Newsdesk Archive

Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time in what astronomers are calling a historic achievement.NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth. A day on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours.

A place of staggering wealth and grinding poverty.A society nourished by unbridled immigration - whose inhabitants lived cheek by jowl in high-rise flats.An urban environment riven by looting and mob violence.Londoners watching Professor Mary Beard's invocation of Rome's cosmopolitan but troubled society in the BBC's Meet the Romans may have experienced a rather hair-raising sensation: that this was all a bit familiar.

CHINA DAILYKERIYA, Xinjiang - 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.

South Korea is planning to step up its customs inspections after the discovery of thousands of Chinese-made capsules filled with what officials said was powdered human flesh.The customs service said ethnic Koreans living in China tried to smuggle them into South Korea, as some believe that the capsules are a panacea for all forms of disease.

TEMPE (April 30, 2012) - The popular perception of archaeology is a team of dusty individuals in wide-brimmed hats unearthing treasures from a pharaoh's tomb or an ancient collection of Native American artifacts.Archaeology is that, but it is also a social science that utilizes information from other disciplines to inform and enhance archaeological data and to provide input to other sciences. Arizona State University Anthropology Professor Michael Smith explores the broadened scope of archaeology in the paper "Archaeology as a Social Science" published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Gary M. Feinman of The Field Museum in Chicago, Robert D. Drennan of University of Pittsburgh, Timothy Earle of Northwestern University and Ian Morris of Stanford University are co-authors of the paper.

Satellite images have revealed that a network of ancient rivers once coursed their way through the sand of the Arabian Desert, leading scientists to believe that the region experienced wetter periods in the past.The images are the starting point for a major potentially ground-breaking research project led by the University of Oxford into human evolutionary heritage. The research team will look at how long-term climate change affected early humans and animals who settled or passed through and what responses determined whether they were able to survive or died out.

Finely spun starch fibers woven into a bandage could dissolve on your skin and be absorbed by your body, eliminating the sting and hassle of ripping it off in one fast motion. Starch fibers could also be used to produce toilet paper, napkins and other biodegradable products, according to researchers at Penn State.Food science researchers dissolved starch into a fluid, then spun it into long strands that can be woven into mats, according to a university news release. Anyone who has ever dissolved starch in water knows it can have some awesome physical properties, but the resulting thick paste is not that useful beyond a fun experiment or maybe thickening some soup.

Dirty pages of centuries-old books have revealed the fears, desires and humanity of medieval Europeans, suggesting that they were as self-interested and afraid of illness as people are today.Kathryn Rudy, lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, analyzed a number of 15th- and early 16th-century European prayer books to reconstruct the reading habits of people who lived in medieval times.

Rare finds have prompted archaeologists to rewrite the history of an ancient north Pembrokeshire stone.The Trefael Stone, a scheduled ancient monument in a Nevern field, was originally thought to be an ancient standing stone, but is actually the capstone of a 5,500-year-old tomb, according to new research from a Bristol University archaeologist.

A meteorite that landed in northern California last week is much more valuable than scientists first thought.After the meteor was sighted streaking through the sky on 22 April, meteorite hunters found fragments of the rock, identified by the "fusion crust" that forms when it burns in the atmosphere. NASA and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also mobilised a search team last weekend of about 30 scientists to look for the fragile black rocks.

Experts have long debated whether the sophisticated animal drawings in a famous French cave are indeed the oldest of their kind in the world, and a study out Monday suggests that yes, they are.The smooth curves and fine details in the paintings of bears, rhinoceroses and horses in the Chauvet cave in southern France's picturesque Ardeche region are so advanced that some scholars thought they dated from 12,000 to 17,000 years ago.That would place them as relics of the Magdalenian culture, in which human ancestors used tools of stone and bone and created increasingly advanced art as time went on.

Indian drugs giant Cipla said Friday it has slashed by up to 76 percent prices of generic medicines used to treat brain, lung and kidney cancer in what the company called a "humanitarian move".There are 2.5 million cases of cancer diagnosed in India each year, according to the World Health Organisation, with most patients receiving inadequate treatment as drugs are priced beyond their reach.

Beneath their rugged exterior, some Martian rocks could have hid life in the ancient past, scientists suspect. An examination of data gathered by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reveals deposits that, on Earth, are only created by water moving through the rock."There are plenty of places on Earth where organisms live in places where water is flowing through fractures in rock," lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University told SPACE.com. "That's definitely a possibility at this location."

Rare earth metals -- a set of 17 chemical elements, including scandium, promethium, yttrium and cerium -- come from a small handful of places in the world. So it's about time that these crucial electric vehicle battery materials started getting recycled on a large scale. Honda announced plans to create what it's calling the world's first mass-production process for doing just that with spent nickel-metal hydride batteries.Honda dealerships will collect used batteries from customers and then send the parts to Japan Metals and Chemicals for the actual recycling. Japan Metals and Chemicals plans to disassemble the batteries, sort out the active substances, and then extract both rare earth elements as well as the nickel and cobalt. The company already has an established heat treatment process for the extraction, according to Honda.

Scientists have identified a gene that slows the spread of pancreatic cancer tumours, paving the way for targeted treatment of one of the deadliest forms of the disease, said a paper published Sunday.After discovering the gene dubbed USP9X at work in a study of pancreatic cancer in mice, the international research team found it also played a role in humans.

As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan's conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime.Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel."What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."

A massive alien planet that may have been ripped into Earth-size chunks by its dying parent star is offering a unique glimpse into the evolution of other worlds and their stars, scientists say.The planet's two remaining pieces, which researchers tentatively identified as planet-size objects just slightly smaller than Earth, were possibly created when their parent body spiraled inward too close to the bloated red giant star KIC 05807616. Extreme tidal forces then tore the parent planet into pieces, some of which seem to have stabilized in orbit around the star, revealing that a planet's life doesn't always start and end neatly, researchers said.

A privately funded search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has pulled in its antenna horns a tad to help the U.S. Air Force gauge human-made space junk circling Earth.The United States Air Force Space Command is on the lookout to improve its Space Surveillance Network, a global setup of radar and optical sensors that detect and track orbiting space junk and satellites.

The oldest red blood cells ever identified have been found in the body of Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps in 1991.The bloody find is a first for Ötzi's mummy, which has been under scientific scrutiny since a pair of hikers stumbled over the body frozen in ice on the Austrian-Italian border. And the new research, published today (May 1) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, helps confirm the story of Ötzi's death.

One of the most puzzling questions about the origin of life is how the rich chemical landscape that makes life possible came into existence.This landscape would have consisted among other things of amino acids, proteins and complex RNA molecules. What's more, these molecules must have been part of a rich network of interrelated chemical reactions which generated them in a reliable way.Clearly, all that must have happened before life itself emerged. But how?.

Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs - as a whole - produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.

On April 22, sonic booms from an incoming daytime fireball rattled Nevada and central California.After analysis of signals detected by infrasound stations in the region, it was found that the booms had been generated by a minivan-sized asteroid slamming into the atmosphere. The space rock ended its violent journey over the Sierra Nevada mountain range near Sacramento, CA.In the days following the dramatic cosmic encounter, small pieces of the space rock have been recovered from the fall site, but scientists from the SETI Institute and NASA believe larger chunks of asteroid made it to the ground.

After years of stalled efforts, Connecticut is close to legalizing medical marijuana.The state Senate approved the bill early Saturday morning following nearly 10 hours of debate. The measure passed the House of Representatives in April, and Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has said he would sign it. The move would make Connecticut the 17th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize medical marijuana.

Finding planets outside our solar system that can sustain life should be made a top priority, say Australian astronomers.Understanding habitability and using that knowledge to locate the nearest habitable planet may be crucial for our survival as a species, writes Dr Charley Lineweaver and PhD student Aditya Chopra of the Australian National University in the Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences.Lineweaver and Chopra reviewed current research examining environments where life is found on Earth and the environments thought to exist on other planets.

Rab-e Rashidi was an academic complex in the 13th century, during the Ilkhanid Dynasty founded by Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan and brother of both Mongke Khan and Kublai Khan. Hulagu took with him many Chinese scholars and astronomers, who helped the famous Persian astronomer Nassereddin al-Tusi learn about the Chinese calculating tables.During its long history, Rab-e Rashidi was damaged by natural disasters. Most of the structure is covered by 6 meters of soil and dust. Today it is an archeological site in Tabriz.

A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life.According to a recent study, tens of billions of planets around red dwarfs are likely capable of containing liquid water, dramatically increasing the potential to find signs of life somewhere other than Earth.

European scientists said Friday they had detected a subatomic particle that sheds light on one of the basic forces of nature which determines the structure of matter.The particle, a baryon called Xi_b, cannot be detected directly as it is too unstable, but scientists observed traces of it in a test at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The Ministry of Defence is facing a legal battle and parliamentary questions after letting a US company excavate a British 18th-century warship laden with a potentially lucrative cargo.Lord Renfrew is among leading archaeologists condemning a deal struck over HMS Victory, considered the world's mightiest ship when she sank in the Channel in 1744.In return for excavating the vessel's historic remains, which may include gold and silver worth many millions of pounds, Odyssey Marine Exploration is entitled to receive "a percentage of the recovered artefacts' fair value" or "artefacts in lieu of cash".

A copyediting error appears to be responsible for critical features of the human brain that distinguish us from our closest primate kin, new research finds.When tested out in mice, researchers found this "error" caused the rodents' brain cells to move into place faster and enabled more connections between brain cells.When any cell divides, it first copies its entire genome. During this process, it can make errors. The cell usually fixes errors in the DNA. But when they aren't fixed, they become permanent changes called mutations, which are sometimes hurtful and sometimes helpful, though usually innocuous.

SYDNEY, May 3 (UPI) -- Australia's treetops were home 15 million years ago to sheep-sized, 150-pound relatives of modern day wombats that looked much like koalas, scientists say.Karen Black from the University of New South Wales said the creatures, knows as Nimbadons, were climbers living in rainforest canopy."Nimbadon was a highly capable, habitual climber and its specialized anatomy suggests it may have adopted a trunk-hugging method of climbing similar to the living koala," Black said.The climbing ability would have helped Nimbadons compete for food with other herbivores, such as kangaroos, and escape from predators, such as marsupial lions, Black said.

At first glance it just looks like a star.Then the camera pans in, and it appears we are looking at a police siren - except it is miles up in the sky.The UFO, filmed on Tuesday in Bialystock, Lithuania, hovers above the cameraman for several minutes.His shaking hands does not disguise the fact that this is a weird object in the sky. It spins and flashes in different colours, and remains motionless for four minutes.The uploader, who placed the video online under the name Robertas01234, simply added this plea on YouTube: 'Who will explain what this is?'.

The much maligned cockroach is more sophisticated, and social, than we thought, according to new research.They hide away, unseen, lurking in dark corners and crevices.When they emerge, they aimlessly scurry and swarm, often around our houses, kitchens and supposedly dirty hotels and restaurants.

Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe. Scholars are now looking into this potential case of ancient industrial espionage.When Tutankhamen died, his tomb was filled with all manner of precious objects, including two folding chairs. The more attractive one is made of ebony and has ivory inlays.Such ingenious chairs were already being used in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. The brilliantly simple design consists of two movable wooden frames connected to each other with pins and with an animal hide stretched between -- a kind of ur-camping stool.

Almost 500 years after the death of Albrecht Dürer, new details about the mysterious life of the Renaissance painter are coming to light. To uncover the secrets of his brilliant works, researchers have used X-rays and infrared cameras, uncovering information even about the sex life of the art world's first international star.With his wavy hair streaming in the wind, the famous tourist sailed along the Dutch coast. A whale that was "100 fathoms" long had reportedly been washed ashore, as he noted excitedly in his diary. He was determined to sketch this monster.

Coelacanths are iconic fishes, well-known as living fossils. The group was thought to have died out with the dinosaurs until a living one was caught in 1938 off the coast of South Africa, sending shock waves through the scientific world.The newly discovered species, described by two University of Alberta scientists in the recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was a 3-foot long fish with a massive symmetrical forked tail quite unlike the tails of any other living or fossil coelacanths.The fossils were discovered on rocky slopes in the Hart Ranges of Wapiti Lake Provincial Park in British Columbia, which at the time the fish was alive was off the western coast of the supercontinent Pangaea.

The warming climate is altering the saltiness of the world's oceans, and the computer models scientists have been using to measure the effects are underestimating changes to the global water cycle, a group of Australian scientists have found.The water cycle is the worldwide phenomenon of rainwater falling to the surface, evaporating back into the air and falling again as rain.The wetter parts of the world are getting wetter and the drier parts drier. The researchers know this because the saltier parts of the ocean are getting saltier and the fresher parts, fresher.

A partial, duplicate copy of a gene appears to be responsible for the critical features of the human brain that distinguish us from our closest primate kin. The momentous gene duplication event occurred about two or three million years ago, at a critical transition in the evolution of the human lineage, according to a pair of studies published online in the journal Cell, on 3 May 2012.

A study that followed recently unemployed people for five months -- or until they landed a new job -- found that staying positive and being persistent helped people find work sooner."It's very, very tough," said study co-author Ruth Kanfer, a professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "It's not like learning a skill, where maintaining a positive attitude can be easier as you see improvement with your effort. You submit resumes, but get almost no feedback on how you're doing or what you could do to improve your chances of finding a job.

As cold cases go, it does not get much colder than Ötzi the Iceman, whose body was found frozen solid in the Italian Alps 5,300 years after he died from an arrow wound.Since he was discovered by trekkers in 1991, scientists have mapped his DNA and figured out everything from what ailments he suffered from (Lyme disease and a weak heart) to the last meal he ate (venison and ibex) before he was shot in the back, probably by an enemy tribesman.

A new University of Florida study that determined the age of skeletal remains provides evidence humans reached the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age and lived alongside giant extinct mammals.The study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology addresses the century-long debate among scientists about whether human and mammal remains found at Vero Beach in the early 1900s date to the same time period. Using rare earth element analysis to measure the concentration of naturally occurring metals absorbed during fossilization, researchers show modern humans in North America co-existed with large extinct mammals about 13,000 years ago, including mammoths, mastodons and giant ground sloths.

SAGAMIHARA, Japan -- A pet parakeet was returned to its Japanese owner Wednesday after the brainy bird told police its home address near Tokyo.The male bird, called Piko-chan, escaped early Sunday morning from his home in the city of Sagamihara and remained at large before being coaxed into perching on the shoulder of a guest at a nearby hotel.

When Alex Aan picked up a copy of Karen Armstrong's Holy War from his local library in west Sumatra in 2005, he had little inkling of his own religious battle to come. But after posting "God doesn't exist" on Facebook, the soft-spoken civil servant, 30, faces up to 11 years in jail for what is considered blasphemy in Indonesia.

An analysis of 5,000-year-old DNA taken from the Stone Age remains of four humans excavated in Sweden is helping researchers understand how agriculture spread throughout Europe long ago. According to Pontus Skoglund from Uppsala University in Sweden and colleagues, the practice of farming appears to have moved with migrants from southern to northern Europe.

The Tibetan Plateau is the youngest and highest plateau on Earth, and its elevation reaches one-third of the height of the troposphere, with profound dynamic and thermal effects on atmospheric circulation and climate. The uplift of the Tibetan Plateau was an important factor of global climate change during the late Cenozoic and strongly influenced the development of the Asian monsoon system. However, there have been heated debates about the history and process of Tibetan Plateau uplift, especially elevations in different geological ages.

To the east of the famous Isis temple on the island of Philae in Upper Egypt, workers and archaeologists are busy at work. They are cleaning and restoring the massive stone blocks that once formed the temple of Hathor, which is being rebuilt and restored in order to be officially inaugurated next month.Time has since taken its toll on the temple, which was built by King Ptolemy VI and extended during the reigns of Ptolemy VII and Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius. Many of the temple's stone blocks have deteriorated; its walls, meanwhile, are riddled with cracks.

Over seven years into its (originally) 90-day mission, the Mars rover Opportunity arrived at the rim of Endeavour Crater. While the crater itself was formed from an ancient meteorite impact, the rocks at its rim show signs of a watery past. Chemical analysis found deposits typical of hydrothermal vents on Earth, along with features usually associated with evaporation. Together, these pieces of evidence suggest warm, shallow water formerly existed in the region of Endeavour.

Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum in London discussed their findings Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their focus: the "Virginia Pars" map of Virginia and North Carolina created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866."We believe that this evidence provides conclusive proof that they moved westward up the Albemarle Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke rivers," said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and author of a 2010 book about the Lost Colony.

Manoeuvering its wings as it flies through the air, it looks like any normal bird coming in for a landing.But, rather than the snappy handiwork of Mother Nature, this winged one is the first robot ever created that is capable of 'perching' - or landing like a bird.The micro aerial vehicle (MAV) managed to slow itself down and perch on a human hand, even though it was thrown off a ladder with force.An astonishing video posted on YouTube shows it swooping in and easing itself down using its wings after being thrown by one of the researchers.

A visitor might stumble upon a strange sight in Laguna, Brazil, if they went down to the shore. Here, the local fishermen rely on dolphins to help them with their yearly fish catch.New research has found that just one local group of about 20 dolphins works with the fishermen, while the other local dolphins don't cooperate, finding other sources of food. The researchers aren't sure what separates these groups.

Non-religious and Pagan weddings are to finally become law in Ireland under proposed new legislation.The Irish government is expected to back legislation giving humanists the same status as organised religions and civil registrars in conducting marriage ceremonies.The Irish Times reports that the proportion of couples choosing a non-religious, civil wedding ceremony in Ireland has increased from six per cent in 1996 to more than 23 per cent in 2006.Social Protection minister Joan Burton is to ask ministerial colleagues to support the Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill.

An eagle owl named Flea was feeling broody, but couldn't have babies of her own. So keepers at Saarburg's Birds of Prey Park took pity on the bird and gave her chicken eggs to incubate. Now the surrogate mother is doing a great job of raising the chicks.A bird center in Germany is attracting attention with an unusual example of a surrogate mother: An eagle owl in the zoo is raising baby chickens as her own young.The owl in Saarburg's Birds of Prey Park in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate has been attentively looking after the four chicks for the past week after successfully incubating a clutch of chicken eggs.

Will this be the future of luxury bachelor and bachelorette parties? Maybe it's something you could get your grandkids. By 2050, bordellos will offer for-hire sex robots for disease- and guilt-free pleasure, according to a new scientific paper.The research, published in the May issue of the journal Futures, sits incongruously among more staid titles about new spatial planning methods and urban sprawl. The paper is meant to be a "futuristic scenario" that "pushes plausibility to the limit," write its authors, Michelle Mars and tourism professor Ian Yeoman, both of the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

Genetic analyses of individuals buried in funereal monuments near a volcano in southern Peru have revealed the family relationships and burial traditions of ancient Peruvians that lived before Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas.The ancient Peruvians buried their dead in "chullpas," structures resembling vertical tombs, which can be up to 6.5 feet high. Researchers hadn't known how the individuals buried within one chullpa were related.Families were organized into "ayllu," a group of relatives that shared common land and responsibilities. Historians think that men retained the ancestral land, and they traded their sisters for wives, in a sort of "sister exchange.

After two decades of examining a microscopic algae-eater that lives in a lake in Norway, scientists on Thursday declared it to be one of the world's oldest living organisms and man's remotest relative.The elusive, single-cell creature evolved about a billion years ago and did not fit in any of the known categories of living organisms -- it was not an animal, plant, parasite, fungus or alga, they said.

Scientific models are failing to accurately predict the impact of global warming on plants, says a new report.Researchers found in long-term studies that some are flowering up to eight times faster than models anticipate.The authors say that poor study design and a lack of investment in experiments partly account for the difference.They suggest that spring flowering and leafing will continue to advance at the rate of 5 to 6 days per year for every degree celsius of warming.

The mastodon was old, its teeth worn to nubs. It was perfect prey for a band of hunters, wielding spears tipped with needle-sharp points made from bone. Sensing an easy target, they closed in for the kill.Almost 14,000 years later, there is no way to tell how many hits it took to bring the beast to the ground near the coast of present-day Washington state. But at least one struck home, plunging through hide, fat and flesh to lodge in the mastodon's rib. The hunter who thrust the spear on that long-ago day didn't just bring down the mastodon; he also helped to kill off the reigning theory of how people got to the Americas.

Scientists were out of this world on Tuesday about tests in icy Alpine caves of the technology needed for a mission to Mars one day."We have learned an infinite amount in the past three days," project leader Gernot Groemer from the Austrian Space Forum said of the 11-nation field test in the Dachstein region near Salzburg.Scientists picked the area - which Groemer called a "scientific playground" - for experiments because ice caves would be a natural refuge for any microbes on Mars seeking steady temperatures and protection from damaging cosmic rays.

CORVALLIS, Ore., May 1 (UPI) -- No creature is safe from fleas, not even dinosaurs that had to endure the bites of giant flea-like insects 165 million years ago, a U.S. zoologist says.George Poinar Jr., a zoology professor at Oregon State University who wrote a commentary on the find of fossils of the giant insects by Chinese scientists, said they were probably 10 times the size of a flea you might find on the family dog."These were insects much larger than modern fleas and from the size of their proboscis we can tell they would have been mean," he said.

A federal court judge in San Francisco granted a temporary restraining order Friday to prevent the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), from handing over 9000-year-old human bones to Native Americans, in the latest twist in an unusual custody battle for two human skeletons that are among the earliest found in the Americas. Three University of California professors filed a lawsuit last week to prevent UCSD from transferring the bones, which have been described as better preserved than those of the Kennewick Man, another ancient skeleton that has been the center of debate and lawsuits.

A policy barring foreign tourists from buying marijuana in the Netherlands has come into effect in parts of the country, with attention focused on the southern city of Maastricht, where a cafe was warned over violating the ban and around 200 smokers marched in protest.Weed is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but it has been sold openly for decades in small amounts in designated cafes known as "coffee shops" under the country's famed tolerance policy.

On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.In this month's Physics World, Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts, explores the science behind Venus's transit and gives an account of its fascinating history.

CHINA DAILYJINAN - Chinese archaeologists have discovered a tomb where an ancient warlord may have once rested, as well as a collection of artifacts dating back more than 2,500 years.The tomb was found near a tourist resort in Yishui county in East China's Shandong province in January. Several bronze weapons, musical utensils, pieces of jade jewelry and ritual utensils have been unearthed from the site since then.

It was one of the bloodiest battles of the Thirty Years' War, but until recently there was no trace of those who died there. Now a mass grave is shedding light on the mysteries of the Battle of Lützen. Were those who fought hungry young men or well-fed veterans? And where did they come from?The morning of November 16, 1632 was foggy, so the mass killing could only begin after some delay. It wasn't until midday that the mist cleared, finally allowing the Protestant army of Sweden's King Gustav II Adolf to attack the Roman Catholic Habsburg imperial army led by Albrecht von Wallenstein. The slaughter lasted for hours in the field at the Saxon town of Lützen.

Amid all the controversy over genetically-modified (GM) crops and their pesticides and herbicides decimating bee populations all around the world, biotechnology behemoth Monsanto has decided to buy out one of the major international firms devoted to studying and protecting bees. According to a company announcement, Beeologics handed over the reins to Monsanto back on September 28, 2011, which means the gene-manipulating giant will now be able to control the flow of information and products coming from Beeologics for colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Australia has listed the koala as a threatened species in parts of the country due to its dwindling population, officials say.Environment Minister Tony Burke said koalas in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are now considered "vulnerable".Habitat loss, urban expansion, vehicle strikes, dog attacks and disease have contributed to their dwindling numbers.

The Dalai Lama says he supports the principles behind Arab Spring protests."The world belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader, kings or religious leaders. The world belongs to humanity. Each country belongs essentially to their own people," he said in an interview Wednesday on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."Politicians at times forget that, even in democratic countries like the United States, he said.

Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world.

The largest comprehensive analysis of Clinicaltrials.gov finds that clinical trials are falling short of producing high-quality evidence needed to guide medical decision-making.The analysis, published May 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found the majority of clinical trials is small, and there are significant differences among methodical approaches, including randomizing, blinding and the use of data monitoring committees.

Scientists examining the remains of "Otzi," Italy's prehistoric iceman who roamed the Alps some 5,300 years ago, said on Wednesday they have isolated what are believed to be the oldest traces of human blood ever found.The German and Italian scientists said they used an atomic force microscope to examine tissue sections from a wound caused by an arrow that killed the Copper Age man, who was found frozen in a glacier, and from a laceration on his right hand.

The European Space Agency is to mount a billion-euro mission to Jupiter and its icy moons.The probe, called Juice, would be built in time for a launch in 2022, although it would be a further eight years before it reached the Jovian system.Prof Michele Dougherty from Imperial College London, UK, was part of the science team that devised the mission. She described to our correspondent Jonathan Amos what Juice would try to achieve.

Anyone wishing to lasso the moon for their sweetheart will have no better opportunity than Saturday night, when the lunar planet provides a larger and closer target than normal.The moon will be closer to the Earth than it will be at any other time of the year, a phenomenon known as a lunar perigee. And coincidentally the moon will become full just two minutes after it reaches its closest point at 11:35 p.m. ET, creating a phenomenon known as a "supermoon."The confluence of proximity and fullness are expected to result in a rare opportunity for skywatchers and astronomers to view an especially big and bright moon. The last supermoon occurred in March, 2011.

Global warming is expected to have devastating effects on coral reefs, but recent research points to a few exceptions.Warming in the equatorial Pacific may actually create refuges for corals around a handful of islands, even as it bleaches, or kills, corals elsewhere, suggests new research that predicts increased upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water in these places."These little islands in the middle of the ocean can counteract global trends and have a big impact on their own future, which I think is a beautiful concept," said study researcher Kristopher Karnauskas, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist, in a press release issued by the institution.

Phys.org) -- Satellite images have revealed that a network of ancient rivers once coursed their way through the sand of the Arabian Desert, leading scientists to believe that the region experienced wetter periods in the past.The images are the starting point for a major potentially ground-breaking research project led by the University of Oxford into human evolutionary heritage. The research team will look at how long-term climate change affected early humans and animals who settled or passed through and what responses determined whether they were able to survive or died out.Until now this part of the world has been largely ignored by scholars despite its critical location as a bridge between Africa and Eurasia.

One of Australia's richest men, Clive Palmer, on Monday unveiled plans to build a 21st century version of the doomed Titanic in China, with its first voyage from England to New York set for 2016.Palmer, a self-made mining billionaire, said he had commissioned state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to construct Titanic II with the same dimensions as its predecessor."It will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic but of course it will have state-of-the-art 21st century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems," Palmer said in a statement.

Alu elements infiltrated the ancestral primate genome about 65 million years ago. Once gained an Alu element is rarely lost so comparison of Alu between species can be used to map primate evolution and diversity.New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Mobile DNA has found a single Alu, which appears to be an ancestral great ape Alu, that has uniquely multiplied within the orangutan genome.

The next-generation engine that will help carry humans deeper into space than ever is back, bigger and better. The J-2X engine is currently on the A-2 Test Stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for an extensive round of tests to build on last year's successful test firings. The engine will provide upper-stage power for NASA's evolved Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket capable of missions to deep space.

Wind turbines have long produced renewable energy but a French engineering firm has discovered another eco-purpose for the towering structures.Eole Water claims to have successfully modified the traditional wind turbine design to create the WMS1000, an appliance that can manufacture drinking water from humid air.The company aims to start rolling out the giant products for sale later in 2012, initially focusing on remote communities in arid countries where water resources are scarce.

Wind farms can affect weather in their immediate locality, raising night-time temperatures on the ground, researchers working in Texas have shown.They used satellite data to show that land around newly constructed wind farms warmed more than next-door areas.The result - published in the journal Nature Climate Change - confirms an earlier, smaller study from 2010.The scientists believe the effect is caused by turbines bringing relatively warm air down to ground level.

At the moment there are 3,162 wind turbines onshore in the UK, up from a few hundred when the industry first set out 20 years ago.Despite protests around the country, the number being built is set to speed up even further over the next few years with 657 currently under construction and 1,788 approved but not yet built.There are another 2,974 in the planning process that have yet to be approved, meaning the total number will be 8,581 if they are all built.To reach Government targets to generate 15 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020, it is expected around 10,000 turbines will need to be built onshore in the UK.

The Department of Justice maintains that there has been no change in the Obama administration's medical marijuana policy. President Obama recently told Rolling Stone, "I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana - and the reason is, because it's against federal law."Yet it also was against federal law in 2008, when candidate Obama did say he would not "use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws" authorizing medical marijuana. Today, the Department of Justice is waging a full-throated war against medical marijuana dispensaries in California and other states that have legalized it.

Why the Pygmies of West Africa have such short stature, while neighboring groups don't, has been somewhat of a mystery. Now new research suggests unique changes in the Pygmy's genome have both led to adaptations for living in the forest as well as kept them short.Researchers analyzed the genomes, the "building code" that directs how an organism is put together, of Western African Pygmies in Cameroon, whose men average 4 feet, 11 inches tall, and compared them with their neighboring relatives, the Bantus, who average 5 feet, 6 inches, to see whether these differences were genetic or a factor of their environment.

Mr Croizon and his swimming partner Arnaud Chassery unveiled their plan to link the world's five continents by swimming across a series of narrow straits that separate them.Having lost his limbs following an electrical accident, the Frenchman said he wants to send a universal message."We are going to symbolically link the five continents, two little people like us, two little men, we're going to be able to build a bridge between the continents... That means that we're going to bring them together. Which means no one is very far from each other. So even if we have different political opinions, or skin colours, of even with our disabilitites, we all live on the same planet. And that's the clear message we want to send," he said.

When every ounce on the trail counts, outdoor adventurers dream about ditching batteries. They might not have to wait. Designers at Colorado State University are developing solar-powered clothes from natural fibers that can charge a number of devices, including phones, tablets and GPS units.Professor Eulanda Sanders and associate professor Ajoy Sarkar in CSU's department of design and merchandising, as well as four of their students, are making prototypes for solar-charging apparel that can be worn while biking, snowboarding, skiing or hiking.

The government of Western Australia has announced it will establish a marine park to provide protection for the biggest humpback whale calving area in the Southern Hemisphere. The Camden Sound Marine Park will cover almost 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles) and will comprise several different zones.A "special purpose zone" will require vessels to stay at least 500 meters (1,640 feet) from humpback mothers and calves. An estimated 22,000 whales inhabit the region surrounding the marine park during calving season in Western Australia's winter months. Another zone will provide for a "wilderness" fishing experience where recreational fishers must either catch and release or eat their catch before leaving the zone. Forty-eight percent of the marine park will be closed to commercial trawl fishing and 23 percent will be closed to all forms of commercial fishing.

Analysis of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been used to establish migration and population patterns for American indigenous cultures during the time before Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genetics has used more detailed DNA analysis of individuals from Arequipa region to identify the family relationships and burial traditions of ancient Peru.

(AP) Swiss scientists have demonstrated how a partially paralyzed person can control a robot by thought alone, a step they hope will one day allow immobile people to interact with their surroundings through so-called avatars.Similar experiments have taken place in the United States and Germany, but they involved either able-bodied patients or invasive brain implants.On Tuesday, a team at Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne used only a simple head cap to record the brain signals of Mark-Andre Duc, who was at a hospital in the southern Swiss town of Sion 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.

Over-consumption in rich countries and rapid population growth in the poorest both need to be tackled to put society on a sustainable path, a report says.An expert group convened by the Royal Society spent nearly two years reading evidence and writing their report.Firm recommendations include giving all women access to family planning, moving beyond GDP as the yardstick of economic health and reducing food waste.

Germany's Jewish community on Wednesday welcomed a landmark decision to republish Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" for the first time since World War II, in an annotated edition.The southern state of Bavaria, which holds the rights, has not permitted reprints of the vicious anti-Semitic tract and rambling memoir since the Nazi leader's 1945 suicide.But it said on Tuesday it would release an edition with historians' commentary as well as a separate version for schools in 2015 before its copyright runs out at the end of that year in order to beat commercial publishers to the punch.

Researchers are learning details about asteroid impacts going back to the Earth's early history by using a new method for extracting precise information from tiny "spherules" embedded in layers of rock.The spherules were created when asteroids crashed into the Earth, vaporizing rock that expanded into space as a giant vapor plume. Small droplets of molten and vaporized rock in the plume condensed and solidified, falling back to Earth as a thin layer. The round or oblong particles were preserved in layers of rock, and now researchers have analyzed them to record precise information about asteroids impacting Earth from 3.5 billion to 35 million years ago .

Its lack of thrills, spills and multiple deaths means it is unlikely to appeal to fans of Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, but a video game based on the years Henry David Thoreau spent living alone in a Massachusetts cabin is in development, following a US government grant.The University of Southern California has been given $40,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts to develop Walden, in which "the player will inhabit an open, three-dimensional game-world, which will simulate the geography and environment of Walden Woods". With the game drawing from the detailed notes Thoreau wrote about the area and its landscape, flora and fauna, users will be able not only to walk in the author's footsteps but also, said the university, "discover in the beauty of a virtual landscape the ideas and writings of this unique philosopher, and cultivate through the gameplay their own thoughts and responses to the concepts discovered there".

If there's one thing that brings people together, it's this: Marijuana regulation is a mess.But the granular details about how to fix it divided a panel of law-enforcement and public-health experts convened Thursday night to debate Initiative 502, a landmark proposal to regulate and tax marijuana like liquor that is on the November ballot.John McKay, who filed the initiative after witnessing the "complete failure" of marijuana prohibition as the U.S. Attorney in Seattle for six years, said legalization was a "simple solution.".

The warming climate is altering the saltiness of the world's oceans, and the computer models scientists have been using to measure the effects are underestimating changes to the global water cycle, a group of Australian scientists have found.The water cycle is the worldwide phenomenon of rainwater falling to the surface, evaporating back into the air and falling again as rain.The wetter parts of the world are getting wetter and the drier parts drier. The researchers know this because the saltier parts of the ocean are getting saltier and the fresher parts, fresher.

HOHHOT - Eighteen cliff paintings dating back over 4,000 years have been discovered by archaeologists in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, an official said Sunday.The prehistoric portraits were unearthed in the Yinshan Mountains in Urad Middle Banner (an administration division of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), said Liu Binjie, head of the Cultural Relics Bureau of Urad Middle Banner.

Siemens recently put two virtual power plants into operation. Virtual power plants are networks of several small power stations that are run like a single system. One of the new virtual power plants enables the Munich municipal utility company to run six of its cogeneration modules, five hydroelectric facilities, and one wind-power plant more efficiently and economically than if they were operated separately. The facilities have a combined output of 20 megawatts. The second virtual power plant was set up for the utility company RWE and consists of a number of similar components to those in Munich. Although it will initially also have an output of 20 megawatts, the second virtual power plant will be expanded to 200 megawatts by 2015. The key component of each virtual power plant network is the distributed energy management system from Siemens.

Humankind's remotest relative is a very rare micro-organism from south-Norway. The discovery may provide an insight into what life looked like on earth almost one thousand million years ago.Biologists all over the world have been eagerly awaiting the results of the genetic analysis of one of the world's smallest known species, hereafter called the protozoan, from a little lake 30 kilometer south of Oslo in Norway.

In particle physics, the baryon family refers to particles that are made up of three quarks. Quarks form a group of six particles that differ in their masses and charges. The two lightest quarks, the so-called "up" and "down" quarks, form the two atomic components, protons and neutrons. All baryons that are composed of the three lightest quarks ("up," "down" and "strange" quarks) are known. Only very few baryons with heavy quarks have been observed to date. They can only be generated artificially in particle accelerators as they are heavy and very unstable.

Strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn's rings have baffled scientists studying images transmitted by the ESA's Cassini Spacecraft. Research suggests that the oddly shaped moons, Pan and Atlas, are born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, a discovery that could shed light on how Earth and other planets formerd from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.

British scientists and engineers have begun testing an experimental technology which they say could be the future of space travel.The Skylon spacecraft is designed to fly from runway to orbit in a single stage, to be completely reuseable and with no need for a pilot.

On the banks of the Rio Grande, limestone caves containing rock art overlook the river. However, this unique record that was painted by people linked to the Huichol Indians of Western Mexico and is up to 4000 years old, is now under threat.The artwork is now suffering from both insect damage and vandalism and is also being affected by a higher than normal humidity caused by the damming of the river below.

Humans that populated the banks of the river Manzanares (Madrid, Spain) during the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) fed themselves on pachyderm meat and bone marrow.This is what a Spanish study shows and has found percussion and cut marks on elephant remains in the site of Preresa (Madrid).In prehistoric times, hunting animals implied a risk and required a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, when the people of the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) had an elephant in the larder, they did not leave a scrap.