around the same time each month, the moon might be to blame.Scientists say they've found evidence that human sleep patterns are timed to the phases of the moon, and that people sleep 20 minutes less on average during a full moon.

The riddle of the age of meteorites from Mars might now be solved, with researchers finding these rocks from the Red Planet might not be billions of years old as some studies have suggested.The new findings shed light on when the Martian crust formed, suggesting the Red Planet has a relatively young, volcanic crust with an ancient, largely inactive, mantle layer below it, scientists added.

A new study published this week in the journal Nature reveals for the first time how the mixing of cold, deep waters from below can change sea surface temperatures on seasonal and longer timescales.Because this occurs in a huge region of the ocean that takes up heat from the atmosphere, these changes can influence global climate patterns, particularly global warming.

The population of honey bee colonies worldwide has severely declined in recent decades, shrinking about 30 percent each year between 2007 and 2010, and scientists still aren't exactly sure what precise set of factors are to blame. The decline has included instances of colony collapse disorder, when there are suddenly very few or no adult bees in an entire colony. Whatever factors are leading to this decline, one thing is certain: it's only accelerating, and that could lead to higher food prices for all of us.

The US embassy in Accra held a roundtable on biotechnology this month. The discussion, designed to promote candid dialogue between biotechnology supporters and sceptics, was attended by experts and campaign groups on both sides of the GM foods debate.But one Ghanaian campaign group refused the invitation. "Our call for a moratorium on GM foods was met with an invitation to a closed-door discussion," said Duke Tagoe, of Food Sovereignty Ghana, which campaigns for greater transparency about GM foods. "We are deeply worried about what seems like an imposition of genetically modified foods on the good people of Ghana without any meaningful public discourse, compounded by attempts to stifle any opposition.".

A major new technology has been developed by The University of Nottingham, which enables all of the world's crops to take nitrogen from the air rather than expensive and environmentally damaging fertilisers.Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. However, only a very small number of plants, most notably legumes (such as peas, beans and lentils) have the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria.

Hannibal Lecter can probably feel for his victims, but only if you ask him.A brain-imaging study of 18 violent, psychopathic criminals in the Netherlands, the largest such study undertaken, suggests they can summon empathy when prompted.The report, published Wednesday in the journal Brain, showed that empathic circuits that are unconsciously activated in the brains of normal people may be dormant or switched off in psychopaths -- not absent, as commonly thought.