Newsdesk Archive
A powerful telescope affording a view of the universe unmatched by most ground-based observatories gazed onto distant galaxies for the first time Monday from deep in Chile's Atacama desert.The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a joint project between Canada, Chile, the European Union, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, officially opened for astronomers after a decade of planning and construction.The world's biggest astronomy project, ALMA is described as the most powerful millimeter/submillimeter-wavelength telescope ever and the most complex ground-based observatory.
The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) -- even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they're carried out. The new law, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the CSA, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication."Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country's drug laws. "The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you're there wouldn't be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime.
The Joe Rogan Experience with Graham Hancock & Duncan Trussell, podast #142Go directly to the YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWxXphYRos, or watch the embedded video below.See the Official Graham Hancock YouTube channel for more videos of Graham, and relating to his work: http://www.youtube.com/user/GrahamHancockDotCom
Organic farmers have a wealth of alternatives to synthetic insecticides--biological pest control, row covers, and even natural insecticides. A company called AgriSolar has a different alternative: a solar-powered system that attracts, disorients, and ultimately kills insects.The system is incredibly effective, if AgriSolar is to be believed. The company claims that it can kill 85% to 90% of all harmful insects on an organic farm. The secret is AgriSolar's lightbulb, which "is designed with certain color spectrum that attracts significantly more bugs," according to CFO Arnold Tinter. Here's how the system works: Solar panels power up the lightbulb, which turns on at dusk when insects start coming out. The insects are attracted to the bulb (from a 20-acre radius), become disoriented, and then eventually fall into a water-filled collection bin.
A new species of enormous crocodile, measured at 20 feet long, has been discovered by University of Florida researchers in a Colombia coal mine, the Gainsville Sun reports.The excavations at the site were led by Jonathan Bloch, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History; and Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.Alex Hastings, a University of Florida Ph.D. student in the department of geological sciences, collected the type-specimen for the species. This fossil set will be used as a comparison tool for future finds.
PARIS: Scientists on Sunday said they had gained insights into a remarkable bacterium that lives without oxygen and transforms ammonium, the ingredient of urine, into hydrazine, a rocket fuel. So-called anammox - for anaerobic ammonium oxidation - germs caused a sensation when they were first identified in the 1990s, but uncovering their secrets is taking time.
Instead of Neanderthals being dim-witted hunters who only dined on big game, new findings suggest they had more balanced diets, with broad menus that may have included birds, fish and plants.Neanderthals are currently our closest known extinct relatives, near enough to modern humans to interbreed, with Neanderthal DNA making up 1 percent to 4 percent of modern Eurasian genomes. A host of recent findings suggest they were not only close genetically, but may have shared many other traits with us, such as creating art.Still, the term "Neanderthal" has long been synonymous with "stupid".
A small asteroid zipped by Earth well inside the orbit of the moon on Friday, marking the second known space-rock encounter for our planet over the past week. Neither of the two asteroids posed any threat to Earth, scientists say."Small asteroid 2011 SM173 just passed Earth at a safe distance of 180,000 miles (290,000 km or .8 lunar distance)," scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program announced in a Twitter post.Asteroid 2011 SM173 was discovered on Thursday by astronomers and is about 56 feet (17 meters) wide, making it about the size of a house.
A University of Colorado Boulder-led team excavating a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has unexpectedly hit an ancient white road that appears to lead to and from the town, which was frozen in time by a blanket of ash.
Monkeys have been taught to move the arms of a computer game character using power of thought alone, in a scientific breakthrough that could help paralysed patients. Two rhesus monkeys learned to operate a virtual arm with their brain power and were able to differentiate between the textures of virtual objects they were "feeling".It is hoped this could pave the way for the development of a ''robotic exoskeleton'' to be worn by severely paralysed people, helping them move and experience the world around them using brainwaves.
Chivalry is not dead - if you are a cricket, that is.Scientists have found that some of the male insects will apparently put the lives of their mating partners ahead of their own.When a mated pair is out together, a male will allow a female priority access to the safety of a burrow, even though it means a dramatic increase in his own risk of being eaten, according to infrared video observations of a wild population of field crickets.
Scientists have discovered a hole five times the size of Germany in the ozone layer above the Arctic, allowing harmful ultraviolet radiation to hit northern Canada, Europe and Russia this spring.The 2 million square kilometre Arctic hole is similar to the hole over the Antarctic, researchers write in the journal Nature, released yesterday.
Plant and animal species that have remained almost unchanged for the past few million years live in the forests, the deserts, the seas and even our own backyards.As our living ancestors, they give us a view of lost worlds. And because they preserve ancient pieces of genetic code, living relics should be a priority for conservation, says Piotr Naskrecki.
Archaeologists in Mexico City have unearthed a ceremonial platform which they hope will aide in the search of an emperors' tomb. The platform studded with stone carvings of serpent heads is located in the City's Templo Mayor ruin.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.Mexico's National Institute of History and Anthropology said the stone platform is about 15 yards (meters) in diameter and probably built around A.D. 1469.
The astronauts on the International Space Station have the best seats in the house, and here's 12 photos to prove it.The fate of the ISS has been tumultuous at best since a Russian Soyuz resupply vehicle crashed, though another attempt will be made in November, whereby Expedition 29 will bring home the three astronauts currently aboard, and deliver a fresh trio to the station. If that doesn't work out? NASA may have to abandon the ISS temporarily or altogether.Let's not think about that just yet, though. Let's just look at these amazing, calming pictures of our humble spaceship Earth.
A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month.Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. What they were witnessing was an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054AD continues to fascinate astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected. Researchers have detected pulses of gamma rays with energies exceeding 100 billion electron-volts - a million times more energetic than medical X-rays and 100 billion times more than visible light.
At 7 p.m. local time on an evening in August some 1,400 years ago, life stopped short in the Maya village of Ceren as the Loma Caldera volcano erupted less than a third of a mile away. Now, while excavating the town, researchers have discovered a unique road, which was likely how the villagers managed to flee the billowing plume of volcanic ash as it rolled through the town.The road is the only known sacbe made of ash; others are made with a stone-filled outer covering that holds them together. These sacbe, or "white ways," are raised paved roads built by the Maya and usually used to connect temples, plazas and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities; some longer roads are also known to connect cities.
Archaeologists are still protesting at the front entrances of archaeological sites, and archaeological work is at a stalemate despite the appointment of a new head to hold Egypt's antiquities portfolio.Early this week Prime Minister Essam Sharaf appointed Mustafa Amin as the new secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) following the resignation of Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, who had held the post of head of Egypt's antiquities office for less than six weeks.Although Sharaf had charged Abdel-Fattah with supervising the SCA's archaeological and administrative work -- for which he was given ministerial authority -- Abdel-Fattah insisted on resigning as protesters continued their sit-in and blocked the entrance of the SCA's Abbasiya building, switched off the electricity and prevented employees from entering their offices. They also drove away the security guards and locked the building's iron gate.
The fight to eradicate the gruesome and debilitating "guinea worm" disease, making it only the second in the world to be wiped out after smallpox, is on the verge of success after it secured £20m funding from the Government.Guinea worm afflicted 3.5 million people across 21 countries in 1986, but thanks to a campaign launched that year by former US President, Jimmy Carter, it is now confined to South Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, afflicting only 1,797 people last year.
Representing one of the most agriculturally bio-diverse nations in the world, India has become a primary target for biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Cargill to spread their genetically-modified (GM) crops into new markets. However, a recent France 24 report explains that the Indian government has decided to take an offensive approach against this attempted agricultural takeover by suing Monsanto for "biopiracy," accusing the company of stealing India's indigenous plants in order to re-engineer them into patented varieties.Brinjal, also known in Western nations as eggplant, is a native Indian crop for which there are roughly 2,500 different unique varieties. Millions of Indian farmers grow brinjal, which is used in a variety of Indian food dishes, and the country grows more than a quarter of the world's overall supply of the vegetable.
Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than prior comets seem to have, researchers say.A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the quantity of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water.The comet had just half the amount of deuterium seen in comets.The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of the Earth's water could have initially came from cometary impacts.Just a few million years after its formation, the early Earth was rocky and dry; something must have brought the water that covers most of the planet today.
Scientists at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory have reprogrammed an adult human egg cell to an embryonic state using cloning technology and created a self-reproducing line of embryonic stem cells from the developing embryo. In so doing, they have managed a feat that has at times been thought impossible, then inevitable, then completed, then incomplete and unfeasible. Their work is published today in Nature.
When it comes to climate change denial, not all human beings are created equal. As a recent study shows, conservative white males are less likely to believe in climate change."It's not surprising," said Aaron McCright, sociology professor at Michigan State University, who is a white male himself. But anecdotal evidence is not scientific, he said. "You really don't know what's going on until you crunch the numbers and find out."Besides the trend amongst skeptics, the study also found that conservative white men who self-report a high understanding of global warming -- dubbed "confident" conservative males -- are even more likely to express climate change denial.
When it comes to harvesting wind energy more efficiently, you don't need to reinvent the wheel -- you just need to stick it in the ocean.Swedish company Ehrnberg Solutions AB has developed the SeaTwirl, a new take on wind turbine technology. The system's unique design allows wind energy to be stored kinetically until it is needed, unlike many traditional turbines which require energy to be immediately fed into the grid. SeaTwirl's flywheel design also allows the system to generate energy even after the wind has died down.
Analysis of data collected by a NASA infrared space telescope shows there are fewer near-Earth asteroids than previously believed, scientists said Thursday.But the majority of the nearly 20,000 bodies between 330 and 3,300 feet wide have not yet been detected and it's not yet clear whether a reduced population also means a reduced number of mid-size asteroids in orbits that could pose a threat to Earth."We find that there are fewer near-Earth asteroids out there," said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator with NASA's NEOWISE program. "However, it's very important to note that fewer does not mean none. And there are still tens of thousands that are out there that we need to find.
LONDON: A graduate student at Princeton University, who got inspired from the work of an Indian-origin scientist, has created a flying carpet.The miniature magic carpet made of plastic has taken flight in a laboratory at the University, the BBC reported.The 10cm sheet of smart transparency is driven by "ripple power"; waves of electrical current driving thin pockets of air from front to rear underneath.
It doesn't look like the leaves changing colors and piling up on the lawn, but a nature-inspired "artificial leaf" technology has taken a notable step toward the goal of producing storable and clean energy to power everything from factories to tablet computers.The leaf is a silicon solar cell coated with catalytic materials on its side that, when placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, splits the H2O into bubbles of oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can be stored and used as an energy source, for example to power a fuel cell.
Warp drives. Artificial gravity. Terraforming planets. These concepts might sound as though they're ripped from the pages of science fiction, but they're the topic of serious scientific presentations at a symposium this weekend sponsored by the Pentagon's think tank.Called the 100-Year Starship Symposium, the public event runs Friday through Sunday in Orlando, Fla. For three days, scientists from universities, NASA centers and private institutions will discuss far-out ideas for building a spaceship to visit another star.Humans have sent probes to planets and asteroids throughout our solar system, and one should leave the solar system next year (though it took the craft, Voyager 1, more than 30 years to get that far). But we've never come close to propelling a human-made object as far as another star.
It's long been rumored that an ancient, isolated people in what's now northern Mexico ate their own kind, in the hopes that they'd be able to eat corn later.Now an analysis of more than three dozen bones bearing evidence of boiling and defleshing confirms that the Xiximes people were in fact cannibals, archaeologists say.The Xiximes believed that ingesting the bodies and souls of their enemies and using the cleaned bones in rituals would guarantee the fertility of the grain harvest, according to historical accounts by Jesuit missionaries.The newfound bones prove that cannibalism, "was a crucial aspect of their worldview, their identity," said José Luis Punzo, an archaeologist behind the new research.
New analysis of data sent back by the SPICAM spectrometer on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has revealed for the first time that the planet's atmosphere is supersaturated with water vapour. This surprising discovery has major implications for understanding the Martian water cycle and the historical evolution of the atmosphere.Although numerous spacecraft have visited Mars over the past half a century, very few direct measurements of the vertical structure of the planet's atmosphere have been made. Since most of the spacecraft instruments have looked down at the surface, it has only been possible to infer the horizontal distribution of gases in the atmosphere, leaving the question of how water vapour is being mixed into the atmosphere almost unexplored.
A team of researchers said Monday they have found crows can recognize symbols representing different quantities, successfully selecting containers holding hidden food items in experiments when given a choice based only on symbols.The research by Shoei Sugita, professor of animal morphology at Utsunomiya University, and others has confirmed for the first time in the world crows can distinguish quantities of items, suggesting the birds have the same numerical cognition ability as human beings.
While many are taking to the oceans and trying to find the best ways to harness offshore wind and provide clean energy from renewable sources, the basic design of any wind turbine is that of a windmill. That is until now. The new design in the works is by Ehrnberg Solutions AB, which is owned and operated by Daniel Ehrnberg. Ehrnberg is also the inventor behind this newly designed turbine called SeaTwirl.
Werner Herzog explores ancient cave paintings in all their 3D cinematic glory.IT'S not often you hear veteran German director Werner Herzog - Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979); Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972); Fitzcarraldo (1982) - speak like an excited schoolgirl. But when he saw the prehistoric drawings in the remote Chauvet caves of Southern France, he bubbled.''It's awesome, absolutely awesome,'' he says. ''This art, 32,000 years old, bursts onto the scene, and not in primitive squibblings - it's fully accomplished. It is truly, totally amazing and mind-boggling. And the passage of time is mind-boggling. Through radio carbon dating we know somebody started a painting and somebody completes it 5000 years later.''
(Nanowerk News) 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 ("Evidence for Helical Edge Modes in Inverted InAs/GaSb Quantum Wells"), 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.
The annual Draconid meteor shower will hit its peak Saturday (Oct. 8), but skywatchers may not get much of a light show.While the normally tame Draconid meteor shower will be exceptionally active this year, the fireworks should be drowned out by sunlight in North America and a bright moon in Europe and Asia, experts say. So stargazers under dark skies may still want to look up on Saturday, but they shouldn't let their hopes get too high."It's not going to be that dramatic," said Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "People in North America aren't going to see anything."
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has completed a gentle spiral into its new science orbit for an even closer view of the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn began sending science data on Sept. 29 from this new orbit, known as the high altitude mapping orbit (HAMO).In this orbit, the average distance from the spacecraft to the Vesta surface is 420 miles (680 kilometers), which is four times closer than the previous survey orbit. The spacecraft will operate in the same basic manner as it did in the survey orbit. When Dawn is over Vesta's dayside, it will point its science instruments to the giant asteroid and acquire data, and when the spacecraft flies over the nightside, it will beam that data back to Earth.
The return of high-rise living, homes built as part of working film sets, new public open spaces in reclaimed retail malls and a dramatic re-evaluation of the relative merits of slums and suburbia. These are just some of the challenging concepts now being canvassed among those developing new ideas about the future of our urban landscape.It is a landscape where designers and planners take the advantages of modern technology as a given, where a city's "smartness" is expected and where sustainability is built into the system, leaving only one big question: what will our future look like?And it is not, according to most thinkers, a science fiction fantasy where everyone behaves like robots in eco-friendly but featureless buildings, despite the move towards these developments.
Just who built large rock walls near Jindabyne is unknown, yet other rock structures hint at an advanced indigenous understanding of astronomy, writes Deborah Smith.At the next summer solstice in December, Angel John Gallard will look to the skies from a special place - a wall made from large stones that runs down a steep slope, exactly east-west, into Lake Jindabyne. The former national park ranger first came across the carefully built structure in bushland more than 30 years ago, but his renewed interest was inspired by research showing indigenous Australians had sophisticated knowledge of the movements of the sun, moon and stars.Astronomers have recently shown that Wurdi Youang - a semi-circular Aboriginal stone arrangement in Victoria that is aligned east-west - marks out where the sun sets on the winter and summer solstices.
(AP) It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper's metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops them for only a day, and then a fresh horde shows up, bringing babies. Stand in the yard, and in seconds ants cover your shoes.It's an extreme example of what can happen when the ants -- which also can disable huge industrial plants -- go unchecked. Controlling them can cost thousands of dollars. But the story is real, told by someone who's been studying ants for a decade.
A NASA supercomputer has provided the most realistic simulation of the evolving universe that scientists have produced to date, giving researchers clues to how the cosmos continues to change and grow, according to the space agency.NASA's Pleiades supercomputer, which is located at the NASA Ames Research Center, used simulation code called Bolshoi to show the distribution of dark matter across a span of one billion light years. Dark matter--a substance with much gravity that doesn't interact with normal matter and cannot be directly observed--comprises about 25% of the universe, and is the subject of much of NASA's work to study the origins and evolution of the universe.
Stonehenge holds many mysteries, but although there are plenty of competing theories about its purpose, experts agree that the site chosen for such a monumental construction project must have held a very special significance for our ancestors. Now evidence is emerging that the Stonehenge area could have been an important centre for prehistoric people several thousand years before the giant stone circle was actually built.The revelation emerged from a small-scale excavation undertaken by Open University archaeology students, which has uncovered a huge cache of artefacts belonging to hunter-gatherers from the middle of the Stone Age, including the remains of a gargantuan Mesolithic-era feast, which took place close to Stonehenge.
The dozen scratchings were uncovered during a three-week excavation at Nevern in Pembrokeshire. Archaeologists think the stars and other designs were made by a serf, labourer or soldier some time between 1170 and 1190 when the castle was built. They say they also give an insight into the beliefs of medieval working men.Dr Chris Caple of the University of Durham led the archaeological dig at the site and said the slates were from a late 12th century cut-stone entranceway. "They were found in only one place in the castle and were probably intended to ward off evil," he explained."In the late 12th century, Nevern would have been an impressive looking castle and entrance, especially from the south side, and it was clearly visible to all passing along the road between St David's and Cardigan.
A cache of cooked and and carved human bones has been discovered in Mexico - backing up stories that cannibalism was practised by an ancient tribe. The bones were found in El Salto, Durango State, northern Mexico, in a cave hamlet built into a cliff.The site - called Cueva del Maguey - dates back to around 1425 and was formerly home to the Xiximes tribe. The archaeological trove included more than three dozen human bones which showed evidence of having been defleshed, cooked and then ritualistically marked with stone blades.Rumours of cannibalism among the 5,000-strong Xiximes have long existed due to the historical accounts of Jesuit missionaries, which labelled the tribe 'the wildest and most barbarian people of the New World'.
Fifty-four years ago today (Oct. 4), the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, and humanity's race into space began. Now a weeklong international space celebration marks that date and highlights all the good that has come from reaching for the stars.The 12th annual World Space Week kicks off today, with organizations around the globe holding events to acknowledge the contributions of space science and technology to life on Earth. This year's festivities will focus on the theme "50 Years of Human Spaceflight," a nod to cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's historic orbital flight of April 12, 1961.Activities this year include a Czech student's flight on a zero-gravity plane, a workshop about space technology applications in Vietnam and a public talk by European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel in Melbourne, Australia.
A robotic vision system and a new type of drill that can be used in low gravity were put through their paces in the trials at El Teide National Park in Tenerife by scientists and engineers working on the project.They hope the technology will be included in a mission to send a rover to Mars where it will search for signs of life on the Red Planet.Using stereo cameras and a three dimensional terrain reconstruction system, the PRoVisG system will allows the rover to identify obstacles, plan a route and navigate itself around the alien environment.
Even after people have gone to bed for the night their brains can carry on processing information according to the study by researchers at Michigan State University in the US.The findings are highlighted in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General."We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems," said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project.
Johns Hopkins scientists investigating chemical modifications across the genomes of adult mice have discovered that DNA modifications in non-dividing brain cells, thought to be inherently stable, instead underwent large-scale dynamic changes as a result of stimulated brain activity. Their report, in the October issue of Nature Neuroscience, has major implications for treating psychiatric diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and for better understanding learning, memory and mood regulation.Specifically, the researchers, who include a husband-and-wife team, found evidence of an epigenetic change called demethylation -- the loss of a methyl group from specific locations -- in the non-dividing brain cells' DNA, challenging the scientific dogma that even if the DNA in non-dividing adult neurons changes on occasion from methylated to demethylated state, it does so very infrequently.
Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art, say archaeologists.Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.A Cambridge University conference on the archaeology of childhood on Friday reveals a tantalising glimpse into life for children in the palaeolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago.
Many individuals who took a single dose of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in what the drug culture calls "magic mushrooms" -- showed alterations in personality characteristics, largely for the better, that persisted for more than a year, a prospective scientific study showed.Participants who reported "mystical experiences" during the hallucinogen sessions tended to show increases in the personality dimension known as openness, according to Katherine A. MacLean, PhD, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University.They found no adverse effects from the drug exposure.
A particle accelerator that suffered the indignity of being downgraded to the second-most powerful in the world faced its final frontier yesterday. After 25 years at the cutting edge of scientific discovery, the American machine was unceremoniously switched off.The Tevatron was completed in 1983 and used to discover the heaviest elementary particle in nature, the top quark, in 1995. But it recently lost a battle for US government funding because it was not as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland, and was deemed outdated.
SOUTHAMPTON, England, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Archaeologists say research on islands around Britain could provide clues to why people gave up being hunter-gatherers and turned to farming 6,000 years ago.The researchers say they hope to settle a long-running debate about whether the change -- around 4,000 B.C. -- was due to colonists moving into Britain from mainland Europe or whether the indigenous population gradually adopted the new agricultural lifestyle themselves, The Independent reported.
A group of scientists and archeologists from Canakkale (Dardanelles) University have found traces of a lost city, older than famed Troy, now buried under the waters of Dardanelles strait.Led by associate professor Rüstem Aslan, the archeology team made a surface survey in the vicinity of Erenkoy, Canakkale on the shore. The team has found ceramics and pottery, what led them to ponder a mound could be nearby. A research on The found pottery showed that the items belonged to an 7000 years old ancient city. The team has intensified the research and discovered first signs of the lost city under the waters of Dardanalles Strait.
With 23-foot wingspans and hefty bodies, the ancient airborne reptiles of the Jurassic Period might seem the unlikeliest of flying machines. In fact, as commonly depicted, these animals, called pterosaurs, would have been unable to sustain flight, according to new research.For the first time since pterosaurs were discovered more than 100 years ago, the basic physics of how they flew are becoming understood. The new research suggests that estimates of pterosaur wing size and shape have been wrong, and that, mechanically, the wings would have had to be crescent-shaped and angled much farther forward on the body than has been thought.
Scientists have found water-bearing deposits on Mars that are out of step with what was happening elsewhere on the planet, raising the prospect that the sites could have hosted Martian life's last stand.The deposits are a type of clay called smectites, which contain a blend of silica with aluminum, iron or magnesium. They form in the presence of water.The deposits were found in an unlikely locale -- roughly 30 feet up from the ground inside two troughs in Noctis Labyrinthus ("the labyrinth of the night"), a maze-like system of deep valleys located near the western end of the massive Valles Marineris canyon that cuts across the face of Mars.
At first glance, a weather forecaster for Venus would have either a really easy or a really boring job, depending on your point of view. The climate on Venus is widely known to be unpleasant -- at the surface, the planet roasts at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit under a suffocating blanket of sulfuric acid clouds and a crushing atmosphere more than 90 times the pressure of Earth's. Intrepid future explorers should abandon any hope for better days, however, because it won't change much."Any variability in the weather on Venus is noteworthy, because the planet has so many features to keep atmospheric conditions the same," says Dr. Tim Livengood, a researcher with the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, Capitol Heights, Md., and now with the University of Maryland, College Park, Md.
AN ARTIFICIAL cerebellum has restored lost brain function in rats, bringing the prospect of cyborg-style brain implants a step closer to reality. Such implants could eventually be used to replace areas of brain tissue damaged by stroke and other conditions, or even to enhance healthy brain function and restore learning processes that decline with age.Cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs have already proved that it is possible to wire electrical devices into the brain and make sense of them, but such devices involve only one-way communication, either from the device to the brain or vice versa.
The US company SpaceX is working on the first-ever reusable rocket to launch to space and back, with the goal of one day helping humans colonize Mars, founder Elon Musk said Thursday.The vehicle would be a reusable version of the Falcon 9 rocket which SpaceX used to propel its Dragon space capsule to low Earth-orbit on a test mission last year. Its first cargo trip to the International Space Station is set for January.Being able to reuse the rocket would save tens of millions of dollars and would bring the notion of making trips to visit or even live on other planets, namely Mars, closer to reality, Musk told reporters at the National Press Club.
In November 1941, two ships crossed paths off the coast of Australia. One was the German raider HSK Kormoran. The other: an Australian warship called the HMAS Sydney. Guns were fired, the ships were damaged, and both sank to the bottom of the ocean.The loss of the Sydney in World War II was a national tragedy for the Australians, particularly because none of the 645 men onboard survived. In the years that followed, there was intense interest in finding the wrecks, particularly the wreck of the Sydney. The idea was that doing this might give the families of the lost sailors some measure of peace, a sense of closure and certainty.
FUKUOKA -- An ancient sword bearing kanji characters that show the year 570 according to the Chinese sexagenary cycle has been unearthed from an ancient burial mound here, the local education board announced on Sept. 21.The discovery made by the Fukuoka Municipal Board of Education is consistent with the Chronicles of Japan, one of Japan's oldest history books, which says Japan imported the Chinese calendar from Paekche, one of the countries that existed on the Korean Peninsula.It is an epoch-making discovery in that it is the oldest item showing that Japan used a calendar in ancient times. It was the seventh sword with inscriptions of characters excavated from an ancient burial mound, and fourth with the inscriptions of characters indicating years. All the previous ones had been discovered before the 1980s.
THE Denisovans, mysterious cousins of the Neanderthals, occupied a vast realm stretching from the chill expanse of Siberia to the steamy tropical forests of Indonesia - suggesting the third human of the Pleistocene displayed a level of adaptability previously thought to be unique to modern humans.Our first tantalising glimpse of the Denisovans came last year with DNA analysis of a bone and tooth found in a Siberian cave. The DNA was distinct enough from Neanderthals' to suggest tens of thousands of years of independent evolution.Before they disappeared, the Denisovans found time to interbreed with Homo sapiens. As a result, 5 per cent of the Denisovan genome lives on - not in the inhabitants of Siberia but in Papua New Guineans, living thousands of kilometres to the south-east (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09710).
Medical marijuana program advocates are firing back a day after Gov. Lincoln Chafee decided to pull the plug on the state's licensing program."We're going to take him to court," said Dr. Seth Bock on Friday.Last spring, Dr. Seth Bock's proposal for the Greenleaf Compassionate Center in Portsmouth was one of three in Rhode Island approved for licenses by the Department of Health. Chafee announced on Thursday that the state's medical marijuana program could not proceed "under current law.
With the U.S. human space program in transition, China is taking a bold step toward an independent path to orbit with the launch this week of a space station testbed.Tiangong-1 -- Mandarin for "heavenly palace" -- is scheduled to blast off aboard a Chinese Long March 2F rocket from a launch site in the Gobi Desert on Sept. 29 or 30, Xinhua, the official Chinese government information agency reports.The eight-ton module will serve as an orbital testbed for China to practice robotic rendezous and docking techniques, a necessary skill for the assembly and operation of the manned outpost China intends to build around 2020.
Have you spotted the tell-tale signature of an earth-like world orbiting a distant star?If you're one of the Today programme listeners who signed up to help analyse the images being generated by Nasa's Kepler Space Observatory last year, then your name could appear as a co-author on a scientific paper detailing the discovery of two new planets.Back in December we asked listeners to help scientists wade through the colossal amount of data being produced by Kepler, which has been sitting out in deep space quietly photographing a patch of sky between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra every 30 seconds or so for the past two years.
Coffee shops in the Dutch city of Maastricht have banned foreign tourists, except those from Germany and Belgium, from entering their premises from Saturday, according to the local association of coffee shops.Coffee shops in the Netherlands are places where customers can legally buy and consume cannabis."We have put in place a 'neighbouring country' criteria," Marc Josemans, president of the Society of United Coffeeshops and owner of the Easy Going coffee shop, told CNN."This is a form of self-regulation. It is not a law, there will be no judge, this was just the only choice we had.
A bizarre creature terrorized a town in West Virginia in 1966 and 1967, leering at locals with glowing red eyes, flying over their cars and causing radiation burns and even the collapse of a major bridge over the Ohio River. Half man, half moth? Ultradimensional being? Alien from another planet? What was Mothman?What began as a series of sightings of an unknown creature grew more complex and mysterious with each retelling. By the time the Mothman story made its way to a major Hollywood film, The Mothman Prophecies, Mothman was some sort of extradimensional harbinger of tragedy, an alien intelligence so bizarre we couldn't even begin to fathom its motives or methods. The movie weaves layers of creepiness and dread with personal grief and looming disaster, all as a backdrop for a positively Lovecraftian cosmic horror that drives men mad . . . and it is, of course, a work of fiction. But how did the Mothman legend get from "something weird some West Virginians saw late one night," to "entity from beyond time and space."?
For a decade now, wolves have been quietly advancing through eastern Germany and may be making inroads across the entire country. But people still haven't learned to live with the predator. Some glorify the wolves, others demonize them and many are simply afraid.They are scenes one might normally expect to see in the Serengeti. But Franz Graf von Plettenberg has the privilege of watching them from his elevated hunting stand in the forests of eastern Germany.In his case, though, it's a deer (rather than a gnu) that is walking calmly through the heath, even though the evil killer, a wolf (instead of a lion), is within sight, heading for the forest. It's as though the potential prey can sense that this wolf has already eaten his fill.
The bosses of two of the world's biggest multi-national corporations were convicted by a jury of "ecocide" at the Supreme Court yesterday for destroying global ecosystems.They were put on trial under international laws which establish ecocide alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression, as the most serious in existence.
Doctors are planning the first clinical trial of ecstasy in the UK, to see whether the drug can be beneficial to the traumatised survivors of child abuse, rape and war.Ecstasy and other illegal drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms are potentially useful in treating people with serious psychological disturbance who cannot begin to face up to their distress, some psychiatrists and therapists believe. But because of public fear and tabloid anger about illegal drugs, scientists say they find it almost impossible to explore their potential.
How much radiation is 'unsafe' for humans? For those exposed to fallout from the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the question is all too real. But there is still no good answer: the accident has highlighted the enormous difficulties in estimating the long-term health risks of relatively low doses of radiation.A group of leading researchers in Europe had hoped that a fresh round of studies on people exposed to radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 would finally begin to help fill this yawning science gap (see 'Lessons from the past'). But their proposal is now looking increasingly unlikely to proceed.
Despite the tree-dwelling mammal having a cute and furry appearance, a 15 pound koala is as loud as a cow weighing more than a tonne, a study found.Researchers discovered the marsupial emitted a louder sound as a way of attracting sexual partners during mating season.The team of Australian and Austrian scientists, writing in The Journal of Experimental Biology, also found their cries were a way of boasting about their body size and intimidate rival lovers.
A group of astronomers used some crafty celestial sleuthing to put to rest a 19th Century mystery surrounding the events that inspired Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of the classic novel "Frankenstein," to pen her tragic tale of the infamous monster.Astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos delved into Shelley's own description of what moved her to write the legendary story, in hopes of solving a long-standing controversy over whether the account is true, or if the author took some liberties in her re-telling of what happened.
To protect it from drying out, a worker sprays water onto a millennia-old chariot recently unearthed in the city of Luoyang (map) in central China.Overall, 5 chariots and 12 horse skeletons were found in the tomb pit, according to China's state-sponsored Xinhua news service. Archaeologists believe the tomb was dug as part of the funeral rites of a minister or other nobleman during the Eastern Zhou dynasty period, about 2,500 years ago.
IN THE DRYING marshlands of the Azraq oasis lie the remnants of one of the earliest communities to roam the Levant.Ayn Qasiyya - an Epipalaeolithic site dating back some 20,000 years located in the Azraq Wetlands Reserve - has yielded dozens of secrets from the prehistoric past and the oldest human remains ever uncovered in Jordan.
A trial of a new cancer drug, which accurately targets tumours, has been so successful it has been stopped early.Doctors at London's Royal Marsden Hospital gave prostate cancer patients a powerful alpha radiation drug and found that they lived longer, and experienced less pain and side effects.The medics then stopped the trial of 922 people, saying it was unethical not to offer all of them the treatment.Lead researcher Dr Chris Parker said it was "a significant step forward".
The wartime prime minister's dark moods, plus a series of lucky encounters, may have transformed the course of human history, writes John Gray.Towards the end of his long life, when he was staying in a house lent to him by friends in the south of France, Winston Churchill sent for a young man who was helping him write one of the books with which he occupied his retirement.Churchill needed the young man as a researcher. But he also valued him as a companion, particularly in the evenings when he would otherwise feel lonely.
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Cherokee Indians, including African-American tribal citizens who nearly lost their right to vote, cast ballots on Saturday in elections for principal chief of the nation's second largest Native American tribe.The black Cherokees, known as freedmen because they are descendants of slaves once owned by wealthy Indians, were reinstated as tribal members earlier this week following pressure from the U.S. federal government."I'm just overjoyed," said Marilyn Vann, a freedmen leader from Oklahoma City, who was driving 160 miles to her voting precinct south of Coffeeville, Oklahoma. "I can hardly wait to put the ballot into the machine.
The problem with exoplanets is that they are very difficult to spot. They're small, distant and often obscured by their star's light. It's little wonder that few direct observations of exoplanets exist -- they're nothing more than tiny smudges in astronomical photographs. And that's after all kinds of complex image processing tricks are applied to tease out the faint signal.But now, the existence of the first exoplanet to be directly observed by the Hubble space telescope has come under close scrutiny.
Although climate studies offer plenty of projections about how the world might change as the Earth warms up, it's easy for people to imagine that those numbers don't apply to them.A new study offers a wake-up call. Climate change doesn't just have the potential to alter people's lives -- it already has.For the Yup'ik people of Alaska, who still depend on hunting, gathering and fishing for much of their subsistence, interviews showed that warmer temperatures and thinner ice in recent years have altered ways of life that passed down from generation to generation.
Prehistoric etchings found in a cave in France are the work of children as young as three, according to research.The so-called finger flutings were discovered at the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths in Rouffignac, alongside cave art dating back some 13,000 years.Cambridge University researchers recently developed a method identifying the gender and age of the artists.It is thought the most prolific was a girl aged five. The artists ran their hands down the cave's soft surfaces.
Around midday on 24 January 1630, seven suns seemed to blaze over Rome. Many onlookers took the phenomenon as a celestial omen of good or ill fortune, but an adherent of the scientific revolution also took note of the kaleidoscopic sky.Jesuit scholar Christoph Scheiner recorded the phenomenon, along with a similar one seen ten months earlier. His work helped to inspire seventeenth-century Dutch astronomer and philosopher Christiaan Huygens to develop the first theories of how such 'halo effects' might arise naturally, but the 1630 diagram was thought to have been lost. A librarian in Germany has now uncovered what seems to be a copy of the picture, and reports the find in Applied Optics.
Archaeologists are investigating islands around Britain to find out why our ancestors gave up being hunter-gatherers 6,000 years ago and turned to farming.Academics from the universities of Southampton and Liverpool are hoping to shed new light on the long-standing debate about whether the change around 4,000BC was due to colonists moving into Britain or if the indigenous population gradually adopted the new agricultural lifestyle themselves.
Are we going to find out more about one of the north of England's first great writers, the Venerable Bede who recorded the history of Anglo-Saxon England?Although never actually canonised, he has always been seen as a potential patron for journalists, because he is said to have written his mighty work The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation without ever leaving his monastery in Jarrow.Like pretty much everything else about him, however, that allegation is unproven and unprovable. But this might just change. A survey by ground-penetrating radar has revealed what may be an underground chamber below St Paul's church in the Tyneside town, where the monastery stood.
The ancient Mayans had contact with alien visitors who left behind evidence of their existence, according to a new Mexican documentary.Sundance winner Juan Carlos Rulfo's Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond is currently in production for release next year to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, reports the Wrap.Producer Raul Julia-Levy said the documentary-makers were working in cooperation with the Mexican government for what he said was "the good of mankind". He said the order to collaborate had come directly from the country's president, Álvaro Colom Caballeros.
A young whale died after an exceptionally high equinox tide carried it 800 yards from the shoreline to a salt marsh where it then became stranded.The 33ft mammal, thought to be a Sei whale, was discovered in marshes on the north bank of the River Humber near the village of Skeffling.As the tide retreated the whale became stranded before rolling over onto its blowhole, causing it to suffocate. The highest tides of the year occur after the spring and autumn equinox.The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has since carried out a post-mortem examination on the mammal with the British Zoological Society. Experts who examined the animal said they are 95 per cent certain it is a female Sei whale and say it could simply have been looking for food when the tide turned.
Beginning on the 28 October, the world première of Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times will be held at Discovery Times Square (226 West 44th Street).This new exhibition features the most comprehensive collection of ancient artefacts from Israel ever organized, including one of the largest collections of the priceless 2000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls displayed in North America and an authentic three-ton stone from the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This exhibition is created by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) from the collections of the Israel National Treasures and produced by Discovery Times Square and The Franklin Institute.
THURSDAY, Sept. 29 (HealthDay News) -- In new research that will almost certainly create controversy, scientists working with the hallucinogen psilocybin -- the active ingredient found in "magic mushrooms" -- have found that a single dose of the drug prompted an enduring but positive personality change in almost 60 percent of patients.Specifically, tests involving a small group of patients in a strictly controlled and monitored clinical setting revealed that, more often than not, one round of psilocybin exposure successfully boosted an individual's sense of "openness." What's more, the apparent shift in what is deemed to be a key aspect of personality did not dissipate after exposure, lasting at least a year and sometimes longer.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children.Under the Tories' omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it's done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 1 1/2 years if it's in a rental or poses a safety risk.
A miniature magic carpet made of plastic has taken flight in a laboratory at Princeton University.The 10cm (4in) sheet of smart transparency is driven by "ripple power"; waves of electrical current driving thin pockets of air from front to rear underneath.The prototype, described in Applied Physics Letters, moves at speeds of about a centimetre per second.Improvements to the design could raise that to as much as a metre per second.The device's creator, graduate student Noah Jafferis, says he was inspired by a mathematical paper he read shortly after starting his PhD studies at Princeton.
The growing controversy over shale gas in Britain has engulfed what Jane Austen once described as the "fine and striking environs" of Bath, home to the world famous hot springs.Council leaders and MPs have hit out at plans to drill gas wells in the nearby Mendip Hills, which they fear will lead to highly toxic chemicals pumped into the ground in a threat to local water supplies. Two Australian-owned companies, Eden Energy and UK Methane, have obtained licences to explore for shale and are applying to Mendip district council for planning permission to test-drill.
China has started the countdown to launch a space station module, the Tiangong-1, that is the first step in establishing a permanent manned presence in orbit above the Earth.A Long March II 2F rocket is scheduled to take off soon after 1.16pm GMT on Thursday from Jiuquan in Gansu province, carrying the laboratory to an altitude of 220 miles (350km) where it will circle the planet unmanned while its systems are tested.A crew capsule, Shenzhou 8, is to be launched unmanned in November and carry out docking tests with the Tiangong, which means "heavenly palace".
MSNBCBRANFORD, Conn. -- When the powerful Tropical Storm Irene swept through, the storm unearthed a mystery in Branford, Connecticut.Part of Linden Avenue collapsed from the storm and neighbors of a beach there found what they believed were human bones protruding from the embankment that the storm eroded and called Branford police.Those bones, experts have determined, likely came from an ancient Native American burial site.
Little did he know that giving a team of scientists a lock of his hair would provide answers to some profound questions about the origins of humankind in his native Australia. But that is exactly what happened when scientists sequenced his genome and found that he was descended from a very ancient wave of modern humanity out of Africa and eventually into Australia some 62,000 - 75,000 years ago.He is an Aboriginal Australian. The results of the genetic tests showed that modern humans migrated into Eastern Asia in more than one wave and that he, along with all of his fellow Aboriginal Australians, could claim direct heritage with a very early wave, perhaps even the first wave. This meant that his population constituted one of the oldest continuous populations outside of Africa.
It currently takes 90 minutes to transmit high-resolution images from Mars, but NASA would like to dramatically reduce that time to just minutes. A new optical communications system that NASA plans to demonstrate in 2016 will lead the way and even allow the streaming of high-definition video from distances beyond the Moon.
Do medical marijuana dispensaries make neighborhoods safer? That's the conclusion of a study by the RAND Corporation, which counters the widespread perception that MMJ businesses attract crime.The study, released last week, focuses on Los Angeles, where in 2010 officials decided to ban roughly 400 marijuana shops from doing business within city limits, forcing hundreds of stores to close when the ordinance went into effect that June. RAND researchers looked at crime statistics on such offenses as theft and assault in the ten days leading up to the mass closure, and then the stats for the ten days after the closure.
An international research team led by biologists at the University of California, Riverside and Texas A&M University has released for the first time a large and robust DNA matrix that has representation for all mammalian families. The matrix -- the culmination of about five years of painstaking research -- has representatives for 99 percent of mammalian families, and covers not only the earliest history of mammalian diversification but also all the deepest divergences among living mammals.
Nina De Santo was about to close her New Jersey hair salon one winter's night when she saw him standing outside the shop's glass front door.It was Michael. He was a soft-spoken customer who'd been going through a brutal patch in his life. His wife had divorced him after having an affair with his stepbrother, and he had lost custody of his boy and girl in the ensuing battle.He was emotionally shattered, but De Santo had tried to help. She'd listened to his problems, given him pep talks, taken him out for drinks.When De Santo opened the door that Saturday night, Michael was smiling.
Relativity is the reigning theory of gravity. In situations where we can measure it directly, such as binary neutron stars, its predictions match the real world with remarkable precision. And, when supplemented with inflation and dark matter, relativity nicely reproduces the large-scale structure of the Universe. But this reliance on other models like dark matter means that we don't have a direct, large-scale test of relativity. Now, scientists have measured the redshifting of light by galaxy clusters to give use the biggest test of relativity yet. Their results show that relativity passes muster, while modified forms of Newtownian gravity fall short.Light emitted by distant objects rarely makes it to Earth at the same wavelength that it started out at.
To protect it from drying out, a worker sprays water onto a millennia-old chariot recently unearthed in the city of Luoyang (map) in central China.Overall, 5 chariots and 12 horse skeletons were found in the tomb pit, according to China's state-sponsored Xinhua news service. Archaeologists believe the tomb was dug as part of the funeral rites of a minister or other nobleman during the Eastern Zhou dynasty period, about 2,500 years ago.Chariots were important vehicles of war during the Zhou dynasty and were driven by nobleman-warriors wielding halberds or spears, said David Sena, a China historian at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the discovery.
Fish are adept at using rocks as tools, and a researcher has the video to prove it. The footage, shot in Palau and described in the journal Coral Reefs, is the first ever to show a fish using a tool.In the video, an orange-dotted tuskfish is seen digging a clam out of the sand. The tuskfish then carries the clam over to a rock, and repeatedly throws the clam against the rock to crush it. This is basic tool tech, but it does the job and is impressive when you consider that fish don't have hands or much to work with in their habitats.Giacomo Bernardi, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shot the video.
Exactly 50 years ago, UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash on a mission to prevent civil war in newly independent Congo. Suspicions that the plane was shot down, never fully laid to rest, are now again on the rise.After his death, Mr Hammarskjold was described by US President John F Kennedy as the "greatest statesman of our century". He was a man with a vision of the UN as a "dynamic instrument" organising the world community, a protector of small nations, independent of the major powers, acting only in the interests of peace.