Newsdesk Archive

The largest-ever recorded quake in Oklahoma was caused by the injection of wastewater, a byproduct of oil extraction, into the ground, new research confirms.On Nov. 6, 2011, a series of earthquakes, including a 5.6-magnitude temblor, struck the rural town of Prague, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City, crumbling homes in the area and damaging a federal highway. The quake could be felt as far away as Milwaukee."We don't normally feel earthquakes, it was shocking," said study co-author Katie Keranen, a seismologist at Oklahoma University.

It's exactly 12 months since I decided to see if I could live for a year without visiting a supermarket. When I started this experiment I wasn't sure if I could manage for a fortnight, and when friends asked me how I'd celebrate the end of my challenge, I used to say "with a major blowout in Sainsbury's".But what a difference a year makes. Swerving the supermarkets has forced me to change my approach to buying, growing and cooking food. Not only am I spending less money, I am eating better, healthier meals.

I've been asked on a number of occasions recently why the moon always seems to show us the same face -- the lunar nearside. I'm not sure why there's the sudden interest, but it's a very good and valid question, especially as tonight (March 27) is a full moon.Look at the moon at any time and -- aside from the constantly changing phases that are caused by changing relative positions of the Earth, the moon and sun -- it does indeed show us the same face, constantly. Perhaps surprisingly, it's 'non-rotation' (from our perspective) comes from its interaction with the Earth.

Acoustic tracking technology has been used to find Antarctic blue whales from hundreds of kilometres away.The technique adapts sonar from anti-submarine combat technology meaning the whales can be detected via the strains of their low-pitched song rather than relying on traditional migration routes and a dose of luck. Once the whales are located, more traditional tracking methods can be used.

The electric fields that build up on honey bees as they fly, flutter their wings, or rub body parts together may allow the insects to talk to each other, a new study suggests. Tests show that the electric fields, which can be quite strong, deflect the bees' antennae, which, in turn, provide signals to the brain through specialized organs at their bases.

Archaeologists have uncovered 20 Stone-Age skeletons in and around a rock shelter in Libya's Sahara desert, according to a new study.The skeletons date between 8,000 and 4,200 years ago, meaning the burial place was used for millennia."It must have been a place of memory," said study co-author Mary Anne Tafuri, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The area which gave rise to the name Neanderthal will run out of public funding for archaeology in two years - North Rhine-Westphalia state government is phasing out its financial support.The region is riddled with the remains of all sorts of ancient societies and attracts archaeologists from around the world.With Roman settlements along the River Rhine and as the region where Neanderthals were discovered, and thus named after, NRW has long been a source of learning about our predecessors.

Remains are moved to protect them from archaeological enthusiasts after excitement over Richard III discoveryBones which some believe could be those of Alfred the Great have been exhumed from an unmarked grave in Winchester to protect them from the enthusiasm of seekers for lost kings inflamed by reports of the rediscovery of the remains of Richard III in Leicester.Alfred died in AD899, and his remains had an even more chequered history than Richard's, moved and reburied at least twice.

According to many Maya scholars, December 21, 2012 corresponded to the end of a Great Cycle in the Maya calendar. Prophets of doom, who predicted the "end of the world" as we know it, and their opposing naysayers, focused on the date with much anticipation. That day came and went as any other day. It appeared that the naysayers were correct.But not so fast, says at least one author.

Experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Padua in northern Italy have dated the shroud to ancient times, a few centuries before and after the life of Christ.Many Catholics believe that the 14ft-long linen cloth, which bears the imprint of the face and body of a bearded man, was used to bury Christ's body when he was lifted down from the cross after being crucified 2,000 years ago.

A mass extinction that occurred over 200 million years ago, killed off a slew of huge predators, including hefty beasts that looked like crocodiles and enormous armadillos, according to new research.Some of the prehistoric predators - animals known collectively as the early pseudosuchians - likely preyed on certain dinosaurs, which later evolved some of impressive characteristics of the ancient pseudosuchians. Those included features like sturdy body armour and strong tails for whacking enemies.

Scientists have confirmed that a shark found off the coast of Florida in 2011 was a single specimen with two heads, rather than conjoined twins.The discovery has sent shockwaves through the world of marine biology, with scientists calling it the rarest two-headed shark ever recorded.The fisherman got double what he bargained for when he caught a regular adult bull-shark on a routine trip. After opening the uterus, he found the baby.

Commonly used pesticides are damaging honey bee brains, studies suggest.Scientists have found that two types of chemicals called neonicotinoids and coumaphos are interfering with the insect's ability to learn and remember.Experiments revealed that exposure was also lowering brain activity, especially when the two pesticides were used in combination.

Athens, Ga. - Excess carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves a smaller carbon footprint.Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures.

A 14,000-year-old engraved reindeer antler is possibly the first piece of early human art ever found. The specimen was uncovered in the 1800s and has been in the vast collections of the Natural History Museum. Its scientific importance, and clues as to how it was made are only now being revealed, scientists report today.

The ancient Egyptians did not live in such good conditions and were not surrounded by such opulence as was thought up to now, but, rather, suffered from hunger and malnutrition, a whole range of infectious diseases and an extremely high infant mortality rate. Furthermore, the governors of Aswan, on the border with Sudan, as well as their families, interbred with the black peoples of the neighbouring country.

Finding the elusive, unregulated Israeli bureaucrat who lets American evangelicals run amok in the Palestinian territories.A line of rental cars crawled up the side of ribbed sandstone formations, mounded high like giant termite nests. In the distance, the city lights of modern Jericho twinkled on the northern horizon. In this haunted landscape where the West Bank meets the Jordan River, the Dead Sea Scrolls--the oldest-known biblical record--remained hidden for millennia.

Some remarkable traces of Stone Age life were unearthed recently in northern Israel, including a pit of burned bean seeds and a carving of a penis that's more than 6,000 years old, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported.Archaeologists are excavating at Ahihud Junction ahead of the construction of a new Israeli railroad line to the city of Karmiel. They found evidence of ancient settlements from two eras: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period and the Early Chalcolithic period (seventh millennium B.C. to fifth millennium B.C.).

The FBI says its most viewed public record is a memo from 1950 recounting a strange story someone told an agent about three "flying saucers" that were allegedly recovered in New Mexico.The so-called Hottel memo was first released in the late 1970s under the Freedom of Information Act, but it's been viewed nearly a million times since 2011, when the FBI launched an online database of public records called the Vault.

t is widely believed that the first real-world bitcoin transaction took place on May 21st, 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer living in Florida, sent 10,000 bitcoin (BTC), the online-only, open source cryptocurrency, to a volunteer in England, who then spent about $25 to order Hanyecz some Papa John's. Hanyecz then uploaded the image above as proof that the transaction had been successfully completed.It was a major milestone in bitcoin's short history. And as of right now, it cost Hanyecz three-quarters of a million dollars. You are looking at a $750,000 pizza.

Falcons rapidly evolved their renowned hunting skills, a study has found.Scientists from Cardiff University have sequenced the genome of peregrine and saker falcons for the first time.Research revealed that compared with other species, these birds of prey have been subjected to fierce competition and pressures, leading them to adapt quickly in order to survive.Investigation of the genes responsible for the birds' unique beaks highlighted this rapid development.

Scientists have been trying to decipher the colours of feathered dinosaurs by studying pigmented structures called melanosomes in the animals' fossilized plumes. These studies have launched a Renaissance of correctly coloured dinosaur artwork, but a team of palaeontologists has now questioned the accuracy of these reconstructions.

When Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman recently reversed his stance on gay marriage after his son came out as gay, he joined a tidal wave of Americans who have altered their views on the subject."There's just been a real huge sea change in how people view gay marriage," says Dawn Michelle Baunach, a sociologist at Georgia State University who has tracked attitudes toward same-sex marriage over the past two decades.

Advocates of Electronic Voice Projection (EVP) claim they can use radio equipment to communicate with the dead. But are they just hearing what they want to hear?In 1969, a mysterious middle-aged Latvian doctor turned up in Gerrards Cross with a large collection of tape recordings.He had, he said, been conducting experiments in communication with the dead, and had established contact with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and many other deceased 20th Century statesmen. The recordings - 72,000 of them - contained their voices.His name was Konstantin Raudive, and he called his technique Electronic Voice Projection, or EVP.

A 63-year-old woman who was expected to die after her heart stopped for 45 minutes, is recovering well.Carol Brothers, from Easterton near Devizes, collapsed outside her home from a heart attack, last month.Paramedics managed to restart her heart and she was airlifted to hospital but her family were told to expect the worst and doctors withdrew medication.Her daughter, Maxine Dickinson, said doctors "put mum on the pathway to die" but days later "she came back to life".

Contrary to convention, vegetation, when well-maintained, can lower the rates of certain types of crime, such as aggravated assault, robbery and burglary, in cities, according to a Temple University study, "Does vegetation encourage or suppress urban crime? Evidence from Philadelphia, PA," published in the journal, Landscape and Urban Planning.

Environmentalists and beekeepers are calling on the government to ban some of the country's most widely used insect-killing chemicals.The pesticides, called neonicotinoids, became popular among farmers during the 1990s. They're used to coat the seeds of many agricultural crops, including the biggest crop of all: corn. Neonics, as they're called, protect those crops from insect pests.But they may also be killing bees.

Research carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and collaborators reveals that the last region on earth to be colonised by humans was home to more than 1,000 species of birds that went extinct soon after people reached their island homes.The paper was published today (25th) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Part of the urgency behind the commercial space travel movement, as well as comments from innovators like SpaceX founder Elon Musk about wanting to migrate to Mars, are rooted in the notion that to survive in the long-term, humanity must move out into the stars and become a multi-planet (and multi-solar system) species. A DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) initiative, called the 100 Year Starship, is squarely focused on promoting this notion of moving humans into space within the next century.

A quick pointer to today's A1 New York Times story on a phenomenon we've been following on this blog for the past year: as algorithmic entities explode across the web, humans remain central to their operation. Automation only goes so far and for all Watson's Jeopardy wins, there are still many, many tasks on which computers are terrible and humans are effortlessly amazing. Like understanding language, say, or knowing what's happening in a photograph.

LOOKS like Bitcoin has got too big to ignore. Virtual currencies are to be regulated by the US Treasury after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) moved to clarify their status under anti-money-laundering laws.The move comes as Bitcoins doubled in value in just a few weeks to hit a record high of more than $70 each, possibly fuelled by the banking crisis in Cyprus and the rest of Europe.

Recent measurements of the rate at which children show DNA changes not seen in their parents -- the "mutation rate" -- have challenged views about major dates in human evolution.In particular these measurements have made geneticists think again about key dates in human evolution, like when modern non-Africans split from modern Africans. The recent measurements push back the best estimates of these dates by up to a factor of two. Now, however an international team led by researchers at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, present results that point again to the more recent dates. The new study is published in Current Biology.

Have agriculture, technology, diet and lifestyle changes put humans out of touch with the way we evolved? And would we be healthier and happier if we lived, at least to some extent, the way our Paleolithic ancestors did?The abundance of Paleo diet and lifestyle recommendations suggests the answer is yes. But University of Minnesota evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk is skeptical. The Paleo ideal is a myth based on speculation rather than science, she says. As a skilled writer with an engaging sense of humor, she does an informative and entertaining job of debunking this myth in her new book, "Paleofantasy: "What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet and How We Live," to be published by W.W. Norton on March 11.

Uranium dating of coral tools used by the earliest settlers of the South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga offers unprecedented precision in reconstructing their history.About 3,000 years ago, inhabitants of New Guinea set their sights east and headed out to sea, sparking an expansion of humanity across thousands of miles to islands scattered across the South Pacific. Archaeologists have been able to track the migration of these pioneers, a group called the Lapita, by their distinctive pottery. But now, researchers are using advanced chemistry involving the coral tools used by these early explorers to more accurately reconstruct their maritime peregrinations.

Scientists have unearthed six fishhooks, the oldest of which was made from a 19,000-year-old mammoth tusk.Hunters of ice age reindeer around 12,300 years ago likely left the fishhooks, along with mammal and fish bones, in an open field in what is now Wustermark, Germany. The fishhooks, which are the oldest found in Europe, suggests humans developed fishing tools earlier than previously thought, probably to catch fast-moving fish that appeared in lakes as the climate warmed.

It seems counterintuitive that castration could help save a species facing extinction. But through removing the ovaries of a female Iberian lynx, scientists say they were able to collect and preserve embryos from the world's most endangered wild cat for the first time.Conservationists are hoping the fertilized eggs could be implanted into a surrogate mother of a closely related species, possibly a Eurasian lynx female. Even one successful surrogate pregnancy could be a boost for felines, whose declining population had been estimated to be less than 200 a decade ago.

Better looking birds are more likely to have healthy offspring, scientists have learned.Studies of female great tits' appearance, and the weight and immune strength of their chicks at two weeks, has revealed a direct link between the health of the infants and the 'attractiveness' of their mother.The study of the birds (parus major), was published in a paper in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology.Researchers from Palacky University in the Czech Republic took two mothers with different patterning, and swapped their chicks.

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon lurk strange creatures and unique animals and sights, including spiders that make large spider-shaped decoys in their webs, unusually hairy caterpillars and atmospheric specters called solar halos.These amazing finds were spotted by Jeff Cremer, marketing director for Rainforest Expeditions, an ecotourism company that hosts guests in the Peruvian Amazon and organizes trips to the jungle.

Billions of trees killed in the wake of mountain pine beetle infestations, ranging from Mexico to Alaska, have not resulted in a large spike in carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, contrary to predictions, a UA-led study has found.Massive tree die-offs release less carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, new research led by the University of Arizona suggests.

Researchers have found they can detect subtle changes in the vibrations honey bees use to communicate with each other that indicate how healthy the insects are.Growing levels of disease, including a deadly parasite known as verroa mite, have taken a devastating toll on honey bee colonies, causing numbers of the insects in Britain to more than halve in the past 25 years.

Michigan Technological University's invisibility cloak researchers have done it again. They've moved the bar on one of the holy grails of physics: making objects invisible. Just last month, Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, and her graduate student, Xiaohui Wang, reported successful experimental demonstration of the use of non-conductive ceramic metamaterials to cloak cylindrical objects from microwave-length electromagnetic waves. Previously, Semouchkina had designed a non-conductive glass metamaterial cloak that worked with infrared frequency waves, which are shorter than microwaves.

Men are idiots. Hence the common chorus of "but using a condom doesn't feel good." (The fact that having AIDS and/or babies feels much worse seems to have escaped these folks.) To be fair: The condom is still fairly primitive; the use of latex was the last major innovation (sorry, Trojan, your "fire and ice" condoms are weird and don't count), and that was decades ago. This is 2013! We are developing invisibility cloaks! We have cars that drive themselves! We have a giant telescope that can see into the past!

The Calgary HeraldFor a certain category of armchair scientists and intellectuals, TEDTalks have become the catnip du jour. The New York-and Vancouver-based conference corporation, whose name originally reflected Technology, Entertainment and Design but whose concerns are now much broader, is beloved for its free, punchy, online videos of leading thinkers expounding Jobs-like on what it calls "ideas worth spreading."

The traditional Indian custom of passing down epics and village folklore from one generation to the next through storytelling is slowly dying with increasing globalisation and the all-pervasive media. Pia Chandavarkar reports from Thanjavur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.On a sunny morning in the sleepy village of Panayakottai, near the town of Thanjavur, a group of housewives get together under the shade of a banyan tree.

Just outside Lima, Peru, a billboard provides drinking water to whomever needs it - mainly, its neighbours.The panel produces clean water from the humidity in the air, through filters.Researchers at the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima and advertising agency Mayo Peru DraftFCB joined forces to launch it.

The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.The annual spring outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted hotter, drier conditions across much of the US, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where farmers have been fighting to hang on to crops of winter wheat.

It's not every day you open an in-flight magazine and read an ad touting "spitwater pressure cleaners for the mining industry." Flip the page and you'll also see an ad cajoling you to "snorkel, sip, snooze" on the Great Barrier Reef.This is Australia, and the ads illustrate a self-destructive paradox: Coal mining could eventually kill the reef that Australians revere.

Located in nearly the direct center of the brain, the tiny pinecone-shaped pineal gland, which habitually secretes the wondrous neurohormone melatonin while we sleep at night, was once thought to be a vestigial leftover from a lower evolutionary state.Indeed, according to recent research, we could be increasing our chances of contracting chronic illnesses like cancer by unnecessarily bathing its evenings in artificial light, working night shifts or staying up too late. By disrupting the pineal gland and melatonin's chronobiological connection to Earth's rotational 24-hour light and dark cycle, known as its circadian rhythm, we're possibly opening the doors not to perception, but to disease and disorder. A recently published study from Vanderbilt University has found associations between circadian disruption and heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Thousands of dead prawns have washed up on a beach in Chile, sparking an investigation.Hundreds of dead crabs were also washed ashore in Coronel city, about 530km (330 miles) from the capital, Santiago.Fishermen suggested the deaths may have been caused by local power stations that use seawater as a cooling agent. The power firms have not commented.Experts are looking into water temperature and oxygen levels and other details to explain the deaths.

It's has been know that massive increases in emission of CO2 from volcanoes, associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the end-Triassic Period, set off a shift in state of the climate which caused global mass extinction of species, eliminating about 34% of genera. The extinction created ecological niches which allowed the rise of dinosaurs during the Triassic, about 250-200 million years ago.

HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - The tsunami that engulfed northeastern Japan two years ago has left some survivors believing they are seeing ghosts.In a society wary of admitting to mental problems, many are turning to exorcists for help.Tales of spectral figures lined up at shops where now there is only rubble are what psychiatrists say is a reaction to fear after the March 11, 2011, disaster in which nearly 19,000 people were killed.

This week, 89 African elephants in southern Chad were slaughtered for their ivory tusks, the worst such incident since the killing of 300 elephants a year ago in Cameroon.To stop the massacre of these stately beasts, conservation groups are fighting poachers with eye-in-the-sky drones. These unmanned aerial vehicles -- introduced with the help of local researchers and Western firms such as Google -- are giving park rangers new tools in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade of not only ivory from elephants and rhinos but also hides from tigers and other big cats.

As the human footprint has spread, the remaining wildernesses on our planet have retreated. However, dive just a few meters below the ocean surface and you will enter a world where humans very rarely venture.In many ways, it is the forgotten world on Earth. A ridiculous thought when you consider that oceans make up 90% of the living volume of the planet and are home to more than one million species, ranging from the largest animal on the planet -- the blue whale -- to one of the weirdest -- the blobfish.

The challenge the world faces is how to maintain food security without further depleting water resources and polluting ecosystems.Of the many activities individuals can modify to conserve water - from gardening to cleaning to washing - adjusting our diet carries the greatest potential impact. Globally, the livestock industry uses 50 per cent of the world's freshwater resources. If the current world population at 7 billion were to adopt North America's meat-based diet, it would require four planet earths to support this demand. With this impossibility, how will we produce enough food for everyone if meat-based diets prevail when we reach 9 billion in 2050?

NEW YORK -- The NYPD spent 1 million hours making 440,000 arrests for low-level marijuana possession charges between 2002 and 2012, according to a new report released Tuesday -- just as legislative leaders in Albany are deciding whether to pass a bill reforming drug laws.The Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, pro-drug law reform groups that commissioned the report, said its findings show a "huge waste" of police resources.

Earlier this month, researchers announced the results of a big new nutritional study in Europe that seemed to yield more evidence that processed meats like bacon and sausage can lead to an early grave. The media responded with the usual "Death by Salami" headlines. What news outlets downplayed about the study, though, is that despite their best efforts, the EU researchers couldn't find any evidence that red meat will kill you. In fact, the study shows that not eating red meat is a risk factor for an early demise.

Like bloodhounds on the fading scent of an escaped convict, researchers have tried for decades to trace the ancient footsteps of the first modern humans who left Africa.Even though this exodus was one of the most important events in human evolution, scientists have been unable to pinpoint when and where it began.

The way the massive stone blocks making up a Roman mausoleum in Turkey were knocked off-kilter reveals clues to the power of the earthquake that rocked the structure.Analyzing other ancient ruins for such damage could help shed light on the history of earthquakes in a region, which could yield insights on what risks that area faces in the future, the scientists who examined the mausoleum said.The ruins of the city of Pınara date back at least 2,500 years to the ancient realm of Lycia in what is now southwest Turkey. It eventually became part of the Roman Empire.

A medieval monastery in Belgium went to major effort to drain wetlands on its land, building structures on artificially raised soil, a new study finds.Archaeologists excavated the Boudelo Abbey, once part of the medieval county of Flanders, in the 1970s. Until now, however, they had no idea that an extensive drained wetland surrounded the site.

A modelling technique known as terradynamics predicts how robots with little legs move across sandy surfaces.Existing models tend to focus on movement involving solid and stable surfaces or in water but the majority of natural terrestrial and extraterrestrial surfaces have more complex dynamics -- sand, dust and soil, for example -- which need to be taken into account when predicting how animals and robots traverse tricky terrain, such as that on Mars.

A new form of cancer treatment has resulted in five patients experiencing complete remission of their disease with no detectable cancerous cells, scientists have announced.The patients had all experienced a serious relapse of a form of cancer of the white blood cells, called B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, before they received transfusions of their own immune cells that had been genetically modified with an extra cancer-fighting gene.

"You matter to me. In a way I cannot explain, you matter to me. And you, you are a marvel... you and all the parts of you."It's not the kind of thing you normally write to a complete stranger.But after graduating from college and moving to New York City, Hannah Brencher was feeling anxious and depressed. She found herself not wanting to be around other people and "just really unravelling".Then she started writing love letters to strangers and leaving them all over the city. The first letter she left on a train simply addressed: "If you find this letter then it's for you." .

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.

Health minister Anna Soubry said that in order to protect public health farmers, vets and drug companies need to put a stop to the policy.The drugs are given to livestock as a preventative measure in order to stop diseases from spreading, even when the animals are perfectly healthy.But the new bugs that emerge are increasingly developing resistance to the antibiotics.

For a while, Adam Martiny and some of his fellow scientists had suspected something was not right in how researchers understand the oceans. The object of their suspicion was something called the Redfield ratio, a principle stating that, when nutrients are not limiting, ocean microorganisms always have the same ratio of three elements: carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.This matters now because the Redfield ratio is used to help modelers and biogeochemists understand how important elements like nitrogen and carbon cycle in the oceans. If the Redfield ratio does not hold true, climate researchers might have to adjust how that process is represented in their climate models.

OSLO - A pre-Viking woolen tunic found beside a thawing glacier in south Norway shows how global warming is proving something of a boon for archaeology, scientists said on Thursday.The greenish-brown, loose-fitting outer clothing - suitable for a person up to about 5 feet, 9 inches tall (176 centimeters) - was found 6,560 feet (2,000 meters) above sea level on what may have been a Roman-era trade route in south Norway. Carbon dating showed it was made around the year 300.

An oblong crystal found in the wreck of a 16th-century English warship is a sunstone, a near-mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners, researchers said on Wednesday.The stone is made of Iceland spar, a transparent, naturally-occurring calcite crystal that polarises light and can get a bearing on the Sun, they said.

The pilot glanced outside his cockpit and froze. He blinked hard and looked again, hoping it was just a mirage. But his co-pilot stared at the same horrible vision."My God, this is a nightmare," the co-pilot said."He's going to destroy us," the pilot agreed.But when Brown and his co-pilot, Spencer "Pinky" Luke, looked at the fighter pilot again, something odd happened.

For those who are interested, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is available as a free download for US and Canada customers until the 24th March. Get it from:KoboAmazon KindleBarnes & NobleiTunes

A British Petroleum representative allegedly rewrote 44 percent of the oil giant's Wikipedia page, including the environmental sections. Some Wikipedia editors are crying foul.Oil giant British Petroleum is well-known for the Deepwater Oil Horizon disaster and its much-criticized handling of the cleanup's aftermath. But you might want to think twice before you read about the event, or the company's environmental record, on Wikipedia.Angry Wikipedia editors estimate that BP has rewritten 44 percent of the page about itself, especially about its environmental performance.

Large numbers of manatees are dying on both coasts of Florida.In the southwest, a persistent red tide in the Gulf of Mexico has killed nearly 200 manatees this year. These tides are algal blooms, and occur when microorganisms called dinoflagellates proliferate, staining oceans and releasing toxins into the water and air. Harmful to organisms including fish, manatees, and humans, the toxins attack the nervous system, causing short-term memory loss, paralysis, seizures, and ultimately death.

The lawyers will be as busy as bees. The long-running row over insecticides linked to declines in bee numbers is going to court. Beekeepers and activists are suing the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), saying it should have banned neonicotinoid insecticides.Neonicotinoids are relatively new chemicals but have already become widely used in recent years because they are taken up by all parts of a plant, giving comprehensive protection against crop pests.

Fukushima's financial fallout is far from over. US military personnel and their families are seeking $2 billion in damages for illnesses they believe were caused by the nuclear plant's meltdown. They allege that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant's operator, misrepresented the amount of radiation present when it accepted US military assistance to deal with the crisis.

The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.

The space rock that hit Earth 65 million years ago and is widely implicated in the end of the dinosaurs was likely a speeding comet.That is the conclusion of research which suggests the 180km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico was carved out by a smaller object than previously thought.Many scientists consider a large and relatively slow moving asteroid to have been the likely culprit.Details were outlined at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Last year, in an effort to tackle the 'myths' surrounding the belief that the world would end on December 21st, Nasa set up a website to debunk theories about 'Mayan Prophecies', and even released a video explaining why Armageddon was not imminent.Nasa chief Charles Bolden was somewhat less reassuring, however, when asked this week for advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City.His suggestion: Pray.

Bushmeat hunting, or the hunting of meat from wild animals, may be transforming the rain forests in Africa.When hunters kill gorillas and other primates for their meat, the primates no longer disperse the seeds of some fruit- and nut-bearing trees, and wind-dispersed seedlings take root instead, according to a study published today (March 19) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Recycling of household waste has tripled in Europe over the past decade but some countries are dragging their feet for meeting a target set for 2020, the European Environment Agency (EAA) said in a report issued on Tuesday.From 2001 to 2010, recycling of materials and composting of organic waste in the 27 nations of the European Union (EU) rose from 13 percent of the total to 39 percent.

By examining the frequency of extreme storm surges in the past, previous research has shown that there was an increasing tendency for storm hurricane surges when the climate was warmer. But how much worse will it get as temperatures rise in the future? How many extreme storm surges like that from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. coast in 2005, will there be as a result of global warming? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute show that there will be a tenfold increase in frequency if the climate becomes two degrees Celcius warmer.

We've already covered two plans for a 3-D printed house, and they couldn't be more different. The first is a Mobius-strip-style building without a beginning or an ending. The second design would be made of plastic, and it looks kinda like a spider's nest. This design, the latest contender, was created by Dutch firm DUS Public Architecture, and actually looks like a relatively normal building--a cathedral, even.

Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.

The possibility that the Voyager-1 spacecraft may have left the Solar System is being hotly debated.Launched in September 1977, the probe was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.

For the Inspiration Mars project, it's the Red Planet or bust in 2018.The plan is daring, and the challenges enormous. Multimillionaire Dennis Tito wants to send a manned spacecraft on a Mars flyby, and to do it, he will need to find money and the right hardware. But perhaps most intriguingly, he will need to find two people willing to hurtle through space together for 501 days in a capsule roughly the size of an ice-cream truck.

A rock crushed under the Curiosity Mars rover's wheels has dazzled mission scientists in more ways than one.Mars is supposed to be the Red Planet, but the rock - dubbed "Tintina" - is a brilliant shade of white.The unusual colour indicates the presence of hydrated minerals that formed when water flowed through the robot's landing site in ancient times.

More than a month has passed since archaeologists announced they'd found the bones of Richard III under a parking lot in Leicester, and the headlines have mostly moved on. But for many, the lure of King Richard III is just beginning.Richard III enthusiasts, or Richardians, as they are known, have societies in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The discovery of the bones of the medieval king has only swelled their ranks. At the same time, the reburial of the king has sparked strong opinions. Why does this particular monarch incite such fascination? Fans say his shrouded history is a major draw.

Sugar - given to children by adults, lacing our breakfast cereals and a major part of our fizzy drinks - is the real villain in the obesity epidemic, and not fat as people used to think, according to a leading US doctor who is taking on governments and the food industry.Dr Robert Lustig, who was this month in London and Oxford for a series of talks about his research, likens sugar to controlled drugs. Cocaine and heroin are deadly because they are addictive and toxic - and so is sugar, he says. "We need to wean ourselves off. We need to de-sweeten our lives. We need to make sugar a treat, not a diet staple," he said.

Proposed changes to marriage would open the way for Star Wars Jedi to perform ceremonies, a church has said.The Free Church of Scotland said the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill will allow groups promoting a belief to marry couples.The government said the change was relevant to bodies such as humanists, who are classed as religious rather than non-religious at the moment.

Urgent action is needed to prevent ancient rock art disappearing say researchers from Newcastle University in northeast England.The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies (ICCHS) and School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) studied the physical underpinnings and condition of Neolithic and Bronze Age rock art panels in Northumberland. They conclude climate change could cause the art to vanish because new evidence suggests stones may deteriorate more rapidly in the future.

It already attracts more than a million visitors a year. Yet these numbers could be dwarfed once Stonehenge, one of the world's greatest prehistoric monuments, completes its radical facelift.Over the next year, the nearby A344 will be closed and grassed over. A new visitor centre will be built a mile and a half from the monument and tourists will be encouraged to explore the ancient landscape around the 5,000-year-old complex.

Divers returning to the site of an ancient wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera have found artefacts scattered over a wide area of the steep, rocky sea floor. These include intact pottery, the ship's anchor and some puzzling bronze objects. The team believes that hundreds more items could be buried in the sediment nearby.The Antikythera wreck, which dates from the first century BC, yielded a glittering haul when sponge divers discovered it at the beginning of the 20th century. Among jewellery, weapons and statues were the remains of a mysterious clockwork device, dubbed the Antikythera mechanism.

The deepest oceanic trench on Earth is home to a surprisingly active community of bacteria, suggesting other trenches may be hotspots of microbial life, researchers say.Life in the deep ocean often relies on organic matter snowing down from above. As these particles waft down, their nutrients get degraded by microbes attached to them, so only 1 to 2 percent of the organic matter produced in surface waters is expected to make it to the average ocean depth of about 12,150 feet (3,700 meters). Just how much makes it to the very deepest parts is unknown.

Every rocky planet likely develops a liquid-water ocean shortly after forming, suggesting that potentially habitable alien worlds may be common throughout the universe, a prominent scientist says.The building blocks of rocky planets contain more than enough water to seed oceans, and computer models and Earth's own history suggest such seas should slosh around soon after these worlds' surfaces have cooled down and solidified, said Lindy Elkins-Tanton of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.

The glowing atmosphere of a strangely giant alien world could help solve mysteries of not just how it formed, but how our own solar system arose, scientists say.The exoplanet discovery comes from the most detailed look yet at the alien planets around the distant star HR 8799, which lies about 130 light-years from Earth. The HR 8799 system is home to four giant planets orbiting a relatively young, 30-million-year-old star, with each planet far larger than any world found in Earth's solar system.

Insect or microbe: plants recognize their attackers and respond by producing specific internal signals that induce the appropriate chemical defenses. That is the main conclusion of a study at the Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology operated at Gainesville, Florida (USA)* by USDA's Agricultural Research Service, to which the team around Prof. Ted Turlings of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, has contributed. The study is published today in the prestigious journal PNAS.

The rooster's morning cock-a-doodle-doo is driven by an internal clock, finds new research, suggesting the male chickens really know the time of day.The study, detailed today (March 18) in the journal Current Biology, found that roosters put under constant light conditions will still crow at the crack of dawn.Past studies have found that a myriad of animal behaviors are driven by an internal clock: at night, a dip in insulin causes humans to process food more slowly, and even blind cave fish use a circadian clock to tell time.

I appreciate and respect the fact that TED have now bitten the bullet -- which cannot have been easy for them -- and fully retracted their original incorrect allegations against the content of my TEDx presentation "The War on Consciousness". They have done so by crossing out the original allegations and publishing my rebuttal here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/They have done the same as regards their original incorrect allegations against the content of the TEDx presentation "The Science Delusion" by my colleague Rupert Sheldrake.TED have also opened up a new blog page ("Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake A Fresh Take") here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/I want to put on record my immense appreciation and respect for the tremendous efforts made by so many members of my online community to get this injustice righted by their engagement on the TED website and the blog posts they have made there. I am touched and heartened, buoyed up and encouraged by this remarkable level of support and it is a sign of the times that our voice has been heard.TED continue to refuse to restore the talks to the original platform on which they appeared -- the TEDx Youtube channel -- where my talk had been viewed by more than 132,000 people and where Rupert's talk had been viewed by more than 35,000 people before TED took them down. I regard it as unfortunate in the extreme that all the conversations and comments that appeared there have been hidden along with the talks, and that those original links have been broken, and I will continue to press for the restitution of our talks to the TEDx Youtube channel separate from and in addition to the presence they now have on the TED blog pages.

In 1983, the world lost one of its weirdest frogs. The gastric-brooding frog, native to tiny portions of Queensland, Australia, gave birth through its mouth, the only frog to do so (in fact, very few other animals in the entire animal kingdom do this--it's mostly this frog and a few fish). It succumbed to extinction due to mostly non-human-related causes--parasites, loss of habitat, invasive weeds, a particular kind of fungus. There were two subspecies, the northern and souther gastric-brooding frog, and they both became extinct in the mid-80s sometime.

NO, IT'S not a giant haystack - it's an example of one of the largest structures constructed by birds.Sociable weavers (Philetairus socius) build huge communal nests - multistorey apartment complexes - from sticks and grass. The structures last for decades, sometimes over 100 years. Multiple families live together and even help raise each other's young; you could call them socialist weavers, though that might bring to mind a collective of 19th-century Lancashire textile workers.