Newsdesk Archive
As far back in time as astronomers have been able to see, the universe has had some trace of heavy elements, such as carbon and oxygen. These elements, originally churned from the explosion of massive stars, formed the building blocks for planetary bodies, and eventually for life on Earth.Now researchers at MIT, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California at San Diego have peered far back in time, to the era of the first stars and galaxies, and found matter with no discernible trace of heavy elements. To make this measurement, the team analyzed light from the most distant known quasar, a galactic nucleus more than 13 billion light-years from Earth.
Pairs of stars with separations five hundred times the size of the solar system could be triplets in disguise. New research indicates that many of the known wide binaries (double star systems) may have once contained three stars, and many could still harbor a third.Bound together by gravity, binary stars make a large percentage of the universe. While most are close, some pairs can orbit with separations thousands of times larger than the distance between the Earth and the sun, known as an astronomical unit. But the wide spread between the two stars means that they couldn't have formed in the same cloud of dust and gas, leaving astronomers to puzzle over how they formed.
Apollo astronaut and geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt doesn't buy the prevailing theory that the moon formed from pieces of Earth that were shot into space after a giant impact.Instead, Schmitt suspects Earth's gravity captured a smaller body that had built itself up in a nearby orbit.Additional evidence may be found inside a deep crater on the moon's south pole, one of several areas Schmitt, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, advocates exploring, not only for science, but to prepare for human missions to Mars.
Research has shown a decrease in levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in core samples from Greenland ice starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The decrease has been attributed to a corresponding increase in nitrates associated with the burning of fossil fuels.However, new University of Washington research suggests that the decline in nitrogen-15 is more directly related to increased acidity in the atmosphere.
South Korea has dropped plans to resume whaling in its coastal waters amid a storm of international criticism, and will instead use non-lethal methods to conduct research into the mammals.The country provoked anger when it announced plans at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission [IWC] in Panama in July to conduct "scientific" whale hunts similar to those carried out by Japan in the Antarctic every winter.
For at least 200 years it has been a yuletide staple, but the traditional world of the popular carol The Twelve Days of Christmas is now under threat as never before.Partridges and turtle doves are disappearing from the countryside at such alarming rates that without urgent action the species may cease to exist in the UK outside the verses of the festive classic, scientists have warned.
The freak melt of the Greenland ice sheet last summer may have been forced by smoke from Arctic wildfires, new research suggests.Satellite observations, due to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Friday, for the first time tracks smoke and soot particles from tundra wildfires over to Greenland.Scientists have long known that soot blackens snow and ice, reducing its powers of reflectivity and making it more likely to melt under the sun.
Norway has agreed to give $180 million to Brazil as part of a broader $1 billion deal for slowing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, Oslo's environment minister said on Thursday.Norway has promised $1 billion each to Brazil and Indonesia for protecting their tropical rainforests and warned Jakarta earlier this year that its progress in reforming its forestry sector will not be sufficient to meet its pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020.
Yes, maggots are creepy, crawly, and slimy. But that slime is a remarkable healing balm, used by battlefield surgeons for centuries to close wounds. Now, researchers say they've figured out how the fly larvae work their magic: They suppress our immune system.Maggots are efficient consumers of dead tissue. They munch on rotting flesh, leaving healthy tissue practically unscathed. Physicians in Napoleon's army used the larvae to clean wounds. In World War I, American surgeon William Baer noticed that soldiers with maggot-infested gashes didn't have the expected infection or swelling seen in other patients. The rise of penicillin in the 1940s made clinical maggots less useful, but they bounced back in the 1990s when antibiotic-resistant bacteria created a new demand for alternative treatments. In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved maggot therapy as a prescription treatment.
Growing old can bring a renewed sense of happiness and wellbeing, despite physical and mental declines, researchers report today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.The finding adds to growing evidence that aging is not all "doom and gloom," said Dilip Jeste, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. Instead, old age can be a time of growth, and older people can be a helpful resource for younger generations.Psychiatrists, too, might do well to re-evaluate their expectations for older patients.
Aging giant sequoia trees are growing faster than ever, with some of the oldest and tallest trees producing more wood, on average, in old age than they did when they were younger.A 2,000-year-old giant sequoia is just cranking out wood, said Steve Sillett, a professor at Humboldt State University in California who has conducted recent research on the big trees.Other long-lived trees like coast redwoods and Australia's Eucalyptus regnans also show an increase in wood production during old age, according to an article Sillett published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
The preserved body of a woolly rhinoceros has revealed new insights into how this now extinct giant animal once lived.The woolly rhino was once one of the most abundant large mammals living in Eurasia, but only a handful of preserved carcasses have been found.Now an analysis of a female woolly rhino found preserved in Siberia reveals that the animal was a herbivore that grazed mainly on cereals, and was similar in size to today's Javan rhino.
Police in Italy say they have recovered a stolen 2,000-year-old Egyptian sphinx near the capital Rome.They believe the granite statue was about to be taken out of the country.It was discovered boxed up in a greenhouse after police had found photographs of Egyptian artefacts during a routine search of a vehicle.
Current and former world leaders on the frontline of the US-led war on drugs have called for a radical change of approach in a British-made film, to be launched online on Friday, that aims to do for global drugs policy what An Inconvenient Truth did to highlight manmade climate change.By featuring a host of leaders, experts, opinion formers and household names pointing out the devastation they say has been inflicted on communities through prohibition, Breaking the Taboo seeks to persuade politicians to put aside fears about being seen as soft on drugs and explore alternatives.Note: See the film hereRelated: The House I Live In director Eugene Jarecki on the war on drugs
Despite concerted government efforts to curtail tobacco use, the number of smokers in the United States has remained stable in recent years, rather than declining. The reason: genetics.New research from the Yale School of Public Health suggests that individuals' genetics play an important role in whether they respond to tobacco-control policies. The study appears online in the journal PLOS ONE.
A bundle of recent genetic studies have suggested that modern humans had sex with Neanderthals thousands of years ago when the two populations roamed the planet alongside each other. However, the bones left behind by the two species don't bear any obvious traces of interbreeding and a new study of monkeys in Mexico shows why we shouldn't expect them to.Researchers examined blood samples, hair samples and measurements collected from mantled howler monkeys and black howler monkeys that were live-captured and released in Mexico and Guatemala between 1998 and 2008. The two monkey species splintered off from a common ancestor about 3 million years ago...
"MY, WHAT a big mouth you have, Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl.Sound odd? That's because this snippet of Little Red Riding Hood was written not by a person but by a piece of software called Xapagy. It may not seem like much, but it demonstrates a first step towards computers that can invent stories. It also signals a new approach to designing a more human-like artificial intelligence.
TAKE the pulse of the universe, and its invisible wrinkles become visible. The first direct evidence of Einstein's gravitational waves, may already exist in records of light pulses from rapidly spinning dead stars.Crucially, we may uncover those waves as early as 2013. New research suggests that we've underestimated the rate at which black holes merge, and how that changes the light from pulsars.Gravitational waves are produced by massive, accelerating objects, such as two black holes spinning towards each other...
Despite their modern-day diversity of language, lifestyle, and religion, Europe's widespread Romani population shares a common, if complex, past. It all began in northwestern India about 1,500 years ago, according to a study reported on December 6th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that offers the first genome-wide perspective on Romani origins and demographic history.The Romani represent the largest minority group in Europe, consisting of approximately 11 million people. That means the size of the Romani population rivals that of several European countries, including Greece, Portugal, and Belgium.
Researchers are poring over thousands of tiny artifacts - including a child's milk tooth - found in a southern Italian cave that appears to have been shared by both Neanderthals and early man.The caves of Roccia San Sebastiano, which overlook the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Naples, are being combed for traces of those who once lived there.On the slopes of the medieval fortress of Montis Dragonis, near Mondragone in Caserta province, researchers say they've uncovered layers of history, rich in early historical finds.
Cognition and symbolic thought are often viewed as important features of modern human behaviour. Engraved objects are seen as hallmarks of this cognition and symbolism and even as evidence for language, indeed they are usually considered as one of the most important features of modern behaviour.During analysis in 2012 of the stone tools that had been unearthed at the Shuidonggou site in 1980, an interesting engraved stone artefact was discovered among the assemblage.Dr Fei Peng, postdoctoral research fellow at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of the paper in the Chinese Science Bulletin that reported the discovery was amazed at what they found.
Influential Japanese scientists who help set national radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country's nuclear plant operators to attend overseas meetings of the world's top academic group on radiation safety.The potential conflict of interest is revealed in one sentence buried in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year's Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant disaster and pointed out to The Associated Press by a medical doctor on the 10-person investigation panel.
If I asked you to think of a murderer, what's the image that springs to mind?If you're like most people, you'll probably think of an evil psychopath, or someone bent on revenge. Perhaps you'll see a criminal mastermind, who eliminates rivals on his way to riches. Or a strung-out drug addict, who kills because she needs money to get high.All of these images have something in common: As a rule, we tend to associate murder with the behavior of individuals who behave in aberrational ways.
Chinese archaeologists say they have unearthed the palace of China's first feudal emperor, best known for the terracotta warrior army guarding his tomb.The newspaper China Daily reports that archaeologists have excavated the palace complex of Qin Shihuang in Xi'an, China, site of the life-size terracotta soldiers. The palace consists of 10 courtyard buildings and one main building, the paper reported. The complex runs about 2,264 feet long and 820 feet wide. The total area is about a quarter of the size of Beijing's Forbidden City, built in the 1400s.
A self-controlled swimming robot has completed a journey from San Francisco to Australia.The record-breaking 9,000 nautical mile (16,668km) trip took the PacX Wave Glider just over a year to achieve.Liquid Robotics, the US company behind the project, collected data about the Pacific Ocean's temperature, salinity and ecosystem from the drone.
A new type of transistor shaped like a Christmas tree has arrived just in time for the holidays, but the prototype won't be nestled under the tree along with the other gifts."It's a preview of things to come in the semiconductor industry," said Peide "Peter" Ye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University.Researchers from Purdue and Harvard universities created the transistor, which is made from a material that could replace silicon within a decade.
The smartphones in our pockets are about to get even smarter.Scientists want these ubiquitous gadgets to be put to work helping them detect and investigate earthquakes.The devices contain accelerometers and a team at the Berkeley Seismic Laboratory says the mechanisms are capable of monitoring tremors.An app is being developed that will record the shaking during major events and then report the data back to a central server over the cell network.
A couple snuggling in front of the TV could end up getting bombarded by commercials for romantic vacations, flowers or even condoms and birth control pills. That creepy invasion-of-privacy scenario comes from a Verizon patent idea that envisions spying on TV viewers for the sake of serving up related ads.
NASA plans to follow-up its Mars rover Curiosity mission with a duplicate rover that could collect and store samples for return to Earth, the agency's lead scientist said on Tuesday.The new rover will use spare parts and engineering models developed for Curiosity, which is four months into a planned $2.5 billion, two-year mission on Mars to look for habitats that could have supported microbial life.
BILLIONS of years ago, a tiny cyanobacterium cracked open a water molecule - and let loose a poison that wrought death and destruction on an epic scale. The microbe had just perfected photosynthesis, a process that freed the oxygen trapped inside water and killed early Earth's anaerobic inhabitants.Now, for the first time, geologists have found evidence of the crucial evolutionary stage just before cyanobacteria split water. The find offers a unique snapshot of the moment that made the modern world. With the advent of photosynthesis came an atmosphere dominated by oxygen and, ultimately, the diversity of life forms that we know today.
Fido Helps You Focus: It turns out pets aren't just good for snuggling.Research in the Journal of Research in Personality found that having animals in the home helps people reduce stress and even reach their goals better.
Drones could soon be helping protect rhinos, tigers and elephants in Africa and Asia, thanks to cash from Google.Controlled via a tablet computer, the small autonomous aircraft will photograph poachers and track animals via smart radio tags.The World Wildlife Fund added the $5m (£3.1m) grant would also fund software that could map where poachers strike.And it was developing a mobile DNA sampling kit to match body parts with animals.
The reproductive health of the average male is in sharp decline, the world's largest study of the quality and concentration of sperm has found.Between 1989 and 2005, average sperm counts fell by a third in the study of 26,000 men, increasing their risk of infertility. The amount of healthy sperm was also reduced, by a similar proportion.The findings confirm research over the past 20 years that has shown sperm counts declining in many countries across the world. Reasons ranging from tight underwear to toxins in the environment have been advanced to explain the fall, but still no definitive cause has been found.
Research by Indiana University paleobotanist David L. Dilcher and colleagues in Europe sheds new light on what Charles Darwin famously called "an abominable mystery": the apparently sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record.Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers present a scenario in which flowering plants, or angiosperms, evolved and colonized various types of aquatic environments over about 45 million years in the early to middle Cretaceous Period.
Some of the biggest coral die-offs in recorded history happened in 2004 and 2005, after massive earthquakes in Sumatra, off the coast of Indonesia.Now, researchers report similar evidence of ancient massive coral kills on Simeulue Island, caused by ancient earthquakes. An analysis of the fossil coral beds provides clues to the history of megaearthquakes in the region, and could help predict future quakes, researchers said Monday (Dec. 3) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The largest ancient Egyptian sarcophagus has been identified in a tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, say archaeologists who are re-assembling the giant box that was reduced to fragments more than 3,000 years ago.Made of red granite, the royal sarcophagus was built for Merneptah, an Egyptian pharaoh who lived more than 3,200 years ago. A warrior king, he defeated the Libyans and a group called the "Sea Peoples" in a great battle.
The Oracle at Delphi is referenced throughout Greek myths and history. Supposedly she was rendered psychic by Apollo. Realistically, she was off her skull on gas that seeped out of the fissures of the temple in which she lived. Here is the scientific explanation for what caused this woman to utter her confused prophecies.Even during the Oracle at Delphi's time, it was widely known that the Oracle's visions had a practical cause. Gas seeped out of the cracks in the cave where she sat, causing her to talk nonsense.
Cyborg anthropology is the study of the interaction between humans and technology, and how technology affects culture. Mobile technology allows one to stand almost anywhere in the world, whisper something, and be heard elsewhere. These devices that live in our pockets need to be fed every night require our frequent attention. In only a few years these devices have become stitched into the fabric of our everyday lives. Phones offer us respite from the boredom of waiting in lines, but they also inhibit us when they run out of batteries.
Palaeontologists have found what is likely to be the oldest known dinosaur, filling in a yawning evolutionary gap.A study in Biology Letters describes Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a new species from 10-15 million years before the previous earliest dinosaur specimens. It walked on two legs, measured 2-3m in length with a large tail and weighed between 20 and 60kg. The find suggests that many millions of years passed between dinosaurs' first members and their dominance on land."It fills a gap between what we previously knew to be the oldest dinosaurs and their other closest relatives,"...
A self-controlled swimming robot has completed a journey from San Francisco to Australia. The record-breaking 9,000 nautical mile (16,668km) trip took the PacX Wave Glider just over a year to achieve.Liquid Robotics, the US company behind the project, collected data about the Pacific Ocean's temperature, salinity and ecosystem from the drone. The company said its success demonstrated that such technology could "survive the high seas".The robot is called Papa Mau in honour of the late Micronesian navigator Pius "Mau" Piailug, who had a reputation for finding ways to navigate the seas without using traditional equipment.
The Taipei Astronomical Museum has announced that the Geminids are expected to show a wonderful meteor shower, which will be at its peak on Dec. 13-14. It shall be noted that this meteor shower is going to outshine every other meteor showers taking place this year.Things will get more beautiful, as the moon will not be present on above mentioned dates. The Geminids are said to be one of the meteor showers which is quite prolific in nature. If to agree with the museum officials then the meteor shower is going to produce 120 meteors in an hour.
The lions that roam Africa's savannahs have lost as much as 75 percent of their habitat in the last 50 years as humans overtake their land and the lion population dwindles, said a study released Tuesday.Researchers at Duke University, including prominent conservationist Stuart Pimm, warn that the number of lions across the continent have dropped to as few as 32,000, with populations in West Africa under incredible pressure."Lion numbers have declined precipitously in the last century," the study, published Tuesday by the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, reads. "Given that many now live in small, isolated populations, this trend will continue. The situation in West Africa is particularly dire, with no large population remaining and lions now absent from many of the region's national parks".
Sir Richard Branson wants his tourist spaceship also to become a high-altitude science platform.The billionaire's rocket plane will carry six fare-paying passengers just above the atmosphere to experience a few minutes of weightlessness.But the vehicle has been designed so that its seats can be removed easily and the space filled with science gear.Passenger flights should begin in 18 months or so; research sorties could start soon after.
During the space age, 1961 was a special year: the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit Earth, while the American astronomer Frank Drake developed the now famous Drake Equation. This equation estimates the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy, supposing our present electromagnetic detection methods.
Are we there yet? If you're Voyager 1 and you're looking for a spot beyond the end of our solar system, the answer is no.NASA officials have been saying for months that Voyager 1 is almost there when it comes to interstellar space as it continues the longest road trip in the history of mankind.Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 took off 16 days apart in 1977, and Voyager 1 is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun.On Monday, project officials said new information sent back from the ship yielded a surprising resul.
A team of researchers at Cornell University, led by professor Dan Luo, has developed a new kind of hydrogel made from synthesized and interwoven DNA, like a microscopic bird's nest. In the presence of H2O the hydrogel forms and holds a pre-determined shape. But in the absence of water, the material flows like any other liquid. If that sounds familiar, you've probably seen Terminator 2.The researchers aren't entirely sure why the material behaves this way just yet, but they think that the forces responsible for holding its shape are so weak that surface tension and gravity are enough to cause it to collapse.
Can't find the keys -- or the family dog? A new project can help track them and other easy-to-lose objects using Bluetooth-enabled buttons.A group of Bluetooth gadget designers is looking to make Bluetooth "stickers" -- stiff devices about the size of a U.S. quarter -- that users can stick to their wallets, kids' shoes, pets' collars and other objects. The stickers are designed to communicate with a smartphone app, called Stick-N-Find, that has several settings to help people find their stuff.
Sometimes love is an illusion. Especially if you're a bowerbird.These crow kin from Australia and New Guinea are known for constructing elaborate edifices to woo mates. But males of one species, the great bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis), go a step further: They use a trick of architectural perspective to boost their allure, and will stick to their own scheme even if it falls short with the females.
Ancient people probably assembled the massive sandstone horseshoe at Stonehenge more than 4,600 years ago, while the smaller bluestones were imported from Wales later, a new study suggests.The conclusion, detailed in the December issue of the journal Antiquity, challenges earlier timelines that proposed the smaller stones were raised first.
My television series Quest for the Lost Civilisation is now available free of charge for viewers in the UK: HERE. Unfortunately the link is geoblocked for viewers in the US and perhaps elsewhere, but the three shows can be watched internationally on Youtube here: http://youtu.be/-yz1DfTF3-ESERIES SUMMARY: Graham Hancock goes on a global quest to trace the remains of a lost civilisation that passed on its legacy to ancient historical cultures all around the world. From the great Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat to the pyramids of Egypt, he brings in astronomical calculations, water erosion patterns on the Sphinx, interpretations of inscriptions in temples and pyramids to show the advanced knowledge of the heavens and constellations which we only duplicated a few centuries ago.
Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula is dotted with thousands of caves that once housed prehistoric people and later became sacred to the Mayans. German archaeologists and filmmakers are currently involved in a project to explore with modern imaging technology and make a 3-D film of this underwater labyrinth.A person died here hundreds of years ago. His body fell into the flooded cave and sank into the water. His flesh gradually separated from his bones. Today, he stares at divers out of empty eye sockets. His skull seems to be pushing its way out of the soil, as if he were trying to rise from the dead, to rise up from the sand, shake the tiresome sediment from his bones and escape from the silent darkness.
Archaeologists have found the remains of an ancient imperial palace near the tomb of emperor Qin Shi Huang, home of the famous terracotta army, China's state media reported on Sunday.The palace is the largest complex discovered so far in the emperor's sprawling 22 square-mile (56 square-km) second-century BC mausoleum, which lies on the outskirts of Xi'an, an ancient capital city in central China. An associate researcher at the Shaanxi provincial institute of archaeology told China's official news wire Xinhua.
Move over amber. When it comes to preserving soft-bodied animals through the ages, there's a newcomer in town: fossilised leech "cocoons".The cocoons are secreted by many leech and worm species as mucous egg cases that harden and often fossilise. Almost two decades ago, Norwegian scientists found a perfectly preserved nematode worm embedded in the wall of a fossilised cocoon, but no one had investigated further.
A British team has arrived in Antarctica to begin a search for life in a lake that has lain buried under nearly 10,000ft of ice for up to a half a million years.Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey are preparing to bore down to the subglacial Lake Ellsworth, deep beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, to collect samples of water and sediment.Toiling under the midnight sun, they will endure temperatures well below freezing in a quest to discover whether life can survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth.Should they find any organisms living in the icy depths, it could offer tantalising clues as to how life might look if it exists elsewhere in the solar system, such as in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa.
On the factory floor at Sierra Nevada Corporation in Louisville, Colo., four identical satellites are taking shape in separate assembly areas, or pods. These are being built for tracking communications company ORBCOMM, which recently lost the first of these new satellites after a misbehaving SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket dumped it into the wrong orbit. These birds are members of a new breed of spacecraft that are more affordable because they are being made in quantity and with off-the-shelf rather than custom-made components.
A tiny space shuttle made out of DNA "LEGO bricks" shows how scientists could someday build new technologies on the smallest scales.Single DNA strands became "LEGO bricks" that could assemble together by themselves into 102 individual 3D shapes. Harvard researchers manipulated the DNA coding of the bricks so that they could form solid shapes such as the tiny shuttle, honeycomb structures, and even "written" features on a solid base such as numbers and letters of the English alphabet.
British renewable energy firm Blue Energy announced Tuesday that it will build a giant solar power plant in Ghana which it claimed will become the biggest in Africa."Blue Energy is to build Africa's largest solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant", the company said in a statement, in a move "which could spark a renewable energy revolution in west Africa".The 155-megawatt Nzema plant, costing $400 million (305 million euros) to build, will be fully operational in 2015. Blue Energy said there were currently only three other PV plants in the world that are bigger.
DOHA (Reuters) - OPEC member Qatar will ask firms to tender for a 1,800 megawatt (MW) solar energy plant in 2014 costing between $10-20 billion as the world's highest per capita greenhouse gas emitter seeks to increase its renewable energy production."We need to diversify our energy mix," said Fahad Bin Mohammed al-Attiya, chairman of the Qatari organizers of climate talks in Doha. The United Nations-led summit is being held among almost 200 nations from November 26-December 7.
NASA's long-lived Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is heading out of the solar system, has reached a "magnetic highway" leading to interstellar space, scientists said on Monday.The probe, launched 35 years ago to study the outer planets, is now about 11 billion miles from Earth. At that distance, it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light 17 hours to reach Earth. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second.Voyager 1 will be the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
A new analysis of topographic and gravity data from Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons, indicates that Titan's icy outer crust is twice as thick as has generally been thought.Scientists have long suspected that a vast ocean of liquid water lies under the crust. The new study suggests that the internally generated heat that keeps that ocean from freezing solid depends far more on Titan's interactions with Saturn and its other moons than had been suspected.Howard Zebker, a professor of geophysics and of electrical engineering at Stanford University, will present the findings at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco on Tuesday (Dec. 4).
BEIJING, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese astronauts may get fresh vegetables and oxygen supplies by gardening in extraterrestrial bases in the future, an official said after a just-concluded lab experiment in Beijing.Deng Yibing, deputy director of the Beijing-based Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Center, said that the experiment focused on a dynamic balanced mechanism of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water between people and plants in a closed system.
Nasa craft Curiosity's samples reveal mix of organic compounds but further study needed to know if they are indigenousThe first detailed analysis of Martian soil by Nasa's car-sized rover, Curiosity, has revealed a complex mix of substances, including water, sulphur, chlorine and organic compounds. At this stage though it is not possible to say where the carbon contained in the organic material originated. It may have been carried to Mars as contamination on the rover, or aboard meteorites that rain down on the planet's dusty surface.Note: NASA release here
The Supreme Court announced Friday it will decide whether companies can patent human genes, a decision that could reshape medical research in the United States and the fight against diseases like breast and ovarian cancer.The justices' decision will likely resolve an ongoing battle between scientists who believe that genes carrying the secrets of life should not be exploited for commercial gain and companies that argue that a patent is a reward for years of expensive research that moves science forward.
Scientists have discovered for the first time how humans - and other mammals - have evolved to have intelligence.Researchers have identified the moment in history when the genes that enabled us to think and reason evolved.This point 500 million years ago provided our ability to learn complex skills, analyse situations and have flexibility in the way in which we think.The research also shows a direct link between the evolution of behaviour and the origins of brain diseases.
Have you ever tried to control your dreams?Back in my college days I became obsessed with lucid dreaming -- having dreams in which I was aware I was dreaming and could shape my internal world with thought alone. After a few weeks of practice, I'd trained myself to ask, "Am I dreaming? How do I know?" whenever something in my environment seemed "off." One night I found myself chatting with Kurt Cobain in my living room. "Wait a minute," I said, "Kurt Cobain's been dead for years!" And suddenly I could fly through the roof and off into the sky. For the next few months I spent a few nights every week hurtling through space, defeating mobs of ninjas and sampling the affections of famous actresses. Sue me -- I was 18, and The Matrix was the coolest thing on Earth.
For some reason, recent UFO reports over Denver still have legs, or antennae, depending on your point of view, belief or personal bias.In early November, FOX TV affiliate, KDVR presented a series of videos, taken by an anonymous source, which purported to show UFOs buzzing around, maneuvering up and down, right and left at dazzling speeds -- all allegedly not visible to the naked eye, only by video after it was slowed down.
Normally, North Korea's official state news agency is the place to go for reports ranging from the reclusive totalitarian state's unparalleled scientific achievements to the limitless love which its inhabitants reserve for their successive leaders.Yet in what appears to be a genuine world exclusive, the inimitable Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has now broken the incredible news that archaeologists in Pyongyang have discovered a unicorn's lair.
Over 100 graves have been dug up in the West African country of Benin, looted by grave robbers seeking body parts for use in magic rituals.Many Americans only think of witches and witchcraft around Halloween. But in many countries belief in witches is common, and black magic is considered part of everyday life. In Africa, witch doctors are consulted not only for healing diseases, but also for placing (or removing) magic curses or bringing luck -- much like many psychics and fortunetellers in America.
Love, according to romantics, can have a dramatic effect on the senses: striking lovers blind, deaf or rendering them tongue-tied. But the simple answer to the question of whether any relationship is "the one" seems to be that your ideal man or woman gets up your nose. New research suggests a sense of smell is vital for a good long-term relationship.In the new study, reported in the journal Biological Psychology, researchers looked for the first time at the effect of being born without a sense on smell on men and women's relationships.
An embryo is an amazing thing. From just one initial cell, an entire living, breathing body emerges, full of working cells and organs. It comes as no surprise that embryonic development is a very carefully orchestrated process -- everything has to fall into the right place at the right time. Developmental and cell biologists study this very thing, unraveling the molecular cues that determine how we become human."One of the first, and arguably most important, steps in development is the allocation of cells into three germ layers -- ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm -- that give rise to all tissues and organs in the body," explains Mark Mercola, Ph.D., professor and director of Sanford-Burnham's Muscle Development and Regeneration Program in the Sanford Children's Health Research Center.
A team made up of members from several European countries has published a paper in Physical Review Letters describing a technique they've developed for using fractal geometry to build structures that maintain their strength despite weighing significantly less.The researchers began their study by noting that many structures in the world already demonstrate some degree of fractal geometry. The Eifel Tower for example, they note was essentially built using a single type of metal rod that is replicated in different sizes throughout the tower to minimize weight. What's not been the case however, they add is a predefined way to implement fractal geometry into structures in general. To rectify that, they have come up with a process that allows for creating metal beams that take advantage of fractal properties.
Spoilage of harvests on their way to market contributes to food shortages in India. A UC-industry partnership has produced an innovative solar chiller container and distribution plan to change that.A new product is set to roll out in India. It's a food-storage device that uses solar panels to cool produce and preserve crops on their way to market, needed in India where 30 to 40 percent of the harvest is lost because of the lack of cold-chain facilities to store and transport food.This sustainable fix in the form of the SolerCool container and a business plan to successfully launch the innovation is possible thanks to University of Cincinnati-industry partnerships.
THE AUSTRALIANTHE end of the world is nigh - and that is excellent news for the small French village singled out in doomsday cults as the only place likely to survive the apocalypse.With esoteric groups circulating a rumour that everyone will perish on December 21 unless they are on Pic de Bugarach, in the Pyrenees, locals can scarcely believe their good fortune.They have spotted an opportunity to make money from New Agers who believe that extraterrestrials will emerge from the mountain top and rescue anyone who is there on the fateful day.
A New Zealand researcher Monday claimed to have solved the riddle of a mystery South Pacific island shown on Google Earth and world maps which does not exist, blaming a whaling ship from 1876.The phantom landmass in the Coral Sea is shown as Sandy Island on Google Earth and Google maps and is supposedly midway between Australia and the French-governed New Caledonia.The Times Atlas of the World appears to identify it as Sable Island, but according to Australian scientists who went searching last month during a geological expedition it could not be found.
Deception is something that people do all the time -- and it plays an important role in military strategy. Now some researchers are trying to figure out how to get robots to do it, by looking at the behavior of squirrels and birds.At Georgia Tech, a team led by Ronald Arkin, a professor at the School of Interactive Computing, studied the literature on squirrels hiding their caches of acorns. Squirrels will hide their food in a certain place, but when they see other squirrels trying to steal from them, they attempt to fool the thieves by running to a false location.
An inventor in his teen years has been on a three-week visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a guest resident. From university officers to labs workers, to bloggers, Americans enjoyed the chance to get to know him better as he got to know his way around university life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the youngest invite ever to MIT's Visiting Practitioner's Program for international development. A 16-year-old from Sierra Leone, he is a self-taught engineer. He never took any engineering or electronics class, but at 13 figured out how to make a battery suitable enough to power his family home. Kelvin Doe told his interviewers that "I love inventing." Never mind that the things he made have been from bits and pieces found around the house and from electronic parts found in dustbins which he used to head toward after school. That is how he made the first Doe battery.
Catalan is not, as some believe, a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently out of the vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans who colonised the Tarragona area. It is spoken by 9 million people in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, Andorra and the town of Alghero in Sardinia.Variants of Catalan are spoken in Valencia and the Balearics, which were taken back from the Moors in the 13th century. According to Professor Albert Rossich of the University of Girona (Gerona) these variants reflect the origin of the people who repopulated these areas when the Moors were driven out. Valencia was repopulated with people from Lleida and Tortosa; the Baleares with people from Barcelona and l'Empordà in the north.
Trust rather than lust is at the heart of the attention to detail and finely made form of handaxes from around 1.7 million years ago, according to a University of York researcher.Dr Penny Spikins, from the Department of Archaeology, suggests a desire to prove their trustworthiness, rather than a need to demonstrate their physical fitness as a mate, was the driving force behind the fine crafting of handaxes by Homo erectus/ergaster in the Lower Palaeolithic period.
Through seven years of disputes, a proposed rock quarry site in Riverside County has been called a job creator, an economy killer, an environmental disaster and even a creation site.The debate ended Thursday, when the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians agreed to purchase 354 acres of the mountaintop site for $3 million and pay developer Granite Construction $17.35 million to end the dispute.
The 13-inch android is scheduled to be completed by next summer and will be sent to the orbiting ISS shortly before astronaut Koichi Wakata arrives, according to officials of the Kibo Robot Project.Currently being developed by a consortium of companies, including Toyota, Robo Garage Co. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the robot will weigh around 2.2lbs and be able to recognise Wakata's facial features.
A rail operator in Japan has unveiled a prototype high-speed magnetic levitation , or 'maglev', train which uses state-of-the-art technology to hit speeds of 310mph.Last week Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) revealed its Series L0 prototype, which it plans to operate on one of Japan's busiest routes from 2027.Maglev trains use magnets to lift the train above the track, eliminating friction to provide a faster and quieter service.JR Tokai says it aims to run the train between Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan's third largest incorporated city, on the JR Chuo Shinkansen Line, a route currently served by Japan's high-speed bullet trains. If approved, the new train will pass to the northwest of of Mount Fuji.
Archeologists have excavated the ruins of an ancient palace in China near the mausoleum of the country's first emperor dating back over two millennia.The tomb, which is related to the emperor renowned for its terracotta soldiers, became one of the greatest modern archaeological finds in 1974 when a peasant during digging a well hit the life-size warriors at the spot, China's state-run news agency Xinhua has reported.
Dr. Eben Alexander says there is a heaven. Dr. Eben Alexander says he's been there. Dr. Eben Alexander says he has scientific proof of both of those things. And Dr. Eben Alexander says he is that proof.Alexander, his epiphany and his crusade aren't as well known as his original thesis, which was proclaimed on the cover of Newsweek in October.CA - UK - US
In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings. My concern here is with the bigger picture.I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science. But I am more and more convinced that that the spirit of free inquiry is being repressed within the scientific community by fear-based conformity. Institutional science is being crippled by dogmas and taboos. Increasingly expensive research is yielding diminishing returns.
Scientists have finally shown what has been postulated for decades: the planet Mercury holds billions of tonnes of water ice at its north pole.A report in Science shows evidence from the Messenger spacecraft that craters in constant shadow host water.A futher pair of Science papers shows that much of the ice is beneath an insulating layer of dark material rich in organic and "volatile" molecules.
An international team of astrophysicists has discovered an enormous gaseous planet that is 13 times more massive than Jupiter, earning it the designation "super-Jupiter."The finding, which is set to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, marks the first new exoplanet system to be directly observed in over four years, according to the researchers. A pre-print of the study is available here.
Astronomers were puzzled earlier this year when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted an overabundance of dark matter in the heart of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520. This observation was surprising because dark matter and galaxies should be anchored together, even during a collision between galaxy clusters.Astronomers have abundant evidence that an as-yet-unidentified form of matter is responsible for 90 percent of the gravity within galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Because it is detected via its gravity and not its light, they call it "dark matter.".
Many of the moons in the solar system could have been spawned from giant rings around planets. According to a new model, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and even the Earth may have once had ring systems that gave rise to satellites.We used to think that moons form around planets in the same way as planets form around stars: coalescing from a gaseous disc that surrounded the planet as it formed. That model still applies to some moons, like those of Jupiter.
Northern California is experiencing the first days of what weather forecasters are warning will be a long series of torrential rainstorms that could cause serious flooding across the northern one-third of the state. The relentless storms are being driven by a feature in the atmosphere you have probably never heard of: an atmospheric river.Oh, and another atmospheric river created the worst flooding since the 1960s in western England and Wales this past week, where more than 1,000 homes had to be evacuated.
The Catholic Church has established an exorcist hotline in Milan, its biggest diocese, to cope with demand. Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni, the diocese's chief exorcist since 1995, said the curia had also appointed twice as many exorcists to cope with a doubling in the number of requests for help over 15 years."We get many requests for names, addresses and phone numbers; that's why we've set up a switchboard in the curia from Monday to Friday from 2.30pm to 5pm," he told the chiesadimilano website."People in need can call and will be able to find a priest in the same area who doesn't have to travel too far." And to that end, the number of demon-busting priests on call has increased from six to 12.
Get your garlic, crosses and stakes ready: a bloodsucking vampire is on the loose - or so say villagers in a tiny western Serbian hamlet.People in Zarozje, which is nestled between lush green mountain slopes and spooky thick forests, say rumours that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened has seen fear - and a potential tourist opportunity - spread through the remote village.A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visitors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.Images at Mail Online
Call it a card player's dream. A complete set of 52 silver playing cards gilded in gold and dating back 400 years has been discovered.Created in Germany around 1616, the cards were engraved by a man named Michael Frömmer, who created at least one other set of silver cards.According to a story, backed up by a 19th-century brass plate, the cards were at one point owned by a Portuguese princess who fled the country, cards in hand, after Napoleon's armies invaded in 1807.
More than 4 trillon tonnes of ice from Greenland and Antarctica has melted in the past 20 years and flowed into the oceans, pushing up sea levels, according to a study that provides the best measure to date of the effect climate change is having on the earth's biggest ice sheets.The research involved dozens of scientists and 10 satellite missions and presents a disturbing picture of the impact of recent warming at the poles.
A study dating the age of more than 1 million single-letter variations in the human DNA code reveals that most of these mutations are of recent origin, evolutionarily speaking. These kinds of mutations change one nucleotide -- an A, C, T or G -- in the DNA sequence. Over 86 percent of the harmful protein-coding mutations of this type arose in humans just during the past 5,000 to 10,000 years.Some of the remaining mutations of this nature may have no effect on people, and a few might be beneficial, according to the project researchers. While each specific mutation is rare, the findings suggest that the human population acquired an abundance of these single-nucleotide genetic variants in a relatively short time.
Fifty-nine years after James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double-helix structure of DNA, a scientist has captured the first direct photograph of the twisted ladder that props up life.Enzo Di Fabrizio, a physics professor at Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy, snapped the picture using an electron microscope.Previously, scientists had only seen DNA's structure indirectly. The double-corkscrew form was first discovered using a technique called X-ray crystallography, in which a material's shape is reconstructed based on how X-rays bounce after they collide with it.
A mapping of the pig genome sheds light on how pig farming has changed the animal over time. The new findings could be of great benefit to medical research.The pig's coat has become lighter, its body is longer and it now has a few more ribs than it used to.Humans have been breeding pigs for thousands of years, and our intervention into pigs' lives has left clear marks.A new international study has investigated how the pig's genes have been affected by man.
A postdoctoral student has developed a technique for implanting thought-controlled robotic arms and their electrodes directly to the bones and nerves of amputees, a move which he is calling "the future of artificial limbs". The first volunteers will receive their new limbs early in 2013."The benefits have no precedent," Max Ortiz Catalan, who carries out research in biomedicine and artificial intelligence at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, told Wired.co.uk. "They will be able to simultaneously control several joints and motions, as well as to receive direct neural feedback on their actions. These features are today not available for patients outside research labs. Our aim is to change that.".
How old is the Grand Canyon? Old enough to be gazed on by dinosaurs, which died out 65 million years ago, or closer to six million years old, formed about when the earliest human ancestors began walking upright?A bitter controversy among geologists over this question edged into the open on Thursday, when a report published in the journal Science offered new support for the old-canyon hypothesis, which is not the prevailing one. In the report, Rebecca M. Flowers of the University of Colorado and Kenneth A. Farley of the California Institute of Technology used an improved dating technique based on the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium atoms into helium atoms in a mineral known as apatite. They said this yielded a thermal record of these rocks under the canyon floor, hot at great depths but cooler the closer they were to the surface.
One of the British Museum's most iconic objects, the Cyrus Cylinder, will tour five major museums in the US next year.The cylinder, often referred to as the first bill of human rights, "must be shared as widely as possible", said museum director Neil MacGregor.It is inscribed with the earliest form of writing - Babylonian cuneiform.
Murder is contagious and may spread like the flu, new research suggests.The researchers relied on the same techniques public-health officials use to track the spread of diseases, but applied them to the spread of homicide in Newark, N.J., over a 26-year span from 1982 to 2008.And just as in other epidemics, certain neighborhoods were more susceptible than others. Diverse, immigrant-rich communities looked to be protected against homicide's spread in the research, while the poorest neighborhoods were more vulnerable. These findings suggest communities could inoculate themselves against murder waves by addressing the underlying risk factors, said study co-author April Zeoli, a criminal justice researcher at Michigan State University.