Newsdesk Archive

Long-distance swimming may have opened up a world of complexity for dolphins.Male bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, cooperate in groups of two or three. These groups also link with others to form gangs of up to 14 males, and sometimes two or more large gangs coalesce.

A human skeleton formally buried almost 8000 years ago on a small strategic island off China's coast is creating excitement that it may represent a direct line to the world's youngest race - New Zealand's Maori and Polynesians.Genetic evidence has long suggested Polynesians - including their youngest branch the Maori - derived from Taiwan's aboriginal people.Now the link may be made in the skeleton found on 400 square metre Liang Island, part of Taiwan controlled Matsu islands, within shelling range of China's Fujian Province.

In the sacred place of Tenochtitlan, archaeologists from INAH-Conaculta (The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History and the Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts), have found 23 tombstones over 550 years old, with etched images of snakes, prisoners, ornaments and warriors, which, as a whole, appears to depict the story alluding to the birth of Huitzilopochtli and the origins of the Holy War between the Mexicas.

Two US rocket companies are readying the first private space missions to the International Space Station (ISS).SpaceX and Orbital both have multi-billion dollar Nasa contracts to supply cargo to the station, filling the void left by the retirement last year of the space shuttle.California-based SpaceX has set the pace so far, having successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule into orbit, and safely returning the capsule to Earth, in December 2010.The company says it could launch for the ISS as soon as 30 April.

An island distillery has taken to space in a bid to discover the taste of the future.Experiments using malt from the Ardbeg distillery on Islay are being carried out on the International Space Station to see how it matures without gravity.Compounds of unmatured malt were sent to the station in an unmanned cargo spacecraft in October last year, along with particles of charred oak.Scientists want to understand how they interact at close to zero gravity.

When most people look at a forest, they see walking trails, deer yards, or firewood for next winter. But scientists at the Harvard Forest and Smithsonian Institution take note of changes imperceptible to the naked eye -- the uptake and storage of carbon. What they've learned in a recent study is that an immense amount of carbon is stored in growing trees, but if current trends in Massachusetts continue, development would reduce that storage by 18 percent over the next half century. Forest harvesting would have a much smaller impact.

From the Klingons in "Star Trek" to the skinny, oval-eyed creatures in classic alien abduction tales, many depictions of extraterrestrials in popular culture have been decidedly humanlike. In sci-fi movies and TV, the reason is obvious: makeup is much less expensive for a humanoid alien, and it's tough to act in a giant ooze suit. Plus, it is much easier to empathize with beings that look like us, so it is no accident that evil aliens oftentimes ooze mucous and sport tentacles.

If current development patterns continue, cities will balloon by an area comparable to France, Germany and Spain combined by 2030, scientists say, greatly increasing the impact on the environment and putting humans at risk.The urban spread is a numbers game of sorts: The United Nations estimates world population will grow from the current 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050, which translates into about 1 million new individuals on the planet on average each week for the next 38 years. Most of that growth is expected to occur in urban centers, researchers say.

t was an island of green in a sea of white."That's a bet" said our guide Girish Gupta. We were in western Gujarat and had been driving on a die-straight causeway between crystalline stretches of saltflats. Once, many centuries ago, this had been a bay of the Arabian Sea and then environmental changes had produced these amazing saline wastes.We passed two boys digging out salt, filling it into pans and emptying it into a truck. Then, as we were about to ask if there was any fresh water in this legendary White Rann, we saw a large brown patch in the shimmering white expanse. It trembled with an uncertain liquidity much like a bowl of aspic in grated ice.

Sending a submarine to the bottom of the ocean on Jupiter's icy moon Europa is the most exciting potential mission in planetary science, according to one prominent researcher.Europa's seafloor may well be capable of supporting life as we know it today, said Cornell University's Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which is currently roaming the Red Planet. So a Europa robotic submarine mission is at the top of his wish list, though it likely won't happen anytime soon.

Scientists are facing an uphill battle to warn the public about pressing issues due to dissenters in their ranks who intentionally sow uncertainty, says a US historian.These naysayers -- some of whom are paid by interest groups -- have helped undermine action on vital problems despite evidence of the need to respond, said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego.

Google's self-driving car has fascinated our minds with its technological promise since being introduced in 2010. But yesterday, the self-driving car touched our hearts.Google posted a video of the self-driving car taking a legally blind man for a spin, showing one of the possibilities and benefits that could come from the technology."Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things," Steve Mahan says in the video.The self-driving car takes Mahan to Taco Bell for a quick meal and a dry cleaner to pick up his clothes.

Radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found in tiny sea creatures and ocean water some 186 miles (300 kilometers) off the coast of Japan, revealing the extent of the release and the direction pollutants might take in a future environmental disaster.In some places, the researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) discovered cesium radiation hundreds to thousands of times higher than would be expected naturally, with ocean eddies and larger currents both guiding the "radioactive debris" and concentrating it.

Was it a secret military exercise, the beginning of the Mayan prophesy or an alien invasion?A loud boom, heard by Pocono residents and others throughout northeastern Pennsylvania the night of March 30, remains a mystery.The boom, heard at about 10:10 p.m., shook cars and houses from Long Pond to Bushkill.

It turns out Earth's single giant moon might not be the only one floating around out there. In fact, at any given time, there may be at least one other "minimoon" orbiting our planet as well.A moon doesn't have to be gigantic -- our minimoons can be as small as one meter across. But they are definitely orbiting us, sometimes for a year or more.Mikael Granvik (formerly at University of Hawaii at Manoa and now at Helsinki), Jeremie Vaubaillon (Paris Observatory) and Robert Jedicke (UH Manoa) have been simulating these minimoons and determined the Earth definitely has more than one moon at any given time.While the typical minimoon might hang around for around nine months, some might orbit for decades.

In 2010, a star 127 light-years away stunned the world -- it had become the largest star system beyond our own, playing host to five, possibly seven, alien worlds. Now, the star (called HD 10180) is back in the headlines; it may actually have nine exoplanets orbiting it.Interestingly, HD 10180 is a yellow dwarf star very much like the sun, so this discovery has drawn many parallels with our own Solar System. It is a multi-planetary system surrounding a sun-like star. But it is also a very alien place with an assortment of worlds spread over wildly different orbits.It is believed that one of HD 10180's exoplanets is small -- although astronomers only know the planets' masses, not their physical size or composition. The smallest world weighs-in at 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it a "super-Earth.

In the sacred place of Tenochtitlan, archaeologists from INAH-Conaculta (The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History and the Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts), have found 23 tombstones over 550 years old, with etched images of snakes, prisoners, ornaments and warriors, which, as a whole, appears to depict the story alluding to the birth of Huitzilopochtli and the origins of the Holy War between the Mexicas.

The earliest evidence of human tool use may be written on the bones of other animals, but in order to produce reliable conclusions, researchers are calling for improved tools and analysis, including an easy-to-access large collection of sample specimens and more unified standards.

A technique that monitors whales through the sounds they emit has answered a key issue raised by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago this month.The sound-monitoring technique revealed that sperm whales retreated from the immediate area around the spill caused by the explosion.

An anniversary deep-sea diving expedition will offer tourists a chance to visit the R.M.S. Titanic, a hundred years after the legendary ship sank to the bottom of the frigid North Atlantic.As part of a $60,000, two-week cruise, a pair of tourists can get shoehorned with a pilot into a tiny Russian MIR submersible that's less than 7 feet (2.1 meters) wide. The trip to Titanic's resting place takes about 2.5 hours, and a round-trip dive lasts about 8 to 10 hours."I think one thing that captures people is a direct link to this almost mythological maritime character, the Titanic," said Rob McCallum of Deep Ocean Expeditions, which holds exclusive charter for Titanic dives.

As global warming triggers heavier rainfall and faster snowmelt in the Arctic, Inuit communities in Canada are reporting more cases of illness attributed to pathogens that have washed into surface water and groundwater, according to a new study.The findings corroborate past research that suggests indigenous people worldwide are being disproportionately affected by climate change. This is because many of them live in regions where the effects are felt first and most strongly, and they might come into closer contact with the natural environment on a daily basis. For example, some indigenous communities lack access to treated water because they are far from urban areas.

Piloted spaceflight planning typically emphasizes transportation; that is, methods of traveling from Earth to some destination and back again. Other than landing and liftoff, astronaut activities on the surface of a target world normally receive little attention. This is not too surprising at the present stage of spaceflight development, given the many challenges inherent in moving humans between worlds.

TIDES evoke the sea, but they may dry out what would otherwise be habitable planets around small stars, making them hostile to life.Rory Barnes of the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues calculated what would happen to Earth-like planets orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy: red dwarfs.These stars are much cooler and fainter than the sun, meaning the habitable zones around them - in which planets can have liquid water on their surface - are much closer in. Any planets orbiting in those zones feel very strong gravitational tugs from the star.

Have you ever wonder why the humble egg is the focus of the most important Christian holiday? Today, the egg is ubiquitous and cheap, but this incredible, edible source of protein was, millennia ago, a potent religious symbol.The EquinoxIt starts with the spring or vernal equinox (which was 20th March 2012), when the sun is directly over the equator, and daylight is distributed evenly between the north and south hemispheres.

Maya blue is the brilliant long-lasting pigment that coloured the Maya world and is one of just a handful of man-made pigments known to the ancient world. It had special significance to the Maya, and was associated with sacrifice and Maya deities, including the rain god Chaak.Impervious to the effects of chemical or physical weathering, the pigment was applied to pottery, sculpture and murals of Mesoamerica largely during the Classic and Postclassic periods (AD 250-1520), playing a central role in ancient Maya religious practice. This unusual blue paint was also used to coat the victims of human sacrifice and the altars on which they were dispatched.

Regions of Earth where water is frozen for at least a month each year are shrinking as a result of global warming. Some of the effects on ecosystems are now being revealed through research conducted at affected sites over decades. They include dislocations of the relationships between predators and their prey, as well as changes in the movement through ecosystems of carbon and nutrients. The changes interact in complex ways that are not currently well understood, but effects on human populations are becoming apparent.

On the savanna a lioness will fell and shred her prey without empathy. Yet for we humans who can imagine that a cow might feel pain, pleasure and fear, enjoying animal flesh may have moral overtones. New research indicates that we have developed a mental tool to help us cope with the realities of our carnivorous nature: denial.In a study that excluded vegetarians, psychologist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues first asked par­ticipants to commit to eating either meat slices or apple wedges. Before eating, everyone wrote an essay describing the full life cycle of a butchered animal and then rated the mental faculties of a cow or a sheep. Participants who knew that they would have to eat meat later in the study made much more conservative assessments of the animal mind, on average, denying that it could think and feel enough to suffer. The study was published last October in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

A type of caterpillar which defends itself by regurgitating on its predators is less likely to do so when in groups than when alone, a new study by researchers from the University of Bristol and the University of Liverpool has found. Such reluctance is sufficient to cancel out the benefits of being in a group.The study, published today in Ecology Letters, will help in the design of more sustainable methods for reducing crop losses caused by caterpillars and similar pests.

The first Australians hunted giant kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized marsupials, huge goannas and other megafauna to extinction shortly after arriving in the country more than 40,000 years ago, new research claims.A team of scientists from six universities say they have put an end to the long-running debate about the cause of the sudden disappearance of giant vertebrates from the Australian ecosystem, and the dramatic change to the landscape that followed.

There is new evidence that resistance to the main treatments for malaria is increasing.Scientists have found resistant strains of the parasite on the border between Thailand and Burma.A few years ago researchers also found malaria resistance in parts of western Cambodia.In the study, published in The Lancet, Professor Francois Nosten and fellow scientists say increased resistance in the region has "seriously compromised" the effort to eliminate the deadly disease..

The Earth's orbit isn't perfectly even. Its poles wobble a bit. The cyclical changes in these orbital features create small changes in the amount of sunlight reaching our planet, as well as its distribution across the surface. Despite their relatively small size, these changes have been driving our planet's climate for millions of years, causing events called hyperthermals 50 million years ago, and the entry and exit to glacial cycles more recently.This raises a pretty obvious question: if the solar changes are so small, how do they drive such large changes in the global temperature? An answer was provided in part by ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. These showed that the concentrations of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane rose and fell in near-perfect synchrony with the rise and fall of the temperatures. These would provide an obvious amplification of the orbital cycles, and could account for the large, global change.

Earth may have terrifying tornadoes, but when it comes to dust devils, Mars has us beat. A camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured a stunning example of a swirling funnel of dust spinning up to an altitude of 20 kilometers. (The animation above provides a side view.) On Earth, tornadoes often reach such heights, but dust devils seldom reach up more than a few hundred meters. That's because dust devils only draw their energy from the solar heating of the surface; tornadoes also tap the heat energy from the condensation of water vapor in a tornadic storm.

The man known as Egypt's Indiana Jones is facing charges for a $17 million deal he made with the American Geographical Society, a prosecutor said.General Prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud said former Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass is accused of wasting public money and stealing antiquities for arranging Tutankhamun exhibitions in the United States and Australia, Egypt's Ahram Online reported.

A team from CEREGE(1) (Aix-Marseille Université/CNRS/IRD/Collège de France), working with colleagues from the UK and Japan, has discovered that, 14 600 years ago, sea levels suddenly rose by nearly 14 meters in a mere 350 years. This spectacular increase coincided with the beginning of the first warm period that marked the end of the last glaciation. Moreover, the Antarctic ice sheet contributed significantly to the sea level rise. Published on 29 March 2012 in the journal Nature, the work confirms that there was a major acceleration in sea level rise between 14 650 and 14 300 BP, making it one of the most remarkable climate events of the past 20 000 years.

During an earthquake, regular walls get shaken much like humans do. The side-to-side strain causes the masonry to crumble. This year, German materials scientists are producing seismic wallpaper that can hold a wall together.Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Institute of Solid Construction and Construction Material Technology has been simulating quake conditions to find better ways to shore up walls since the 1990s. Early attempts involved bonding thin carbon fiber slats to masonry, but that only made the crumbling worse.Several years ago, they came up with another approach, one in which the surface of a whole wall could be reinforced using special wallpaper. In 2010, the institute's director, Lothar Stempniewski, and his colleagues began perfecting the material.

A hundred years ago, on April 15, 1912, an iceberg brought down the supposedly unsinkable Titanic in the North Atlantic.If the legendary ship sailed today, it would likely encounter many more icebergs, possibly due to global warming, scientists say."It's a surprising thought that global warming would lead to more icebergs," said Frank Lowenstein, head of climate-adaptation strategy for the Nature Conservancy.Earth's average global temperature has increased by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) since 1880, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Two-thirds of that warming has happened since 1975.

Until now, illicit drug use has not been common in older people. However, it is likely to become more common as generations that use drugs more frequently reach an older age.New research published today in the journal Age and Ageing has found that the lifetime use of cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine and LSD in 50-64 year olds has significantly increased since 1993 and is much higher than lifetime use in adults aged over 65. The study also found that drug use in inner London was higher than the overall UK average.

In a handy stroke of luck, scientists have rediscovered a "lost" African species: the Bururi long-fingered frog.Last seen in 1949, the 1.3-inch-long (3.2-centimeter-long) amphibian was found during a December 2011 biodiversity survey in the small central African country of Burundi, scientists announced in March.Thwarted by decades of political conflict, few biologists have so far been able to explore Burundi's ecosystems.

Chile's Supreme Court Wednesday removed the last legal obstacle to building a giant $2.9 billion hydroelectric complex in the Patagonian wilderness, rejecting a bid by environmentalists to block it.The highly controversial project, which environmentalists say will wreck a unique and pristine habitat in the southern tip of South America, sparked violent protests last year.The high court "confirmed it was rejecting" an appeal by green campaigners to halt the $2.9 billion HidroAysen project of Spanish-Chilean consortium Endesa-Colburn, a court spokesman said.

Can a farmer commit patent infringement just by planting soybeans he bought on the open market? This week, the Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on the question. The Court is pondering an appeals court decision saying that such planting can, in fact, infringe patents.In 1994, the agricultural giant Monsanto obtained a patent covering a line of "Roundup Ready" crops that had been genetically modified to resist Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. This genetic modification is hereditary, so future generations of seeds are also "Roundup Ready." Farmers had only to save a portion of their crop for re-planting the next season, and they wouldn't need to purchase new seed from Monsanto every year. The company didn't want to be in the business of making a one-time sale, so when Monsanto sold "Roundup Ready" soybeans to farmers, it required them to sign a licensing agreement promising not to re-plant future generations of seeds.

When magnetic fields of opposite polarity collide and merge, they unleash a torrent of energy. The process, known as magnetic reconnection, can cause flares on the Sun and magnetic storms and shimmering auroras on magnetized planets with substantial atmospheres, such as Earth, Jupiter and Saturn.Now scientists have discovered that magnetic reconnection also happens on Venus, a planet with no intrinsic magnetic field. The finding, reported today in Science1, suggests that magnetic reconnection may generate auroras on Venus, and could have contributed to the loss of a thick, water-rich atmosphere that scientists believe surrounded the planet during its early history, some 4 billion years ago.

At the Planet Under Pressure conference in London, Diana Liverman and Will Steffen present something of a contrasting couple.The two professors have been working together on a State of the Planet report, which has involved trawling through numerous reports and scientific papers. At the end of it all, the message of one appears somewhat optimistic, the other fundamentally pessimistic.

If new computer simulations pan out in the real world, nuclear fusion, the power source that makes stars shine, may be a practical possibility here on Earth, scientists say.Simulations at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico revealed a fusion reactor that surpasses the "break-even" point of energy input versus energy output, indicating a self-sustaining fusion reaction. (This doesn't break any laws of physics for the same reason that starting a fire with a match doesn't).

Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own.To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the very human way that scientists, engineers and members of the public think about space exploration and the search for alien life.From Star Trek to SETI, our modern world is constantly imagining possible futures where we dart around the galaxy engaging with bizarre alien races. Denning points out that when people talk about these futures, they often invoke the past. But they frequently seem to have a poor understanding of history.

Michelle Pecoult, a woman belonging to Set Right, a non-denominational Christian ministry in Perth, Australia, claims she and her group performs "four or five" exorcisms a day -- most recently on a two-year-old, the Herald Sun reports.According to the paper, Pecoult claims the two-year-old was "growling and snarling" until her team was able to exorcise a demon from the child."(The demon) was told to leave and in 20 minutes left," Pecoult told the Herald Sun. "The child didn't know (it had happened).

A juvenile mammoth, nicknamed "Yuka," was found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people.The remarkably well preserved frozen carcass was discovered in Siberia as part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, if not older. If further study confirms the preliminary findings, it would be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region.The carcass is in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact, retaining its pink color. The blonde-red hue of Yuka's woolly coat also remains.

The European Commission urged the EU Parliament on Wednesday to hold off on voting on a controversial global anti-online piracy pact until judges rule on its legality.The commission is expected to refer the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to the European Court of Justice in a few weeks, hoping to settle if it respects fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and data protection.For more information on ACTA and how to stop it, visit http://www.stopacta.info/Automatically email your representatives through http://killacta.org/Various Links and information available here also: http://www.akascope.com/2012/04/02/acta-passed-10-weeks-action-late/

FACED with massive public debt, Greece is finding that its fabled antiquity heritage is proving a growing burden -- with licensed digs postponed, illegal ones proliferating, museum staff trimmed and valuable pieces stolen."Greece's historic remains have become our curse," whispered an archaeologist at a recent media event organised to protest spending cuts imposed on the country for the past two years as a condition for European Union and International Monetary Fund loans.

Tattered pieces from two bibles more than 1200 years old have been found in another bible in an Auckland library.The pieces, sewn into the four volume Latin bible, were discovered by staff at Sir George Grey's Special Collections in the central city library.They were found while staff were cataloguing books dating from before 1501.The tattered manuscript is believed to date from just after 800AD and could be the earliest fragments of Western manuscripts in Australasia.

When the great west doors of York Minster swing open on Thursday and the Queen makes her way along the nave of the packed church for the ancient service of distributing Maundy Money, she will also be walking towards a small pit from which human bones have been pouring by the barrow load, the remains of some of the earliest Christians to worship on the site.Tantalising finds include 30 skulls and a jumble of bones used to backfill a trench by the medieval builders of the present cathedral, and a man whose stone-lined and lidded grave was chopped off by Walter de Gray's 13th-century walls, leaving only his shins and feet in place.

For anyone who would like to learn more about the mysteries of Ayahuasca, the Vine of Souls, I've just posted, and recommend, this thoughtful new documentary by Alexander Ward on my Youtube channel.Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMqUfqYt_dcChannel Link: http://youtube.com/GrahamHancockDotCom-Graham

The color and scent of flowers and their perception by pollinator insects are believed to have evolved in the course of mutual adaptation. However, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Zurich has now proved that this is not the case with the arum family at least, which evolved its scent analogously to the pre-existing scents of scarab beetles and thus adapted to the beetles unilaterally. The mutual adaptation between plants and pollinators therefore does not always take place.

Leading scientists on Thursday called on the upcoming Rio Summit to grapple with environmental ills that they said pointed to "a humanitarian emergency on a global scale."In a "State of the Planet" declaration issued after a four-day conference, the scientists said Earth was now facing unprecedented challenges, from water stress, pollution and species loss to spiralling demands for food.

Coral off Tahiti has linked the collapse of massive ice sheets 14,600 years ago to a dramatic and rapid rise in global sea-levels of around 14 metres.Previous research could not accurately date the sea-level rise but now an Aix-Marseille University-led team, including Oxford University scientists Alex Thomas and Gideon Henderson, has confirmed that the event occurred 14,650-14,310 years ago at the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming.

Analysis of data from the 10-meter South Pole Telescope is providing new support for the most widely accepted explanation of dark energy -- the source of the mysterious force that is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.The results also are beginning to hone in on the masses of neutrinos, the most abundant particles in the universe, which until recently were thought to be without mass.

William Blake wrote, "To see a world in a grain of sand ... " Now there's an attempt to make those words a reality. At MIT, researchers have developed "smart sand" that's able to self-organize and assemble itself into any object. The idea is that a person could drop a small object into a bucket of smart sand and, after a few minutes, pull up a larger replica made from the particles.The technique could allow a person to duplicate tools or mechanical parts nearly instantly.The self-building material, which was developed by Daniela Rus, a professor of computer science and engineering at MIT and her student Kyle Gilpin, isn't the size of sand grains yet. Each "grain" is a cube 10 millimeters (about a third of an inch) long. It has magnets on four sides that can be turned on and off and are used to attract or repel each cube with another. With only a small amount of information, the cubes can arrange themselves into larger objects.

The announcement of a pair of planets orbiting a 12.5 billion-year old star flies in the face of conventional wisdom that the earliest stars to be born in the Universe shouldn't possess planets at all.12.5 billion years ago, the primeval universe was just beginning to make heavier elements beyond hydrogen and helium, in the fusion furnace cores of the first stars. It follows that there was very little if any material for fabricating terrestrial worlds or the rocky seed cores of gas giant planets.This argument has been used to automatically rule out the ancient and majestic globular star clusters that orbit our galaxy as intriguing homes for extraterrestrials.

A new UK facility aimed at improving measurement of carbon emissions and boosting development of clean technology is due to open.The Centre for Carbon Measurement will be based at the National Physical Laboratory in south-west London.It will raise accuracy of climate data, support better emissions monitoring to ensure a fair carbon market, and verify claims made about low-carbon products.It will be formally launched at the Planet Under Pressure event in London.

You no longer need a heartbeat to be alive. In a groundbreaking surgery last year, doctors William Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute in Houston replaced a dying man's heart with twin turbines, resulting in a living person without a pulse.In this short film called Heart Stop Beating, directed by Jeremiah Zagar, you can follow the revolutionary procedure. Compared to artificial hearts that mimic real ones, the device is thought to be much more durable, since it has no flexible membranes or complex twisting mechanisms. "No one has been able to make a self-contained pulsatile device that can last more than two years or so and most wear out sooner," says Cohn.

Western Europe has long been held to be the "cradle" of Neandertal evolution since many of the earliest discoveries were from sites in this region. But when Neandertals started disappearing around 30,000 years ago, anthropologists figured that climactic factors or competition from modern humans were the likely causes. Intriguingly, new research suggests that Western European Neandertals were on the verge of extinction long before modern humans showed up. This new perspective comes from a study of ancient DNA carried out by an international research team. Rolf Quam, a Binghamton University anthropologist, was a co-author of the study led by Anders Götherström at Uppsala University and Love Dalén at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

A paper titled Scouting the spectrum for interstellar travellers recently appeared on the arXiv. Here is its abstract:Advanced civilizations capable of interstellar travel, if they exist, are likely to have advanced propulsion methods. Spaceships moving at high speeds would leave a particular signature which could be detected from Earth. We propose a search based on the properties of light reflecting from objects travelling at relativistic speeds. Based on the same principles, we also propose a simple interstellar beacon with a solar sail.

Five telescopes made of bone and dating to the 18th century have been discovered in Amsterdam, with two of the scopes found in the equivalent of toilets.At the time, called the Enlightenment, the telescopes would have been considered luxury items and were likely used to gaze at objects on land or sea, rather than to look at the stars. They were created during a period when Amsterdam was a flourishing center for trade, one that attracted talented craftsmen.

THE Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, is among a group of prominent Australians who have declared the ''war on drugs'' a failure in the most significant challenge to drug laws in decades.''The prohibition of illicit drugs is killing and criminalising our children and we are letting it happen,'' says a report released today by the group, which includes the former federal police chief Mick Palmer, the former NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, the former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop, a former Defence Department secretary, Paul Barratt, the former federal health ministers Michael Wooldridge and Peter Baume, and the drug addiction expert Alex Wodak.

During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama instilled hope in medical marijuana supporters by pledging to respect state laws on the matter. And for the first two years of his term, he was generally faithful to his promise. Yet suddenly, and with no logical explanation, over the past eight months he has become arguably the worst president in U.S. history regarding medical marijuana.1. In 1970, Nixon signed into law the Controlled Substances Act, which placed marijuana in Schedule I -- the most restrictive of the five schedules, which declared that marijuana has no medical value whatsoever. Since then, all seven presidents have been content to keep marijuana in Schedule I, even going so far as to have (1) DEA bureaucrats overrule the DEA's own administrative law judge on the matter, and (2) Health & Human Services reject scientific petitions for rescheduling.

General Prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on Monday referred charges of wasting public money and stealing Egyptian antiquities against Zahi Hawass, former minister of state for antiquities to the Public Fund Prosecution office.Nour El-Din Abdul-Samad, Director of Archeological Sites, had filed the accusations against Hawass, and requested that the objects in question be returned to the Egyptian Museum.The Public Funds Prosecution office also received other charges accusing Hawass of wasting public money and exposing Egyptian antiquities to stealing in collaboration with former regime members.

Should happiness figure in a nation's bottom line? And should the concept of Gross National Product be replaced by Gross National Happiness?Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley told a high-level U.N. meeting Monday that it not only should but that it must if mankind is to avoid its current unsustainable and self-destructive course.Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation which tops Asia in the United Nations' First World Happiness Report, convened the meeting seeking to develop a new economic model based on principles of happiness and well being.

The sounds of Mars and Venus have been revealed for the first time by scientists.A team from the University of Southampton used physics and mathematics to replicate the natural sounds of other worlds from lightning on Venus to whirlwinds on Mars and ice volcanoes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.They have also modelled the effects of different atmospheres, pressures and temperatures on the human voice on Mars, Venus and Titan, and found that on Venus humans would sound like bass Smurfs.

Scientists say they have new evidence that our ancestors were using fire as early as a million years ago.It takes the form of ash and bone fragments recovered from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.The team tells the journal PNAS that the sediments suggest frequent, controlled fires were lit on the site.The ability to use fire is regarded as a key step in human development because it gave us access to cooked foods and new technologies

Places on Saturn's moon Titan see rainfall about once every 1,000 years on average, a new analysis concludes.Earth and Titan are the only worlds in the Solar System where liquid rains on a solid surface - though on Titan, the rain is methane rather than water.The calculation is based on findings from the Cassini probe of rainstorms that occurred in 2004 and 2010.Dr Ralph Lorenz presented details of his work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.

An odd, previously unseen landform could provide a window into the geological history of Mars, according to new research by University of Washington geologists.They call the structures periodic bedrock ridges (and they use the abbreviation PBRs to evoke a favorite brand of beer). The ridges look like sand dunes but, rather than being made from material piled up by the wind, the scientists say the ridges actually form from wind erosion of bedrock."These bedforms look for all the world like sand dunes but they are carved into hard rock by wind," said David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. It is something there are not many analogs for on Earth.

Beluga whales and narwhals live solely in the cold waters of the Arctic and sub-arctic. Smithsonian scientists, however, found that this may not have always been the case. They recently described a new species of toothed whale and close relative to today's belugas and narwhals that lived some 3-4 million years ago during the Pliocene in warm water regions.Why and when its modern-day relatives evolved to live only in northern latitudes remains a mystery. The team's research was recently described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered: If a star can get tossed outward at such an extreme velocity, could the same thing happen to planets?New research shows that the answer is yes. Not only do runaway planets exist, but some of them zoom through space at a few percent of the speed of light - up to 30 million miles per hour.

The people of medieval Iceland survived disaster by sticking with traditional practices, an innovative new study suggests.This didn't just help them recover from plague and volcanic eruptions; it may ultimately have kept human settlement on Iceland viable centuries later when climate change had made their environment even harsher.The research examines how late-medieval Icelanders responded to potentially devastating population drops, by analysing layers of soil and volcanic ash.

Ash and charred bone, the earliest known evidence of controlled use of fire, reveal that human ancestors may have used fire a million years ago, a discovery that researchers say will shed light on this major turning point in human evolution.Scientists analyzed material from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, a massive cavern located near the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Previous excavations there had uncovered an extensive record of human occupation.

The world's oceans have been warming for more than 100 years, twice as long as previously believed, new research suggests.The findings could help scientists better understand the Earth's record of sea-level rise, which is partly due to the expansion of water that happens as it heats up, researchers added."Temperature is one of the most fundamental descriptors of the physical state of the ocean," said the study's lead author,Dean Roemmich, an oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego. "Beyond simply knowing that the oceans are warming, [the results] will help us answer a few climate questions.

Sparrows in San Francisco's Presidio district changed their tune to soar above the increasing cacophony of car horns and engine rumbles, details new George Mason University research in the April edition of Animal Behaviour.The study, "Birdsongs Keep Pace with City Life: Changes in Song Over Time in an Urban Songbird Affects Communication," compares birdsongs from as far back as 1969 to today. The researchers also detail how San Francisco's streets have grown noisier based on studies from 1974 and 2008.

Large numbers of people moved between Africa and Europe during recent and well-documented time periods such as the Roman Empire, the Arab conquest, and the slave trade, and genetic evidence of these migrations lives on in Europeans today. But were there more ancient migrations?In a study published online today in Genome Research, researchers present the first genetic evidence for prehistoric gene flow between Africa and Europe, dating back as far as 11,000 years ago.

Denmark has committed to generating 50 percent of its electricity from wind sources by the year 2020, by which time the country hopes to have reduced CO2 emissions by 34 percent compared to 1990 levels. This renewed commitment to wind forms the central pillar in an energy bill that commits to obtaining 35 percent of the country's energy from renewable sources by that time. And Denmark actively aims to lower energy consumption, with 2020 usage 12 percent lower than that of 2006."Denmark will once again be the global leader in the transition to green energy," said Martin Lidegaard, Denmark's Minister for Climate, Energy and Building. "This will prepare us for a future with increasing prices for oil and coal. Moreover, it will create some of the jobs that we need so desperately, now and in the coming years."The bill passed with a near-unanimous 171 votes out of the parliament's 179 seats.

A century ago, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to the South Pole ended in tragedy. While Scott's names lives on in history, the story of other members of the team have been lost in time. Antarctic-based doctor Alexander Kumar, originally from Derbyshire, explains why one of Scott's team, Edward Wilson, is a forgotten hero.A century ago, in the frozen wilderness of Antarctica, the extraordinary life of naturalist, artist and medical doctor Edward Wilson ended.Wilson's commitment to alleviating human suffering, undertaking scientific research, creative excellence and exploration has always inspired me.

The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon.Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it.Tory MP David Davis called it "an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary people".

Paleoanthropologist Milford H. Wolpoff, Professor of Anthropology and Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan has responded to the questions posed in his GrahamHancock.com community interview.See the Interviews page linked in from the main menu for information of upcoming community interviews.

The online community have been spooked by a series of videos uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing websites which appear to show loud noises rumbling apparently from beneath the ground.People from a wide ranges of cities and countries have uploaded videos.While some appear to be relatively obvious hoaxes, others remain unexplained and ideas as to what the noises might be range from the mundane to the arguably ridiculous.

Nick Pope will be our next Community Interview on the GHMBNick is best known for formerly running the British Government's UFO Project. If you have any questions for him, see his page on the site, or head right over to his thread on the messageboards and put your questions to him.

The Government is to reconsider its refusal to ban neonicotinoid pesticides, the nerve-agent chemicals blamed for the collapse of bee colonies worldwide, the chief scientist at the Department of the Environment, Sir Robert Watson, told The Independent.Sir Robert, a former head of the UN climate panel, moved quickly to begin a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Government's stance after two new scientific studies, from Britain and France, strongly linked neonicotinoid use to bee declines.He said the new studies, and others, would be closely analysed.

The new test of Einstein's view of the universe has proved him right with ''incredible accuracy'' and is helping scientists to understand the mysterious acceleration of the universe.A team of cosmologists have announced at the National Astronomy Meeting being held at the University of Manchester, the most accurate measurement ever made from when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate.It means that the phenomenon can be explained using just Einstein's general theory of relativity and the cosmological constant - the simplest theoretical explanation for the acceleration of the universe.

The UK's forecasting agency will branch out to studying distant layers of the atmosphere in an attempt to better understand the impact that the Sun's activity has on Earth.By extending its focus from 60 miles to 380 miles (90-600km) above ground, weathermen hope to deliver earlier and more accurate predictions of how storms on the Sun will affect our GPS, radio and power systems.The region they will study includes the thermosphere, a layer of the atmosphere where space weather is more noticeable as the Earth's magnetic field repels streams of charged particles expelled by the Sun.

The land around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks might look like it's filling up with people and houses, but it's nothing compared to the rate of development around some other U.S. national parks, according to a new Montana State University study.While population densities rose 246 percent around Yellowstone/Grand Teton and 210 percent around Glacier between 1940 and 2000, they surged 3,092 percent around the Mojave National Preserve in California, 2,962 percent around the Colorado River parks and almost 2,473 percent around the Everglades National Park/Big Cypress National Park in Florida.

New research has revealed that some events in Earth's history happened more recently than previously thought. Scientists from the British Geological Survey and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, publishing recently in the journal Science, have refined the data used to determine how much time has passed since a mineral or rock was formed. They report uranium isotopic composition of minerals, used to date major geological events, which are more accurate than previously published. The major effect of this is to reduce previous age determinations by up to 700,000 years.Minerals naturally capture uranium when they form, which in turn undergoes a chain of radioactive decays to other elements, ending with lead. This new research has shown that, by more accurately measuring the relative amount of the uranium isotopes 238U and 235U, we now have a better understanding of how much time has passed since a mineral or rock has formed.

Although bringing a pet to work could come with practical difficulties, a trial at an American company suggested it improved people's job satisfaction.Dog owners also reported that it reduced their feelings of stress, which previous studies suggest can lead to higher rates of absence and lower productivity.Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University studied 75 people at a manufacturing company where each day for a trial week 20 to 30 people were allowed to bring their dogs to work.

Hardy Jones, co-founder of BlueVoice.org is reporting that over 600 dolphins have mysteriously washed up on the north coast of Peru.Details are still surfacing over a shocking and unexplained mortality event (UME), which has claimed the lives of hundreds of dolphins along the Peruvian coastline. Jones who is currently in Chiclayo investigating the deaths, said he arrived in the country on Tuesday in response to an email alert from Dr. Carlos Yaipen Llanos, the Lima-based director of the marine mammal rescue organization, ORCA Peru.Note: For balance, see An Uplifting Dolphin Story.

I've posted the second half of my interview with Sonia Doubell on my Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ulIn-7Wb4The subjects discussed are consciousness, cognitive liberty, the so-called "war on drugs", the evils of the State, the delusions of patriotism and nationalism, the tyranny of established religions, the mysteries of Ayahuasca, and the strength and fundamental goodness of the human spirit.

Cattle aren't known for their intelligence. Perhaps it's because their family tree has a very skinny trunk.Genetic evidence suggests all "taurine" cattle (the most commonly recognized breed) descend from only about 80 females and came from a single region in what is now Iran about 10,500 years ago. A study in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution traced the modern global herd's heritage back to its ancestral home on the range.The study compared mitochondrial DNA extracted from 15 preserved ancient cattle's bones to modern cattle and found little variation. Little variation meant the founding population didn't have many different versions of the mitochondrial genes to start with.

All cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East some 10,500 years ago, according to a new genetic study.An international team of scientists from the CNRS and National Museum of Natural History in France, the University of Mainz in Germany, and UCL in the UK were able to conduct the study by first extracting DNA from the bones of domestic cattle excavated in Iranian archaeological sites. These sites date to not long after the invention of farming and are in the region where cattle were first domesticated.The team examined how small differences in the DNA sequences of those ancient cattle, as well as cattle living today, could have arisen given different population histories. Using computer simulations they found that the DNA differences could only have arisen if a small number of animals, approximately 80, were domesticated from wild ox (aurochs).

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has said the war on drugs has failed, and it is time to end the "taboo" on discussing decriminalisation.He was addressing a Central American summit in the Guatemalan city of Antigua.Mr Perez Molina convoked the meeting to consider decriminalisation as a way of reducing drug-related violence.But the presidents of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras all cancelled their attendance at short notice.

For the eager prankster, nothing beats the centuries-old tradition of April Fools' Day."A lot of people think [April Fools' Day] is just obnoxious, and just wish it would stop," said Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes in San Diego, California."But people who love pranks really love the day and refuse to give up the tradition. They're the ones who keep it alive," Boese told National Geographic News in 2008.He said, however, that the number of pranks in the home and at the office has decreased in recent years in the United States, and has been replaced by large institutionalized media hoaxes.

The starling, famous for its winter displays known as "murmurations" involving up to hundreds of thousands of birds, has seen a steady decline in numbers since the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds first launched the Big Garden Birdwatch began in 1979.This year's survey of garden birds by members of the public revealed an average of just over three starlings per garden, compared to 15 in 1979, a fall of 79 per cent, the wildlife charity said.The RSPB also warned that the numbers seen in the murmurations, when the birds gather above roost sites at dusk and fly in patterns before settling down for the night, are also dropping.

Scientists have discovered ways in which even low doses of widely used pesticides can harm bumblebees and honeybees, interfering with their homing abilities and making them lose their way.In two studies published in the journal Science on Thursday, British and French researchers looked at bees and neonicotinoid insecticides - a class introduced in the 1990s now among the most commonly used crop pesticides in the world.In recent years, bee populations have been dropping rapidly, partly due to a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists also fear pesticides are destroying bee populations, but it is not clear how they are causing damage.

Spacecraft could one day navigate through the cosmos using a particular type of dead star as a kind of GPS.German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars.These dense, burnt-out stars rotate rapidly, sweeping their emission across the cosmos at rates that are so stable they rival atomic clock performance.This timing property is perfect for interstellar navigation, says the team.

Astronomers have measured the precise distance to over a quarter of a million galaxies to gain new insights into a key period in cosmic history.The 3D map of the sky allows scientists to probe the time six billion years ago when dark energy became the dominant influence on the Universe's expansion.No-one knows the true nature of this repulsive force, but the exquisite data in the international BOSS survey will help test various theories.The analysis appears in six papers.

According to a recent study headed by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, eating commercial baked goods (fairy cakes, croissants, doughnuts, etc.) and fast food (hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza) is linked to depression.