Newsdesk Archive
Unsurprising statistics from the United States: The number of self-published books published in that country annually, both print and e-books, has grown 287 per cent since 2006. That makes close to 250,000 self-published titles a year out there. These statistics were gathered by the company that oversees ISBNs (international standard book numbers) in the U.S.
A build-it-yourself underwater rover is now officially for sale after success on Kickstarter, and anyone can order one and put it together. It may not be a breeze to construct, but now you don't have to be James Cameron to do your own submarine exploration.OpenROV is a bare-bones underwater robot that runs on C batteries and can be operated from just about any computer. It's meant for classrooms and amateur explorers, who can explore the bottoms of lakes and coral reefs from the safety of the boat via a live video feed and simple controls. It's designed to go as deep as 100 meters, or about 328 feet.
It's hard to imagine what Mars might've looked like when its valleys were filled with water and its thick atmosphere sported white fluffy clouds. Now try to imagine what ancient Mars might look like with its own biosphere.Using elevation data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, software engineer Kevin Gill was inspired to create a virtual version of the red planet with a difference. "I had been doing similar models of Earth and have seen attempts by others of showing life on Mars, so I figured I'd give it a go," Gill told Discovery News. "It was a good way to learn about the planet, be creative and improve the software I was rendering it in.".
European scientists say they have found further evidence that how you serve food and drink matters hugely in the perception of taste.Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Oxford recruited 57 volunteers and asked them to taste hot chocolate served in plastic cups with four different colors -- white, cream, red and orange with white on the inside.The chocolate was the same in all the samples, but the volunteers found that the flavor was better when the drink was served in the orange or cream-colored cups.
Think the first movies were screened in a cinema? According to an analysis of cave art, our prehistoric ancestors may have invented the concept while drawing on their walls.In this video, researcher and film-maker Marc Azema from the University of Toulouse Le Mirail in France reveals how several frames of an animation are superimposed in many animal sketches. A horse painting from the Lascaux caves in France, for example, is made up of many versions of the animal representing different positions of movement.
Neuroscience is the new black, when it comes to fashion in scientific research."The gene was the central issue in biology in 20th century," Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric Kandel, neuroscientist at Columbia University said in an interview in Toronto recently. "The mind is the essential issue for biology in the 21st century.""And certainly if you think of public health consequences, the diseases, pain, schizophrenia, depression, manic depressive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, God knows what, so many miseries of humankind come from psychiatric and neurological disorders," Kandel added.
The tumor that erased Tom's memory did not touch his "soul."Tom was one of those people we all have in our lives -- someone to go out to lunch with in a large group, but not someone I ever spent time with one-on-one. We had some classes together in college and even worked in the same cognitive psychology lab for a while. But I didn't really know him. Even so, when I heard that he had brain cancer that would kill him in four months, it stopped me cold.
Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.Sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age, and the new study shows that unborn babies are listening to their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth can demonstrate what they've heard.
A team of international archaeologists including Christian Cloke of the University of Cincinnati is providing new insights into successful and extensive water management and agricultural production in and around the ancient desert city of Petra, located in present-day Jordan. Ongoing investigations, of which Cloke is a part, are led by Professor Susan Alcock of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP).
A new book has revealed rare historical gems buried in New Zealand's national archives, including a bizarre WWII plan to create a "tsunami bomb" and military files detailing supposed UFO sightings.A new book has revealed rare historical gems buried in New Zealand's national archives, including a bizarre WWII plan to create a "tsunami bomb" and military files detailing supposed UFO sightings.
Trees and the insects that eat them wage constant war. Insects burrow and munch; trees deploy lethal and disruptive defenses in the form of chemicals.But in a warming world, where temperatures and seasonal change are in flux, the tide of battle may be shifting in some insects' favor, according to a new study.
The world is facing a new wildlife crisis with rhino and elephant poaching in Africa now running out of control, as the illicit wildlife trade booms across the globe as never before.A problem which has always existed, but previously seemed containable, hit an unprecedented new level in 2012, with hundreds of rhinos and thousands of elephants illegally slaughtered to satisfy soaring demand in Asia for rhino horn and elephant ivory.
As the new year begins, good things, however small, are happening.Someone's loved one got a new job in San Francisco. In Charlottesville, a canceled reservation allowed someone else to get a seat on a sold-out train and arrive in time for a wedding. The storybook characters Pooh and Piglet made someone in East Sussex, England, happy, and in Colorado Springs, ever-reliable bacon brightened someone's day.Grateful people have posted these bright spots on the World Gratitude Map, a crowd-sourcing project with an uplifting mission.
Birds learn to sing in much the same way humans learn to talk: by listening to, and then imitating, the vocal sounds of their elders. Of course, those sounds rarely come out right the first time, but a fledgling's sense of hearing can tell her just how off the mark she is. If a note is too low, she'll know to whistle it higher next time, and that feedback helps birds (and us) learn how to communicate.
Coral reefs are under siege worldwide, and now a team of Australian and Chinese researchers has made an alarming discovery in the waters near China: The teeming coral reefs once found off the shores of the Asian giant have shrunk by an astonishing 80 percent over the last 30 years.Biological surveys in the South China Sea and off mainland China revealed that losses of living coral reefs, especially in the past 10 to 15 years, present a "grim picture of decline, degradation and destruction," said the research report, according to AFP.
A ban on the import of second-hand refrigerators is coming into force in Ghana to reduce energy consumption and harm to the environment.Many old fridges contain chemicals called Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which damage the Earth's ozone layer.Although these are already banned or being phased out, they are thought to be commonly used in Africa.The head of Ghana's energy commission told the BBC the ban made Ghana "a pioneer in West Africa".
Make no mistake. Tigers have gone extinct in Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Singapore, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the islands of Bali and Java in Indonesia and possibly in Korea.The iconic big cats remain endangered with extinction in other parts of their range, including China, Russia, Nepal, India and Thailand, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.But a few places see some promising signs of a comeback, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Early natural philosophers held that life on the earth is fundamentally dichotomous: all living things are either animals or plants. When microorganisms were discovered, they were divided in the same way. The large and motile ones were considered to be animals and the ones that appeared not to move, including the bacteria, were considered to be plants. As understanding of the microscopic world advanced it became apparent that a simple twofold classification would not suffice, and so additional categories were introduced: fungi, protozoa and bacteria. Ultimately, however, a new simplification took hold. It seemed that life might be dichotomous after all, but at a deeper level, namely in the structure of the living cell.
The link between teenagers smoking pot and psychosis is ripe for a correlation-causation debacle. Studies have indicated there's a relationship between psychotic symptoms and above-average marijuana use, but the reasons behind that correlation are not clear. Does pot cause psychosis in teens, or are teens with mental health issues retreating into marijuana use to deal with those issues?
New Year's Eve is a time of celebration, during which many partiers celebrate with a glass or two of bubbly. Revelers should consider themselves part of a long line of tradition. According to two recent studies, people have been drinking alcohol in social settings for at least as early as the dawn of civilization, stretching back to around 11,000 years ago.The studies have been documented in two separate journals: the November issue of Levant and the December issue of Antiquity. One article describes the evidence of troughs used to brew beer at the Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The other article reveals how researchers believe that they have uncovered the archaeological remains of a primitive 3,500-year-old beer brewery and feasting hall, complete with kilns likely used to dry malt before the fermentation of yeast, in Cyprus.
After a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011, causing major meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, local schools restricted outdoor activities and parents (understandably) wanted to keep their children indoors. That's had an unexpected consequence. Fukushima children 5 to 9 and 14 to 17 are the fatest in the country.The education ministry released a nation-wide preliminary report last week, defining "obese" children as kids who are 20 percent heavier than average. In Fukushima, the obesity rate among 6-year-old boys was 11.4 percent, up from 6.3 percent in 2010. For 8-year-old girls in the prefecture, the rate doubled to 14.6 percent.
December 21, 2012 has come and gone and the world as we know it persists. There was no apocalypse, no pole shift, no rendezvous with a mysterious "planet Nibiru."Whether centered around the end of the Mayan "Long Count" calendar on the winter solstice of 2012 or not, what are we to make of this strange social and cultural phenomenon of expectations of worldwide calamity?For many, the notion of the end of the world was an excuse for levity ("Buy Christmas presents? Why bother?"). It seemed like high comedy. But unfortunately for some, the macabre expectations and fears were all too real.
A fully automated border station could ease the burdens for human agents in charge of securing the U.S.-Mexican border crossings in 2013.The closed border crossing at Big Bend National Park in Texas is scheduled to become the first automated checkpoint between the U.S. and Mexico when it reopens on Jan. 28, according to Nextgov. Computers at the $3.7 million station will scan citizenship documents and allow for live video interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at a station in El Paso, Texas.
A mobile phone that charges in your pocket, a flat-screen TV that needs no power cord, a car fueled by a cordless panel in the floor: In a nondescript building just outside Boston, these and other applications of wireless electricity signal a future with fewer snaking cables.WiTricity, a company spun off from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), aims to redefine how people use energy, making it possible to power devices without ever plugging them into an outlet. In WiTricity's lab, various devices run on power transmitted via electric coils through the air.
"Peking Man," a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a woodworking, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides.The new discoveries paint a picture of a human ancestor who was more sophisticated than previously believed.
Two comets and two asteroids will pass close to the Earth in 2013. Stargazers can also look forward to solar eclipses in Australasia and Central Africa, as well as the launch of Europe's magnetic field mission, Swarm.The infamous asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian god of darkness, will pass by the Earth - at a safe distance of almost 15 million kilometers - on January 10, 2013. Astronomers will however be anxiously following its path, and collecting data with optical telescopes and radar antennae.
Imagine it: trillions of dollars worth of precious metals, fossil fuels, and fresh water, just lying around waiting to be claimed by anybody with a little know-how and an adventurer's spirit--any lucky person willing to travel a few million miles into the great black unknown, latch on to a big hunk of funny-shaped rock, and claim 'em!Asteroid mining may be down the road a piece yet, but that doesn't mean it's too early to start scouting. With that in mind, we give you Asterank 3D, the first visual guide to our solar system's most valuable resources.
Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years.
New research shows that long, needle-thin carbon nanotubes could lead to lung cancerInhaling carbon nanotubes could be as harmful as breathing in asbestos, and its use should be regulated lest it lead to the same cancer and breathing problems that prompted a ban on the use of asbestos as insulation in buildings, according a new study posted online today by Nature Nanotechnology.
A secret bunker hidden deep within the deserts of New Mexico is reported to be the "alien space cathedral" of the Church of Scientology, according to a BBC reporter.The site is marked by a large symbol etched onto the desert floor: two diamonds surrounded by a pair of overlapping circles, according to the British newspaper The Sun. A private airstrip, built to serve the controversial church's leaders, is within walking distance of the symbol.
EIGHT US sailors are suing the Tokyo utility that operates the Fukushima nuclear power plant, charging that the company lied about the high level of radiation in the area where they were carrying out a humanitarian mission after the tsunami that triggered the reactor crisis.
The remains of a high-caste man wearing armor who was buried by hot ash -- possibly as he tried to calm the wrath of an erupting volcano -- have been found in an area known as the "Pompeii of Japan."Archaeologists say they have unearthed the well-preserved body of a sixth-century man who had apparently turned to face a flow of molten rock as it gushed through his settlement.
Two centuries after the French people beheaded Louis XVI and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, scientists believe they have authenticated the remains of one such rag kept as a revolutionary souvenir.Researchers have been trying for years to verify a claim imprinted on an ornately decorated calabash that it contains a sample of the blood of the French king guillotined in Paris on January 21, 1793.The dried, hollowed squash is adorned with portraits of revolutionary heroes and the text: "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation."
Unless you live right next to an active volcano, and in some cases even if you live right next to an active volcano, tapping Earth's nearly limitless amount of geothermal power is not easy. You usually have to drill through hard volcanic rock, which is slow and expensive. Or at least, it is if you're not using a frikkin' laser drill, which they totally have now.
FROM fossil fuels to geothermal heat, accessing the planet's energy riches usually involves boring deep into the Earth with giant metal drills. But could lasers do the same job?Foro Energy, a start-up company in Littleton, Colorado, has developed what it claims is an inexpensive system of high-powered lasers that can rip through rock, potentially revolutionising drilling and hastening the adoption of greener forms of power.
Electrical engineer and entrepreneur Louis Michaud's AVEtec company has received funding from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs program to build an experimental Atmosphere Vortex Engine (AVE). The $300,000 in startup funds is to go towards building a working engine to dispel or prove the viability of using such technology to produce electricity with virtually no carbon footprint.
POLAR storms are among the most vicious weather systems on the planet, but we may soon be wishing there were more of them.These mini-hurricanes occur in the Arctic winter, when freezing air flows out of the region and over the warmer Atlantic Ocean. As the Arctic warms in the coming decades, there are expected to be fewer of them.But without the storms, the rest of the world could face weather disruption. They are vital to the global thermohaline circulation in the ocean, which underpins ocean currents and weather systems, say Alan Condron at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Ian Renfrew at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK.
An invasive species has the potential to drastically alter Antarctic ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of years, research suggests.A species of midge was able to release large volumes of nutrients into the soil, changing the way native species had lived and evolved, a UK team found.They added the species was well-suited to thrive in the extreme conditions.
The British Antarctic Survey above Lake Ellsworth was a Great White Hope for discovering never-before-seen life. Scientists spent years planning an ambitious study of the lake, which sits two miles below the Antarctic surface, hoping to burrow through the ice with a hot-water drill. If they'd arrived at the bottom, the team might've found microbes with biology never observed by humans. Instead, the team's heading home.
A new pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can organise the organ's rhythm, US researchers report.The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal.Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker.The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Scientists are exploring better methods of camouflage, a so-called scientific invisibility cloak, and news has spread fast about a Canadian company with substantial claims on how far they have come with camouflage technology. The company, HyperStealth Biotechnology, has developed Quantum Stealth camouflage material, which renders its wearers invisible by bending light waves around them. Their work has obvious implications for the defense industry. How can the enemy hit targets they cannot see or defend themselves from attackers who are invisible? Theoretically, any soldier could put on the material and get it working with no power source required.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The wreck of a Soviet submarine lost during World War Two has been found in the Baltic Sea, 71 years after it sank, the Swedish Military said on Monday.The Swedish Armed Forces said the submarine, believed to have been lost on patrol in late 1941, was found in the Swedish economic zone southeast of the Baltic island of Oland in an area which German forces had mined during the war."There is much to indicate that the submarine headed straight into the minefield while on the surface and was blown apart by a mine," the military said in a statement.
A fossil dealer's guilty plea has set the stage for what is most likely the largest dinosaur fossil repatriation in history, according to an attorney representing the President of Mongolia, the country that will receive most of the fossils that federal officials are seizing from fossil dealer and preparer Eric Prokopi.On Thursday (Dec. 27) Prokopi pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to smuggling fossils and agreed to forfeit a small menagerie of dinosaurs to federal officials. All but one of the dinosaurs in question came from Mongolia, where law makes fossils state property, and among them is a high-profile skeleton that received a $1.05 million bid at auction.
December 22 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician renowned for somehow intuiting extraordinary numerical patterns and connections without the use of proofs or modern mathematical tools. A devout Hindu, Ramanujan said that his findings were divine, revealed to him in dreams by the goddess Namagiri.
Computerworld - Verizon's attempt -- unsuccessful so far -- to secure a patent for a so-called 'snooping technology,' which in this case would let television advertisers target individual viewers based on what they're doing or saying in front of their sets, capped another challenging year for privacy advocates.The Verizon technology, which includes a sensor/camera housed in a set-top box, would determine the activities of individual viewers -- eating, playing, cuddling, laughing, singing, fighting or gesturing -- and then trigger personal advertisements based on the activities.
It was a banner year for science as physicists finally isolated what many believe is the elusive Higgs boson, even as superstitious peddlers of claptrap about a Mayan apocalypse had their irrational rear ends handed to them as a new day dawned on Dec. 22.After four decades of searching for it, the journal Science this week named the discovery of the Higgs boson as 2012's "Breakthrough of the Year." In July, researchers at Switzerland's CERN particle physics laboratory identified what they believe is the Higgs boson...
Australia has threatened Japan with diplomatic action over its whaling programme, after Japan reportedly dispatched its whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean for what Tokyo calls a scientific expedition.On Saturday, Tony Burke, Australia's environment minister, condemned the move by Japan, describing the claims that its whaling programme is for scientific research as "a joke".
The United States was going to launch an automatic and all-out nuclear attack on both the Soviet Union and China, in the event that the President was killed in an attack, a newly released document reveals. The plan was in place until 1968, when the plan was revised by President Johnson. It went by the name "Furtherance." Here's how William Burr of the National Security Archive at George Washington University described the state of play before the changes.
The renowned Scottish academic and writer Archibald Edminston Roy has died in Glasgow aged 88. Known as Archie E Roy, he was Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Glasgow University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.During a lengthy career, he published 20 books - six of them novels. He also had an asteroid named after him and conducted research into the paranormal.Professor Roy died of pneumonia on Thursday afternoon. He is survived by his wife Frances and three sons David, Archie and Ian.
A new study indicates that clay minerals, rocks that usually form when water is present for long periods of time, cover a larger portion of Mars than previously thought.The project, which was led by Eldar Noe Dobrea of the Planetary Science Institute, identified the clay minerals using a spectroscopic analysis from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The research shows that clays also exist in the Meridiani plains that Opportunity rolled over as it trekked toward its current position.
Japan's space agency is readying a new asteroid probe for launch, an ambitious mission that aims to build on the victory of the country's first round-trip asteroid mission that sent the Hayabusa spacecraft to retrieve samples of the space rock Itokowa.The new Japanese asteroid mission, called Hayabusa2, is scheduled for launch in 2014 and aimed at the asteroid 1999 JU3, a large space rock about 3,018 feet (920 meters) in length. It is due to arrive at the asteroid in mid-2018, loiter at the space rock and carry out a slew of challenging firsts before departing the scene at the end of 2019.
Ah, science. Sure, it does plenty of amazing things for society: finding treatments for cancer, putting people in space. But along the way, scientists also discover some truly bizarre things about the way the world works. From DNA-devouring worms to M&M-crazed bees, here are some of the strangest science stories of the year.Hold the sex, pass the DNASure, birds do it, bees do it, but rotifer worms don't bother. Having sex is a key way for species to increase their genetic diversity and prevent the buildup of harmful genetic mutations. But an all-female worm called the bdelloid rotifer seems to have kept its kind alive for 80 million years without engaging in sex. Instead of cozying up to a fellow rotifer, the creature devours fungi and bacteria and incorporates some of that DNA into its own genetic code. The DNA meals may provide a healthy dose of antioxidants, the researchers propose.
Richard Marsh is prepared for winter snows and his charges, a herd of 100 rare Chillingham wild cattle, are ready too.They have been weathering winters in the 360 acre Chillingham Castle park in Northumberland since first being enclosed in about 1240."These wild cattle are unique and rarer than the Siberian tiger," Mr Marsh said."No human hand touches them and they receive no veterinary care either."
Arts centre discovered under one of Rome's busiest roundabouts was built in AD123 and could seat 900 peopleArchaeologists who have completed the excavation of a 900-seat arts centre under one of Rome's busiest roundabouts are calling it the most important Roman discovery in 80 years.The centre, built by the emperor Hadrian in AD123, offered three massive halls where Roman nobles flocked to hear poetry, speeches and philosophy tracts while reclining on terraced marble seating.
On an unknown date at an unidentified location, the U.S. government turned over a collection of undisclosed Sinagua artifacts to anonymous members of the Hopi Tribe for unspecified disposition.The mysterious proceedings this fall involved an archaeological treasure trove and a substantial expenditure of tax dollars. Yet virtually everything about it remains secret under a federal law known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.
The oldest known representation of a pharaoh has been found carved on rocks at a desert site in southern Egypt, according to new research into long forgotten engravings.Found on vertical rocks at Nag el-Hamdulab, four miles north of the Aswan Dam, the images depict a pharaoh riding boats with attendant prisoners and animals in what is thought to be a tax-collecting tour."We don't know with certainty who the king represented at Hamdulab is. We can guess on paleographic and iconographic grounds," Maria Carmela Gatto, associate research scholar in Egyptology at Yale University and co-director of thee Aswan-Kom Ombo archaeological project in Egypt, told Discovery News.
While on his death bed, the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan cryptically wrote down functions he said came to him in dreams, with a hunch about how they behaved. Now 100 years later, researchers say they've proved he was right."We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters. For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years," Emory University mathematician Ken Ono said.Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village in South India, spent so much time thinking about math that he flunked out of college in India twice, Ono said.
Looks like Tiger Mom had it half-right: Motivation to work hard and good study techniques, not IQ, lead to better math skills, a new study shows.But there's a catch: The findings, published this month in the journal Child Development, show that keeping children's heads in the math books by force probably won't help.The analysis of more than 3,500 German children found those who started out solidly in the middle of the pack in the fifth grade could jump to the 63rd percentile by eighth grade if they were very motivated and used effective learning strategies, said lead author Kou Murayama, a psychology researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.
We've told you before about remote-controlled cockroaches being strapped with steering wheels so that the insects could help rescue earthquake victims. Now roaches are skittering into a more aesthetic venue -- the art gallery. As part of the "Life, in some form" exhibit by the Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC), Dallas-based artist Brittany Ransom debuted her Twitter-Remote-Controlled Cockroach.
A home video allegedly taken just before Christmas during a late-night flight appears to show a UFO flying next to the plane. The video, posted to YouTube by a man named Mauricio Ruiz, has the Internet buzzing.According to Tom Rose, an Examiner.com blogger,The UFO itself is of a type possibly never filmed before. For most of the video the lustrous, rounded object flies alongside the jet, maintaining relative distance and speed. This in itself is unusual as aircraft are usually separated by a mile or more for safety reasons. The object looks metallic and resembles a closed fist encased in a glove.
Some people think that the clouds are the product of global warming. The heat is causing water vapor to drift higher before it condenses. Others say it's more pollutants and dust in the atmosphere, making more visible clouds form at higher levels. There's also the possibility that people had always seen noctilucent clouds, but that the eruption from it made them more dramatic. Since they've acquired a name, more attention has been called to them. In any case, they're very pretty. And a little eerie.
The Artificial Lab at the University of Zurich is working on Roboy -- a robot humanoid boy -- capable of naturalistic movement thanks to a system of tendons.The project is an extension of the ECCE robot project led by Owen Holland of the University of Sussex.ECCE was designed to be anthropomimetic, meaning it sought to mimic not only how human actions look but also how they are performed within the body. Of particular interest to the Roboy team was ECCE's anthropomorphic, tendon-driven arm, ANTHROB which flexes and rotates with a human-like range of movements.Images here
China's economic boom has seen its coral reefs shrink by at least 80 percent over the past 30 years, a joint Australian study found, with researchers describing "grim" levels of damage and loss.Scientists from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology said their survey of mainland China and South China Sea reefs showed alarming degradation.
Children who make an effort to perform acts of kindness are happier and experience greater acceptance from their peers, suggests new research from the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Riverside.Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a professor in UBC's Faculty of Education, and co-author Kristin Layous, of the University of California, Riverside, say that increasing peer acceptance is key to preventing bullying.
A Japanese security company plans to rent out a private drone that takes off when intruder alarms are tripped and records footage of break-ins as they happen, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.The helicopter-like device is equipped with a small surveillance camera that can transmit live pictures of a crime taking place."The flying robot could take off if our online security systems detect any unauthorised entry," Asuka Saito, a spokeswoman for Secom, said.
Magnetic levitation has been demonstrated for a variety of objects, from trains to frogs, but so far no one has developed a practical maglev-based actuator that converts some external source of energy into motion. Now in a new study, researchers for the first time have used a laser to control the motion of a magnetically levitating graphite disk.
Google Street View already offers virtual tours of Rome, Paris and London. But imagine if virtual travelers could feel the sun beating down on their faces as they toured the Colosseum? Or could feel the burn in their quads as they walked up the Eiffel Tower? Or could smell the old tapestries hanging in Westminster Abbey?If Ikei Laboratory has anything to say about it, that soon may be no stretch of the imagination. A part of the Tokyo Metropolitan University Graduate School of System Design, the lab is developing so-called "virtual body technology."
As a longtime reader of science fiction, it's always interesting to see how the visions of writers eventually become real. Take Arthur C. Clarke's letter to Wireless World in 1945, which details the geostationary communications satellite network everyone uses today. The satellites are in what is called the "Clarke Orbit." And Isaac Asimov wrote frequently about humanoid robots, which are becoming more common in research labs -- although we have yet to see R. Daneel Olivaw from Asimov's Robot series.So inspired by these writers and others, I decided to take a look at 2012 and the futuristic technologies that are materializing before our eyes.
The popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released on Thursday.The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year, while print readers fell from 72 to 67 percent in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
A century-old globe filled with encyclopaedic illustrations and a working model of the Solar System may have been an early example of interactive education, experts believe.The colourful 10-inch wide object, housed at Cambridge University's Whipple Museum, has been shrouded in mystery until now.When, where and why it was made remained an unsolved puzzle. Now, a new investigation points to the globe being made in Spain in the first decade of the 20th century as an educational tool for children.
A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated sparrows, published in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience."We found that the same neural reward system is activated in female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in people listening to music that they like," says Sarah Earp, who led the research as an undergraduate at Emory University.
Dragonflies lack humans' big brains, but they still get the job done, according to new research that suggests that these insects have brain cells capable of feats previously seen only in primates.Specifically, the dragonflies can screen out useless visual information to focus on a target, a process called selective attention. The new study, published Dec. 20 in the journal Current Biology, is the first to find brain cells devoted to selective attention in an invertebrate animal.
Japanese whaling vessels left port Friday bound for the Southern Ocean on their annual hunt for the huge marine mammals, a media report and Greenpeace said.Citing the Fisheries Agency, Kyodo News reported three vessels had departed from the far-western port of Shimonoseki, while environmental group Greenpeace said the whaling fleet's mother ship had left another port, also in the country's west."The mother ship, Nisshin Maru, left Innoshima today," said Greenpeace Japan's executive director Junichi Sato.
China has opened up its domestic sat-nav network to commercial use across the Asia-Pacific region.Beidou - named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper constellation - offers an alternative to the US's global positioning system (GPS).It had previously been restricted to the Chinese military and government.A spokesman said that Beidou is targeting a 70-80% share of the Chinese market in related location services by 2020.
A research team led by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has discovered that massive earthquakes in the range of 8 to 8.5 magnitudes on the Richter scale have left clear ground scars in the central Himalayas.This ground-breaking discovery has huge implications for the area along the front of the Himalayan Mountains, given that the region has a population density similar to that of New York City.
(ISNS) -- Every year the Oxford English Dictionary expands, incorporating freshly coined terms such as "bromance," "staycation" or "frenemy." However, a recent analysis has found that as a language grows over time, it becomes more set in its ways. New words are always being added, according to this study, but few become widely used and part of the standard vocabulary."There are a lot of new hip words that are sort of popping out, but the popularity and the lifespan of these words are very short," said Matjaz Perc, a physics professor at the University of Maribor in Slovenia and one of the authors of the paper. "Our study shows that we don't really need them, so the mileage that we get out of them is very low compared to other words.".
An 81-year-old man from Somerset who had a stroke woke up speaking Welsh.Alun Morgan was taken ill while he was at his home in Bath. A few days later, he was speaking the language he had not spoken since childhood."This was strange because I'd not lived in Wales since I was evacuated there during the war," he said.
In the period just before they went extinct, the American lions and saber-toothed cats that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene were living well off the fat of the land.That is the conclusion of the latest study of the microscopic wear patterns on the teeth of these great cats recovered from the La Brea tar pits in southern California. Contrary to previous studies, the analysis did not find any indications that the giant carnivores were having increased trouble finding prey in the period before they went extinct 12,000 years ago.
New Delhi (CNN) -- When 33-year-old Ashoo Mongia visits the supermarket it's rarely for stocking up his fridge for the week. As head of a cow protection enforcement team, he regularly scours Delhi grocery stores and outdoor markets for food products containing cow beef.For the last 15 years, Mongia and his team of 120 Delhi-based volunteers have thrown themselves in a battle that pits India's billon-dollar meat industry and growing underground beef trade against Hindu traditionalists keen on preserving the holy status of cows.
Quantum dots are nanoscale-sized pieces of semiconductor. Their small size ensures that quantum effects, like the Pauli exclusion principle, influence the behavior of electrons within them. This gives the dots properties that a bulk material with the same composition lacks, and it makes them appealing candidates for things like tiny lasers, photovoltaic materials, and LEDs.Another area where they've shown promise is medical imaging.
Raccoons rarely get tumors, so when 10 of the creatures with the same type of deadly growth turned up around Marin County, California, pathologists took note.The raccoons all had been submitted for a routine necropsy after they were seen acting strangely before they died, wandering in the daylight and approaching humans. Researchers discovered that rabies, often the culprit for such symptoms, didn't seem to be the problem. Rather, these raccoons all had brain tumors that extended from the olfactory tract to the frontal lobe. Pathologists suspect the growths were caused by a newly described infectious agent, dubbed raccoon polyomavirus.
Geologists studying the O'ahu mountains of Hawaii have found they are slowly dissolving and sinking from within. Eventually in time, the island of O'ahu will be reduced to a flat, low-lying island; returning back to the earth where it originated.O'ahu is Hawaii's third largest island, referred to by many as the "gathering place." The O''ahu island holds about 80% of Hawaii's population, drawing more tourists than any other island in the state of Hawaii. The mountains affected are the Ko'olau and Wai'anae volcanic mountains, with the Wai'anae Volcano in the west and the Ko'olau Volcano in the east.
One of the biggest effects of climate change has been to alter the chemistry of Earth's oceans: areas with the highest salt content are getting saltier while those with fresher water are getting fresher.What is causing the change in salinization -- and what, or who, is responsible -- is a problem that researchers are working to solve.Salinity plays an important part in the circulation of water between the earth's surface and atmosphere, and therefore global weather.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming at twice the rate previously thought, say scientists who have teased the information from more than 50 years of temperature data at Byrd Station, in the center of the ice. The average temperature at that station has risen 4.3 degrees F (2.4 degrees C) since 1958, which is triple the warming rate of most of the planet and on par with the very fastest warming parts of the world.
For explorer Eric Larsen the holidays just wouldn't be the same if he weren't sleeping in a tent in sub-zero temperatures. This year marks his fourth Christmas in Antarctica in five years.This time, he's attempting to become the first person to ride a fat tire bike 750 miles from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole. He calls his adventure Cycle South, and it's his first expedition since becoming a dad -- and his first big trip going solo. Depending on conditions, he'll make the return trip via bike as well.
Some of the Nazca Lines, mysterious geoglyphs that span a vast swath of the rugged Peruvian desert, may have once been a labyrinth with a spiritual purpose, a new study suggests.The new insight, published in the December issue of the journal Antiquity, came because two archaeologists decided to use a decidedly low-tech method to understand the sand drawing's ancient secrets: by walking it.
Nicaraguan authorities have ordered the evacuation of several hundred people living near San Cristobal volcano.Officials also declared an amber alert for five sq km ( two sq miles) around the volcano, which began spewing ash and gas on Tuesday.However, some 1,500 farmers are refusing to leave the area, the French news agency AFP reports.First Lady and government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said 15 eruptions had been recorded since Tuesday night.
An ancient temple and cache of sacred vessels uncovered by Israeli archaeologists provides rare evidence of rituals held outside Jerusalem about 2,700 years ago, Israel Antiquities Authority said.The cache includes fragments of chalices and pottery figurines of heads with curling hair as well as harnessed animals. It was found near a large structure with a wide east- facing entrance that conforms to traditional temple construction in the ancient Near East, the Authority said in an e-mailed statement.
Scientist in the United States on Sunday offered a molecular-level explanation for how a Chinese herbal medicine used for more than 2,000 years tackles fever and eases malaria.The herb is an extract of the root of a flowering plant called blue evergreen hydrangea, known in Chinese as chang shan and in Latin as Dichroa febrifuga Lour.
Clive Vivier, co-founder of the Zululand rhino reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, said he was granted permission by the US state department to buy the state-of-the-art Arcturus T-20 drone.He is now seeking clearance from local civil aviation authorities to put 30 of the drones in South African skies.Radical solutions are needed, he argued, at the end of a year that saw a record of more than 650 rhinos slaughtered for their horns to meet demand from the Far East.
Landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows.The study suggests that management strategies that reduce the local use of pavement and increase natural habitat within the landscape could improve nesting opportunities for wild bees and help protect food supplies around the word.
A new strain of MRSA has been found in British milk, indicating that the superbug is spreading through the livestock population and poses a growing threat to human health.The new strain, MRSA ST398, has been identified in seven samples of bulk milk from five different farms in England.The discovery, from tests on 1,500 samples, indicates that antibiotic-resistant organisms are gaining an increasing hold in the dairy industry.
Almost 80 years after first going to print, the final Newsweek magazine hit newsstands Monday featuring an ironic hashtag as a symbol of its Twitter-era transition to an all-digital format.The second-largest news weekly magazine in the United States has been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.During a fierce decades-long rivalry with fellow American coffee-table staple Time magazine, Newsweek pushed the envelope with bold and often controversial covers.
Over the last two decades, astronomers have catalogued around 850 planets outside our Solar System. And the search for worlds orbiting other stars is turning up some weird and wonderful characters.From a scorched gas giant that's darker than coal, to a planet packed with diamond, here are some of the oddballs-in-chief.In a memorable scene from the film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker looks out over the horizon while two suns set in the sky of his home planet Tatooine. Astronomers have already discovered several "Tatooine" systems, where planets orbit double stars.
A series of rapid environmental changes in East Africa roughly 2 million years ago may be responsible for driving human evolution, according to researchers at Penn State and Rutgers University."The landscape early humans were inhabiting transitioned rapidly back and forth between a closed woodland and an open grassland about five to six times during a period of 200,000 years," said Clayton Magill, graduate student in geosciences at Penn State. "These changes happened very abruptly, with each transition occurring over hundreds to just a few thousand years.".
A company's sustainability efforts are becoming so desirable for employees that some are now willing to give up part of their salary to work for one, new research shows.More than 15 percent of employees in the U.S., U.K. and Germany have taken a pay cut to work for a sustainable company, astudy by consulting firm Bain & Co. found. In addition, more than 30 percent of employees said they were willing to accept a pay cut of at least 5 percent to join a company that's considered a global sustainability leader.
THEY are thought to have taken root way back in the 15th century when the War of the Roses was effectively brought to an end with the death of Richard III.But very modern methods have been used to ensure that the most important area of oak trees in the north of England is set to be preserved for generations to come.
As much as science looked to the future this year in fields ranging from particle physics to planetary exploration, 2012 also gave us a rich view into the past. Here's a month-by-month view of what excited archaeologists through the year.2012 started off with some archaeological reminders of the excesses of New Year. Following the news that Peruvians were snacking on popcorn as early as 4700 BC was evidence for early Maya tobacco use, with nicotine residues found in ceramic vessels from Mexico dating to between AD600 and AD900.
Astronomy is a beautiful science.I mean that literally and figuratively. Of course, astronomy is literally telling us our place in the Universe, how everything works, how it fits together . . . and it's done on the grandest of scales. There's a beauty in the tapestry of the cosmos.But it's also just beautiful. Nebulae, galaxies, stars, planets, aurorae; from the near sky to the most distant realms, the Universe is filled to overflowing with pure, simple beauty.
Even for the lucky few creatures that are preserved in the fossil record, soft tissues such as skin and feathers typically disappear over time. But a newly developed technique has found a way to bring them back to life in some cases. Researchers have now used the approach to resurrect the teeth and recognize the carcass of a 50-million-year-old fossil of a lizard, long thought to be merely preserved remnants of skin shed from the reptile.