Newsdesk Archive

A team of scientists from Oregon has collected microbes from ice within a lava tube in the Cascade Mountains and found that they thrive in cold, Mars-like conditions.The microbes tolerate temperatures near freezing and low levels of oxygen, and they can grow in the absence of organic food. Under these conditions their metabolism is driven by the oxidation of iron from olivine, a common volcanic mineral found in the rocks of the lava tube. These factors make the microbes capable of living in the subsurface of Mars and other planetary bodies, the scientists say.

Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special difficulty for the theory of evolution. Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing, and only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.How could the extreme degree of cooperation multicellular existence requires ever evolve? Why aren't all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes?.

Air-breathing fish that can hop and walk across the floor on their fins hint that walking may have evolved underwater before such animals began migrating on to land, scientists find.The distant ancestors of humans and all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and other four-limbed animals, or tetrapods, are fish that eventually developed the ability to breathe on land. One of the few living fish related to these ancient land-dwellers are air-breathers known as lungfish, which are found today in Africa, South America and Australia.

Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be the first chance to see one consume such a cloud.As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.

A hoard of silver found by a metal detector has provided intriguing new clues to a previously unknown Viking king, the British Museum announced on Wednesday.Found some 16 inches beneath the surface of a field in Silverdale, a village in north Lancashire, UK, the hoard materialized as Darren Webster, a 39-year-old stonemason, lifted a lead box signalled by his detector.A shower of 201 pieces of silver revealed an abundance of arm-rings, brooch fragments, ingots and coins.

After digging and exploring for the last three years, archaeologists in Mexico say they have found a ceremonial offering that may have been used nearly 2,000 years ago to consecrate the Pyramid of the Sun before its constructionThe announcement came in a bulletin from Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH), which said the offering consisted of pieces of obsidian, animal remains and three human figures made of a green stone that looks sort of like jade. One of those is a remarkable mask delicately carved from a single piece and resembling a human face.

When searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, it's a really tricky job to know where to look. Space is big, and the odds of detecting a transmission from an alien are vanishingly small. But with the help of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, some of the guesswork is about to be cut out of the SETI equation.On Monday, the Kepler science team announced the confirmation of a "super-Earth" orbiting right in the middle of the habitable zone of its sun-like star. The world, called Kepler-22b, therefore has some of the qualities of a world where life as we know it may exist.The habitable zone is a region surrounding a star where its energy is just right for liquid water to exist on its surface. Any closer, the water would turn to vapor, any further, and the water would turn to ice.

Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth's climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly fainter than present think the planet may have been more prone to catastrophic glaciation than previously believed.The new 3-D model of the Archean Eon on Earth that lasted from about 3.8 billion years to 2.5 billion years ago, incorporates interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, land, ice and hydrological cycles, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Eric Wolf of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department. Wolf has been using the new climate model -- which is based on the Community Earth System Model maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder -- in part to solve the "faint young sun paradox" that occurred several billion years ago when the sun's output was only 70 to 80 percent of that today but when geologic evidence shows the climate was as warm or warmer than now.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is 11 billion miles from our sun and has entered a region NASA is describing as a "cosmic purgatory," a part of space where there is very little solar wind.The latest data, transmitted to Earth by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), show that Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space referred to as the "stagnation region.""We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically," says Rob Decker, a Voyager researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement. "For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now.

After nearly eight years exploring the surface of Mars with the robot rover Opportunity, scientists announced Wednesday they have found "the single most powerful piece of evidence" yet that water once flowed abundantly on the Martian surface.It must have gushed through underground fractures on the planet billions of years ago, they said, and as the water flowed, it formed a broad range of minerals that the rover has recently discovered near the edge of a crater that Opportunity has just begun exploring.

After two hours of driving through the desert, a structure appears to rise from the sand. It's soft and rounded, and almost the same color as the beige terrain around it.Yet as our tour bus drives closer, light glints off metal. What resembled a mushroom in shape and color from the distance starts to take form as a futuristic building. A hangar, in fact.I am here at Spaceport America, a half-built dream to transform a desolate stretch of scrub brush into the worldwide capital of the commercial space industry.

The Sibudu rock shelter sits above the uThongathi river in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Here, archaeologists have over the past decade uncovered finds that have shed fascinating light on the behavior and life-ways of early modern humans. Finds have included perforated shells interpreted to have been used like bead ornaments, sharpened bone points likely used for hunting, evidence of bow and arrow technology, and even snares and traps for hunting and glue production for the hafting of stone implements. Now, an international team of scientists have discovered within the shelter what they believe to be mats that were used as bedding and as a living surface.

With the retirement of the last space shuttle, some have expressed concerns about an unclear future for NASA. No such ambiguity exists for Edward T. Lu: This former NASA astronaut says the space agency ought to take the lead in protecting against destructive asteroids which could threaten humanity's existence.Lu, who also holds a doctorate in applied physics from Stanford University, offered his thoughts in a first-person essay published in Scientific American. But this wouldn't be a go-it-alone effort by the U.S.; Lu called for a transnational project that would involve other national space agencies as well as private organizations. The goal: to come up with early warning systems and advanced technologies that could be deployed against killer space rocks hurtling toward Earth.

Feel a little awkward interacting with humanity? Would you rather hold up transparent mobile device and filter reality through a lens that bombards you with a 3D cheat sheet? Don't worry, Samsung's got you covered.The South Korean tech company recently released a video envisioning a a shape-shifting, bendable, see-through tablet/smart phone that explores, locates and translates the world into a kaleidoscopic viewfinder of multimedia.

Here's a trivia question for your dino-crazy kids: What's the biggest dinosaur to roam North America? Paleontologists report that it's Alamosaurus sanjuanensis, one of many breeds of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods to roam the continent 69 million years ago.Montana State University's Denver Fowler and the State Museum of Pennsylvania's Robert Sullivan make that judgment on the basis of two huge vertebrae and a femur that they collected in New Mexico between 2003 and 2006. Based on the bones' proportions, they figure that Alamosaurus could be around the same size as South America's giant sauropods, such as the 70-ton Argentinosaurus.

Thousands of migratory birds are dead or injured after they apparently mistook a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields, highways and other areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeted to the ground.One state wildlife expert is calling it the worst downing she'd ever seen.Crews went to work cleaning up the dead birds and rescuing the injured survivors after the creatures crash-landed in the St. George area Monday night.

Italian scientist Andrea Rossi, who claims to have invented the world's first cold fusion machine, visited Massachusetts last week, meeting with a state senator and several scientists to explore the possibility of manufacturing cold fusion reactors in the state.Despite heavy skepticism in the scientific community about his work, Rossi came stateside at the invitation of Massachusetts Senate minority leader Bruce Tarr, a Republican who has been active in pursuing alternative energy legislation. "My thought process was pretty simple: If it works, I want this technology to be developed and manufactured in Massachusetts," Tarr told The Boston Globe.

The first computer chip made out of a substance described as a "promising" alternative to silicon has been tested by researchers.The Switzerland-based team used molybdenite (MoS2) - a dark-coloured, naturally occurring mineral.The group said the substance could be used in thinner layers than silicon, which is currently the most commonly used component in electronics.

Scientists believe they may have caught their first glimpse of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle that is thought to underpin the subatomic workings of nature.Physicists Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli were applauded by hundreds of scientists yesterday as they revealed evidence for the particle amid the debris of hundreds of trillions of proton collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva.

The world's aid agencies have become "lords of poverty" and their claim that famine has struck Somalia's capital is "absolutely" false, according to the country's prime minister.Abdiweli Mohammed Ali, who leads Somalia's officially recognized government, chose the week the United Nations appealed for $1.5 billion to help his country's people to deliver a stinging attack on relief workers.Ali, a Harvard-educated economist, believes they have become an "entrenched interest group," exaggerating the scale of suffering in order to drum up donations.Note: Lords of Poverty by Graham Hancock is out of print, but is available on Amazon: CA UK US

As parts of Central America and the U.S. Southwest endure some of the worst droughts to hit those areas in decades, scientists have unearthed new evidence about ancient dry spells that suggest the future could bring even more serious water shortages. Three researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Dec. 5, 2011, presented new findings about the past and future of drought.

The questions surrounding why and how the human brain has evolved over the past six million years as compared to other primates in the evolutionary timeline have been central in the discussions of human origins research for many years. When and how did this happen? Some possible clues may have emerged as a result of new research by an international team of scientists in China and Germany, suggesting that changes in the activity levels of certain genes of the human brain during brain development may have been the cause, and that these changes were controlled by key regulatory molecules called microRNAs.

A device that gets scorching hot as it captures and traps much of the sun's energy using a greenhouse-like approach could usher in an era of inexpensive electricity from the sun.The breakthrough comes from a sunlight-absorbing material made of photonic crystals that are arranged to prevent the escape of most of the energy it captures from direct sunlight.The concept is similar to the way carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere trap the sun's energy, which keep the planet warmer than it would be if all the energy escaped to space.

Reports from Japan suggest that long-extinct woolly mammoths could be cloned back into existence within five years, but don't hold your breath."C'mon, it'll never happen. Not in my lifetime," said Webb Miller, a Penn State computer scientist and genomicist who helped decipher the genetic code of a woolly mammoth.Japanese and Russian researchers have been working for years to find a suitable woolly mammoth specimen in the Siberian permafrost, and they recently told Japan's Kyodo news service that they recovered what they hope will be viable bone marrow from a frozen thigh bone recovered near Batagay in eastern Russia's Sakha Republic (a.k.a. Yakutia).

Now scientists have discovered the real reason why buttercups glow yellow under people's chins.Researchers found that the flower's unique anatomical structure - used to attract pollinating insects - contributes to the popular children's trick.Experts in physics and plant scientists from Cambridge University worked together to solve a problem that has perplexed generations of researchers.

The shrinking of the Arctic sea-ice, in thickness and volume, has been considerably faster than predicted by the computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As sea ice retreats, more ocean water is exposed, which is then heated to cause further retreat in what is known as a "positive-feedback loop".Current projections by one team of Arctic scientists suggest that the sea ice in September, when it hits its summertime minimum, will all but have disappeared as early as 2015.

Japanese researchers have enlisted wild monkeys to test radiation levels in forests near the devastated Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant.The primates will be fitted with radiation metres and GPS transmitters to track the levels and spread of the leaked radioactive emissions.Professor Takayuki Takahashi from Fukushima University and his team of scientists are using almost 1,000 monkeys in the monitoring project.

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake has struck the Pacific state of Papua New Guinea, but no tsunami warnings have been issued.The quake struck 89km (55 miles) from the second city of Lae, at a depth of 121km, said the US Geological Survey."It was very, very big," a hotel receptionist in Lae reportedly said.

During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.

Iquitos, Peru - It's been more than one month since Peru's government sent investigators to the Amazon to probe the brutal murders and mutilation of at least 14 shamans, traditional healers or medicos, of the indigenous Shawi people of Peru's northern border region near Ecuador.Since then, the government has remained mum and, so far, has made no arrests, or at least has not made any known. Early reports focused on the Evangelical Christian mayor of the river port town of Balsapuerto, citing officials who accused him of instigating a fanatical religious purge.

It's 2080. Global emissions peaked decades ago, too late to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 °C above preindustrial levels. The shift in climate has changed the world. As temperatures climbed by 2 °C, effects were felt first in poor and vulnerable regions like sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Extreme weather events - droughts, floods and hurricanes - became more common and severe. Vulnerable nations had a stark choice: adapt or face millions of deaths. At huge financial cost, society has adapted.We cannot say for sure what kind of a home Earth will offer in 2080, but averages made across thousands of model runs help paint a picture of what a 2 °C warmer world would look like.

Ever wondered what Antarctica would look like without all that ice?Scientists have produced the most detailed map yet of the White Continent's underbelly - its rock bed.Called simply BEDMAP, this startling view of the landscape beneath the ice incorporates decades of survey data acquired by planes, satellites, ships and even people on dog-drawn sleds.It is remarkable to think that less than 1% of this rock base projects above the continent's frozen veil.

In 1977, a small crew of oceanographers traveled to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and stumbled across a brand new form of life. The discovery was so unusual, it turned biology on its head and brought into question much of what scientists thought they knew about where life can form and what it needs in order to survive.

A computerized method for determining when prehistoric languages were spoken has been developed by an international group of scholars known as the ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgment Program) consortium. ASJP is anchored in the Linguistics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.The method is described in the most recent issue of Current Anthropology.

Differences in the patterned clicks that sperm whales use to communicate with each other seem to be down to culture and not genetics, say researchers.The finding could influence conservation efforts; instead of focussing solely on where the animals live, protection should also consider which dialect they use.All sperm whales in a pod use the same small selection of patterned clicks. Scientists think they use the sounds to show other whales that they're part of the same gang.

Our planet has faced many dangers on its epic journey around the galaxy. The evidence of our turbulent history might lie buried on the moonFOR billions of years, Earth has been on a perilous journey through space. As our planet whirls around the sun, the whole solar system undertakes a far grander voyage, circling our island universe every 200 million years. Weaving our way through the disc of the Milky Way, we have drifted through brilliant spiral arms, braved the Stygian darkness of dense nebulae, and witnessed the spectacular death of giant stars.

Nearly everyone I meet has heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. Many have seen its beautiful images of the birthplace of new stars and planetary systems, or of the "gravitational lenses" that reveal a mysterious "dark matter" that dwarfs the amount of matter bound up in stars or galaxies.This year's Nobel Prize in physics went to three scientists who used Hubble to detect the mysterious dark energy -- a sort of fifth fundamental force, previously unknown -- that we now think is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe.

What would be a case for the repair shop for a car engine is completely normal for a micro engine. If it sputters, this is caused by the thermal motions of the smallest particles, which interfere with its running. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart and the Stuttgart-based Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have now observed this with a heat engine on the micrometre scale. They have also determined that the machine does actually perform work, all things considered. Although this cannot be used as yet, the experiment carried out by the researchers in Stuttgart shows that an engine does basically work, even if it is on the microscale. This means that there is nothing, in principle, to prevent the construction of highly efficient, small heat engines.

French archaeologists have discovered an extremely rare example of a neolithic "earth mother" figurine on the banks of the river Somme.The 6,000-year-old statuette is 8in high, with imposing buttocks and hips but stubby arms and a cone-like head. Similar figures have been found before in Europe but rarely so far north and seldom in such a complete and well-preserved condition.The "lady of Villers-Carbonnel", as she has been named, can make two claims to be an "earth mother". She was fired from local earth or clay and closely resembles figurines with similar, stylised female bodies found around the Mediterranean.

Archeologists have discovered previously unknown fragments of a figurine known as the "Lion Man," and are piecing it back together. Could the 35,000-year-old statue actually represent a female shaman? Scientists hope to resolve a decades-long debate.Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings.Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette.

An Italian geophysicist who attended a meeting at the center of a trial alleging scientific negligence in connection with the deadly 2009 L'Aquila earthquake told a court that he had serious doubts about the scientific basis of some of the statements made during the meeting.Christian Del Pinto testified yesterday during the trial of seven scientists and technicians who face manslaughter charges for allegedly failing to properly assess seismic risks ahead of the earthquake that devastated the central Italian town of L'Aquila on 6 April 2009. Having previously heard from relatives and friends of the deceased, prosecutors took evidence from those present at the experts' fateful meeting held a week before the magnitude-6.3 quake, which killed 308 people.

Evolution, apparently, ranks alongside pornography and terrorism as topics that the Turkish government's controversial new Internet filtering scheme keeps out of the hands of children. Internet users in Turkey were surprised yesterday to find that several educational Web sites about evolution, such as this one, were inaccessible. After Hürriyet Daily News reported the censorship yesterday, the government reversed the block today. But science advocates and Internet freedom activists say it's a worrying sign of the government's attitude toward evolution.

The French call pinot noir "the noble grape" and have long considered it a source of inspiration. Now it can also be appreciated as the reason for an extensive, localized climate record.A study found a close match between pinot noir grape harvest dates in Burgundy, sea surface temperature trends and the Western European climate. The relationship could be used to forecast harvest dates months in advance.

Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years.

Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley."Rainfall in the Sahel has dropped 20-30 percent in the 20th century, the world's most severe long-term drought since measurements from rainfall gauges began in the mid-1800s," said study lead author Patrick Gonzalez, who conducted the study while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Forestry. "Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought, which has overwhelmed the resilience of the trees.

IT'S time to rethink Otzi the iceman's last hours. The theory that he was caught and killed after a lengthy and exhausting chase through the Alps clashes with new evidence that he sat down for a leisurely meal no more than an hour before his violent death.Otzi's body was discovered in 1991 inside a glacier near the mountainous border between Italy and Austria. It had been naturally mummified by ice about 5300 years ago.

VETERINARIANS in Alaska are at a loss to explain a disease that has killed almost 200 Arctic ringed seals since July. The animals' hair falls out, they develop ulcers on their flippers and skin, and they have lesions in their lungs, livers, hearts and brains. The disease may have spread to other species including spotted seals, bearded seals and walruses.

The area's diversity is so astonishing that a new species is found every two days, but regional cooperation and decision-making must take centre stage to preserve its richness, the group added.The dangers posed to local wildlife were highlighted earlier this year, when WWF said that Vietnam's Javan rhinos have been poached into extinction."While the 2010 discoveries are new to science, many are already destined for the dinner table, struggling to survive in shrinking habitats and at risk of extinction," said Stuart Chapman, Conservation Director of WWF Greater Mekong, in a statement.

Legalization used to be the rallying cry of stoners alone. Not anymore.In Latin America, leaders seem to be reaching a new consensus about the drug war: it has failed, and it's time for a new solution.Most say that foreign demand for cocaine and marijuana is the underlying problem.If American, Europeans and others stopped buying the drugs, the vast black-market for the trade wouldn't exist. The drug traffickers wouldn't be able to charge huge profits, and they wouldn't be able to afford the massive weaponry and build the network of informants, enforcers, dealers and mules that allow them to sustain their production and distribution supply chain.

Charley Lineweaver's team, from the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the distant planet was liveable for Earth-like organisms.While just one percent of Earth's volume - from core to upper atmosphere - was occupied by life, Linewaver said their world-first modelling showed three percent of Mars was habitable, though most of it was underground.

The Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum curates fragments related to five lead curse tablets from ancient Rome. One of these tablets (JHUAM 2011.01) was recently conserved and placed on view, along with the original iron nail (JHUAM 2011.06) associated with it.Objects such as this one are evidence of a common practice in Greek and Roman antiquity to scratch curses onto tablets which were then deposited in wells or graves. While the earliest tablets only contained the name of the person to be cursed, later examples grew more elaborate, such as this example. Curses could be inscribed on basically anything, ranging from pottery sherds to gemstones, though lead is the most common material used for this purpose.

Japan caused outrage yesterday as authorities confirmed it is diverting millions of pounds tagged for the reconstruction of its tsunami-devastated coast to protect its annual Antarctic whale-hunt.Roughly 2.28bn yen (£19m) from a reconstruction fund for areas badly hit by the crippling 11 March earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster will be used to beef up security for the Japanese whaling fleet, which left port under heavy guard this week.The money is part of about 500bn yen in "fisheries-related spending" green-lighted by parliament last month. Japan's Fisheries Agency justified the decision by saying that "safer hunts" would ultimately help whaling towns along the coast to recover.

Engineers have said they were "stunned" to unearth a 17th Century cottage, complete with a cat skeleton, during a construction project in Lancashire.The cottage was discovered near Lower Black Moss reservoir in the village of Barley, in the shadow of Pendle Hill.Archaeologists brought in by United Utilities to survey the area found the building under a grass mound.Historians are now speculating that the well-preserved cottage could have belonged to one of the Pendle witches.

A German citizen has won his first battle in an effort to view a UFO report created by the Scientific Service of the German Parliament (aka Bundestag). After attempts by the Bundestag to block the document's release, the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled that the German citizen has the right to read the document as requested. The Bundestag is appealing the decision, sending it to the Supreme Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg for a final decision.Germany has claimed that they have never officially investigated the UFO phenomena. However, other European nations, such as Britain and France, have not only held official investigations, they have released thousands of previously classified documents. This is what has inspired German citizen Frank Reitemeyer in his quest to seek out Germany's X-Files.

Excitement for Ridley Scott's latest alien movie, Prometheus, has been heating up. Fascinating new images were recently released and there has been news this week of a trailer being leaked. However, an exciting fact for those who believe extraterrestrials have already visited our humble planet is that Scott says his new movie is influenced by the theory that aliens have "helped" humanity advance to its current level of civilization. Dubbed the "ancient astronaut theory," this idea was made popular in the late 60s by Swiss author Erich von Daniken, and is currently the focus of the popular History channel television series Ancient Aliens.

Archaeologists are looking at Sadahurip Mountain in Garut, West Java. The great mystery awaits to be unveiled: is it true that the mountain contains a huge pyramid of which size is more superior to Giza Pyramid in Egypt?In Bosnia, six years ago in 2005, a hill named Visocica gained fame.An archaeology enthusiast and businessman, Semir Osmanagic, found unusual appearance on the shape of the 213-meter high hill in April 2005.

In the future, a person may be able to watch a computer screen and have his or her brain patterns modified to improve physical or mental performance. Researchers say an innovative learning method that uses decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging could modify brain activities to help people recuperate from an accident or disease, learn a new language or even fly a plane.(Medical Xpress) -- New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.

A new book reports that two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that officially brought the United States into World War II, President Roosevelt was warned about such a possible attack in a memo from naval intelligence.U.S. News' Paul Bedard writes more about the story.

For 70 years, survivors of the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor have captivated listeners with their firsthand accounts, recalling buddies who died in their arms or the glasses worn by a low-flying Japanese pilot.They have participated in solemn wreath-laying ceremonies and spoken to civic groups and school children about the infamous day and the need for the United States to remain vigilant.But the gradual loss of the World War II generation has accelerated, and this year, perhaps more than any before it, evidence of a tide change is inescapable.

The Christmas sky last year was lit up by an extraordinarily powerful and mysteriously long-lasting explosion in space that scientists now suggest was a comet smacking into a dense star or a peculiar supernova death.Radiation from gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions ever seen in the universe, strikes Earth's atmosphere from random directions in space about twice a day. These bursts can be roughly divided into two kinds, ones lasting less than two seconds, and ones lasting up to minutes.However, the strange gamma-ray burst detected on Christmas Day 2010 by NASA's Swift satellite lasted at least half an hour.

Mexico City, Dec 3, 2011 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Mexican archaeologists have discovered human remains of pre-Columbian Mayas from 2,000 years ago in the Yucatan peninsula, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.The institute said in a communique Friday that archaeologists found two burial sites several days ago in the historic center of the southeastern city of Merida, the first of the pre-Columbian era to be found in the Yucatan state capital and possibly dating back to an ancient Mayan settlement in the region known as Jo.

One topic that people always ask astronomers about is black holes. These seemingly mysterious and bizarre objects are known to gobble up everything around them, even light, and physics as we know it cannot accurately describe what goes on inside.From the outside, however, we consider black holes to be pretty simple objects, described completely by their mass, or size, spin and charge. This is often called the "no-hair" theorem of black holes.For the most part, something that massive is almost certainly neutral, so astronomers really only care about how big a black hole is and how fast it is spinning.

CAMBRIDGE (MASSACHUSETTS): At least four times in the last few years, astronomers have announced they have found planets orbiting other stars in the sweet spot known as the habitable zone - not too hot, not too cold - where water and thus perhaps life are possible.

Deforestation and extreme weather may later cause earthquakes, scientists believe.Their findings suggest that cutting down trees on steep slopes may increase the risk of not only landslides but earthquakes in heavily deforested places such as Haiti, which suffered a devastating magnitude 7 quake in 2010.

Nasa Inspector General Paul Martin issued a report detailing foibles such as the US space agency making loans to researchers who never used the samples, or simply losing track of rare pieces dating back to the first US trip to the Moon in 1969."According to Nasa records, 517 loaned astromaterials have been lost or stolen between 1970 and June 2010," said the report.Astromaterials include moon rocks and soil; meteorites from asteroids, Mars, and the Moon; ions from the outer layers of the Sun; dust from comets and interstellar space; and cosmic dust from Earth's stratosphere.

The rover, called Opportunity, and its twin, Spirit, arrived on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004. Over the years, the rovers, aided by several orbiting spacecraft, have returned a convincing body of evidence that Mars was not always as cold and dry as it is today.The most convincing proof, unveiled this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, is a thin vein of gypsum laced inside and protruding from an ancient rock along the rim of a 96-mile (154 km) wide crater called Endeavour.Gypsum - commonly known as plaster of Paris - typically forms from water flowing through rock.

An international team of archaeologists is reporting 77,000-year-old evidence for preserved plant bedding and the use of insect-repelling plants in a rock shelter in South Africa. This discovery is 50,000 years older than earlier reports of preserved bedding and provides a fascinating insight into the behavioural practices of early modern humans in southern Africa.The team, led by Professor Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in collaboration with Christopher Miller (University of Tübingen, Germany), Christine Sievers and Marion Bamford (University of the Witwatersrand), and Paul Goldberg and Francesco Berna (Boston University, USA), is reporting the discovery in the journal Science.

Remember those odd images that Google Maps discovered in the Gobi Desert last month? On Friday, a new explanation surfaced, along with an accusation that the Chinese ripped off American technology to make them.According to Nathan Cohen of Fractal Antenna Systems, the strange patterns in the Gobi sand are just that: fractal antennas, designed to reflect radar waves and conceal objects hidden in the ground beneath them.The strange patterns emerged in mid-November, when Google and gadget site Gizmodo noticed the strange shapes. The story was later picked up by news outlets all over the world, all without any good explanation for what made the strange shapes in the desert, although the Chinese government almost certainly had a hand. Their purpose, though, remains unknown.

The enormous bones of what is believed to be the biggest dinosaur in the U.S. have been unveiled by university researchers.A research paper produced jointly by the Museum of Rockies in Montana State and the State Museum of Pennsylvania describes two gigantic vertebrae and a femur that the team collected in New Mexico from 2003 to 2006.The bones belong to the sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis: a long-necked plant eater related to Diplodocus. The Alamosaurus roamed what is now the southwestern region of the U. S and Mexico about 69 million years ago.

AS THE latest round of United Nations climate negotiations began in Durban, South Africa, on Monday, expectations could scarcely have been lower. A globally binding deal is further away than ever. That makes considerable warming from climate change inevitable.In the last few weeks major reports by the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have concluded that we can still meet the UN's target of limiting warming to 2 °C above preindustrial levels. But climate scientists are far less optimistic. Many say the chance to avoid a 2 °C rise has been and gone, and we must now prepare for the damage to come.

Plans to build a new reactor at Sellafield in Cumbria to convert waste plutonium into electricity have been proposed by energy company GE Hitachi.The multi-billion pound reactor would recycle waste from the UK's nuclear plants, currently stored at Sellafield.The government spends £2bn a year managing it and is looking at options including reprocessing or storage.

A huge treasure trove of artefacts including thousands of fragments of pottery provides the first evidence that the sea-faring Lapita people settled in mainland Papua New Guinea.The discovery, by a group of archaeologists from Australia and Papua New Guinea led by Dr Bruno David and Professor Ian McNiven from Monash University, may also give clues about the origin of Torres Strait Islanders.The groups' findings are to be presented this weekend at the Australian Archaeological Association Conference in Toowoomba.

For many, the story of Pompeii defines what happens when a volcano erupts: It destroys everything in its path and kills everyone who cannot escape.But nearly a millennium ago, a very different scenario played out just north of the modern-day city of Flagstaff in the Arizona desert. Here, the local Sinagua peoples survived the eruption of the powerful Sunset Crater volcano and adapted to a changed landscape to forge a more complex society and higher standard of living.

New and exciting archaeological finds have been made at the Knowth tumulus over the last few months, according to archaeologists working on the site.The passage tomb cemetery at Brú na Binne has produced some extraordinary discoveries over the decades ever since Professor George Eogan made his first tentative exploration in and around the site.A number of previously unknown large-scale monuments in the field lying immediately to the south-east of the large mound have recently come to light.

While modern-day humans use the most advanced engineering to build nuclear reactors, nature sometimes makes them by accident.Evidence for a cluster of natural nuclear reactors has been found on Earth, and some scientists say our planet may have had many more in its ancient past. There's also reason to think other planets might have had their own naturally occurring nuclear reactors, though evidence to confirm this is hazy. If they did exist, the large amounts of radiation and energy released by such reactors would have had complicated effects on any life developing on this or other worlds, experts say.

If the words "World's Largest Tesla Coils" don't set your blood aboil, you might want to check if you still have a pulse. Hands down, this has to be one of the coolest projects Discovery News has ever written about. I'm so amped that my head is thundering with heavy metal. Here's why:Electrical engineer Greg Leyh and his high voltage colleagues at the Lightning on Demand organization near San Fransisco are raising money to build two 120-foot Tesla coils that researchers hope will help unlock some of the secrets behind arguably one of nature's most beautiful and deadly forces: lightning.

As European leaders meet today in a desperate attempt to prevent a colossal euro collapse, a look back at history shows that we have learned little from the past.Excessive debt accumulation, structural weakness and poor management were responsible for economic crashes and collapses since the medieval invention of banking by the Italians, who came up with the deposit account, double entry bookkeeping and the line of credit."The word bank comes from the Italian, named after the 'banco' or bench on which merchants traded. And bankrupt originates from the practice of breaking the bench of an insolvent banker," said art historian Ludovica Sebregondi, co-curator of "Money and Beauty," a perfectly timed exhibition which runs in Florence until January 22.

Researchers in San Diego say they've discovered how a rare "twinned rainbow" works and can now simulate one on a computer.By studying virtual rainbows, they figured out that the twinned rainbow needs sunlight to reflect off both small and large size water droplets at just the right angle."A double rainbow everyone has seen," said Iman Sadeghi, a Google software engineer and former doctoral student at the University of California San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering.

Scientists have successfully transitioned fundamental research in autonomy to undersea gliders, demonstrating in recent sea tests how the new software, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), can help robots become smarter at surveying large swaths of ocean."Using the new algorithms, the vehicle has a greater ability to make its own decisions without requiring a human in the loop," said Marc Steinberg, program officer for ONR's Adaptive Networks for Threat and Intrusion Detection or Termination (ANTIDOTE), a multi-disciplinary university research program.

A series of photographs of cannibalism in polar bears have been released, and the researchers who witnessed the act think the rate of cannibalism may be increasing. They observed three instances of adult male polar bears killing and eating young cubs during summer and autumn in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway and made a series of photographs of one episode.

NASA has announced the launch target for Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration flight will be Feb. 7, 2012. Pending completion of final safety reviews, testing and verification, NASA also has agreed to allow SpaceX to send its Dragon spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) in a single flight."SpaceX has made incredible progress over the last several months preparing Dragon for its mission to the space station," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. "We look forward to a successful mission, which will open up a new era in commercial cargo delivery for this international orbiting laboratory."

Lunar eclipses are fantastic to experience and, fortunately, they are a whole lot easier to observe than their solar counterparts.Unlike solar eclipses, you don't need to be in a specific place to see them -- so long as you can see the moon then you can enjoy the eclipse. Also unlike solar eclipses, you don't need any special equipment to observe them.Well, as luck would have it, in just a few hours, there will be a lunar eclipse for you to feast your eyes on. It takes place on Dec. 10, but if you miss it, the next one isn't until 2014!

As parts of Central America and the U.S. Southwest endure some of the worst droughts to hit those areas in decades, scientists have unearthed new evidence about ancient dry spells that suggest the future could bring even more serious water shortages. Three researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Dec. 5, 2011, presented new findings about the past and future of drought.Pre-Columbian Collapse - Ben Cook, a climatologist affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York City, highlighted new research that indicates the ancient Meso-American civilizations of the Mayans and Aztecs likely amplified droughts in the Yucatán Peninsula and southern and central Mexico by clearing rainforests to make room for pastures and farmland.

Scientists have discovered that, just like humans, honeybees often find the best way to resolve indecision in a colleague is to administer a swift clout round the back of the head.While such practices are now largely frowned upon in most human organisations - though any potential TechEye interns have to learn how to make good tea somehow - for bees it is a vital tool in problem solving with long periods of procrastination.According to researchers from Sheffield University, such a physical approach to curtailing indecision is remarkably similar to how neurons in human brains stamp out umming and ahhing.

On Tuesday, teams are expected to reveal the outcome of searching through the latest data from experiments at the huge £6 billion particle-accelerating machine at CERN on the French-Swiss border, near Geneva.One of the main scientific goals of the huge £6 billion atom smasher is to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give everything in the universe mass.The particle is a key part of the standard model used in physics to describe how particles and atoms are made up.

Nasa's lone surviving Mars rover Opportunity is scouting the landscape in search of a place to spend its fifth winter.The solar-powered robot geologist has been scouting out sites along the crater rim that not only have interesting rocks to examine but also ample sunshine. The hardy rover has survived four previous Martian winters and scientists expect no different and even drew up a to-do list.

The remains of a pair of ancient compound eyes that belonged to the world's first super predator have been discovered by fossil hunters in Australia.Anomalocaris was a soft-bodied marine animal that patrolled the oceans more than half a billion years ago. Adults grew to a metre long and had eyes on stalks.The creature also had grasping claws and teeth-like serrations in its mouth that it used to capture and feed on other marine animals. The fossilised excrement of the predator suggests it may have crunched up trilobites, which were up to 25cm long.

This year's second total lunar eclipse on Saturday morning will offer a rare chance to see a strange celestial sight traditionally thought impossible.Ringside seats for the lunar eclipse can be found in Alaska, Hawaii, northwestern Canada, Australia, New Zealand and central and eastern Asia. Over the contiguous United States and Canada, the eastern zones will see either only the initial penumbral stages before moonset, or nothing at all.Over the central regions of the United States, the moon will set as it becomes progressively immersed in the Earth's umbral shadow. The Rocky Mountain states and the prairie provinces will see the moon set in total eclipse, while out west the moon will start to emerge from the shadow as it sets.

Is a giant, cloaked spaceship orbiting around Mercury?That's been the speculation from some corners aftera camera onboard NASA's STEREO spacecraft caught a wave of electronically charged material shooting out from the sun and hitting Mercury.Theorists have seized on the images captured from the "coronal mass ejection" (CME) last week as suggestive of alien life hanging out in our own cosmic backyard. Specifically, the solar flare washing over Mercury appears to hit another object of comparable size. "It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," YouTube-user siniXster said in his video commentary on the footage, which has generated hundreds of thousands of views this week. Now, how this user was able to determine that the object was "obviously" a cloaked spaceship with no other natural explanation remains as much a mystery as the object itself.

An online petition calling for the government to posthumously pardon Alan Turing and quash his conviction for gross indecency has been launched.The gay computer pioneer was convicted of the offence in 1952, when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK.Two years later, he died from cyanide poisoning, which an inquest ruled was suicide.The e-petition said his treatment and death "remains a shame on the UK government and UK history".

British scientists believe microscopic worms which are biologically very similar to humans may be the key to helping humans colonize other planets like Mars by giving clues on coping with long-term space living.A team of scientists led by Nathaniel Szewczyk from Notthingham University blasted 4,000 of the worms, known as known as Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans, into space on board the Space Shuttle Discovery, and studied their progress.

Scientists at the University of Hull have found that some people have the ability to hallucinate colours at will -- even without the help of hypnosis.The study, published this week in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, was carried out in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull. It focused on a group of people that had shown themselves to be 'highly suggestible' in hypnosis.

The Earth pulses with a special kind of resonant wave. The Schumann Resonance has long been dubbed 'the Earth's heartbeat,' and it has only been spotted from below. Recently, though, satellites have found signs of this electromagnetic heartbeat leaking up into space.The heartbeat of the earth goes at about eight cycles per second. Like many other heartbeats, it's regulated by electricity. When lightning strikes the earth, it creates electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere. These waves are caught between the ground and the upper atmosphere, sixty miles up. Most of these waves are dampened and shake themselves to nothing.

A 70-million-year-old nest of the dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi has been found with evidence that 15 juveniles were once inside it, according to a paper in the latest Journal of Paleontology.While large numbers of eggs have been associated with other dinosaurs, such as the meat-eating Oviraptor or certain duck-billed hadrosaurs, finding multiple juveniles in the same dino nest is quite rare."I, for one, cannot think of another dinosaur specimen that preserves 15 juveniles at its nest in this way," lead author David Fastovsky told Discovery News.

Microscopic 570-million-year-old fossils from China may represent the earliest evidence for animal life on Earth, suggests a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.Previous theories have said that the fossils represented giant bacteria."One of the proponents of the bacteria theory was a co-author of this paper (Jake Bailey of the University of Minnesota) and he now agrees that the fossils do not represent a giant sulfur bacteria," co-author Philip Donoghue, a professor of palaeobiology at the University of Bristol, told Discovery News.

"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined... could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." - Abraham Lincoln, 1838America's so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued for the past ten years, has forever altered the political and legal landscape of our country. It has chipped away at our freedoms and is unraveling our Constitution. Even now, with Osama bin Laden having been killed and al Qaeda dismantled by a series of high-profile assassinations, the war hawks continue to rattle their sabers. Yet while more and more Americans join the call for a de-escalation of military actions abroad, those clamoring for war have turned their focus inwards. As Senator Lindsay Graham recently remarked as an explanation for his support of legislation allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans, "Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield.See the ACLU petition : Tell Congress: Say NO to Indefinite Detention and Endless Worldwide War

The vote could happen at any time now, and free speech champions in Congress say our outcry is crucial. Senator Wyden is even planning to block the vote by reading out our petition names for hours! We are meeting with the White House this week -- and members of Congress have asked to be updated daily on exactly how many signatures we've got. Let's reach 1.5 million before this important meeting.

Under changes in Czech drug policy approved Wednesday by the Cabinet, growers of psychedelic cacti and fungi will no longer face criminal punishment. The hallucinogenic plants will be removed from the government's drug "black list," meaning that cultivation of more than "small" amounts will no longer be a crime.Peyote and magic mushrooms were originally included on the list when the Czech's reformed their drug laws in 2009, making the Czech Republic one of the most liberal in Europe on drug policy. But amateur cactus growers who said they had no intention of consuming their plants complained that the drug reforms effectively criminalized them for pursuing their hobbies.

Almost three quarters of UK butterfly species have declined in abundance over the past decade.According to a study compiled by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), even common species have seen a fall of 24%.It found that 72% of species had declined in abundance and that the distribution of 54% had been reduced.

NEW HAVEN -- The words "ancient Egyptian art" brings to mind the popular tomb art found in the region of the Upper Nile, created between 5000 BC and about 300 AD.As ancient as those works are, they're almost contemporary compared to what a Yale University professor and a team of Belgian scientists found in Qurta, Egypt -- rock carvings dating back to between 15,000 and 23,000 years ago. They are the oldest Egyptian works of art known to exist and are among the oldest art found anywhere.The findings were announced in the December issue of Antiquity, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.