Newsdesk Archive

Fragments of an ancient continent are buried beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean, a study suggests.Researchers have found evidence for a landmass that would have existed between 2,000 and 85 million years ago.The strip of land, which scientists have called Mauritia, eventually fragmented and vanished beneath the waves as the modern world started to take shape.The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.Until about 750 million years ago, the Earth's landmass was gathered into a vast single continent called Rodinia.

The Mars rover Curiosity experienced its first significant malfunction on Wednesday, when one of its two onboard computers became corrupted and failed to turn off and enter "sleep mode" as planned.The Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent up commands to switch all operations from the corrupted A computer to the twin B computer early Thursday morning, according to a Thursday NASA statement.

BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Researchers say data from NASA space probes has forced a revision of theories about radiation belts around the Earth just a few thousand miles above our heads.Instruments designed and built by the University of Colorado Boulder have returned new finding on the Van Allen radiation belts -- donut-shaped rings of electrons that encircle the Earth that were one of the first discoveries of the space age.Two spacecraft launched in 1958 carrying instruments built by James Van Allen showed the presence of two distinct rings of high-energy electrons.

The Mars rover Curiosity experienced its first significant malfunction on Wednesday, when one of its two onboard computers became corrupted and failed to turn off and enter "sleep mode" as planned.The Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent up commands to switch all operations from the corrupted A computer to the twin B computer early Thursday morning, according to a Thursday NASA statement.Most spacecraft have a backup computer to step in if the primary computer fails.

Hundreds of years ago, a king was born in Oxford, England. The son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the boy would one day be known as Richard the Lionheart, the man made famous by the Crusades and in the fictional stories of Robin Hood. Now, researchers have found the preserved heart of this king, and have analyzed what exactly preserved it.Richard's path to the throne wasn't easy. He was only the second son of Henry II, which did not make him heir to his father. Yet in 1183, Richard's elder brother Henry III died, leaving the way to the throne clear--for the most part.

Diverse mental illnesses may actually represent variations on a common theme rather than separate disorders.A quiet autistic child is certainly unlike a manic adult with bipolar disorder, or a person suffering a bout of paranoia due to schizophrenia, but new research suggests that these varied conditions may be more alike than previously thought.Researchers analyzed genetic data from some 33,000 people of European descent who had either autism, schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder or attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They were compared with nearly 28,000 unaffected controls.

A statue in Paris of Jean François Champollion, the French archaeologist who deciphered hieroglyphics, has been condemned as "derogatory" and "shameful" by Egyptian Egyptologists.Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi carved the marble statue depicting Champollion standing with his left foot on a pharaonic head in 1875. It was put on display in the Parc Egyptian created by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette for the Universal Exhibition of 1877.It was originally intended to be transported to Figeac, the birthplace of Champollion, but the project did not find sufficient support and it remained in Paris.

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.The discovery of the scrolls 50 years ago galvanized a resurgent evangelical movement, many of whose members heralded the creation of Israel as evidence of the coming rapture.

An international study of wild insects finds that managed honeybees are not as successful at pollinating crops as wild insects, especially wild bees. Collected from 600 fields in 20 countries, the data suggest the continuing loss of wild insects in many agricultural landscapes is having negative consequences for crop harvests.The study, published in a recent issue of Science, is an urgent call to maintain and manage pollinator diversity for long-term agricultural production.The research team was comprised of 50 international scientists, including Dr. Lawrence Harder, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences (Bio) at the University of Calgary.

Archaeologists and restoration specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have added their expertise to the conservation of Theban Tomb 39, in Luxor, Egypt, helping to return fragments of reliefs to their correct location to aid further understanding of a funerary complex that functioned as a place of pilgrimage for over three thousand years.The Mexican mission led by Egyptologist Gabriela Arrache involved specialists from the Mexican Society of Egyptology, University of the Valley of Mexico and the INAH...

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), with the support of the Florida Department of State (DOS), completed a statewide investigation that included more than 400 felony violations by 13 individuals from the Keys to the Panhandle. The undercover operation shut down a group of individuals who destroyed state lands to illegally uncover and sell historic Florida artefacts.Florida statute establishes that historic properties, including artefacts, are an important legacy to be valued and conserved for present and future generations. Artefacts on public lands are part of the public trust and should be enjoyed by all.

The textual corpus of Bronze Age Mesopotamia is unique in its richness; containing works which appear purely administrative, entirely fictional, or anywhere along a vast spectrum between the two extremes. The present discussion evaluates the major textual genres in terms of their possible uses in reconstructing wider socio-economic dynamics across Mesopotamia: this includes both practical aspects of the agricultural and commercial economies, but also points of ideology centred on complementary themes of fatalistic transience, rejuvenation, and the sensuality of mortals. The two are then linked together by an analysis of legal and haruspical texts, which were written for practical purposes but are imbued with underlying ideological meanings.

Meteorite hunters at the bottom of the world bagged a rare find this southern summer: a 40-pound (18 kilogram) chunk of extraterrestrial rock.A team from Belgium and Japan discovered the hefty meteorite as the members drove across the East Antarctic plateau on snowmobiles. Initial tests show it is an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite found on Earth, Vinciane Debaille, a geologist from Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, said in a statement."This is the biggest meteorite found in East Antarctica for 25 years," Debaille said.

A comet crashing into the Earth some 13,000 years ago was thought to have spelled doom to a group of early North American people, and possibly the extinction of ice age beasts in the region.But the space rock was wrongly accused, according to a group of 16 scientists in fields ranging from archaeology to crystallography to physics, who have offered counterevidence to the existence of such a collision."Despite more than four years of trying by many qualified researchers, no unambiguous evidence has been found [of such an event],"...

Scientists have moved closer to allowing paralysed people to control artificial limbs with their thoughts following a breakthrough in technology that gave rats an extra sense.A brain implant that allows the animals to "feel" the presence of invisible infrared light could one day be used to provide paralysed people with feedback as they move artificial limbs with their thoughts, or it could even extend a person's normal range of senses.

Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.

The temple built by Romulus to celebrate the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force has been found at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say. The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini.

When archaeologists began digging the fields in 2010 they knew it was a site of historical interest, but even they were surprised by the wealth of ancient finds their trowels unveiled.Back in 1995, a hoard of 400 Roman coins was discovered west of Didcot in Oxfordshire, indicating the land had been lived on for centuries.As plans progressed for 3,300 new homes, schools and shops on the 180-hectare site, archaeologists were called in to investigate.

Palestinian fisherman have been left mystified after hundreds of bloodied Mobula Ray fish were found washed up on a Gaza beach.Around 220 of the fish appeared on the Gaza City beach yesterday, the Times of Israel has reported.

Beijing has been battling an unwelcome, unrelenting and "very unhealthy" smog for many months, much of it made up of particulate nitrogen compounds suspended in the air. Nitrogen pollution in China has kept pace with the country's rapid growth. A study published in Nature last week finds that the rate of nitrogen pollution grew by more than half in the last 30 years.

Five diabetic beagles no longer needed insulin injections after being given two extra genes, with two of them still alive more than four years later.Several attempts have been made to treat diabetes with gene therapy but this study is "the first to show a long-term cure for diabetes in a large animal", says Fàtima Bosch, who treated the dogs at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.

Suspicious minds are driven by testosterone, a study has found.People are less likely to be trusting if they were exposed to high levels of the male hormone in the womb.But they are not just good at spotting con-artists and cheaters, as was previously thought.

It's easy to think humans have stopped evolving, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Though modern medicine and civilization's graces make the struggle to survive more subtle, evolution's engine keeps churning. In the last few thousand years, in fact, a time when human evolution was once thought to have slowed, it may actually have sped up.Charles Darwin, born on this day in 1809, might have been pleasantly surprised.

A report in the American Psychological Association tries to reconcile the scientific research on violent videogames with the ongoing debate. (The report is one of the best explainers on videogame violence we've ever read, by the way. Do check it out here.) But if the research is still being debated, with nothing definitive found, then why are so many scientists and pundits on both sides acting like we have a verdict?

The presence of an animal can significantly increase positive social behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), according to research published February 20 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marguerite E O'Haire and colleagues from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade: 4D printing.At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble.It could be used to install objects in hard-to-reach places such as underground water pipes, he suggested.

A solar power company capable of "printing" colourful glass that can generate electricity from the sun's energy announced a £2m funding boost on Tuesday.Oxford Photovoltaics, a spin-off from the University of Oxford, said the investment from clean-tech investors MTI Partners will help its solar glass, which can be dyed almost any colour, take a step closer to the commercial market.

Nut-cracking monkeys don't just use tools. They use tools with skill.That's the conclusion of a new study that finds similar tool-use strategies between humans and Brazil's bearded capuchin monkeys, which use rocks to smash nuts for snacks. Both monkeys and humans given the nut-smashing task take the time to place the nuts in their most stable position on a stone "anvil," the study found, keeping the tasty morsels from rolling away.

Researchers in China say that they've successfully managed to test an engine that runs on electricity, requires no propellant and produces no exhaust. It's called the EmDrive, and it's able to convert microwave energy directly into thrust inside a sealed chamber. Oh, it's totally silent and highly efficient, too. If it seems too good to be true, well, you're not the only one who feels that way. But the researchers have a prototype that apparently works, and they've just published a paper detailing it.

Radiation from the nuclear disaster offers biologists an opportunity to study migrations of fish, turtles and birds across the Pacific. The research could benefit conservation efforts.Marine biologist Dan Madigan stood on a dock in San Diego and considered some freshly caught Pacific bluefin tuna. The fish had managed to swim 5,000 miles from their spawning grounds near Japan to California's shores, only to end up the catch of local fishermen.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted solar particles moving at incredible speeds near Saturn, giving scientists a rare up-close look at phenomena that occur during dramatic star explosions.The particles flowed from the sun during a strong blast of solar wind, then plowed into Saturn's magnetic field shortly thereafter. This encounter, which Cassini observed in February 2007, created a shockwave that accelerated the particles to super-high energies, scientists said.

Planets orbiting binary star systems have to deal with the stresses of more than one star. But new research reveals that close binaries could be as good as singles when it comes to hosting habitable planets. Low-mass twins could make the best hosts, because their combined energy extends the habitable region farther away than would exist around a single star.After modeling a variety of binary systems, two astronomers determined that stars 80 percent as massive as the Sun, if close enough together, could allow for conditions that would be ideal for hosting habitable planets.

Space exploration has stirred imaginations and piloted hopes and dreams, but the future of space travel looks very different from the age in which Neil Armstrong made it to the moon.Since NASA is no longer doing manned missions, astronaut hopefuls have turned their sites on the private sector.

It looks like the Titanic. It is meant to feel like the Titanic. But the Australian billionaire who on Tuesday unveiled blueprints for a successor ship to the doomed ocean liner is confident his dream project will not sink like the Titanic.At a news conference in New York, mining tycoon Clive Palmer said his ambitious plans to launch a copy of the Titanic and sail her across the Atlantic would be a tribute to those who built and backed the original.

Tucked almost secretively away within a cliff high above the Dead Sea, archaeologists have recently uncovered more artifacts that may hold clues to the history of a cave that has yielded contents dated to the turbulent times of Jesus, the First Century Jewish Revolt and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

An extraordinary find allowing scientists to see through the head of the 'fuxianhuiid' arthropod has revealed one of the earliest evolutionary examples of limbs used for feeding, along with the oldest nervous system to stretch beyond the head in fossil record.Until now, all fossils found of this extremely early soft-bodied animal featured heads covered by a wide shell or 'carapace', obscuring underlying contents from detailed study.

I'm here at TED2013 in Long Beach, jacked up on amazing coffee and mind-blowing ideas from today's 4-minute TED fellow talks (the longer 18-minute talks start tomorrow).I was only part-way through the first day when I had to take a moment to track down Baile Zhang, an assistant professor of physics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who had demonstrated his "invisibility cloak."

The serial expeditioner Sir Ranulph Fiennes has been forced to pull out of perhaps his greatest challenge yet, an unaided journey across Antarctica during winter, after getting frostbite during a training exercise.Fiennes, 68, who had planned to be among a small group taking an anticipated six months to travel 2,000 miles in temperatures as low as -70C, was frostbitten after mending a ski binding with bare hands at -30C after a fall at a training base, expedition organisers said.

A smartphone has been blasted into orbit from India by a team of researchers from the University of Surrey.They hope to use a purpose-built app to test the theory, immortalised in the film Alien, that "in space no-one can hear you scream".The phone will play out several of the screams submitted by people online.The test will monitor the durability of standard commercial components in space.

Astronomers have realised that a comet discovered last month appears to be on course for a close flyby of Mars next year -- and uncertainty in its projected path means that it could hit the Red Planet.C/2013 A1, discovered by Robert McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, was spotted on 3 January out between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. After digging into data from other observatories, astronomers were able to reconstruct its orbit going back 74 days. Projecting that forward, it became clear that it would fly pretty close to Mars sometime on 19 October 2014 -- which means there is a slight chance of it impacting the planet, according to astronomer Ian Musgrave. Now, further observations have increased that chance (though it's still not very likely, before anyone starts panicking about the fate of the Curiosity rover).

A team led by millionaire and former space tourist Dennis Tito plans to send a "tested couple" to Mars and back in a privately funded mission.The Inspiration Mars Foundation plans to start its one-and-a-half-year mission in January 2018.The foundation has carried out a study which it says shows that it is feasible to achieve such a mission using existing technology.The group still has to raise funding for their mission.

Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.

Evidence from caves in Siberia indicates that a global temperature increase of 1.5° Celsius may cause substantial thawing of a large tract of permanently frozen soil in Siberia. The thawing of this soil, known as permafrost, could have serious consequences for further changes in the climate.

Global warming may have caused extreme events such as a 2011 drought in the United States and a 2003 heatwave in Europe by slowing vast, wave-like weather flows in the northern hemisphere, scientists said on Tuesday.The study of meandering air systems that encircle the planet adds to understanding of extremes that have killed thousands of people and driven up food prices in the past decade.

A billboard in Lima, Peru, created by ad agency Mayo DraftCFB in collaboration with the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC), captures the air's humidity and turns it into potable water for Lima residents. Lima is referred to as a "desert megacity" where many residents cope with inadequate access to clean drinking water. The agency and university formed a team to produce what they refer to as the first billboard that produces drinking-water out of air.

Watch your step, Moses. Anyone attempting to walk across the floor of the Red Sea might fall into the 820-foot-deep canyon that was recently discovered by a British navy ship.A 3-D map of the canyon was produced using a multi-beam echo sounder attached to the hull of the HMS Enterprise, according to a UK Ministry of Defense news report. The mapping equipment functions like sonar. It bounces sound waves off the ocean floor and uses the echoes to create an image of the bottom of the sea.

Astronomers have traced the origin of a meteor that injured about 1,000 people after breaking up over central Russia earlier this month.Using amateur video footage, they were able to plot the meteor's trajectory through Earth's atmosphere and then reconstruct its orbit around the Sun.As the space rock burned up over the city of Chelyabinsk, the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings.

The Cyrus Cylinder is a small unprepossessing barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in enigmatic-looking cuneiform, and yet is one of the most iconic objects in the unparalleled world collection housed at the British Museum.It is an object with many meanings and provides a link to a past that we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us.

A dead bird animated by off-the-shelf robotics helped US biologists study behaviour in the swamp sparrow species.Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina worked with engineering students and a taxidermist to operate the wings of a deceased swamp sparrow.They programmed simple Picaxe computer chips, and built a tiny linear motor to fit inside the cavity of the bird they named Robosparrow.

A student project has resulted in a suit that mimics Spider-Man's famous "spider sense," allowing the wearer to sense obstacles and other people without the benefit of sight. It still has a ways to go, though, so using it to fight crime is not advised.Victor Mateevisti at the University of Illinois, Chicago decided to investigate whether something like an enhanced sense of one's environment can be created with off-the-shelf sensors and hardware. The answer is: Not quite yet, but we're getting there.

There's an old dream shared by artificial intelligence researchers: an algorithm that can create perfect translations of any text, in any language, at the press of a button.And then there is today's automated translation technology. Services like Google Translate can provide the gist of a passage of text. But if you're a newspaper publisher seeking foreign readers or a public health expert wanting to educate speakers of another language, human translation remains the only option.

A Viennese archaeologist lecturing in North Carolina this week claims to have identified the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or half-sister. But not everyone is convinced.That's because the evidence linking the bones, discovered in an ancient Greek city, to Cleopatra's sibling Arsinoe IV is largely circumstantial. A DNA test was attempted, said Hilke Thur, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former director of excavations at the site where the bones were found. However, the 2,000-year-old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.

The remora, also known as a suckerfish, attaches itself to sharks, whales, turtles and any other sea creature it can grab onto with its suction disk, feeding off its hosts' parasites and leftover meals and in generally enjoying the comforts of a free ride. The name remora means "delay" in Latin, because ancient sea farers believed the fish held up their ships.

An antibiotic created from human sweat might fight off hospital superbugs and deadly strains of tuberculosis, scientists reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The researchers, from Scotland, Germany, France and Spain explained that a protein found on human skin - Dermcidin - is activated in sweat (slightly acidic and salty environments) and kills harmful microbes by perforating their cell membranes.Dermcidin is a natural protein, part of our natural defences, that is present on our skin when we sweat. The authors wrote that understanding how these natural defences work could help researchers design effective alternatives to conventional antibiotic medications.

There certainly aren't plenty more fish in Europe's sea. Its stocks have crashed, and imports now account for more than half the fish consumed in the European Union. Now, the EU hopes that radical reforms to its system of fishing quotas will restore fisheries by 2020. The plan is a big step forward, but experts are concerned that politicians could yet ignore scientific recommendations in implementing it.The Common Fisheries Policy, set up in 1970, governs the European fishing industry, with annual fishing quotas for each EU member state. These are set by a gathering of ministers called the Council of the European Union.

An authentic photo surfaced Friday afternoon capturing the bright light seen by dozens of Southern California sky watchers.About 50 people contacted the American Meteor Society on Thursday with reports of a "green fireball" lighting up the sky. Sightings were reported in Ventura, Anaheim, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, Paso Robles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, according to the group's website.Photographer Susan Lary of the Southern California Weather Authority captured the so-called fireball and provided the image to NBC News.

How did the largest of all dinosaurs evolve necks longer than any other creature that has ever lived? One secret: mostly hollow neck bones, researchers say.The largest creatures to ever walk the Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods. These vegetarians had by far the longest necks of any known animal. The dinosaurs' necks reached up to 50 feet (15 meters) in length, six times longer than that of the current world-record holder, the giraffe, and at least five times longer than those of any other animal that has lived on land.

When movie director James Cameron dove to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean early last year, he and his team captured hours of video of strange new deep sea life. On Friday, a researcher was giving a peek into this bizarre new world, presenting preliminary findings based on analysis on reams of footage from the so-called Deepsea Challenge expedition.

Scientists are delving deep into the travels of whales -- thanks to high-tech tracking devices -- to try to help protect them.Except for a few species, global whale populations have been decimated over the last few hundred years. Many are at less than 10 percent of their original population size, following aggressive hunting in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

M13 was the only bear known to have been living wild in Switzerland, according to the Swiss national broadcaster.Despite that status, the young male was shot Tuesday morning in Poschiavo Valley, in the Alps near the Italian border, by authorities who feared he was a threat to people.The brown bear had become dangerous because he regularly sought out food in inhabited areas -- including a school -- and had started following people during the day, the Swiss Federal Environment Office said.

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The designer of the Daleks from the BBC's Doctor Who has died aged 84 after a short illness, his daughter has said. Former BBC designer Ray Cusick died of heart failure in his sleep on Thursday, Claire Heawood added.The Daleks became the iconic villains in cult science fiction series Doctor Who, which is due to mark its 50th anniversary with events this year.Mr Cusick, from Horsham, West Sussex, leaves two daughters and seven grandchildren, his family said.

A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe! Those results emerged from a new study led by Howard Bond. Such metal-poor stars are (super) important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe, which can be used to corroborate age estimates inferred by other means.In the past, analyses of globular clusters and the Hubble constant (expansion rate of the Universe) yielded vastly different ages for the Universe, and were offset by billions of years! Hence the importance of the star (designated HD 140283) studied by Bond and his coauthors.

UNLOCKING the moon for mineral exploration is closer to science fact than science fiction.As local and international researchers gather in Sydney for Australia's first off-Earth mining conference this week, it wasn't just the usual logistical and economic challenges that were discussed.Senior project engineer Gordon Roesler, from the University of New South Wales' Australian centre for space engineering research, said advances in robotics in particular meant investors, entrepreneurs and research institutions were taking off-Earth mining more seriously.

Thousands of space fans young and old got a taste of what life in space is like Friday (Feb. 22) during NASA's first-ever Google+ Hangout with astronauts on the International Space Station.The live online video conference connected three members of the space station's crew with chat participants from around the world and came just days after the $100 billion space laboratory briefly lost communications with NASA Mission Control.

It's a good time to be a particle physicist. The long-sought Higgs boson particle seems finally to have been found at an accelerator in Geneva, and scientists are now hot on the trail of another tiny piece of the universe, this one tied to a new fundamental force of nature.An experiment using the Earth itself as a source of electrons has narrowed down the search for a new force-bearing particle, placing tighter limits on how big the force it carries can be.

An underwater "Grand Canyon" has been captured in state-of-the-art images created by a Royal Navy survey ship.HMS Enterprise discovered the 250 metre deep canyon in the Red Sea during a nine-month mission to improve understanding of the waters east of Suez.The 3D images were created after the ship left the Egyptian port of Safaga and were made using the Devonport-based survey ship's multibeam echo sounder.

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5C could see permafrost thaw over a large area of Siberia.A study shows that more than a trillion tonnes of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane could be released into the atmosphere as a result.An international team has published details in the journal Science.The evidence comes from analysis of stalactites and stalagmites in caves along the "permafrost frontier".

Nearly 100 dead sea creatures and birds have washed up on a Peruvian coastline and experts are trying to work out the mystery surrounding their deaths.Sky News reports that 18 sea turtles, 22 sea lions, 16 angular roughsharks, eight dolphins and 22 marine birds were found during an inspection by government officials.A number of the creatures were sprayed with a special paint as part of the investigation of the discovery along 77 miles of the Lambayeque coastline.

Otters' reproductive organs may be affected by chemicals in our waterways, according to scientists.Experts studying the reproductive health of the mammals in England and Wales were concerned to find a decrease in the weight of otters' penis bones.Other health problems in males included an increase in undescended testicles and cysts on sperm-carrying tubes.

Chimpanzees don't need to be rewarded for playing with brainteasers. Like humans with a crossword puzzle, they're motivated by the challenge alone, new research finds.For the study, published today (Feb. 23) in the American Journal of Primatology, researchers followed six chimpanzees at the Zoological Society of London's Whipsnade Zoo. Three of the chimps are half-brothers (Phil, Grant and Elvis), and their family group includes another male and two females.

I had come to Washington state to write about how the authorities had legalised marijuana after a referendum in the November presidential election, a move that shocked the rest of the nation.This, says the former Washington State Bar Association president Salvador Mungia, one of the reform's champions, is how alcohol prohibition ended 80 years ago. First states stopped enforcing federal laws. Then they stopped enforcing the mirroring state laws the federal government had demanded they introduce. Then they began repealing their own laws, dismantling the legal foundations of prohibition.

Neuroscientists have discovered that women are better at distinguishing among subtle distinctions in color, while men appear more sensitive to objects moving across their field of vision.Scientists have long main- tained that the sexes see colors differently. But much of the evidence has been indirect, such as the linguistic research showing that women possess a larger vocabulary than men for describing colors. Experimental evidence for the vision thing has been rare.

China's environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called "cancer villages" after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.But the term "cancer village" has no technical definition and the ministry's report did not elaborate on it.

In 2010, scientists working for the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and the University of Southampton made an astonishing discovery: the deepest and hottest known hydrothermal vents. These vents, which were found in an isolated trough in the Caribbean, have been named the Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field (BHVF).

A glow-in-the-dark shark scares off predators with "lightsaber-like" spines on its back, a study suggests.The research was carried out on the velvet belly lanternshark, a small species found in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.The scientists believe that while the light-up spines can be seen by larger, potentially dangerous fish, they are harder for the shark's prey to spot.The study is published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

"Star Trek" star William Shatner and tens of thousands of the show's fans are leading a charge to name one of Pluto's newly discovered moons after the character Spock's home planet.Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk on the Starship Enterprise on the program launched in 1966, proposed the name earlier this month in response to an appeal from scientists for help in choosing the names of two newly discovered Pluto moons.

Nearly every day, videos, photos and eyewitness accounts of UFOs pop up on the Internet.Some are hoaxes. Some are quirks in the weather. Some sightings are never explained and forevermore remain UFOs.The photo [right], taken by Hannah McRoberts on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in 1981, is considered one of the most credible UFO pictures.Still, never has there been widely accepted positive proof of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, though there are those who believe various government agencies around the world have conspired to hide the truth.

A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows that the earliest human burial practices in Eurasia varied widely, with some graves lavish and ornate while the vast majority were fairly plain."We don't know why some of these burials were so ornate, but what's striking is that they postdate the arrival of modern humans in Eurasia by almost 10,000 years," said Julien Riel-Salvatore, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology at CU Denver and lead author of the study. "When they appear around 30,000 years ago some are lavish but many aren't and over time the most elaborate ones almost disappear. So, the behavior of humans does not always go from simple to complex; it often waxes and wanes in terms of its complexity depending on the conditions people live under.".

The current crisis in Syria parallels events that preceded the fall of the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago, according to research published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science.The Akkadian empire flourished in the third millennium BC. Sometime around 2,200 BC drought hit, the lands dried and people migrated from urban centers. The government then collapsed, and the mighty empire began to falter in a series of calamities collectively referred to as the third-millennium Mesopotamian urban crisis.

While the mysteries of Stonehenge, constructed in England between 3,000 and 2,000 BC, may never be truly revealed or understood, a recent examination of the historic monument using cutting-edge visualization tools has unearthed some fascinating carvings that date to the Bronze Age. It is not yet known what questions about Stonehenge these carvings will answer, but the project did demonstrate the potential for using laser-scanning and visualization technology on the world's antiquities.

What is curry? Today, the word describes a bewildering number of spicy vegetable and meat stews from places as far-flung as the Indian subcontinent, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean Islands. There is little agreement about what actually constitutes a curry. And, until recently, how and when curry first appeared was a culinary mystery as well.

Bees are democrats. They vote. When a community of bees has to make a choice, like where to build a new hive, they meet, debate and decide. But here's what they don't do: they don't filibuster. No single bee (or small band of bees) will stand against the majority, insisting and insisting for hours. They can't.Bee biology prevents it.CA - UK - US

Children and adolescents who watch a lot of television are more likely to manifest antisocial and criminal behaviour when they become adults, according to a new University of Otago study published online in the US journal Pediatrics.The study followed a group of around 1000 children born in Dunedin in 1972-73. Every two years between the ages of 5 and 15, they were asked how much television they watched. Those who watched more television were more likely to have a criminal conviction and were also more likely to have antisocial personality traits in adulthood.

The Russian meteorite, whose sonic boom damaged buildings and injured more than a thousand last week, is not the first to shatter a human life.Take the true story of Ann Hodges, the only confirmed person in history to have been hit by a meteorite.On a clear afternoon in Sylacauga, Alabama (see map), in late November 1954, Ann was napping on her couch, covered by quilts, when a softball-size hunk of black rock broke through the ceiling, bounced off a radio, and hit her in the thigh, leaving a pineapple-shaped bruise.

For the first time ever, people have drilled into a rock on Mars, collecting the powdered remains from the hole for analysis.Images sent back from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday confirmed that the precious sample is being held by the rover's scoop, and will soon be delivered to two miniature chemical labs to undergo an unprecedented analysis.

A colossal sunspot on the surface of the sun is large enough to swallow six Earths whole, and could trigger solar flares this week, NASA scientists say.The giant sunspot was captured on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory as it swelled to enormous proportions over the 48 hours spanning Tuesday and Wednesday (Feb. 19 and 20). SDO is one of several spacecraft that constantly monitor the sun's space weather environment.

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point."It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out.".

Flowers' methods of communicating are at least as sophisticated as any devised by an advertising agency, according to a new study, published today in Science Express by researchers from the University of Bristol. However, for any advert to be successful, it has to reach, and be perceived by, its target audience. The research shows for the first time that pollinators such as bumblebees are able to find and distinguish electric signals given out by flowers.

Imagine a cell phone charger that recharges your phone remotely without even knowing where it is; a device that targets and destroys tumors, wherever they are in the body; or a security field that can disable electronics, even a listening device hiding in a prosthetic toe, without knowing where it is."That's the magic of time reversal," says Steven Anlage, a university physics professor involved in the project. "When you reverse the waveform's direction in space and time, it follows the same path it took coming out and finds its way exactly back to the source."

Recently, an international marine life census concluded that over 200,000 organisms call Earth's oceans their home. Remarkably, a handful of those life forms happily exist at depths and temperatures where life was once thought to certainly perish.Yet despite the fact that people have been intimately engaged with the seas for thousands of years, we still know very little about many of these creatures, discovering new ones on a routine basis. If even the darkest, coldest, and seemingly oxygen-depleted regions of our own world are capable of harboring life, perhaps life may be flourishing elsewhere in the solar system; for example, within the oceans of the Saturnian moon Titan.

IN A remote corner of west Texas, in the shadow of a sprawling wind farm, one of the world's largest batteries was switched on last week. Deep in oil country, the battery is at the vanguard of efforts to help renewable energy sources realise their potential and, ultimately, oust fossil fuels in the US.Built for energy giant Duke Energy by local start-up Xtreme Power, the array is the biggest and fastest battery in the world. It can deliver 36 megawatts of wind power to the grid over a period of 15 minutes.

An ancient tsunami caused dramatic long-term ecological changes in the Caribbean more than 3,000 years ago, new research suggests.Scientists investigated sediments from a coastal lagoon on the Caribbean island of Bonaire about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of the Venezuelan coast. The Caribbean is highly vulnerable to coastal hazards such as hurricanes, tsunamis, mudslides and floods.

The widely-used insect repellent Deet appears to be losing its effectiveness against mosquitoes, scientists say.Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say mosquitoes are first deterred by the substance, but then later ignore it.They say more research is needed to find alternatives to Deet, which was first developed by the US military.

A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004.

An ear, unsurprisingly, is difficult to make from scratch. Ear cartilage is uniquely flexible and strong and has been impossible for scientists to reproduce with synthetic prostheses.If a child is born without one, doctors typically carve a replacement ear out of rib cartilage, but it lacks the wonderfully firm yet springy qualities of the original ear. And it often doesn't look so good.So why not print one?

Although mutations, the driver of evolution, occur at random, a study of the bacterium Escherichia coli reveals that nature often finds the same solution to the same problem again and again.Over time, random mutations enable organisms to adapt and diversify, often when geographically separated groups of the same species grow better suited to their local environment and less like members of the other group.

Doctors may in the future be able to take a blood test to determine if a patient is suicidal, hopefully decreasing the number of people taking their own lives.In Australia, suicide is the number one cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 44 (Australian Bureau of Statistics).Research published in Neuropsychopharmacology has found that a chemical in the brain called quinolinic acid is linked to suicidal behaviour. Quinolinic acid is produced as a by-product of inflammation.

Feeling good about spending money on someone else rather than for personal benefit may be a universal response among people in both impoverished countries and rich nations, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association."Our findings suggest that the psychological reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts," said lead author Lara Aknin, PhD, of Simon Fraser University in Canada.

With 10,000 miles separating them, two makers designed and built a customizable 3-D-printed prosthetic hand for a 5-year old boy named Liam in South Africa for $150 in parts. No power necessary.The idea for Liam's hand started out as Rich Van As's nightmare accident. When Van As, an artisan carpenter, chopped off four of his fingers with a table saw, he vowed to get mechanical replacements.