Newsdesk Archive

Peanut-fearers, rejoice -- new research suggests that treatment may be possible for peanut allergies. A study sponsored by National Institutes of Health in the January issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that by exposing people to small amounts of peanut powder every day, they could increase their tolerance.

Archaeologists say they have discovered a string of 3,000-year-old rock tombs in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor, containing the remains of wooden coffins, skeletons, furniture and canopic jars.The tombs were dug within the funerary temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who reigned from 1427 to 1401 B.C. during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. However, the newfound tombs appear to be part of a more recent cemetery. In Thursday's announcement of the discovery, Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said they date back to the beginning of a transitional period that lasted from 1075 to 664 B.C.

Physicists have created an atomic clock that relies on a fundamental link between time and mass. The researchers, at the University of California, Berkeley, say that the pulse of the clock is determined solely by the mass of its beating heart, a caesium atom.Although their claims are controversial, the researchers say that the device could also have a role in redefining the kilogram, the only basic unit of measurement not yet tied to a fundamental physical phenomenon.

If you found yourself bundling up in scarves, hats, and long underwear less than usual last year, you weren't alone: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, according to scientists with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.2 degrees above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year recorded -- 1998 -- NOAA said in its report Tuesday. All 48 states in the contiguous U.S. had above-average annual temperatures last year, including 19 that broke annual records, from Connecticut through Utah.

The fears of major health organizations have come true: Gonorrhea that is immune to the last remaining effective oral antibiotic has been detected in at least nine North American patients, meaning the era of "incurable" gonorrhea could be close.In a study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group of scientists led by Vanessa Allen of Public Health Ontario, found that 6.7 percent of patients with gonorrhea at a Toronto clinic still had the disease after a round of cephalosporins, the last effective oral antibiotic used to treat the disease.

Science may be getting closer to explaining those prune-like fingers and toes we all get when we sit in a hot bath too long.UK researchers from Newcastle University have confirmed wet objects are easier to handle with wrinkled fingers than with dry, smooth ones.They suggest our ancestors may have evolved the creases as they moved and foraged for food in wet conditions.

A Texan student who refused to wear a badge with a radio tag that tracked her movements has lost a federal court appeal against her school's ID policy.The radio chips track attendance, which in turn helps secure school funding.But Andrea Hernandez, 15, stopped wearing the badge on religious grounds, saying it was the "mark of the beast".After John Jay High School suspended her, she went to court and won a temporary injunction to continue her studies at the school, without the tag.

Tiny hairs in the ear which detect sounds have been regenerated to reverse deafness for the first time, say US researchers in the journal Neuron.An injection of a drug led to the creation of new hairs in tests on mice.Normal hearing was not restored, rather the mice went from hearing nothing to detecting sounds such as a door slamming or traffic.Experts said it was "tremendously exciting" but warned treating humans was still a distant prospect.

A dozen killer whales trapped in the ice about 30 kilometres off the coast of Inukjuak, Que., could be in imminent danger, as a local Inuk who visited them late Wednesday afternoon said the small patch of open water which the whales are sharing is already shrinking.Twelve orcas were spotted at the breathing hole at the eastern top of Hudson Bay by an Inukjuak hunter Tuesday. The federal government is sending a team of experts tomorrow to evaluate whether they can be saved.

Zambia has banned the hunting of lions and leopards due to the rapid decline in its numbers of big cats.Zambia's tourism minister said there was more value in game-viewing tourism than blood sport, which brought in just $3m (£1.9m) last year.Sylvia Masebo said the country did not have enough cats for hunting purposes."Tourists come to Zambia to see the lion and if we lose the lion we will be killing our tourism industry," she told Reuters.

Sometimes, a trick gets pulled off better in nature than it does in a laboratory. That might be the case with new research claiming fireflies' unique lanterns can be reverse-engineered for LED lights, making the bulbs as much as 55 percent more efficient.We've seen scientists get the idea to mimic the insect's chemical reaction, but this project deals with their also-impressive structure. This is how the researchers--a team from Belgium, France, and Canada--explained the process in a statement.

In the new world of technology, television is not just for watching. It is also watching you.So-called smart TVs being unveiled this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show offer technologies that watch the viewer, in an effort to offer more relevant programming.The idea may sound eerie to those familiar with George Orwell's novel "1984" but people in the industry say this is the next step in the evolution of TV viewing.

The story of the missing Russian crown jewels begins, as so many great adventures do, in a library.In this case, it was the U.S. Geological Survey Library in Reston, Va.Richard Huffine, the director, was looking through the library's rare-book collection when he came upon an oversized volume."And there's no markings on the outside, there's no spine label or anything like that," he says. "This one caught our eye, and we pulled it aside to take a further look at it.".

LONG BEACH, Calif.- A possible alien planet discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope is the most Earth-like world yet detected beyond our solar system, scientists say.With a radius that is just 1.5 times that of Earth, the potential planet is a so-called "super-Earth," meaning it is just slightly larger than the Earth. The candidate planet orbits a star similar to the sun at a distance that falls within the "habitable zone" - the region where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. Scientists say the planet, if confirmed, could be a prime candidate to host alien life.

LONG BEACH, Calif.- The Maya, best known these days for the doomsday they never foretold, may have accurately predicted astronomical phenomena centuries ahead of time, scientists find.A new book, "Astronomy in the Maya Codices" (American Philosophical Society, 2011), which was awarded the Osterbrock Book Prize for historical astronomy here at the American Astronomical Society conference Monday (Jan. 7), details a series of impressive observations made by Mayan astronomers pre-16th century.

Death didn't mean the end of beauty for pre-Hispanic civilizations in what is now Mexico. A new study finds that ancient Teotihuacans likely exhumed the dead and painted them with cosmetics during periodic remembrance rituals.The ancient city of Teotihuacan is northeast of modern-day Mexico city. It was a major cultural area in its day, marked by huge monuments, temples and pyramids. Among the archaeological finds at the site are pots of cosmetic pigments. It was these pots that researchers from Mexico and Spain analyzed to reveal the death practices.

Astronomers following the so-called doomsday asteroid Apophis, which will be whizzing past Earth on Thursday morning, have found the rock is much larger than had previously been assumed. Since the asteroid could hit Earth in 2036, that's a problem.The asteroid, named after an Egyptian god of death, had been thought to be around 885 feet (270 meters) wide, plus or minus a couple of hundred feet (60 meters).

I'd like to share some advance information on my new novel War God (publication date 6 June 2013) which tells the epic story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico - a true adventure so extraordinary, and at times so unbelievable, you literally "couldn't make it up".This is the first of what will be a series of short articles on the book that I'll write here over the coming months as we move towards publication.Article 1. FORCE OF PERSONALITY OR FORCES OF HISTORY?

Scientists analysing Australian rocks have discovered traces of bacteria that lived a record-breaking 3.49bn years ago, a mere 1bn years after Earth formed.If the find withstands the scrutiny that inevitably faces claims of fossils this old, it could move scientists one step closer to understanding the first chapters of life on Earth. The discovery could also spur the search for ancient life on other planets.

The chance discovery of a 100 million year old fossil forest on an island east of New Zealand has unlocked new insights on ancient life close to the South Pole.Large trees in their original living position, early flowering plants, seed cones and rare insects preserved in a rock formation were discovered by researchers in the Chatham Islands. The find reveals what is believed to be the first records of life close to the South Pole during the Cretaceous period, a time of extreme greenhouse conditions 145-65 million years ago.

A catastrophic rise in sea level before the end of the century could have a hitherto-unforeseen side effect. Melting icebergs might cool the seas around Greenland and Antarctica so much that the average surface temperature of the entire planet falls by a few degrees, according to unpublished work by climate scientist James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

The UK's Met Office has downgraded its forecast for warming at the Earth's surface over the next five years. Headlines this week announced that global warming is "at a standstill". Climate sceptics crowed. But the Met Office said the outlook for later in the century remains unchanged. New Scientist looks at the factsHas global warming stopped, or hasn't it?Atmospheric warming has certainly slowed greatly in the past decade. The Met Office says this appears to be due to natural cycles that are counteracting the warming effect of greenhouse gases. After incorporating new analysis of natural cycles into its latest model of atmospheric and ocean circulation, it has concluded that we are in for a few more years of little change.

A MYSTERIOUS virus or natural event has baffled residents of an Angus town, after a number of seabirds were found washed up on their shore.At least 17 geese and other unidentified birds were found on the coast of Arbroath on Sunday morning, and dog walkers contacted The Courier to air their concerns.Despite being obscured by dirt and debris, only two of the birds had any visible wounds. Kevin Murray recorded 18 geese and one mallard duck at the breakwater during a walk.

A detailed 3D image of a bird's voice box has been created by scientists investigating how the animals sing.Researchers in Denmark have modelled the tiny vocal organ of the zebra finch.The study identified how the syrinx organ is adapted for rapid trills, even during flight.According to the team, despite advances in understanding the neural control of birdsong, the physical ability is less well understood.

BERLIN (Reuters) - New solar power installations in Germany hit a record high last year but tapered off in the fourth quarter as subsidies were cut to curb costs to consumers, Environment Ministry data showed on Saturday.Capacity grew by more than 7.6 gigawatt (GW), breaking the previous records of 7.5 GW in 2011 and 7.4 GW in 2010, and far above the 2.5 to 3.5 GW Berlin would like to see each year.The solar boom has been encouraged by generous feed-in tariffs, which are guaranteed to generators for 20 years to encourage carbon free power to gradually replace fossil fuels.

The US Geological Survey is to decomission Landsat 5 - the longest-operating Earth observing satellite mission ever.The satellite's had a good run, outlasting its original three-year life by a quarter of a century. The USGS has successfully rescued it from near-death on several occasions, but the recent failure of a gyroscope has been the final nail in its coffin.

When humans produce energy, we do it very inefficiently. Usually what happens is that we make something very hot (like a car engine), use a tiny bit of that energy to do work, and then spend even more energy getting rid of all the waste heat. Panasonic has developed a new thermoelectric material that can get a chunk of that energy back.A thermoelectric material is something that can convert heat directly into electricity. It's not a new thing, but generally it's so inefficient that anyone who's serious about capturing electricity through heat instead uses some sort of steam generator. Where thermoelectrics have potential is in microgenerators, where you're just looking for a little bit of power to take the edge off of your electricity bill.

Apophis hit the headlines in December 2004. Six months after its discovery, astronomers had accrued enough images to calculate a reasonable orbit for the 300-metre chunk of space rock. What they saw was shocking.There was a roughly 1 in 300 chance of the asteroid hitting Earth during April 2029. Nasa issued a press release spurring astronomers around the world to take more observations in order to refine the orbit. Far from dropping, however, the chances of an impact on (you've guessed it) Friday 13 April 2029 actually rose.

Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity has used its brush tool for the first time to sweep dust off the surface of a rock.The rotating wire bristles cleared a roughly 5cm-wide patch on an area of ground dubbed "Ekwir 1" by scientists.Brushing away the dust gives the robot's survey instruments a clearer view of the texture and chemistry of the underlying rock.Curiosity is building towards using its hammer-drill, the last major tool yet to be deployed on the mission.

Getting sleep will be one of the biggest challenges facing astronauts in any future manned mission to Mars, according to a study of six men who spent 520 days and nights in a confined "spacecraft" during a simulated trip to the planet.The Mars500 project began on 3 June 2009 when three Russians, an Italian, a Frenchman and a Chinese man entered a sealed experimental facility in Moscow without access to natural light, fresh air or direct face-to-face contact with any other human being.

DEERFIELD, Ill., Jan. 7 (UPI) -- An early ancestor of today's birds had teeth -- and not just any teeth, but ones evolved for a special diet, U.S. paleontologists say.Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, researchers say a study of a species of early bird, Sulcavis geeorum, suggests it had a durophagous diet, meaning the bird's teeth were capable of eating prey with hard exoskeletons like insects or crabs.The new specimen, a fossil from the Early Cretaceous period of 121 million to 125 million years ago, greatly increases the known diversity of tooth shape in early birds and hints at previously unrecognized ecological diversity, they said.

Each year several dozen institutional archaeological excavations and multiple more salvage excavations take place in the lands of the Bible. Some excavations draw attention because of the exciting dimensions of their discoveries. Many more compile important information from less dynamic discoveries that help us better understand the biblical world in its social context.Following are some of the most exciting discoveries announced in the past year, taken from the news digests of ARTIFAX magazine, and reported on The Book & The Spade radio program.

Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste.Decontamination is considered a crucial process in enabling thousands of evacuees to return to their homes around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and resume their normal lives.

The grounding of a drilling rig in Arctic waters illustrates the risks of pushing the boundaries of oil exploration and recovery.An Arctic storm tore a drilling rig loose from its tow ship and forced it aground near Alaska's Kodiak Island this week. Just a few months ago, the rig and another began preliminary drilling of the first offshore oil wells in the Arctic.

When it comes to solving puzzles, animals in captivity are, well, different animals than their wild brethren.Testing animals' ability to solve new problems has been historically conducted on animals in captivity. Only recently has a shift been made to run these tests on animals in their natural habitat. In a study appearing in Animal Behaviour, however, researchers at Michigan State University found vast differences in the problem solving skills between captive and wild spotted hyenas.

Scientists found treasure when they studied a meteorite that was recovered April 22, 2012 at Sutter's Mill, the gold discovery site that led to the 1849 California Gold Rush. Detection of the falling meteorites by Doppler weather radar allowed for rapid recovery so that scientists could study for the first time a primitive meteorite with little exposure to the elements, providing the most pristine look yet at the surface of primitive asteroids.

Look up at the night sky and you'll see stars, sure. But the sky is also filled with planets -- billions and billions of them at least.That's the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm. The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 -- planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority of planets in our galaxy and thus serve as a perfect case study for understanding how most of these worlds form.

In a decade of war, more than 1,300 Americans have lost limbs on the battlefield. And that fact led the Department of Defense to start a crash program to help veterans and civilians by creating an artificial arm and hand that are amazingly human. But that's not the breakthrough. We don't use that word very often because it's overused. But when you see how they have connected this robotic limb to a human brain, you'll understand why we made an exception.To take this ultimate step they had to find a person willing to have brain surgery to explore new frontiers of what it is to be human. That person would have to be an explorer with desperate need, remarkable courage and maybe most of all, a mind that is game.

A team of Italian researchers studying the contents of a small tin found aboard the wreck of a second century B.C. cargo ship claim its contents are pills meant to cure eye or skin ailments. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team says that some of the ingredients found in the pills mirror those still used today to treat such ailments.

Olduvai Gorge, perhaps the most famous site for evidence of early humans, is again the subject of intense research on a decades-old question bearing on human origins: How, when and where did early humans evolve from using the first and simplest stone tool industry, that of Oldowan, to the second-oldest, and more sophisticated, stone tool technology known as the Acheulean?

Researchers discovered 4,000-year-old spearheads and other artifacts at a site in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said.The find "will change the chronologies of the antiquity of human settlement in the northwest of the country," archaeologist Joel Santos Ramirez said.

They are called "crypto-Jews" or "lost Jews," and in recent years they have emerged in remote places as scattered as India, Brazil, the American Southwest and here in Colombia.They were raised as Christians but believe they have discovered hidden Jewish roots, prompting many to return to Judaism. Many say their ancestors were Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain more than 500 years ago, as the Spanish crown embarked on a systematic persecution of Jews.

Archeologists are studying the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen. The sites have sparked a number of questions about the early history of Islam. Was there once a church in Mecca?The commandment "Make yourself no graven image" has long been strictly followed in the Arab world. There are very few statues of the caliphs and ancient kings of the region. The pagan gods in the desert were usually worshipped in an "aniconic" way, that is, as beings without form.Muhammad had a beard, but there are no portraits of him.

Long-ago lore still has the power to ignite modern-day controversies: Witness the tempests that were stirred up this year over the Maya calendar, the purported "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," a bone box linked to early Christians, a disputed dinosaur skeleton and the plan to clone a woolly mammoth.It turned out that there was much more to each of these cases than met the eye. Or sometimes much less. Either way, we'll be hearing more about ancient mysteries in the year to come. Here's a status report on six of 2012's most controversial mysteries (and missteps) in the realms of archaeology, anthropology and paleontology.

Russia has been sending Soyuz capsules into space since the late 1960s. As spaceships go, they're simple, cheap, and dead nuts reliable, but the design is old enough that taking a Soyuz capsule much beyond Earth orbit isn't really an option. We've just heard that Russia has finalized the design for a new spacecraft that will be able to take humans all the way to the Moon.

The concrete-floored room looks, at first glance, like little more than a garage. There is a red tool chest, its drawers labeled: "Hacksaws." "Allen wrenches." There are stepladders and vise grips. There is also, at one end of the room, a half-built spaceship, and everyone is wearing toe-to-fingertip protective suits."Don't. Touch. Anything.".

In the Disney film "Wall-E," a colony of humans becomes an obese population after hundreds of years locked inside a spaceship. A lack of activity and an abundance of food left the starship denizens with little desire to stay in shape.But while "Wall-E" was science fiction, but at least one anthropologist believes the human race will change when it embarks on multigenerational space missions to Alpha Centauri or other nearby stars.

NASA's battle cry behind the small armada of orbiters, landers and rovers dispatched to Mars is "follow the water!" Where there's water, there could be life, which needs a solvent like water to assemble the complex macromolecules needed for living systems.Mars is covered with geological evidence that it was once a soggy planet. But no longer. One of the most exciting findings to date from the roving field geologist, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, was the detection of a dried up ancient stream where water once flowed billions of years ago.

Moons like the one depicted in the film Avatar may be among the most common places to find alien life, scientists believe.Astronomers came to the conclusion after identifying up to 15 new planets orbiting the life-friendly "habitable zones" of stars.All are giant gaseous worlds similar in size to Jupiter or Neptune.

Toyota has given a taste of self-drive car safety technology ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next week.The car maker revealed a video clip of a Lexus fitted with safety features designed to minimise car crashes.The technology includes on-board radar and video cameras to monitor the road, the surroundings, and the driver.

Suresh Ponnusami sat back on his porch by the road south of the Indian textile town of Tirupur. He was not rich, but for the owner of a two-acre farm in the backwoods of a developing country he was doing rather well. He had a TV, a car, and a maid to bring him drinks and ensure his traditional white Indian robes were freshly laundered every morning.The source of his wealth, he said, was a large water reservoir beside his house. And as we chatted, a tanker drew up on the road. The driver dropped a large pipe from his vehicle into the reservoir and began sucking up the contents.

The kilogram may need to go on a diet. The international standard, a cylinder-shaped hunk of metal that defines the fundamental unit of mass, has gained tens of micrograms in weight from surface contamination, according to a new study.As a result, each country that has one of these standard masses has a slightly different definition of the kilogram, which could throw off science experiments that require very precise weight measurements or international trade in highly restricted items that are restricted by weight, such as radioactive materials.

Twenty-three hundred years ago, hordes of mice, snakes, and insects fled the Greek city of Helike on the Gulf of Corinth (map). "After these creatures departed, an earthquake occurred in the night," wrote the ancient Roman writer Claudius Aelianus. "The city subsided; an immense wave flooded and Helike disappeared."Since then, generations of scientists and folklorists have used a dizzying array of methods to attempt to predict earthquakes. Animal behavior, changes in the weather, and seismograms have all fallen short.

The question most people have about the threat of stormy weather and more flooding is the one the scientists find hardest to answer: how bad is it going to be?The fact is that the science of understanding why rain falls, and where and when, and how it then soaks into the ground or spills into the streets, is extremely challenging.And Britain, as an island nation, tucked between the Atlantic Ocean and the continental mass of Europe, and caught in a tussle between mild maritime air and icy blasts from the Arctic, has the least predictable weather of all.

Is is the lighter-than-air gas that makes a party balloon float up to the ceiling, but a shortage of the element is threatening to disrupt critical research projects.In 1996 the US government decided to start selling off its national helium reserve at rock-bottom prices, leading to a glut of cheap helium on the world market. Scientists believe this explains why oil companies have not bothered to collect much of the helium released to the air during the mining of natural gas. With the entire US strategic reserve expected to be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price, several multimillion-pound projects in the UK have had to be put on hold.

Predicting what we will eat in Britain in 2035 comes down to how gloomy you are about the future. Will stagnant growth have pushed us down the list of rich nations so far that we can't import any foods any more? Or will new energy sources and acceptance of food bio-tech mean that 3-D food printers will be pumping out nutritionally enriched burgers and sushi in all our homes? Will climate change mean land in Britain has to be devoted to crops, not meat, to keep 70 million of us fed?

The future feast is laid out around a cool white room at Eindhoven's University of Technology . There is a steak tartare of in-vitro beef fibre, wittily knitted into the word "meat". There are "fruit-meat" amuse-gueules. The green- and pink-striped sushi comes from a genetically modified vegetarian fish called the biccio that, usefully, has green- and pink-striped flesh. To wash this down, there's a programmable red wine: with a microwave pulse you can turn it into anything from Montepulciano to a Syrah. For the kids, there are sweet fried crickets, programmable colas and "magic meatballs". These are made from animal-friendly artificial meat grown from stem cells: packed with Omega 3 and vitamins, they "crackle in your mouth". Yum.

Pollution is invisible and knowing how much is around you is not always easy. But a new system called Citisense, which consists of a mobile air quality sensor and smartphone app, could one day give people real-time information about the air around them.The system, which is still in the research stages and not available commercially, was developed by a group of scientists lead by William Griswold, a computer science professor UC San Diego. It has a mobile sensor that a person wears while walking or biking around a city.

The Kyoto Protocol on climate change used to be a big deal. So big that the future of humanity was said to hinge on its implementation. Did you know it expired on New Year's Day? We're guessing you didn't, but don't worry. It's no big deal.Adopted in 1997 and in force since 2005, the U.N. compact was intended to lock its signatories into curbing or cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions relative to 1990 levels. It didn't work out as planned.

Sapmi, Sweden, Dec. 21, 2012 -- After spending six years in the Amazon jungle of Peru learning traditional healing techniques, Jungle Svonni returned home to Sweden only to face trumped-up charges for possession of a natural plant that is entirely legal in his country.News of his arrest has sparked an online flurry of support with friends and supporters around the world quickly launching an online petition through the Web site causes.com that calls on the Swedish government to drop all charges immediately. The petition is gaining hundreds of signatures a day.

China may be gearing up to perform a controversial anti-satellite test this month, perhaps in the next week or two, some experts say.For several months, rumors have been circulating within the United States defense and intelligence communities that a Chinese anti-satellite test is imminent, says Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists. It could even be conducted on Jan. 11, the date on which China performed ASAT operations in both 2007 and 2010.

A smartphone video that shows a bright orb exploding in the sky sparked a UFO mystery in Sacramento, Calif., but it looks as if the mystery has been solved: It was a weather balloon.That may sound like the quintessential cover story from the flying-saucer conspiracy, but in this case, the explanation makes perfect sense.

It's 27 October 1954. A reserve game between Fiorentina and nearby rivals Pistoiese is under way at the Stadio Artemio Franchi.A crowd of around 10,000 has gathered to watch. Among them is Gigi Boni (second left in the picture) a lifelong Fiorentina fan who in later years would become the co-ordinator of the club's supporters group.Now in his eighties Boni still has vivid memories of watching in disbelief as UFOs hovered above the stadium.

An 18th-century copy of a sex manual titled "Aristotle's Compleat Master-Piece," once banned for 200 years in the United Kingdom, is set to go on the block Jan. 16 at Lyon & Turnbull auction house in Edinburgh, Scotland.Those looking for juicy passages might be disappointed, but if you're into weird advice, prepare to pay the estimated $650 winning bid. One section of the book advises midwives to burn marigolds and blow the smoke inside a mother's vagina to help extract the afterbirth, Lyon & Turnbull book specialist Cathy Marsden told The Huffington Post.

A waterfall-climbing fish in Hawaii uses the same muscles to both rise and feed, researchers have discovered.Scientists looked at the Nopoli rock-climbing goby (Sicyopterus stimpsoni), also known in Hawaiian as o'opu nopili. This plant-eating fish is found throughout Hawaii, and was once greatly relished as food, apparently being a favorite snack among priests.

Thirteen dwarf galaxies are playing a cosmic-scale game of Ring Around Andromeda, forming an enormous structure astronomers have never seen before and are hard-pressed to explain with current theories of how galaxies form and evolve.According to current theories, the small galaxies, which contain as many as a few tens of billions of stars each, should be randomly arranged around the Andromeda galaxy.

Earth should have been an ice cube in the very early days of our solar system, when the sun was cooler than today. Yet the primordial Earth was a watery sphere. This "faint young sun" paradox has puzzled researchers for decades, but now a look at the atmosphere of one of Saturn's moons suggests a new solution.For the first two billion years of the Earth's existence, the sun was up to 25 per cent dimmer than it is today, making Earth's average temperature up to 25 °C colder. But the geological evidence is that Earth had liquid water at this time, even though the average surface temperature should have been around -10 °C.

Urban agriculture is promoted as a strategy for dealing with food insecurity, stimulating economic development, and combating diet-related health problems in cities. However, up to now, no one has known how much gardening is taking place in urban areas. Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a methodology that they used to quantify the urban agriculture in Chicago.John Taylor, a doctoral candidate working with crop sciences researcher Sarah Taylor Lovell, was skeptical about the lists of urban gardens provided to him by local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Overweight or unhealthy people who refuse to attend exercise sessions could have their benefits slashed, in a move proposed by Westminster Council.GPs would also be allowed to prescribe leisure activities such as swimming and fitness classes under the idea.The Tory-controlled council said the aim was to save £5bn from the NHS budget when local authorities take over public health provision from April.BMA member and GP Dr Lawrence Buckman called the idea "draconian and silly".

Exfoliation is good for the skin, but the scrubbers in some soaps are bad for the environment. Last week global consumer-goods company Unilever acknowledged the growing concerns of scientists and environmentalists by saying the company will no longer use these plastic beads in its products.The plastics in question are called microplastics, itty bitty pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in diameter. The problem with their small size is that these plastics rinse right down drains and collect in marine environments and the stomachs of marine animals. Studies published in the last month have reported microplastics inside fish in the English Channel and harbour seals in the Netherlands. In fact, a review of microplastics published last year demonstrated that these tiny plastics are now all over the place.

Termites collect particles of precious metals such as gold when they are burrowing and then stockpile them in their mounds, often indicating a larger deposit underneath.A study published in PLoS One and Chemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis found that termite mounds in West Australian goldfields contained high concentrations of gold. This means that the insects can be used to help humans find gold and other mineral deposits.

Scientists say the discovery of a stuffed western long-beaked echidna in a London museum could mean the animal, thought to be extinct in Australia, may still be living in the nation's north-west.The long-beaked echidna, which is about twice as big as a common Australian echidna, was thought to have become extinct in Australia in the last ice age - although it still lives in Papua New Guinea.Dr Kristofer Helgen from the Smithsonian Institution has told Radio Australia he's discovered a stuffed specimen that was only about 100 years old in London's Natural History Museum.

It's official: There are no more rhinos left in Vietnam.A large female Javan rhino, estimated to be between 15 and 25 years old, was shot and killed in late April 2010, and had its horn removed by a poacher. Turns out it was the country's last, as reported by Rachel Nuwer at Take Part, a digital media and advocacy company.It's the second subspecies of Javan rhino to go extinct. The third subspecies remains in Indonesia, likely confined to a single park, where as few as 35 of the critically endangered animals survive.

Feathered dinosaurs might have used muscular tails to shake tail feathers and lure the opposite sex, researchers say.Scientists analyzed 75-million-year-old fossils of feathered, two-legged dinosaurs known as oviraptors retrieved during expeditions to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Although oviraptors were members of the meat-eating theropods, making them relatives of such fearsome predators as T. rex and Velociraptor, most oviraptors had beaks that lacked teeth.

Israeli and American scientists have for the first time uncovered the mechanism by which the chemical compound Bisphenol A, commonly used in the plastics industry, damages human eggs and can harm female fertility.Studies in recent years have shown a decline in human fertility in both males and females. The new research, which was carried out at Harvard University, and headed by Dr. Ronit Machtinger, a gynecologist at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, tried to examine whether human eggs could be damaged by increased exposure to Bisphenol A. The research premise was based on information from previous research on animals that the substances harms various tissues.

When our sun first got going, some 4.5 billion years ago, it wasn't the same blazing star we know today--its warmth and brightness grew gradually as more and more of its fuel ignited. So, for Earth's first two billion years, our planet was bathed in a light 25 percent dimmer than it receives today.If the sun dropped back down to that magnitude today, our planet would plunge into an ice age dramatic enough to bury the continents in miles-thick ice sheets and freeze the oceans solid. But according to the geological evidence, ancient Earth was not frozen: It was covered in vast liquid oceans and dotted over with arcs of island chains that sprouted up from undersea volcanoes and then wore back down again in the rain.

A massive eruption on the surface of the sun this week blasted out a wave of super-hot plasma so high that it could tower over 20 Earths, NASA officials say.The New Year's Eve solar eruption occurred Monday and was captured on camera by NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory, a sun-watching spacecraft that constantly records high-definition video of our star. The result: an eye-popping video of the New Year's Eve sun storm.

The sun's peak of solar activity this year will likely be the quietest seen in at least 100 years, say NASA scientists who watch Earth's closest star daily.Sunspot numbers are low, researchers said, even as the sun reaches the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. Also, radio waves that are known to indicate high solar activity have been very subdued."It's likely to be the lowest solar maximum, as measured by sunspot 'number,' in more than a century."

It feels like the Large Hadron Collider has just barely started doing science (and it's not even at full strength yet), but already plans are underway for its successor: the International Linear Collider, or ILC. The ILC will likely cost between $10 and $20 billion, and it's now looking like the host country will probably be Japan.The LHC has done a stupendous job of colliding hadrons with each other. Hadrons, of course, are particles made up of other particles: a proton, for example, is made of three quarks (two up quarks and a down quark) held together with gluons. The LHC's circular design makes it possible to accelerate hadrons up to enormous energies and collide them efficiently.

Physicists have created a quantum gas capable of reaching temperatures below absolute zero and paving the way for future quantum inventions.The chilly substance was composed of potassium atoms which were held in a lattice arrangement using a combination of lasers and magnetic fields. According to a report in the Nature journal, by tweaking the magnetic fields the research team were able to force the atoms to attract rather than repel one another and reveal the sub-absolute zero properties of the gas.

Are you going to love Taylor Swift just as much in 10 years as you do now? Sure, you might think, I'll be basically the same person then, with roughly the same preferences, values, and personality traits. But you're probably wrong, according to a new study, whose authors claim that many people underestimate how much they'll change in the future.

A key feature of quantum physics is the wave-particle duality: the tendency of physical systems to exhibit both wavelike and particle-like behaviors. One particularly striking example of the wave-particle duality is the quantum eraser. In a typical experiment, two photons are entangled in a particular way and sent along different paths. As is usual in entanglement, a measurement performed on one photon reveals the outcome of related measurements on the second. In the specific case of the quantum eraser, however, the measurement dictates whether the second photon will exhibit wave- or particle-like characteristics.

Illinois Senator Mark Kirk has wrestled with lots of devilish political issues during his 28-year political career, but after suffering a stroke one year ago, he claims he had a very different experience: an encounter with angels.The Republican senator was recovering from a massive stroke in the right side of his brain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Intensive Care Unit in Chicago when Kirk said three angels visited him, the Chicago area's Daily Herald reported.

An ancient manuscript discovered inside caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan provide the first physical evidence of a vibrant Jewish community that thrived in that region a thousand years ago.Jerusalema trove of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew characters rescued from caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan is providing the first physical evidence of a Jewish community that thrived there a thousand years ago.

A 2,000-year-old relief carved with an image of what appears to be a stylishly overweight princess has been discovered in an "extremely fragile" palace in the ancient city of Meroë, in Sudan, archaeologists say.At the time the relief was made, Meroë was the center of a kingdom named Kush, its borders stretching as far north as the southern edge of Egypt. It wasn't unusual for queens (sometimes referred to as "Candaces") to rule, facing down the armies of an expanding Rome.

Located in the buffer zone of Cuc Phuong National Park, Con Moong Cave in Thach Yen commune, Thanh Hoa, has been known for many years as a unique archaeological site in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.After excavation, archaeologists have demonstrated that Con Moong represents the cultural developments associated with many stages of development of ancient Vietnamese in more than ten thousand years (from 18,000 to 7,000 BC).

Britain wants GM food to be grown commercially. After years of encouraging developing countries in Africa and elsewhere to grow them, but unable to allow its own farmers to do so, the environment secretary Owen Paterson has told a major conference that GM can secure countries' food supplies, is good for the public and can help limit climate change.This is part of a massive PR drive by government, industry and free marketeers to shake off GM's "Frankenfood" image in Britain. But it will resonate deeply in sub-Saharan Africa, where the US and UK governments, industry bodies and seed companies have all been lobbying strongly for GM crops to be grown widely.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" summed up the response from the Home Office, and later David Cameron, to the publication of the home affairs select committee's year-long inquiry into drug policy last week. Why waste time on setting up a royal commission into drug policy (something his coalition partners, in contrast, went on to call for) when our current drug policy is working? The key evidence for this, quoted like a mantra by the government, is falling drug use. But the "falling drug use" plank on which the government is walking is a very shaky one.

Information communications and technologies (ICT), such as the Internet, account for approximately as much carbon dioxide emissions as the aviation industry, or roughly two percent of the global total, according to research by the consulting group Gartner.As telecommunications use around the world continues to expand rapidly, emissions will likely grow. At the same time, ICT will make existing technologies more energy efficient and may well reduce overall emissions, experts say.Greenhouse gas emissions from energy use by the Internet and related technologies were quantified in the mathematical models recently published in Environmental Science and Technology.

The sound of keyboard music floats over the modern buildings in Malaga's Technology Park, commonly known as Spain's Silicon Valley.But this is not a practice session, even though the musician playing is an international performer.The pianist is stretching his hand out over the keyboard demonstrating to a software designer that he is working with how many notes one hand can span."We have taught a computer to write musical scores," says Gustavo Diaz-Jerez, software consultant and pianist.

Zoo gorillas have earned a reputation for doing a whole lot of nothing, often just sitting against a tree for hours at a time. But Kidogo, a silverback in the Krefeld Zoo, has earned sudden fame for his penchant for performing a number of tricks, including tightrope walking.Expectations placed on Kidogo weren't particularly high. The 12-year-old silverback was brought to the Krefeld Zoo in April from his home in Denmark to serve as a male companion to Muna and Oya, two female gorillas. The hope is that the trio will expand, and that the zoo's lowland gorilla enclosure will soon be bustling with baby apes.

The increasing abundance of roe deer appears to be having an impact on woodlands, a study has suggested.Researchers found that sites with the highest abundance of the native animals had the lowest shrub layer vegetation cover and a lower number of birds.It is described as the first study of its kind in the UK to examine the possible impact of just one species of deer on the natural environment.Details were presented at the British Ecological Society's annual meeting.

Even four times as deep as most scuba divers venture, the Great Barrier Reef blooms. A new exploration by a remote-operated submersible has found the reef's deepest coral yet.The common coral Acropora is living 410 feet (125 meters) below the ocean's surface, a discovery that expedition leader Pim Bongaerts of the University of Queensland called "mind-blowing." The group had previously seen the coral living in the reef at a depth of about 200 feet (60 m).

Will forensic analysts succeed in doing what Bigfoot hunters have only dreamed of achieving?Skeptics and believers are holding their collective breath waiting for the results of a peer-reviewed, five-year study conducted by Texas veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum.Ketchum claims to have isolated enough DNA samples from alleged Bigfoot hair, blood, saliva and urine to prove the existence of the legendary beast.

Astronomers have shed further light on the mysterious process of how young stars and their planetary systems form.The ALMA telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, is helping scientists to unlock new mysteries about how solar systems form. Astronomers using ALMA have been observing the formation of a young star and its planets around 450 million light years away.While it is understood how the young planets grow at this time, pulling in matter from the giant dust clouds which surround them, until now scientists have not known how the young star also continues to grow at this time.

Researchers have found fossils of bacteria that are nearly 3.5 billion years old, believed to be the oldest visible fossils ever uncovered.The fossils, found in northwest Australia's Pilbara region, are from a time before oxygen existed on Earth and are from just one billion years after Earth's formation, according to Old Dominion University's Nora Noffke, one of the researchers who worked on the project.The fossils are imprints found on sandstone that was formed when microbes interacted with rock sediment. Scientists have discovered older rocks, but Noffke says those rocks have eroded to the point where traces of life are all but impossible to find.

Poland on Wednesday imposed new bans on the cultivation of certain genetically modified strains of maize and potatoes, a day after an EU required green light for GM crops took effect.The centre-right government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk imposed farming bans on German BASF's Amflora strain of potato and US firm Monsanto's MON 810 maize or corn, according to a government statement Wednesday.The ban on specific strains essentially uses a legal loophole to circumvent the EU's acceptance of such products.

Mauritania has banned the use of plastic bags to protect the environment and the lives of animals and fish.More than 70% of cattle and sheep who die in the capital, Nouakchott, are killed by eating plastic bags, environment ministry official Mohamed Yahya told BBC Afrique.Plastic bag manufacturers could be jailed for up to a year.

The US town of Concord in Massachusetts has banned the sale of bottled water in units smaller than one litre.The law came into effect on January 1, after a three-year campaign to reduce waste and encourage tap water use.First offenders will get a warning. Anyone caught selling the banned bottles a second time will be fined $25 (£15), with $50 for further offences.The Australian town of Bundanoon introduced a complete ban on bottled water in 2009.

A TINY town in north Queensland is on full UFO alert following sightings of strange lights in the night sky.Cardwell businessman Greg Smith said he and his son watched the lights for 15 minutes and are convinced that what they saw was some sort of UFO."This was a couple of months ago. I used to be the world's biggest sceptic about this stuff, but I'll tell you what, this really rattled me and my son,'' he told The Townsville Bulletin.