Newsdesk Archive

A laser with a frequency stability so far unequalled: This is the result of a research cooperation of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) within the scope of the Excellence Cluster QUEST (Centre for Quantum Engineering and Space-Time Research) with colleagues from the American NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)/JILA. Their development, about which they report in the scientific journal "Nature Photonics", is important for optical spectroscopy with highest resolution, e.g. of ultra-cold atoms. But, above all, an even more stable interrogation laser is now available for use in optical atomic clocks.

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a novel technology that can fabricate, in mere seconds, microscale three dimensional (3D) structures out of soft, biocompatible hydrogels.Near term, the technology could lead to better systems for growing and studying cells, including stem cells, in the laboratory. Long-term, the goal is to be able to print biological tissues for regenerative medicine.For example, in the future, doctors may repair the damage caused by heart attack by replacing it with tissue that rolled off of a printer.

UK researchers say they have taken a huge step forward in treating deafness after stem cells were used to restore hearing in animals for the first time.Hearing partially improved when nerves in the ear, which pass sounds into the brain, were rebuilt in gerbils - a UK study in the journal Nature reports.Getting the same improvement in people would be a shift from being unable to hear traffic to hearing a conversation.

The discovery of remains that could belong to Richard III reminds us how fluid is our understanding of the pastIf the remains found under a council car park in Leicester prove to be those of Richard III, the dispute about just how deformed the notorious medieval monarch really was can finally be settled. But more importantly, perhaps, it will have brought to light that beneath our cities and towns are layers of history, trenches of earth littered with the fragments of the past.

Scientists who found well preserved woolly mammoth remains in a remote part of Russia hope they might contain the necessary material to clone the long extinct beast.The Russian-led international team found the remains, including fur and bone marrow, with some cell nuclei intact, in the Ust-Yansk area of the Yakutia region on Russia's Arctic coast.The next step will be to search for living cells among the material which was preserved in the Siberian permafrost, said the Russian scientist who led the expedition with members from the United States, Canada, South Korea, Sweden and Great Britain.

For nearly a century the Mediterranean city of El Azizia in northern Libya has held the official title for having been the hottest place on Earth ever recorded.But the world record was taken away on Thursday after an investigation by the World Meteorological Organisation found the measurement was probably bungled by someone who misread a thermometer.A panel of experts convened by the WMO raised five serious concerns over the historic claim that the mercury reached 58C in 1922 at what was then an Italian army base on the Libyan coast.

Software that will allow robots to "talk" with people is being developed at the University of Aberdeen.The code will be used to help robots complete tasks more efficiently and could pave the way for human-to-robot business meetings.Robots now carry out tasks in a range of industries, from decommissioning nuclear plants to maintaining railway lines.But without continuous human guidance mistakes can be made.

Scientists have published the most detailed analysis to date of the human genome.They've discovered a far larger chunk of our genetic code is biologically active than previously thought.The researchers hope the findings will lead to a deeper understanding of numerous diseases, which could lead to better treatments.More than 400 scientists in 32 laboratories in the UK, US, Spain, Singapore and Japan were involved.Their findings are published in 30 connected open-access papers appearing in three journals, Nature, Genome Biology and Genome Research.

The death of Robert Falcon Scott as he returned from the South Pole may partly have been the result of the actions of his own colleagues which were later hushed up, a new book claims.In it, Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales in Sydney says he has uncovered archive material suggesting that Scott and his men found less food than expected at a key point on their return journey from the South Pole in February 1912.Turney points the finger at Teddy Evans, Scott's second-in-command, who turned back before reaching the pole.

A unique Mayan theater has been unearthed in Mexico, according to researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).Found at the archaeological site of Plan de Ayutla, in Ocosingo, Chiapas, the 1,200-year-old theater did not seem to be a place for art and culture, but was rather used by Mayan elite to legitimize their power and subjugate local minority groups."It was a unique theater, since it was found in an acropolis, 137 feet above the other plazas. The stage lay within a palace complex," Luis Alberto Martos López, director of the research project, said in a statement.

TUTANKHAMUN'S mysterious death as a teenager may finally have been explained. And the condition that cut short his life may also have triggered the earliest monotheistic religion, suggests a new review of his family history.Since his lavishly furnished, nearly intact tomb was discovered in 1922, the cause of Tutankhamun's death has been at the centre of intense debate. There have been theories of murder, leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, sickle-cell anaemia, a snake bite - even the suggestion that the young king died after a fall from his chariot.But all of these theories have missed one vital point, says Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon with an interest in medical history at Imperial College London. Tutankhamun died young with a feminised physique, and so did his immediate predecessors.

Pleased to make available the full audio of my extensive and detailed interview with New Dawn magazine which has been uploaded to my Youtube channel. Of all the interviews I've done over the years I think this is one of the most thorough and detailed. It gets into some areas I've never talked about publicly before and doesn't go over old ground covered in other interviews. We've included a selection of photographs by Santha, sometimes keyed to what I'm saying but more usually there simply to provide a beautiful visual background to the audio track.-GrahamNote: See the video page for more videos.

The Scottish wildcat, one of the country's rarest species, could become extinct "at any moment", conservationists have warned.There could be as few as 35 purebreds left in the wild, according to information gathered by the Scottish Wildcat Association (SWA).Numbers have dwindled in their northern habitat due to cross-breeding with domestic or feral cats.

A new species of monkey has been identified in Africa, only the second time such a discovery has been made on the continent in 28 years.The identification of the monkey in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is significant, as identification of mammals new to science is rare.Lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis) has a naked face and a mane of long blond hairs, and is described by the researchers who identified it as shy and quiet. It lives both on the ground and in trees in a 6,500 square mile habitat of the lowland rainforests in the centre of the DRC between the middle Lomami (the inspiration for the species' name) and the upper Tshuapa Rivers. Its diet is mostly fruit and vegetation.

A new experiment shows that measuring a quantum system does not necessarily introduce uncertaintyContrary to what many students are taught, quantum uncertainty may not always be in the eye of the beholder. A new experiment shows that measuring a quantum system does not necessarily introduce uncertainty. The study overthrows a common classroom explanation of why the quantum world appears so fuzzy, but the fundamental limit to what is knowable at the smallest scales remains unchanged.

Taking the devilish element out of one of Australia's most iconic but endangered animals could save it from extinction.Evolving to be less aggressive could be the best hope for saving Tasmanian Devils in the wild, suggest scientists from the University of Tasmania, in a new study.The species is facing extinction from Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), an infectious cancer that is spread by the animals biting each other. It is believed that the cancer has wiped out over 60% of the animals since it was first discovered in 1996.

For more than three decades, Concorde represented the pinnacle of business travel -- the ultimate status symbol for the jetset executive.Considered a marvel of aviation technology, the distinctive droop-nosed aircraft traveled at twice the speed of sound, flying from London to New York in about three and a half hours -- half the time of commercial airliners.But even before an Air France Concorde crashed in 2000, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew members on board, the luster was beginning to wane.

Nasa's Juno spacecraft will execute the second of two big burns on its main engine on Tuesday.The manoeuvre will put the probe on a path to flyby Earth in October next year. This sweep around the home planet will then give the mission a gravitational boost and the velocity required to get it out to Jupiter in July 2016.What you might not know is that this critical event depends on British-designed and -built hardware.Juno is equipped with a Leros-1b apogee engine prepared by Moog-ISP of Westcott.

Mexican archaeologists discovered a nearly 2,000-year-old sculpture of a jaguar in the Izapa archaeological zone, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said in a communique.The one-ton piece - which measures 1.38 meters (53 inches) long by 87 centimeters (34 inches) high and 52 centimeters (20.5 inches) wide - "is only engraved on one of its sides with the form of a jaguar, with the front and back paws flexed as if it were lying down," the director of the INAH Center in the southern state of Chiapas, Emiliano Gallaga, said.

A third 5,000-year-old hand-carved figurine has been discovered during excavations on Orkney.Archaeologists had previously unearthed two ancient figurines in 2009 and 2010 at the dig at Links of Noltland in Westray.All three will go on display at the Westray Heritage Centre.

A Chilean court ruled that ayahuasca is beneficial to health and therefore its use should not be penalized, an act of collective consciousness that seems to advance the revival of psychedelic medicine and introduicrnos a little more to the mystery of a plant that continues tradition of the drink of the gods, the soma.A few days ago a court in Chile ruled that ayahuasca is not a substance harmful to health. In contrast, this compound may be highly beneficial to the welfare of human beings. A mystery is revealed in this herb, as a vine metaphysical joins heaven and earth, the soul with the body and the conscious mind with the unconscious.

The complete flora of tropical East Africa has been recorded by scientists, 60 years after the project first began.When researchers started the task in 1948 they thought it would only take 15 years to finish.But it took 135 botanists from 21 countries six decades to catalogue all the 12,104 wild plant species of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.1,500 plant species new to science have been described during the project from acacia trees to flowering plants.

A family in Guatemala was simply looking to renovate their home, hoping to get a different look than what they were used to.That mission was certainly accomplished when they began scraping back plaster in their kitchen, they discovered a historic Mayan mural that covered multiple walls.When Lucas Asicona Ramirez peeled back the layers and found the murals, he was likely the first person to see the images in centuries.The Maya were a group of people who lived in the areas now known as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and western El Salvador before the Spanish colonization of the Americas.Though the official start and end dates of the civilization vary, the range from 2600 B.C. to about 900 A.D. showing their longevity.

GRAB your bucket list. There's less than 100 days left for you to do everything you wish to do - if you believe in the Mayan apocalypse.December 21 is the end of days. Or, perhaps it's the 23rd... Interpreting the Mayan calendar is not a precision science.But what we know is the "Long Count" and "Dresden Codex" calendars of the ages of the Earth do expire in December. Maybe.And, according to a thriving industry of books, television documentaries and web blogs, that means it is time to kiss everything goodbye.

The Mars Curiosity rover has all but completed its commissioning phase and is ready to begin its detailed investigation of the Red Planet.The six-wheeled vehicle touched down in Gale Crater on 6 August (GMT).Since then, daily activities have been dominated by system checkouts and instrument calibration work.US space agency engineers say they have one final day of testing on Curiosity's robotic arm to complete before handing the rover over to the scientists.

For centuries historians have debated Richard III and whether his reputation as a ruthless hunchback king was a true reflection of his reign or just a figment of Shakespeare's imagination.Now it would seem that at least some of that legend may be true, after archaeologists unearthed a fully intact skeleton that they believe is that of the medieval king which, crucially, has a deformed spine.

When you raise the subject of over-eating and obesity, you often see people at their worst. The comment threads discussing these issues reveal a legion of bullies who appear to delight in other people's problems.When alcoholism and drug addiction are discussed, the tone tends to be sympathetic. When obesity is discussed, the conversation is dominated by mockery and blame, though the evidence suggests that it may be driven by similar forms of addiction.

The idea that all species have an equal right to exist makes as much sense as believing we should bring back dinosaurs and dodos, a scientist has suggested.A report on the 100 most critically endangered species in the world has been published by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), with its authors arguing they should all be saved.But Dr Sarah Chan, deputy director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at Manchester University, challenged the belief that all species should be preserved.

Russia's North-Eastern Federal University said an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow some 328 feet (100 meters) underground during a summer expedition in the northeastern province of Yakutia.Expedition chief Semyon Grigoryev said Korean scientists with the team had set a goal of finding living cells in the hope of cloning a mammoth. Scientists have previously found bones and fragments but not living cells.Mr Grigoryev told the online newspaper Vzglyad it would take months of research to determine whether they have indeed found the cells.

News out of France concerning Prehistoric cave drawings that were animated by torch-light is taking the art history world by storm, and has overwhelmed this artist to the point of awe.The cave drawings were found by archaeologist Marc Azema and French artist Florent Rivere, who suggest that Paleolithic artists who lived as long as 30,000 years ago used animation effects on cave walls, which explains the multiple heads and limbs on animals in the drawings. The images look superimposed until flickering torch-light is passed over them, giving them movement and creating a brief animation.

A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory.If Shinichi Mochizuki's 500-page proof stands up to scrutiny, mathematicians say it will represent one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century. The proof will also have ramifications all over mathematics, and even in the real-world field of data encryption.

Two Long Island families with mysterious holes in their roofs think plummeting frozen waste from overhead airplanes might be the cause of their troubles.Lois Farella awoke to a thunderous crash at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning (Sept. 9) and found that her roof had a hole the size of a basketball leading straight through the shingles, plywood and insulation, according to CBS New York. At the same time, the roof of Farella's next-door neighbor's house got a similar makeover. And when her roofer, Bryan Lanzello, investigated the damage, he reportedly found a brown, wet stain in the attic where the offending object would have landed.Pictures here

After discovering the smallest particle that could ever exist, the team at Cern is now considering scaling up - with a brand new collider.The Geneva-based team which discovered what they believe to be the Higgs Boson particle this summer is now looking to the future, and are proposing a new underground accelerator with a circumference of 50miles (80kms) - three times the size of the current one under Geneva.The collider will be used to solve a new batch of mysteries of the universe, such as how gravity interacts on a molecular level.Any new collider is unlikely to be built until 2025, but the Cern team wish to get a head-start, concerned by the 25-year wait it took between proposing the first collider, and its completion in 2008.The team is considering a range of options now the original $4.6billion particle collider has served its intended purpose.

More than 100 million years ago, a harsh storm washed an unlucky horseshoe crab into a toxic lagoon. The doomed crustacean scrambled and plodded along the muddy bottom before succumbing, leaving behind a now-fossilized death march that ends with the crab's body.Such a find is "extremely rare," the researchers write on Aug. 29 in Ichnos: An International Journal for Plant and Animal Traces. Once plopped into the oxygen-free, highly salty lagoon, the creature did not live long, the researchers say; even so, it did live long enough to try to escape, creating a track extending 32 feet (9.7 meters) long with an average width of 1.7 inches (4.25 centimeters).

Virgin births have been reported in wild vertebrates for the first time.Researchers in the US caught pregnant females from two snake species and genetically analysed the litters.That proved the North American pit-vipers reproduced without a male, a phenomenon called facultative parthenogenesis that has previously been found only in captive species.Scientists say the findings could change our understanding of animal reproduction and vertebrate evolution.

Many people with chronic pain swear by acupuncture, but skeptics of the ancient needle-based treatment have long claimed that it's little more than an elaborate placebo.A new study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine appears to at least somewhat vindicate the acupuncture believers.After re-analyzing data from 29 high-quality clinical trials dating back to the 1990s, researchers have concluded that the pain relief derived from acupuncture is partly real, in that it can't be ascribed entirely to the placebo effect.

An apparent impact on Jupiter early Monday (Sept. 10) created a fireball on the planet so large and bright that amateur astronomers on Earth spotted the flash.The surprising impact on Jupiter was first reported by amateur astronomer Dan Peterson of Racine, Wisc., who was observing the largest planet in our solar system when the event occurred, according to the website Spaceweather.com, which tracks space weather and night sky events.

When searching for life on another world, the most fundamental precaution that any space agency needs to take with any probe or rover is to ensure it doesn't carry Earth microbes. However, if reports are to be believed, Nasa may have screwed up -- and is hoping that it doesn't find any water when it drills into the Martian soil.According to the Los Angeles Times, the possible contamination occurred six months before the rover's launch in November 2011. Curiosity's drillbits were designed to be stored in a sealed box, separate from the drill mechanism -- however, a Nasa engineer worried that a rough landing might make assembling the drill on Mars impossible (and thus rendering one of the rover's most important tools impotent), and opened the sealed unit to install one drill bit as a kind of backup. This happened without consulting Nasa's team dedicated to avoiding contaminating Mars with Earth bacteria.

Even the best pictures of a distant galaxy are a bit lopsided. But this is an attribute, not a bug. Because mass distorts space-time, light coming from distant galaxies is bent as it passes through intervening shoals of invisible matter, leaving the images of these distant objects minutely sheared and stretched.Two astronomical surveys now scheduled to come online seek to take advantage of this effect, which is known as weak gravitational lensing. The surveys aim to use the technique to get a firmer handle on dark energy, the mysterious force that is apparently speeding up the expansion of the Universe.

(SPACE.com) NASA is calling on students around the world to help name a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid that the agency is hoping to visit with an unmanned probe that will collect samples of the space rock and return them home.The asteroid, currently known as (101955) 1999 RQ36 could pose a threat to Earth when it swings close to our planet 170 years from now. Measuring 1,837 feet (560 meters) wide, asteroid 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of slamming into Earth in the year 2182, researchers have said.

In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought.A region of French Polynesia has similar deposits of these strange clays, which scientists found were formed by cooling magma rather than water.

Fans have rallied to buy the lab of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla to turn it into a museum. But why do so few people appreciate the importance of Tesla's work?Lots of people don't know who Nikola Tesla was. He's less famous than Einstein. He's less famous than Leonardo. He's arguably less famous than Stephen Hawking. Most gallingly for his fans, he's considerably less famous than his arch-rival Thomas Edison.But his work helped deliver the power for the device on which you are reading this. His invention of the induction motor that would work with alternating current (AC) was a milestone in modern electrical systems.

Few people would notice the willow blister, a spore-shooting fungus that grows parasitically on twigs in a small corner of Wales. Fewer still are likely to realise that this is one of the rarest fungi in the world, a distinction that gives the blister a place on an unenviable list: the world's 100 most threatened species.Equally unlikely to be noticed is the spoon-billed sandpiper, a small, dull-coloured bird that breeds in Russia and migrates to south-east Asia, targeted by hunters on the way.

They look like they could be the latest images taken from a multi-million pound NASA satellite but these stunning snaps were actually taken from a £30 camera bought off eBay by a teenager.Adam Cudworth, 19, managed to capture these incredible views of the earth from space using little more than a balloon and his second-hand camera.And while NASA spends hundreds of millions of pounds each year on high tech satellites Adam, whose scientific background consists of only a Physics A-Level, achieved his incredible feat - on a £200 budget.

Scientists have designed new models for testing whether a planet could support life by searching for evidence of underground water, it was reported.Instead of looking for surface water, the new tools identify whether there may be water kept liquid by core heat, according to the BBC.The development could mean more planets are found to be capable of sustaining life forms.

There's been a victory for sense and science in South Korea, as the government there has rejected calls to drop references to the evolution of birds from the national school curriculum.As previously reported on Wired.co.uk, pressure group Society for Textbook Revise had managed to persuade textbook publishers to drop sections from their books that discussed the evolution of horses and the Jurassic-era early avian-like dinosaur Archaeopteryx. Now, however, a special panel convened by the South Korean government has recommended that the publishers ignore the creationists' arguments -- which should mean that textbooks reintroduce the old segments before the start of the next school year..

Pieces of jewellery, pottery and iron tools dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Senegal's capital, Dakar, following recent floods, researchers say.The discovery was made at a construction site, local academic Alioune Deme told the BBC.A colleague, Moustapha Sall, stumbled across the items after the rains washed away sand, he said.The objects could date back between 2,000 and 7,000 BC, Mr Deme said.

Lingering doubts over the future of US energy security are breathing new life into a technology that has lain dormant for more than a decade.Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have more than doubled the amount of uranium that can be extracted from seawater using Japanese technology developed in the late 1990s.The world's oceans contain around 4.5 billion tons of uranium, enough fuel to power every nuclear plant on the planet for 6,500 years. The results were presented on 21 August at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia.

I have an upcoming speaking tour in Australia in October with Dennis McKenna and Mitch Schultz. See here for more information: http://www.losttribes.net.au/Booking options here: http://tickets.entheo.net/See the Facebook page and the Event Page.In connection with the tour the excellent Australian print magazine New Dawn have run an interview with me in their current issue, available in most news agencies across Australia and New Zealand. The electronic version of the issue is available here:http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/latest-issue/new-dawn-134-september-october-2012-Graham

Scientists, visionaries, entertainers and the public will gather in Houston this week for the 100-Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss space travel to another star.Interstellar travel is significantly more difficult than spaceflight within our solar system, because the distances involved are vast.For example, at its farthest, Mars is about 20 light-minutes away from Earth, and even Pluto is only about 4 light-hours distant. But the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is more than 4 light-years from Earth, meaning a vehicle traveling at light-speed would take 4 years to arrive.

Ultra-small and lightweight satellites, called CubeSats, have demonstrated their agility over the years to carry out space research in low-Earth orbit, typically using commercial off-the-shelf electronics.A move is on to consider using these miniaturized spacecraft to further moon exploration -- a new class of CubeSat dubbed LunarCubes.When CubeSats emerged onto the scene, and ideas began to materialize about their uses in Earth orbit, the prevailing thought was "that's impossible, you'll never do it," said Russell Cox, director of research for Flexure Engineering in Greenbelt, Md.

Tigers in Nepal seem to be taking night shifts in order to avoid their human neighbours, a study has shown.The big cats generally move around at all times of the day and night, to monitor territory, mate and hunt."It's a very fundamental conflict over resources," said co-author Neil Carter, from Michigan State University in East Lansing, US."Tigers need resources, people need the same resources. If we operate under the traditional wisdom that tigers only can survive with space dedicated only for them, there would always be conflict. If your priority is people, tigers lose out. If your priority is tigers, people lose out.".

Even Oscar Pistorius had to learn to walk before he could run. But learning to live with a prosthetic limb can be a difficult and frustrating experience.To help amputees get to grips with a new prosthetic arm, the prosthesis manufacturer Otto Bock has teamed up with researchers from the Interactive Media Systems Group at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria to develop a virtual reality training environment called ProsthesisTrainer.

NASA spacecraft watching the sun have captured jaw-dropping pictures and video of a giant filament of super-hot plasma reaching up from the star's surface and erupting into space.The filament was made of solar material that was ejected from the sun during an intense solar storm on Aug. 31. Flares are caused by increased magnetic activity on the surface of our star, and are becoming more common as the sun approaches a phase of peak activity in 2013.

It's long been known that earthly metals like gold and silver were forged in supernova explosions, but the metals' exact origins have been shrouded in mystery. Now a new study has identified the unique nuclear recipe for silver in space.While most common light elements like hydrogen and helium were formed in the big bang, heavier elements like carbon and oxygen are formed within stars through nuclear fusion.

European archaeologists using geophysical methods have mapped an ancient Roman town, which disappeared after its abandonment 1,500 years ago and now lies buried underground, revealing the location of its theater, marketplace and other buildings.Interamna Lirenas was founded as a Roman colony in the 4th century BCE in the Liri Valley in Southern Lazio, about 50 miles south of Rome. After it was abandoned around the year 500 CE, it was scavenged for building materials and, over time, its remains were completely lost from view. Today, the site is an uninterrupted stretch of farmland, with no recognizable archaeological features.

Armed with millions of available cell phone cameras and digital cameras, people are looking to the skies around the world, and posting images of apparent UFOs on YouTube every day.It's about time the FBI helped out with sifting through it all. Or at least former FBI Special Agent Ben Hansen, who now makes a living uncovering the truth behind strange and bizarre sightings."The fact is, this phenomenon is real -- it's really happening, and new technology helps us sometimes to get closer to it. But because of the ease of which we're able to now create things ourselves, it's also hindering the field."

A study of rocks at an old A-bomb test site in the Pacific has led a team of scientists to conclude that early Mars was not so warm and wet, as many argue.The rocks at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia contain clay minerals that look like those seen on the Red Planet.But whereas the Martian clays are taken to be the products of weathering of rocks by liquid water, the atoll's clays have a very different origin.These were precipitated directly from water-rich molten rock as it cooled.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, warns CO2 levels are rising at a faster than exponential rateA leading British academic has called for accelerated research into futuristic geo-engineering and a worldwide nuclear power station "binge" to avoid runaway global warming.Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, said both potential solutions had inherent dangers but were now vital as time was running out.

The controversial climate-change contrarian, S. Frederick Singer, a former space scientist and government scientific administrator, who holds PhD in Physics from Princeton University and is co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, presents the theory that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle.Using historic data from two millennia of recorded history combined with natural physical records, they argue that the 1,500 year natural sunspot magnetic waves cycle that has always controlled the earth's climate remains the driving force in the current warming trend. Man created carbon dioxide has very little effect on the earth's climate.

This week, skywatchers will have the chance to catch a winking "demon star" in the night sky.The star, known as Algol, is located in the constellation of Perseus, the Hero, and has been known since ancient times as " The Demon Star."Algol has a long and venerable history. Its name comes from the Arabic word al-ghul, which means "female demon." But, contrary to popular belief, the name seems to have nothing to do with the star's behavior, but rather, is due merely to Algol's position marking the head of the Gorgon Medusa in ancient Greek mythology. According to the myth, gazing at Medusa could turn a person to stone.

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.

wiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, died yesterday. But the LSD trip is far from over as scientists bring lucidity to how hallucinogens work.Also called psychedelics, hallucinogens alter a person's perception, mood and a slew of other mental processes. Hallucinogen history goes back centuries as people worldwide have taken the drugs to induce altered states for religious and spiritual purposes.

A 70-million-year-old dinosaur at the center of an international fossil custody battle is a Frankenstein-like amalgam of parts of several creatures, a Manhattan federal court was told on Wednesday.The claim - which federal prosecutors challenged - could complicate the U.S. government's forfeiture case against a Florida fossil dealer who reconstructed tyrannosaurus bataar bones and sold the piece at auction in May for $1.05 million. Auction marketing material for the skeleton implies that it is a reconstruction of a single creature.

Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China.According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects."I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils," he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums "have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees".

Lemon sharks have the ability to learn from each other's behaviour, US scientists have found.The team compared the performance of inexperienced juvenile sharks working with both trained and untrained partners.The results showed that sharks working with trained partners could complete tasks more quickly and successfully.The study is thought to be the first to demonstrate social learning in any cartilaginous fish."I think it's a really cool finding," said lead author Dr Tristan Guttridge from the University of Miami, Florida whose paper was published in the Journal of Animal Cognition.

Can an abundance of sea otters help reverse a principal cause of global warming?A new study by two UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest that a thriving sea otter population that keeps sea urchins in check will in turn allow kelp forests to prosper. The spreading kelp can absorb as much as 12 times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins, the study finds.The theory is outlined in a paper released online today (September 7, 2012) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by lead authors UC Santa Cruz professors Chris Wilmers and James Estes.

Global tuna stocks are fast reaching the limits of fishing sustainability, decimated by an absence of comprehensive, science-based catch limits, conservation experts warned Saturday.Five of the world's eight tuna species are already classified as threatened or nearly threatened with extinction, according to the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).At the IUCN's World Conservation Congress currently underway in South Korea's southern Jeju Island, experts said partial quotas currently in place were inadequate and uninformed.

OSLO (Reuters) - Protected areas for wildlife have expanded worldwide to cover a land area the size of Russia in the past two decades, but far more parks and reserves are needed to meet a 2020 target, a study showed on Friday.The sharp growth, as governments expanded existing areas and declared new ones, was needed to help slow a loss of animal and plant species and to conserve eco-systems which serve vital functions such as purifying water and storing greenhouse gases, it said."These rich natural areas are very important for people, who rely on them for food and clean water, climate regulation and reducing the impacts of natural disasters," said Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

If these walls could talk, they'd solve a Maya mystery.Five years ago Lucas Asicona Ramírez (far right, pictured with family) began scraping his walls while renovating his home in the Guatemalan village of Chajul. As the plaster fell away, a multi-wall Maya mural saw light for the first time in centuries, according to archaeologist Jaroslaw Zralka, who recently revealed the finds to National Geographic News.The paintings depict figures in procession, wearing a mix of traditional Maya and Spanish garb. Some may be holding human hearts, said Zralka, who was working on the other side of Guatemala when a colleague tipped him off to the kitchen murals.

The goal of new telescopes is usually to resolve more details at greater distances. The most straightforward way to do this is to simply make telescopes larger. Unfortunately, the simple weight of the mirrors makes this a path fraught with difficulties. Despite the difficulties, there are consortiums attempting to do just this.An alternative is to combine the light from different telescopes. The interference between the light fields captured by separate telescopes creates an image that has details that would ordinarily be resolved by a telescope with a size similar to the separation between the telescopes. This seems simple, but the light fields are very weak and losses involved in transporting and combining the light fields are such that separations of a few hundred meters are today's limits. A trio of Canadian researchers has proposed using technologies being developed for quantum key distribution to greatly extend the allowable distance between telescopes.

Winter has come and gone for another year and with it more data has been gathered in a cutting edge trial that is being carried out in the Australian Alps.The trial is exploring the possibility of increasing snowfall by utilising a technique called cloud seeding that was first seen more than 50 years ago.Cloud seeding is the process of introducing a particle into the clouds to help make it rain or snow.

Julie Schickling stood out on her porch in West Seattle just after midnight because she couldn't explain what she was hearing. So she recorded the sound (listen here on West Seattle Blog)."It gets high and lower, and goes away, then comes back," said Schickling.Some of her neighbors report being shaken out of bed by the low rumble, also described as a growl. In fact, as many people you talk with is about how many different words you heard to describe it.

A research team has been sent to the far north of Sweden to attempt to verify reports that a "ghost rocket" crashed into a lake in 1980.The leader of the expedition, Clas Svahn, told TheLocal.se that while he doesn't necessarily "believe" that an extraterrestrial object crashed into the lake, he wants to find out what did. He's taking along a support team, divers, and a film crew to document the process.He's also taking along a pair of witnesses -- Bo and Liz Berg -- who saw the object landing in the south end of a lake in Muddus, on 31 July, 1980.

Nasa's Curiosity rover has measured the Red Planet's atmospheric composition.The robot sucked the air into its big Sample Analysis at Mars (Sam) instrument to reveal the concentration of different gases.It is the first time that the chemistry of the atmosphere has been tested from the surface of the planet since the Viking landers in the 1970s.The Sam analysis is ongoing but no major surprises are expected at this stage - carbon dioxide will dominate.

Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society, said evidence of whether beings exist not only beyond earth but beyond our solar system, could be found in that time, a newspaper reported.Lord Rees said he believed that astro-physicists could be able to view images of distant planets outside the solar system as soon as 2025. This could potentially lead to the discovery of some form of life on them.When asked what changes could be expected in science in the next 40 years, he said understanding more about the "origin of life, the place where it exists, and whether aliens exist, is going to be crucial", the Daily Mail reported.

After 16 years of planning the countdown is on for one of the most ambitious scientific missions to Antarctica. In October a 12-man team of British scientists, engineers and support staff will make the 16,000 km journey from the UK to go deep into the heart of the frozen continent to collect samples of water and sediments from an ancient lake buried beneath three kilometers of ice. Their quest is to reveal vital secrets about the Earth's past climate and discover life forms that may live in subglacial Lake Ellsworth on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The pressure in Mount Fuji's magma chamber is now higher than it was in 1707, the last time the nearly 4,000-metre-high Japanese volcano erupted, causing volcanologists to speculate that a disaster is imminent.The new readings, taken by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, reveal that the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption.This, lead volcanologist on the case Eisuke Fujita told Kyodo News, is "not a small figure".Researchers have speculated for some time that the volcano, located on Honshu Island 100km southwest of Tokyo, is overdue an eruption.

It's been an hour and the group of volunteers aboard the rickety fishing boat are still yet to spot a Yangtze finless porpoise, known as jiangzhu or "river pig". Thirty years ago, when they numbered 2,000, the mammals could be seen from the shore here dancing on Dongting Lake in the sludge-coloured waves. Now there are about 85 jiangzhu here. As Xu Yaping, the patrol's chief, peers through the haze, and coal barges and dredgers churn the lake, the chance of encountering this ancient creature seems remote.

A stretch of China's longest river has abruptly turned the color of tomato juice, and officials say they don't know why.Residents of the southwestern city of Chongqing first noticed that the Yangtze River, called the "golden waterway," had a spreading stain on its reputation yesterday (Sept. 6).Though the bright-red water was concentrated around Chongqing, Southwest China's largest industrial center, it was also reported at several other points along the river, according to ABC News.See photos here

Humans may be destabilising desert ecosystems across the world, according to a new study.Analysis of the human impact on dryland ecosystems suggests it is "drastically changing" mammal communities.The scientists believe that activities such as overgrazing livestock lie behind increasing local extinctions and a reduction in diversity.The work will help to inform future conservation efforts, said lead author Ms Maria Veronica Chillo.

The ancient builders of Stonehenge may have had a surprisingly meaty diet and mobile way of life. Although farming first reached the British Isles around 6,000 years ago, cultivation had given way to animal raising and herding by the time Stonehenge and other massive stone monuments began to dot the landscape, a new study finds.

Scientists are attaching radio sensors to bees in a bid to find out how and when they get attacked by a deadly parasite.The Apocephalus borealis parasite attaches itself to bees, and then forces them to leave their hives, head to the outside world, and 'dance' erratically in front of streetlights.After an exhausting dance, the bees plunge to the ground dead, victims of a disease which is decimating colonies in America.So staff at San Francisco State University are now attaching radio sensors - the size of a speck of glitter - to the insects, to monitor their movements.

Researchers have shown off a 'cyborg' cockroach they can control remotely.The team have been able to accurately steer it to follow complex shapes on the ground.Now they hope to fit it with video cameras and other sensors, so it can crawl into buildings undetected, and even search earthquakes for survivors.'Our aim was to determine whether we could create a wireless biological interface with cockroaches, which are robust and able to infiltrate small spaces,' says Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work.

Underground water could greatly increase the chances of planets harbouring extraterrestrial life, scientists believe.Taking into account sub-surface habitats broadens the range of places life-sustaining planets can occupy, a study has found.It means there could be around seven times more life-bearing planets among the stars than is currently believed.

The story of westward expansion in the United States is often told from the perspective of the men and women who crossed the Great Plains in search of a better life in the west. But a historian at Missouri University of Science and Technology is bringing to light the role settlers' animals played in the westward migration of the mid-1800s.Dr. Diana L. Ahmad, an associate professor of history at Missouri S&T, discusses the relationship between pioneers and their stock -- mainly oxen, mules, horses and cattle -- in an essay published in the summer 2012 issue of the Great Plains Quarterly. She notes that the westward travelers' success depended greatly on their interactions with the animals.

Two commercial spaceflight companies have checked off vital milestones on the path toward flights to the International Space Station for NASA, the space agency announced Thursday.The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX has completed its Space Act Agreement under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. The company is slated to launch the first of its 12 contracted robotic cargo flights to the space station from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in October, officials said.

THE latest twist in the origin-of-life tale is double helical. Chemists are close to demonstrating that the building blocks of DNA can form spontaneously from chemicals thought to be present on the primordial Earth. If they succeed, their work would suggest that DNA could have predated the birth of lifeMovie Camera.DNA is essential to almost all life on Earth, yet most biologists think that life began with RNA. Just like DNA, it stores genetic information. What's more, RNA can fold into complex shapes that can clamp onto other molecules and speed up chemical reactions, just like a protein, and it is structurally simpler than DNA, so might be easier to make.

Ice fields in southern South America are rapidly losing volume and in most cases thinning at even the highest elevations, contributing to sea-level rise at "substantially higher" rates than observed from the 1970s through the 1990s, according to a study published Wednesday.The rapid melting, based on satellite observations, suggests the ice field's contribution to global sea-level rise has increased by half since the end of the 20th century, jumping from 0.04 millimeters per year to about .07 mm, and accounting for 2 percent of annual sea-level rise since 1998.

Deep-sea crabs have a type of colour vision despite living up to 1000m below the surface, say scientists.Investigating the "murky depths", US-based researchers recorded the glow of tiny bioluminescent species using a submersible vehicle.The team also studied how crustaceans react to this light, and found previously unknown sensitivities to blue and ultra violet wavelengths.They suggest crabs use their colour vision to discern edible food.

Christopher Nolan's 2010 blockbuster Inception is set in a distant future where military technology enables one to infiltrate and surreptitiously alter other people's dreams. Leonardo Di Caprio plays Dom Cobb, an industrial spy tasked with planting an idea into the mind of a powerful businessman. The film has a complex, layered structure: Cobb and the other characters create dreams within dreams within dreams, but they cannot distinguish between reality and the dream states they fabricate.

Recent research suggests fascinating connections between the effects of the psychedelic drug psilocybin and personality traits related to inner experience. Personality appears to influence response to psilocybin and psilocybin can promote changes in personality, suggesting a reciprocal relationship. Further research in this area could lead to new insights into the basis of human personality and creativity.

The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today (Sept. 5) that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485."The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, will be buried at sea, family spokesman Rick Miller said on Thursday.Armstrong died on Aug. 25. He was 82.A public memorial service will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 13 and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed online at nasa.gov and nationalcathedral.org.On July 20, 1969, Armstrong, who led the Apollo 11 mission, became the first human to walk on the moon.

Unlike most stories on "Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?," Kaydee Wilson's husband wasn't particularly dangerous or violent, and she didn't suffer any physical harm at his hands. Instead, she was associated with one of the most unexpected and bizarre crimes imaginable.Her husband, Thad Roberts, was an intern for NASA in the summer of 2002 when he orchestrated a heist. His targets were rocks from the moon. They were estimated to be worth about $21 million. But why did he do it?.

NASA's Voyager 1 probe is streaking toward interstellar space these days, but the most far-flung man-made object in the solar system almost got stuck in Earth orbit after launching 35 years ago today (Sept. 5).Voyager 1's Titan-Centaur rocket came within 3.5 seconds of running out of fuel when it carried the spacecraft aloft on Sept. 5, 1977, mission officials said today during a celebration of the launch's 35th anniversary at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has sharply criticised the government's "snooper's charter", designed to track internet, text and email use of all British citizens, as "technologically incompetent".He said Wikipedia would move to encrypt all its connections with Britain if UK internet companies, such as Vodafone and Virgin Media, were mandated by the government to keep track of every single page accessed by UK citizens.He said the British government would have to resort to the "black arts" of hacking to break encryptions: "It is not the sort of thing I'd expect from a western democracy. It is the kind of thing I would expect from the Iranians or the Chinese and it would be detected immediately by the internet industry," he told MPs and peers.

Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China.According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects."I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils," he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums "have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees".

A recently discovered 500-year-old Alaskan settlement is rapidly disappearing into the Bearing 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 Yup'ik culture was one of the last contacted Eskimo societies, but prevailed over an area three times the size of Scotland.

Forget optical computing or quantum computing: researchers at Aalto University have successfully used water droplets as bits of digital information.Using what they term 'superhydrophobic droplet logic', they've built a memory device, as well as devices for elementary Boolean logic operations.Their invention's based on the discovery that when two water droplets collide with each other on a highly water-repellent surface, they rebound like billiard balls. "I was surprised that such rebounding collisions between two droplets were never reported before, as it indeed is an easily accessible phenomenon," says Henrikki Mertaniemi...