Newsdesk Archive

There is evidence that some microbial life had migrated from Earth's oceans to land by 2.75 billion years ago, though many scientists believe such land-based life was limited because the ozone layer that shields against ultraviolet radiation did not form until hundreds of millions years later.But new research from the University of Washington suggests that early microbes might have been widespread on land, producing oxygen and weathering pyrite, an iron sulfide mineral, which released sulfur and molybdenum into the oceans.

The doctors prescribing the drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling.Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug's true effects.

THE divide in world opinion over what constitutes free speech will be on display again this week at the United Nations, where arguments over a proposed blasphemy law were an annual feature for a decade.This time it is the global reaction to a YouTube video that disparages Islam's prophet Muhammad that is sure to roil the meeting of the UN General Assembly.Muslim leaders have vowed to discuss the offensive video from their UN platforms, sowing concern among free-speech activists of a fresh push toward an international law that would criminalise blasphemy. Human rights groups and Western democracies resisted such a law for years and thought they had finally quashed the matter after convincing enough nations that repressive regimes used blasphemy laws to imprison or execute dissidents.

A recently deciphered Egyptian papyrus from around 1,900 years ago tells a fictional story that includes drinking, singing, feasting and ritual sex, all in the name of the goddess Mut.Researchers believe that a priest wrote the blush-worthy tale, as a way to discuss controversial ritual sex acts with other priests."Our text may represent a new and hitherto unrecognized Egyptian literary genre: 'cult' fiction, the purpose of which was to allow controversial or contentious matters pertaining to the divine cult to be scrutinized in this way,"...

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe. This is the "wow" factor behind a device known as a "space-time crystal," a four-dimensional crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space. However, there are also practical and important scientific reasons for constructing a space-time crystal. With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective means by which to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, the so-called many-body problem of physics.

The Sagrada Família in Barcelona is a spectacular building in its own right, but when you throw a healthy dose of the latest lighting and architectural mapping technology in its direction, the facade of famous church becomes truly mesmerizing. That dose comes from Moment Factory, a new media and entertainment studio based in Montreal, Canada, which has produced a 15-minute multimedia tribute inspired by the original color sketches and words of the buildings' equally famous architect Antoni Gaudi.

Scientists seeking to better understand and predict massive solar eruptions are zeroing in on mysterious cavities in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.These coronal cavities serve as launch pads for billion-ton clouds of solar plasma called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Understanding the roots of CMEs is a high priority for solar researchers, since blasts that hit Earth squarely can disrupt radio communications, satellite navigation and power grids."We don't really know what gets these CMEs going," Terry Kucera, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "So we want to understand their structure before they even erupt, because then we might have a better clue about why it's erupting and perhaps even get some advance warning on when they will erupt." .

Distracting from the news that Arctic sea-ice extent reached a record low on Sept.16 is a widely circulating blog article claiming that at the opposite end of the Earth, Antarctic sea ice is more than making up for the losses.In the post, climate change skeptic and blogger Steven Goddard states that Antarctic sea ice reached its highest level ever recorded for the 256th day of the calendar year on Sept. 12. He reasons that the Southern Hemisphere must be balancing the warming of the Northern Hemisphere by becoming colder (and thus, net global warming is zero).

Archaeologists have unearthed remnants of what they believe is a 1,000-year-old village on a jungle-covered mountaintop in the Philippines with limestone coffins of a type never before found in this Southeast Asian nation, officials said Thursday.National Museum official Eusebio Dizon said the village on Mount Kamhantik, near Mulanay town in Quezon province, could be at least 1,000 years old based on U.S. carbon dating tests done on a human tooth found in one of 15 limestone graves he and other archaeologists have dug out since last year.

Please bear with me as I ask you to briefly use your imagination. Close your eyes. Imagine Machu Picchu at dawn cloaked in fog. Now imagine the fog slowly lifting to reveal an enormous ancient city perched on the edge of a mountain.Picture a sense of mystery being immersed in thousands of years of history as you walk between antiquated hewn stone structures. There is tranquility in the wind-blown stillness of the primeval site. You feel a renewed sense of kinship with the past and with your ancestors and feel a deep reverence for their lives and accomplishments.

On October 23, 1962, a U.S. Navy commander named William B. Ecker took off from Key West at midday in an RF-8 Crusader jet equipped with five reconnaissance cameras. Accompanied by a wingman, Lt. Bruce Wilhelmy, he headed toward a mountainous region of western Cuba where Soviet troops were building a facility for medium-range missiles aimed directly at the United States. A U-2 spy plane, flying as high as 70,000 feet, had already taken grainy photographs that enabled experts to find the telltale presence of Soviet missiles on the island. But if President John F. Kennedy was going to make the case that the weapons were a menace to the entire world, he would need better pictures.

Following on from Part 1 (Click Here), in which I consider the digital record and how much of it might survive into the near and distant future.There are, of course, other historical records. Great works of art and literature are likely to survive for a fair amount of time through replication or conservation, whether or not they are stored digitally. But there are limits to physical preservation, and the destruction of intentionally conserved records tends to be down to human, rather than natural processes. Julius Caesar is thought to have (accidentally) burnt down the centuries old library at Alexandria; in modern day Greece, Iraq, and Egypt political and economic factors have allowed looters to raid important museum collections.

In March 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami set off a partial meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant on Japan's coast. A recent study led by European researchers found Fukushima is not alone, as 22 other plants around the world may be similarly susceptible to destructive tsunami waves, with most of them in east and southeast regions of Asia.The 23 facilities on the list (including Fukushima) house a total of 74 nuclear reactors. Thirteen of the plants are active, while the others are either nearing completion or being expanded to house more reactors. The researchers say East and Southeast Asia are at the greatest risk of a nuclear crisis triggered by a tsunami because of the rise of atomic power stations in the region, especially in China, which houses 27 of the world's 64 nuclear reactors currently under construction.

Not so long ago, gods and witchcraft were the main explanations for natural phenomena. Nowadays scientists and science can explain even the most incredible findings. However, in the night of the tropical rainforest we found something that would make even the most rational scientist wonder about the magical world.In an expedition such as this, where one has a time window of only two weeks and the ambition to sample as many species as possible of the fungal world, one must walk in the limbo of tiredness and making the most out of this opportunity.

Rigorous experiments seem to suggest that ESP and mental telepathy are real, yet these phenomena are rejected as hoaxes by mainstream science, because belief in mind reading would contradict the most basic laws of our understanding of reality. Or would it? Via Reality Sandwich, Chris Carter argues that telepathy and quantum physics go hand-in-hand.

Passenger jets could be chomping on straw or flying on fuel extracted from sawdust in coming years as the search widens for cleaner alternatives to kerosene, French scientists say.The "ProBio3" project, started in early July and co-financed by a French government economic stimulus program, aims to use traditional horse-bedding materials to develop a new kind of biofuel that can be used in a 50/50 blend alongside kerosene.

A team of physicists has published a study detailing how it has devised a cheap way to print lasers on to nearly any surface using an ordinary inkjet printer -- a find that could revolutionise the future production and use of lasers.The paper, published in the journal Soft Matter, explains how a team of University of Cambridge physicists and engineers printed hundreds of small dots of chiral nematic liquid crystal molecules (LC) -- which are already used to create organic lasers -- on to a material coated with a wet polymer solution. When that solution dries, it reacts with the liquid crystals, causing them to align and be transformed into individual multi-colour lasers, without the addition of mirrors.

In July, physicists were ecstatic in announcing preliminary results pointing to the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson particle. The Higgs boson is a tiny subatomic particle that apparently weighs about 130 times as much as an atom of hydrogen, the lightest gas. The non-scientist might have no idea what's so important about this elementary particle, but Wichita State University physics professor Nick Solomey is excited about the discovery.

Crows, sea lions, and many other critters use social networks to increase their fitness and survival. To understand how, researchers are turning away from Twitter and Facebook and, instead, looking to the power of tiny radio tags that record wildlife encounters.Of course, the researchers can access the data logged by the tags via the Internet, which means they can spend more time working in the lab rather than in the field waiting to catch a glimpse of critter meetup.The system, called Encounternet, hinges on fingernail-sized tags that weigh as little as less than 1 gram (0.035 ounces) and send and receive pulses. Each tag emits a unique pulse, allowing researchers to know what animals met when.

How do language families evolve over many thousands of years and how stable over time are structural features of languages?Researchers Dan Dediu and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen introduced a new method using Bayesian phylogenetic approaches to analyse the evolution of structural features in more than 50 language families.

Thousands of people in the Asian island nation of Sri Lanka have been struck by a mysterious and deadly form of kidney disease. A new study points to a likely cause - pesticides and fertilisers.Tucked away in Sri Lanka's North Central Province is the village of Halmillawetiya. A pebbled path connects small houses of brick and mud set among coconut palms and other tropical trees.Sampath Kumarasinghe, aged 21, lives here with his widowed mother and extended family.

Artificial soil-like materials have been developed to help scientists image the secret world of plant roots. The view could help biologists, chemists and physicists improve crops and identify ways to prevent the outbreak of plant-based diseases.The clear soil was developed by theoretical biologist Lionel Dupuy at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland. It's is made of a synthetic material known as Nafion. The compound can be modified to mimic the chemistry of natural soils. It's not transparent at first, but when watered in a customized liquid solution, the particles bend light, making the solution clear.

Harvard University says it hasn't committed to publishing research that purportedly shows some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife even though its divinity school touted the research during a publicity blitz this week.The research centers on a fourth-century papyrus fragment containing Coptic text in which Jesus uses the words "my wife." On Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King announced at an international conference that the fragment was the only existing ancient text in which Jesus explicitly talks of having a wife.

New computer models suggest there could be many more habitable planets out there than previously thought.Scientists have developed models to help them identify planets in far-away solar systems that are capable of supporting life.Estimates of habitable planet numbers have been based on the likelihood of them having surface water.But a new model allows scientists to identify planets with underground water kept liquid by planetary heat.The research was presented at the British Science Festival in Aberdeen.

Fifty years ago today (Sept. 12), President John F. Kennedy whipped up support for NASA's fledgling Apollo program in a speech that contains perhaps the most famous words he ever uttered about space exploration.Kennedy's stirring, soaring "moon speech," delivered at Rice University in Houston, laid out why the president believed sending astronauts to Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of the 1960s was so important. Kennedy had first aired that ambitious goal in May 1961, just six weeks after the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin became the first human to reach space.

Sending people to another star will be a monumental undertaking, and the challenges will be not just technological, but human. One thorny question, experts say, is whether to involve organized religions in the effort to mount an interstellar journey.Religious leaders argued the issue Sept. 14 in Houston at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the prospect of sending a space mission to another star within 100 years.

Both men lit themselves on fire in protest. But only one of them is credited with starting a revolution. The difference between the two? Mobile phones recorded Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor, as he set himself ablaze in despair over his economic plight. Those videos kicked off the wave of 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations. Abdesslem Trimech, the other man, fell into relative obscurity.The example, cited in the book "The Mobile Wave," highlights just one of the many superpowers that mobile phones -- and to a lesser extent, tablets -- have bestowed upon humanity. In addition to enabling us to video events on a second's notice, potentially altering the course of global politics, these high-tech human "appendages" increasingly have become tools for fighting corruption, buying stuff, bolstering memory, promoting politics, improving education and giving people around the world more access to health care.

Scientists would love to be able to rewind the universe and watch what happened from the start. Since that's not possible, researchers must create their own mini-universes inside computers and unleash the laws of physics on them, to study their evolution.Now researchers are planning the most detailed, largest-scale simulation of this kind to date. One of the main mysteries they hope to solve with it is the origin of the dark energy that's causing the universe to accelerate in its expansion.

Venomous reptiles may provide a good source for new drugs for human diseases, researchers in Liverpool say.Venom has already been used to create drugs, but the chemicals in it are often too deadly for human consumption.However, a study, published in the journal Nature Communications, has shown snakes and lizards have "reclaimed" some toxins and used them, safely, elsewhere in their own bodies.Scientists think these reclaimed toxins could make safe and effective drugs.

Akrotiri is well known to archaeologists as the excavation site of a remarkably well-preserved Minoan Bronze Age settlement that was buried by the massive and widespread Theran eruption in the middle of the second millennium BC. The eruption was one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history. It devastated the island of Thera (also called Santorini), which included the settlement at Akrotiri, in addition to communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and on the coast of Crete. Like the Roman ruins of Pompeii much later in 79 A.D., it's buildings and human artifacts were exceptionally preserved under the super-heated, yet protective, covering of the volcano's ashfall. Frescoes, pottery, furniture, advanced drainage systems and three-story buildings have been discovered at the site through excavations conducted by Spyridon Marinatos beginning in 1967. Some historians suggest that this settlement, as well as the volcanic disaster, was the inspiration for Plato's writing about Atlantis.

A flowering California shrub thought to be extinct in the wild for almost seven decades was added to the federal endangered species list Wednesday after a sharp-eyed biologist spotted the plant on a highway median while driving off the Golden Gate Bridge.The last known Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana) was discovered in 2009 during a highway construction project, and after genetic tests confirmed the species, the state spent $109,000 on a crane to move the plant and its 12.5-ton root ball to another site so the $1 billion project could continue, federal and state officials said.

Many of the mammals that emerged right after the non-avian dinosaur extinction were hearty creatures, as exemplified by Ernanodon, a beast described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.The skeleton that is the focus of the study is nearly complete, revealing how this early mammal looked in the flesh and lived."Ernanodon was a badger-sized, rather chunky mammal with a short square skull, extremely reduced dentition and big claws on the forelimbs," lead author Peter Kondrashov told Discovery News.

An international group of scientists has developed a material that can turn wasted heat into electricity with unprecedented efficiency, a discovery that may one day allow for more efficient cars and buildings. The finding was reported this week in the journal Nature.The material is crucial to creating devices called thermoelectric generators, which are designed to create an electrical charge when a difference in temperature exists across them. When such a difference exists, electrons move from one side to the other and a voltage is created which can be captured and used as electricity.

The impact of crop pesticides on honeybee colonies is unlikely to cause colony collapse, according to a paper in the journal Science today. More research is now needed to predict the impact of widely-used agricultural insecticides, called neonicotinoids, on honeybee populations.UK scientists from the University of Exeter and Food and Environment Agency highlight flaws in previous research (published in Science, April 2012) that predicted that neonicotinoids could cause honeybee colony collapse. Neonicotinoids are among the most widely-used agricultural insecticides and honeybees ingest residues of the pesticides as they gather nectar and pollen from treated plants.

Egypt on Thursday reopened the Serapeum of Saqqara, a vast underground necropolis south of Cairo dedicated to the bulls of Apis, after 11 years and complete renovation of the historic Pharaonic site.The Serapeum, whose origin dates back to around 1400 BC, was discovered in 1851 by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, founder of the first department of Egyptian antiquities. It was closed temporarily in 2001 because of water seepage and earth movements.

British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is to lead the first team on foot across Antarctica during the southern winter.The six-month expedition next year is being called the Coldest Journey, crossing terrain where the temperature has hit -90C.It will be 68-year-old Sir Ranulph's latest record attempt. Past feats have seen him go pole to pole and climb Everest as a pensioner.Guinness World Records describes him as the world's greatest living explorer.

One of the world's leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades' time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward.".

A Carthaginian burial site was not for child sacrifice but was instead a graveyard for babies and fetuses, researchers now say.A new study of the ancient North African site offers the latest volley in a debate over the primary purpose of the graveyard, long thought to be a place of sacred sacrifice."It's all very great, cinematic stuff, but whether that was a constant daily activity ― I think our analysis contradicts that," said study co-author Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh.

Experiments on the division of labour in honeybee hives have revealed why some bees do the waggle dance while others nurse their queens.The roles require drastically different behaviours, with nurses feeding the larvae and performing royal grooming duties, and foragers navigating great distances and performing complex dance routines to point others in the direction of rich sources of nectar.According to a report in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the job a worker bee does corresponds to distinct patterns of chemicals that latch on to and regulate certain genes in their brains.

In April, the U.S. Department of Energy and an international consortium of major oil and gas companies completed an unprecedented two-month proof-of-concept test in the North Slope of Alaska. The experiment was supposed to show that a steady flow of methane molecules could be extracted from a substance known as methane or gas hydrates submerged under the sea floor.It worked and the world moved one step closer to tapping gas hydrates, the most abundant fossil fuel resource on Earth.

There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world's demand. Atmospheric turbines that convert steadier and faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate even more power than ground- and ocean-based units. New research from Carnegie's Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested from winds, as well as the effects high-altitude wind power could have on the climate as a whole. Their work is published September 9 by Nature Climate Change.

European aerospace giant Airbus is proposing a new method of air transport that takes advantage of bird-like formations to reduce drag, save energy and fly more quickly to their destinations. The planes going in the same general direction would join together in an aerodynamic formation before splitting off to land.Airbus' proposal for 2050 also includes robot-assisted take-off for passenger jets, (just like fighters on carrier decks) to shorten runways and get planes to cruising altitude more quickly. The company claims shorter runways will also take up less land and produce fewer carbon emissions.

Our universe is a mysterious place. Only 4 percent or so is made up of the ordinary matter we see around us, including all those galaxies filled with stars. The rest, physicists believe, is made of up weakly interacting dark matter, and a mysterious substance called dark energy that is causing the cosmos to expand at an accelerating rate.At least, that's the working hypothesis, and it seems to fit the data, although there are scientists who question its existence and tout alternatives to explain that accelerating expansion.A new, two-year study by scientists at the University of Portsmouth and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen concludes that dark energy does, indeed, exist. Those results just appeared in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Intercontinental travel will never happen. The nearest shore is thousands of miles away. This means that even if we had the ability to row five miles per day from our little island, it would take years to get there!To rub (sea) salt into the wound, the nearest shoreline is probably not a place we'd want to visit anyway. We've heard that beasts of unimaginable horror lurk over the horizon. Even worse, what if that undiscovered country is a desert-like place, or a disease-ridden tropic? Perhaps water doesn't even flow as a liquid! Imagine trying to live in a land covered with ice. What a thought!.

EGYPT INDEPENDENTThe State Council Administrative Court on Saturday ordered the government to take the necessary procedures to recover 179 artifacts that belonged to Queen Cleopatra from the United States.Former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif had issued a decree to display the artifacts in the United States, based on an individual agreement signed by Zahi Hawass, the former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities; the National Geographic Society, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch; and two other American associations.The court ruled that the agreement is a violation of Article 10 of the Antiquities Protection Act, which prohibits contracts with private foreign societies to display antiquities outside Egypt.

A rare scarab amulet newly unearthed in Tel Aviv reveals the ancient Egyptian presence in this modern Israeli city.Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, have long uncovered evidence of Egyptian influence. Now, researchers have learned that a gateway belonging to an Egyptian fortification in Jaffa was destroyed and rebuilt at least four times. They have also found the scarab, which bears the cartouche of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390 to 1353 B.C. Scarabs were common charms in ancient Egypt, representing the journey of the sun across the sky and the cycle of life.

A comprehensive atlas of the adult human brain that reveals the activity of genes across the entire organ has been created by scientists.The map was created from genetic analyses of about 900 specific parts of two "clinically unremarkable" brains donated by a 24-year-old and 39-year-old man, and half a brain from a third man.Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle said the atlas will serve as a baseline against which they and others can compare the genetic activity of diseased brains, and so shed light on factors that underlie neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has enacted a law aimed at protecting a unique species of dolphins that live in the country's Amazon rivers.The new legislation bans fishing freshwater pink dolphins and declares the species a national treasure.At a ceremony along the shores of the Ibare river, President Morales called on the armed forces to protect the habitats of the pink dolphins.

A space rock crashed into Earth about 12,900 years ago, wiping out some of North America's biggest beasts and ushering in a period of extreme cooling, researchers say, based on new evidence supporting this comet-crash scenario.If such an impact took place, it did not leave behind any obvious clues like a crater. But microscopic melted rock formations called spherules and nano-size diamonds in ancient soil layers could be telltale signs of a big collision. The mix of particles could only have formed under extreme temperatures, created by a comet or asteroid impact.Researchers first reported in 2007 that these particles were found at several archaeological sites in layers of sediment 12,900 years old. Now an independent study published in the Sept.17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) says those findings hold up.

NASA currently controls its deep space missions through a network of huge satellite dishes in California, Spain and Australia known as the Deep Space Network (DSN). Even the Voyager 1 probe relies on these channels to beam data back to Earth as it careers away into space.But traffic on the network is growing fast, at a rate that the current set-up can't handle. Two new dishes are being built in Australia at the moment to cope with the extra data, but a researcher from University of Southern California has proposed a slightly more radical solution to the problem.

The sun still shines as bright, but according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), its precise distance from us has just changed.At a recent meeting of the IAU in Beijing, China, members unanimously voted to redefine the astronomical unit, or AU, which has long served as the fundamental unit of distance between objects in the solar system. According to the voters, the official definition of the AU is now exactly 149,597,870,700 metres, and the unit should be written "au".Historically, calculating the astronomical unit was based on the average distance between Earth and the sun, or 149,597,870,691 metres. An amendment in 1976 complicated things by also tying the unit to the sun's mass.

Last week I was at a palaeontology conference up in Oxford and so my blogging time was rather reduced. I do want to cover both the contents of the meeting itself, and the importance that such meetings have in the process of scientific research. However that will have to go onto the backburner just a little as first of all I want to talk about a paper that came out last week that I had a hand in. It's on the subject of sexual selection in the fossil record and how we might detect evidence of its operation.

A renowned scientist whose work has been cited by the Government to justify its plan to cull badgers has called the scheme "crazy".The intervention from Lord Krebs, who led a nine-year study into the effect of badger culling on rates of tuberculosis in cattle, came as the Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, said he wanted to see the scheme rolled out beyond two pilot areas."I would go down the vaccination and biosecurity route rather than this crazy scheme that may deliver very small advantage," he said.

A disregard for three critical protocols, including sorting samples by size, explains why a group challenging the theory of a North American meteor impact event some 12,900 years ago, failed to find iron and silica rich magnetic particles in the sites they investigated.This is the finding of an independent interdisciplinary team of scientists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Not separating samples of the materials into like-sized groupings made for an avoidable layer of difficulty, said co-author Edward K. Vogel, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.

WARSAW (Reuters) - A huge cargo of elaborate marble stonework that sank to the bottom of Poland's Vistula river four centuries ago has re-appeared after a drought and record-low water levels revealed the masonry lying in the mud on the river bed.Archaeologists believe the stonework was part of a trove which 17th-century Swedish invaders looted from Poland's rulers and loaded onto barges to transport home, only for the booty to go to the bottom when the vessels sank.

LONDON (Reuters) - Companies looking to store polluting carbon under the sea will have to pay more for tougher seabed screening, after geologists discovered a three-kilometre long fracture near Norway's pioneering subsea carbon storage project in the North Sea.Storing carbon under the sea is part of Britain's ambitious plan to cut climate warming emissions by retrieving CO2 from polluting power plants which is then pumped into depleted offshore oil and gas fields.

Two new articles are now live on the articles page.Secrets of Vedic Science & Mysticism by Tina Sadhwani, andThe Concept of Civilization by Xavier Bartlett. (related messageboard thread hereEnjoy the read!

In a study that prompted criticism from other experts, French scientists said on Wednesday that rats fed on Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) corn or exposed to its top-selling weedkiller suffered tumors and multiple organ damage.Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleagues said ra]ts fed on a diet containing NK603 - a seed variety made tolerant to dousings of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller - or given water with Roundup at levels permitted in the United States, died earlier than those on a standard diet.

The first ever Etruscan pyramids have been located underneath a wine cellar in the city of Orvieto in central Italy, according to a team of U.S. and Italian archaeologists.Carved into the rock of the tufa plateau --a sedimentary area that is a result of volcanic activity -- on which the city stands, the subterranean structures were largely filled. Only the top-most modern layer was visible."Within this upper section, which had been modified in modern times and was used as a wine cellar, we noticed a series of ancient stairs carved into the wall. They were clearly of Etruscan construction," David B. George of the Department of Classics at Saint Anselm, told Discovery News.

A grandfather, who was told by doctors that his cancer was 'incurable', has been given the all-clear less than four months later - after trying a different diet.Allan Taylor could have been forgiven for fearing the worst when doctors told him they could do nothing to treat his condition.But the 78-year-old would not give up, and instead searched the internet for an alternative method to fight his cancer.After studying websites, he decided to radically change his diet - and found his condition improved dramatically.Mr Taylor, a retired oil rig engineer from Middlesbrough, replaced red meat and dairy products with 10 portions of raw fruit and veg each day.

This video asks, "Do you think you're smarter than a chimp?" It's a good question. Puzzles like this would likely flummox a human, but chimps have creative problem-solving skills.This chimpanzee is shown a fixed plastic tube with a peanut in the bottom. He wants the peanut -- badly, as it turns out. So badly, that he's willing to do... well, you'll see...

Ever since we launched planetary spacecraft beginning in the late 1950s, UFO-spotters have eagerly anticipated our running across alien spaceships flitting around. Rather than just accidentally crossing at a cosmic intersection, the legend is that extraterrestrials are watching us explore the solar system.Based on the long history of supposed close encounters, I anticipated that not long after NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) landed, folks would begin reporting "strange things" in Martian skies. And sure enough, several reports of UFOs buzzing the Gale crater landing site have surfaced in the past few weeks following the celebrated touchdown of Mars rover Curiosity.

What is transhumanism?Transhumanism is a philosophical doctrine that aims to continuously improve humanity. It promotes science and technology but with people at its centre. Ultimately, it aims to free humanity from its biological limitations, overcoming natural evolution to make us more than human.How does transhumanism improve humanity?It does this through the development of technologies that boost health and fight ageing and disease, by replacing lost or defective body parts and by improving the internet, communication technologies and artificial intelligence.

A WESTERN suburbs man claims he has footage of a UFO over Melbourne.Albanvale resident Ivan, who did not want his surname published, said he filmed the fast-moving disc-shaped object descending and ascending high above his house about 7pm last Tuesday.He said a neighbour called him outside to witness the spectacle, both looking on in astonishment."I have dismissed a lot of things thinking of what it could be," Ivan said."But I am left with very little other than to think it is something unearthly.".

TWO hundred years later, the legends and tales of Navinoti have finally come true in the highlands.According to the paramount chief of Savatu, the Tui Cawanisa, Ratu Semisi Ketewai, the tales of their forefathers have come to pass with the successful completion of the $300million Nadarivatu Hydro-electric scheme.He said the site where the dam was located had been prophesied by their forefathers to one day bring light, money and prosperity to the highlanders.

Ancient Egyptians did not speak to posterity only through hieroglyphs. Those elaborate pictographs were the elite script for recording the lives and triumphs of pharaohs in their tombs and on the monumental stones along the Nile. But almost from the beginning, people in everyday life spoke a different language and wrote a different script, a simpler one that evolved from the earliest hieroglyphs.These were the words of love and family, the law and commerce, private letters and texts on science, religion and literature. For at least 1,000 years, roughly from 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, both the language and the distinctive cursive script were known as Demotic Egyptian, a name given it by the Greeks to mean the tongue of the demos, or the common people.

Our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals were harvesting feathers from birds in order to use them as personal ornaments, a study suggests.The authors say the result provides yet more evidence that Neanderthal thinking ability was similar to our own.The analysis even suggests they had a preference for dark feathers, which they selected from birds of prey and corvids - such as ravens and rooks.Details of the research appear in Plos One journal.

Humans may have conquered the world, but not without a big helping hand from climate change. A major study of the last 120,000 years of history reminds us that, while we are adaptable, our species is ultimately at the mercy of the climate.Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, but only left the continent about 70,000 years ago. After that our species rapidly went global, colonising first Europe and Asia, and then Australasia and the Americas.

The forest of towering, dead mangrove trees stretches along the beach as far as the eye can see. As the crashing waves rise and fall, short stumps emerge and vanish beneath the Pacific Ocean. Climate change has come early to the Bajo Lempa region of western El Salvador.A tiny rise in the sea level has, according to local people, seen about 1,000ft of the mangroves on which they depend vanish beneath the ocean since 2005. Another 1,500ft remains between the Pacific and their village, La Tirana. No one, it seems, knows how long it will take before the waves reach their homes.

Off the coast of northwest Greenland, an enormous iceberg is beginning to go to pieces.The huge ice chunk, named PII-2012, was originally part of the Petermann Glacier, but broke away from the glacier in mid-July in a process called calving.By the end of July the Manhattan-size chunk of ice had nearly reached the mouth of a fjord that opens on the Nares Strait, a narrow stretch of ocean that separates Greenland from Canada.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland (Reuters) - Perched on a hilltop outside Washington, the U.S. government's net-zero energy laboratory looks a lot like the luxury houses nearby, with two significant differences: it will make as much energy as it uses, and only sensors, not people, live in it.Designed to fit in a typical residential neighborhood, the 4,000 square foot (372 square meter) net-zero lab on the suburban campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology is so energy-efficient that over the course of a year it is expected to produce as much energy as it needs.Its total energy consumption should be "net zero."

Researchers have taken a key step towards recovering specific brain functions in sufferers of brain disease and injuries by successfully restoring the decision-making processes in monkeys.By placing a neural device onto the front part of the monkeys' brains, the researchers, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre, University of Kentucky and University of Southern California, were able to recover, and even improve, the monkeys' ability to make decisions when their normal cognitive functioning was disrupted.The study, which has been published today (Sept. 14) in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering, involved the use of a neural prosthesis, which consisted of an array of electrodes measuring the signals from neurons in the brain to calculate how the monkeys' ability to perform a memory task could be restored.

It sounds like the plot of a science fiction film, or like something from a transhumanist fantasy: researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, report that they can induce memory-like patterns of activity in slices of brain tissue, and that the slices can store these activity patterns for short periods of time.The brain can encode information about the outside world and retrieve it later on, and the mechanisms underlying this ability are of great interest to neuroscientists. The general consensus among researchers is that memories are formed by the strengthening of connections within networks of nerve cells, and recalled by reactivation of the electrical signals generated by these networks. The new work, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, contributes to our understanding of these processes.

One wears a prim white bonnet. Another sticks out its tongue, hands resting over abdomen. A third clutches at its chest, mouth seemingly frozen in a scream. They are faces from the past, just as they were when laid to rest nearly 300 years ago.In 1994 workers discovered a secret crypt that had been bricked up for 200 years in the northern Hungarian town of Vac, inside were 265 hand painted coffins stacked, one on top of the other, in order of size. The occupants were buried between 1731 and 1838 in the crypt of a Dominican church and had naturally mummified, due to environmental conditions within the sealed room.

The Homo sapiens imagination runs wild: A 4-D Mammoth Hunters ride? An Ice Age-themed roller-coaster?Pure fantasy only, these ideas flew to mind when I scanned a report this morning about a Neanderthal park that may be established on the Rock of Gibraltar within a few years.

A new nanomaterial vanquishes the bubbles that normally pop up with boiling, a finding that may point to ways to help prevent explosions in nuclear power plants, researchers say.To understand how this material works, imagine a hot skillet. When its surface is warm, water on it will bubble. However, once the skillet gets hot enough, the water drops will skitter across its surface as they levitate on a cushion of vapor, an effect known as the Leidenfrost regime after the scientist who investigated it in 1756.

Spacecraft could build themselves or huge space telescopes someday by scavenging materials from space junk or asteroids. That wild vision stems from a modest proposal to use 3-D printing technology aboard a tiny satellite to create a much larger structure in space.The "SpiderFab" project received $100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense. Practical planning and additional funding could lead to the launch of a 3-D-printing test mission within several years.

The GHMB Community Interview with rogue Egyptologist John Anthony West is now over, and all the questions have been answered.Please see the community interview page for past and upcoming interviews.If you would like to add your voice and suggest someone as a future community interviewee, please do so on the messageboards in the community interview suggestions thread.

An abundance of spiders on Guam is the result of the loss of forest birds caused by an invasive snake that decimated the avian population, researchers say.Biologists from Rice University, the University of Washington and the University of Guam found the loss of bird species has left the Pacific island's jungles with as many as 40 times more spiders than found on nearby islands like Saipan."You can't walk through the jungles on Guam without a stick in your hand to knock down the spiderwebs," Rice researcher Haldre Rogers said.

NEW DELHI: After a false start three years ago, Delhi may finally be on the road to being free of plastic bags. The Delhi cabinet on Tuesday approved imposition of a blanket ban on use, storage, sale and manufacture of plastic bags in the city.The new ban, more comprehensive and better thought out, will supersede the earlier notification issued in January 2009 that prohibited only the use, storage and sale of plastic bags in commercial areas."There will be no leniency in implementing the blanket ban and crackdown on violators will be more aggressive this time," chief minister Sheila Dikshit said.

A recently discovered 500-year-old Alaskan settlement is rapidly disappearing into the Bering Sea.The exquisitely preserved frozen site provides a spectacular insight into the Yup'ik Eskimo culture.Researchers from the University of Aberdeen are using isotope analyses on recovered Eskimo hair to investigate how humans adapted to rapid climate change in the Arctic village.The research was discussed at the British Science Festival.

The lack of hovercrafts in this day and age is often lamented in the tech community. But now Aeroflex, a high-tech company based in California, is testing an aerial vehicle that uses two ducted rotors to hover above the ground. Mark De Roche, founder of Aeroflex, describes the vehicle by saying, "Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV's."A couple of decades ago, the design for this "hover bike" ran into trouble because of stability issues. Aeroflex may have fixed that with a mechanical system that lets the vehicle react to leaning movements from the driver to correct balance.

Archaeologists have found an ancient water reservoir in Jerusalem that may have been used by pilgrims coming to the Temple Mount, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced.The IAA said the cistern could have held 66,000 gallons (250 cubic meters) of water; it likely dates back to the era of the First Temple, which, according to the Hebrew Bible, was constructed by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. and then destroyed 400 years later.Israeli archaeologists believe the reservoir served the general public in the ancient city, but say its location hints at a role in the religious life of Jerusalem.

Designer Gabriele Diamanti has created a solar oven he calls the Eliodomestico (household-sun); its purpose is to boil saltwater to produce clean drinking water for people in places where such water is difficult or impossible to obtain. What's unique about the Eliodomestico is that it's been designed in such a way as to be easily built by local people, rather than elsewhere and shipped in. This way, the profits from making and selling the oven remain local.Diamanti says he came up with the idea for the Eliodomestico while visiting friends working for non-governmental agencies (NGOs) in third world countries, trying to help those in need.

On Saturday morning a tall white tube called Stig is scheduled to leap off of a launch pad in New Mexico and make for the edge of space. If the experimental rocket reaches its planned altitude of 100 kilometres - considered the boundary of space - it will be the first space flight for 12-year-old company Armadillo Aerospace of Texas.It will also be only the second of the original crowd of 19 space start-ups that vied to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, eventually won by Scaled Composites in 2004, and widely credited with sparking the commercial space race. A successful launch will also be a powerful sign that a genuine diversity of operators is emerging, which has long been the promise of commercial space flight.

One day "intelligent" passenger aircraft will cruise across oceans in low-drag, energy-saving formations, like flocks of geese. So said European plane-maker Airbus at its annual technology look-ahead conference last night. It's a striking idea that media outlets lapped up.Warming to its theme, Airbus added that emissions could be cut by using a superfast ground vehicle to catapult future aircraft into the air, so that it reaches cruising speed and altitude faster. And it could land with the engines switched off, in a long, controlled "free glide" to the runway.But how will this stuff actually work? With computers, of course. "Highly intelligent aircraft would be able to self organise and select the most efficient and environmentally friendly routes," says Airbus.

DOES root canal surgery feel more painful because you can hear the dentist's drill? That is one implication of new research suggesting that sounds, sights and smells can subtly alter our response to treatment, in a way akin to the placebo effect. The finding reinforces the idea that much of our behaviour may be the result of our minds responding subconsciously to cues that are reminders of past experiences.The placebo effect occurs when people with a medical condition appear to get better after receiving a treatment containing no active ingredients - for example, sugar pills - or even after a chat with a kindly doctor. It is thought to work because recipients have, over their lifetime, become conditioned to feel better when they take a pill or see their doctor.

Out in the bush, scientists should be humble and bow to the greater knowledge of locals. A paper out today tells the story of how rinderpest - a cattle plague that brought down empires and caused some of Africa's worst famines - was finally eradicated, in May last year.According to Jeffrey Mariner of Tufts University in North Grafton, Maryland - one of the key players in the eradication - it was achieved by using the expertise of local cattle herders rather than the floundering efforts of outsiders. He and his colleagues advocate applying this "barefoot" strategy to other animal diseases.

Each time Sharon DeWitte takes a 3-foot by 1-foot archival box off the shelf at the Museum of London she hopes it will be heavy."Heavy means you know you have a relatively complete skeleton," said DeWitte, an anthropologist at the University of South Carolina who has spent summers examining hundreds of Medieval skeletons, each time shedding new light on the dark subject of the Black Death.

Gareth Norman, area co-ordinator with British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), has questioned why so many whales are getting into difficulty and becoming stranded on the east coast.Earlier this month, 17 whales, including three calves, died after a 27-strong pod beached on rocks between Pittenweem and Anstruther.A second group of 24 pilot whales, thought to be from the same pod, was spotted in shallow water near Cellardyke but they later dispersed.Attempts to rescue a minke whale, caught in netting off the Angus coast, near the Bell Rock Lighthouse, also ended in failure on the same weekend.

A survey of catches at European ports has found that fishermen did not catch a single cod over the age of 13 last year.The findings raise concerns for future stocks of cod, which become more fertile as they age. The fish can live as long as 25 years and grow to 6ft.Researchers warned a lower life expectancy meant a lower birth rate and a faster decline.

A new study has identified how five different sections of the genetic code help guide the development of different facial characteristics in each individual.Researchers from the Netherlands, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia used MRI scans and portrait photographs to map out different facial features common among people of European ancestry.They then analysed the genes of 10,000 people across the five countries to look for common genetic variants which were linked to different facial traits.

A new look at a fossil mammal with powerful front legs for digging is clearing up questions about the origin of a group of strange and scaly modern-day creatures called pangolins.First excavated in Mongolia in the 1970s, the fossil sat in storage for decades until researchers for the Russian Academy of Sciences rediscovered and analyzed it, reporting their results today (Aug. 27) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

During construction work carried out by the Ministry of Endowments at the Al-Khamis market area, which is next to the archaeological site of Matariya in northern Cairo, workers stumbled upon a part of an ancient Egyptian stele.Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim explained that the newly-discovered stone artefact is the right section of a New Kingdom stele, on which is displayed a complete, illustrated list of various offerings to ancient Egyptian deities. A collection of geese, vegetables, fruits, bread, and cattle is depicted.

Djenne-Djenno, one of the best-known archaeological sites in sub-Saharan Africa, spreads over several acres of rutted fields near the present city of Djenne in central Mali. The ruts are partly caused by erosion, but they're also scars from decades of digging, by archaeologists in search of history and looters looking for art to sell.When I was there last fall, a few archaeology students were in evidence. These days, with Mali in the throes of political chaos, it's unlikely that anyone is doing much work at all at the site, though history and art are visible everywhere. Ancient pottery shards litter the ground. Here and there the mouths of large clay urns, of a kind once used for food storage or human burial, emerge from the earth's surface, the vessels themselves still submerged.

More than 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, you might think the Stasi had been consigned to history. But a new generation wants to know what the East German secret police did to their parents, and computing wizardry is about to make it easier to find out.The German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its agencies did not disappear immediately once the Berlin Wall fell.For some weeks afterwards many Stasi staff remained in their offices, trying to destroy evidence that could land them in jail or expose their spies in foreign countries.But they ran into technical difficulties."The Stasi was an organisation that loved to keep paper," says Joachim Haussler, who works for the Stasi archives authority today.

BThis, in case you've ever lain awake at night pondering it, is what happens if you have the desire to mix drugs with paint.Washington DC-based artist Bryan Lewis Saunders did just that to create his aptly entitled portfolio of work, DRUGS.From cocaine and marijuana, to Xanax and Absinth, these narcotics-inspired self-portraits capture the many faces of Mr Saunders as he experiments with a cocktail of illegal substances.Reminiscent of the 1987 PSA 'Brain on Drugs' the artwork is an alarming home truth of what narcotics can do to the mind.'After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self,' he wrote in a commentary accompanying the collection.

Researchers have spotted a never-before-seen chemical effect in Vincent Van Gogh's Flowers In A Blue Vase that is dulling the work's vibrant yellows.It seems a layer of varnish added later to protect the work is in fact turning the yellow to a greyish-orange colour.High-intensity X-ray studies described in Analytical Chemistry found compounds called oxalates were responsible.But atoms from the original paint were also found in the varnish, which may therefore be left in place.It is not the first time that the bright yellows that Van Gogh preferred have been examined with X-rays.

Has the International Space Station inadvertently caught sight of an "Interstellar" Space Station hovering nearby? Or is a blurry streak that UFO hunters have found in new NASA footage filmed out the window of the space station merely a window reflection? Let the most likely explanation win.On Sept. 11, YouTube user danielofdoriaa posted footage from the ISS's live camera feed, which streams over the Web. In his annotated footage, he points out a faint, elongated white shape with a neat row of faint white dots next to it set against the blackness of space just below the curve of the Earth. It is an "amazingUFO mothership letting out an orb fleet on ISS live feed," the YouTuber explains in the video title.

The study of giant viruses, described in a paper in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, may reshape the universal family tree, adding a fourth major branch to the three that most scientists agree represent the fundamental domains of life.The researchers used a relatively new method to peer into the distant past. Rather than comparing genetic sequences, which are unstable and change rapidly over time, they looked for evidence of past events in the three-dimensional, structural domains of proteins.