Newsdesk Archive

The standard way of thinking about space missions is that once you've done something successfully, you try to do it again, only bigger and better. The aging Hubble Space Telescope, for example, will be followed by the larger, more powerful James Webb Space Telescope. The Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, each about the size of a golf cart, are soon to be one-upped by the far more capable Curiosity rover, which is as big as an SUV.

The secrets of one of the most remarkable technological finds from Ancient Greece have been probed for the first time using powerful X-ray imaging equipment, specially shipped to Athens.The Antikythera Mechanism as it is known, is regarded as the world's oldest "computer" and is thought to have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses and record dates of the ancient Olympiad. Its remains were recovered from a Roman shipwreck off the southern coast of Greece in 1901.

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.Discovered in a coal mine in Colombia in 2005, the turtle was given the name Carbonemys cofrinii, which means "coal turtle." It wasn't until now that the turtle was examined and described in a scientific journal; the findings are detailed online Thursday in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.The researchers say C. cofrinii belongs to a group of side-necked turtles known as pelomedusoides. The turtle's skull, roughly the size of an NFL football, was the most complete of the fossil remains.

Under perfectly carved niches that once held dozens of small buddha statues, the purposeful tap of chisel on stone echoed over the Bamiyan valley for the first time in centuries.Twelve young Afghans had gathered to take the first tentative steps back towards a stone-working tradition that once made their home famous, at a workshop in a cave gouged out as a monastery assembly hall more than 1,000 years ago.

A New York state supreme court judge has written an impassioned plea to legalize medical marijuana in the state, potentially taking New York one step closer to becoming the 17th state in the nation to allow use of the drug as a palliative.In an op-ed piece in Thursday's New York Times, justice Gustin L Reichbach writes eloquently of his three-and-a-half-year long battle with prostate cancer. He describes enduring chemotherapy, brutal surgery, radiation, constant nausea and insomnia. The only remedy that has given him a modicum of relief has been marijuana.

One of the nightmare scenarios for modern society is the possibility of a global flu pandemic like the 1918 Spanish influenza which infected about a quarter of the global population and killed as many as 130 million of them. An important question for policy makers is how best to limit the spread of such a disease if a new outbreak were to occur. (The Spanish flu was caused by the H1N1 flu virus that was also responsible for the 2009 swine flu outbreak.)One obvious idea is to close international airports to prevent, or at least dramatically reduce, the movement of potentially infected individuals between countries. But is this the best approach?.

Shortly after the Second World War, the Swedish government conducted a vast social experiment to decide whether to implement educational reform. An examination of data from people who took part in the study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, has revealed that those lucky enough to have experienced the reformed system have been more likely than their contemporaries to live a long life.

An unmanned flight to the International Space Station this month will be the first rendezvous by a privately developed vehicle. The flight will test the Dragon spacecraft's ability to resupply the space station now that the space shuttles are retired.Stage 1: LaunchThe two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with its Dragon capsule will launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The mission will last approximately three weeks.

Think of it as an amped up version of the iconic "Blue Marble" image. A new photo of Earth from space highlights the striking beauty and intensely rich colors of our home planet.The photo was taken by a Russian weather satellite, called Elektro-L No.1, which flies in a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers) above the Earth's equator.

The ability to breathe new life into an aging satellite using robot mechanics could potentially boost satellite industry efficiency and reduce mission costs, and at least one aerospace firm is forging ahead with plans to do just that.Now, all the company needs is customers."We're ready to sell, we're ready to build, we're ready to deliver," said Edward Horowitz, ViviSat's chairman of the board. ViviSat is a joint venture of rocket manufacturer Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and aerospace firm U.S. Space.

The only constant is change. It's the most basic fact of human existence. Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same.We feel it with each breath. From birth to the unknown moment of our passing, we ride a river of change. And yet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we exhaust ourselves in an endless search for solidity. We hunger for something that lasts, some idea or principle that rises above time and change. We hunger for certainty. That is a big problem.It might even be THE problem.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as his alter ego Ali G, asked Buzz Aldrin if astronauts had ever gone to the sun. "It's too hot," Aldrin replied sardonically. "What if we were to go during the winter?" Cohen persisted.Though we have hurtled spacecraft into the frigid frontiers of the solar system, where water would freeze rock solid in seconds, we have never ventured closer to the seething sun than the distance of the planet Mercury.

Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said.A team from the UK's University of Leeds and Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron.As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives.

Ancient creatures resembling stout-necked Loch Ness Monsters apparently developed arthritis in their monster jaws, revealing that even such lethal killers could suffer from and eventually succumb to diseases of old age, researchers find.Scientists reached that conclusion while investigating the fossil of an extinct marine reptile known as a pliosaur. The carnivore was apparently an old female extending some 26 feet (8 meters). It had a 10-foot-long (3 meters), crocodilelike head, short neck, whalelike body and four powerful flippers to propel it through water to hunt down prey.

This is one of the most inspiring stories we've ever seen: Claire Lomas of the U.K. was paralyzed from the chest down in a horse-riding accident five years ago. Yet today, she accomplished something difficult for anyone: she finished the London Marathon. It took 16 days and one impressive bionic exoskeleton, but she did it. Watch the video and try not to tear up a little, I dare you..

The gigantic wildfires that blow through the southwestern United States today are unprecedented in the long-term historical record, new research suggests, and are due to modern human activities."The U.S. would not be experiencing massive large-canopy-killing crown fires today if human activities had not begun to suppress the low-severity surface fires that were so common more than a century ago," study researcher Christopher Roos, of Southern Methodist University, said in a statement.

One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along.They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away.What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans?

Our story of the Gooderham family begins with a band of Viking conquerers under the command of a man named Guthrum.While Guthrum's Westward expansion would be stymied by Alfred The Great, who he eventually was forced to enter into a peace treaty with, he was still King of what was then known as 'East Anglia', around modern day Suffolk and Norfolk.Guthrum divided the land amongst his men and that is where they settled. Over time warriors became farmers, and Guthrum became Gooderham.

A group of biology researchers, led by Akhilesh Reddy from Cambridge University have found an enzyme that they believe serves as a circadian clock that operates in virtually all forms of life. In a paper published in the journal Nature, they describe a class of enzymes known as peroxiredoxins which are present in almost all plants and other organisms and which appear to serve as a basic ingredient in non-feedback loop biological clocks.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, a rocket is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to deliver a capsule full of supplies to the International Space Station.Such launches are unremarkable when government agencies are at the helm, but this flight is different. The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule is in the hands of SpaceX, the first commercial company to attempt a rendezvous with the orbiting outpost.

There will be a relatively rare solar eclipse this weekend, as the moon slides between Earth and the sun, casting its long shadow across wide swaths of the globe.Sunday's event will be an annular partial solar eclipse, meaning that the moon will be too far away from the Earth to totally block out the suns light when it aligns itself briefly.The last time there was an annular solar eclipse was in 1994.

A thought-powered robotic arm could put independence within reach for disabled patients, researchers report. In a new study, two people with almost-complete body paralysis were able to reach and grasp small foam balls and a thermos of coffee with a robotic arm using only their brain signals to direct the motion. The result, a first for human subjects, brings scientists a step closer to restoring mobility for people with spinal cord injuries, lost limbs, and other conditions that limit movement.

Denver (CNN) -- A Colorado advocacy group is spending thousands of dollars to convince people that smoking pot is safer than drinking alcohol.It's an attempt by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol to rally support for a vote in November that would legalize the drug for recreational use. Colorado legalized marijuana for medical use in 2000."The goal is the choice -- to make sure adults have the choice to use a less harmful substance than alcohol," Tvert said.

Aviation authorities are scratching their heads over a mysterious flying object in the skies above Colorado that almost caused a mid-air crash.The object was sighted by a commercial jet pilot, who claimed to air traffic controllers that some kind of flying craft got too close for comfort on Monday.In a transmission that appeared on LiveATC.net, the operator of the Cessna Citation 525 CJ1 says: 'A remote controlled aircraft, or what?'Something just went by the other way ... About 20 to 30 seconds ago. It was like a large remote-controlled aircraft'.

In August, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will reach the Red Planet and begin its search for habitats that could have supported life.The next-generation rover, better known by the nickname Curiosity, will pick its way up a mound in the middle of Gale crater and look for evidence that water once flowed on the Martian surface - a condition that is considered a prerequisite for hosting microbial beings.Q: On an expedition to the California desert this month to demonstrate some of the challenges Curiosity will face on Mars, scientists chatted about the upcoming mission.

Erich von Daniken, author best known for his controversial work linking extraterrestrial influences to early human culture with books such as 'Chariots of the Gods?' Daniken is one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and ancient astronaut hypotheses. We are now collecting questions for him for his GrahamHancock.com community interview, so if you have a question for Erich, please post it up on our messageboards.Check the Interviews page for more.

Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents have discovered two sets of archaeological artifacts in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument since February, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday.In late February, Ajo Station agents patrolling on foot came across what they believed to be an ancient bowl hidden in a shady outcropping of rock, the Border Patrol said.

Nathaniel Montague spent more than 50 of his 84 years chasing history, meticulously collecting rare and one-of-a-kind fragments of America's past. Slave documents. Photographs. Signatures. Recordings.Montague -- Magnificent Montague, as he's been known since his days as a pioneering radio DJ -- amassed an 8,000-piece collection reflecting names from the well-known to the forgotten to those history never thought to remember. It's valued in the millions; some call it priceless. One assessment of just five of the pieces puts the total value of those treasures alone somewhere between $592,000 and $940,000.

Could the future of cleaner fossil fuel really be frozen crystals now trapped in ocean sediments and under permafrost?Backed by an oil industry giant, the Obama administration recently tested a drilling technique in Alaska's Arctic that it says might eventually unlock "a vast, entirely untapped resource that holds enormous potential for U.S. economic and energy security." Some experts believe the reserves could provide domestic fuel for hundreds of years to come.

What were the Romans really like? Different from us in many ways, but there is much that is familiar in Roman family life and in particular parenting.In 94 AD young Quintus Sulpicius Maximus died.A Roman lad who lived just 11 years, five months and 12 days, he had recently taken part in a grown-up poetry competition, a sort of Rome's Got Talent. He had composed and performed a long poem in Greek.

It's slightly macabre but our fascination with the mummified bodies of men, women and children from ancient civilisations continues to draw captivated audiences to exhibitions here and around the world.Numbers of visitors to the Queensland Museum are expected to swell significantly when a new exhibition from the British Museums Egyptology collection opens to the public on Thursday.

KERIYA, Xinjiang, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The ruins of a Buddhist temple dating back 1,500 years ago have been discovered in China's largest desert, offering valuable research material for historians studying Buddhism's spread from India to China.The temple's main hall, with a rare structure based around three square-shaped corridors and a huge Buddha statue, has been uncovered after two months of hard work in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Dr. Wu Xinhua, the leading archaeologist of the excavation project, said Monday.

The curtain of secrecy is being raised by Blue Origin, a private entrepreneurial space group designing both suborbital and orbital vehicles.Backed by Amazon.com mogul Jeff Bezos, the Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin group has completed wind tunnel testing of its next-generation craft, simply called the "Space Vehicle." It would transport up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station. Though the company has been stingy on public information in the past, new details of the recent work have been released.

Scientists have used DNA analysis to gain important new insights into how human beings repopulated Europe as the Ice Age relaxed its grip.Dr Maria Pala, who is based at the University of Huddersfield -- now a key centre for archaeo-genetics research -- is the lead author of an article in the latest issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics which shows how the Near East was a major source of replenishment when huge areas of European territory became habitable again, up to 19,000 years ago.

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced May 8 the discovery of objects that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David. During recent archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in Judah adjacent to the Valley of Elah, Garfinkel and colleagues uncovered rich assemblages of pottery, stone and metal tools, and many art and cult objects. These include three large rooms that served as cultic shrines, which in their architecture and finds correspond to the biblical description of a cult at the time of King David.

The rarest gorilla on Earth, the elusive Cross River gorilla, has been caught on film by a hidden camera trap for the first time ever.Researchers estimate that only about 250 to 300 of the gorillas remain on the planet, and humans have rarely observed these critically-endangered primates in their natural habitat.

For centuries, Native Americans have been on the receiving end of some of the worst atrocities committed on U.S. soil, driven from their homes and isolated on impoverished reservations. How can the U.S. government begin to repair the damage done to Native American communities, and compensate in some small way for the injuries done to them?Well, giving back Mount Rushmore would be a start.

In May 2010, the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull reached the Iberian Peninsula and brought airports to a halt all over Europe. At the time, scientists followed its paths using satellites, laser detectors, sun photometers and other instruments. Two years later they have now presented the results and models that will help to prevent the consequences of such natural phenomena.

Physicists routinely baffle reporters, but for once things went the other way. Alexander Gaeta was sitting in his Cornell University office in the fall of 2010 when a reporter called to ask his opinion of a strange new paper in the Journal of Optics: What did he think about the claim that it might be possible to create a time cloak, a device that would render events undetectable?Gaeta was caught off guard. He was still grappling with the invisibility cloak, a wild idea that turned into reality in 2006, when physicists demonstrated that a class of synthetic materials could bend light completely around an object. (Think of water in a stream flowing around a rock.) Without light bouncing off the object, it would essentially disappear.

Vatican staffers who have been leaking embarrassing letters about corruption and nepotism inside the tiny city state are to be hunted down by a crack squad of cardinals led by a senior member of the religious group Opus Dei.Irritated by the anonymous release of documents to the press this year, Pope Benedict has named Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, to lead a three-man team which will haul in staffers for questioning and rifle through files until they catch the perpetrators of what has been dubbed "Vatileaks".

An American chemist says he's found a substance - several, in fact - that can repel some of the most fearsome predators in the ocean. He wants to use his discovery to protect them, and us.Eric Stroud stands on a pier on the island of North Bimini in the Bahamas. He looks down into the turquoise water.A couple of eagle rays and barracudas swim by."The current is ripping through here right now," he says. "The tide is going out. So any scent that's put here goes right to the outside of the channel, and that's where the big sharks are right now.

In some forms of blindness, including age-related macular degeneration, most of the eye is perfectly fine. The cells of the retinal that convert light into electrical pulses may die off, but the cells that support them, including the nerves that process these signals and relay them to the brain, are still intact. This raises the prospect that the eye's infrastructure can be used to help restore vision. Stimulate the remaining neurons in response to light, and they'll happily take the signals and feed them into the visual centers of the brain.

New research led by the University of Reading has revealed that finds at Glastonbury Abbey provide the earliest archaeological evidence of glass-making in Saxon Britain.Professor Roberta Gilchrist, from the Department of Archaeology, has re-examined the records of excavations that took place at Glastonbury in the 1950s and 1960s.

Conservationists protest against the project to build several hydroelectric power stations in the Chilean Patagonia, in Santiago, Chile in 2011. Chile's supreme court has halted construction on the Rio Cuervo hydroelectric project in the country's remote and pristine Patagonia region, after accepting an appeal from environmental groups.The court's decision on Friday ran counter to a recommendation by a regional environmental review commission to give the green light to the project, developed by a joint venture of Australia's Origin Energy and Xstrata Copper.

Smoking marijuana may help relieve the muscle tightness and pain of multiple sclerosis, a small U.S. study suggests.Many people with MS often suffer from spasticity, an uncomfortable and disabling condition in which the muscles become tight and difficult to control. Spasticity can be controlled with medications but the symptoms may continue or the anti-spasticity drugs may carry adverse effects such as drowsiness, sedation, and muscle weakness.

More than 1.5 million people in Europe, the US and elsewhere have petitioned the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, to veto a law that critics say could lead to the loss of 220,000 square kilometres of Amazonian rainforest, an area close to the combined size of the UK and France.The proposed new Brazilian forest code, pushed through parliament by the powerful farming lobby in the face of national opposition, would provide an amnesty for landowners who have illegally cleared forests in the past and will allow deforestation in previously protected areas like mountain tops and beside rivers. According to environment groups, it could allow loggers to chop down more of the Amazon than has been possible in the last 50 years.

Speakers at a panel on Tuesday disagreed over whether a correspondent for The Associated Press who defied military censors by reporting that the Germans had surrendered unconditionally in World War II had acted properly.Edward Kennedy was fired by the AP in 1945 after he became the first journalist to send a firsthand account of the surrender in Reims, France, that he and 16 other journalists witnessed.

Paris - Vicarious travellers and students of history can take a virtual stroll through the vast necropolis build by the ancient Egyptians in the Giza Plateau, thanks to a 3D Internet project launched this week.The interactive recreation, to be found at www.3ds.com/giza3D, was put together by French design company Dassault Systems with material from the archives of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

It is a space mission straight from the Hollywood film Armageddon.A team of astronauts are being trained to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth.Nasa, the US space agency, is planning to send humans far further than they have ever been before to by making contact with an asteroid up to three million miles away by the end of the next decade.

Coelacanths, an ancient group of fishes once thought to be long extinct, made headlines in 1938 when one of their modern relatives was caught off the coast of South Africa. Now coelacanths are making another splash and University of Alberta researchers are responsible.Lead U of A researcher Andrew Wendruff identified fossils of a coelacanth that he says are so dramatically different from previous finds, they shatter the theory that coelacanths were evolutionarily stagnant in that their body shape and life-style changed little since the origin of the group.

The disappearance of Neanderthals still remains a mystery, but paleoanthropologists are increasingly understanding what allowed their evolutionary cousins, Homo sapiens, to conquer the planet.According to Ariane Burke, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal, the rapid dispersal of anatomically modern humans was not so much due to superior intelligence or improved hunting or gathering techniques, but rather to the creation of symbolic objects that allowed them to extend their social relations across vast territories.

Before the brunches, before the gifts and greeting cards, Mother's Day was a time for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace.When the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium. Of course, Mother's Day marched on without her and is today celebrated, in various forms, on a global scale.

UK scientists have claimed a breakthrough in research on rice that could help farmers devastated by last year's tsunami in Japan.Researchers in Norwich said a method of identifying and isolating crop traits has been developed that means new varieties could be created in a year.A Sainsbury Laboratory scientist said Japanese farmers could now grow a salt-resistant crop within two years.It previously took up to 10 years to develop new crop strains, he said.

Researchers have come up with a startling suggestion for how life could propagate across our galaxy.Identifying the mathematical hole between the expected mass of our galaxy - The Milky Way - and what is observed, they theorise that there are billions and billions of 'nomadic' planets, unaffiliated to any particular star, floating through the darkness of space.The scientists from the Astrobiology department at the University of Buckingham have proposed that these planets originated in the early Universe, within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called 'missing mass'.

One day some 74,000 years ago, in a swampy valley in the south of India, dawn never came. In the half-light, greyish dust sifted down, blanketing the ground and turning trees to ghosts. Far to the east, a volcano called Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra had unleashed one of the greatest eruptions ever known, flinging thousands of cubic kilometres of rock into the atmosphere and spreading a pall of ash across southern Asia.Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, has studied the ash deposits in India's Jurreru Valley to reconstruct the events that followed. Within days, the trees shed their whitened foliage; rains later swept ash into layers several metres thick on the valley floor. Eventually, the lakes and swamps vanished, perhaps because the climate had become drier and cooler. Toba had transformed a lush habitat into a wasteland.

PHILADELPHIA -- Trouble sleeping? Biting those fingernails? Maya apocalypse worries keeping you up at night?Well, you can relax. Anyone still sweating a Dec. 21, 2012 winter solstice End of the World courtesy of the ancient Maya calendar may want to consider a trip here, to the storied Penn Museum. Opening this weekend, the "Maya 2012: Lords of Time" exhibition comes complete with panels debunking all sorts of buncombe about the Maya, from doomsday calendar predictions to their "disappearance.

FLINGING pebbles at an asteroid sounds like a fruitless task, but a new calculation shows that this could deflect an Earthbound rock.It takes surprisingly little force to deflect an asteroid, provided it is done several years before the projected impact. Previous ideas have included landing an engine on the asteroid to push it away from a collision, and using mirrors or lasers to vaporise its surface and provide thrust to shift its course.

The densest waters of Antarctica have reduced dramatically over recent decades, in part due to man-made impacts on the climate, Australian scientists said Friday.Research suggests that up to 60 percent of "Antarctic Bottom Water", the dense water formed around the edges of Antarctica that seeps into the deep sea and spreads out through the world's oceans, has disappeared since 1970.

BALTIMORE - A doctor says stress, family medical history or possibly even poison led to the death of Vladimir Lenin, debunking a popular theory that a sexually transmitted disease debilitated the former Soviet Union leader.UCLA neurologist Dr. Harry Vinters and Russian historian Lev Lurie reviewed Lenin's records for an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference that opens Friday on famous people's deaths.The conference is held yearly at the school, where researchers in the past have re-examined the diagnoses of figures including King Tut, Christopher Columbus, Simon Bolivar and Abraham Lincoln.

Adolf Hitler developed a "messiah complex" during World War II, a newly unveiled report written for wartime British intelligence says.The report, written in 1942 by Cambridge academic Joseph MacCurdy, said Hitler was turning increasingly to "Jew-phobia" as defeat loomed.Social scientist Mark Abrams, who worked on the BBC's overseas propaganda analysis unit, commissioned the report.

New evidence proves humans are continuing to evolve and that significant natural and sexual selection is still taking place in our species in the modern world.Despite advancements in medicine and technology, as well as an increased prevalence of monogamy, research reveals humans are continuing to evolve just like other species.

There's an 80% chance that in five months Bill Weir will be the first person ever to see his cardiac tissue beating outside his body.Last week Bill visited Dr. Tim Nelson at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to report on a revolutionary new stem cell treatment that would have sounded like science fiction even five years ago.

One of the best and indeed often most enjoyable means of learning about and connecting with some of the more famous and interesting people in the world is by seeing and reading interviews done with them.If done well, an interview with a celebrity or notable person can bring you new insights into their personalities and their motivations as well as gaining a deeper understanding and broader perspective on their work.Have you ever had, though an instance where you felt that the interviewer wasted the persons time by asking banal questions, and leaving out what could have been some great ones?In short, did you ever wish you could be the one to ask the questions?.

They were the stone-age equivalent of Glastonbury festival. People gathered in their hundreds to drink, eat and party every summer at revelries lasting several days and nights. Young men met women from nearby communities and married them. Herds of cattle were slaughtered to provide food.These neolithic carousals even had special sites. They were held on causewayed enclosures, large hilltop earthworks built by our forebears after they brought farming to Britain from the continent 6,000 years ago.

Vesta is the only remaining example of the original objects that came together to form the rocky planets, like Earth and Mars, some 4.6 billion years ago.This assessment is based on data from the Dawn probe which has been orbiting the second largest body in the asteroid belt for the past 10 months.The findings from the Nasa mission are reported in Science magazine.

Children who are exposed to violence experience wear and tear to their DNA that is similar to that seen in aging, according to a new study that may help explain why they face a heightened risk of mental and physical disorders as adults.In a long-term study of 118 pairs of identical twins, researchers at Duke University found that boys and girls who had experienced violence had shorter genetic structures called telomeres than youngsters who had more peaceful upbringings.

Scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) at the University of Edinburgh have discovered an enzyme that corrects the most common mistake in mammalian DNA.The mistake is the inclusion of individual bits of RNA within the DNA sequence, which the researchers found occurs more than a million times in each cell as it divides. The findings, published in Cell, suggest the RNase H2 enzyme is central to an important DNA repair mechanism necessary to protect the human genome.

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan measure that would have eliminated funding for federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they're legal failed Wednesday in the House of Representatives. The legislation, introduced by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Sam Farr (D-Calif.), Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), was part of the appropriations bill to fund the Department of Justice for fiscal 2013. It failed 262-163.

A strange creature allegedly filmed by underwater drillers in the deep ocean on April 25 has sparked intrigue and controversy on the Internet. Theories about the mysterious animal range from a jellyfish to an unknown marine version of the Loch Ness monster to a whale placenta.Neither the source of the video nor the location where it was filmed have been revealed, leading some people to suspect a hoax.Others note that the video seems authentic, and that a hoaxed video would likely be much more dramatic. Scale in the video is unclear, and without more information about the drill site (for example the diameter of the pipe the animal moves in front of), it's impossible to know exactly how big it is.

Battir, West Bank -- One of the last Palestinian farming villages that still uses irrigation systems from Roman times says its ancient way of life is in danger as Israel prepares to lay down its West Bank separation barrier.With construction possibly beginning in the coming weeks, the people of Battir hope a legal battle, backed by recent U.N. recognition of the village's agricultural practices, will help change Israel's mind.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Mount Fuji may be sitting on a large, active fault that could trigger a magnitude-7 earthquake, changing the shape of the mountain and devastating nearby communities, the education ministry said on Thursday.A survey commissioned by the ministry found a 30-km fault beneath Japan's highest mountain, believed by many to be sacred, and research results indicate it was likely to be active, a ministry official said.If the fault sets off an earthquake, it could lead to a major landslide and hit communities at the foot of the 3,776-metre-high mountain. Further research was required, the official said.

In 2010, a massive, magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck the south central coast of Chile, rupturing beaches and launching a tsunami that rode inland with devastating effect. In an instant, whole sections of the coastline were transformed, with large swaths of sand and rock lifted from beneath the waves.For Chile, it was a disaster of sobering proportions. But for Eduardo Jaramillo and Jenifer Dugan -- researchers who have spent years studying the effects of coastal erosion on beach ecology -- it was also a rare opportunity to see one of climate change's more immediate effects put in reverse.

When it comes to brain development, slow and steady wins the race. A single ancestral human gene that made two copies of itself may have helped the evolution of our large brains 2.5 million years ago, as our ancestors were diverging from australopithecines.Paradoxically, it seems the effect of the extra copies was to slow down individual brain development. This allowed time for neurons to develop more and better connections with one another.

Big news on the pharma front today: for the first time the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has approved a drug for humans that was produced in a genetically engineered plant cell. The approval could open the door to a range of biologic drugs that are generated in plant cells and then transferred to human patients.

Either we aren't alone, or it's nigh time NASA fixed its dodgy cameras.For the third time this year, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has returned an image of a giant UFO hovering near, or feeding off the Sun. Maybe.SOHO was launched in 1995 as a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, with a sole aim to study the Sun. The mission was supposed to last just two years, but it is still plugging away and has approved support from ESA to continue to do so until at least December.In recent years, SOHO has found an extended role as a predictor of solar weather activity, helping scientists on Earth prepare for radiation bursts sent our way by solar flares.

Archaeologists working at the Xultun ruins of the Mayan civilisation have reported striking finds, including the oldest-known Mayan astronomical tables.The site, in Guatemala, includes the first known instance of Mayan art painted on the walls of a dwelling.A report in Science says it dates from the early 9th Century, pre-dating other Mayan calendars by centuries.Such calendars rose to prominence recently amid claims they predicted the end of the world in 2012.

Three years ago, a stone-throwing chimpanzee named Santino jolted the research community by providing some of the strongest evidence yet that nonhumans could plan ahead. Santino, a resident of the Furuvik Zoo in Gävle, Sweden, calmly gathered stones in the mornings and put them into neat piles, apparently saving them to hurl at visitors when the zoo opened as part of angry and aggressive "dominance displays.

Since 1997, researchers have been able to quantum teleport photons with a major record being set by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai. In 2010, that team successfully teleported a photon over 16km. Now that same team has released new findings, in which they claim to have teleported photons nearly 100km, or over 60 miles.

A detailed description of development of the first practical artificial leaf -- a milestone in the drive for sustainable energy that mimics the process, photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert water and sunlight into energy -- appears in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research. The article notes that unlike earlier devices, which used costly ingredients, the new device is made from inexpensive materials and employs low-cost engineering and manufacturing processes.

A new look at an ancient volcanic blast on Mars suggests that the Red Planet was much more Earth-like billions of years ago, with abundant surface water and a relatively thick atmosphere, scientists say.The air on Mars was likely at least 20 times denser 3.5 billion years ago than it is today, researchers said. Back then, they added, the Red Planet's atmosphere likely helped sculpt and shape the planet's surface, much like Earth's atmosphere does today.

Marine insects in the Pacific Ocean are changing their reproduction habitats in response to environmental changes from the accumulating amount of rubbish in the north Pacific subtropical gyre, also known as the great Pacific garbage patch, according to researchers.The patch has increased in size 100 times since the 1970s, including its swath of microplastic particles of less than 5mm diameter. The marine insect Halobates sericeus, a species of water skater, is now using the microplastic debris as a surface to lay its eggs, said a study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego, published on Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Exotic warm water marine species such as anchovy, bluefin tuna, stingray, and thresher shark are spreading northwards into British coastal waters, where average sea temperatures are now moving closer to the warmer conditions of southern Europe.A new study by marine scientists discloses that many species, some better known to holidaymakers in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands, are now increasingly commonly seen in the seas off Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire and Sussex, providing vivid evidence that climate change is already changing the natural environment.

Two British men who have been totally blind for many years have had part of their vision restored after surgery to fit pioneering eye implants.They are able to perceive light and even some shapes from the devices which were fitted behind the retina.The men are part of a clinical trial carried out at the Oxford Eye Hospital and King's College Hospital in London.

An investigation worthy of a Dan Brown novel has shed new light on the voyages of John Cabot, the Italian navigator and explorer, revealing that he may have had knowledge of European expeditions to the "New World" that predated Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.Although commonly credited with "discovering" America, Christopher Columbus would not reach the mainland of the New World until 1498, when he sailed to South America.Farther north, Cabot became the first European since Leif Ericson and the Vikings to land on North American soil when he made three voyages for England's Henry VII between the summers of 1496 and 1498. The second of these expeditions, carried out in 1497, resulted in the European discovery of North America - at Newfoundland.

Humans lived alongside mammoths, mastodons and giant sloths 13,000 years ago in the area now known as Vero Beach, Florida, a new study indicates.Researchers say the new evidence solves a longstanding debate on whether humans reached the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age and lived alongside giant mammals that are now extinct.The study is published online today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

A Queen's University researcher has created a Star Trek-like human-scale 3D videoconferencing pod that allows people in different locations to video conference as if they are standing in front of each other. "Why Skype when you can talk to a life-size 3D holographic image of another person?" says professor Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab.

What lesson does the last, big opening of a New World -- the 1492 voyage of Columbus -- offer to would-be asteroid miners who last week announced plans to open outer space to mankind's exploitation?We asked an expert, Charles Mann, author of 1493; Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, a look at how guns, germs, and gold (and much more besides) from North and South America has circled the globe over the last five centuries, transforming the trajectory of human history.

Beside a slab of trilobites, in a quiet corner of Britain's Oxford University Museum of Natural History, lies a collection of ochre-tinted human bones known as the Red Lady of Paviland. In 1823, palaeontologist William Buckland painstakingly removed the fossils from a cave in Wales, and discovered ivory rods, shell beads and other ornaments in the vicinity. He concluded that they belonged to a Roman-era witch or prostitute.

Turn your telescope to the constellation of Perseus and you might note an unusual star called Algol, dubbed the "Demon Star" or the "Raging One." You wouldn't notice anything much different at first, unless you happened to be looking during a window of a few hours -- every 2.867 days -- when Algol's brightness visibly dims.This unusual feature was first noticed back in 1667 by an astronomer named Geminiano Montanari, and later confirmed -- with a proposed possible mechanism -- in 1783 by John Goodricke, who precisely measured the period of variability: it dims every 2.867 days.

A few pieces of "lacquerware of unknown names" unearthed 35 years ago from a tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, are found to be a gnomon with template and an equatorial device for the positional measurement of celestial bodies. They are among the oldest instruments for astronomical measurement that can still be seen in the world.In 1977, archaeologists unearthed a great number of precious relics from the tomb of XIAHOU Zao(?-165BCE), the 2nd Marquis of Ruyin of the Western Han dynasty. They named a piece of lacquerware "lacquerware of unknown name", for no one has been able to identify it.

Scientists who scanned the brains of men convicted of murder, rape and violent assaults have found the strongest evidence yet that psychopaths have structural abnormalities in their brains.The researchers, based at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the differences in psychopaths' brains mark them out even from other violent criminals with anti-social personality disorders (ASPD), and from healthy non-offenders.

With a significant portion of the world's population living within close proximity to the oceans, often in large cities, rising sea levels bring the potential for devastating consequences.But scientists are still unable to make predictions precise enough for people to plan how to handle the loss of land and threat to coastal communities expected over this century, two researchers point out in a commentary this week in the May 4 issue of the journal Science.

Horses were domesticated 6,000 years ago on the grasslands of Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, a genetic study shows.Domestic horses then spread across Europe and Asia, breeding with wild mares along the way, research published in the journal PNAS suggests.The work, by a Cambridge University team, brings together two competing theories on horse domestication.The matter has been hotly contested by scientists.

The Eye of Horus is one of the best-known Ancient Egyptian symbols, still used in jewellery and artwork despite being more than 3,000 years old.What is less known is exactly how important it was to everyday life in those early days of civilization, for a closer look at the eye reveals a complex mathematical system which was used as frequently as we use our numbers today.Every line of the drawing represents a fraction - so instead of the Egyptians writing ¼, they would draw the iris of the Eye of Horus.

Scientists have announced the discovery of a newfound crocodile species that may have been the largest to ever roam the Earth. The colossal reptiles trolled East African waters between 4 million and 2 million years ago, and may have snacked on human ancestors, researchers said.The largest fossil specimens recovered belong to massive crocodiles some 25 feet (7.5 meters) in length; and the ancient giants may have grown larger than 27 feet (8 meters), according to Christopher Brochu, an associate professor of geosciences at the University of Iowa.

A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged.The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker.

The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean has increased a hundred fold over the past 40 years.Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography documented the big rise when they trawled the waters off California.They were able to compare their plastic "catch" with previous data for the region.The group reports its findings in the journal Biology Letters.

Norway on Monday inaugurated what it called the world's largest laboratory for capturing carbon dioxide, a leading strategy for fighting global warming.Located at an oil refinery on Norway's west coast, the Technology Centre Mongstad aims to test French and Norwegian methods of capturing carbon dioxide emissions and burying them underground to prevent them from escaping into the atmosphere."We need to find a way to reconcile the need for energy and the need for emission reductions," said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as he inaugurated the site.

An enormous sunspot group has taken shape on the surface of the sun, hinting that our star may soon start spouting off some powerful storms.The huge sunspot complex, known as AR 1476, rotated into Earth's view over the weekend. It measures more than 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across, researchers said. Scientists with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory mission, a space-based telescope watching the sun, dubbed the solar structure a "monster sunspot" in a Twitter announcement.

Driverless cars will soon be a reality on the roads of Nevada after the state approved America's first self-driven vehicle licence.The first to hit the highway will be a Toyota Prius modified by search firm Google, which is leading the way in driverless car technology.Its first drive included a spin down Las Vegas's famous strip.Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licences in Nevada.