Newsdesk Archive

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

Iran said on Sunday that its scientists have "tested the first nuclear fuel rod produced from uranium ore deposits inside the country," the website of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation said."After going through physical checks, it was inserted into the core of the Tehran research reactor in order to study how well it works," the website added.Iran said last month that it planned to insert domestically produced uranium fuel into the Tehran research reactor, which produces isotopes for medical purposes and currently runs on a nearly depleted stock of nuclear plates bought from Argentina in 1993.

A record number of rhino were poached in South Africa this year as rising demand in Asia for their horns led to increased killings of the threatened species.At least 443 of the animals were killed in South Africa during 2011, up from 333 last year, according to the national parks service and conservationists.

It is the greatest journey in history, and now the story of how the first members of our species walked out of their African homeland to colonise almost every corner of the world is being told by reading the DNA of their living descendents.Half a million people from around the globe are participating in an ambitious project to reconstruct some of the ancient migratory routes that took Homo sapiens from their ancient African homelands to the relatively new territories of Asia, Europe, Oceania and America.

For years, the story told about the Amazon has been one of destruction - the world's largest rainforest, a region of amazing biodiversity, key to the fight against climate change, being remorselessly felled. But that is no longer the whole truth.The Environment Agency special ops team gathered in a sultry town right on the southern edge of the Amazon. A group of officers, men and women, were relaxing in the shade of a majestic mango tree outside their offices. They were smoking and chatting.These aren't bureaucrats with crumpled suits and clipboards. In Brazil, environment agents wear military fatigues, with heavy black pistols slung casually on their thighs.

The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish.In a world first a team headed by Professor Stefan Schlatt, at Muenster University in Germany, were able to grow sperm by using germ cells. These are the cells in testicles that are responsible for sperm production.

Thousands of dead herring have been discovered washed up on a north Norwegian beach - prompting Doomsday predictors to hail it as another sign the world is set to end.More than 20 tonnes of the fish is currently carpeting the beach of Kvaenes, in Nordreisa, with experts views differing on how they have come to be there. One thing is for sure, it will provide welcome ammunition to those believing the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring the end of Earth.Jan-Petter Jorgensen, 44, was walking with his dog Molly when he found the stinky haul.

Apple has applied for two hydrogen fuel cell patents. Citing consumer awareness about fossil fuel's environmental and political impact, the move indicates the company has been looking into a new system to recharge their portable device batteries for over a year."As a consequence of this increased consumer awareness," one application stated, "electronics manufacturers have become very interested in developing renewable energy sources for their products, and they have been exploring a number of promising renewable energy sources such as hydrogen fuel cells.

A model has helped shed light on how human-started fires shaped Africa's landscape, researchers report.Before human activity became widespread, most fires were caused by lightning strikes during the continent's wet seasons, they said.As the human population expanded, more fires occurred during the dry season, triggering a shift in the impact of fires on Africa's ecology, they added.The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina enacted a law on Wednesday providing a wide definition of terrorism that critics fear will allow the state to jail people for up to 15 years for activities as diverse as marching in protests or pulling money out of banks.The law, approved by Congress last week, seeks to punish anyone who "terrorizes" the population, leaving the definition of the term open.

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.Here in Britain, many economists believe that by the end of 2012 we could well have slipped into a second devastating recession. The Coalition remains delicately poised; it would take only one or two resignations to provoke a wider schism and a general election.

The Loch Ness monster lives in a giant carpenter's level.Just as the bubble in a carpenter's level moves back and forth depending on the surface it rests upon, Scotland's Loch Ness tilts back and forth according to the movement of the ground beneath it caused by the tides on the nearby North Sea.When the tide comes in on the North Sea, 13 kilometers (8 miles) to the east of Loch Ness, the increased pressure on the seafloor deforms the Earth, a process called ocean tidal loading. And while the moon controls the tides of the North Sea, and affects the loch as well, the wobbly movement of the land from the pressure of the changing tides is what really determines the loch's levels. The water in the loch acts like a bowl of water on a wobbly table, sloshing according to the movement of the land it rests upon.

Past Horizons covered many great news stories from around the globe in 2011. But what turned out to be the most popular? We decided to collate the data in order to find out the top 12 news stories enjoyed by our readers:1) Wolves were domesticated in southeast AsiaWell, we did not expect this to be number one, but a new study on wolf domestication was so popular that our servers crashed with the strain.

You might not think that a collaboration to study the chemical and physical properties of ancient Attic pottery would have anything to do with space missions, but, well, you'd be mistaken.Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded nearly $500,000 to scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute, Stanford's National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) and the Aerospace Corporation to do just that.Among other objectives, it is hoped that the project will improve our understanding of iron-spinel chemistry, which is critical to the advanced ceramics used for thermal protection in aerospace applications, such as protective tiles on the Mars Rover Sojourner, or the fleet of space shuttles, for example.

Nasa's twin spacecraft are now circling the moon on a mission to measure lunar gravity.The latest probe slipped into orbit on New Year's Day, joining its twin, which arrived a day earlier.The Grail spacecraft - short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory - will spend the next two months spiralling closer to the surface.In March, they will begin mapping the moon's uneven gravity field from orbit to understand its interior down to the core.

A wild panda has been caught on camera gnawing at the bones of a dead gnu, a type of wild cow, in China's Sichuan Province.Scientists from the Wanglong Nature Reserve were studying panda habitats in Pingwu County.They realised an animal had been chewing on flesh from a dead animal, so decided to set up a security camera to monitor who was eating the meat.

These extraordinary photos show a bonobo - also known as a pygmy chimpanzee - named Kanzi collecting wood, breaking it up and putting it into a pile before striking a match to light the fire, and then cooking his meal on the fire.

Bob Anderson, an Olympic fencer, film swordsman, fight director and stunt performer passed away at 89 in his native United Kingdom. The AP reports the British Academy of Fencing confirms his Jan. 1 death.Working with famous players such as Errol Flynn and Antonio Banderas, Anderson's most famous scenes were done nearly anonymously in the Star Wars franchise. He dueled with light sabers in both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.Anderson was just one third of Vader. James Earl Jones provided the husky voice over, while former weightlifter David Prowse provided the imposing six foot six figure when Vader wasn't involved in a complicated fight scene.

The Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas next Tuesday, and gadget makers are getting ready to show off their latest tech products for the coming year.Every year, a few big product trends emerge. In 2011, it was all about Android tablets; in 2010, 3D televisions and e-readers dominated the show; and in 2009, netbooks were a big topic. So what does 2012 promise? Here's a look at five CES trends that people are already talking about.

(Reuters) - Will Wright, the designer behind successful video game simulations including "SimCity", "The Sims" and "Spore", is at it again. Only this time, rather than controlling virtual people or creating space creatures, the protagonist of "HiveMind" is the actual player."HiveMind," a group of cross-platform, cross-media online applications, is designed to turn a gamer's everyday life into part of the interactive experience by building upon Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and tapping into streams of personal information on phones, tablets, social networks and computers.While the technology and data collection is in place, the game doesn't yet have a release date. Nevertheless, Wright is enthusiastic about his new project and eager to discuss the lifestyle implications "HiveMind" could have on casual gamers.

Scotland's biggest horse mussel bed and a "faceless and brainless" fish-like creature were recorded during government-backed surveys this year.The work covered almost 2,200 square miles - equivalent to an area one and a quarter times the size of the Cairngorms National Park.The Scottish government has hailed the finds made during the surveys.WWF Scotland said the results highlighted the need to better protect the marine environment.

Pluto may not be a planet anymore, but it still seems to have a few tricks up its sleeve.A new study conducted jointly by the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado (SwRI) and Nebraska Wesleyan University has yielded intriguing results regarding the origins of the former planet's "ruddy" color.Using the Hubble space telescope's "new and highly sensitive" Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, researchers have found potential evidence that complex hydrocarbon and/or nitrile molecules may grace the surface of Pluto.

The head of the Colorado Department of Revenue has written a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration asking that federal controls on marijuana be loosened slightly to account for its "potential medicinal value."Colorado is the third state with a medical-marijuana program to ask the DEA to reschedule marijuana.Revenue Department executive director Barbara Brohl's letter, written Dec. 22, does not come as a surprise. A law passed last year in the legislature required the state to ask for rescheduling by the end of this year.

In 2011, most of the best meteor showers occurred when the moon was close to full. This natural "light pollution" made the fainter meteors impossible to see.But 2012 starts out with a fine meteor shower, the Quadrantids, with absolutely no moon to interfere with the viewing. The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak on Jan. 4 at about 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT).Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through fields of debris left behind by comets or asteroids in the past. The result is that, instead of the handful of meteors, or "shooting stars," which can be seen any clear night, we get a "shower" of meteors: dozens or even hundreds of meteors over the course of an evening.

A great explosive burning of coal set fire and made molten by lava bubbling from the Earth's mantle , looking akin to Kuwait's giant oil fires but lasting anywhere from centuries to millennia, could have been the cause of the world's most-devastating mass extinction, new research suggests.

LONDON (Reuters) - For those who couldn't quite make it to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise on Thursday's winter solstice, a new app could offer some consolation by offering a virtual tour around the mysterious stones.Features include a Google Maps image of the circle of stones giving different views, allowing users to stand within the virtual stones and physically move about the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Excavations among what many scholars consider to be the world's oldest monumental buildings on the island of Malta continue to unveil surprises and raise new questions about the significance of these megalithic structures and the people who built them. Not least is the latest find - a small but rare, crescent-moon shaped agate stone featuring a 13th-century B.C.E. cuneiform inscription, the likes of which would normally be found much farther east in Mesopotamia.

Most everyone knows (or think they know) how Manhattan Island, today the jeweled centerpiece of New York City, was purchased by the Dutch from the Indians for $24 worth of beads and trinkets back in the 1600s. But what do we know about the actual Indians who supposedly made the sale? What really went on between them and the settlers?It should come as no surprise that there is much more to the story than the legend. The details are recounted in First Manhattans: A History of the Indians of Greater New York, by Robert S. Grumet (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), a history so detailed that it reads like a soap opera.

The journal Science has lauded an eye-opening HIV study, known as HPTN 052, as the most important scientific breakthrough of 2011. This clinical trial demonstrated that people infected with HIV are 96 percent less likely to transmit the virus to their partners if they take antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).The findings end a long-standing debate over whether ARVs could provide a double benefit by treating the virus in individual patients while simultaneously cutting transmission rates. It's now clear that ARVs can provide treatment as well as prevention when it comes to HIV, researchers agree.

Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago.This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in southeastern Illinois from 700 until 1400 A.D. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in May.The researchers were able to identify how the coppersmiths of Cahokia likely set up their workshop and the methods and tools used to work copper nuggets into sacred jewelry, headdresses, breastplates and other regaliat.

JUST before noon on 1 September 1859, an English solar astronomer named Richard Carrington witnessed the biggest solar flare ever recorded. About 18 hours later, an intense magnetic storm hit Earth. Currents induced in telegraph wires in Europe and North America sparked fires.If the 1859 event were to occur today, it could devastate our modern technological infrastructure. So researchers are now turning to automated image-processing and artificial intelligence to better forecast the sun's behaviour and give us time to prepare for a solar onslaught.

When you're mad at someone, you have plenty of options for revenge.In the ancient world, the most popular way to get back at someone was to curse them, and a University of Washington professor has just deciphered a curse found on a tiny lead tablet in modern day Turkey.It shows that someone was awfully mad at a grocer in the town of Antioch in the 3rd century. Maybe it was a business rival, maybe it was an upset customer, maybe a lover. But this person hired a magician to ask the gods to strike the grocer down. The magician scribbled the curse on a 6x10 centimeter lead tablet, rolled it up, and tossed it in a well.

An archaeological excavation in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem has uncovered a centuries-old clay pipe inscribed with the phrase "Love is the language for lovers."Literally translated, the inscription reads "Heart is language for the lover." And, not surprisingly, it was most likely a gift to a lover, according to Shahar Puni, of the Israel Antiquities Authority."Clay pipes of this kind were very common in the Ottoman period, were mostly used for smoking tobacco, and some were even used to smoke hashish," Puni said in a statement. Hashish comes from the cannabis plant, like marijuana.

That's what Sue Rusche wants to know, and someone better give her an answer, because Sue Rusche is one of the nation's leading experts at being afraid of drugs."In many state legislatures around the country, or by ballot (direct voter) referendum, important decisions are or will be made as to legalization of marijuana in some form. Before voters cast their ballots, or their elected officials decide, think about what will happen to children if marijuana becomes accessible to adults, much like alcohol." Well, I'll tell you exactly what I think will happen: marijuana will be as easy for kids to obtain as alcohol currently is.But before Sue Rusche runs screaming for the hills, she might be interested to know that marijuana is currently easier to buy than beer if you're underage.

Research indicates that the animals are also able to calculate the odds before taking risks.Experts observed apes as they gambled using upturned cups concealing pieces of chopped banana.Given the choice of a safe bet of a small piece of banana or a larger chunk of fruit hidden beneath one of a selection of shuffled cups, the apes chose to gamble more than 50 per cent of the time.The team, led by Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics found that they were also able to identify when the odds were stacked against them and when it was wiser to go with the safe bet.

Scientists have finally unravelled why scorpions glow bright green under ultraviolet light. The ability is widely known - but biologists have puzzled over why the creatures might have evolved it.Biologist Douglas Gaffin of the University of Oklahoma investigated the 'fluorescence' and found that the creatures can 'sense' light using their tails.The creatures may to have evolved the ability to help them scuttle away under rocks.'Scorpions are largely solitary, nocturnal arachnids that glow a bright cyan-green under UV light,' wrote Gaffin in a paper in Animal Behaviour. 'The function of this fluorescence is a mystery.'Gaffin's team 'blindfolded' scorpions, then tested them with various different colours of light - and found that the tails seemed to function like secondary 'eyes'.

Thin shoots of moss taken from fuzzy clumps growing in Antarctica contain evidence of how human activities are affecting life on the ice-covered continent, new research indicates.Antarctica has no trees, but the moss shoots act somewhat like tree rings, recording evidence of environmental conditions as they grow. Now, Australian scientists have figured out how to decipher the record in the moss shoots.Their technique relied on an atomic marker laid down worldwide half a century ago by nations testing nuclear weapons.

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A spacecraft is within 24 hours of its insertion burn that will place it into lunar orbit. At the time the spacecraft crossed the milestone at 1:21 p.m. PST today (4:21 p.m. EST), the spacecraft was 30,758 miles (49,500 kilometers) from the moon.Launched aboard the same rocket on Sept. 10, 2011, GRAIL-A's mirror twin, GRAIL-B, is also closing the gap between itself and the moon. GRAIL-B is scheduled to perform its lunar orbit insertion burn on New Year's Day (Jan. 1) at 2:05 p.m. PST (5:05 p.m. EST).

NASA-supported researchers announced that they had discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in 740,000 year old California's Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components."The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.

"CALLER reports that she has seen a spaceship and it was really close to the houses. Described as big with lights all round it."This was just one such call fielded by police, back in February 2010.An Echo request, made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, revealed there have been a series of alien and UFO reports to Gloucestershire police in the past three years.On May 11, 2009, in Cheltenham, one 999 operator received a call and noted: "Saw a UFO travelling from Up Hatherley to Bishop's Cleeve area.

The number of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) spotted across Ireland has increased by nearly 70% in just three years.The UFO Research Association of Ireland revealed that 59 incidents were reported in 2011, compared with 42 the year before and just 35 in 2009.Association founder Adam Tallon suggested people are becoming more open to the possibility of UFOs and therefore feel more comfortable reporting a sighting to its website.

Nearly 40 years after the cold grey soil of the moon was last disturbed by bounding humans, the lunar surface has become an official destination once more.Tentative plans to land a man on the moon have been outlined in a document published by the Chinese government that confirms the nation's intention to become a major spacefaring nation. Officials in China have spoken before of their hopes for a crewed lunar mission, but the government document is the first to state the aim as a formal goal for the nation's space agency.Details of the plan – which would see a human walk on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972 – were published in a white paper that serves as a roadmap for the next five years of Chinese space exploration.

The weekend came sooner than usual for Samoa as the tiny South Pacific country crossed over the international date line and jumped forward a day in time.Samoans who had gathered around the main clock tower in the capital, Apia, cheered and clapped as the clock struck midnight on Thursday to the wail of sirens and burst of fireworks and time jumped forward 24 hours to Saturday. Drivers circled the clock tower blaring their horns, and prayers were held across the country. The change effectively erases Friday 30 December 2011 from its calendar.The switch is also being made by neighbouring Tokelau to align the islands' time with Asia-Pacific trading partners.

Throughout 2011 there was a string of breathless news stories about astronomers finding extrasolar planets in the habitable zones surrounding their stars.This is the "Goldilocks Zone" where temperatures are just right for water to remain in liquid form and presumably nurture life as we know it.Last week, NASA announced the discovery of the first two Earth-sized planets orbiting a sun-like star. That followed an announcement from the Kepler space observatory two weeks before that scientists had discovered a planet roughly twice the size of Earth orbiting inside its star's habitable zone.SETI astronomers are firing up their Allen Array radio telescope to check these worlds for signs of intelligent life.

Climate changes profoundly influenced the rise and fall of six distinct, successive waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years, shows a novel statistical analysis led by Brown University evolutionary biologists. Warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.

A brainless, primeval organism able to navigate a maze might help Japanese scientists devise the ideal transport network design. Not bad for a mono-cellular being that lives on rotting leaves.Amoeboid yellow slime mold has been on Earth for thousands of years, living a distinctly un-hi-tech life, but, say scientists, it could provide the key to designing bio-computers capable of solving complex problems.Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a professor at Future University Hakodate says the organism, which he cultivates in petri dishes, "organises" its cells to create the most direct root through a maze to a source of food.

The most profound question asked by mankind is: are we alone? So the second most profound question must be: where should we look for life if we're not alone?Now, two prominent scientists have published a paper suggesting that although we have an entire universe to seek out the proverbial alien needle in a haystack, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start.Paul Davies and Robert Wagner of Arizona State University have suggested a crowd-sourcing effort to find artificial structures on the moon. After all, lunar missions like NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are returning some dazzling, high-resolution imagery of the moon's surface. If aliens have been there, perhaps we could spot evidence of their presence.

The exact origins of the Turin Shroud remain a great mystery, but scientists are now disputing the long-held belief that the religious artifact is a medieval forgery.Italian researchers at the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development say they believe the image was created by an ultraviolet "flash of light." However, if that theory is true, it remains a mystery as to exactly how that technology could have been implemented at the time of the Shroud's creation. While the technology is readily available in present day, it was far beyond the means of anyone around pre-20th Century.

Located within the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado, a heretofore unheard-of archaeological site is beginning to offer up some hints about the early rise of the Pueblo society (otherwise known as the Anasazi) that gave rise to the great cliff dwellings and other settlements often associated with the famous Native American desert cultures in the Southwest region of the present-day United States.

BELGRADE, DECEMBER - A prehistoric settlement from the early and late Iron Age and several remains from the Ancient Period (from 1,000 BC to II-III century AD) have been discovered at the site of Bare, southern Serbia, the head of an archaeological research team that made the discovery has told Tanjug news agency.Several objects dating from the Iron Age were found on a terrain covering about three hectares of space, said the head of the team, Maja Djordjevic of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia.

Scientists studying a unique collection of human skulls have shown that changes to the skull shape thought to have occurred independently through separate evolutionary events may have actually precipitated each other.Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Barcelona examined 390 skulls from the Austrian town of Hallstatt and found evidence that the human skull is highly integrated, meaning variation in one part of the skull is linked to changes throughout the skull.

Commercial spaceflight venture SpaceX has been talking for a while now about reusing every part of its space launch system, from the optionally manned Dragon capsule (which is already reusable) to the rocket stages that it discards on its way to orbit. Via a new animation, the private space enterprise is showing exactly how this would happen, not via splashdown and recovery at sea like you might be thinking, but by vertically landing back at the launch site under their own power.

Chimpanzees moving through the forest take into account other chimps' ignorance or knowledge of a threat when they raise the alarm.The apes were more likely to make warning calls when they spotted a venomous snake if others in their troop had not seen the danger, researchers found. As chimps in the know arrived at the scene, they passed the warning on to others who lagged behind but were still within earshot.Video footage of wild chimps foraging in Uganda's Budongo forest show apes at the front of their groups jumping with surprise on spotting a model snake lying camouflaged in the undergrowth.

From emotional honeybees to particles flying faster than Einstein's theory of relativity ought to allow, 2011 abounded in findings that posed new questions and expanded frontiers of possibility. Here are Wired Science's favorites.

The discovery by Russian archaeologists of the remains of an extinct prehistoric human during the excavation of Denisova Cave in Southern Siberia in 2008 was nothing short of a scientific sensation. The sequencing of the nuclear genome taken from a circa. 30,000-year-old finger bone revealed that Denisova man was neither a Neanderthal nor modern human, but a new form of hominin. Minute traces of the Denisova genome are still found in some individuals living today. The comparisons of the DNA of modern humans and prehistoric human species provide new indications of how human populations settled in Asia over 44,000 years ago.

One hundred years ago today, Captain Robert Falcon Scott was trudging through the endless snow on his epic journey to the south pole. "The marches are terribly monotonous," he wrote in his diary on Thursday 28 December 1911. "One's thoughts wander occasionally to pleasanter scenes and places, but the necessity to keep the course, or some hitch in the surface, quickly brings them back."

A 15-year-old American has become the youngest person to climb the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, completing the feat by summiting Antarctica's Mount Vinson over the weekend.Jordan Romero, who last year at age 13 became the youngest person to climb the world's tallest peak Mt. Everest, was descending to base camp Sunday after reaching the summit of Vinson Massif with a team that included his father and his stepmother, according to his team's website.

A member of the Occupy London protests was stopped from boarding his flight home for Christmas after he was found carrying anarchist literature, it has been claimed.The demonstrator, who is part of the group occupying the empty UBS building dubbed the "Bank of Ideas", said he was told he would not be allowed on the Ryanair flight to Malaga because the pilot feared he might distribute leaflets and "upset other passengers".

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have discovered a way to make time stand still -- at least when it comes to the yearly calendar.Using computer programs and mathematical formulas, Richard Conn Henry, an astrophysicist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and Steve H. Hanke, an applied economist in the Whiting School of Engineering, have created a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity.

A team of scholars has discovered what might be the oldest representation of the Tower of Babel of Biblical fame, they report in a newly published book.Carved on a black stone, which has already been dubbed the Tower of Babel stele, the inscription dates to 604-562 BCE.It was found in the collection of Martin Schøyen, a businessman from Norway who owns the largest private manuscript assemblage formed in the 20th century.

The heart-warming hand-made valentine that a Confederate soldier sent to his wife is one of the 25,000 Civil War artefacts collected to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the long, bloody war.For years, momentos like this one gathered dust in attics and basements, but now states all over the country are calling on descendants to allow archivists to scan their heirlooms and present a fuller picture of life during the War.The heart valentine was created by soldier Robert King, who used his penknife to cut one sheet of a newspaper and a used envelope together so that he could intertwine the two in a basket weave pattern while serving on the front lines.

This stone pendant was found at the Irikaitz dig site, according to a press release from the University of the Basque Country. The Irikaitz archaeological site is located in town of Zestoa in the Basque Country, Spain, 14 m away from a bank of the Urola River.The pendant is 9 cm long and has a hole for hanging it from the neck. However, apart from being adornment, it was probably used to sharpen tools.It is the oldest artifact of this kind found at open-air excavations throughout the whole Iberian Peninsula.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease?New skeletal evidence suggests Columbus and his crew not only introduced the Old World to the New World, but brought back syphilis as well, researchers say.Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria, and is usually curable nowadays with antibiotics. Untreated, it can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones; it can also be fatal.

Going in the face of an ever-increasing clamor to reform decades of failed drug policies, the US House of Representatives is poised to pass two bills that promise more of the same. The House is set to vote any day now--the vote was originally set until Wednesday night, but was pushed back--on HR 1254, the Synthetic Drug Control Act of 2011, which would criminalize not only synthetic stimulants ("bath salts"), but also synthetic cannabinoids ("fake pot") marketed under names such as "K2" and "Spice."At least 40 states have passed bans on the new synthetic drugs, and the DEA has placed both fake weed and bath salts under emergency bans. The bill would make both sets of substances Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, which would make them difficult to research. Scientists have warned Congress that placing synthetic drugs under Schedule I will have a chilling effect on research intended to explore treatments for a range of diseases and disorders.

Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics in a turf war at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January.Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes.Groups of priests have clashed before in the church, built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born.

Now that 94 percent of the soy and 70 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, Monsanto -- one of the companies that dominates the GMO seed market -- might look to some like it's winning. But if we look a little closer, I'd say they're holding on by a thread.Their current success is due in large part to brilliant marketing. The company's approach was both compelling -- their products were sold as the key to making large-scale farming far simpler and more predictable -- and aggressive: Monsanto made it virtually impossible for most farmers to find conventional seeds for sale in most parts of the country.

Maybe Frank should have sung "Fly Me to the Moons."Scientists studying satellites orbiting the planet have come to an astounding conclusion: Earth has multiple moons at any given time, the MIT Technology Review reported.Mikael Granvik, along with colleagues at the University of Hawaii, first discovered a mysterious body orbiting the Earth in 2006. The object -- or RH120 as it was known -- turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few meters across. Moreover, it was a natural satellite just like our moon.

An amazing study authored by professors D. Mark Anderson (University of Montana) and Daniel Rees (University of Colorado) shows that traffic deaths have been reduced in states where medical marijuana is legalized.According to their findings, the use of medical marijuana has caused traffic related fatalities to fall by nearly nine percent in states that have legalized medical marijuana.The study notes that this is equal to the effect raising the drinking age to 21 had on reducing traffic fatalities.

Five thousand Irish soldiers who swapped uniforms to fight for the British against Hitler went on to suffer years of persecution.One of them, 92-year-old Phil Farrington, took part in the D-Day landings and helped liberate the German death camp at Bergen-Belsen - but he wears his medals in secret.Even to this day, he has nightmares that he will be arrested by the authorities and imprisoned for his wartime service.

The search for Scotland's Loch Ness Monster is world famous. Far less well-known is the hunt for a similar creature, Mokele-mbembe, which is reputed to live in the remote north of Congo-Brazzaville. But how strong is the evidence?"I checked maps, and the data on the maps was white. It said, 'insufficient data to delineate terrain'. Well that got me!" says Dr Roy Mackal, a retired biologist from the University of Chicago."It's the end of the world. It gives you a feeling of a surviving prehistoric time.

FRIDAY, Dec. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- have a better sense of smell than their extinct Neanderthal cousins, which may be one reason why one thrived while the other died out, according to scientists.Brain size is the same in both species, but differences in brain shape may indicate differences in brain organization that may be linked to behavior and cognition, which includes skills such as memory, problem solving, attention and producing and understanding language.

As India inched towards independence, hundreds of mixed-race Anglo-Indians feared for their future and retreated to a self-styled homeland in a thickly forested part of the country.Ernest McCluskie, an Indian of Scottish descent, established McCluskieganj in what is now the eastern state of Jharkhand, hoping to attract Anglo-Indians anxious about the impending demise of the British empire.

NASA's new Mars rover has already begun performing research in space, less than three weeks after launching on its eight-month cruise to the Red Planet.The car-size Curiosity rover has begun using its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument, which monitors high-energy particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources. Such radiation is potentially hazardous to humans, so the rover's results could help scientists plan future manned missions to Mars, researchers said.

Volunteers in white lab coats, surgical gloves and masks stood on the back of a pickup truck along the banks of the Nile in Cairo, rummaging through stacks of rare 200-year-old manuscripts that were little more than charcoal debris.The volunteers, ranging from academic experts to appalled citizens, have spent the past two days trying to salvage what's left of some 192,000 books, journals and writings, casualties of Egypt's latest bout of violence.

After a wild night on top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, researchers report that they've successfully tested the remote-control system for a prototype telescope that could someday be looking at the cosmos from the surface of the moon.The demonstration for the International Lunar Observatory precursor instrument, or ILO-X, came a day earlier than originally plannned, due to a wave of chilly, stormy weather that was sweeping over Hawaii. Temperatures on Mauna Kea reportedly dipped to 16 below zero Fahrenheit overnight.

The idea of putting maggots into open flesh may sound repulsive, but such a therapy might be a quick way to clean wounds, a new study from France suggests.Men in the study, all of whom had wounds that wouldn't heal, were randomly assigned to have dead and unhealthy tissue removed from their lacerations by either standard surgical therapy or maggots (that eat dead tissue).After about a week, men who received the maggot therapy had less dead tissue in their wounds than men who underwent surgery, the researchers said.

The parliament of Spain's Basque Country Autonomous Community will approve a new drug law early next year that will regulate marijuana cultivation, distribution, and consumption, EFE reported Tuesday.The Basque Country Autonomous Community is charged with setting and enforcing domestic law within its borders in northeastern Spain. If the bill passes, it would mark a direct challenge to the United Nations' 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which forbids legalization."It's better to regulate than to ban," said Jesus Maria Fernandez, second in command at the region's health authority. Regulating "the growing, sale, and consumption of cannabis" is a better approach to pot smoking, he said, calling it "a practice that is already consolidated."

Researchers believe that the footage from one of the most inhospitable spots in the ocean may even include the first sightings of species new to science.The images were recorded using a remote-operated, underwater robot called Kiel 6000, which allowed scientists to survey volcanic underwater vents in the South West Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean.Theses ocean floor fissures, otherwise known as black smokers, make the waters around them superheated and mineral-rich which in turn drive diverse ecosystems in the watery depths.

An anatomical specimen labelled "Yeti's finger" has been left overlooked in a museum for decades, its origins unexplained, until BBC reporter Matthew Hill set out to investigate.In the vaults of the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum in London are thousands of anatomical specimens from both human and animal species.Still used as a teaching museum today, it was founded in the 18th Century by John Hunter, a surgeon, anatomist and naturalist.

A group with researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are the first to plot changes in Earth's axis through laboratory measurements. To do this, they constructed the world's most stable ring laser in an underground lab and used it to determine changes in Earth's rotation. Previously, scientists were only able to track shifts in the polar axis indirectly by monitoring fixed objects in space. Capturing the tilt of Earth's axis and its rotational velocity is crucial for precise positional information on Earth -- and thus for the accurate functioning of modern navigation systems, for instance.

Coral reefs are extremely diverse ecosystems that support enormous biodiversity. But they are at risk. Carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying the ocean, threatening reefs and other marine organisms. New research led by Carnegie's Kenneth Schneider analyzed the role of sea cucumbers in portions of the Great Barrier Reef and determined that their dietary process of dissolving calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from the surrounding reef accounts for about half of at the total nighttime dissolution for the reef.The work is published December 23 by the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Malaysian wildlife authorities say the capture of a young Borneo Sumatran rhino gives them a last chance to save the highly endangered species from extinction.The female rhino, aged between 10 and 12, was caught on December 18 and is being kept in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah on the Malaysian area of Borneo island.It is hoped it will breed with a lone captive male."All of us in Sabah are relieved that we have been able to capture this rhino after almost a year-and-a-half," Borneo Rhino Alliance director Junaidi Payne said.

If you have never watched bees carefully, you are missing out. Look closely as they gently curl and uncoil their mouthparts around food, and you will sense that they are not just eating but enjoying their meal. Watch a bit more, and the hesitant flicks and sags of their antennae seem to convey some kind of emotion. Do those twitches signal annoyance? Or something like enthusiasm?Whether bees really experience any of these emotions is an open scientific question. It is also an important one, with implications for how we should treat not just bees but the great majority of animals. Recently studies by Melissa Bateson and her colleagues at Newcastle University in England have rekindled the debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something akin to moods.

A mysterious streak of light in the night sky baffled many Europeans on Christmas Eve, with speculation running wild as to whether it was a meteor, a comet or space junk.Videos captured in Germany, France and Belgium show the blaze of light passing across the sky more slowly than a typical shooting star, and with greater brightness and detail.The leading edge of the streak appears round and white, while the tail trailing it has an orange tone in some images.

The entire Hawaiian population of the peat moss Sphagnum palustre appears to be a clone that has been in existence for some 50,000 years, researchers have discovered.The study is published in New Phytologist.Among the most long-lived of organisms, every plant of the Hawaiian population appears to have been produced by vegetative rather than sexual propagation and can be traced back to a single parent.

A mysterious line where two millipede species meet has been mapped in northwest Tasmania, Australia. Both species are common in their respective ranges, but the two millipedes cross very little into each other's territory. The 'mixing zone' where they meet is about 230 km long and less than 100 m wide where carefully studied.The mapping was done over a two-year period by Dr Bob Mesibov, who is a millipede specialist and a research associate at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. His results have been published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

For generations, the 12,000 residents of Medellin's tough Comuna 13, which clings to the side of a steep hillside, have had to climb hundreds of large steps authorities say is the same as going up a 28-story building.Now they can ride an escalator, in what the mayor of Medellin said is the first massive, outdoor public escalator for use by residents of a poor area."It turned out very well," said Mayor Alonso Salazar.

Hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon will be examined for telltale signs that aliens once visited our cosmic neighbourhood if plans put forward by scientists go ahead.Passing extraterrestrials might have left messages, scientific instruments, heaps of rubbish or evidence of mining on the dusty lunar surface that could be spotted by human telescopes and orbiting spacecraft.Though the chances of finding the handiwork of long-gone aliens are exceptionally remote, scientists argue that a computerised search of lunar images, or a crowd-sourced analysis by amateur enthusiasts, would be cheap enough to justify given the importance of a potential discovery.

This Administration's response to the "Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol" petition has been criticized by many to be both patronizing and insufficient. The most notable critique, perhaps, has been published by Russ Belville of NORML, The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, as linked below:http://blog.norml.org/2011/10/29/white-house-response-to-normls-we-the-people-marijuana-legalization-petition/In his rebuttal, Belville argues that not only does the White House's response ignore decades of scientific evidence, but ultimately fails to even answer the two questions posed by the petition in the first place.We the People demand that the current White House Administration produce a full, point-by-point rebuttal to NORML's article that is every bit as thorough, reasoned and scientific as Russ Belville's. We expect nothing less.

I will be appearing as a guest on Coast-to-Coast AM, http://www.coasttocoastam.com/, interviewed by my friend Whitley Strieber, for three hours from 11pm Pacific Time on Tuesday 27th Dec to 2am Pacific Time on Wednesday 28th Dec. In the UK that's from 7am to 10 am on Wednesday 28th Dec. Join me if you can.-Graham

Could 2012 be the year of Chickenosaurus, the first dinosaur to live in modern times?You might recall our story from a few years ago, describing what was then referred to as "Dinochicken." To recap, Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, told me that he and some colleagues were working to create a dinosaur out of a chicken.The goal is to bring back multiple dinosaur characteristics, such as a tail, teeth and forearms, by changing the levels of regulatory proteins that have evolved to suppress these characteristics in modern birds.

UCLA physicists have made nanomechanical measurements of unprecedented resolution on protein molecules.The new measurements, by UCLA physics professor Giovanni Zocchi and former UCLA physics graduate student Yong Wang, are approximately 100 times higher in resolution than previous mechanical measurements, a nanotechnology feat which reveals an isolated protein molecule, surprisingly, is neither a solid nor a liquid.

As many as a half-billion trees may have died across Texas from the effects of the 2011 drought, the state's forest service says.A survey released Monday by the Texas Forest Service estimates 100 million to 500 million trees, or 2% to 10% of the state's 4.9 billion trees, have been killed by the severe drought, which began last year.Although it will take several years to obtain enough data to determine the full effect of the drought, "ultimately, Mother Nature is going to dictate what will happen," said Chris Edgar, a forest resource analyst.

Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a jelly-like material and wound treatment method that, in early experiments on skin damaged by severe burns, appeared to regenerate healthy, scar-free tissue.In the Dec. 12-16 online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers reported their promising results from mouse tissue tests. The new treatment has not yet been tested on human patients. But the researchers say the procedure, which promotes the formation of new blood vessels and skin, including hair follicles, could lead to greatly improved healing for injured soldiers, home fire victims and other people with third-degree burns.

Chinese archaeologists have discovered the remains of the country's oldest imperial palace, which dates back 3,700 years and is linked to the ancient Xia Dynasty, which many researchers long considered to be merely the stuff of legend.The remains of the palace are at the Erlitou Bronze Age site in the country's north-central Henan province, according to the People's Daily. Archaeologists discovered the rammed-earth foundation, with at least three courtyards. The palace covers a total area of more than 2,100 square meters.

Ludwig van Beethoven, the eponymous classical music composer, is famous for churning out compositions despite his deafness. And now new study in the British Medical Journal shows that his musical compositions actually seem to be influenced by his worsening deafness with age.Beethoven's deafness is attributed to severe tinnitus, which is a sensation of ringing or noise in the ears, according to BBC News.

Anti-whaling activists intercepted Japan's harpoon fleet far north of Antarctic waters on Sunday, they said, with the help of a military-style drone.Sea Shepherd Conservation Society spokesman Paul Watson said the unmanned long-range drone, launched from the anti-whaling ship the Steve Irwin, had located the Japanese fleet and relayed the coordinates back to the activists.

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

MEXICO CITY -- Seize the day. Less than 52 weeks are left before Dec. 21, 2012, when some believe the Maya predicted the end of the world. Unlike enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who suggest putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration.Mexico's tourism agency expects to draw 52 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 22 million foreigners in a year.It's selling the date, the winter solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.

A stunning comet that survived a recent brush with the sun is amazing astronomers again, this time in dazzling new photos captured just before sunrise over Chile.The comet Lovejoy may not be the famed Star of Bethlehem, but it still provided a jaw-dropping sight for astronomer Gabriel Brammer, photographed the comet rising ahead of the sun on Dec. 22 at Paranal Observatory in Chile's high Atacama Desert.Brammer is a support astronomer for the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which runs the Paranal facility. His time-lapse photos of comet Lovejoy show it rising ahead of the sun as the Paranal astronomers fire a laser beam, which serves as a guide star, into the sky. Our Milky Way galaxy and the moon are also visible in the images.