Newsdesk Archive

Research from North Carolina State University shows that honey bees "self-medicate" when their colony is infected with a harmful fungus, bringing in increased amounts of antifungal plant resins to ward off the pathogen."The colony is willing to expend the energy and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins," says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State's Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research. "So, clearly this behavior has evolved because the benefit to the colony exceeds the cost.".

Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car -- even if it's not an electric vehicle. Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity.Today, electrical energy generated by various methods is still difficult to store efficiently. Chemical batteries, hydraulic pumping and water splitting suffer from low energy-density storage or incompatibility with current transportation infrastructure.

Major changes are needed in agriculture and food consumption around the world if future generations are to be adequately fed, a major report warns.Farming must intensify sustainably, cut waste and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms, it says.The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change spent more than a year assessing evidence from scientists and policymakers.Its final report was released at the Planet Under Pressure conference.

Some of the world's most commonly used pesticides are killing bees by damaging their ability to navigate and reducing numbers of queens, research suggests.Scientific groups in the UK and France studied the effects of neonicotinoids, which are used in more than 100 nations on farm crops and in gardens.The UK team found the pesticides caused an 85% drop in queen production.Writing in the journal Science, the groups note that bee declines in many countries are reducing crop yields.

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system that formed nearly 13 billion years ago, suggesting the early universe harbored more planets than has been thought.The system consists of a star called HIP 11952 and two Jupiter-like alien planets. It is just 375 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). The planets are likely the oldest yet found; at 12.8 billion years old, they're just 900 million years younger than the universe itself, according to the commonly accepted Big Bang theory.For comparison, Earth and the other planets in the solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Since the 1960s, when NASA astronauts first left the confines of Earth to begin exploration above and beyond our planet, their cameras have captured some amazing sights.Some of those moments will be revealed Tuesday night on "NASA's Unexplained Files," the final episode of the Science Channel's month-long "Are We Alone?" series.Spanning the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and space shuttle programs, astronauts saw unusual lights and objects, some considered unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and founder of the private spaceflight company Blue Origin, has announced that he's located the F-1 engines that launched Apollo 11 to the moon.In the privately funded venture, Bezos' team used state-of-the-art deep sea sonar to hunt for the space artifacts that have sat 14,000 feet (4.2 kilometers) under the Atlantic Ocean for over 40 years.The five powerful engines of the most famous Saturn V rocket burned for only a few minutes on July 16, 1969, sending Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to an altitude of 38 miles (61 kilometers) before the first stage of the rocket separated and the second-stage engines took over (pictured top). First stage, plus empty fuel tanks and engines, fell back to Earth for a splashdown in the ocean.

A bizarre creature that washed ashore last week in Folly Beach, S.C., sparked speculation in the area and on the Internet that a dead sea monster might have been discovered.The tan-brown animal with greenish patches was strange enough, but what really baffled beachgoers was its massive size and the dinosaur-like bony plates on its sides. It's not clear just how long it was, but photos suggest it exceeded 10 feet.Like many washed-up carcasses it carried both a salty stench and an air of mystery. Speculation ran rampant, with commenters suggesting that the creature was everything from a dinosaurian sea monster to a toxin-spawned mutation to a chupacabra.

It was a genuine small-town mystery that briefly put Clintonville, Wisconsin in the national spotlight. Late on March 18, folks in the city of 4,700 just west of Green Bay (and a couple hours north of my current base of operations) suddenly flooded 911 with reports of unsettling booms and shaking. Callers described the noises as being similar to jackhammers, rattling pipes, rumbling thunder, or slamming doors. Authorities scrambled to identify the source. Gas lines were checked for signs of leaks or other anomalies, the same for sewers and water mains. Planes surveyed the county for plumes of smoke. The landfill was checked for signs of a methane explosion. The dam was inspected for structural damage. The military was asked about exercises. Everything checked out, and there were no reports of industrial accidents, either.

A new report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development paints a grim picture of the world in 2050 based on current global trends. It predicts a world population of 9.2 billion people, generating a global GDP four times the size of today's, requiring 80 percent more energy. And with a worldwide energy mix still 85 percent reliant on fossil fuels by that time, it will be coal, oil, and gas that make up most of the difference, the OECD predicts.Should that prove the case, and without new policy, the report warns the result will be the "locking in" of global warming, with a rise of as much as 6° C (about 10.8° F) predicted by the end of the century. Combined with other knock-on effects of population growth on biodiversity, water and health; the report asserts that the ensuing environmental degradation will result in consequences "that could endanger two centuries of rising living standards.

A series of communal dinners in Berlin is bringing together like-minded food lovers to enjoy meals concocted using local merchants' leftover, unwanted produce. The events are aimed at raising awareness about massive consumer food waste in Germany and the West.Sandra Teitge remembers what it was like growing up in communist East Germany two decades ago."There was never enough food, so I learned to eat everything and not to leave anything on my plate," Teitge said.

PANICKY news headlines in recent months have warned of the perils of the fiery debris that might rain down on us as three derelict spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere. In the end, NASA's UARS satellite, Germany's ROSAT X-ray telescope and Russia's crippled Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, all burned up or ditched harmlessly in the oceans. But at least mission controllers knew where they were headed - the craft were around the size of an SUV, and so were easy to track via radar.

European Space Agency (ESA) officials said the docking of Europe's third Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) was flawless when it eased into place without any intervention from astronauts in the space station.They put the official docking time with the ISS at 2233 GMT and approximately 30 minutes later initial electrical connections to the ISS were confirmed.Astronauts aboard the ISS will be able to enter the vessel after electric connections and seals keeping space atmosphere out of the station are checked.

The inky shadows of solar eclipses can alter local weather on small scales, according to new analysis of a 1999 total eclipse.Solar eclipses occur when the moon slips between Earth and the sun, causing a huge shadow to glide across our planet's surface.Meteorologists knew an eclipse could lower temperatures within this shadow by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). But they couldn't confirm anecdotal reports of changes in wind speed and direction linked to the astronomical events.

A sensational new theory about the Turin Shroud claims to destroy the core belief of of Christianity - that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.Art historian Thomas de Wesselow is convinced the Shroud is real and did touch Christ's body.But the Cambridge academic insists that the image on the cloth fooled the Apostles into believing Christ had come back to life, and the Resurrection was in fact an optical illusion.

A build-up of gas in the adults' bodies as they decomposed could have built up to such a pressure that they burst open, causing their embryos and organs to fly out in all directions, it was widely claimed.But now the "exploding dinosaur" theory, which became the most widely accepted answer to the prehistoric puzzle, has been debunked by Swiss scientists who demonstrated that the animals could not have acted as "natural explosive charges".More likely, they said, is the less exciting theory that mild currents on the seabed where the fossils were found were strong enough to sweep away the small embryonic bones but not large enough to dislodge the weightier mothers' remains.

There could be many billions of planets not much bigger than Earth circling faint stars in our galaxy, says an international team of astronomers.The estimate for the number of "super-Earths" is based on detections already made and then extrapolated to include the Milky Way's population of so-called red dwarf stars.The team works with the high-precision Harps instrument.This is fitted to the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile.Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.

The Federal Government says it will contribute $1 million towards a scheme to protect Cambodia's Angkor Wat temples.The world-famous temple complex in Siem Reap province is visited by thousands of tourists each day.Foreign Minister Bob Carr is in Cambodia on his first trip overseas since being sworn into his new role and says the funding will help preserve the 700-year-old monuments in the area."We're going to take the experience Australians gain managing Uluru and other world heritage sites, and see that in this great site," Mr Carr said.

A huge, copper-toned formation in West Africa dominates a mesmerizing photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers snapped this hypnotic image of the so-called Richat structure in Mauritania, as the space station flew over the Sahara Desert on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa. Erosion of the various rock layers created the ring-like features that make up the sprawling structure, but the origin of the Richat structure remains somewhat mysterious, geologists have said.The photo shows Kuipers' unique vantage point from the orbiting complex, which flies approximately 240 miles (386 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth. The image was taken on March 7 using a Nikon D2Xs camera, officials at the European Space Agency said in a statement.

During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: "It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather."What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.

Royal cemetery in Meidum developed continuously at least until the late New Kingdom period, the end of the second millennium BC, determined Dr. Teodozja Rzeuska, archaeologist at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Culture PAS. Until now, Egyptologists believed that the dead had been buried there only in times of the builders of the pyramids, in the third millennium BC.Archaeological site Meidum represents the southern border of the most famous necropolis of the ancient world - the Memphite necropolis, which includes the largest pyramids built for the pharaohs Khufu and Khafre.

Despite the recent verdict of Judge Aharon Farkash of the Jerusalem District Court acquitting accused Israeli forgers Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch, the jury is still very much out on the actual authenticity of the subject antiquities they were accused of forging. After a seven-year trial with 120 sessions where the judge heard 126 witnesses and dozens of experts, producing 12,000 pages of testimony with a final 475-page verdict, the world seems to be no closer than before to determining the truth about the antiquities in question. Among them, the James Ossuary inscription, the Jehoash Tablet inscription, and the diminutive Ivory Pomegranate inscription, await further research and testing before most or all experts can agree that they are, in fact, what they have been purported to be.

According to a paper published in Science, models of how animal and plant distributions are affected by climate change may also explain aspects of human evolution.The approach takes existing knowledge of the geographical spread of other species through the warming and cooling of the ice ages to provide a model that can be applied to human origins."No one has applied this knowledge to humans before," said Dr John Stewart, lead author on the paper and researcher at Bournemouth University."We have tried to explain much of what we know about humans, including the evolution and extinction of Neanderthals and the Denisovans (a newly discovered group from Siberia), as well as how they interbred with the earliest modern populations who had just left Africa. All these phenomena have been put into the context of how animals and plants react to climate change. We're thinking about humans from the perspective of what we know about other species."

Scientists have produced a colossal picture of our Milky Way Galaxy, to reveal the detail of a billion stars.It is built from thousands of individual images acquired by two UK-developed telescopes operating in Hawaii and in Chile.Archived data from the project, known as the Vista Data Flow System, will be mined by astronomers to make new discoveries about the local cosmos.But more simply, it represents a fabulous portrait of the night sky.

Ancient foot bones from a recently discovered pre-human species, which had opposable big toes like a gorilla's, could shed light on how the ancestors of humanity came to walk upright, researchers say.Humans dominate the planet partly because walking upright frees their hands for tool use. Among the earliest known relatives of humanity to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species including the famed "Lucy." This hominin is a leading candidate for direct ancestor of the human lineage, living about 2.9 million to 3.8 million years ago in East Africa.

An ancient stone monolith in England was likely an astronomical marker, according to new archaeological evidence. The 4,000-year-old stone is triangular in shape and angles up toward geographic south. Its orientation and slant angle are aligned with the altitude of the sun at midsummer, researchers said.And new evidence shows that there are packing stones around the base of the 7.2-foot tall (2.2-meter) monolith, indicating that it was placed carefully in its location and position, they added."Given the sensitivity of the site, we can't probe under the surface of the soil," astronomer Daniel Brown of Nottingham Trent University in England said in a statement.

I'M KNEELING in a narrow strip of green fields that separates the Nile river from Egypt's western desert, watching Angus Graham and his team hammer what look like huge metal tent pegs into the ground. A few fields away, the ruined columns of the Ramesseum, mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II, rise above the wheat, overlooked by the amber cliffs that hide the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings.This area is dotted with some of the world's most impressive ancient remains, including the awesome Colossi of Memnon (pictured). But Graham, a field director for the Egypt Exploration Society in London, is interested in what's still hidden underground.

Every few months, the subject of Internet privacy and browser tracking in particular makes top headlines in the tech press. The latest bout of privacy and tracking news surround newly released best-practice guidelines from the FTC, which are intended to give consumers "greater control over the collection and use of their personal data."While these are recommendations rather than regulations at this point, many observers believe that, if they have no effect, regulations will come later through congressional action.The report has drawn fire from both sides, with business interests saying the practices it suggests will kill the Internet, which is fueled by targeted advertising.

U.S. Company Boston Dynamics recently demonstrated a new type of tiny robotic jumper capable of surpassing almost any type of obstacle by jumping as high as a 3 story building. The robot is equipped with a camera which can help soldiers in urban war zones or teams of rescue professionals in disaster areas and hazardous environments.From the guys who brought to you the robotic BigDog, Alpha Dog, LS3, Cheetah and many other advanced droids, comes a new breakthrough in robotics - Sand Flea. This tiny remote control sized robot (only 11 pounds) can move quickly on a variety of different surfaces, stop and leap straight up in the air to heights up to 30 feet - allowing it to overcome almost any urban obstacle.

A new study of ancient South African rocks indicates Earth may have experienced huge swings in the composition of its early atmosphere.The study in the journal Nature Geoscience indicates Earth's atmosphere transitioned between an oxygen-rich environment and a thick methane hydrocarbon haze similar to what is now seen on the Saturnian moon Titan.

Whilst most famous for his catalog of 110 galaxies, nebulae, clusters and double stars, Charles Messier was a comet-hunter at heart. His catalog was simply a list of nuisances, faint fuzzies that looked like comets but were not.The Frenchman found 13 comets in all between 1760 and 1785, but perhaps the most important of them was the streaking comet that he spotted in June 1770. Fast moving on the sky, it was bright enough at magnitude +2 that it could be clearly seen from well-lit towns and cities. A brief spectacle of wonder for eighteenth century astronomers to enjoy, its ramifications could have been much greater.

Should you rip off a Band-Aid quickly or peel it back inch-by-inch? A universal "body glue" that sticks cells together means you might not have to do either. The glue could also help to deliver drugs to the exact cells that need them, avoiding nasty side effects from less targeted treatments such as chemotherapy.All mammalian cells are surrounded by a membrane covered in polyvalent choline phosphate, or PC-groups, that repel aqueous particles, protecting the cell from the environment.

From end to end, the newly discovered gamma-ray bubbles extend 50,000 light-years, or roughly half of the Milky Way's diameter, as shown in this illustration. Hints of the bubbles' edges were first observed in X-rays (blue) by ROSAT, a Germany-led mission operating in the 1990s. The gamma rays mapped by Fermi (magenta) extend much farther from the galaxy's plane.The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible.

Researchers in Wales and the United States have collaborated to complete the first high-resolution, comprehensive genetic map of a promising energy crop called miscanthus (Miscanthus sinensis). The results – published in the current edition of the peer-reviewed, online journal PLoS One – provide a significant breakthrough towards advancing the production of bioenergy.

A growing body of evidence underscores the importance of human gut bacteria in modulating human health, metabolism, and disease. Yet bacteria are only part of the story. Viruses that infect those bacteria also shape who we are. Frederic D. Bushman, PhD, professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, led a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that sequenced the DNA of viruses -- the virome -- present in the gut of healthy people.

NASA scientists have replicated the impact of a comet and demonstrated that amino acids, a building block of life, could have survived the intense heat and shock waves given off in the collision.The combination of water, energy and amino acids – which bind together to form proteins – could have caused the first chemical reactions and created proteins, the researchers said.Presenting their findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, they said that several comets, asteroids and meteorites arriving over a long time span could have brought repeated batches of these ingredients to the primordial Earth.

Sections of Albert Einstein's brain are going on display in Britain for the first time this Thursday in an exhibition of notable examples of human grey matter.When the physics genius died aged 76 in 1955 his brain was divided into sections, two of which are going on show at the Wellcome Collection show Brains: The Mind As Matter.The two slides from Einstein's brain are on loan from the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, where they were shown publicly for the first time in the US last year.

More than 80,000 of Albert Einstein's papers, including his most famous formula - E=mc² - and letters to and from his former mistresses, are going online at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.As NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro says on All Things Considered, "what the trove uncovers is a picture of complex man who was concerned about the human condition" as well as the mysteries of science.In one 1929 letter, to the editor of the newspaper Falastin, the Einstein (a Jew) suggested that a council of elders of both Jewish and Arab backgrounds convene to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict taking place under the British mandate.

The dinosaurs needed to go extinct for the mammals, and humans, to arise. At least that's what researchers have been thinking for decades. But, a new study indicates that at least one group of ancient mammals was already expanding 20 million years before the dinosaurs were wiped from the Earth.Analysis of ancient mammal teeth indicates they were able to take off not because dinosaur die-off made way for them, but because they discovered a new food source that others weren't consuming.

A prototype "space fence" designed to track Earth's burgeoning orbital debris population passed a key test recently, locking onto objects in a demonstration run.The radar system, which is being developed by aerospace firm Lockheed Martin for the United States Air Force, has successfully detected orbiting space junk, company officials announced March 8. The Air Force also approved Lockheed's preliminary design for the system on Feb. 29, they added.

Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that after 244 years, it will put an end to the print edition and be available only in digital form.Hours after Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. announced it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time in more than 200 years, someone among the editing minions of free online rival Wikipedia made an irony-free note of that fact."It was announced that after 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print, instead focusing on its online encyclopedia," the entry read.

Geologists have unearthed new evidence that a massive asteroid or comet smashed into the planet some 12,900 years ago during a period called the Younger Dryas, a time marked by unusual cold temperatures and the extinction of many large animals in North America, including mammoths, mastodons and saber-tooth cats.The telltale clues are embedded in a thin layer of 13,000-year-old sediment buried beneath Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico. The impact hypothesis for the cause of the Younger Dryas boundary layer, seen in several locations in North America, Greenland, and Western Europe has come under repeated scrutiny over the years. This is the first time evidence has extended into Mexico and the tropics.The sediment contains an exotic assortment nanodiamonds, impact spherules and other materials, some of which could only have been formed through a cosmic impact, the new analysis shows.

THE East Antarctic ice sheet looks unlikely to release its frozen grip any time soon. A new model suggests that prehistoric sea-level rise long thought to have been caused by the ice sheet melting was actually the result of local subsidence.About 400,000 years ago, Earth went through a warm interglacial period similar to today's. The geological record shows traces of beaches and marine fossils in areas of Bermuda and the Bahamas far from the coast, suggesting that sea level was 20 metres higher than now.

IN THE final chapter of Lone Survivors, Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist specialising in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, tells the story of the Iwo Eleru skeleton. Found in Nigeria in 1965, its skull resembles those of some of the earliest modern humans - skulls that are more than 150,000 years old. But as Stringer showed last year, Iwo Eleru is less than one-tenth that age. Africa presents a rich anatomical and archaeological record of 15,000 years ago, near the dawn of agriculture.

It would be the trip of a lifetime: travelling through a wormhole to emerge near Pluto or in a galaxy millions of light years away. Now you can see what an epic journey through a tunnel in space-time might look like, thanks to an animation by astrophysicist Andrew Hamilton from University of Colorado at Boulder.First, you free fall through the outer horizon of a black hole. Once you reach its inner horizon, you see an infinitely-energetic flash of light from the outside world containing an image of the entire history of the universe. In a real black hole you would be vaporised by the burst, but the visualisation assumes you have superpowers to survive it.

In the span of a few thousand years human beings have achieved some remarkable feats, innovating and crafting a rich web of traditions and beliefs that we pass from one generation to the next. The young learn from the old, and not only master traditional techniques but reshape them, creating a dynamic culture in which creativity and inventiveness yield increasingly complex solutions. But beyond intelligence and opposable thumbs, how did humans develop culture in such myriad, complex ways, when other brainy, dexterous species did not? Tests comparing young children, chimpanzees and monkeys suggest that collaboration, rather than competition, may be the key to human culture.

The letter to the editor of a prestigious archaeology magazine came from inmate No. J81961 at Tehachapi State Prison.Prisoner Timothy Fenstermacher, a high school dropout, wrote to disagree with an article by an archaeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.Archaeologist Orly Goldwasser had based her story on the birth of the alphabet in part on the appearance of the rare "Sinai hieroglyph," which she said was used in the Sinai during Egypt's Middle Kingdom.

In response to population growth, many "new towns" or planned cities were built around the world in the 1950s. But according to Dr. Tali Hatuka, head of Tel Aviv University's Laboratory for Contemporary Urban Design (LCUD) at the Department of Geography and the Human Environment, these cities are a poor fit for modern lifestyles – and it's time to innovate.

Between June and August each year, Hindu pilgrims complete the Amarnath Yatra, an arduous trek to a holy cave high up in the Himalayan glaciers near the border with Pakistan, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. In the past five years, the number of people making the trip has nearly doubled. (See a map of the region.)In 2011, more than 650,000 people visited the cave. The increased human traffic is threatening the environment in this fragile ecosystem, a major source of water for the Indus River. Scientists are now grappling with how to protect the headwaters of the Indus, while giving reverence to religion, culture, and politics.

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt in the 15th century BC in a relatively long and prosperous reign. Despite her success as a female pharaoh, she is often depicted as a man in statues because the belief that pharaohs were sons of the god Amon-Re. Hatshepsut also dressed as a man to meet this expectation.A statue uncovered in Abydos, Egypt, is thought to show her more feminine side.

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court ruling allowing human genes to be patented, a topic of enormous interest to cancer researchers, patients and drug makers.The court overturned patents belonging to Myriad Genetics Inc. of Salt Lake City on two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer.Myriad's BRACAnalysis test looks for mutations on the breast cancer predisposition gene, or BRCA. Those mutations are associated with much greater risks of breast and ovarian cancer.

A genetic study of cattle has claimed that all modern domesticated bovines are descended from a single herd of wild ox, which lived 10,500 years ago.A team of geneticists from the National Museum of Natural History in France, the University of Mainz in Germany, and UCL in the UK excavated the bones of domestic cattle on archaeological sites in Iran, and then compared those to modern cows. They looked at how differences in DNA sequences could have arisen under different population history scenarios, modelled in computer simulations.

For the last 30 years there has been a very small controversy rumbling in the hallowed halls of physics. Way back in 1985, scientists from the then-USSR noted that whenever a thunder storm passed over their neutron detector, they observed an increased flux of neutrons. Unfortunately, they didn't have much in the way of monitoring equipment to really nail down much beyond the initial observation.Since then, scientists have put forward a couple of potential explanations for the observed flux. One was that the high fields generated during lightning strikes was modifying the trajectories of muons from cosmic ray showers. In short: these are cosmic rays, and this is not interesting. The second was that the gamma rays emitted during the lightning strike generated neutrons, a photonuclear event. But new measurements show that neither of these explanations can explain the data.

The planet Venus has been dominating the nighttime sky recently, but did you know it's possible to see the bright world in the daytime? Today (March 26), Venus can be spotted in the afternoon if you know where and when to look.In fact, a daytime apparition of Venus in the sky was famously spotted by none other than President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.It was March 4, 1865, and the streets of Washington DC were packed with crowds watching the inauguration ofAbraham Lincoln for his second term as president. Suddenly someone in the crowd spotted something strange in the sky: a tiny brilliant point of light.

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.Ranging in length from roughly 3 to 5 inches (80 to 140 millimeters), the telescopes were made using cattle metatarsal bone.

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.

The Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) system (U.S. Patent 5950543, assigned to ET3.com, Inc.) would take passengers from New York to Beijing in just two hours. Advocates of Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) claim it is silent, cheaper than planes, trains, or cars and faster than jets.How it would work: put a superconducting maglev train in evacuated tubes, then accelerate using linear electric motors until the design velocity is attained. Passive superconductors allow the capsules to float in the tube, while eddy currents induced in conducting materials drive the capsules. Efficiency of such a system would be high, as the electric energy required to accelerate a capsule could largely be recaptured as it slows.

Most of us walk and carry items in our hands every day. These are seemingly simple activities that the majority of us don't question. But an international team of researchers, including Brian Richmond at the George Washington University, have discovered that human bipedalism, or walking upright, may have originated millions of years ago as an adaptation to carrying scarce, high-quality resources. This latest research was published in this month's Current Biology.The team of researchers from the U.S., England, Japan and Portugal investigated the behavior of modern-day chimpanzees as they competed for food resources, in an effort to understand what ecological settings would lead a large ape -- one that resembles the 6 million-year old ancestor we shared in common with living chimpanzees -- to walk on two legs.

It's hard enough for kids to remember all the known oceans and seas -- Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Norwegian, Barents -- and now they can add one more to the list: the Enceladan Ocean. The name is lovely, and the place is nifty, but there's not much chance of visiting it soon. It's located on Enceladus, one of Saturn's 66 known moons. While Enceladus has been familiar to us since it was first spotted in 1789, the discovery of its ocean, courtesy of the venerable Cassini spacecraft, is a whole new and possibly game-changing thing.

Classical music is good for the soul and maybe the heart too. Mice with heart transplants survived twice as long if they listened to classical music rather than pop music after their operation.Masateru Uchiyama of Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, gave mice heart transplants from an unrelated donor which were therefore expected to be rejected. For a week following the operation, the mice continuously listened to Verdi's opera La Traviata, a selection of Mozart concertos, music by Enya, or a range of single monotones.

A new and unusual wasp species has been discovered during an expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.It was independently also found in the insect collections of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where it was awaiting discovery since the 1930s, when it had been collected on Sulawesi. The new species is pitch-black, has an enormous body size, and its males have long, sickle-shaped jaws. The findings have now been described in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The construction of what is to become Africa's biggest wind farm will start by June in an arid region of northern Kenya, the project's officials said on Saturday.A total of 365 wind turbines will be erected near Lake Turkana, where winds blow predictably and regularly, averaging speeds of 11 metres per second.After seven years of study and funding negotiations, the 585 million euro ($775 million) project is to take off in June once risk guarantees from the Ida and Miga financial institutions -- part of the World Bank Group -- are finalised, Carlo Van Wageningen, head of Lake Turkana Wind Power, told AFP.

According to one of the leading scholars in the field, there is an emerging consensus among scientists that animals share functional parallels with humans' conscious metacognition -- that is, our ability to reflect on our own mental processes and guide and optimize them.In two new contributions to this influential field of comparative psychology, David Smith, PhD, of the University at Buffalo and his fellow researchers report on continuing advances in this domain.

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.

Back in the day, our ancestors didn't get nearly as hung up as we do on the thorny question of where, or whether, science dovetails with spiritual practice. They just got on with it, sometimes with what we would now consider to be a reckless disregard for such niceties as actual evidence. Isaac Newton (though admittedly more sensitive to the question of evidence than most) is a prime example: physicist, mathematician, natural philosopher and theologian, but also – as most people are now aware – a man with a keen interest in alchemy. It's been suggested that he suffered from Asperger's syndrome as well: he was, to put it mildly, a challenging personality.

Deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole lurks, conditions are so chaotic that planets – and perhaps life – can't form: Or can they?A small team of astronomers suggests one way to answer the question, at least as it relates to planets: Monitor the Milky Way's rejects – stars that the galaxy's central black hole has kicked toward intergalactic space – for signs of planets.Such planets – orbiting a star or traveling alone – so far are hypothetical. The center of the galaxy is so shrouded in dust that planet-hunting as it's practiced in our galactic neighborhood is futile.

A camera aboard one of the two Grail spacecraft that began orbiting the moon in January has returned images of the far side of the lunar surface on behalf of school children in Montana. But the photos from the MoonKam system are of poor quality, making it difficult to see specific features.The MoonKam project is led by Sally Ride Science of La Jolla, with help from undergraduates at the University of California San Diego. The university is using software to show middle school students from the across the country where the probes are located above the moon. Students can then file requests to have specific areas photographed. UCSD passes those requests on to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which is managing the mission.

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun; it must therefore be the least likely place to find a reservoir of water ice.However, according to observations made by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) aboard NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft and radio telescope data from the 1990s, a supply of water may be held inside Mercury's shady craters in the planet's polar regions.MESSENGER (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) has been in Mercury orbit for a year and it is giving us an unprecedented view of the tiny, barren world.

A literary historian has uncovered thousands of banned books buried seven storeys underground in the National Archives of Australia building in Sydney.It's a prude's nightmare but a book collector's dream: Nicole Moore found 793 boxes filled to the brim with books Australians were never allowed to read.The books were banned by authorities for various reasons between the 1920s and 1980s.Associate Professor Moore has now written her own book - The Censor's Library - explaining why so many publications were deemed unfit for consumption, including novels that are now highly acclaimed.The ghostly collection, including copies of the Karma Sutra and first-edition comics from the 1950s, reveals attitudes towards sexuality, politics, birth control, reading, pleasure and race.

USGS officials confirm that Clintonville, Wisconsin was hit by a minor earthquake early Tuesday, but that doesn't explain why the town has been plagued by strange sounds since Sunday night.Residents reported booming sounds again on Thursday morning, making it the fourth night in a row the mysterious noises have been heard and felt.According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a 1.5 magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday just after midnight near Clintonville. Officials stated they don't believe such a minor quake is usually heard or felt, but concede it's slightly possible.

The crew members were scrambled into escape capsules ready to fire off for an emergency return to Earth after Nasa officials spotted a piece of space junk hurtling towards the path of the ISS.The remnants of a discarded Russian satellite were picked up too late to manoeuvre the space station into a safer orbit.Instead, the three Russian, two American and Dutch astronaut were ordered by ground control to take shelter in the emergency Soyuz spacecraft early today.The debris eventually passed the ISS within an estimated nine miles.

Humans hunted Australia's giant vertebrates to extinction about 40,000 years ago, the latest research published in Science has concluded.The cause of the widespread extinction has provoked much debate, with climate change being one theory.However, scientists studied dung samples from 130,000 and 41,000 years ago, when humans arrived, and concluded hunting and fire were the cause.The extinction in turn caused major ecological changes to the landscape.

A new surveillance camera by Hitachi Kokusai Electric can look at footage that contains an image of someone, either still or video, and then search other video or still images on file for other instances of that same face. In so doing, it can search, process and display up to thirty six million faces in just one second. Each hit is displayed immediately in its native format, i.e. still or video, in thumbnail form, which its makers say, allows the camera to display the actions of a person prior to, or even after, being seen by the surveillance camera. All they need do is click on the thumbnail to watch the video play.

A cancer patient will be the first in Britain to have his prostate removed using a hand-held robot today.Stuart Ellis, 52, a structural engineer from Cheadle Hulme, will undergo the revolutionary operation at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, Greater Manchester.The device allows the surgeon to combine the touch and feel of traditional surgery with the greater accuracy and dexterity of articulating instruments, according to the hospital.

Amateur astronomers are puzzling over a seemingly anomalous cloud that has shown up on images of Mars taken over the past few days. Is it really a cloud, or a trick of the eye? Does it really extend 150 miles up from the surface, as some of the observers suggest? And what churned up all that stuff, anyway? The amateurs and the pros will be trying to resolve those questions before the phenomenon fades away."It's not completely unexpected," Jonathon Hill, a member of the team at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, told me today. "But it's bigger than we would expect, and it's definitely something that our atmosphere guys want to take a look at.Hill and his colleagues will be looking at the area where the cloud was spotted using the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which is one of the instruments on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Hidden in the landscape of the fertile crescent of the Middle East, scientists say, lurk overlooked networks of small settlements that hold vital clues to ancient civilizations.Beyond the impressive mounds of earth, known as tells in Arabic, that mark lost cities, researchers have found a way to give archaeologists a broader perspective of the ancient landscape. By combining spy-satellite photos obtained in the 1960s with modern multispectral images and digital maps of Earth's surface, the researchers have created a new method for mapping large-scale patterns of human settlement. The approach, used to map some 14,000 settlement sites spanning eight millennia in 23,000 square kilometers of northeastern Syria, is published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Titanoboa was one gigantic snake. It lived around 58 to 60 million years ago, a scant several million years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. It could grow 42 feet or more in length and weigh more than a ton, vastly outslithering the previous fossil record holder, a 40-million-year-old, 33-foot-long snake called Gigantophis. But Titanoboa is just one proud inductee in the Prehistoric Giants Hall of Fame. Meet the other record-holders.

An Australian outback zoo was Wednesday investigating the sudden and mystifying deaths of four white rhinos who showed "neurologic abnormalities" like stumbling.The Taronga Western Plains Zoo, a safari-style animal park about 400 kilometres (248 miles) west of Sydney, said toxins, bacterial infection, snake venom and organ failure had so far been ruled out in the deaths."Currently tests are underway to investigate possible viral causes, although several types including Hendra virus and West Nile virus have also been ruled out," the zoo said in a statement.

Scientists now have evidence that Jupiter's core has been dissolving, and the implications stretch far outside of our solar system.Jupiter might be having a change of heart. Literally.New simulations suggest that Jupiter's rocky core has been liquefying and mixing with the rest of the planet's innards. With this new data, astronomers hope to better explain a recent puzzling discovery of a strange planet outside of our solar system.

The 20-ton vessel, named after 20th-century Italian physicist, Edoardo Amaldi, blasted off atop a heavyweight version of the Ariane 5 launcher at 01:34am (0434 GMT) from the launch pad in French Guiana."Mission accomplished," Jean-Yves Gall, the head of Arianespace satellite launch operator, said shortly after lift-off.About an hour later the vessel separated from the launcher and went its orbit flight path in what Gall said was picture perfect execution.

The giant asteroid Vesta possesses many features usually associated with rocky planets like Earth, according to data from a Nasa probe.Vesta has been viewed as a massive asteroid, but after studying the surface in detail, scientists are describing it as "transitional".The Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Vesta - one of the Solar System's most primitive objects - since July 2011.They have documented many unexpected features on its battered surface.Mission scientists presented their latest results at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.

More than 30,000 Roman coins were found by archaeologists working in Bath in 2007, it has been revealed.The silver coins are believed to date from 270AD and have been described as the fifth largest UK hoard ever found.The coins are fused together and were sent to the British Museum. Conservators are expected to take at least a year to work through them.

FOSSIL feathers provided the definitive proof that birds descended from dinosaurs. There is one extinct beast that doesn't fit the picture, though. It is called Longisquama insignis, and it lived 230 to 240 million years ago - just before the dinosaurs evolved, and 70 to 80 million years before the first fossils of feathered dinobirds. Why, then, did Longisquama sport what look suspiciously like feathers?Some palaeontologists think that it didn't: they say that the only known specimen of Longisquama - found in Kyrgyzstan in the 1960s and shown here at life size - was just a run-of-the-mill reptile that died beneath some exotic plant fronds, so the "feathers" were not actually part of the animal. A small group of researchers say Longisquama's feathers are real, and suggest that birds evolved from reptiles like this rather than from feathered dinosaurs. A new analysis suggests neither theory is correct.

In the search for sustainability of the ocean's fisheries, solutions can be found in a surprising place: the ancient past.In a study published on March 23 in the journal Fish and Fisheries, a team of marine scientists reconstructed fisheries yields over seven centuries of human habitation in Hawaii and the Florida Keys, the largest coral reef ecosystems in the United States, and evaluated the management strategies associated with periods of sustainability. The results surprised them.

Since the explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, scientists have been working to understand the impact that this disaster has had on the environment. For months, crude oil gushed into the water at a rate of approximately 53,000 barrels per day before the well was capped on July 15, 2010. A new study confirms that oil from the Macondo well made it into the ocean's food chain through the tiniest of organisms, zooplankton.

A Nasa spacecraft has found further tantalising evidence for the existence of water ice at Mercury's poles.Though surface temperatures can soar above 400C, some craters at Mercury's poles are permanently in shadow, turning them into so-called cold traps.Previous work has revealed patches near Mercury's poles that strongly reflect radar - a characteristic of ice.Now, the Messenger probe has shown that these "radar-bright" patches line up precisely with the shadowed craters.

An English World War II soldier's lost diary supports sensational claims that Adolf Hitler fathered a secret son with a 16-year-old French girl.Former Royal Engineer Leonard Wilkes, from Birmingham, central England, recorded neatly written entries into a small blue notebook during his time serving in France, the Birmingham Mail reported Tuesday.His family claims it could contain the earliest written record of the story of Jean-Marie Loret -- who always claimed his father was Hitler.

The notorious 19th-century trial of Lizzie Borden, a wealthy New England woman accused of killing her parents with an ax, is back in the spotlight with the discovery of her attorney's handwritten journals, providing fresh insight into the relationship with her father.Borden was acquitted in 1892, and much of the evidence in the case ended up with Andrew Jackson Jennings, Borden's attorney. The two journals, which Jennings stored in a Victorian bathtub along with other evidence from the case, including the infamous "handless hatchet," were left to the Fall River Historical Society by Jennings' grandson, who died last year.

NASA's highly anticipated Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) began operations on the International Space Station with the Canadian Dextre robot and RRM tools March 7-9, 2012, marking important milestones in satellite-servicing technology and the use of the space station robotic capabilities.A joint effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), RRM is an external station experiment designed to demonstrate the technologies, tools, and techniques needed to robotically service and refuel satellites in orbit, especially those not built with servicing in mind. RRM represents the first time the space station's Dextre robot is used for technology research and development, moving it beyond robotic maintenance of the orbiting superstructure.

Joining us for a community interview is Milford H. Wolpoff, the paleoanthropologist, and professor of anthropology is the leading proponent of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that challenges the 'Out of Africa' theory, and is author of 'Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction' (CA UK US), which reviews the scientific evidence and conflicting theories about how human evolution has been interpreted, and how its interpretation is related to views about race.Please share your questions for him on the message boards

Thousands of possible early human settlements have been discovered by archaeologists using computers to scour satellite images.Jason Ur said he had found about 9,000 potential new sites in north-eastern Syria.Computers scanned the images for soil discolouration and mounds caused when mud-brick settlements collapsed.Dr Ur said surveying the same area on the ground would have taken him a lifetime.

The 1920s was an incredible decade of advancement for communications technology. Radio was finally being realized as a broadcast medium, talkies were transforming the film industry, and inventors were tinkering with the earliest forms of television. People of the 1920s recognized that big changes were ahead, and no one relished in guessing what those changes might be more than Hugo Gernsback.Gernsback was a pioneer in both radio and publishing, always pushing the boundaries of what the public might expect of their technological future. In 1905 (just a year after emigrating to the U.S. from Germany at the age of 20) Gernsback designed the first home radio set and started the first mail-order radio business in the world. The radio was called the Telimco Wireless and was advertised in magazines like Scientific American for $7.50 (about $180 today).

The objects that inspired some of his greatest cinematographic successes lie deep below the waves, but now, the film director James Cameron plans to explore even further into the watery unknown. Today he will set out for the deepest point of the world's oceans in a submersible in which he will hardly be able to move.The director of Titanic and The Abyss will attempt to lead only the second manned expedition to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, seven miles below the surface of the western Pacific Ocean.

Greenhouse gases are likely to result in annual costs of nearly $2 trillion in damage to the oceans by 2100, according to a new Swedish studyThe estimate by the Stockholm Environment Institute is based on the assumption that climate-altering carbon emissions continue their upward spiral without a pause.Warmer seas will lead to greater acidification and oxygen loss, hitting fisheries and coral reefs, it warns.Rising sea levels and storms will boost the risk of flood damage, especially around the coastlines of Africa and Asia, it adds.

Man-made chemicals present in homes, schools, offices, cars and food are probably contributing to the sharp rise in obesity and diabetes in western societies, according to a review of scientific literature published today.Until now lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise and poor diet were believed to be the primary causes of the increased incidence of both conditions, whose proliferation has strained global health budgets.

A powerful earthquake Tuesday that centered along the Pacific coast of southern Mexico occurred in a region with a history of unleashing damaging jolts, scientists say.Since 1973, the seismically active coast has been rocked by 15 major quakes magnitude-7 or larger. The deadliest occurred in 1985 when a magnitude-8 struck, sending shock waves to Mexico City that killed thousands."It's a very active zone," said Stanford University geophysicist Greg Beroza, who has done field work in the area.

Historians, architects, archaeologists and volunteers in Germany are teaming up to build a medieval monastery the old-fashioned way. Working conditions will be strictly 9th-century, without machines, rain jackets or even coffee. It will take decades, but they hope to garner fresh insights into everyday life in the 800s.What did a medieval stonemason do when heavy rainfall interrupted his work? Umbrellas are impractical at construction sites. Gore-Tex jackets weren't yet invented, nor were plastic rain jackets. "He donned a jacket made of felted loden cloth," says Bert Geurten, the man who plans to build an authentic monastery town the old-fashioned way.

It alters birdsong and can make it difficult for some predators to hunt, and now it seems that man-made noise also affects plants.A US team found that industrial noise disrupted the behaviour of animals that pollinate plants and disperse seeds.This, they suggest, could be slowly transforming our landscape, especially by changing the dispersal of slow-growing trees.The study is published in the Royal Society Proceedings B.

Several dozen Indonesian women founded the colonisation of Madagascar 1,200 years ago, scientists said on Wednesday in a probe into one of the strangest episodes in the human odyssey.Anthropologists are fascinated by Madagascar, for the island remained aloof from mankind's conquest of the planet for thousands of years.It then became settled by mainland Africans but also by Indonesians, whose home is 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) away.

Researchers have updated HadCRUT - one of the main global temperate records, which dates back to 1850.One of the main changes is the inclusion of more data from the Arctic region, which has experienced one of the greatest levels of warming.The amendments do not change the long-term trend, but the data now lists 2010, rather than 1998, as the warmest year on record.The update is reported in the published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.