Newsdesk Archive

Two antiquity thieves were apprehended at a Beit Shemesh-adjacent archeological dig where they managed to destroy ancient artifacts in their search for gold.The robbers, both Bedouin residents of Dimona, brought digging equipment to the Be'er Limon site late last week, and proceeded to operate there for several nights. On Thursday, in the pouring rain, the pair smashed the walls of a 2,000-year-old well located under a structure from the Crusader Period. They dug deep holes in the ground, causing what the Israel Antiquities Authority deemed as "irreversible damage.

Species: Mesodinium chamaeleonHabitat: seawater around Scandinavia and North America, chowing down on a new generation of slavesMany animals transform themselves almost beyond recognition in the course of their lives. Caterpillars become butterflies and tadpoles become frogs, and if we couldn't watch them do so we might not even suspect that the two stages were the same creature.Spectacular as these shifts are, they are only shape-shifting. A tadpole and a frog are both animals, so both must take in food from their surroundings.Not so Mesodinium chamaeleon. This newly discovered single-celled organism is a unique mixture of animal and plant.

Sick of having to ditch your bottled water, booze and toiletries at the airport security post? That appalling hassle should end by April next year, when airports are supposed to start screening the contents of bottles for explosives.But they can only do this if the bottle-scanning technologies currently being trialled are up to the job. This week, Cobalt Light Systems of the UK says its explosives detector has passed all its European civil aviation security tests - which means the end should be in sight for bottle-dumping at airport security.

KEITH MOON and Ringo Starr had their own individual drumming styles, and if you listen closely enough you will find this guy (pictured) does too. Male ruffed grouse are the first animals known to make unique non-vocal sounds.Humans and many other animals, particularly birds, can be identified by their voices. But no one had looked to see if non-vocal sounds are similarly unique, says Andrew Iwaniuk of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

Not surprisingly, it's going to be a big year for those interested in the golden era of polar exploration. Captain Robert Falcon Scott finally reached the South Pole 100 years ago this week, on 17 January 1912. The irony is, of course, that by dying on his trip home, Scott's story - certainly in the English speaking world of the former British Empire - has often eclipsed that of Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who beat him to the pole by more than a month.And so it is that a whole raft of events has been planned for 1912, rather than 1911, to rediscover and replay the story that captivated the world a century ago. Already underway in Cambridge, UK is the Scott Polar Research Institute's exhibition of the protagonists' diaries. That is now being joined by Scott's Last Expedition at the Natural History Museum in London.

SOPA and PIPA may have been put on hold -- thanks to possibly the most contentious uproar seen on Capitol Hill and in the tech world ever -- but other legislation was introduced this week to combat online piracy.Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) introduced H.R. 3782, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the same day as an Internet protest when a number of high-profile websites such as Wikipedia went dark. Issa says the new bill delivers stronger intellectual property rights for American artists and innovators while protecting the openness of the Internet. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has introduced the OPEN Act in the U.S. Senate.See the OPEN act website: http://keepthewebopen.com/

Researchers have secured £6m in funding to develop the groundbreaking treatment which could prevent genetic conditions affecting the heart, muscle or brain being passed on to children and future generations.But the method is controversial because it involves transferring the parents' DNA into a donor egg, meaning the resulting child would inherit a tiny fraction of their genetic coding from a third party.Regulations currently forbid scientists from implanting such eggs into patients.

Anybody willing to pay the asking rent of £90,000 a year can take over the 13-hectare site in a secluded forest in eastern Poland, which during the war lay in German East Prussia.From 1941 to the end of 1944 the Wolf's Lair was the nerve centre of the Nazi war machine owing to its proximity to the Eastern Front.The Polish Forestry Service, the owners of the camp, started looking for a tenant after the old 20-year lease expired.Hitler and his henchman built huge bombproof bunkers at the site that also housed 2,000 staff and security personnel.

With the Iron Age Chiseldon cauldrons excavated and cleaned to expose the metal surface the team at the British Museum are beginning to see interesting technological features and evidence of manufacture revealing them to be sophisticated and high status objects.Although the cauldrons are over 2,000 years old, different tool marks from shaping and thinning the copper alloy are still preserved and visible on the surface of the metal. These suggest the careful and deliberate use of specific tools for different tasks, indicating that the objects were made by a craft specialist skilled at working in sheet metal.

One Saturday afternoon in September 1954, a handsome, faintly smiling god looked up from the London mud. His name was Mithras, and the rediscovered Roman temple to his cult became a sensation in a gloomy postwar capital pitted with bombsites and still recovering from rationing.The temple was also about to become Britain's most mobile Roman site. Fifty-seven years ago it was in the way of an office block development and was dismantled and moved to the street level roof of a car park, part of the huge Bucklersbury House development. Now it is on the move again, back to the banks of the long vanished Wallbrook stream, to make way for the headquarters of Bloomberg.

A comet has been spotted disintegrating in the atmosphere of the sun for the first time.Such sun-diving comets are common but none have been seen surviving entry into the sun's atmosphere until now. They could help reveal what comets are made of and also uncover hidden properties of the sun's atmosphere, researchers said today (Jan. 19) as they announced the discovery.A group of comets known as the Kreutz family regularly flies perilously close to the sun.

A large, long-lasting solar flare erupted on the surface of the sun on Thursday, and was captured on camera by Nasa's orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory.The flare was associated with a 'coronal mass ejection' - a burst of solar particles - which is now travelling towards earth at 630 miles per second, and will hit our atmosphere on Saturday.This earth-directed 'coronal mass ejection' is not predicted to cause damage on Earth, but might cause magnetic storms - so stargazers should watch out for increased northern lights.

Auroras may dazzle more people than usual this weekend as Earth receives a glancing blow from an enormous solar outburst that erupted on Jan. 19. The outburst, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was detected by sun-watching satellites.Researchers at the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute predict that auroras should be visible from Seattle, Des Moines, Chicago, and Cleveland, to Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia Saturday and Sunday nights, weather permitting.Space-weather forecasters initially were concerned that Earth would take a direct hit, notes Joe Kunches, a space scientist at the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.

A NEANDERTHAL walks into a bar and says... well, not a lot, probably. Certainly he or she could never have delivered a full-blown joke of the type modern humans would recognise because a joke hinges on surprise juxtapositions of unexpected or impossible events. Cognitively, it requires quite an advanced theory of mind to put oneself in the position of one or more of the actors in that joke - and enough working memory (the ability to actively hold information in your mind and use it in various ways).So does that mean our Neanderthal had no sense of humour? No: humans also recognise the physical humour used to mitigate painful episodes - tripping, hitting our heads and so on - which does not depend on language or symbols. So while we could have sat down with Neanderthals and enjoyed the slapstick of The Three Stooges or Lee Evans, the verbal complexities of Twelfth Night would have been lost on them.

Scientists who created a potentially more deadly bird flu strain have temporarily stopped their research amid fears it could be used by terrorists.In a letter published in Science and Nature, the teams call for an "international forum" to debate the risks and value of the studies.US authorities last month asked the authors of the research to redact key details in forthcoming publications.A government advisory panel suggested the data could be used by terrorists.

The processes behind building the oldest boat ever found in Western Europe will be investigated by a team of modern- day maritime experts.Archaeologists from the University of Exeter will lead the project at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth as they attempt to rebuild a sewn-plank boat, examples of which date to around 2000 BC. The Bronze Age vessels, which measured up to 16 metres in length, are thought to have been unique to England and Wales."Because none of the boats have ever been found as complete boats, this project will seek to understand how they were constructed, how to steer such a long boat, measure how fast it can go, understand how the crew used paddles, as sails were not evident, and how watertight it is," said Professor Robert Van de Noort, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter.

Caracol, the site of an ancient Mayan city, is the largest archeological site in Belize, and has been a focus of scientific exploration for decades. Until recently, however, the only way researchers could uncover its wonders was to slowly and laboriously hack their way through the dense jungle overgrowth with machetes and other tools.But nearly three years ago, researchers tried a new approach, flying over the area with laser technology that can penetrate through the tiniest openings in the rainforest canopy, for the first time allowing archaeologists an unencumbered--and unprecedented--three dimensional view of a vast expanse of this early urban civilization.

It is off the beaten path of world tourism. Unlike the great monuments of ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica, it sees comparatively fewer visitors. Yet if casual tourists or expeditionary scholars were to see it, they would likely say that it is every bit as impressive as the Roman Colosseum or the Pyramids of Giza. Built astride and into the sheer cliff face of a mountain, it resembles something of a hybrid of ancient Petra in Jordan and the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings of the U.S.....or, for those familiar with the Tolkien works, a Minas Tirith in ruins. Known as the cave city or monastery of Vardzia, it was dug into the side of Mount Erusheli near the town of Aspindza and the Mtkvari river in southern Georgia during the late 12th century. Today, it is a tourist destination for Georgians, Europeans and others throughout the world who know of its existence. But some of its remarkable remains will crumble away into oblivion if expert care and conservation is not realized in full.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Fish hooks and fishbones dating back 42,000 years found in a cave in East Timor suggest that humans were capable of skilled, deep-sea fishing 30,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers in Australia and Japan said on Friday.The artefacts -- nearly 39,000 fishbones and three fish hooks -- were found in a limestone cave in Jerimalai in East Timor, 50 metres (165 feet) above sea level, said Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University's department of archaeology and natural history.

If you ever worry about the future of America, there is no need: it is in good hands. A high school student named Angela is proof of that. We think you'll agree she is nothing short of amazing. CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman met her on the road.Born to Chinese immigrants, 17-year-old Angela Zhang of Cupertino, California is a typical American teenager. She's really into shoes and is just learning how to drive.But there is one thing that separates her from every other student at Monta Vista High School, something she first shared with her chemistry teacher, Kavita Gupta.

From Darwinian evolution to the idea that personality is largely shaped by chance, the favorite theories of the world's most eminent thinkers are as eclectic as science itself.Every January, John Brockman, the impresario and literary agent who presides over the online salon Edge.org, asks his circle of scientists, digerati and humanities scholars to tackle one question.In previous years, they have included "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" and "What is the most important invention in the last 2,000 years?"This year, he posed the open-ended question "What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?

Dung beetles dance on top of balls of poo to help them navigate away from rivals as fast as possible, scientists find.Dung beetles roll up balls of dung to feed their young. Strangely, they routinely climb on top of these balls and dance around in circles on them, a mystery that neuroethologist Emily Baird at Lund University in Sweden and her colleagues wanted to solve."My research interest lies in understanding how animals with small brains, and therefore relatively limited processing power, are capable of orienting and navigating through the world," Baird told LiveScience. "Our aim is to understand the techniques and mechanisms that animals such as insects use to overcome the limitations of their small brain."

A comet has been spotted disintegrating in the atmosphere of the sun for the first time.Such sun-diving comets are common but none have been seen surviving entry into the sun's atmosphere until now. They could help reveal what comets are made of and also uncover hidden properties of the sun's atmosphere, researchers said today (Jan. 19) as they announced the discovery.A group of comets known as the Kreutz family regularly flies perilously close to the sun.

Researchers have succeeded in combining the power of quantum computing with the security of quantum cryptography and have shown that perfectly secure cloud computing can be achieved using the principles of quantum mechanics. They have performed an experimental demonstration of quantum computation in which the input, the data processing, and the output remain unknown to the quantum computer. The international team of scientists will publish the results of the experiment, carried out at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), in the forthcoming issue of Science.

SCIENTISTS are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July.This is only the fifth time scientists have confirmed chemically Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling.The small rock refugees were seen in a fireball in the sky six months ago, but they were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.Scientists and collectors of meteorites are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big money because they are among the rarest things on Earth.

A research team has discovered what may be the oldest astrologer's board, engraved with zodiac signs and used to determine a person's horoscope.Dating back more than 2,000 years, the board was discovered in Croatia, in a cave overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The surviving portion of the board consists of 30 ivory fragments engraved with signs of the zodiac. Researchers spent years digging them up and putting them back together. Inscribed in a Greco-Roman style, they include images of Cancer, Gemini and Pisces.The board fragments were discovered next to a phallic-shaped stalagmite amid thousands of pieces of ancient Hellenistic (Greek style) drinking vessels.

A push to recognise indigenous people in Australia's founding document is gaining initial strong political support after an expert panel mapped out the long path to constitutional change.Labor has promised to hold a national referendum on the constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians on or before the next federal election, due in 2013.An expert panel of 19 indigenous leaders, politicians and legal minds travelled the country last year holding public meetings on the issue.

More than two centuries after she disguised herself as a man and set out on a journey that would make her the first woman to circle the globe, pioneering botanist Jeanne Baret is getting some long-deserved recognition.A newly described plant species has been christened Solanum baretiae in her honor. Biologist Eric Tepe, with the University of Utah and the University of Cincinnati, named the newfound species after hearing about Baret's unsung work during a National Public Radio interview with Glynis Ridley, author of the biography, "The Discovery of Jeanne Baret" (Crown, 2010), on the program "All Things Considered.

The textbooks will tell you that the Mayan people thrived in Central America from about 250 to 900 A.D., building magnificent temples in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and southern Mexico.But could they possibly have left stone ruins in the mountains of North Georgia? Richard Thornton thinks so. He says he's an architect and urban planner by training, but has been hired to research the history of native people in and around Georgia since 2003. On Examiner.com, he wrote about an 1,100-year-old archeological site near Georgia's highest mountain, Brasstown Bald, that he said "is possibly the site of the fabled city of Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto failed to find in 1540."This might all be fairly arcane stuff, except that an archeologist he cited, Mark Williams of the University of Georgia, took exception. In the comments section after Thornton's piece, he wrote, "I am the archaeologist Mark Williams mentioned in this article. This is total and complete bunk. There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia. Move along now."

Rights campaigners and politicians Wednesday condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists reportedly in exchange for food on India's Andaman Islands.British newspaper The Observer released the undated video showing Jarawa tribal women -- some of them naked -- being lured to dance and sing after a bribe was allegedly paid to a policeman to produce them.

Comparatively few people are privileged to get within a foot or two of the physical remains (actual or cast) of ancient or historic human ancestors......at least, not without the necessary scientific credentials and sanctions reserved exclusively for the scientists who are responsible for examining and studying them. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, however, has made it possible for the interested public to approach and position their eyes within inches of some of the most significant skeletal, fossil, and mummified finds of the past two centuries.

The well-tuned geometry of the florets on the face of the sunflower head has inspired an improved layout for mirrors used to concentrate sunlight and generate electricity, according to new research.The sunflower-inspired layout could reduce the footprint of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants by about 20 percent, which could be a boon for a technology that's limited, in part, by its massive land requirements.CSP plants employ arrays of giant mirrors, each the size of half a tennis court, to beam the sun's rays up to heat a tube of fluid in the top of a tower. This hot fluid drives steam turbines that generate electricity.

In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a "sky crane," the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to "assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life."

A 47-million-year-old primate may have been a fashionista of sorts, as new analysis of the fossil suggests it sported grooming claws.Besides helping the primate rake through its fur, particularly in hard-to-reach spots, the grooming claw presents a puzzle of sorts for scientists studying the relationship between a group that includes humans, apes and monkeys, and the family that includes lemurs.That's because the primate is the first extinct North American primate with a toe bone showing features associated with the presence of both nails and a grooming claw.

Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet's unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow from Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously sponsors of the Protect IP Act.The newly-opposed Senators are skewed strongly to the Republican side of the aisle. An Ars Technica survey of Senators' positions on PIPA turned up only two Democrats, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who announced their opposition on Wednesday. The other 11 Senators who announced their opposition on Wednesday were all Republicans. These 13 join a handful of others, including Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who have already announced their opposition.

When Google speaks, the world listens.And today, when Google asked its users to sign a petition protesting two anti-piracy laws circulating in Congress, millions responded.A spokeswoman for Google confirmed that 4.5 million people added their names to the company's anti-SOPA petition today.Not too shabby.The petition, which was available via a link from Google's homepage, states that although fighting online piracy is important, the plan of attack described in the SOPA and PIPA bills would be ineffective.

Recently digitized drawings by a 19th-century artist reveal stunning sunspots, auroras and even planetary bodies as they were observed in the Victorian era.Recently digitized and made available by the New York Public Library, the images are a remarkably modern-looking glimpse into astronomy in the late 1800s. Drawn by French-born artist Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895), the illustrations range from detailed surface studies of the moon to likenesses of the planets that could pass for pop art.

Despite reports that a failed Russian Mars probe fell to Earth Sunday (Jan. 15) and plunged into the Pacific Ocean, some confusion remains over where exactly the spacecraft crashed, according to Russian news reports.The robotic Phobos-Grunt spacecraft fell from space yesterday at 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 GMT) somewhere over the southern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile, Russian military officials told the country's news agency Ria Novosti. The probe malfunctioned shortly after launch and had been stuck in orbit around Earth for more than two months.

A pyramid far older and larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, may have been discovered in Indonesia.Mount Sadahurip in Garut, West Java, dubbed the "Garut Pyramid," has been undergoing verification tests by the Ancient Catastrophic Disaster Team to see if the mount is indeed based upon a man-made structure.By using geo-electric instruments, surveyors are measuring the resistance of the geological layers, while seeking additional funding to begin excavations. An initial survey determined that the structure is unlikely to be of natural formation.

The year 2012 is a significant one in the Maya calendar.The ancient long count calendar of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, states that on the 12th December, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in approximately 26,000 years.And 21 December, 2012, is said to mark the end of the 13th Maya Calendar, a 144,000-day cycle or "b'ak'tun" since the mythical Maya day of creation 5,200 years ago.Though popularly interpreted as signifying the "end of the world as we know it," scholars stress that the end of the "b'ak'tun" does not mean apocalypse.

During the first week of 2012, UFO reports streamed in from around the world as numerous eyewitnesses described and videotaped strange things in the sky.Whether they were balloons, conventional aircraft or misidentified astronomical objects, the new year of UFO sightings is off and running as the worldwide proliferation of digital video cameras and phone cams makes it easier than ever to photograph unusual sights in the sky above us.The Colorado-based Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO investigative organization in the world, received many reports of UFOs during the first week of the year from eyewitnesses in 36 out of 50 states.

An antique gun found buried on a Northern Territory beach may support theories the Portuguese were the first European power to discover Australia, an historical author says.Christopher Doukas unearthed the gun buried in mud off Dundee Beach, about two hours' drive from Darwin, during a low tide in January 2010.The Doukas family did some internet research and found it resembled a 16th Century Portuguese swivel gun.

An Australian chap named Chris Malloy has built a hoverbike from motorbike parts, which he claims can fly at 173mph at an altitude of 3,000 metres.Those are theoretical figures for the time being, because it hasn't flown too far yet. Instead they're based on the device's thrust-to-weight ratio, which is extremely high thanks to how little weight it carries. It consists almost solely of a pair of massive propellers, powered by a central 1170cc four-stroke engine with a seat on top. The fuel tank contains enough juice to give it a range of 92 miles at a cruising speed of 92 mph.

UK wildlife charities are asking for people's help in examining if hedgehogs are being affected by climate change.Retired hedgehog expert Dr Pat Morris performed a study 40 years ago showing that temperature affects when the animals emerge from hibernation.With the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and People's Trust for Endangered Species, he wants to see if warming since then has changed things.Hedgehog numbers fell in the last 50 years, largely due to land use change.

A collection of hundreds of fossil specimens, including some gathered by Darwin on his travels, have been discovered after 165 years hidden in an old cabinet.The 314 slides were found by Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway at the British Geological Survey. The professor says in a release: "While searching through an old cabinet, I spotted some drawers marked 'unregistered fossil plants'. I can't resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop!"The glass slides were made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets, explains Falcon-Lang, to allow them to be studied under the microscope. Among these was a piece of fossilized wood that had been collected by Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle.

Can a person be truly addicted to the Internet?A new brain scan study shows not only can that be the case, but also that Internet addiction might cause the same brain changes that are seen in alcoholics and drug addicts.For the study, published in the Jan. 11 issue of PLoS One, researchers studied 17 men and women who were diagnosed with Internet addiction disorder (IAD) and compared scans of their brains to scans of 16 healthy people who weren't addicted to the web. Study participants were between the ages of 14 and 21 and lived in China.

Websites such as Wikipedia plan a one-day blackout over SOPA and PIPA, which they say could lead to censorship. The bills' advocates say misinformation is inflaming passions without solving piracy.Most people probably haven't paid much attention to the huge corporations waging war in Washington over legislation designed to crack down on online theft of movies, music and other content. But the conflict will hit consumers in the face Wednesday, when Wikipedia and a number of other websites intend to go dark to protest the proposed changes.Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced Monday that the hugely popular online encyclopedia would be unavailable for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and related legislation, which opponents say could lead to censorship or the complete shutdown of some websites.

A pin dropping is pretty quiet. But what about a bacterium?Hearing anything smaller than a certain size would ordinarily be tough to do. But not if you have "nano-ears." This kind of ear is a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam and can pick up sound a million times fainter than humans can usually hear.Sound waves happen when air is compressed and decompressed by pressure waves. Measuring that pressure -- really measuring how air molecules are moving back and forth -- one would see a sine wave pattern, and that is what makes sound of a given frequency.

After giving pigs a low-dose of antibiotics for just two weeks, researchers detected a drastic rise in the number of E. coli bacteria in the guts of the animals. And those bacteria showed a large jump in resistance to antibiotics.The particular strain of E. coli detected in the study was not pathogenic to pigs or humans. But the results add to concerns that regular use of antibiotics in farm animals could spread dangerous and drug-resistant varieties of bacteria throughout the environment and into our food and water.The new findings also emphasize the need to find ways to keep animals healthy without antibiotics.

Leading retailers including Tesco and McDonald's have pledged to buy higher welfare eggs in the face of a number of countries failing to meet new EU rules banning battery cages.The National Farmers' Union has drawn up a "good egg" list of the major supermarkets, food outlets and restaurants which are supporting British farmers by only using eggs which conform to higher welfare rules brought in on January 1.The new EU legislation bans battery cages for laying hens, and UK farmers say they have spent £400 million meeting the improved welfare rules. Minimum standards now require hens to be kept in at least "enriched" cages with more room, nesting and perching areas, and features which allow natural behaviour.

Researchers are developing a mobile phone application in an effort to help save an ancient Aboriginal language that is close to being lost forever.The language of Iwaidja is thousands of years old but on Croker Island in the Top End only about 150 people still speak it.Iwaidja is one of about 50 known Aboriginal languages of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

After receiving pledges totaling more than its goal of $100 million by a year-end deadline, the Ecuadorian government last week announced that it would move forward with the so-called Yasuni ITT Initiative, an innovative plan to leave untapped more than 900 million barrels of crude oil beneath a pristine Amazonian nature reserve, in exchange for annual international donations. Last summer, there were fears that Germany would back away from a nearly $50 million pledge to the effort, but $116 million in contributions has now been collected from it, other foreign governments, individuals, and foundations, according to Ivonne Baki, the head of the Yasuni ITT Initiative. "We've created amazing momentum," says Baki. That momentum will be needed as the Ecuadorian government has now set a new goal of securing $291 million in contributions in both 2012 and 2013 to keep the initiative going.

Printing electronics just got a boost from the University of Illinois, where the latest in electric inks has been made from silver.Jennifer Lewis, a professor of materials science and engineering, and graduate student S. Brett Walker described the new ink in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Most inks for printing electronics have metallic particles in them. This ink is all liquid -- a solution of silver and ammonia. When printed, the liquid evaporates, leaving a trail of conductive material.

Saturn's moon Titan may be more similar to an Earth-like world than previously thought, possessing a layered atmosphere just like our planet, researchers said.Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere. A better understanding of how its hazy, soupy atmosphere works could shed light on similar ones scientists might find on alien planets and moons. However, conflicting details about how Titan's atmosphere is structured have emerged over the years.The lowest layer of any atmosphere, known as its boundary layer, is most influenced by a planet or moon's surface. It in turn most influences the surface with clouds and winds, as well as by sculpting dunes.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, can seem like Earth viewed through a funhouse mirror. Far colder than our home, water on the surface exists only in a frozen state, while its liquid lakes and clouds are made of methane, and there's an apparent methane cycle playing the role of our water cycle. Now, a detailed model suggests that daily and yearly variations in the moon's temperature may produce distinct layers in the lowest region of Titan's atmosphere, similar to stratification seen in Earth's troposphere.Benjamin Charnay and Sébastien Lebonnois of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris, France have developed a three-dimensional general circulation model (GCM) of Titan's thick atmosphere. Based on data from the Huygens lander and Cassini radio data, the model shows a weak amount of convection, varying over the course of Titan's day. As Saturn is much farther from the Sun than Earth is, the difference between day and night on Titan is comparatively small, but the amount of surface heating in the researchers' model is sufficient to drive cloud formation and wind patterns.

Careful when you post that tweet -- the FBI might be watching you.Or, then again, maybe not.In an age of heightened awareness over terrorist activity, grave warnings about hackers stealing personal data and concerns over Facebook privacy, there is yet another alarming trend: folks suspecting an overlord watching their every move. Web hysteria has grown to a fever pitch in recent months, with increasing chatter about social policing that is way overblown.Here are the top four myths, and whether they have any basis in reality.

Earth's first molecules of oxygen, which led to the development of life on the planet, may have relied on a newly identified enzyme, scientists reported this week.Around 2.4 billion years ago, the planet experienced a huge spike in atmospheric oxygen levels. Scientists have long held that this rise in oxygen, called the Great Oxygenation Event, was tied to the arrival of the first photosynthetic organisms. (Oxygen is a byproduct of photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into sugary foods.) But nobody knew why these oxygen-producing organisms emerged in the first place.

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

If their islands are deluged by rising seawater, the people of the Maldives would have to evacuate, becoming the first refugees driven from their homes by global warming. Their president considers this an eventuality, not a possibility, and so he is buying up land in foreign countries and urging those countries to be prepared for an influx of people with no return destination.

In their more scholarly moments, archaeologists may speak earnestly of settlement patterns and cultural transitions, the analytical thrusts of their research. But down deep, they live for the thrill of turning stones aside and finding a full tomb, especially if they are searching around Maya ruins in Guatemala.Dr. David Freidel of Southern Methodist University cast one appraising look on a pyramid at a site known as Waka and said he felt the presence of tombs hidden inside, waiting to be discovered. One likely place to look was a broad landing on a stone stairway leading up the pyramid to the temple at the summit. Or perhaps under a stone shrine midway up the face of the pyramid.

As many as six humpback whales entered Honolulu Harbor on Thursday morning, generating thrills and concerns about their safety. But even more unusual is that two them came in with a fishing boat they'd been accompanying for about 400 miles over the course of a week. Ocean Pearl Capt. Billy Winn shared footage of the whales frolicking at sea in the KITV 4 News report.

Contrary to rampant speculation, the United States military's secretive X-37B space plane is most likely not spying on a prototype Chinese space module, experts say.According to a recent report by the BBC, a new article in Spaceflight Magazine suggests that the robotic X-37B space plane might be surveilling China's recently launched space laboratory Tiangong 1. As evidence, the article notes apparently striking similarities in the orbits of the two spacecraft. But in reality, these orbits are quite different, other analysts contend, making it extremely unlikely that the X-37B is keeping an eye on Tiangong 1.

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

Two strong earthquakes 40 minutes apart rocked the remote South Orkney Islands in Antarctica on Sunday, experts from the US Geological Survey said.The epicenter of the first, a magnitude 6.6 temblor, was at a depth of 10 kilometers (six miles), some 539 kilometers (334 miles) west of Coronation Island, the USGS said. No destructive tsunami was created, according to a US-based warning center.The first quake occurred at 1340 GMT. About 40 minutes later the region was struck by an aftershock measured at 6.2. A second 5.1-magnitude aftershock occurred at around 1640 GMT, USGS said later.

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera -- a super bug -- into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 -- two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.

STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe, who live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão."She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said.

The International Space Station boosted its orbit Friday to avoid a potentially dangerous collision with a piece of space junk.The orbiting laboratory, currently home to six astronauts from three countries, burned its thrusters at 11:10 a.m. ET, raising its orbit slightly to take it out of range of a piece of broken satellite that was due to pass between 0.6 and 15 miles (1 to 24 kilometers) of the station.

The scientists of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including astronomers at Penn State, have produced a new map of the universe that is in full color, covers more than one quarter of the entire sky, and is full of so much detail that you would need five-hundred-thousand high-definition TVs to view it all. The map consists of more than one-trillion pixels measured by meticulously scanning the sky with a special-purpose telescope located in New Mexico. This week, at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, the SDSS scientists announced results of four separate studies of this new map that, taken together, provide a history of the universe over the last six-billion years.

They got married, had children, made beer. Although they lived 3,500 years ago in Nippur, Babylonia, in many ways they seem like us. Whether they were also slaves is a hotly contested question which Jonathan Tenney, assistant professor of ancient Near Eastern studies, addresses in the newly released "Life at the Bottom of Babylonian Society: Servile Laborers at Nippur in the 14th and 13th Centuries, B.C." (Brill).The book is based on Tenney's dissertation at the University of Chicago, for which he received the 2010 Dissertation of the Year Award by the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq.

CAMBRIDGE, England - Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking was too ill to attend a conference in honor of his 70th birthday Sunday, but in a recorded message played to attendees he repeated his call for humans to colonize other worlds.University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz told the conference that Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed because of Lou Gehrig's disease, had only recently been discharged from the hospital for an unspecified ailment."Unfortunately his recovery has not been fast enough for him to be able to be here," Borysiewicz said.

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous. The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and Daniel Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory.

Astronomers have created a vast cosmic map revealing an intricate web of dark matter and galaxies spanning a distance of one billion light-years.This unprecedented task was achieved not by observing dark matter directly, but by observing its gravitational effects on ancient light traveling from galaxies that existed when the Universe was half the age it is now.

Explorers have discovered the wreck of a British submarine that sank off the coast of Malta in one of the worst naval disasters of the second world war.Nearly 90 men lost their lives when HMS Olympus struck a mine and sank as it tried to evade German and Italian warships blockading Grand Harbour in the early hours of 8 May 1942.A team of divers from a Florida-based exploration trust found the wreck while surveying the ocean floor off Malta last year. They announced their findings to the British government and the Royal Navy this week.

You might someday be much, much smarter than you are now. At least that's the hope of neuroscientists focused on understanding the basis of intelligence.They have discovered that the brains of people with high IQs tend to be highly integrated, with neural paths connecting distant brain regions, while less intelligent people's brains build simpler, shorter routes. But no one knows why some brains construct much longer-range connections than others."When the brain mechanisms that underlie intelligence are understood, it is theoretically possible that those mechanisms can be tweaked to increase IQ," said Richard Haier, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California at Irvine who studies intelligence. For the first time in human history, he said, "the concept that intelligence can be increased is reasonable."

It's a special kind of dressage: When Raffaello D'Andrea lifts his right arm, a plate-sized helicopter obediently starts its engine. When he moves his finger through the air, the device follows as if on a horse's lead.D'Andrea is a drone trainer. The professor is standing in socks with his legs apart on the floor of a gymnasium-like building at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. The floor is covered with mats to soften the impact when the expensive devices crash to the ground. And lest any errant drones escape from the "Flying Machine Arena" in the Mechanical Engineering Department, the 10-by-10-meter (1,075-square-foot) interior space is also surrounded by a net.

Computerworld - IBM announced Thursday that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to 12 the number of atoms required to create a bit of data.The breakthrough may someday allow data storage hardware manufacturers to produce products with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today's hard disk and flash drives."Looking at this conservatively ... instead of 1TB on a device you'd have 100TB to 150TB. Instead of being able to store all your songs on a drive, you'd be able to have all your videos on the device," said Andreas Heinrich, IBM Research Staff Member and lead investigator on this project.

Researchers claim to have created the pill, which they claim provides all the same benefits of exercising without the exertion.They claim that a hormone naturally found in muscle cells that triggers the calorie-burning benefits of exercise, may have potential as an obesity-fighting drug.The newly identified hormone, called irisin, increases in the body during exercise, boosting energy expenditure and controlling blood glucose levels.

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

It began with dark mutterings in the local pub, that a strange beast might be stalking the woods around the little village of Woodchester, savaging the local wildlife and frightening local dog walkers.Now, even the National Trust is suspicious and experts are carrying out DNA tests on the carcasses of two roe deer found mutilated in the Gloucestershire countryside.

The hurt must be running deep within Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. Just as NASA's car-sized Mars Science Laboratory successfully made its final course correction for the Red Planet this week, Roscosmos was preparing for a much grimmer task: tracking its minibus-sized Phobos-Grunt probe, which is set to meet an untimely end in Earth's atmosphere over the next few days.

Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said.An international conference agreed that the region's surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years.As a result, they are better suited to cope with future shifts in the climate.

Jacob Gingerich was one of eight men sent to prison for a few days in September after ignoring state law that requires all slow-moving objects on the road to display reflective triangles.The group of Swartzentruber Amish men in rural Graves County, USA, refused to pay their fines and disobeyed orders from a judge, landing them in jail.A ninth Amish man avoided prison when a local resident paid his fine. At least two other Kentucky counties, Grayson and Logan, have recently summoned men into court for driving unmarked buggies. A court date on Thursday could mean more Amish men end up in jail over the dispute.Members of the conservative Amish community consider using the bright reflective symbol amounts to blasphemy.

It is with hesitation and regret that we announce that GrahamHancock.com will participate in the anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA blackout during January 18th 2012, currently led by Reddit.com, and now Wikipedia also.We will be off the air for about 12 hours in solidarity with this protest.As a site that contains a great deal of user-generated content, from the messageboards to the many user-created articles that get posted here, it is impossible to effectively ensure that there are no links posted to copyright infringing material. Existing laws dictate that as long as we comply with DMCA takedown requests, GrahamHancock.com will not be in jeopardy. But two new bills, PIPA ("PROTECT IP Act") and SOPA ("Stop Onlne Piracy Act") threaten the community of GrahamHancock.com, and indeed the site itself, by allowing for DNS blacklisting of any site linking to infringing material, with the possibility of jail time and fines for site owners.During the blackout, GrahamHancock.com will post links to relevant resources to assist readers in contacting their representative to share your opposition to SOPA and PIPA. The Senate Cloture Vote on PROTECT IP (PIPA) scheduled is for January 24th, 2012, so it is essential we all do our part to stop it before it changes the landscape of the Internet from here on.If you would like to inform yourself further on SOPA & PIPA in the meantime, please see this infographic from American Censorship and this video from Fight For The Future.

This morning a rare and extraordinary Roman helmet was shown in public for the first time since it was buried 2,000 years ago. A decade after its discovery in Leicestershire, the painstaking process of reconstruction, and conservation is complete and it is ready to go on display at Harborough Museum.Still in the soil block in which it was found, the fragile helmet was brought to the British Museum where initial study in the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research revealed a much more complex assemblage than had been expected.

A strain of tuberculosis that is resistant to all existing TB drugs has emerged in Mumbai, India."We currently have 12 confirmed cases, of which three are dead," says Zarir Udwadia of the Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre in Mumbai, and head of the team whose diagnoses of four cases has just been published.

The global economy could withstand widespread disruption from a natural disaster or attack by militants for only a week as governments and businesses are not sufficiently prepared to deal with unexpected events, a report by a respected think-tank said.Events such as the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, which grounded flights in Europe, Japan's earthquake and tsunami and Thailand's floods last year, have showed that key sectors and businesses can be severely affected if disruption to production or transport goes on for more than a week.

In last week's issue of the journal Science, Andrew Lawler gives a lengthy report on the forgotten city of Cahokia. For a while now archaeologists have known about this Native American settlement beneath modern East St. Louis, but many believed it was what Lawler calls a "seasonal encampment." A new round of archaeological digs, done in preparation for a bridge being constructed across the Mississippi River between Missouri and Illinois, has unearthed evidence of "a sophisticated, sprawling metropolis stretching across 13 kilometers on both sides of the Mississippi" that existed about a thousand years ago.

The informal information source, Twitter, was yielding data that would have been a quicker way of detecting and tracking the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti than traditional methods, according to a study.The study found that online social media and news feeds were faster than, and broadly as accurate as, the official records at detecting the start and early progress of the epidemic, which hit Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010 and has killed more than 6,500 people.

The largest distant galaxy cluster has been spotted by astronomers using a telescope in Chile.Galaxy clusters are the largest stable structures in our Universe.Seven billion light years away and with two million billion times the mass of our Sun, the cluster was nicknamed "El Gordo" - "the Fat One" in Spanish.Astronomers reporting at the 219th American Astronomical Society meeting said El Gordo was currently undergoing a merger and growing even larger.

A skyscraper building boom in China and India may be a sign of an impending economic collapse, according to financial experts.Barclays Capital has mapped an "unhealthy correlation" between construction of the world's tallest buildings and looming financial crises over the last 140 years, including the Great Depression and the Asian financial crisis.Today, China is home to over half the 124 skyscrapers now under construction worldwide.

A tiny stamp bearing an image of the Temple Menorah and likely placed on baked goods some 1,500 years ago has turned up during excavations near the Israeli city of Akko, researchers announced.The Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the ceramic stamp while excavating at Horbat Uza, a small rural settlement east of the city Akko, before construction of a railroad track connecting Akko and Karmiel in northern Israel.From the Byzantine period, the stamp is called a "bread stamp," as it was used to identify baked goods; this one, in particular, probably belonged to a bakery supplying kosher bread to the Jews of Akko, the researchers say.

The genetic changes underlying the evolution of new species are still poorly understood. Genetic studies in domestic animals can shed light on this process due to the rapid evolution they have undergone over the last 10,000 years.A new study published today describes how a complex genomic rearrangement causes a fascinating phenotype in chickens. In the study published in PLoS Genetics researchers at Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, North Carolina State University and National Chung-Hsing University have investigated the genetic basis of fibromelanosis, a breed characteristic of the Chinese Silkie chicken. This trait involves a massive expansion of pigment cells that not only makes the skin and comb black but also causes black internal organs. Chickens similar in appearance to the Silkie were described by Marco Polo when he visited China in the 13th century and Silkie chickens have a long history in Chinese cuisine and traditional Chinese medicine.

As climate change alters the temperatures of reptile habitats around the globe, tests of one lizard species suggests warmer nests could make some reptiles smarter.When researchers incubated the eggs of Bassiana duperreyi, a mountain-dwelling Australian skink, at warmer-than-usual temperatures, they grew up to perform especially well on a learning task.Herpetologists knew reptiles incubated in warmer nests developed differently, but linking hotter egg temperatures to increased intelligence is a first.

A frog species that appears to be the world's smallest has been discovered in Papua New Guinea by a US-based team.At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world's smallest vertebrate - the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.The researchers also found a slightly larger relative, Paedophryne swiftorum.Presenting the new species in PLoS One journal, they suggest the frogs' tiny scale is linked to their habitat, in leaf litter on the forest floor.

The smallest exoplanet yet found around a sun-like star is a rocky world half the size of Earth and almost identical in size to Mars. Although it is too hot for life, researchers say its discovery boosts the chances of finding other, more life-friendly planets.The newly discovered planet, called KOI-961.03, periodically passes in front of its parent star, causing a slight dip in its brightness detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope.Philip Muirhead of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena led a team that made the discovery, which was announced on Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

Astronomers have found a black hole that behaves like one of those batting cages that automatically spits baseballs.The stellar mass black hole ejects glowing cannon balls of plasma simultaneously in opposite directions that blaze though space at one-quarter the speed of light. That's fast enough to travel from the sun to Earth in half an hour!Astronomers don't have any idea how the ultra-fast bullets are launched, but they do know that the fuel supply for these fireworks comes from a companion star to the black hole.

More clues have been found in the case of the disappearing honey bees.Powdery waste blown off from seed planters was found to contain up to 700,000 times the bee's lethal dosage of neonicotinoid insecticides in a Purdue University study. The study also found the insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam in dead bees laying in and around hives in Indiana."We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology at Purdue and a co-author of the study published in PloS One, in a press release.

The failed Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt has been pictured moving across the sky by the Paris-based amateur astronomer Thierry Legault.The spacecraft is seen moving left to right in the video. The bulbous shape of its fuel tanks and its outstretched solar panels are easily discernable.Mr Legault uses a sophisticated telescopic tracking system and captured similar imagery of Nasa's defunct UARS satellite last year.Phobos-Grunt is falling to Earth.

Environmental disruptions and technological advances have always influenced where and how people live. Early humans may have left Africa after rapid fluctuations in rainfall destroyed their food supply, and the opening up of the American Southwest occurred roughly in parallel with improvements in air-conditioning technology. In the decades ahead, a warming planet and a booming population will again alter where we live and how we construct our homes.