Newsdesk Archive

As a child, astronomer Jill Tarter would walk along the beaches of western Florida with her father and look up at the stars."I assumed, at that time, that along some beach on some planet, there would be a small creature walking with its dad and they would see our sun in their sky, and they might wonder whether anyone was there," she tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "But I never thought about it professionally until graduate school.".

FOR those searching for life on another planet, the mission involves not just finding the evidence but getting others to take them seriously.UFO sightings in Australia are on the rise, according to people who track such phenomena, and international studies indicate a growing number of "closet believers" of extraterrestrial life.But people who come forward to report sightings are still pilloried by much of society.The issue emerged again last week after a video of an alleged UFO sighting over the NSW south coast was posted on YouTube and raised a few sceptics' eyebrows.

The end of the world is nigh. Or so you might think if you immersed yourself in American popular culture.From TV adverts to Hollywood movies, depictions of post-apocalyptic worlds are everywhere.There is a long tradition of such apocalyptic thinking in the US. But as Matthew Barrett Gross and Mel Giles argue in their book The Last Myth, it has now moved beyond religious prophecies into the secular world.

Maybe it's time to shelve the old saying, "you can't leave home without it," when it comes to packing for trips to space.Say you're hunkered down inside Mars Base-1 and a vital piece of life-support gear breaks down. A hurried search in supply bins proves futile. The next cycler spaceship with equipment is months away. Time is running out.

THE Dahshur royal necropolis in Egypt was once a dazzling sight. Some 30 kilometres south of Cairo, it provided King Sneferu with a playground to hone his pyramid-building skills - expertise that helped his son, Khufu, build the Great Pyramid of Giza. But most signs of what went on around Dahshur have been wiped away by 4500 years of neglect and decay. To help work out what has been lost, archaeologists have turned to fractals.

Innovative research by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Bradford used laser microscopes to explore how stone tools were used in prehistory, and the process has helped streamline surface measurement techniques for modern manufacturers.The analysis of stone tools is a key factor in understanding early human life including social organisation and diet. Archaeologists at the University of Bradford hypothesised that reconstructing past activities was the best way to study what each tool was used for. They proposed to measure the surface structures of replica stone tools before and after they were used in different reconstructions on two natural materials -- antler and wood.

During routine excavation works at the Archaic period cemetery located at Abu Rawash area northeast of the Giza Plateau, a French archaeological mission from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) stumbled on what is believed to be a funerary boat of the First Dynasty King Den (dating from around 3000BC).The funerary boat was buried with royalty, as ancient Egyptians believed it would transfer the king's soul to the afterlife for eternity.

Known for its expansive glaciers and the coldest temperatures on Earth, the Antarctica of today is a far cry from its tenure as a subtropical paradise 53 million years ago, replete with palm trees, summer highs near 25°C (77 F), and frost-free winters sitting near 10°C (50 F) despite the endless darkness.Describing a recent study lead by Jörg Pross, Jason Palmer writes about the anomalous warm bubble known as the Eocene, noting that soaring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels drove the global average temperature to increase by 5°C.Drilling into an offshore site near Wilkes Land, a part of eastern Antarctica that lies south of Australia, Pross and his team collected sediment from deep below the sea floor that was laid down and subsequently buried over the past 53 million years.

Two recent articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that the Later Stone Age (LSA) and Modern Culture both emerged much earlier than was previously thought.A team of international scientists from South Africa, France, Italy, Norway, the USA and Britain dated and directly analyzed organic objects found in the archaeological layers at Border Cave, South Africa in the Lebombo Mountains near the border of Swaziland.The team carbon-dated many organic objects, including beads made from ostrich eggshells, thin bone arrowhead points, wooden digging sticks, a gummy substance called pitch and a lump of beeswax. The last two objects were both used to haft bone or stone blades to shafts...

Dolphins form cliques based on their skills, scientists have found, suggesting they could be the only non-human mammals to indulge in elite societies.Wild bottlenose dolphins bond over their use of tools, with distinct cliques and classes forming over decades as a result of their skills, scientists have found.The communities, which have been compared with societies such as the Bullingdon Club in humans, mean the aquatic animals share their knowledge only with those in their own circle, passing it down the family line.

The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist.The particle has been the subject of a decades-long hunt as the last missing piece of physics' Standard Model, explaining why matter has mass.Now one Higgs-hunting team at the Large Hadron Collider report a "5.9 sigma" levels of certainty it exists.That equates to a one-in-300 million chance that the Higgs does not exist and the results are statistical flukes.

WASHINGTON -- The Toshiba Vision screen in New York City's Times Square will become the largest East Coast location for the public to see live mission coverage of Curiosity, NASA's most advanced planetary rover, as it lands on the Martian surface at 1:31 a.m. EDT August 6.The Toshiba Vision screen will broadcast NASA TV coverage beginning at 11:30 p.m. EDT August 5 and continuing through 4 a.m. EDT the next day. Programming will originate from Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The rover is on a precise course for a landing beside a Martian mountain to begin 2 years of unprecedented scientific detective work.

The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause", according to a scientific study set up to address climate change sceptics' concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring.Prof Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change sceptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (Best) project, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds." He added that he now considers himself a "converted sceptic" and his views had undergone a "total turnaround" in a short space of time.

Researchers in the UK say they have made a key step in development of a lithium-air battery, a device that promises three to five times as much energy per unit mass as the existing lithium-ion batteries that we use in our consumer devices and electric vehicles.Once built, such a battery could allow you to fly cross-country flights with a functioning laptop, or talk for a week without charging your cellphone or even a take a 500-mile journey in a Chevy Volt, for example, instead of the 100 miles it runs today.

Less than two weeks from now, the Mars Science Laboratory will reach the Red Planet. After scientists hold their breath through the sophisticated but terrifying landing procedure, the car-size Curiosity rover should be in position to explore new regions of our neighboring world.Curiosity may well capture the imagination of the world, just as the Mars Phoenix Lander did when it found evidence of water ice back in 2008. Nevertheless, the future of U.S. planetary science remains in limbo. As part of ongoing belt-tightening in Washington, President Barack Obama proposed to cut $309 million from NASA planetary science, or about 20 percent of its $1.5 billion budget.

University of Reading archaeologists have found evidence that Iron Age people in Britain were spicing up meals with foods and seasoning imported from around the Mediterranean.Previously it had been assumed that prior to the Roman occupation of Britain, only liquid products such as olive oil and wine were imported from across the Channel. However archaeologists working at Silchester Roman Town in Hampshire have discovered that people of that time were importing Mediterranean seasoning as well as whole olives themselves.

Saturn's moon Iapetus frequently plays host to a huge type of landslide or avalanche that is rare elsewhere in the Solar System, scientists report.Sturzstroms or "long-runout landslides" move faster and farther than geological models predict they should.They have been seen on Earth and Mars, but there is debate about their causes.Now, images from the Cassini space mission, reported in Nature Geoscience, suggest that heating of icy surfaces helps the landslides keep going.

Is life on other planets possible? Well a team of American astronomers certainly seem to think so.Five new planets were discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope earlier this year and even though they're 10,000 light-years away from us, we have a lot in common.They rotate round their star in a similar way to Earth as it goes round the Sun.So scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in America studied the planets to see if they have the right geography, temperature and amount of gravity for livings things to exist there.

Enceladus is little bigger than a lump of rock and has appeared, until recently, as a mere pinprick of light in astronomers' telescopes. Yet Saturn's tiny moon has suddenly become a major attraction for scientists. Many now believe it offers the best hope we have of discovering life on another world inside our solar system.The idea that a moon a mere 310 miles in diameter, orbiting in deep, cold space, 1bn miles from the sun, could provide a home for alien lifeforms may seem extraordinary. Nevertheless, a growing number of researchers consider this is a real prospect and argue that Enceladus should be rated a top priority for future space missions.

The size of a male rhinoceros beetle's horn is a genuine indicator of its health, according to researchers.The horns vary in size from small bumps to two-thirds of the insect's body length and are used in fights.Investigating the variation, US scientists found cells in the horn are more sensitive to "nutrition signals" than cells in other parts of the body.They suggest their findings could explain the evolution of super-sized body parts in the natural world.

Archaeologists in Bapska, eastern Croatia have stumbled across 6,500 year old deer antlers. The hunting trophy was found hanging on the wall of prehistoric house along with valuable items of jewellery, writes website dalje.com."We have the oldest deer hunting trophy in Croatia," said Marcel Buric, the head researcher at the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb.

The crewed version of SpaceX's Dragon space capsule has passed a key design review, moving one step closer to carrying astronauts into orbit, NASA officials announced Thursday (July 12).In the review, which was conducted June 14 at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., company officials gave NASA details about every phase of a potential crewed Dragon mission to the International Space Station.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was late for work. It was August 1945, and he'd just finished designing a 5,000-ton tanker for his company, Mitsubishi. He was heading to the office to finish up, clear out and head home, and that's when he saw the plane, high up in the sky over Hiroshima. He watched it drop a silvery speck into the air, and instinctively, says science writer Sam Kean, "he dove to the ground and covered his eyes and plugged his ears with his thumbs."

While you're enjoying your coffee this morning, half a dozen scientists are already at work. They're not sitting at desks, however, but a few miles off the Florida Keys, 60 feet down on the ocean bottom.The researchers are living and working this week at Aquarius Reef Base, the world's last undersea research laboratory. The 25-year-old facility, built by the federal government, has hosted everyone from marine biologists studying endangered coral reefs to NASA astronauts training for weightless missions in space. But the Aquarius Reef Base itself is now endangered.

Humans get most of the blame for climate change, with little attention paid to the contribution of other natural forces. Now, scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of California Santa Cruz are shedding light on one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years that has everything to do with the chemistry of the world's oceans.

Mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time -- at least in theory."We show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide," said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis. "This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity."The results are reported in two papers by Temple with graduate students Moritz Reintjes and Zeke Vogler, respectively, both published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

ERIE, Pa. - After storms off the Florida coast scuttled the much-anticipated expedition for submerged evidence of early Americans in the Gulf of Mexico last August, plans are under way to commence the fourth installment of this pioneering adventure July 20-29. At the helm are chief scientists Dr. James Adovasio and Dr. C. Andrew Hemmings of Mercyhurst University.

At a conservation center in Tucson, archaeologists are studying several ancient Native American pots discovered earlier this year deep in the remote desert mountains of southern Arizona.The archaeologists believe the pots are hundreds of years old but still haven't determined their exact age or who made them. That could take a year or more. But what they do know is that the discovery of the pots was a rare and unusual find.The reddish-brown pots, which likely stored water and food, were intact when they were found in mountainous alcoves of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which lies just north of the U.S.-Mexico border and west of the Tohono O'odham Reservation. Most of the ancient pottery found these days are shards.

It's always cool when something new is discovered, especially when it's about 750 million miles away from Earth. Such is the case with one of Saturn's moons known as Iapetus. Scientist Kelsi Singer was looking over images of the celestial body, which was already known to be very icy in its composition, found something no one had previously discovered.There are massive avalanches that Singer describes as being similar to the ones that occur here on Earth. It's significant because of the vastly different composition of Iapetus."The landslides on Iapetus are a planet-scale experiment that we cannot do in a laboratory or observe on Earth. They give us examples of giant landslides in ice, instead of rock, with a different gravity, and no atmosphere.

Phys.org) -- Einstein's theory of relativity is remarkable not only because it is so successful in explaining seemingly bizarre observations (like the bending of starlight) or because it has assembled a coherent picture of nature. One would expect these results from any good theory. Relativity is also amazing because its has shown that the universe behaves in completely non-intuitive ways (at least to humans): time dilates, lengths contract, gravity warps space, and mass and energy are related by E=mc^2. Our so-called "common sense" is sometimes just plain wrong.It is no wonder, therefore, that astronomers are constantly testing relativity to see whether all of its details are perfectly in order, or if some adjustment might be necessary that might also change our basic understanding of space and time.

The team has been digging for four years together with Mexican antiquity authorities at Uxul in present-day Campeche, Mexico. The aim of the excavation project led by Prof Nikolai Grube and Dr Kai Delvendahl is to study the process of centralization and collapse of hegemonic state structures in the Mayan Lowlands using the example of the mid-sized archeological site at Uxul and its ties to the supraregional center at Calakmul.Since 2011, the team has concentrated on the royal palace of Uxul which is located directly south of the main squares in the center of the ancient city. The royal palace, measuring about 120 x 130 meters, consists of at least eleven individual buildings which all are aligned around five courtyards.

ROME (Reuters) - The ancient Colosseum of Rome, where gladiators fought for their lives, is slanting about 40 cm (16 inches) lower on the south side than on the north, and authorities are investigating whether it needs urgent repairs.Experts first noticed the incline about a year ago and have been monitoring it for the past few months, Rossella Rea, director at the 2,000-year-old monument, said in an article published in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Sunday.The Leaning Tower of Pisa, another of Italy's most popular attractions, was reopened in 2001 after being shut for more than a decade as engineers worked to prevent it from falling over and to make it safe for visitors.

Fragments of 20,000-year-old pottery discovered in south-east China have pushed back the use of ceramics to 10,000 years before agriculture.This shows that pottery was invented by mobile hunter-gatherers, rather than developing from the more settled lifestyles of early farmers, as was previously believed.Found during excavations at Xianrendong Cave, the sherds are 2,000-3,000 years older than any pottery previously found, and date from the peak of the last glacial period, when climate change dramatically reduced regional food resources.

Genetic test maker 23andMe is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve its personalized DNA test in a move that, if successful, could boost acceptance of technology that is viewed skeptically by leading scientists who question its usefulness.23andMe is part of a fledgling industry that allows consumers to peek into their genetic code for details about their ancestry and future health. The company's saliva-based kits have attracted scrutiny for claiming to help users detect whether they are likely to develop illnesses like breast cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's.The biology of how DNA variations actually lead to certain diseases is still poorly understood, and many geneticists say such tests are built on flimsy evidence.

The zodiac, the twelve signs listed in a horoscope, is closely tied to how the earth moves through the heavens. The signs are derived from twelve constellations that mark out the path on which the sun appears to travel over the course of a year. The dates in a horoscope correspond, in principle, to when the sun passes through each constellation. But a closer examination of the motion of the earth, the sun, and the stars shows the zodiac to be more complex than you might imagine!As the earth orbits the sun, the sun appears to pass in front of different constellations. Much like the moon appears in a slightly different place in the sky each night...

(CBS News) A man who has never been able to see color before is now able to perceive it thanks to a device that lets him listen to colors.Artist Neil Harbisson suffers from a visual condition called achromatopsia or total color blindness. Harbisson can only see things in shades of grey. So, he partnered with some computer scientists at the in 2003, who created an "electronic eye" for him.The device - which Harbisson wears on his head - detects the color frequency of the item that is passed in front of it, turns it into a sound frequency and passes the information to a chip installed at the back of Harbisson's head.

The month of August brings us not one, but two full moons. The first will kick off the month on Wednesday (Aug.1), and will be followed by a second on Aug. 31.Some almanacs and calendars assert that when two full moons occur within a calendar month, the second full moon is called a "blue moon."The full moon that night will likely look no different than any other full moon. But the moon can change color in certain conditions.

An enduring question ever since the manned moon landings of the 1960s has been: Are the flags planted by the astronauts still standing?Now, lunar scientists say the verdict is in from the latest photos of the moon taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC): Most do, in fact, still stand."From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11," LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson wrote in a blog post today (July 27). "Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11, and it looks like he was correct!" .

NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, has a tall task ahead of itself when it lands Aug. 6 on the Red Planet.The rover, part of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, will aim to search for signs that Mars is, or ever was, habitable. Since one of the key requirements of habitability is thought to be the presence of liquid water, Curiosity will seek signs of water buried beneath the Martian surface.To do this, the rover will shove neutrons underneath the planet's surface in hopes that the particles bump against hydrogen, one of the two types of atoms that make up water molecules. Neutrons are subatomic particles that have no electrical charge. When a neutron hits a hydrogen atom, the neutron will slow to a near-stop because the two particles are about the same size.

Debate over the origin of large-scale polygons (hundreds of meters to kilometers in diameter) on Mars remains active even after several decades of detailed observations. Similarity in geometric patterns on Mars and Earth has long captured the imagination. In this new article from GSA Today, geologists at The University of Texas at Austin examine these large-scale polygons and compare them to similar features on Earth's seafloor, which they believe may have formed via similar processes.Understanding these processes may in turn fuel support for the idea of ancient oceans on Mars.

If you've always wanted to live on a distant world, Dutch company Mars One wants to give you your chance to settle on the red planet. There's only one catch: You'll never be able to return to Earth.Next year, Mars One will hold a worldwide lottery to select 40 people to train to be civilian astronauts. That group will be sent to live in a desert simulation for three months, after which the initial pool will be whittled down to 10. By 2023, this group will be sent to Mars to form the first permanent human settlement.According to Bas Lansdorp, founder of Mars One, "We will send humans to Mars in 2023. They will live there the rest of their lives. There will be a habitat waiting for them, and we'll start sending four people every two years.".

A Russian mogul wants to achieve cybernetic immortality for humans within the next 33 years. He's pulled together a team intent on creating fully functional holographic human avatars that house our artificial brains. Now he's asking billionaires to help fund the advancements needed along the way.The man behind the 2045 Initiative, described as a nonprofit organization, is a Russian named Dmitry Itskov. The ambitious timeline he's laid out involves creating different avatars. First a robotic copy that's controlled remotely through a brain interface. Then one in which a human brain can be transplanted at the end of life. The next could house an artificial human brain, and finally we'd have holographic avatars containing our intelligence much like the movie "Surrogates.".

The port town of Siraf is located in the northwestern part of Bushehr Province in southern Iran and has a long rich history. Now, a joint team led by Iranian archaeologist Hossein Tofiqian and US-based Iranian expert Sorna Khakzad, have begun work on the partly submerged port.Searching beneath the wavesAt one time, the port had been one of the major centres for marketing pearls and silk in the region, but has gradually submerged over the centuries. The team is currently working to identify any trace of the port structures before deciding on a full excavation strategy. The American members of the team have brought all the specialist equipment necessary for underwater excavations.

The critically-endangered mountain chicken frogs were rescued from the island of Montserrat as they faced extinction due to the rapid spread of the Chytrid fungus.The disease has devastated amphibian populations around the world, pushing many species to the edge of dying out.In a bid to protect the mountain chicken frogs by developing a healthy population of the animals that could eventually be reintroduced to disease free areas of the island, scientists airlifted 50 of the frogs to London.

The world is just days away from the greatest global showcase of elite sport.But while a few thousand athletes will be pushing their bodies to the limit, most of the world will be watching on TV, sitting inactive for hours on end.In a series of articles in the Lancet timed to coincide with the Olympics, researchers from 16 countries set out the scale of the health burden created by physical inactivity.

Researchers working in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda have filmed gorillas dismantling snares set by poachers to catch smaller game. Previously, anecdotal evidence had suggested that silverback gorillas had been seen dismantling snares. In this instance it was two young blackback, mountain gorillas that were involved. The team, part of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center, filmed first a silverback motioning towards the snare. Next, two young male blackbacks arrived on the scene, surveyed the situation, then proceeded to take apart the snare, avoiding being caught in it in the process.

London: No matter how bright you think your child is, until the age of seven, children are no brainier than the birds.Researchers at the University of Cambridge during simple experiments found out that birds did just as well as children up until the age of seven, The Daily Mail reported.By pitting birds against boys and girls using tests inspired by the Aesop's fable in which a thirsty crow is able to drink from a pitcher after using pebbles to raise the water level to within its reach.

One obvious way to reset a mobile device's clock is to check out a master clock online but Zhenjiang Li, a computer scientist and doctoral candidate at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and colleagues have another way of keeping devices time-worthy. Li and co-authors from universities in China, Singapore, and Illinois, have demonstrated that any mobile device, including a smartphone, that has a light sensor or camera can use the flicker from fluorescent lights to keep accurate time. They have authored a paper titled, "FLIGHT: Clock Calibration Using Fluorescent Lighting," to explore how smartphone clocks can keep precise time via the flicker of fluorescent lights.

The woman behind one of the world's most famous paintings was born in a humble house in Florence, according to new documents.Rossella Lorenzi gets the story.

For the first time in the world, an international research team consisting mainly of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and RIKEN recently discovered the phenomenon of the polarity of the polar magnetic field in the solar polar region reversing faster than expected by using the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) mounted on the Solar Observation Satellite "Hinode." This discovery was brought about by the SOT's high spatial resolution and high-precision polarimetry, and the long-term operation steadily conducted via the "Hinode" satellite.At present, solar activity has passed the solar minimum and is increasing slightly. Looking at the overall picture, the solar magnetic field in this solar minimum shows that the north polar region has negative polarity and the south polar region has positive polarity. The polarity of both the north and south polar regions is expected to reverse in May 2013, around the same time as the solar maximum, which is the period with the largest average number of sunspots.

The Landsat mission has been taking satellite imagery and data of Earth for 40 years. One of the primary benefits of such a record is the ability to study changing landscapes.To celebrate the launch of the first Landsat satellite on July 23, 1972, the USGS and NASA asked the public to nominate landscapes that have undergone a lot of environmental change for a closer look. The Landsat team chose these six submissions and created customized chronicles of the change in each area.If you're feeling inspired, you can check out these tutorials on using Landsat data and try putting your own scene together.

Ice cream was enjoyed in Italy by rich and poor alike long before freezing technology brought iced products to the masses, says new research.Long portrayed as a luxury product that in its early days would have been enjoyed primarily by an elite set of society, ice cream was sold on the streets in Naples as long as 300 years ago.At that time, making ice cream was a laborious task which relied on large amounts of ice. Until the late 19th century, when industrial refrigeration eliminated the need for ice houses, ice was harvested from glaciers in the mountains and transported to towns and cities where it was used to cool buckets of mixes.

The so-called Maiden mummy of a 15-year-old Incan girl who was sacrificed 500 years ago is giving up some secrets, revealing the teenager suffered from a bacterial lung infection at the time of her death, scientists report Wednesday.The researchers analyzed tissue proteins, rather than DNA, from the Maiden and another young Inca mummy who died at the same time.Over the last decade, DNA techniques have proven useful in helping solve ancient mysteries, such as how King Tut died. But these techniques aren't without faults. For example, finding evidence of a malaria-causing parasite in King Tut's system doesn't necessarily mean the Egyptian king suffered any malaria symptoms. Additionally, the environment can easily contaminate DNA samples, if researchers aren't careful.

How can you tell if an ancient story is completely fictional or based on reality? One method, says a team of physicists, is to map out the social network of the characters and test whether it looks like a real social network. When they used that method for three ancient myths, they found that the characters have surprisingly realistic relationships.Ancient stories are called myths for a reason. No one believes that Beowulf, the hero of the Anglo-Saxon epic, slew a talking monster named Grendel. Or that the Greek gods described in The Iliad actually appeared on Earth to intervene in the Trojan War. But historians and archaeologists agree that much of those ancient narratives was based on real people and events. The supernatural features of the narrative were then layered onto reality.

Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.

Campaigners fighting to get a pardon for computer pioneer Alan Turing have taken their fight to the House of Lords.The gay codebreaker was convicted of gross indecency in 1952, when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK.He died from cyanide poisoning two years later and it was ruled at his inquest that he had committed suicide.A private members bill to grant him a pardon has been introduced in the Lords by Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Sharkey.

It's time for flying ant day in large parts of the UK, when they embark on their annual mating ritual. So how do the ants know it's their one day a year to mate?The sun has finally come out, summer has arrived and with it comes the annual swarm of flying ants.This seasonal appearance occurs when the ants embark on their "nuptial" flight. This mating ritual happens on roughly the same day across the country, with some regions following a day or two afterwards.

Yes, it's the moment we've all (secretly) been waiting for: Fish In Space!But before you go getting too excited and start asking the big questions -- like: if there's a bubble in a microgravity aquarium, what happens if the fish falls into it? Let's ponder that for a minute... -- it's worth pointing out that the fish aren't actually in space right now (their habitat has just been delivered to the space station) and this fishy experiment isn't just to see how fish enjoy swimming upside down, there's some serious science behind it.Like... to see how fish enjoy swimming upside down.

Egyptian archaeologists have sent a petition to President Mohamed Morsi and Prime Minister Hisham Qandil asking them to not to merge the antiquities ministry with the culture ministry, and to maintain its cabinet status.According to a press release, which the Ahram Online has a copy of it, the archaeologists' syndicate said: "For 30 years we lived under a corrupt system that was hostile to our cultural heritage... It kept it under the control of outsiders who sold it cheaply.The former regime always stood against our independence and even hindered the establishment of an archaeologists' syndicate.

Despite having protected status, the biodiversity in a large number of tropical forests is still continuing to decline, a study has suggested.The authors said the findings should cause concern because the areas have been seen as a final refuge for a number of threatened species.Habitat disruption, hunting and timber exploitation have been seen as signs of future decline, they added.The findings have been published online by the science journal Nature.

In a matter of days, a geologist unlike any on Earth will venture into alien territory. It has six legs and one arm. Instead of feet, it rides around on metal wheels as thin as cardboard. Its brain is in its belly, where it also digests and analyzes the remains of Martian rocks. It eats plutonium for breakfast.Despite its resemblance to a one-armed, 1-ton praying mantis, Curiosity is the most advanced machine ever sent to another planet. If all goes according to plan, the rover will touch down on Mars on Aug. 5 and begin rolling along the surface a few days later.

Two men unlucky enough to get both HIV and cancer have been seemingly cleared of the virus, raising hope that science may yet find a way to cure for the infection that causes AIDS, 30 years into the epidemic.The researchers are cautious in declaring the two men cured, but more than two years after receiving bone marrow transplants, HIV can't be detected anywhere in their bodies. These two new cases are reminiscent of the so-called "Berlin patient," the only person known to have been cured of infection from the human immunodeficiency virus.

Over 500 million years ago a spineless creature on the ocean floor experienced two successive doublings in the amount of its DNA, a "mistake" that eventually triggered the evolution of humans and many other animals, says a new study.The good news is that these ancient DNA doublings boosted cellular communication systems, so that our body cells are now better at integrating information than even the smartest smartphones. The bad part is that communication breakdowns, traced back to the very same genome duplications of the Cambrian Period, can cause diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders.

After decades of digging, paleoanthropologists looking for fossilized human bones have established a reasonably clear picture: Modern humans arose in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all archaic species of humans then disappeared, surviving only outside Africa, as did the Neanderthals in Europe. Geneticists studying DNA now say that, to the contrary, a previously unknown archaic species of human, a cousin of the Neanderthals, may have lingered in Africa until perhaps 25,000 years ago, coexisting with the modern humans and on occasion interbreeding with them.

A newly drawn-up evolutionary tree suggests a group of bacteria may be the last common ancestor for all life on Earth.Researchers established the tree by scouring gene banks to compare shared proteins across the kingdoms of life, and they identified Actinobacteria, the group that has given rise to most human antibiotics, as the base.William Duax, a physical chemist at SUNY Buffalo, and his team analyzed genetic sequences, looking for copies of proteins found in ribosomes.

Indonesian zookeepers have moved an orangutan out of visitors' sight so she'll no longer smoke lit cigarettes people regularly throw into her cage.Taru Jurug Zoo spokesman Daniek Hendarto said Thursday that Tori and her male companion, Didik, were moved Wednesday to a small island within the zoo. There are four endangered orangutans at the zoo in the Central Java town of Solo.

Two sea stars evolved into independent species in extraordinarily little time, a genetic study indicates.By examining differences in the genetic codes of two closely related "cushion stars," researchers concluded ancestors of the two species stopped interbreeding as little as 6,000 years ago.This qualifies as "one of the fastest known marine speciation events," write the authors, referring to the creation of new species.

Any person who's feeling a little under the weather knows that some of the best medicine is sympathy. And where better to find tons of sympathy than from your social media group. Type in "#feelingsick" to Twitter to see what I mean.Even if no one responded to your sympathy fishing, don't worry, Adam Sadilek and his colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York have been paying attention.Using 4.4 million tweets with GPS location from over 630,000 users in New York City, Sadilek and his team were able to predict when an individual would get sick with the flu and tweet about it up to eight days in advance of their first symptoms. Researchers found they could predict said results with 90 percent accuracy.

While mapping the seafloor off San Diego, researchers found something odd: a seafloor mound about the height of a two-story building and the size of a city block.Further investigation found evidence the formation was caused by methane leaking out of the seafloor, which would make it the first so-called "methane seep" in San Diego County, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego announced yesterday (July 25).The Scripps researchers took samples from 3,400 feet (1,036 meters) below the surface and bought up strange worms and clams that likely live off symbiotic bacteria that break down the clear, flammable gas.

Cities across the globe have seen unprecedented growth in recent decades. While revisiting a city after a period of time can reveal some surprising changes, the true extent of the expansion of some urban centers can only be truly appreciated from above. Way above.The Landsat satellite program is the longest continuous archive of images of Earth from space in existence. Run by the USGS and NASA since Landsat 1 launched on July 23, 1972, this record of the surface of our planet reveals invaluable insight for scientists and the public alike. A record like this is particularly useful for studying change and understanding the human impact on the landscape.

The GHMB Community Interview with Robert Bauval is now open. Co-author with Graham of many books, and author of just released, 'Breaking the Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt'.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.

Archaeology is being revolutionized by remote-scanning techniques that use lasers to detect otherwise invisible ground features. The technology digitally extracts vegetation for a clean image of the earth's surface. Archaeologists in Germany have already discovered thousands of new sites.The Glauberg is a hot spot for archaeologists. For decades, researchers have been studying the hill in the central German state of Hesse, where people settled some 7,000 years ago.Over the millennia, the plateau was inhabited by Celts and Alemanni and, in the Middle Ages, people there built castles that reached for the sky. Accordingly, researchers have found plenty of artifacts. In 1996, they made the sensational discovery of an almost perfectly preserved statue of a Celtic warrior...

Two sculptures of life-size lions, each weighing about 5 tons in antiquity, have been discovered in what is now Turkey, with archaeologists perplexed over what the granite cats were used for.One idea is that the statues, created between 1400 and 1200 B.C., were meant to be part of a monument for a sacred water spring, the researchers said.The lifelike lions were created by the Hittites who controlled a vast empire in the region at a time when the Asiatic lion roamed the foothills of Turkey.

A unique airplane has just completed a 4,000-mile journey, making the first solar-powered intercontinental round-trip air journey.Traveling between Europe and Africa, the Solar Impulse experimental solar airplane landed in Payerne, Switzerland at 8:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. ET) on Tuesday. The odyssey began two months ago, on May 24. This wasn't a test to see how fast the plane could make the trip, but to assess its endurance and reliability.The project was also aimed at raising public awareness about energy issues.

One of the occasional complaints around solar panels is that they are 'an eyesore'.Well this may be about to change, after researchers developed a new transparent solar cell which means windows in homes and other buildings can have the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside.The University of California, Los Angeles team describes a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light, making the cells nearly 70 per cent transparent to the human eye.They made the device from a photo-active plastic that converts infrared light into an electrical current.

A study of unidentified flying objects in Canada shows a record high number of sightings in 2011, prompting researchers to suggest further studies into the subject.Ufology Research, which has recorded UFO sightings in Canada since 1989, said there were 986 sighting reports in 2011. This figure is close to the 1,004 sightings recorded in 2008.Ontario has the most number of sightings, with 406.The study notes only 11 per cent of the sightings could not be explained. The rest were determined to be regular lights in the sky..

Those car tires you kick someday may be made from soybeans.Goodyear is working on tires made at least partially of soybean oil instead of petroleum-based oil. In addition to reducing Goodyear's petroleum consumption for tires, soy-oil tires have longer tread life and may reduce Goodyear factories' energy use, the company said.

The findings support historians' belief that ancient myths including Beowulf, The Iliad and the traditional Irish poem Táin Bó Cuailnge may be based, at least in part, on real communities and people.Researchers from Coventry University analysed the texts of the three ancient stories and compared the complex web of characters' relationships with the type of "social networks" that occur in real life.For each character the physicists calculated their popularity, based on how many relationships they had with other characters and whether they were friends or enemies. Then, they examined the overall dynamic between the cast as a whole.

A privacy charity says it is prepared to take legal action against the UK government if it fails to explain why it has not restricted the export of British surveillance technologies to repressive regimes, including Iran, Egypt and Syria.Privacy International, which first put the question directly to David Cameron in November 2011, has sent a letter to business secretary Vince Cable and is demanding an answer to its queries within the next two weeks. If the government fails to take action under the 2002 Export Control Act -- which states that the secretary of state may prevent the export of technology if the transfer could be used in "breaches of human rights" or "internal repression in any country" -- the charity is prepared to file for a judicial review on 6 August and even request an injunction to stall technology companies' exports and to prevent them maintaining those technologies already exported to questionable authorities.

Oceanographers have published a study revealing that fertilising algae with iron causes it to undergo a growth spurt before dying and plunging to the seabed, taking the carbon it has absorbed with it.Phytoplankton rapidly absorbs heat-trapping carbon, so researchers involved in the project are suggesting their findings -- published in the journal Nature -- could have potential uses in controlling climate change. They warn, however, that far more studies need to be carried out before such a conclusion can be drawn.

The Great Barrier Reef's amazing diversity of life gets a helping hand from distant underwater volcanic eruptions, a new study has found.Submarine volcanoes can spit out trillions of pieces of floating rock upon which corals and other organisms hitch a ride to the world's largest reef, where they can thrive and multiply, according to research published this month in the journal PLoS One.

A mangrove is a forest consisting of various species of mangrove trees growing with their bases submerged in water, at the interface between land and sea. They cover more than three quarters of tropical coastlines, that is to say almost 200,000km². In New Caledonia, they accounts for almost 80% of the island's western coastline. They act as a buffer zone between the lagoon and the mountain mining areas, rich in metallic elements (iron, manganese, nickel, chrome and cobalt, nearly all toxic pollutants).

Cambridge scientists have used an age-old fable to help illustrate how we think differently to other animals.Lucy Cheke, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge's Department of Experimental Psychology expanded Aesop's fable into three tasks of varying complexity and compared the performance of Eurasian Jays with local school children.The task that set the children apart from the Jays involved a mechanism which was counter-intuitive as it was hidden under an opaque surface. Neither the birds nor the children were able to learn how the mechanism worked, but the children were able to learn how to get the reward, whereas the birds were not.

Scientists have discovered a one mile deep rift valley hidden beneath the ice in West Antarctica, which they believe is contributing to ice loss from this part of the continent.Experts from the University of Aberdeen and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) made the discovery below Ferrigno Ice Stream, a region visited only once previously, over fifty years ago, in 1961, and one that is remote even by Antarctic standards.Their findings, reported in Nature this week reveal that the ice-filled ancient rift basin is connected to the warming ocean which impacts upon contemporary ice flow and loss.

The Greenland ice sheet melted at a faster rate this month than at any other time in recorded history, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of thaw.The rapid melting over just four days was captured by three satellites. It has stunned and alarmed scientists, and deepened fears about the pace and future consequences of climate change.In a statement posted on Nasa's website on Tuesday, scientists admitted the satellite data was so striking they thought at first there had to be a mistake.

Alexander the Great is portrayed as a legendary conqueror and military leader in Greek-influenced Western history books but his legacy looks very different from a Persian perspective.Any visitor to the spectacular ruins of Persepolis - the site of the ceremonial capital of the ancient Persian Achaemenid empire, will be told three facts: it was built by Darius the Great, embellished by his son Xerxes, and destroyed by that man, Alexander.That man Alexander, would be the Alexander the Great, feted in Western culture as the conqueror of the Persian Empire and one of the great military geniuses of history.

According to written records and supported by dendrochronology and archaeological evidence, for 12-18 months in AD 536-537, a thick, persistent dust veil or dry fog darkened the skies between Europe and Asia Minor. The climatic interruption brought by the thick, bluish fog extended as far east as China, where summer frosts and snow are recorded in historical records; tree ring data from Mongolia and Siberia to Argentina and Chile reflect decreased growing records from 536 and the subsequent decade.

SMH.COM.AUA BREAKTHROUGH by Australian and Danish climate scientists has shown that carbon dioxide was linked more closely to the ending of the last ice age than previously thought.The team studied tiny bubbles of ancient air, trapped in layers of compressed ice around the coast of Antarctica, and traced rising levels of carbon dioxide more accurately than earlier studies.

The ancient Native Americans of the desert Southwest subsisted on a fiber-filled diet of prickly pear, yucca and flour ground from plant seeds, finds a new analysis of fossilized feces that may explain why modern Native Americans are so susceptible to Type II diabetes.Thousands of years of incredibly fibrous foods, 20 to 30 times more fibrous than today's typical diet, with low impact on the blood sugar likely left this group vulnerable to the illness when richer Anglo foods made their way to North America, said study researcher Karl Reinhard, a professor of forensic sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The dry regions of India have a long history of collecting rainwater. Indian water guru Anupam Mishra has photographed some of the country's old - and new - water projects, as part of his effort to promote water conservation and management, particularly through sharing knowledge of ancient rainwater harvesting systems.

Archaeologists on Tuesday unearthed a skeleton in a rare state of preservation in Florence in what they believe may be a crucial step towards unraveling the mystery of the identity of the woman with the most enigmatic smile in the world.Several bodies have been discovered in the hunt to find the mortal remains of Lisa Gherardini, the Florentine noblewoman widely believed to have served as the muse for Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa".

More than 500 million years ago a spineless ocean-dwelling creature experienced a dramatic change to its DNA, which may have led to the evolution of vertebrates, says a new study.The good news is that these ancient DNA doublings boosted cellular communication systems, so that our body's cells are now better at integrating information than even the smartest smartphones.The bad part is that communication breakdowns, traced back to the very same genome duplications of the Cambrian Period, can cause diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders.

The traditional image of Neanderthals as gritty people who spent most of their time out hunting might not be entirely accurate, according to a new study revealing that they may have had to devote hours to daily subsistence tasks instead.Our extinct prehistoric cousins, the Neanderthals, may have spent less of their time living the rugged life of the hunter and more of it carrying out tedious domestic chores, a new study suggests.

During routine excavation works at the Archaic period cemetery located at Abu Rawash area northeast of the Giza Plateau, a French archaeological mission from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) stumbled on what is believed to be a funerary boat of the First Dynasty King Den (dating from around 3000BC).The funerary boat was buried with royalty, as ancient Egyptians believed it would transfer the king's soul to the afterlife for eternity.Unearthed in the northern area of Mastaba number six (a flat-roofed burial structure) at the archaeological site, boat consists of 11 large wooden planks reaching six metres high and 150 metres wide, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said in a press release sent to Ahram Online on Wednesday.

July 25, 2012 (WASHINGTON) -- Buckyballs are high-powered desktop magnetic toys for adults, but some young children are swallowing the tiny magnets and getting hurt. Teens also have accidentally ingested the magnetic balls after trying to mimic tongue piercings, leading the government to take steps to stop the sale of the product.In an unusual move, the Consumer Product Safety Commission filed an administrative complaint Wednesday against New York-based Maxfield and Oberton, the manufacturer of Buckyballs. The desktop toys have small but very powerful magnets that are strong enough to mold into different shapes.The safety commission says the company refused to recall the product. On another front, the agency said it was able to persuade about 10 retailers, including Amazon.com, to stop selling Buckyballs.

The art of humorous storytelling in Japan, known as rakugo, isn't as popular as it once was. But now an android has joined the ranks of comics who kneel on cushions while spinning out jokes.The narrative droid is a copy of Beicho Katsura III, an 86-year-old rakugo comic recognized by the government as a Living National Treasure.The Beicho Android, as it's known, is the work of Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, creator of the Geminoid series of lifelike androids, and makeup artist Shinya Endo.

Instead of fleeing randomly when faced with a predator, sheep attempt to bury themselves within their flock, new UK research has shown.The theory that animals moving in groups retreat towards the centre of their flocks if a predator appears has been tested before.But the researchers are the first to show that sheep behave this way using GPS technology.Details of the work are published in the journal Current Biology.

The Belle Epoque, France's golden era at the turn of the last century, bequeathed Paris elegant landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, but also a more sinister legacy of radioactive floors and backyards which the capital is only now addressing.When the Franco-Polish Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium in 1898, she set off a craze for the luminescent metal among Parisians, who started using it for everything from alarm clock dials to lipsticks and even water fountains.

A war shirt worn by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe that can be seen in a painting hanging in the Smithsonian Institution sold on Saturday for $877,500 (£562,000) at auction, organisers said.Mike Overby, an organiser of the annual Coeur d'Alene Art Auction, said the shirt that sold in Reno is considered to be one of the most important Native American artifacts ever to come to auction. It had been expected to raise from $800,000 to $1.2m, he said."Anything associated with Chief Joseph is highly desirable, and that's a pretty special shirt," he told Associated Press.

When astronauts return from space walks and remove their helmets, they are welcomed back with a peculiar smell. An odor that is distinct and weird: something, astronauts have described it, like "seared steak." And also: "hot metal." And also: "welding fumes."Our extraterrestrial explorers are remarkably consistent in describing Space Scent in meaty-metallic terms. "Space," astronaut Tony Antonelli has said, "definitely has a smell that's different than anything else." Space, three-time spacewalker Thomas Jones has put it, "carries a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell."Space, Jones elaborated, smells a little like gunpowder. It is "sulfurous.".