Newsdesk Archive

After meticulously stitching together images that were gathered over six years by a NASA spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, astronomers have created a global map of the surface of Titan, the ringed planet's largest moon, and it features some surprisingly Earth-like geological features.An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Nantes in France, created the striking mosaic of Titan's surface using infrared images taken by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft.The global map and animations were presented Oct. 4 at the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Science in Nantes, France.

Edinburgh-based Pelamis Wave Power has secured a lease from the Crown Estate to develop a wave farm off the island of Bernera on the Western Isles.The firm said the project would generate enough electricity for about 7,000 homes.The site off Bernera is one of eight areas of seabed the Crown Estate has leased out for wave and tidal projects.Sites in the Mull of Kintyre, the Moray Firth, Shetland and west of Islay are among the others.

With Columbus Day coming up next week, it's time to arm yourself with interesting facts about the man credited with discovering America. Here are some unusual facts about the 15th century explorer:* Columbus' father and his mother's family were wool merchants. In his youth, Columbus helped his father with weaving.* He taught himself Latin, because that was the language in which geography books were written.* Columbus first went to sea as a teenager.* Before his famed journeys to the Americas, Columbus was a pirate.

As it perches on a solid block of ice floating on the Antarctic Ocean, this seal should feel safe from predators.What it does not suspect is that it is about to become a victim of a group of killer whales who have developed an extraordinary tactic to catch their prey.The predatory sea mammals work together as a group to create large waves that wash seals off the ice and can even break up larger floes to deliver their quarry.

LONDON: The muscular movements of elephant trunks and human tongues have been mimicked using bundles of carbon nanotubes.Carbon nanotubes are praised for their strong, stiff, properties enabling their wide range of applications in fields such as aeronautics and spacecraft design. But making these materials flexible could open up a new range of possibilities from nano-robots to fluidic circuits.Research published in Science today shows how bundles of nanotubes can be brought together to create yarns that, when dipped into an electrolyte, can be made to twist rapidly when injected with a charge. When this charge is removed, they were shown to untwist just as quickly, simulating the torsional movement seen in the muscles of elephant trunks and squid tentacles. The yarns are just one-tenth the diameter of a human hair.

Russian scientists want to join European Space Agency's ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission to study the Red Planet, a leading Russian space researcher said."From the scientific point of view such mission would be of great interest to us, it would boost our own Mars research," said Oleg Korablyov, deputy chief of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.The ExoMars program to send a satellite to Mars in 2016 and a robot rover two years later was run jointly by NASA and ESA. NASA later said it would cut its participation in the project and will not provide its Atlas carrier for the launch.

SHIJIAZHUANG, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chickens began being domesticated in China about 8,000 years ago, far earlier than in the rest of the world, according to a recent study on fossils uncovered in north China's Hebei Province.Archaeologists said they had unearthed 116 fossil specimens from 23 types of animals, including pig, dog, chicken, tortoise, fish, and clam, at the Cishan Site, a Neolithic village relic in the city of Wu'an. Several bone fragments were identified to be from domesticated chickens, said Qiao Dengyun, head of the Handan Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology."The chicken bones found at Cishan are slightly larger than wild jungle fowls, but smaller than that of a modern domesticated chicken," said Qiao. Qiao said the bone fossils date back to 6,000 BC, earlier than the oldest domesticated chicken previously discovered in India that dated back 4,000 years.

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and comes in a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including graphite, graphene, and the hardest natural material known to man, diamonds. Now scientists have discovered a new form of carbon that is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses previously only observed in diamond. Unlike crystalline forms of carbon such as diamonds, whose hardness is highly dependent upon the direction in which the crystal is formed, the new form of carbon is amorphous meaning it could be equally strong in all directions.A team including scientists from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science started with a form of carbon called glassy carbon.

Digging deeper in a South African cave that had already yielded surprises from the Middle Stone Age, archaeologists have uncovered a 100,000-year-old workshop holding the tools and ingredients with which early modern humans apparently mixed some of the first known paint.These cave artisans had stones for pounding and grinding colorful dirt enriched with a kind of iron oxide to a powder, known as ocher. This was blended with the binding fat of mammal-bone marrow and a dash of charcoal. Traces of ocher were left on the tools, and samples of the reddish compound were collected in large abalone shells, where the paint was liquefied, stirred and scooped out with a bone spatula.

A miniature airborne drone has helped archaeologists capture images for creating a 3-D model of an ancient burial mound in Russia, scientists say.Archaeological sites are often in remote and rugged areas. As such, it can be hard to reach and map them with the limited budgets archaeologists typically have. Scientists are now using drones to extend their view into these hard-to-reach spots."There are a lot possibilities with this method," said researcher Marijn Hendrickx, a geographer at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

A group of campaigners is warning that the Taj Mahal will cave in within five years if nothing is done to save it.The domed mausoleum built along the Yamuna River is the country's most iconic structure, luring four million visitors each year to Agra, India.In the past, a grimy and corroding facade caused by factory pollution was the greatest concern surrounding the building. But there have been graver worries over the sustainability of the 358-year-old marble building, which last year began t0 show cracks. Its four minarets are also reportedly tilted.

Even when vision has failed, the mind's eye can see, given just the right voltage to just the right place in the brain, says a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, which used rhesus monkeys with intact vision, demonstrated one way to restore something akin to sight in the blind. It showed that direct stimulation to the brain's visual cortex can create the perception of shapes, colors and contrasts -- even when the eyes cannot see them.

Last month, we wrote about a new study by Santa Monica think tank RAND, which demonstrated that neighborhood crime actually increased after a number of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles were closed. These data flew in the face of the anecdotal claims of California's law enforcement community, which has argued for years that such dispensaries are a magnet for crimes like burglary. Well, in an illustration of what happens when scientists produce research that doesn't serve the interests of the state, fierce criticism from LA's city attorneys has led RAND to pull the study report from their website. According to spokesman Warren Robak, "As we've begun to take a look at the report, we decided it's best to remove it from circulation until that review is complete.

It's now been three weeks since the extraordinary news that neutrinos travelling between France and Italy had been clocked moving faster than light. The experiment, known as OPERA, found that the particles produced at CERN near Geneva arrived at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy some 60 nanoseconds earlier than the speed of light allows.The result has sent a ripple of excitement through the physics community. Since then, more than 80 papers have appeared on the arXiv attempting to debunk or explain the effect. It's fair to say, however, that the general feeling is that the OPERA team must have overlooked something.

If you want to get your mind around the research that won three astronomers the Nobel Prize in physics last week, it helps to think of the universe as a lump of dough - raisin-bread dough, to be precise - mixed, kneaded and ready to rise. Hold that thought.Now consider Albert Einstein - not the wild-haired, elderly, absent-minded professor he became in his later years but a young, dashing scientist in his 30s. It's 1916, and he's just published his revolutionary general theory of relativity. It's not necessary to understand the theory (thank goodness). You just have to accept that it gave scientists the mathematical tools they needed to forge a better understanding of the cosmos than they'd ever had.

When Vincent Van Gogh moved to the southern French town of Arles in 1888, he painted nearly 200 vivid canvasses before cutting off his left ear in a fit of madness. This artistic explosion was possible in part because Van Gogh kept his brushes, paints, and palette constantly at the ready. A new discovery in South Africa suggests that prehistoric human painters also planned ahead, using ochre paint kits as early as 100,000 years ago. But just what they used the paints for is still a matter of debate.

The kits used by humans 100,000 years ago to make paint have been found at the famous archaeological site of Blombos Cave in South Africa.The hoard includes red and yellow pigments, shell containers, and the grinding cobbles and bone spatulas to work up a paste - everything an ancient artist might need in their workshop.This extraordinary discovery is reported in the journal Science.It is proof, say researchers, of our early ancestors' complexity of thought.

There's no greater mystery than a mystery cropping up somewhere you thought you understood. In the case of the Martian plain Hesperia Planum, it was filed under "Region on Mars. Not Particularly Interesting. No Further Study Needed." Now, in typical Mars fashion, it appears Hesperia Planum has been hiding some secrets.Hesperia Planum is known for, well, being unremarkable. But it is important nonetheless.It's an ancient lava-filled plain that has been used by scientists to characterize the base of a Martian geologic epoch, the aptly named "Hesperian" that spanned 3.7 to 3.1 billion years ago.

Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday.Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation.

Even in this age of satellite mapping and global positioning, there remain "lost worlds" where few humans tread and where species of animal unrecognised by science live. Kerinci Seblat National Park in West Sumatra is one such place. The size of a small country, its dim, steamy interior has never been explored properly. Last month I returned to these jungles for the fourth time to track an elusive and, as yet, unrecorded species of ape known to the locals as the orang pendek or "short man."

After decades of more and more powerful fish-catching innovation, scientists are now developing ways for fisherman to catch just the amount, and type, of fish they need.Technological advancement on the high seas has advanced almost in lock step with the decline of healthy fisheries around the globe. Since the 1950s, fishery collapse has been predictably preceeded by new advances that allow fisherman to hoover up ever-increasing catches: floating freezer ships, 30-mile drift nets, and open season in international waters.But technology is also offering a glimmer of a second chance.

Sometime in the distant past our ancestors' brains grew sophisticated enough to ponder life's big questions. In this book, Dean Falk explains how the study of those ancient brains - or at least, the impressions they left in the skulls they occupied - may help to provide an answer to one of the biggest questions: where did we come from?Falk was a key member of the team that studied the brain impression of Homo floresiensis, or the "Hobbit", discovered in Indonesia in 2003. She is now central to an ongoing controversy over whether that brain belonged to a distant relation of our species - Falk's preferred conclusion - or a modern human with a developmental disorder.

An archaeologist who worked with the Elad association in Jerusalem's City of David claims that the association and the Antiquities Authority are carrying out excavations "without any commitment to scientific archaeological work."Dr. Eilat Mazar - a Hebrew University archaeologist who worked in close cooperation with Elad over past years, and who is considered one of the most productive researchers in Jerusalem and in the City of David area in particular - has castigated Elad for the excavation of a large subterranean pit, called "Jeremiah's Pit," at the entrance to the City of David visitors' center complex.

Movie industry computer graphics and the very latest digital marine technology have brought the world's oldest submerged city back to life in a BBC Two documentary due to be shown this Sunday (October 9) at 8 pm.Just a few metres under the sea, off the southern coast of Greece, lies Pavlopetri -- the oldest submerged city in the world. A team of archaeologists from The University of Nottingham, working with the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, has spent the last three years surveying the site which was first discovered in the late 1960's. This summer the city, which dates back over 5,000 years, became the first underwater city to be fully digitally mapped and recorded creating a highly detailed stone by stone plan in photo-realistic 3D: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pavlopetri/index.aspx.

New algorithm distinguishes contributors to the Old Testament with high accuracy, says TAU researchIn both Jewish and Christian traditions, Moses is considered the author of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Scholars have furnished evidence that multiple writers had a hand in composing the text of the Torah. Other books of the Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament are also thought to be composites. However, delineating these multiple sources has been a laborious task.

Global glaciation likely put a chill on life on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, but new research indicates that simple life in the form of photosynthetic algae could have survived in a narrow body of water with characteristics similar to today's Red Sea."Under those frigid conditions, there are not a lot of places where you would expect liquid water and light to occur in the same area, and you need both of those things for photosynthetic algae to survive," said Adam Campbell, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences.

A simple atomic nucleus could reveal properties associated with the mysterious phenomenon known as time reversal and lead to an explanation for one of the greatest mysteries of physics: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.The physics world was rocked recently by the news that a class of subatomic particles known as neutrinos may have broken the speed of light.Adding to the rash of new ideas, University of Arizona theoretical physicist Bira van Kolck recently proposed that experiments with another small particle called a deuteron could lead to an explanation for one of the most daunting puzzles physicists face: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.

Physicists have predicted that under the influence of sufficiently high electric fields, liquid droplets of certain materials will undergo solidification, forming crystallites at temperature and pressure conditions that correspond to liquid droplets at field-free conditions. This electric-field-induced phase transformation is termed electrocrystallization.The study, performed by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, appears online and is scheduled as a feature and cover article in the 42nd issue of Volume 115 of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

A new study of sediments laid down shortly after an asteroid plowed into the Gulf of Mexico 65.5 million years ago, an event that is linked to widespread global extinctions including the demise of big dinosaurs, suggests that lowly worms may have been the first fauna to show themselves following the global catastrophe.While the focus on the so-called K-T boundary extinction is often on the survival and proliferation of mammals, paleo-botanical studies show some of the earliest terrestrial ecosystems to emerge were dominated by low-diversity and opportunistic aquatic plants, said University of Colorado Boulder geological sciences Associate Professor Karen Chin. And while sediments laid down immediately following the impact event generally have relatively few animal fossils, new evidence from North Dakota shows networks of crisscrossing burrows less than three inches above the K-T boundary layer.

WHAT should a scientific society do when creationists want to participate in its conferences? This question faces many scientific organisations in the US. At meetings of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in 2009 and 2010, young-Earth creationists, who think Noah's flood was a historical event and the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, presented posters, gave talks and led field trips.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Three years on, not a single Wall Street banker has been prosecuted after a financial crisis rooted in rampant fraud brought the global economy to its knees. President Obama's Department of Justice has more dangerous miscreants to worry about: medical marijuana shop owners.The DoJ has launched an assault on medical pot dispensaries, vowing to shut down establishments licensed and regulated by state and local governments, in a reversal of an earlier policy, based on an Obama campaign promise to leave the shops alone as long as they followed state law.And while major corporations have managed to get their federal tax bills down to zero, the IRS has determined that pot clinics can't deduct salaries, rent, the cost of bud or other operating expenses on their tax returns. If a business can't deduct those expenses, its tax bill almost always winds up exceeding even its profits.

*WARNING - Adult Language within.*For most trees, fire is kind of a bad thing. Nothing burns better than a nice dry hunk of wood, and a tree is in no position to stop, drop and roll when you light a bonfire under it. The Australian eucalyptus tree takes advantage of this weakness in the same way as Schwarzenegger takes advantage of his enemies' vulnerability to bullets.Just like animals, plants compete with each other for space and territory, though most have only a limited ability to retaliate against some asshole fern setting up camp on their lawn. But when it comes to protecting their territory, eucalyptus trees have a scorched earth policy -- they not only are immune to forest fires, but also actively encourage them.You see, the eucalyptus itself is designed specifically to be the only tree standing after a fiery apocalypse -- they have stems hidden deep inside their trunks, ready to spring out once the smoke clears. So it basically spends its life throwing around gasoline, waiting for a spark

To feed the world's growing and more affluent population, global agriculture will have to double its food production by 2050. More farming, however, usually means more environmental harm as a result of clearing land, burning fossil fuels, consuming water for irrigation and spreading fertilizer. Agriculture already imposes a greater burden on Earth than almost any other human activity, so simply doubling current practices would ruin large areas of land as well as poisoning rivers and oceans.

Just two weeks after finding the Gairsoppa loaded with an estimated £155m worth of silver, marine salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration have found the Mantola which is believed to be carrying around 20 tonnes of silver, valued at around £12m.The discovery was made in the North Atlantic whilst the salvage company carried out recovery operations on the Gairsoppa wreck in international waters off the coast of Ireland.Odyssey Marine Exploration said its researchers used a proprietary shipwreck database to identify other potential targets within range of the original wreck, and came up with a search area for the Mantola.

A RUSSIAN region in Siberia has confidently proclaimed that its mountains are home to yetis after finding "indisputable proof" of the existence of the hairy beasts in an expedition.The local administration of the Kemerovo region in the south of Siberia said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains."During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the 'Snow Man'," the Kemerovo region administration said in a press release.

The Russian coal-mining region of Kemerovo said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains."During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the 'Snow Man'," the Kemerovo region administration said.The expedition was organised after Kemerovo's governor invited researchers from the United States, Canada, and several other countries to share their research and stories of encounters with the creature at a conference.

Breaking away from dental school dogma, more dentists are speaking out against fluoridation because fluoride chemicals, added to NYC's water supply intending to reduce tooth decay, are actually a money-wasting health risk, reports the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation (NYSCOF).Seven NYC Council Members sponsored legislation (1) and residents are petitioning Mayor Bloomberg to stop fluoridation, to preserve money and health. Join them: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-fluoridation-in-new-york-cityHydrofluosilicic acid, a lead- and arsenic-laced chemical (2) left-over from making phosphate fertilizer (3) is NYC's fluoride chemical of choice. Fluoridation cost NYC approximately $25 million in 2008.

Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have demonstrated for the first time that it's possible to cloak a singular event in time, creating what has been described as a "history editor." In a feat of Einstein-inspired physics, Moti Fridman and his colleagues sent a beam of light traveling down an optical fiber and through a pair of so-called "time lenses." Between these two lenses, the researchers were able to briefly create a small bubble, or gap, in the flow of light. During that fleetingly brief moment, lasting only the tiniest fraction of a second, the gap functioned like a temporal hole, concealing the fact that a brief burst of light ever occurred.

At least 14,000 years ago, artists took to Altamira cave in Spain with charcoal and red pigments, painting bison, deer and their own handprints on the rock walls and ceiling. This prehistoric art gallery is now closed to the public, but plans to reopen it have scientists raising the alarm."Altamira cave, although currently closed, is at real risk," a group of Spanish researchers wrote in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Science.The threat, according to the scientists, is that even a limited stream of visitors will spur bacterial and fungal growth on the cave walls, damaging the very paintings tourists long to see.

According to reports submitted to a UFO organization, strange lights were seen hovering near Phoenix, Ariz., on the evening of Sept. 30.One account entered into the Mutual UFO Network witness reporting database began, "I was at my friend's party when one of the children noticed some unusual green lights in the sky. At first I thought they must have been from a plane or helicopter, but they were moving too slowly and seemed to form a perfect triangle. My friend got her phone out and started to record them. As she started recording they seemed to pulsate a few times before returning to a triangle and then to just two green lights.

Earth was a dry, hot place immediately after it formed, with surface temperatures above 1,000 degrees; any water would have evaporated immediately. And yet today, 71% of our planet's surface is ocean. So where did all that water come from?One theory is that it came from comets, and that hypothesis gets more support in a new study published in the journal Nature.Scientists have found that the comet 103P/Hartley 2 has water with properties similar to the water on Earth. The comet is currently about 419 million miles from Earth. Scientists believe it originated in the Kuiper belt, which is near Pluto.

Scientists for the first time have derived thriving colonies of embryonic stem cells from human embryos created using cloning technology.In experiments documented in an article released today by the journal Nature, a team of scientists from the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory claim they created two lines of the cells through the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the less emotionally and politically charged term for cloning.

Chinese archaeologists say they've found evidence of agricultural activity in an ancient vanished city that was a pivotal stop along the famous Silk Road.Scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics said remote sensing procedures, field investigations and sample testing in the area showed there were once large tracts of farmland in Loulan, an important trading city that mysteriously disappeared in the third century A.D., China's official news agency Xinhua reported Sunday.

It was an archaeological cold case. Placed on the back burner, it remained unresolved for years.In 1977, the University of Toledo, under the direction of David M. Stothers, conducted excavations at what was called the "Strzesynski site" (33Wo50) on the Maumee River, just below and upriver of Fort Meigs State Memorial near Perrysburg, Ohio. Fort Meigs, a National Historic Register and Landmark site owned and administered by the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, is the largest reconstructed wooden fort in the United States, originally built during the War of 1812 by Major-General William Henry Harrison, commander of the U.S. Northwestern Army. Excavations of 33Wo50 revealed the structural remains and material culture of an early nineteenth-century log farmhouse.

Ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world's oldest temples may not have been strictly religious buildings after all, according to an article in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not the gods.

The devastating earthquake that struck Japan earlier this year was powerful enough to slightly alter the pull of gravity under the affected area, scientists have found.Anything that has mass has a gravity field that attracts objects toward it. The strength of this field depends on a body's mass. Since the Earth's mass is not spread out evenly, its gravity field is stronger in some places and weaker in others.The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki temblor in March was the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan and the fifth-most powerful quake ever recorded. To see how the temblor might have deformed the Earth there, scientists used the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to analyze the area's gravity field before and after the quake.

MEXICO CITY - Archaeologists found a round Aztec ceremonial platform studded with stone carvings of serpent heads at Mexico City's Templo Mayor ruin, raising hopes in the search for an emperor's tomb, authorities said Thursday.No Aztec ruler's tomb has ever been located and researchers have been on a five-year quest to find a royal tomb in the area of the Templo Mayor, a complex of two huge pyramids and numerous smaller structures that contained the ceremonial and spiritual heart of the pre-Hispanic Aztec empire.

Policy and science are at loggerheads about opening the world-famous Altamira Cave to the public.If the famous Paleolithic rock paintings in Altamira Cave could speak to the throngs of admiring tourists that passed before them during the visiting heydays of the 1960s and 1970s, they would have said "you're killing me". Scientists and managers of the World Heritage Site of Altamira Cave might agree with that. They are deeply concerned that recent calls to reopen the cave, closed to mass tourism since 1977, would lead only to the cave paintings' ultimate destruction.

There could be life on the planet Venus, US scientists have concluded in a report in the journal Astrobiology.The existence of life on the planet's oven-hot surface is unimaginable.But microbes could survive and reproduce, experts say, floating in the thick, cloudy atmosphere, protected by a sunscreen of sulphur compounds.Scientists have even submitted a proposal for a Nasa space mission to sample the clouds and attempt to return any presumed Venusians to Earth.

One reason optimists retain a positive outlook even in the face of evidence to the contrary has been discovered, say researchers.A study, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggests the brain is very good at processing good news about the future.However, in some people, anything negative is practically ignored - with them retaining a positive world view.

Recent cold winters that brought chaos to the UK and other places in northern Europe may have their roots in the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions.The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.A UK scientific team now shows in Nature Geoscience journal how these changes lead to warmer winters in some places and colder winters in others.The researchers emphasise there is no impact on global warming.

The link between extreme winter weather in North America and Europe - including the cold spells of the last three years - and the 11-year solar cycle is growing stronger.Last year, New Scientist reported that physicists suspected events in the stratosphere linked solar activity to extreme winters in the UK.Climate scientists at the UK Met Office have done a new analysis of fluctuations in the Sun's UV radiation, which reinforces that link and suggests a mechanism for how solar activity may affect seasonal weather. The team emphasise that their findings do not suggest a link to long-term global warming.

In a busy lab at Duke University, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis is merging brain science with engineering in a bid to create something fantastical: a full-body prosthetic device that would allow those immobilized by injury to walk again.On Wednesday, Nicolelis and an international group of collaborators declared that they had cleared a key hurdle on the path toward that goal, demonstrating they could bypass the body's complex network of nerve endings and supply the sensation of touch directly to the brains of monkeys.

Five footprints from human feet, calculated to be between 4,500 and 25,000 years old, were discovered in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua. Specialists said that the foot prints could belong to the first men who lived in this region that is today known as northern Mexico.These are the first human footprints that have been found in Chihuahua and once their age has been found out, they will be added to the few footprints from the first people that lived in the American continent that are preserved in Mexico, particularly in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila and in a ranch in Sonora.The footprints correspond to three adults and a child that probably lived in the caves that are located in the sierra, in the Valle de Ahuatos, eight kilometers from the town of Creel, in Chihuahua.

EVER felt a little incoherent? Or maybe you've been in two minds about something, or even in a bit of delicate state. Well, here's your excuse: perhaps you are in thrall to the strange rules of quantum mechanics.We tend to think that the interaction between quantum physics and biology stops with Schrödinger's cat. Not that Erwin Schrödinger intended his unfortunate feline - suspended thanks to quantum rules in a simultaneous state of being both dead and alive - to be anything more than a metaphor. Indeed, when he wrote his 1944 book What is Life?, he speculated that living organisms would do everything they could to block out the fuzziness of quantum physics.

An Illinois research team has succeeded in overcoming one major obstacle to a promising technology that simultaneously reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide and produces fuel.University of Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Paul Kenis and his research group joined forces with researchers at Dioxide Materials, a startup company, to produce a catalyst that improves artificial photosynthesis. The company, in the university Research Park, was founded by retired chemical engineering professor Richard Masel. The team reported their results in the journal Science.

In a painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998, astronomers have found visual evidence for two extrasolar planets that went undetected back then.Finding these hidden gems in the Hubble archive gives astronomers an invaluable time machine for comparing much earlier planet orbital motion data to more recent observations. It also demonstrates a novel approach for planet hunting in archival Hubble data.

As the ocean warms, it expands, and that thermal expansion is the prime contributor to changes in global sea levels, which in recent years have been rising by an average of about 3 mm a year. (Regionally and locally, changes may be greater or lower, affected not only by thermal expansion but factors ranging from local wind patterns to the mining of groundwater aquifers.) Even as the underlying trend clearly slopes upward, there are of course seasonal and annual variations. But, as the image above shows clearly, from mid-2010 to mid-2011, there was a sharp deviation of 6 mm - downward.

The relative of all living things, dubbed the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), was a sophisticated organism with a complex structure recognizable as a cell, according to a new paper in the journal Biology Direct.Prior theories have held that this great-grandparent of all living things was little more than a crude assemblage of molecular parts, a chemical soup out of which evolution gradually constructed more complex forms. This latest research suggests that was not the case, although LUCA was not a multi-celled creature.

The discovery of intelligent aliens would be mind-blowing in many respects, but it could present a special dilemma for the world's religions, theologians pondering interstellar travel concepts said.Christians, in particular, might take the news hardest, because the Christian belief system does not easily allow for other intelligent beings in the universe, Christian thinkers said at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss issues surrounding traveling to other stars.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence of human evolution and rapid genetic changes suggesting that, contrary to modern claims, technological and cultural advancements have not halted the evolutionary process in humans.The new study, led by geneticist Emmanuel Milot from the University of Quebec, looked at a group of women from the remote island town of Ile aux Coudres in Quebec, Canada. The team looked at the birth, death and marriage records kept by the Catholic Church in the town. They were specifically looking at the data from women who married between 1799 and 1940.

The face of a 14th-century former Archbishop of Canterbury has been revealed 630 years after he was beheaded by angry peasants.Resembling a character out of a science fiction movie, the medieval cleric Simon of Sudbury now stares at visitors in St. Gregory's Church at Sudbury in Suffolk, where the 3-D model is on permanent display alongside the original skull."There was a gasp when people saw what he looked like as his sculpture was unveiled. He was compared to characters such as Spock and Shrek, and some were surprised by the size of him. Indeed, he is quite a big guy," forensic artist Adrienne Barker from the University of Dundee told Discovery New.

ROBERT LAUGHLIN, a Nobel laureate for his work in quantum physics, starts his study of our energy futures with an absurd proposition - that it doesn't matter much whether we burn all our coal and oil or leave it underground.It's a cop-out, of course. If we burn all the coal, we would probably burn too. But for the purposes of Powering the Future, it means "we don't have to analyze contemporary energy struggles". Instead, he moves swiftly on to imagine what a world that does not burn carbon might look like.

It is no surprise that a proposed test of a climate engineering technology has raised hackles despite being environmentally benignThe world's first field test of a technology that might, one day, cool global temperatures has been put on hold for at least six months, amid disquiet.In October, the skies above Norfolk in the UK were scheduled to host a giant balloon attached to a 1-kilometre pipe that would harmlessly spray water droplets into the air. The work could be the first practical step in combating the effects of climate change.

Two new pits of civil servant and acrobat terracotta figures at the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shihuang (259 BC-210 BC) have opened to the public this month.The acrobat pit, coded K9901 and discovered in 1999, lies in the southeast of the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.The 11 unearthed terracotta figures, unarmoured with their torsos unclad, differ a lot from terracotta warriors. They might represent wrestlers, acrobats or dancers in the court of the Qin Dynasty, according to archaeologists.

The traditional view based on the Biblical account is that in the 10th century King David ruled over a United Monarchy consisting of Judea in the south and Israel in the north. By the 9th century it had split into two kingdoms, Israel that continued to exist until the Assyrian conquest in 721BCE and Judea that continued until the Babylonian destruction in 586BCE. In contrast the Minimalist school refuted the idea of a United Monarchy and saw David as a mythical figure. The kingdom of Israel established itself first, in the 9th century (low chronology) and a monarchy developed in Judea only after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel in the late 8th century. With the discovery of the House of David stele at Dan the Minimalists had to grudgingly concede that David could exist but was a minor chieftain who ruled over a limited area, not an extensive kingdom ruled from a centralized location. With the discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a site in the Elah valley, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of Hebrew University is convinced that he has uncovered a Judean town that is dated to the 10th Century B.C.E. To build fortifications like those at Khirbet Qeiyafa, requiring moving 200,000 tons of stone, could not have been a local initiative but would have required a centralized government.

Seahorses, the distinctive horse-headed small fish typically found in tropical seas and on coral reefs, are thought to be breeding in the River Thames in London, the Environment Agency announced yesterday.A juvenile short-snouted seahorse, Hippocampus hippocampus, was recently found in the river at Greenwich and may be evidence of a breeding colony, the agency said.Growing up to 15cm (six inches) long, the species is more commonly found in the waters of the Mediterranean and Canary Islands, although it is sometimes encountered around the British coasts, especially in the south and in the Thames Estuary.

As well as being able to tell whether people are being treated even handedly, babies just over a year old are capable of basic altruism, or trying to help others even at their own expense.Being able to sense that a situation is unequal made babies more willing to share their favourite toys, a new study found, suggesting that fairness and altruism are linked.Previous research had shown that two-year-olds could help others and that at about six or seven children have a sense of fairness, but a new experiment indicated that the traits may develop even earlier.

Scientists are investigating a possible link between tiny particles of pollution found in diesel fumes and the global collapse of honey bee colonies.Professor Guy Poppy, an ecologist, Dr Tracey Newman, a neuroscientist, and their team from the University of Southampton, believe that minuscule particles, or 'nanoparticles', emitted from diesel engines could be affecting bees' brains and damaging their inbuilt 'sat-navs'. They believe this may stop worker bees finding their way back to the hive.

A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in Titanium ores. Not only is titanium a valuable element, it is key to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the Moon's interior.Mark Robinson and Brett Denevi is presenting the results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission at the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The rock is an integral part of the "Worldwide Peace Project," an artwork on display in the German capital. But an indigenous group from Venezuela says the holy boulder was stolen from them and are demanding its return. With Hugo Chavez backing their plea, the issue has caused friction between Caracas and Berlin.In central Berlin, right behind the Brandenburg Gate, lies a red sandstone boulder. It weighs 35 metric tons (77,000 pounds), looks like a stranded whale and comes out of Venezuela's Canaima National Park. It was brought to Berlin over a decade ago by 78-year-old German artist Wolfgang Kraker von Schwarzenfeld.

YouTube and Lenovo are partnering with Space Adventures, NASA, and various space agencies to launch YouTube Space Lab, a worldwide competition that challenges teenagers to create a space experiment. The two winning projects will be performed in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and broadcast on YouTube.The contest is open to students ages 14-18 from all over the world. Competition will be divided among two age groups: 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old. Projects will be judged by a panel of space experts including scientists, professors, and astronauts such as NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations William Gerstenmaier and all-around genius Stephen Hawking.

Ever since the last NASA space shuttle mission touched down in Florida on July 21, there has been a spirited debate in articles and blogs across the Internet over the future of humans in space.Congress has directed NASA to build a super-rocket with the brawny power to hurtle astronauts out of Earth orbit and onto interplanetary destinations. The largely vague justifications for "boldly going" there emphasize the uniquely American notion of conquering the frontier, "living in space," and planetary colonization as our manifest destiny.But I'd like to offer a goal that is more tangible and far overarching. On many different levels, space pioneers could focus on answering, arguably, the most profound question every asked by humans: are we alone in the universe?

NASA-themed corn mazes around the country are paying homage to the organization's 50th anniversary of human space flight by creating seven so-called "space farms.""When the plans were explained to NASA, the agency was happy to contribute design themes and recommendations for each region, as well as education and outreach materials so that the public can learn more about NASA," NASA said on its Web site.The corn mazes are in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Lehi, Utah, Lathrop, California, Brookshire, Texas, Schaghticoke, New York, The Rock, Georgia, and Gretna, Nebraska. They are open to the public and will have games and activities related to space.

Neutrinos that go beyond light speed? Not so fast, say two theoretical physicists.In a terse, peremptory-sounding paper posted online on September 29, Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow of Boston University calculate that any neutrinos traveling faster than light would radiate energy away, leaving a wake of slower particles analogous to the sonic boom of a supersonic fighter jet. Their findings cast doubt on the veracity of measurements recently announced at CERN (and posted online here) that clocked neutrinos going a sliver faster than light.

A spacecraft sent to the least explored rocky planet in the solar system is providing surprising new information that may rewrite what scientists believe about the growth of planets.Mercury, the tiny planet closest to the sun, has a lopsided magnetic field, much more sulfur than expected and strange "hollows" across its surface that may hint at present-day geologic activity, according to data gleaned by the Messenger spacecraft.

The US military's unmanned Predator and Reaper drones are continuing to fly remote missions overseas despite a computer virus that has infected their US-based cockpits.Government officials are still investigating whether the virus is benign, and how it managed to infect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where US military pilots remotely fly the planes on their missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."Something is going on, but it has not had any impact on the missions overseas," said a source, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

AMSTELVEEN, The Netherland - A Formula One tycoon is linking up with KLM, the Dutch airline, to develop spacecraft that could bring every city on Earth within two hours' travel time.A British passenger was the first to buy a $93,000 ticket for a ride on an early version of the craft, providing suborbital flights for space tourists.

A Pennsylvania-based team's electric-powered plane flew a 200-mile course to win a $1.35 million prize from NASA.Team Pipistrel-USA.com won the CAFE Green Flight Challenge and the largest award ever given by the space agency after its Taurus G4 electric airplane flew a course that began and ended at Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif., in less than two hours using just a half-gallon of gas for each person aboard."Two years ago, the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 miles per hour in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction," Jack Langelaan, team leader of Team Pipistrel-USA.com, said in today's award announcement. "Now we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.

The development of behavioural complexity and intricate judgment were once only thought to be characteristics possessed by modern humans. However, the archaeological record emphasises distinctive bone structure which makes Neanderthals anatomically adept to climatic hardship. Many bone features are also portrayed, which assists in vigorous movements and in occupying cold, harsh environments.

A team of Russian and American scientists will set off on an expedition this week to try to solve the mystery of the Abominable Snowman.It follows a rise in Yeti sightings in the Kemerovo region, 3,000 miles (4828km) east of Moscow.Jonathan Downes, the director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, which is dedicated to the study of unknown animals, talked about the mystical creature on Radio 5 live Breakfast.

Europe is to lead the most ambitious space mission ever undertaken to study the behaviour of the Sun.Known as Solar Orbiter, the probe will have to operate a mere 42 million km from our star - closer than any spacecraft to date.The mission proposal was formally adopted by European Space Agency (Esa) member states on Tuesday.Solar Orbiter is expected to launch in 2017 and will cost close to a billion euros.

After nearly seven months of flight, the U.S. Air Force's latest X-37 robotic space plane is nearing a milestone in its secret mission in Earth orbit as it chalks up mileage and operational experience.As of last week, the reusable X-37B space plane had been in orbit for more than 206 days, two months shy of its 270-day mission design lifetime. The spacecraft, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, launched on its clandestine mission on March 5 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.The space plane is the second X-37B spacecraft built for the Air Force by Boeing's Phantom Works and carries the name Orbital Test Vehicle 2, or OTV-2.

NASA's Kepler space telescope is finding lots and lots of extrasolar planets. But how many might support intelligent life? And, is there a "sweet spot" in the galaxy where SETI astronomers should aim their telescopes?I'd say we have already stumbled across that sweet spot three decades ago, but more on that later.First, we need to understand what are the prerequisites for the evolution of life beyond microbes. Because we only have one example -- Earth -- extrapolations are dicey. For example, if completely water-covered worlds are more common than estimated, chances for advanced surface life go down. What's more, only surface dwellers could develop technological civilizations.

Rice University physicists have created a tiny "electron superhighway" that could one day be useful for building a quantum computer, a new type of computer that will use quantum particles in place of the digital transistors found in today's microchips.In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Rice physicists Rui-Rui Du and Ivan Knez describe a new method for making a tiny device called a "quantum spin Hall topological insulator." The device, which acts as an electron superhighway, is one of the building blocks needed to create quantum particles that store and manipulate data.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Want to find out how to Hunt the Higgs Boson using your phone? Ever wondered how the Large Hadron Collider experiments work, and what the collisions look like?Scientists at the world's biggest scientific experiment - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)at CERN, Geneva - are trying to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the Universe, the origin of mass, the structure of space and time, and the conditions of the early universe. For those of us not lucky enough to have the world's highest energy particle smasher in our own back gardens, we can still get close to the action using an exciting new smartphone App.The new App, called 'LHSee', makes the LHC accessible to anybody with a smartphone or tablet PC running the Google Android operating system.

A miniature airborne drone has helped archaeologists capture images for creating a 3-D model of an ancient burial mound in Russia, scientists say.Archaeological sites are often in remote and rugged areas. As such, it can be hard to reach and map them with the limited budgets archaeologists typically have. Scientists are now using drones to extend their view into these hard-to-reach spots."There are a lot possibilities with this method," said researcher Marijn Hendrickx, a geographer at the University of Ghent in Belgium. The machine tested in a remote area in Russia called Tuekta was a four-propeller "quadrocopter": the battery-powered Microdrone md4-200.

Not long after Neptune completed its first orbit around the sun since its discovery in 1846, scientists have managed to calculate the exact length of one day on the distant gas giant planet.Unlike their rocky counterparts, gas giants have long challenged astronomers when it comes to calculating their rotation.Mercury, Venus, and Mars are essentially solid spinning rock, but huge gas giants move more like spinning liquids, sloshing and swirling around a small rocky core. While features on rocky, terrestrial planets are literally etched in stone, outer planets have features that appear to dance on top of the constantly moving clouds.

The architects at Herzog & de Meuron have unveiled their new vision for the Paris skyline: a blade-like skyscraper designed to play with shadows.Fresh off its well-received design for the Olympic "Bird's Nest" stadium in Beijing, the architecture firm has mocked up another striking building. The front looks like a glass pyramid shining over southern Paris. But from the side, the glittering building is thin, like a tall icicle pointing toward the sky. (Check out the two artist renderings above.)Beyond its aesthetic presence, the two-faced tower has a bit of a gimmick. The architects claim that through carefully design and positioning, the skyscraper "does not cast shadows on adjacent buildings."

Ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world's oldest temples may not have been strictly religious buildings after all, according to an article in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not the gods.The buildings at Göbekli, a hilltop just outside of the Turkish city of Urfa, were found in 1995 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues from the Þanlýurfa Museum in Turkey. The oldest of the structures at the site are immense buildings with large stone pillars, many of which feature carvings of snakes, scorpions, foxes, and other animals.

On October 8th, Earth will pass through a network of dusty filaments shed by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Forecasters expect the encounter to produce anywhere from a few dozen to a thousand meteors per hour visible mainly over Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The meteors will stream from the northern constellation Draco--hence their name, the "Draconids."Peak rates should occur between 1600 UT and 2200 UT (noon - 6 pm EDT) as Earth grazes a series of filaments nearly intersecting our planet's orbit. Analysts at the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office prepared this plot showing how the meteor rate is likely to vary.

Scientists have discovered that Venus has an ozone layer.The thin layer, which is hundred of times less dense than the Earth's, was discovered by the European Space Agency's Venus Express craft, researchers report in the journal Icarus.Until now, ozone layers have only been detected in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.The find could help astronomers refine their hunt for life on other planets.The European spacecraft spied the ozone layer when focusing on stars through Venus' atmosphere.

A team of astronomers has spotted gamma ray emissions coming from the Crab Pulsar far higher than theoretical pulsar models can explain.The inexplicably powerful gamma rays challenge notions of how powerful electromagnetic ways are formed.The emissions came from the heart of the Crab Nebula, where an extreme object called a pulsar resides. Scientists found emissions at more than 100 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) - 100 billion times more energetic than visible light, says a report published in the journal Science.

The birds successfully selected containers containing the highest quantity of food via numbers marked on the lid in a series of experiments conducted by Japanese scientists.The findings suggest that crows possess the same numerical cognition ability as humans, according to Shoei Sugita, professor of animal morphology at Utsunomiya University.Eight jungle crows took part in the experiments, during which two containers marked with "two" and "five" numerical symbols on the lid were placed in a cage.

This afternoon, NASA scientists announced the findings of their NEOWISE Space Infrared Survey of near-Earth asteroids. The good news: They found 40 percent fewer medium-sized ones than were previously believed to exist, meaning that perhaps there aren't as many potentially dangerous rocks passing near the planet as scientists once believed. The bad news: Even so, tens of thousands are left to be discovered.

A human skull from the Herero and ethnic Nama people is displayed during a ceremony in the auditorium of Berlin's Charite hospital September 30, 2011. The hospital is returning 20 human skulls to Namibia, which were taken from victims of the Herero and Nama tribes, who died at the hands of German colonial forces during the resistance war in Namibia between 1904 and 190. The Namibian skulls were were sent to Berlin, a hub at the outset of the 20th century for anthropological research, for racial analysis, according to Charitie's research. Many skulls are still stored at the Medical History Museum at the teaching hospital in Berlin.

Tucked away in a nondescript office park in northern Kentucky, Noah's followers are rebuilding his ark.The biblical wooden ship built to weather a worldwide flood was 500 feet long and about 80 feet high, according to Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry devoted to a literal telling of the Old Testament.This modern ark, to be nestled on a plot of 800 acres of rolling Kentucky farmland, isn't designed to rescue the world's creatures from a coming deluge. It's to tell the world that the Bible's legendary flood story was not a fable, but a part of human history.

Volcanologists from the University of Leicester have uncovered one of the world's best-preserved accessible examples of a monstrous landslide that followed a huge volcanic eruption on the Canarian island of Tenerife.Seven hundred and thirty-three thousand years ago, the southeast slopes of Tenerife collapsed into the sea, during the volcanic eruption. The onshore remains of this landslide have just been discovered amid the canyons and ravines of Tenerife's desert landscape by volcanologists Pablo Dávila-Harris and Mike Branney of the University of Leicester's Department of Geology.

London (CNN) -- We may not immediately equate the activities of archaeologists to trash sifting. Or imagine that the glass-encased artifacts in museums might be one-time refuse. But quite often, this is exactly the case.Studying ancient trash from around the world gives archaeologists and historians the chance to understand the habits that defined people's daily lives, said Dr. Richard Meadow, Director of the Peabody Museum's Zooarchaeology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University.It may not be glamorous but, he said, "much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash, if trash is defined as the products of human consumption. Trash is a proxy for human behavior.

It was one of those moments you live for as a scientist. One day you think you know what's going on. The next the world has been turned upside down.Today the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to scientists who discovered that the universe was accelerating. Is that worth a Nobel Prize? Yup. Here is why.As I was coming up as a graduate student, we were taught that the fate of the post-big bang universe had just a few possibilities. One was that the gravity from all the stuff in the cosmos would slow everything down enough to eventually halt the expansion and lead, one day, to a collapse and a "big crunch." In the other possibilities, gravity played a role decelerating the universe but not enough to stop expansion which would continue, essentially, forever.