Newsdesk Archive

A study of some of the most successful people in British history has found that only one - Henry VIII - was a psychopath.Professor Kevin Dutton assessed ten people regarded as among Britain's greatest to determine how psychopathic they were.He found that Henry VIII was in the same category as dangerous criminals like Ian Brady or other serial killers, but others who had fought their way to the top were not.

Scientists have implanted a false memory in the brains of mice in an experiment that they hope will shed light on the well-documented phenomenon whereby people "remember" events or experiences that have never happened.False memories are a major problem with witness statements in courts of law. Defendants have often been convicted of offences based on eyewitness testimony, only to have their convictions later overturned when DNA or some other corroborating evidence is brought to bear.

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away.It's known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that's heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations.

War God published in the US today. Get the ebook now for $2.99: http://amzn.to/15sPWRj. This offer is available to US residents and to residents of countries outside Europe, the UK and the British Commonwealth. A Kindle is NOT necessary. You can download the free Kindle app for your PC Mac, I-Pad, I-Phone, Android, Blackberry, etc.War God in the US: http://amzn.to/15sPWRjWar God in the UK (published 30 May): http://amzn.to/Tnfc4qWar God in Canada (available 13 August): http://amzn.to/UG3PHd

Margo Bauer was desperate. Dealing with chronic nausea and frequent bouts of vomiting -- both attributed to her multiple sclerosis -- the retired nurse was constantly exhausted and in pain. That was, until she attended an informational meeting where she was introduced to medical marijuana.Under California's Medical Marijuana Program, she received a medical marijuana card and now legally grows her own plant at a Southern California assisted living facility where she lives with her husband who suffers from Alzheimer's. She smokes a rolled joint occasionally, which she says keeps her nausea at bay, and her pain lifted to the point that she joined an all-female synchronized swimming team, the Aquadettes.

A new study reveals how death in organisms, including humans, spreads like a wave from cell to cell until the whole individual is dead.The good news is that, in certain cases, scientists may be able to stop the biochemical process that leads to this death wave, reviving the individual.

Scientists have confirmed one of the rarest phenomena of decay in particle physics, found about three times in every billion collisions at the LHCb.They observed a rare transformation of one subatomic particle into anther for the first time.The way this unfolds casts doubt on versions of the theory of physics known as Supersymmetry (Susy).

The strangeness of the world of the very small that allows a particle to be in two states at once may extend to larger scales, two new studies reveal. If the research proves true, that would bolster the validity of a thought experiment suggesting a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time.The idea, called Schrödinger's Cat after the physicist,Erwin Schrödinger, who proposed it in 1935, goes like this: Put a cat in a box with a vial of poison gas. The vial opens when a tiny piece of radioactive metal emits an alpha particle (the nucleus of a helium atom) as it decays.

China's environmental problems are well known. The air is foul, the food is sometimes contaminated, as is the water (even by thousands of dead pigs), there is massive overfishing offshore, even mountains aren't safe!. All of this is now the #1 cause of social unrest in the country.Now it's eels' turn, it seems. According to a report by Sina.com (translated by Google), residents report that tens of thousands of dead eels have washed up on the shores of Guangdong.

A new study predicts full Arctic melt by the 2050sIce is such a fundamental part of the Arctic Ocean that we once had no idea what lay beneath it: Early cartographers were as likely to depict the Arctic as a landmass as they were to draw water. But we've known for some time that our warming climate will eventually mean the transformation of the ice-locked Arctic into an open expanse of blue water. The question has long been not if, but when.

Antarctica's Dry Valleys are home to the oldest ice on Earth. The first signs of the massive thaw disturbing the Arctic's frozen ground have now appeared in one of these valleys, melting a glacier buried since the last Ice Age.The Dry Valleys are different from the rest of Antarctica. Their ice, some of which is millions of years old, is buried under scoured boulders and dust as fine as flour. The arid landscape looks like Mars and, until now, hadn't changed much since the continent froze about 15 million years ago.

The Sahara conceals large quantities of water stored at depth and inherited from ancient times. A recent study by the IRD and its partners has just shown that this groundwater is not entirely fossil, but resupplied every year... The inputs therefore do not compensate for the withdrawals, but their existence means that these transboundary aquifers, the main water resource of semi-arid regions in Algeria and Tunisia, could be managed sustainably.

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and other industrial activities around the world is a vast source of untapped energy, according to new research that describes a proof-of-concept technique to harvest it.Akin to harvesting energy from the wind, this combination of chemistry and mechanics would generate electricity from the carbon dioxide (CO2) already flowing out of plants. While it wouldn't destroy the CO2, it would pull far more energy from existing waste gas. It could arguably even enable plants to resist scaling up and becoming more wasteful, just to keep up with demand.

The fossilized remains of a truly ancient dinosaur have been discovered in the north-Mexican state of Coahuila. Remarkably preserved for their estimated age of 72 million years, the 50 vertebrae that were dug up once formed the basis for a 15-foot tail that was attached to a 40-foot dinosaur.

Artists and craftsmen more than 2,000 years ago developed thin-film coating technology unrivaled even by today's standards for producing DVDs, solar cells, electronic devices and other products. Understanding these sophisticated metal-plating techniques from ancient times, described in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research, could help preserve priceless artistic and other treasures from the past.

Scientists at Imperial College London have designed a concept mission to land astronauts on Mars.The plan envisages a three-person crew journeying to Mars aboard a small two-part craft.The craft would rotate to generate artificial gravity and use a heat shield to protect itself against solar flares.The crew would then return to Martian orbit in a pre-sent craft fuelled using ice from beneath the planet's surface.

The peculiar circumstances of journalist Michael Hastings' death in Los Angeles last week have unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories.Now there's another theory to contribute to the paranoia: According to a prominent security analyst, technology exists that could've allowed someone to hack his car. Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is "consistent with a car cyber attack.".

Monsanto Co. said Thursday it will largely drop its bid to grow some of its genetically modified crops in Europe.The world's largest seed-maker has nine pending applications with the European Commission, the executive body for the European Union. A spokesman said the company plans to withdraw eight of those applications.

Rituals such as saying grace, making a birthday wish while blowing out candles or the ceremonial cutting of the cake before eating can enhance the flavour of the food, according to a new study.The study, by researchers from Minnesota University, could explain why we have so many unusual customs and quirky habits when it comes to eating and drinking.

There's an old head-scratcher that asks whether the refrigerator light really goes out when you close the door.The answer may be about to change.Scientists have known for hundreds of years that plants respond to light in a variety of ways.

Archaeologists have been left stumped after the remains of a Pacific walrus was found buried among human skeletons in a churchyard near London's St Pancras train station.The nine bones of the four-metre long animal were found inside a coffin with eight other sets of human remains, including three skulls, dating back to around 1822.Researchers from Ramboll Cultural Heritage and Archaeology initially made the discovery in 2003 but following detailed studies of the bones, as well as searching through zoological records, the team has not found any conclusive proof as to how the animal arrived in the UK.

Between 1962 and 1964, the Boston Strangler claimed the lives of at least 11 women. Now, half a century later, DNA evidence has confirmed that the chief suspect, Albert DeSalvo, raped and murdered one of those victims, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan.DeSalvo confessed to killing Sullivan and about a dozen other women, but later recanted that confession and was never convicted. He was killed in prison in 1973 while serving time for other crimes.

The largest Native American tribe in the United States is seeking to dub the classic 1977 movie "Star Wars" movie in Navajo as a way to help preserve its traditional language.Fluent Navajo speakers have been invited for a casting call in Window Rock in northern Arizona on Friday and Saturday to dub the roles of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and others, tribal officials said.

We live immersed in artificial light.Astronomers rate the darkness of our skies on a scale (the Bortle Scale) of 9 (brightest) to 1 (darkest). Most of us spend our lives in the radiance of levels 5 through 8, only rarely venturing into areas ranked 3 or darker. Because of the rapid growth of light pollution over recent decades, most Americans under 40 have never known real darkness. All over the globe our nights are growing brighter, and almost nowhere are they growing darker.

Madagascar's first people may not have driven the island's largest animals to extinction, suggests new study.New research indicates that Madagascar was occupied some 2,500 years earlier than previously established. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests a more complex view of the human role in the extinction of the island's mega-fauna.

A recent slowdown in the upward march of global temperatures is likely to be the result of the slow warming of the deep oceans, British scientists said on Monday.Oceans are some of the Earth's biggest absorbers of heat, which can be seen in effects such as sea level rises, caused by the expansion of large bodies of water as they warm. The absorption goes on over long periods, as heat from the surface is gradually circulated to the lower reaches of the seas.

They partly attribute the observed warming, and preceding cooling trends to ocean circulation changes induced by global greenhouse gas emissions and aerosols predominantly generated in the Northern Hemisphere from human activity.The research, by scientists from CSIRO and the University of NSW, was published today in Scientific Reports.

Climate data can help predict some crop failures several months before harvest, according to a new study from an international team, including a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.Scientists found that in about one-third of global cropland, temperature and soil moisture have strong relationships to the yield of wheat and rice at harvest. For those two key crops, a computer model could predict crop failures three months in advance for about 20 percent of global cropland, according to the study, published July 21 in Nature Climate Change.

Computers aren't really known for their way with words, but that could be about to change. An artificial intelligence program recently scored as high as a 4-year-old on a test of verbal IQ. The result may help AIs develop common sense.AIs such as Google's search engine or IBM's Watson typically perform well in specific areas, like ranking web pages or answering game-show style questions. But these systems tend to fail when asked to do things outside of their narrow area of expertise. For years researchers have attempted to build systems with a more general "common sense" understanding, but have had mixed results.

Individual wild wolves can be recognised by just their howls with 100% accuracy, a study has shown.The team from Nottingham Trent University, UK, developed a computer program to analyse the vocal signatures of eastern grey wolves.Wolves roam huge home ranges, making it difficult for conservationists to track them visually.Related: Wolves have a unique 'singing voice' and can 'identify each other' by howl

Scientists have found further evidence that dolphins call each other by "name".Research has revealed that the marine mammals use a unique whistle to identify each other.A team from the University of St Andrews in Scotland found that when the animals hear their own call played back to them, they respond.

Sheep have been reared on Sark for thousands of years, according to an archaeological research team.Excavations of an ancient settlement near the Sark Mill have revealed a number of spindle whorls, used for working wool.Sir Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University, said a "surprising number" had been found at the site's edges.

A gigantic, steaming-hot mound of compost is not the first place most people would search for a solution to climate change, but the hour is getting very late. "The world experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes during the 2001-2010 decade," declares a new report from the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization, which added that the decade was "the warmest since the start of modern measurements in 1850."

With Britain's heatwave reaching a peak, there could be no better moment to talk about why global warming has slowed to a standstill.It reminds me of reporting on a drought a few years ago: while filming interviews with people about the impact, the heavens opened and rainwater was soon flowing down my neck.So as journalists were invited to the Science Media Centre in London to hear how the worldwide rise in temperatures has stalled, the mercury shot up as if on cue to record the hottest day of the year so far.

The last time concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were as high as they are today, big chunks of the seemingly stable East Antarctic ice sheet melted and helped raise global sea levels more than 65 feet higher than they are now, a new study suggests.Scientists have long known that seas were higher during the Pliocene, a geological epoch that ran from 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago. At the time, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were similar to today's 400 parts per million (ppm).

Three days ago, thousands of people around the world stopped what they were doing and waved at the sky as the Cassini spacecraft took the world's photo - from Saturn.Yes, it was essentially pointless - the Earth from that far away is little more than a collection of pixels. But it was a nice gesture - and now the results are starting to emerge.

Australians and environmentalists have reacted furiously to the news that two US fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park during war games.The two Harrier jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard each jettisoned an inert bomb and an unarmed explosive bomb in the World Heritage-listed marine park on Tuesday when a training exercise went wrong, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement on Saturday.

Michael Boatwright, a Florida man found unconscious in a California Motel 6 months ago, woke up in a Palm Springs hospital in February speaking exclusively Swedish. News of Boatwright's strange memory loss has been making headlines in the past few days, garnering attention across the U.S. and in the U.K. and Sweden. The 61-year-old Navy veteran doesn't recognize himself in ID photos, has no memory of who he is, and calls himself Johan Elk, The Desert Sun reports.

The legendary World War II-era codebreaker who was convicted of "gross indecency" after engaging in a same-sex relationship may finally receive a posthumous pardon from the British government.Officials have indicated they would support a bill that would pardon Alan Turing, who commit suicide in 1954 after being subjected to "chemical castration" two years earlier after it was discovered he was gay, according to The Guardian. The bill could be delivered the lower House of Commons as early as October.

An important new discovery has been made in Japan about neutrinos.These are the ghostly particles that flood the cosmos but which are extremely hard to detect and study.Experiments have now established that one particular type, known as the muon "flavour", can flip to the electron type during flight.The observation is noteworthy because it allows for the possibility that neutrinos and their anti-particle versions might behave differently.

A nearly 1,500-year-old Mayan stone monument, inscribed with a story of an ancient power struggle, has been unearthed in Guatemala.The stone slab, which dates to A.D. 564, was found in a small tunnel that adjoins the tomb of an ancient queen beneath the Mayan temple at the site of El Perú-Waka'.

Mummies and myths go together, with a touch of ghoulish interest in ancient tombs for added interest, but modern science is shedding a little light on some of our more musty ideas about ancient Egypt's dead.Even as modern-day Egypt seethes with political turmoil, scholarship into the mortuary practices of that ancient land is enjoying a renaissance.

Thousands of years after their owners' mouths stopped moving forever, the teeth of Egyptian mummies are telling scientists details about their civilization.After analyzing the oxygen isotope levels in teeth recovered from the mummies, researchers at the Université de Lyon in France were able to determine that the ancient Egyptians endured an extensive period of drought.

Call it the latest salvo in the not-so-heated debate over whether dinosaurs were hot- or cold-blooded.A new paper published in the journal PLoS One argues that dinos must have been warm-blooded like birds and mammals--and not cold-blooded like reptiles, as many scientists believed in years past.

Dinosaurs with giant domes on their heads may have used their extra padding for head butting, new research suggests.An analysis of pachycephalosaurid skulls revealed head wounds likely incurred during combat. The pattern of wounds, described July 16 in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest the dome-headed dinos butted heads, just as bighorn sheep do today.

Researchers from Edinburgh University have said 'self replicating' robotic space probes from alien civilisations could already have arrived in our solar system.The probes, which mathematicians Duncan Forgan and Arwen Nicholson referred to in their paper 'Slingshot Dynamics for Self Replicating Probes and the Effect on Exploration Timescales', could be so hi-tech that they're invisible to human beings, the researchers said.

For a very long time, the scientific community has been wary of studying UFOs, and the scientists themselves hesitate to talk about their beliefs of unexplained aerial phenomena.But that attitude is changing, and many scientists are joining the discussion without fear of ridicule.

Bright lights make people more honest, altruistic and ethical, and less selfish, according to new research. Experiments showed people in a brightly lit room donated more than twice as much as those in a dim room, and were more likely to offer to help others.

The National Institute of Health, the largest funder of medical research in the US, is planning to stop using chimpanzees in laboratory experiments. But where will the chimpanzees go and how will it affect scientific research?The head of the National Institute of Health (NIH) said its decision to retire more than 300 chimpanzees from research would help usher in a "compassionate era" of scientific research.

During excavations near the Archaic-era necropolis located at Abu Rawash northeast of the Giza Plateau, a French archaeological mission from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) has unearthed wooden sheets of two funerary boats of First Dynasty King Den (dating from around 3000 BC).The first sheet is 390 centimetres tall, while the second is 70 centimetres in height. A third 120-centimetre-tall sheet was also found, but initial studies suggest that this belonged to a first boat, discovered last year in the same area.

Bees, so crucial to our food supply, are dying off at alarming rates. CALS researchers are taking a close look at everything from the microbes in their hives to the landscapes they live in to identify in what conditions bees thrive.People and bees have a long shared history. Honeybees, natives of Europe, were carried to the United States by early settlers to provide honey and wax for candles.

A widely used insect nerve agent that harms bees will be banned from use on corn and sunflowers in Europe from the end of 2013, after member states overwhelmingly backed the proposal in a vote on Tuesday. However, the UK once again failed to back measures to restrict pesticide use.Fipronil is used in more than 70 countries and on more than 100 different crops, but in May the European Food Safety Authority labelled it a "high acute risk" to honeybees. A similar assessment by the EFSA on three other neonicotinoid insecticides, based on increasing scientific evidence of harm, also preceded the suspension of their use in the European Union in April.

American scientists have transformed people into cows using immersive virtual reality programmes with the aim of persuading them to eat less meat.The University of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab allows people to step into a cow's hooves for a surreal experience.The hi-tech computer software subjects humans to being virtually poked with cattle prods and eventually dragged to a virtual slaughterhouse.Researcher Jeremy Bailenson hopes that participants find the experience so moving that they emphathise with the cattle and choose to eat less meat as a result.

Nutrition experts contend that all we need is what's typically found in a routine diet. Industry representatives, backed by a fascinating history, argue that foods don't contain enough, and we need supplements. Fortunately, many excellent studies have now resolved the issue.On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News.

It seems like some of the largest dinosaurs in prehistoric times didn't need to make dental health a priority.A new study published in the journal PLoS One examined the teeth of Camarasaurus and Diplodocus dinosaurs and found that they not only had multiple sets of backup teeth, but also constantly regenerated new ones.

French company Spotter has developed an analytics tool that claims to be able to identify sarcastic comments posted online.Spotter says its clients include the Home Office, EU Commission and Dubai Courts.The algorithm-based analytics software generates reputation reports based on social and traditional media material.

Neutrinos have been caught shape-shifting in a way no one has seen before, a particle experiment has confirmed. Delayed for years by the magnitude-9 earthquake that rocked Japan in March 2011, the result is an early step towards figuring out why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, and possibly opens the door to new physics.

The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, captured this image of a gigantic coronal hole hovering over the sun's north pole on July 18, 2013, at 9:06 a.m. EDT. Coronal holes are dark, low density regions of the sun's outermost atmosphere, the corona. They contain little solar material, have lower temperatures, and therefore, appear much darker than their surroundings.

On Feb. 5, 1971, Edgar Mitchell became the sixth of only 12 men to step on the moon. Of that elite dozen, which included Buzz Aldrin and the late Neil Armstrong 44 years ago this week, Mitchell is the only one to go on record about his controversial belief in extraterrestrial UFOs -- and of a possible government cover-up.

A mysterious, catastrophic event tore away the atmosphere of Mars, according to the first detailed analysis of the make-up of the air on the Red Planet.A year after the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, and having travelled a kilometre over the Martian surface, its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instruments have returned their first measurements, confirming the identity of the gases in the Martian atmosphere, which include argon, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Primitive society was not driven by war, scientists believe.Researchers from Abo Academy University in Finland say that violence in early human communities was driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles.They say their findings suggest that war is not an innate part of human nature, but rather a behaviour that we have adopted more recently.

Two private companies are teaming up to attempt the first-ever mission to the moon's south pole in order to place a telescope atop a lunar mountain.This plan is being spearheaded by the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), a non-profit aiming to build a scientific and commercial base on the moon, with help from the startup Moon Express, which hopes to become a Space Age version of FedEx in the coming decade.

A company in Australia has developed a range of wetsuits which they say renders the wearer nearly invisible or repulsive to sharks.It is hoped the suits will help prevent attacks on divers, surfers and even swimmers who wear them in coastal areas that are shark infested.They incorporate patented Shark Attack Mitigation System technology (SAMS) which is tuned to disrupt the senses of the killer fish.

Imagine taking off from a runway like a normal aeroplane but flying so high and so fast that when you unclip your seatbelt, you float around the cabin. Look out of the windows: on one side is the inky blackness of deep space, while on the other is the electric blue of your home planet, Earth.

Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not.In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the "iKnife" diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests.

A Romanian museum is analysing ashes found in a stove to see if they are the remains of seven paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and others that were stolen last year from the Netherlands, an official has said.The prosecutor's spokeswoman, Gabriela Chiru, told Associated Press that Romania's National History Museum was examining the ashes found in the stove of Olga Dogaru. She is the mother of Radu Dogaru, one of three Romanian suspects charged with stealing the paintings from Rotterdam's Kunsthal gallery in a daytime heist.

A Stone Age wooden post that is thought to be one of the oldest artefacts of its kind in Europe has been unearthed at a wind farm site in south Wales.The "intricately" carved timber has been dated as 6,270 years old, from the late Mesolithic or early Neolithic era.The discovery was made in September 2012 at Maerdy Wind Farm in Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Archaeologists tunneling beneath the main temple of the ancient Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northern Guatemala have discovered an intricately carved stone monument with hieroglyphic text detailing the exploits of a little-known sixth-century princess whose progeny prevailed in a bloody, back-and-forth struggle between two of the civilization's most powerful royal dynasties, Guatemalan cultural officials announced July 16.

Mysterious, pyramid-like structures spotted in the Egyptian desert by an amateur satellite archaeologist might be long-lost pyramids after all, according to a new investigation into the enigmatic mounds.Angela Micol, who last year found the structures using Google Earth 5,000 miles away in North Carolina, says puzzling features have been uncovered during a preliminary ground proofing expedition, revealing cavities and shafts.

THE links between the Bible and documented history are rare, so a faint inscription that may suggest an undiscovered history of Jerusalem is sure to inspire debate.A 3000-year-old text discovered in December near the ancient city's Western Wall has been dated to the 10th century BC, which is about 250 years older than what was previously thought to be the oldest writing sample from Jerusalem, according to a Times of Israel translation of a Hebrew University study.

Renewed interest in whether prolonged cell phone use and exposure to radiation can cause cancer has caused the Federal Communications Commission to revisit the potential risks. In April, the FCC announced it's soliciting information from health experts on the current research.Some scientists and consumer groups have been critical of the FCC, since it has not revised its standards for mobile devices since 1996.

University of Arizona researchers have found in a recent study that ultrasound waves applied to specific areas of the brain are able to alter patients' moods. The discovery has led the scientists to conduct further investigations with the hope that this technique could one day be used to treat conditions such as depression and anxiety.

A study published in the July 17, issue of the journal PLOS ONE found that more than 80% of tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging.The Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak were already thought to be global hotspots of forest loss and degradation due to timber and oil palm industries, but the rates and patterns of change have remained poorly measured by conventional field or satellite approaches. A research team from the University of Tasmania, University of Papua New Guinea, and the Carnegie Institution for Science documented the full extent of logging in this region.

Evolution can be fast, but not fast enough to keep up with the rate of human-caused climate change, say two researchers who have studied the evolution rates of hundreds of species in the past.In fact, many vertebrate species would have to speed up their evolution rate 10,000 times to match today's pedal-to-the-metal rate of global warming, according to John Wiens, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at the University of Arizona, and Ignacio Quintero, a postgraduate research assistant at Yale University.

Mysterious, pyramid-like structures spotted in the Egyptian desert by an amateur satellite archaeologist might be long-lost pyramids after all, according to a new investigation into the enigmatic mounds.Angela Micol, who last year found the structures using Google Earth 5,000 miles away in North Carolina, says puzzling features have been uncovered during a preliminary ground proofing expedition, revealing cavities and shafts.

Plenty of people view lettuce as a rather dull salad ingredient but the leafy vegetable had a racier function in ancient Egypt.A distant relative of the cos lettuce was taken as an aphrodisiac and used as a phallic symbol by the ancient Egyptians, according to one egyptologist.Salima Ikram of the American University of Cairo said that lettuces can be seen on the walls of tombs dating back to 2,000 BC and were supposedly the Egyptian god of fertility, Min's favourite food.

University of Adelaide research has shown new evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded like birds and mammals, not cold-blooded like reptiles as commonly believed.In a paper published in PLoS ONE, Professor Roger Seymour of the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, argues that cold-blooded dinosaurs would not have had the required muscular power to prey on other animals and dominate over mammals as they did throughout the Mesozoic period.

You may have more in common with a pigeon than you realise, according to research. It shows that humans and birds have brains that are wired in a similar way.A researcher from Imperial College London and his colleagues have developed for the first time a map of a typical bird brain, showing how different regions are connected together to process information. By comparing it to brain diagrams for different mammals such as humans, the team discovered that areas important for high-level cognition such as long-term memory and problem solving are wired up to other regions of the brain in a similar way.

International talks on establishing huge marine reserves in Antarctica have failed to reach a consensus.Russia blocked attempts by western countries to set up the protected areas in the Ross Sea and Eastern Antarctica.The Russian representative challenged the legal basis that would allow for the creation of such reserves, according to organisations at the talks in Germany.

A rapid acceleration in the melting of Antarctic and Greenland glacier ice, amounting to around 300 billion tonnes a year, has been detected by a satellite over the past decade.The satellite that measures gravity fluctuations on Earth due to changes in the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica detected the melting which could have a dramatic impact on sea levels around the world, researchers say.

The US Central Intelligence Agency isn't just interested in gathering intelligence on foreign powers and enemies. As it turns out, Langley is also investigating the feasibility of altering the environment to fight the effects of climate change. The CIA is currently funding, in part, a $630,000 study on geoengineering, the science of using experimental techniques to modify Earth's climate, as Mother Jones reports.

Harvesting waste heat from power stations and even vehicle exhaust pipes could soon provide a valuable supply of electricity.A small team of Monash University researchers working under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) has developed an ionic liquid-based thermocell. Thermocell technology is based on harnessing the thermal energy from the difference in temperature between two surfaces and converting that energy into electricity.

Neptune has a new moon, and its existence is an enigma. The object, known for now as S/2004 N1, is the first Neptunian moon to be found in a decade. Its diminutive size raises questions as to how it survived the chaos thought to have created the giant planet's other moons.The faint moon was discovered in archived images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, was poring over pictures of Neptune taken in 2009 to study segments of its rings.

It's widely thought that Earth arose from violent origins: Some 4.5 billion years ago, a maelstrom of gas and dust circled in a massive disc around the sun, gathering in rocky clumps to form asteroids. These asteroids, gaining momentum, whirled around a fledgling solar system, repeatedly smashing into each other to create larger bodies of rubble -- the largest of which eventually cooled to form the planets.

Scientists have spotted more evidence that an enormous ocean on Mars covered much of the planet's surface billions of years ago.The latest clues were found in photos from NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the planet. The images show what appears to be an ancient river delta, which may have emptied into a vast Martian ocean that inundated up to one-third of the Red Planet long ago, a new study reports.

The giant gas cloud heading for the black hole at the centre of our galaxy has begun its death spiral.The cloud, known as G2 is now being stretched out like a piece of spaghetti by the black hole's extreme gravity.This gravitational field has caused the head of the cloud to accelerate around the black hole and to speed back towards us.

A Chinese museum has been forced to close after claims its 40,000-strong collection of supposedly ancient relics is almost entirely composed of fakes.The Jibaozhai Museum in Jizhou, a city in the northern province of Hebei, opened in 2010, its 12 exhibition halls packed with apparently unique cultural gems.But on Monday, the museum was shut after claims many of the exhibits were knock-offs bought for between 100 and 2000 yuan ($17.50 and $350).

Female social dominance over males is rare among mammal species. Bonobos, one of our closest living relatives, are known for females holding relatively high social statuses when compared to males; though this is puzzling as the males are often bigger and stronger than the females. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now analyzed the dominance relations between male and female wild bonobos and took particular interest in the high social status ranking of some females.

There's something undeniably surreal about early cave paintings, something otherworldly or even psychedelic. And according to a team of international scientists, that's because the cave painters were doing mind-bending drugs while painting them.Researchers Tom Froese, Alexander Woodward and Takashi Ikegami from Tokyo recently published a comprehensive study of over 40,000 years worth of cave paintings and found some pretty telling patterns.

Same-sex couples will be able to get married in England and Wales after new measures became law.The government's controversial legislation on the issue received Royal Assent on Wednesday.The Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaderships all backed the proposals, which were finally approved by MPs and peers earlier this week.

Their idea is state of the art: Ten Bielefeld students have set their sights on constructing a bio-battery. They want to make use of the bacteria Escherichia coli to convert glucose into energy. With this project, they are taking part in this year's 'international Genetically Engineered Machine competition' (iGEM) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. Since May, they have been spending a lot of their free time in the laboratory in order to realise their idea. Now that the first test results are available, the project enters an important phase.

The next time nature calls, you can answer with a urine-powered cellphone.British researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), a joint venture between the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol, have created a fuel cell that uses bacteria to break down urine and, in the process, generate electricity.

Drinking plain old water may help improve mental performance, at least on certain brain tests, a small study suggests.In the study, participants who drank about three cups of water (24 ounces, or 775 milliliters) before taking a battery of cognitive tests performed better on a test that measured reaction times compared with those who did not drink water.

Palaeontologists in Utah say the fossil of a big-nosed horned dinosaur sheds light on the island continent known as Laramidia, where it roamed millions of years ago.Dubbed Nasutoceratops titusi, the creature lived during the Late Cretaceous about 76 million years ago.It belonged to the family of herbivores ceratops dinos, of which the famous triple-horned triceratops was a member.

The link between drought and the rise and fall of Egypt's ancient cultures, including the pyramid builders, has long fascinated scientists and historians. Now, they're looking into an unexpected source to find connections: mummy teeth.A chemical analysis of teeth enamel from Egyptian mummies reveals the Nile Valley grew increasingly arid from 5,500 to 1,500 B.C., the period including the growth and flourishing of ancient Egyptian civilization.

Nasa has announced it has successfully tested a 3D-printed rocket engine part.The US space agency said that the injector component could be made more quickly and cheaply using the technique.The part is used to deliver liquid oxygen and hydrogen gas to an engine's combustion chamber.

A deep link between two seemingly unconnected areas of modern science has been discovered by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Geneva.While research tends to become very specialized and entire communities of scientists can work on specific topics with only a little overlap between them, physicist Dr Nicolas Brunner and mathematician Professor Noah Linden worked together to uncover a deep and unexpected connection between their two fields of expertise: game theory and quantum physics.

Scientists have discovered a radioactive substance in sediment under a Swiss lake used for drinking water and situated near a nuclear plant, the Le Matin Dimanche weekly reported Sunday.While scientists cited in the report stressed there was no danger to human health, the discovery raises concerns about safety practices and a lack of transparency at the Muehleberg nuclear plant in northwestern Switzerland.

A new study says Europe's first farmers used far more sophisticated practices than was previously thought. A research team led by the University of Oxford has found that Neolithic farmers manured and watered their crops as early as 6,000 BC.It had always been assumed that manure wasn't used as a fertiliser until Iron Age and Roman times. However, this new research shows that enriched levels of nitrogen-15, a stable isotope abundant in manure, have been found in the charred cereal grains and pulse seeds taken from 13 Neolithic sites around Europe.

Researchers have discovered one of the largest collections of prehistoric rock carvings created by desert nomads that lived 6,000 years ago.Archaeologists believe the 8,000 images carved into 500 rocks in Mexico's white desert of Coahuila, could provide valuable clues to the way pre-Hispanic hunter-gatherer tribes communicated with each other.