Newsdesk Archive

Ever find yourself briefly paralyzed as you're falling asleep or just waking up? It's a phenomenon is called sleep paralysis, and it's often accompanied by vivid sensory or perceptual experiences, which can include complex and disturbing hallucinations and intense fear.For some people, sleep paralysis is a once-in-a-lifetime experience; for others, it can be a frequent, even nightly, phenomenon.

When filmmaker Carla MacKinnon started waking up several times a week unable to move, with the sense that a disturbing presence was in the room with her, she didn't call up her local ghost hunter. She got researching.Now, that research is becoming a short film and multiplatform art project exploring the strange and spooky phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The film, supported by the Wellcome Trust and set to screen at the Royal College of Arts in London, will debut in May.

The world's first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it.

Long after a near-death experience, people recall the incident more vividly and emotionally than real and false memories, new research suggests."It's really something that stays in the mind of people as a clear trace, and it's even more clear than a real memory," said Vanessa Charland-Verville, a neuropsychologist in the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege in Belgium. She, along with colleagues, detailed the study online March 27 in the journal PLOS ONE.

For several years researchers have been trying to apply the tools of science to get inside our heads. It is a noble effort that, when finally achieved, will represent a huge triumph of mankind over nature. Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto have developed some powerful computational tools which use blood flow data from MRI scans to approximately visualize what a person is experiencing in dreams. Their results were published yesterday in Science, along with considerable fanfare. Before studies like this can be taken at face value, though, a closer inspection of the actual methods and results is warranted.

A new type of tarantula about the size of your face has been found in northern Sri Lanka. Scientists found the spiders -- with a leg span up to 8 inches (20cm) across -- living in trees and the old doctor's quarters of a hospital in Mankulam.Covered in beautiful, ornate markings, the spiders belong to the genus Poecilotheria, known as "Pokies" for short. These are the tiger spiders, an arboreal group indigenous to India and Sri Lanka that are known for being colourful, fast, and venomous.

THE haul from Japan's whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean was a "record low" this year, a government minister says, blaming "unforgivable sabotage" by activists.The hunt netted just 103 Antarctic minke whales, less than half its tally last year and no fin whales, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Friday, adding it was the lowest total since "research whaling" began in 1987.

Many traditionally write off the Southern United States as an area dead to cannabis law reform, but one Representative is behind a new effort that can change all of that.This week, Rep. Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham) has introduced House Bill 550, the Alabama Cannabis and Hemp Reform Act of 2013. This measure would legalize the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and the cultivation of up to 12 mature marijuana plants by those over the age of 21. It would also authorize the Department of Revenue to establish marijuana retail outlets. You can read the full text of the measure here.

Pew Research has found that a record high 52% of Americans believe marijuana should be legal. That's up from 45% in 2011 and just 41% in 2010. The charge has been led by 18 to 29 year olds. So does that mean that weed is on its way to becoming legal in more places than it is now? Perhaps, but the public's opinion of marijuana is a lot more murky than the Pew surveys indicate.First, Pew Research is on its own with seeing a rapid rise in weed legalization over the past three years. Other pollsters show the percentage of Americans who want to legalize weed staying steady. Angus Reid has polled the question five times since 2009 and has come away with 53%, 52%, 55%, 52%, and 54% in November 2012 in favor of legalization. There's no trend there.

Do not try this on your next vacation.Egyptian authorities cracked down on climbing the Pyramids at Giza in the 1980s, but that didn't stop adventurer Vitaliy Raskalov and his friends from dodging local guards this year to take a few very hard-to-get shots from atop the Great Pyramid.The Russian photographer said his motivation was simple: "We saw the old photographs of the Pyramids and decided to climb on it.".

People power may have come to modern-day Egypt and not Sudan, but the unearthing of ancient pyramids in Egypt's southern neighbour shows that greater social equality existed there 2,000 years ago, a French archeologist says.Three years of digging by a French team at Sedeinga, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) from the Egyptian border, has unearthed 35 pyramids that emphasise the contrast between the two ancient cultures, said Claude Rilly, director of the mission.

The Polynesians' epic voyages of exploration and colonization across the Pacific are one of humanity's most impressive accomplishments (even if the local bird life wasn't likely to have enjoyed it). Having most probably started in Taiwan, the explorers reached and settled on islands across most of the Pacific, as far north as Hawaii and as far south as New Zealand. And recent evidence shows that they also stopped in South America, where they stayed long enough to pick up food crops that eventually wound up distributed across the Pacific as well.

Neanderthals had family sex, great eyes, and a terrible time hunting varmintsOur thick-browed, extinct friends known as the Neanderthals have been all over the news lately. The latest find? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have sequenced and published a high-quality Neanderthal genome taken from a toe bone found in a Siberian cave, reports The Associated Press.

New research suggests that climate change following massive volcanic eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction and cleared the way for modern humans to thrive in Europe and Asia.The research, led by Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova and Vladimir Borisovich Doronichev of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia, is reported in the October issue of Current Anthropology.

Suddenly, the idea of asteroid mining is everywhere. As a recent feature here in Popular Mechanics noted, asteroid mining has gone from a "someday" idea to a business plan for more than one company. As a professor who's been writing, teaching, and practicing space law since the 1980s, I say, why not? Asteroids are valuable, they're out there, and they are free for the taking.Or are they?Asteroids are certainly available, and they're valuable. More than 750,000 asteroids measure at least 1 kilometer across, and millions of smaller objects are scattered throughout the solar system, mostly in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Even a comparatively small asteroid is potentially quite valuable, both on Earth and in space.

Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs. Now, astronauts could be a step closer to our nearest planetary neighbor through a unique manipulation of nuclear fusion, the same energy that powers the sun and stars.University of Washington researchers and scientists at a Redmond-based space-propulsion company are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks.

Experts in nuclear physics at the University of Surrey have helped develop research towards a 'nuclear battery', which could revolutionize the concept of portable power by packing in up to a million times more energy compared to a conventional battery.By capturing charged particles in a special storage ring the experts have solved a long-standing problem of how to understand the fundamental structure of an unstable isotope of bismuth, Bi-212, with potential far-reaching consequences.

Members of Parliament's Commons Environmental Audit Committee have called for a suspension in the use of chemicals linked to the disappearance of bee colonies.Wild bee species help to pollinate around one third of the world's crop production, but their numbers are falling fast -- MPs say that two thirds of these species have declined in population in the UK.

A majority of Americans now say marijuana should be made legal, with far fewer viewing it as a gateway to harder drugs or as morally wrong, according to a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.By 52 to 45 percent more say marijuana should be made legal than not, with support for legalization jumping seven points in two years and 20 points since the 2002 General Social Survey. Last November, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found the public split 48 to 50 percent on whether to legalize small amounts of marijuana for personal use. And 51 percent of registered voters supported legalization in a December Quinnipiac University poll.

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, with hundreds of volcanoes, some erupting lava fountains up to 250 miles high. However, concentrations of volcanic activity are significantly displaced from where they are expected to be based on models that predict how the moon's interior is heated, according to NASA and European Space Agency researchers.Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's massive gravity and the smaller but precisely timed pulls from two neighboring moons that orbit further from Jupiter -- Europa and Ganymede. Io orbits faster than these other moons, completing two orbits every time Europa finishes one, and four orbits for each one Ganymede makes. This regular timing means that Io feels the strongest gravitational pull from its neighboring moons in the same orbital location, which distorts Io's orbit into an oval shape. This in turn causes Io to flex as it moves around Jupiter.

Some parts of the moon haven't seen the sun in millions, and even billions, of years but an unmanned NASA spacecraft is shedding light on these lunar lands of permanent darkness.A new video from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio explains just how the agency's powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is collecting data on the moon's coldest, darkest craters.

(CBS News) Twenty years ago, "Jurassic Park" seemed like pure science fiction. Scientists in the movie retrieved ancient DNA from bones, and the movie fantasized dinosaurs could be brought back to Earth.Not only is "Jurassic Park" back in theaters next month in 3D, but it turns out some of the science fiction might be about to become reality.

For several decades, scholars have been searching for tangible evidence of Pre-Columbian contacts between the Old and New Worlds. Whether based on cross-cultural comparisons, historical records, studies of linguistics, or anthropological inquiry, these claims have stimulated heated debates and controversy in various fields. In recent times however, there appears to be a growing body of evidence to suggest that there were exchanges between Polynesian seafarers and native peoples in the Americas. From c. 300 to c. 1450 CE, the Polynesians traversed the Pacific Ocean, settling remote island chains like those of present-day Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Could they have also made it to the New World? .

Human colonization of the Pacific Islands likely caused the extinction of nearly 1,000 species of large-bodied, flightless birds known as passerine landbirds.A study of fossils from 41 Pacific islands found that two-thirds of bird populations on these islands went extinct in the period between the first arrival of humans and European colonization, or roughly from 3,500 to 700 years ago. Overhunting by humans, exacerbated by forest clearance, was a major cause of prehistoric bird extinctions.

Sprinkled with pollen, buzzing bees fly from one blossom to another, collecting sweet nectar from brilliantly colored flowers. Bees tend to symbolize the pollination process, but there are many wild insects that carry out the same function. Unfortunately, wild insect populations are in decline, and, according to a recent study, adding more honey bees may not be a viable solution.

Bumblebees and Pavlov's dogs have something in common: Both can learn to associate two things they've never seen together before.A new study finds that bees use simple logical steps to learn from other bees which flowers hold the sweetest nectar."It really gives us an insight into how complex social-learning behaviors can arise in animals," said study researcher Erika Dawson, a doctoral student at Queen Mary University of London.

A German property developing firm has removed parts of a historic stretch of the Berlin Wall amid heavy police presence, despite a week of protests.Builders removed four segments of the so-called East Side Gallery stretch on Wednesday morning to open access to a building site for blocks of flats.Some 250 police officers were deployed as the sections were dismantled.

British archaeologists said Thursday they have unearthed a sprawling complex near the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq, home of the biblical Abraham.The structure, thought to be about 4,000 years old, probably served as an administrative center for Ur, around the time Abraham would have lived there before leaving for Canaan, according to the Bible.

Two studies of vacuums suggest that the speed of light in a vacuum might fluctuate, pointing the way to a quantum mechanical explanation for why the speed of light and other so-called constants are what they are.Where did the speed of light in a vacuum come from? Why is it 299,792,458 meters per second and not some other figure?The simple answer is that, since 1983, science has defined a meter by the speed of light: one meter equals the distance light travels in one 299,792,458th of a second. But that doesn't really answer our question. It's just the physics equivalent of saying, "Because I said so."

At the 2012 Astrobiology Science Conference, Astrobiology Magazine hosted a plenary session called "Expanding the Habitable Zone: The Hunt for Exoplanets Now and Into the Future."The session featured a panel of exoplanet hunters and thinkers, who held a lively discussion about some of the most important issues facing the search for and understanding of alien worlds orbiting distant stars.The following transcript relays some of their opening thoughts. It's the first entry in Astrobiology Magazine's eight-part series, "The Great Exoplanet Debate."

Although they didn't have much of a choice, the beavers saved the day.A beaver dam helped prevent a large quantity of oil from spilling into a reservoir of fresh water in northern Utah. The leak, from a Chevron pipeline, spilled 27,000 gallons (102,200 liters) of crude oil into soil and marshes at Willard Bay State Park. Between the spill and the bay is where the unlikely heroes had made their home.Related story here

A huge pool of warm water that stretched out from Indonesia over to Africa and South America four million years ago suggests climate models might be too conservative in forecasting tropical changes.Present in the Pliocene era, this giant mass of water would have dramatically altered rainfall in the tropics, possibly even removing the monsoon. Its decay and the consequential drying of East Africa may have been a factor in Hominid evolution.

SLEEP experts are urging people to make love, practice yoga and have a hot shower to give themselves the best chance possible of a good night's sleep.The ReDormin Sleep Study has found yoga can increase slumber by 64 minutes, while sex and a hot shower before bed can each give you 6 minutes more sleep.Having a partner to snuggle up to will give you 24 minutes of extra sleep, but if they snore expect to loose 14 minutes of shut-eye a night.

THE poorly designed Y chromosome that makes men is degrading rapidly and will disappear, even if humans are still around.Evolutionary geneticist Jenny Graves says while the process is likely to happen within the next five million years it could have begun in some isolated groups."As long as something came along it its stead, we would not even suspect without checking the chromosomes," she told AAP on Tuesday.

William Shakespeare's lesser known role as an illegal food hoarder 400 years ago helps us understand him as a more complex figure, says new research.As well as hoarding during food shortages, the Aberystwyth University study said the bard was also threatened with jail for tax evasion.They looked at how food and hunger were reflected in Shakespeare's writing.His play Coriolanus shows a famine created and exploited by rich merchants and politicians.

In the middle of the Bronze Age, around 1000 BCE, the quantity of metal artefacts traded in the Baltic Sea region increased dramatically. Around that same time, a new type of monument appeared along the coasts; stones set on edge and arranged in the form of ships, built by the maritime culture involved in that same metal trade.These Bronze Age maritime groups were part of a network that extended across large parts of northern Europe and with links further to the south: a network maintained due to the increasing dependence on bronze and other important raw materials as a means of social status and cultural dependency.

A new national poll reveals that Americans differ along political party lines even in their endorsement of conspiracy theories, including the belief that President Obama is the Anti-Christ to the idea that global warming is a hoax.The poll found, for instance, just 15 percent of Democrats believe a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order; compare that with 34 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Independents who believe the same.

Scientists say lake muds unlikely to have created mountain at the heart of Curiosity's mission.Wind, not water, deposited most of the sediments in the layered Martian mountain NASA's Curiosity rover was sent to study, suggests an analysis of observations from orbit. If the rover confirms this scenario when it reaches the mountain next year, it could spell trouble for its chances of finding organic material there.

Robots built to mimic ants suggest that real ants waste little, if any, mental energy deciding which way to go when they reach an uneven fork in the road, according to a new study. Instead, the ants just take the easiest route as dictated by geometry."The shape of their network relieves some of the cognitive load for the ants; they don't need to think about it," Simon Garnier, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told NBC News. "The shape of their networks has constrained their movement in a way that is more efficient for them.".

Widely used pesticides have been found in new research to block a part of the brain that bees use for learning, rendering some of them unable to perform the essential task of associating scents with food. Bees exposed to two kinds of pesticide were slower to learn or completely forgot links between floral scents and nectar.These effects could make it harder for bees to forage among flowers for food, thereby threatening their survival and reducing the pollination of crops and wild plants.

It's been a long, dark winter in Germany. In fact, there hasn't been this little sun since people started tracking such things back in the early 1950s. Easter is around the corner, and the streets of Berlin are still covered in ice and snow. But spring will come, and when the snow finally melts, it will reveal the glossy black sheen of photovoltaic solar panels glinting from the North Sea to the Bavarian Alps.

If rivers are a nation's lifeblood, the US should be on the sick list. More than half of the country's streams and rivers are in a "poor condition" for aquatic life, according to a survey by the US Environmental Protection Agency.The agency sampled nearly 2000 sites in 2008 and 2009, looking at factors such as physical disturbances, mercury in fish flesh, faecal bacteria and nutrients from fertilisers.

Omar Razzouki gazes intently at the wooden box, marveling at what might be the solution to the perennial water woes that he and other nomads like him across the Sahara desert face daily.More than 330 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, or around 40 percent of the population, do not have access to clean drinking water, according to a report published to mark world water day by British NGO WaterAid.

The ancient Maya used a vivid, remarkably durable blue paint to cover their palace walls, codices, pottery and maybe even the bodies of human sacrifices who were thrown to their deaths down sacred wells. Now a group of chemists claim to have cracked the recipe of Maya Blue.Scientists have long known the two chief ingredients of the intense blue pigment: indigo, a plant dye that's used today to color denim; and palygorskite, a type of clay. But how the Maya cooked up the unfading paint remained a mystery. Now Spanish researchers report that they found traces of another pigment in Maya Blue, which they say gives clues about how the color was made.

The AustralianCLIVE Palmer is a giant step closer to creating his own Jurassic Park after the eccentric billionaire put in an order for more than 100 mechanical dinosaurs.The mining magnate, who is also building a replica Titanic, already has a tyrannosaurus rex called Jeff and an omeisaurus named Bones in his Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane.

Technology company Festo has created a mechanical dragonfly capable of mimicking natural flight, and which can be controlled by a smartphone.Taking inspiration from the way real dragonflies can move their two pairs of wings independently the BionicOpter features four wings each capable of being adjusted individually for fine motor control.

LIMA, Peru -- Peru's government declared an environmental state of emergency on Monday in a remote Amazon jungle region it says has been affected by years of contamination at the country's most productive oil fields, which are currently operated by Argentina-based Pluspetrol.

Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy.On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador's capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups.

New research predicts that rising temperatures will lead to a massive "greening," or increase in plant cover, in the Arctic. In a paper published on March 31 in Nature Climate Change, scientists reveal new models projecting that wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 50 percent over the next few decades. The researchers also show that this dramatic greening will accelerate climate warming at a rate greater than previously expected."Such widespread redistribution of Arctic vegetation would have impacts that reverberate through the global ecosystem," said Richard Pearson, lead author on the paper and a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation.

Male bats perform oral sex on females, apparently to make sex last longer, researchers say.These findings, the first discovery of male-to-female oral sex in bats, match prior studies revealing that female bats perform fellatio, or oral sex, on male bats.Scientists analyzed a colony of about 420 Indian flying foxes (Pteropus giganteus) roosting in a single fig tree in southern India, near the village of Nallachampatti. This fruit-eating bat is one of the largest bats in the world.

A trove of Neanderthal fossils including bones of children and adults, discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers say.The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and humans may have at least had the opportunity to interact, or cross paths, there, the researchers added.Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, apparently even occasionally interbreeding with our ancestors. Neanderthals entered Europe before modern humans did, and may have lasted there until about 35,000 years ago, although recent findings have called this date into question.

A study has been able to accurately determine the age of the Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave (Asturias, Spain) for which previous studies had provided inexact measurements. The application of a pre-treatment to reduce contamination by modern carbon has managed to lower the margin of error from 40,000 to just 3,200 years.El Sidrón cave in Asturias (northern Spain) is one of the westernmost Neanderthal sites on the Iberian Peninsula and contains a large amount of this type of remains in addition to the flint tools they used. Now, thanks to the development of new analytical procedures, a research team co-ordinated by the University of Oviedo (Spain) has managed to provide a more accurate dating for these Neanderthal populations in Asturias.

It sounds like the plot for a new Indiana Jones film.Archaeologists say they have discovered the 'Gates of Hell', the mythical portal to the underworld in Greek and Roman legend.The site, in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey, is said to closely match historical descriptions of what was known as Ploutonion in Greek and Pluutonium in Latin.Describing the site, the Greek geographer Strabo (64/63 BC -- about 24 A.D.) said: 'This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground.'Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.'.

President Barack Obama announced a new research initiative this morning (April 2) to map the human brain, a project that will launch with $100 million in funding in 2014.The Brain Activity Map (BAM) project, as it is called, has been in the planning stages for some time. In the June 2012 issue of the journal Neuron, six scientists outlined broad proposals for developing non-invasive sensors and methods to experiment on single cells in neural networks. This February, President Obama made a vague reference to the project in his State of the Union address, mentioning that it could "unlock the answers to Alzheimer's.".

Easter is coming. Some people are saying that the crucifixion and resurrection narratives simply retell the cycle of seasons, the death and return of the Sun. Others say that these stories are literal histories. But you say the reality is more complicated than either of these. You argue that the Easter stories - the death and resurrection of Jesus have very specific mythic origins.

Researchers believe they have pinpointed the skeletal remains of the first known human-Neanderthal hybrid, according to a study published Wednesday in the peer reviewed scientific journal PLoS ONE. The finding comes from northern Italy, where some 40,000 years ago scientists believe Neanderthals and humans lived near each other, but developed separate and distinctly different cultures.

When filmmaker Carla MacKinnon started waking up several times a week unable to move, with the sense that a disturbing presence was in the room with her, she didn't call up her local ghost hunter. She got researching.Now, that research is becoming a short film and multiplatform art project exploring the strange and spooky phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The film, supported by the Wellcome Trust and set to screen at the Royal College of Arts in London, will debut in May.

A UFO was seen buzzing the Eiffel Tower in Paris last Tuesday, just four days before the Parisian landmark was evacuated because of terror threats, reports gather.com.A video titled "Woman Records UFO Near Collision With Eiffel Tower Paris 26th March 2013" has emerged online showing a glowing orb flying directly at the Eiffel Tower, then rocketing upwards in the sky. The object was not a conventional aircraft, weather balloon or Chinese lantern, reports the website. It was traveling too quickly, and changed directions on a dime.

To err is human.So is refusing to apologize for those errors.From toddlers and talk show hosts to preteens and presidents, we all know people who have done stupid, silly and evil things, then squared their jaws and told the world they've done nothing wrong.

Ants have long been known to choose the shortest of several routes to a food source, but what happens when the shortest route is not the fastest? This situation can occur, for example, when ants are forced to travel on two different surfaces, where they can walk faster on one surface than on the other. In a new study, scientists have found that ants behave the same way as light does when traveling through different media: both paths obey Fermat's principle of least time, taking the fastest route rather than the most direct one.

Since the first reports of successful cloning of mammals by somatic cell nuclear transfer, concerns have been raised about the efficiency and repeatability of cloning techniques, and the health of cloned offspring. Although it has been showed since the early 2000s that cloned animals can themselves be cloned, the efficiency of SCNT appeared to taper with each successive generation, leading some to speculate that there might be an inherent limit to cloning from clones due to the accumulation of genetic errors.

A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism suggests that a breath test profile of gut microorganisms may be able to tell doctors how susceptible a person is to developing obesity.The study shows that people whose breath has high concentrations of both hydrogen and methane gasses are more likely to have a higher body mass index and higher percentage of body fat.

Pretty much anything can be a computer, if it can compute logical functions, store data, and transmit information -- even living cells. A team at Stanford University has accomplished one of the the final tasks necessary to turn cells into working computers: They've created a biological transistor, called a transcriptor, that uses DNA and RNA instead of electrons and responds to logical functions.

In an important step toward the creation of "bio-batteries," a new study reveals how bacteria produce electricity when proteins in their cell membranes come into contact with a mineral surface.Scientists have known for some time that a family of marine bacteria known as Shewanella oneidensis, found in deep ocean sediments and soil, can create electrical currents when exposed to heavy metals like iron and manganese.

"Scent-delivery" technologies continue to interest marketers, who are always looking for ideas on how to deliver an enhanced shopper experience. Scent stimulation related to targeted products is one way to go. Now, a "smelling screen" has been developed by researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) and it makes smells appear to come from the exact spot on any LCD screen that is displaying the image of a food item. A peach or a steaming cup of coffee, for example, would lend the illusion that their respective smells were coming from the images on the screen direct to the viewer. The smelling screen was shown at the IEEE Virtual Reality conference in Orlando, Florida, which ran from March 16 to March 23.

Climate change will drastically change vegetation patterns in the Arctic, which will in turn spur additional warming, according to a new study.The research, published yesterday in Nature Climate Change, outlines a counterintuitive side effect of climate change: As higher temperatures drive plants and trees into areas now inhospitable to them, their new distribution speeds up temperature rise via natural processes such as releases of heat-trapping water vapor into the air.

GLOBAL warming has led to more ice in the sea around Antarctica and could help insulate the southern hemisphere from atmospheric warming.A Dutch study says that unlike in the Arctic region, sea ice around Antarctica has expanded at a significant rate since 1985.Published online in Nature Geoscience, the article suggests cool freshwater from melt beneath the Antarctic ice shelves has insulated offshore sea ice from the warming ocean beneath.

The discovery of microscopic color-making structures in fossilized feathers has recently made it possible for scientists to picture dinosaurs and ancient birds in their natural hues.But a group of researchers warns we might not be able to paint a Microraptor shimmery black or give the giant ancient penguin a maroon and gray coat just yet.

Three astronauts have arrived at the International Space Station after being the first to try out a new "express" route that slashes their launch-to-docking commute from two days to just six hours.The crew of the Soyuz capsule, Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin and American Chris Cassidy, docked with the ISS late Thursday after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. En route to the station, they made "only four orbits instead of the usual two-day launch-to-docking mission profile for a Russian spacecraft," NASA says.

NASA's budget request for the 2014 fiscal year may include plans for an ambitious mission to send a robotic probe into deep space, capture an asteroid and haul it back within the reach of astronaut explorers, according to a press report.The space agency is apparently including a request for $100 million in its 2014 budget request to help fund the audacious asteroid capture mission, an Aviation Week report said.

How fast do quantum interactions happen? Faster than light, 10,000 times faster.That's what a team of physicists led by Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai found in an experiment involving entangled photons, or photons that remain intimately connected, even when separated by vast distances.They wanted to see what would happen if you tried assigning a speed to what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."

The term "survival of the fittest" refers to natural selection in biological systems, but Darwin's theory may apply more broadly than that. New research from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory shows that this evolutionary theory also applies to technological systems.

Shifting dunes on Mars, especially those near the planet's north pole, may harbor layers of liquid water not far beneath their ice-encrusted surfaces.That is the implication of studies of sand dunes in Alaska's Kobuk Valley National Park, some 380 miles northwest of Fairbanks. There, above the Arctic Circle, researchers using the dunes as stand-ins for dunes on Mars have found evidence for liquid water trapped between the dunes' icy winter coat and subsurface layers of ice or freeze-dried silt that form a temporary, cement-like barrier that prevents the water from percolating deeper into the dune.

The saying lightning never strikes the same place twice apparently does not apply in Alexander Mandón's case.The 20-year-old Colombian has been struck by lightning four times since September. So to "cure" his electrical attraction, a local indigenous doctor recommended that Mandón be buried alive in an upright position, Spanish-language publication "Noticias Uno" reports.

A study led by Zachary Mainen, Director of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, and published today (March 28th) in the scientific journal, Neuron, reports that when rats were challenged with a series of perceptual decision problems, their performance was just as good when they decided rapidly as when they took a much longer time to respond. Despite being encouraged to slow down and try harder, the subjects of this study achieved their maximum performance in less than 300 milliseconds.

Once consigned to the fringes of libertarianism, the argument for the legalisation of drugs has received an unlikely boost in America in recent months with the release of a documentary entitled The House I Live In. Coinciding with the decision by the states of Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana, the film won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance film festival last year and has arrived at a moment when Americans are beginning to reconsider the efficacy of their nation's drug policy.

"Mesmerising and with a little bit of mystery about it."That is how aviculturist Amy King describes the graceful leaping, bowing, running, spinning and grass-tossing of dancing cranes.This unique and spectacular behaviour has been imitated in various human cultures since the Stone Age and the purpose of such elaborate displays is widely understood to establish and reaffirm long-term pair bonds.

Scientists have linked the underground injection of oil-drilling wastewater to a magnitude-5.7 earthquake in 2011 that struck the US state of Oklahoma.Wastewater injection from drilling operations has been linked to seismic events in the past, but these have typically been much smaller quakes.They also have tended to occur in the first weeks or months of injection.The study in Geology suggests that "induced seismicity" can occur years after wastewater injection begins.

The mass extinction events that we understand well all seem to have relatively local causes: volcanic activity in Asia or Pangea, an impactor striking the Yucatan. But the events are so large that the environmental disruption goes global, killing off species across the planet and even in ecosystems, like the oceans, that might not be directly affected.

Syngenta and Bayer, top producers of the pesticides blamed for a sharp fall in bee populations around the world, have proposed a plan to support bee health to try to forestall a European Union ban on the products.EU governments failed this month to agree a ban on three widely used pesticides linked to the decline of honeybees, but the European commission is threatening to force one through unless member states agree a compromise.

WASHINGTON -- The chemical pesticide lobby is waging a multi-million dollar battle to prevent regulation of chemicals linked to the dramatic escalation in the deaths of pollinating bees over the past year.CropLife America, the trade association that represents more than 90 of the world's biggest agro-chemical manufacturers, spent nearly $2.5 million last year lobbying against bills that sought to increase oversight of chemical manufacturing and transfer, strengthen drinking water standards and fund research into the effects of pesticides on humans.

A severe plague of locusts has infested about half of Madagascar, threatening crops and raising concerns about food shortages, a UN agency says.The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said billions of the plant-devouring insects could cause hunger for 60% of the population.

Caffeine. Like so many other wonderful compounds that provide a lift, buzz, high or other pleasant side effect, caffeine under certain circumstances is toxic. It's most certainly poisonous to humans in high amounts, but even small amounts of caffeine in a watershed can kill off native bacteria populations and can stunt the germination and growth of many plants--which is unfortunate, because caffeine is frequently found in the water around cities.

A deadline to remove illegal loggers and settlers from the lands of one of the most threatened tribes on Earth appears poised to pass without action in Brazil.The Awá, a tribe of about 450, have won multiple legal battles granting them the rights to their territory, which are also guaranteed in the Brazilian constitution. But enforcement of those rights has been lacking, with reports of illegal logging camps operating only 3 miles (5 kilometers) from one Awá settlement.

The AustralianABOUT 28,000 rivers have disappeared from China's state maps, an absence seized upon by environmentalists as evidence of the irreversible natural cost of developmental excesses.More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China appear to be missing, according to the 800,000 surveyors who compiled the first national water census, leaving Beijing fumbling to explain the cause.

Restoration workers have discovered nine secret crypts hidden under the ruins of Coventry's bombed cathedral.Work has been taking place after a crack appeared in part of the 14th Century ruins, in September 2011.It was already known there were two crypts, which were last open to the public in the 1970s.Dr Jonathan Foyle, chief executive of the World Monuments Fund Britain, which is handling the work, said it was like finding a "subterranean wonderland".

Why are audiences attracted to bloodshed, gore and violence? A recent study from researchers at the University of Augsburg, Germany and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that people are more likely to watch movies with gory scenes of violence if they felt there was meaning in confronting violent aspects of real life.

It is a little-known fact that ancient Egypt was populated almost entirely by men. Or at least, this is the impression one would gain from reading many of the publications about ancient Egypt in in which women appear as some sort of minority sub-group. Many works deal exclusively with a male elite of kings, priests and scribes.Take the case of a married couple from around the 14th century BC whose intact tomb, discovered in Luxor by the Italians in 1906, still contained their mummified bodies and hundreds of personal belongings, now displayed in the superb Museo Egizio in Turin.

An eccentric Australian mining magnate who is building a replica of the ill-fated Titanic has unveiled his latest scheme -- a park of giant robotic dinosaurs.Clive Palmer, who last month in New York launched an ambitious plan to build and sail the "Titanic II", said he had ordered more than 100 life-size dinosaur robots from China to populate his north Australian resort.

Scientists in the US have built and tested robotic ants that they say behave just like a real ant colony.The robots do not resemble their insect counterparts; they are tiny cubes equipped with two watch motors to power the wheels that enable them to move.But their collective behaviour is remarkably ant-like.By being programmed simply to move forward toward a target and avoid obstacles, the robot colony finds the fastest way through a network or maze.

The bacterial makeup of the intestines may help determine whether people gain weight or lose it, according to two new studies, one in humans and one in mice.The research also suggests that a popular weight-loss operation, gastric bypass, which shrinks the stomach and rearranges the intestines, seems to work in part by shifting the balance of bacteria in the digestive tract. People who have the surgery generally lose 65 percent to 75 percent of their excess weight, but scientists have not fully understood why. Now, the researchers are saying that bacterial changes may account for 20 percent of the weight loss.

Twelve years ago, Portugal eliminated criminal penalties for drug users. Since then, those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin go unindicted and possession is a misdemeanor on par with illegal parking. Experts are pleased with the results.Before he got involved in the global war on drugs, João Goulão was a family physician with his own practice in Faro, on Portugal's Algarve coast. Arriving in his small office in Lisbon, the 58-year-old tosses his jacket aside, leaving his shirt collar crooked. He looks a little tired from the many trips he's taken lately -- the world wants to know exactly how the experiment in Portugal is going. Goulão is no longer able to accept all the invitations he receives. He adds his latest piece of mail to the mountain of papers on his desk.

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a "do not eat" signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

Scientists may have discovered the first meteorite from Mercury.The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from Mercury, and not an asteroid or Mars.

The "artists" behind bizarre, barren, grassless rings dotting the desert of Southwest Africa have been found lurking right at scientists' feet: termites.Known as fairy circles, these patches crop up in regular patterns along a narrow strip of the Namib Desert between mid-Angola and northwestern South Africa, and can persist for decades. The cause of these desert pockmarks has been widely debated, but a species of sand termite, Psammotermes allocerus, could be behind the mysterious dirt rings, suggests a study published today (March 28) in the journal Science.

In a feat of physics worthy of Star Trek's Romulans, researchers have for the first time used a form-fitting cloak to render an object invisible from any direction. Sorry, Harry Potter, this is not magic.The experiment, conducted using microwave radiation, eventually could help pave the way for more-effective ways to hide military aircraft from radar, the researchers say. If extended to visible light, the approach could lead to novel biomedical applications, as well as tiny switches for optical computing.

A new study undertaken by a diverse group of scientists in Sweden has found that contrary to popular belief, most of the carbon that is sequestered in northern boreal forests comes about due to fungi that live on and in tree roots, rather than via dead needles, moss and leaf matter. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their findings after taking soil samples from 30 islands in two lakes in northern Sweden.

A new plan would let people grow their own crickets, which they would then sell to be dried, ground up, and turned into protein-rich flour to enrich baked goods. That cookie you're eating may one day pack an extra cricket-fueled punch.Insects are not regular fare on Western menus, but a surprising number of people worldwide--perhaps as many as 2.5 billion--eat them happily on a regular basis. High in protein, low in fat, and rich in iron and omega-3, bugs like grasshoppers and cicadas are vital staples--a crunchier, and more sustainable, alternative to beef, pork, and lamb.

Concrete plans for a one-way ticket to Mars have been forged. Food will have to be grown on location. Is this a distant future scenario? Not for Wieger Wamelink, ecologist at Alterra Wageningen UR, for whom the future will begin on 2 April. He will be researching whether or not it is possible to grow plants on the moon.We have been to the moon several times. Next time, we may go back for a considerable period. And concrete plans for a one-way ticket to Mars have already been forged. Food will have to be grown on location. Is this a distant future scenario? Not for Wieger Wamelink, ecologist at Alterra Wageningen UR, for whom the future will begin on 2 April. He will be researching whether or not it is possible to grow plants on the moon.

A family tree unites a diverse group of individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from a single common ancestor at the base of the tree. But this organizational structure falls apart if genetic information is a communal resource as opposed to a family possession.Some evidence suggests that early evolution may have been based on a collective sharing of genes. A group of researchers are now searching for clear genetic vestiges from this communal ancestry.But it's hard to shake our fascination with family trees.