Newsdesk Archive

The earthquake that shook the East Coast last week rattled casks holding radioactive nuclear waste at a Virginia plant, moving them as much as 4.5 inches from their original position, the plant's operator said.The 5.8-magnitude quake shifted 25 casks, each 16 feet tall and weighing 115 tons, on a concrete pad at Dominion Resources Inc's North Anna nuclear plant.

A TROVE of Second World War memorabilia from soldiers of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps captured by the British at El Alamein has been discovered in an archaeological dig at the wilderness camp where they were held.Red Cross tins, old letters, photographs of their time as prisoners of war (PoWs), uniform buttons and mess tins are being thrown up by excavators at the Whitewater Camp in Manitoba, Canada, where 500 Wehrmacht soldiers were held after their defeat by the British in the western desert in November 1942.

CBC NewsArcheologists in the Arctic hoping to find Sir John Franklin's long-lost ships neared the end of their latest search Friday with no shipwreck in sight.It appears HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, two of the most sought-after wrecks in Canada, will remain undiscovered for now.

The Moon's face is an open book, but its deeper nature is still a mystery. Probes from Europe, Japan, India, China and the United States have imaged the lunar surface in exquisite detail, mapped its minerals, looked for evidence of water and scouted for potential landing sites. Now Maria Zuber, principal investigator for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which is set to launch on 8 September, wants to reveal the Moon's hidden history.

Most everyone knows that stress can cause a clenched, gurgling, unhappy stomach. What's less well known is that the relationship goes both ways.Beneficial gut bacteria, or probiotics, have been shown in the past to alleviate symptoms of stress and anxiety, but it wasn't clear whether the bugs could have an impact on the brains of healthy animals. Now, John Cryan, a pharmacologist with the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Center at University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues have found that probiotics have a direct impact on mood neurotransmitters in mice1. The findings further support the idea that one way to heal problems of the mind might be through the stomach.

These are the last images of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart as she prepared for her round-the-world flight during which she mysteriously disappeared.Among the pictures is one of the Lockheed Electra 10E, the plane that was used for her doomed circumnavigation attempt in 1937.She is also poignantly captured packing for the journey and getting her hair cut at a barber's shop in Miami, Florida.The photographs were unearthed along with Earhart's Luxor aviator goggles which she had worn during a flying lesson with instructor Neta Snook in 1921. The pair were involved in a minor crash and one eye-piece of the goggles was smashed.

Scientists found that male great tits are singing at higher frequencies in order to combat the din of modern life.But although their higher-pitched songs are being heard by females of the species, they are seen as less attractive.Therefore males that struggle to make their low-frequency songs heard, or that change to less attractive higher tunes, are at risk of not finding a breeding mate.

The Environment Agency (EA) is getting better at its relentless spin. Its well-publicised report on the "10 most improved rivers in Britain" comes hard on the heels of news that otters have now returned to all English counties. The two stories suggest that nothing but good ever happens to our waterways and the government is living up to its intention to be the "greenest ever".If only.

The renaissance of Britain's rivers was underlined on Tuesday when waterways once considered polluted to death were revealed as teeming with life.Among the list of the 10 most improved rivers published by the Environment Agency were the River Wandle, a tributary of the Thames which runs through southwest London.It was declared a sewer in the 1960s but is now one of the best urban fisheries in the country.

An Indiana University study that compared strategies used by extroverted college students and their less socially inclined peers found that happy people who are less outgoing relied less on partying and drinking to be happy and more on connections with family and friends or cognitive strategies, such as positive thinking.

Scientists are expressing confidence that questions about life on Mars, which have captured human imagination for centuries, finally may be answered, thanks in part to new life-detection tools up to 1,000 times more sensitive than previous instruments."The bottom line is that if life is out there, the high-tech tools of chemistry will find it sooner or later," said Jeffrey Bada, Ph.D., co-organizer of a special two-day symposium on the Red Planet, which began in Denver Colorado on August 30 during the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). "It certainly is starting to look like there may be something alive out there somewhere, with Mars being the most accessible place to search," Bada added.

It may not be much use to hitchhikers through the galaxy, but it is extremely valuable to astronomers: the new radio atlas of the Milky Way. After almost ten years of work, researchers at the Max Planck Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have completed their investigation into the polarised radio emission in the galactic plane. The atlas is based on observations undertaken with the 25-metre radio telescope in the Chinese city of Urumqi and shows an area of 2,200 square degrees of the sky.

The pages of ecological history are filled with woeful tales of destruction from non-native species -- organisms that originated elsewhere.Kudzu, a fast-growing vine imported from Japan, now chokes out many native plants across the southern United States, Zebra mussels native to the Caspian Sea have reduced the food supplies of native fishes in the Great Lakes, and rats imported to New Zealand have decimated the native bird populations.Examples of the damages caused by these so-called "invasive species" are seemingly as endless as the amount of battles waged against them.But are all non-native species bad?.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A 2,000-year-old burial box could reveal the location of the family of Caiaphas, the high priest involved in the crucifixion of Jesus, Israeli researchers say.Ossuaries -- ancient limestone burial boxes -- are common archaeological finds from the first century B.C. to the first century A.D.Researchers at Tel Aviv University say the inscription on an ossuary confiscated from antiquities looters three years ago could reveal the home of the family of the biblical figure and high priest Caiaphas prior to their exodus to Galilee after A.D. 70, a TAU release reported Monday.

Using creativity to solve problems is usually encouraged and championed as companies' secret to success. But researchers have questioned whether people actually welcome creative tastes with open arms. At least among adult college students, the team found somewhat the opposite.Because creative ideas are also new, they seem to give rise to uncertainty or even discomfort for others who depend on the tried-and-true way of doing things. To reduce uncertainty, subconsciously rejecting a creative idea may be easier than accepting it.Even in cases in which creative ideas show promise, it's still hard for other people to accept them, researchers say.

Earthquakes, explosions and observations of Earth's ever-changing magnetic field are helping scientists open up a new window on the heart of our planet. When Jules Verne wrote A Journey to the Centre of the Earth over 100 years ago, he imagined a place of glowing crystals and a turbulent sea, complete with prehistoric animals and giant mushrooms.What was actually beneath our feet was a complete enigma. Even to this day scientists astonishingly know more about the rings of Saturn than they do about the core of our own planet. But that is beginning to change. "We're at a golden age in terms of the real discovery of the bulk of the deep Earth," says seismologist Professor Rick Aster.And remarkably, not everything Verne imagined was wrong.

The four bodies discovered in 2001 on South Uist are the first evidence in Britain of deliberate mummification.It is thought the body parts may have come from people in the same families - and were used for spiritual guidance. The skeletons looked very unusual - like Peruvian mummies.Sheffield University's Prof Mike Parker Pearson said the mummies had not been buried straight after preservation.A team from the University of Sheffield first uncovered the remains of a three-month-old-child, a possible young female adult, a female in her 40s and a male under the prehistoric village of Cladh Hallan.

Ancient Egyptians used gels to style their hair, according to research on mummified remains by the KNH Centre of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester.A study of male and female mummies has revealed the fashion-conscious Egyptians used a fat-based product to keep their hair in place.They used the styling gel on both long and short hair, and even plaited in hair extensions to lengthen their tresses. It also appears that metal implements were also used to force curling, which would then be held in place by the gel. The researchers note that curling tongs have also been found in several tombs in Egypt.

In the previous article Uncovering Atlantis: Evidence of a lost chapter in human history, we looked at how common themes in legends and foundational myths of various cultures seem to point to a common root culture much older than anything recognized today.In this article we will expand on the premise of a lost ancient civilization, and explore whether it is possible at all to fit the possibility of a kingdom of Atlantis into our current understanding of our pre-history.The Neolithic RevolutionThe first step to seeing whether or not the concept of an Atlantis can find some sort of continuity and congruence with our current orthodox view of human history is to first explore the conventional understanding of the inception and subsequent flourishing of human civilization.

(Reuters) - British scientists have devised a way of using graphene, the thinnest material in the world, to capture and convert more light than previously, paving the way for advances in high-speed Internet and other optical communications.In a study in the journal Nature Communication, the team -- which included last year's Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov -- found that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power.Graphene is a form of carbon just one atom thick and yet 100 times stronger than steel.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have created the first fully stretchable organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The researchers devised a way of creating a carbon nanotube and polymer electrode and layering it onto a stretchable light-emitting plastic. Their device is a two-centimeter square with a one-centimeter square area that gives off a blue light. Details of their work were published in July in Advanced Materials. The paper is titled, "Intrinsically Stretchable Polymer Light-Emitting Devices Using Carbon Nanotube-Polymer Composite Electrodes."The method they used for their proof-of-concept device has attracted interest because stretchable electronics is peppered with lots of design challenges, starting with carbon nanotubes themselves.

ASTRONOMERS HAVE DISCOVERED the closest known infant star to our planet, and it wasn't born until 25 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.The star, called AP Columbae, is closer to Earth than previously thought and is around 40 million years old - a stellar newborn when compared to our own Sun which was created 4.6 billion years ago."The star has been known about and studied for the past 15 years, but it wasn't realised it was so young and so close, until now," says co-author Simon Murphy, a PhD student from the Australian National University in Canberra.

Tony Sale, the brilliant engineer who led the rebuild of Colossus, the first modern computer, has died aged 80. The mammoth project to recreate the code-cracking Colossus capped a career built around electronics and computers.Most recently, Mr Sale drove the campaign to save Bletchley Park, where Colossus aided Allied code-cracking efforts during World War II. At Bletchley he also founded the National Museum of Computing to help preserve the UK's ageing computers.Born in 1931, Mr Sale displayed his talent for engineering at an early age by building a robot, called George I, out of Meccano. One of the later versions of George was built from the remains of a Wellington bomber.

The first nuclear power plant being considered for production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets may really look like it came from outer space, according to a leader of the project who spoke here today at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).James E. Werner said that innovative fission technology for surface power applications is far different from the familiar terrestrial nuclear power stations, which sprawl over huge tracts of land and have large structures such as cooling towers."People would never recognize the fission power system as a nuclear power reactor," said Werner.

Where Matternet is going, it doesn't need roads. But the people there need food and medicine. And these drones can bring it to them.Nearly one billion people in rural areas live without access to all-season roads--meaning a large portion of the world's population can't get medication, food, and other supplies when they need them. The Matternet, a concept created by a group of students in this summer's class at Singularity University, aims to leapfrog road-based transportation altogether with a network of electric autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) in the developing world that transports supplies and people from place to place. Think of it as the Jetsons meets Mother Theresa.

There was always the risk that when the US shuttles were retired, continued operations on the International Space Station (ISS) could be left more vulnerable should there be a failure on the Russian Soyuz rocket system.Soyuz has become the sole means of getting people to the 400km-high outpost. If it can't fly, no-one can. It's the classic single-point failure with no back-up. Everyone knew this was a possibility; few I suspect thought we'd be in such a position so soon after the last American orbiter was withdrawn from service.The failure last week of an unmanned freighter to the ISS has left the Russians questioning the reliability of their usually ultra-reliable Soyuz fleet, and the planned manned flight to the station on 22 September has now been postponed as a consequence.

A much less virulent version of the Black Death plague that killed a third of Europe's population in the 14th century is still present today, according to a study published Tuesday.DNA testing on the skeletons of plague victims unearthed in a medieval London mass grave reveals part of the same gene sequence as the modern bubonic plague, despite its different attributes."At least this part of the genetic information has barely changed in the past 600 years" says Johannes Krause, one of the authors of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) "Without a doubt, the plague pathogen known today as (yersinia) pestis was also the cause of the plague in the Middle Ages," he added.

A new kind of boat is designed to move quickly and stealthily through water by generating a layer of gas around its underwater surfaces.The design reduces friction by a factor of 900, according to the New Hampshire company that produced the boat. Its smooth speed makes it ideal for special operations. It could also revolutionize shipping.Juliet Marine recently unveiled the Ghost, a ship it says can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The shape of the craft is similar to earlier attempts at making watercraft less visible to radar -- notably the Navy's "Sea Shadow" project of the 1980s.

A major roadblock in any negotiation can often be that each side believes their opponent's position is unmovable, according to a group of researchers in Israel. Stand-offs, they say, can end if those involved think their counterparts can adopt a flexible mindset.To put their theory to the test, they opted to ask Israelis and Palestinians.Eran Halperin of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel and colleagues surveyed 500 Israeli Jews on whether they believed groups of people had fixed natures, and on their attitudes towards the Palestinians. Volunteers who believed that groups could change tended to have more positive attitudes towards a negotiated peace process.

For many people, the word "Antarctica" evokes images of endless sheets of ice. But it turns out that the southern continent has a wealth of varied and spectacular features to offer.Case in point: The Mt. Erebus ice caves. This winter on the Science Friday blog, Kayla Iacovino, a Ph.D. student in volcanology and petrology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, posted some jaw-dropping pictures of the caves.In a post a few months earlier, she explained how the caves formed. "The hot volcanic gas steaming from Erebus volcano, Antarctica does more than fuel the lava lake in its summit crater," Iacovino wrote. "Hot gasses traveling up through cracks and fractures in the volcanic rocks surrounding the Erebus summit has created an intricate system of ice caves all over the mountain."

The first nuclear power plant being considered for production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets may really look like it came from outer space, according to a leader of the project who spoke here today at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).James E. Werner said that innovative fission technology for surface power applications is far different from the familiar terrestrial nuclear power stations, which sprawl over huge tracts of land and have large structures such as cooling towers.

Joseph Ecker's teenage son listened intently as his father told him about the 1000 Genomes Project, which aims to sequence and compare the genomes of 1,000 people. Ecker, a molecular geneticist, explained that he and his colleagues were launching a similar project for the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. "My son said, 'Well then you should sequence 1,001'," Ecker recalls. "He's a very competitive kid."And so the Arabidopsis '1001 Genome Project' was born. Three years later, a loose confederation of laboratories is on the verge of making that challenge a reality. Papers published online in Nature1 and Nature Genetics2 this week report the sequencing of nearly 100 A. thaliana genomes, the first swathe released by the project; around 400 more have been sequenced, but are not yet ready for publication. Last week, Ecker's group at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, won a US$2-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to polish off another 500 strains, and to catalogue expressed RNAs and map DNA methylation, a chemical modification that affects gene expression.

A warrior wasp? A wasp with jaws longer than its front legs?The new species of wasp that Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, has scientists abuzz.The jaw-dropping, shiny black wasp appears to be the "Komodo dragon" of the wasp family.

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.

Everyone knows the potential destructive power of hurricanes, but few people are aware that storms like Hurricane Irene encourage growth of psychedelic mushrooms.Yes, it sounds trippy, but one of the strange aftermaths of a hurricane is an increased amount of mushrooms popping up -- especially the psilocybin -- or "magic" kind -- the ones that cause hallucinations.According to Dr. Casey Simon, an addiction expert based in Orange County, Calif., hurricanes create the perfect climactic conditions for the mushrooms to grow."Mushrooms are spores and they multiply in moisture and are spread by wind," he told HuffPost Weird News.

Steve Jobs has never been shy about his use of psychedelics, famously calling his LSD experience "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." So, toward the end of his life, LSD inventor Albert Hofmann decided to write to the iPhone creator to see if he'd be interested in putting some money where the tip of his tongue had been.Hofmann penned a never-before-disclosed letter in 2007 to Jobs at the behest of his friend Rick Doblin, who runs an organization dedicated to studying the medical and psychiatric benefits of psychedelic drugs. Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, died in April 2008 at the age of 102.

The founder of the Ikea furniture chain, Ingvar Kamprad, is facing further questions about his Nazi past following claims in a new book.Author Elisabeth Asbrink says Mr Kamprad was an active recruiter for a Swedish Nazi group, and stayed close to sympathisers well after World War II.The details go beyond what Mr Kamprad has previously admitted.

If you've noticed that you're visiting the doctor a lot less than most of your friends and neighbors, it could be that you have a distant, ancient archaic human ancestor to thank for that. A recent study by a Stanford University-led research team found that an admixture of certain genes between early modern humans and other species of archaic humans, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, led to strengthened immune systems among at least some modern humans today.

THE RIVIERA TIMESPart of a prehistoric skull, dating back 170,000 years, has been discovered during an archaeological dig in Nice. Experts say the discovery could reveal important clues to the evolution of humans.Students Ludovic Dolez and Sébastian Lepvraud were working on the excavation site, Lazaret Caves, on 13th August, when they came across the partial remains of a forehead belonging to a Homo Erectus.

Diving off Seki village of Alanya, underwater archaeologists found the place of the port of Syedra Ancient City.Archaeologists found relics of a 5,000-year-old port in Alanya town of the southern province of Antalya.Diving off Seki village of Alanya, underwater archaeologists found the place of the port of Syedra Ancient City.Underwater archaeologist Hakan Oniz from Eastern Mediterranean University told A.A on Wednesday that the port was 5,000 years old, and they found architectural relics belonging to Roman period and Bronze Age.

Much of microscopic science remains abstract. While tools and experiments have allowed scientists to infer how things like electrons and atomic nuclei behave, no one has ever really seen an electron. At least, not until now.While it's impossible to snap a photo of an electron in the strictest sense (the wavelength of visible light is much too large for direct measurement), scientists have done the next best thing. By modifying a piece of equipment called a scanning tunneling microscope, a team of researchers from IBM Research Zurich were able to produce the first-ever images of electrons in their orbitals, according to study in Nature reported by Science magazine.

Intrepid architects from Copenhagen are turning a power plant into a man-made ski hill, and creating a new kind of 'hedonistic sustainability.'Imagine taking a vertical elevator up through a power plant, and stepping out onto a ski slope. This is the vision of architect Bjarke Ingels of Copenhagen. His company, the Bjarke Ingels Group, won first prize in an international competition that challenged architects to design a new incinerator to turn waste into energy in the Danish capital."This building transforms all the trash of the Copenhageners into electricity and heating -- it's going to be not only the tallest, but also the biggest building in Copenhagen," Ingels told Living on Earth.

Years of either running from or running after animals left its mark in the human brain -- even just looking at a photo of an animal jolts our brains into action.No matter how high tech and urban we may become, animals continue to affect our brains like no other person, place or thing, shows new research in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience.Co-author Ralph Adolphs explained to Discovery News "that it is important for the brain to be able to rapidly detect animals. The reasons for this are probably several, but would likely include the need to avoid predators and catch prey."

Rob Spence, a self-proclaimed "Eyeborg," had his eye, which was damaged in a shotgun accident, replaced with a camera about two years ago. It's not too much of a stretch for Spence, who otherwise works as a filmmaker--and now he's been sponsored by video game maker Square Enix, which commissioned Spence to create a video about prostheses to promote their new game, Deux Ex: Human Revolution.On his blog, which is endearingly named Eyeborg, Spence has posted a new twelve-minute video. He travels around the world, talking to those endowed with the cutting edge of cyborg-dom. Matter of fact, it's not too different from our recent feature, State of the Bionic Art, except Spence investigates the specific real-life counterparts to the crazy-futuristic prostheses and cyborg parts featured in the new Deux Ex game.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists may have found a new way to track secret nuclear tests from those rogue nations (cough cough North Korea cough cough) who are trying to keep those tests under wraps. Surprisingly enough, that new solution may be possible with analysis of regular old GPS data, along with some clever mathematics.In May 2009, North Korea detonated a clandestine nuclear test, a kilometer underground. That's worrisome for obvious reasons, and more worrisome because performing the test underground severely limits our ability to measure the size and specifics of the blast--no radioactive gas or dust was let into the air, as it usually would. But that doesn't mean there are no signs of radioactive explosions.

Every summer since the late 19th century, Earth's polar skies have lit up with eerie blue-white glowing clouds, slowly twisting and undulating in the twilight sky. These mystifying clouds are referred to as "night-shining" clouds, or noctilucent clouds.Such clouds form in an upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere called the mesosphere during the summer and can be seen from the high latitudes on Earth.A series of massive eruptions from the Krakatau volcano (also spelled Krakatoa) in late August 1883 may have serendipitously helped to draw attention to the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds. Dust and ash injected high into the atmosphere from the Indonesian volcano caused spectacular and colorful sunsets worldwide for several years.

Jock Wishart, an adventurer who has rowed his way across the Atlantic and circumnavigated the globe in a powerboat, said he and his five-man team were "exhilarated" after completing their 450-mile voyage through the Arctic waters.The group, who embarked on their expedition to highlight the effects of climate change on the region, encountered polar bears and collided with icebergs in their specially designed vessel.

Archaeologists and anthropologists are still uncertain as to who the first Australians were and from where they came. The debate has been further clouded by the discovery in 2003 of the new species of Homo, Homo floriensis, on the nearby Indonesian island of Flores. Who were the first Australians and how did they cross the ocean to a land they could not see?The settlement of Australia has always caused debate amongst academics as to when it occurred and by whom. In the past 20 years more Pleistocene sites have been uncovered on mainland Australia which seems to push the dating back from c.25,000 years ago to up to c.176,000 years ago (Kirch 2002; 67) and earlier.

HIDDEN IN THE MANUSCRIPTS of early British settlers are the last surviving records of many indigenous languages. Last week, the State Library of NSW launched a new project to rediscover these forgotten dialects.Of the 250 indigenous languages spoken at the time of British settlement, fewer than 20 are still in daily use. The State Library of NSW, in a partnership with Rio Tinto, aims to pass the rediscovered words on to Aboriginal communities, helping to reverse the current language decline.

You think your vacation pictures are impressive? Try to imagine what it was like 45 years ago as scientists and engineers produced the very first images of our planet from deep space.On August 23, 1966, NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photo of Earth from the moon's orbit, and it forever changed how we see our home planet."You're looking at your home from this really foreign kind of desolate landscape," said Jay Friedlander, who started his NASA career 20 years ago as a photographic technician working on images including those from the Lunar Orbiter at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's the first time you're actually looking at Earth as a different kind of place," said Friedlander, currently a multimedia specialist at Goddard.

Fossils from the oldest known Antarctic "sea monster" have been found, a new study says.The discovery of an 85-million-year-old plesiosaur has pushed back the marine reptile's presence in Antarctica by 15 million years."The fragments we found don't belong to any group registered on the continent before, which indicates a greater diversity of the plesiosaurs in Antarctica than previously suspected," said team leader Alexander Kellner, of the National Museum of Brazil at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Saudi Arabia is excavating a new archeological site that will show horses were domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Arabian peninsula, the country's antiquities expert said Wednesday.The discovery of the civilization, named al-Maqar after the site's location, will challenge the theory that the domestication of animals took place 5,500 years ago in Central Asia, said Ali al-Ghabban, Vice-President of Antiquities and Museums at the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A man who billed himself as the "Jewish Indiana Jones" for rescuing Torah scrolls lost in the Holocaust was arrested on Wednesday for making up the bogus stories to steal money from his Save a Torah charity.Menachem Youlus, 50, of Wheaton, Maryland, was charged with one count each of mail fraud and wire fraud, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara and U.S. Postal Inspector Ronald Verrochio, both based in New York.

The Abri (Rock Shelter) of Saint-Joseph was first discovered in 1983 by archaeozoologist Rose-Marie Arbogast and Neolithic specialist Christian Kids, during a systematic exploration of caves of the northern slope of the Jura Hills, in the Alsace region of France.The rock shelter of St. Joseph has now been studied by a group of researchers from the University of Basel Institut für Prähistorische und Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie (IPNA) and the University of Strasbourg.

Skewed skulls may have helped early whales find the direction of sounds in water and are not solely, as previously thought, a later adaptation related to echolocation.Scientists affiliated with the University of Michigan and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) report the finding in a paper published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Asymmetric skulls are a well-known characteristic of the modern whale group known as "odontocetes" or toothed whales.

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - The nation's second-largest Indian tribe formally booted from membership thousands of descendants of black slaves who were brought to Oklahoma more than 170 years ago by Native American owners.The Cherokee nation voted after the Civil War to admit the slave descendants to the tribe.

What is this thing we call the universe? Sounds like a trivial question, nothing to worry about. Or, as a cynic would say, "Who cares?"It turns out that understanding the nature of the universe goes hand in hand with our understanding of who we are and how we fit into nature. To see this, consider how a person of the 16th century thought of the world.Earth was the center of creation, immobile, while everything else turned around it: moon, planets, sun, stars. The universe was spherical, onion-like, and finite: outside the celestial orbs was the Primum Mobile, the sphere responsible for imparting motion to the inner spheres. Outside the Primum Mobile was the Empyrean, the realm of God and his court of divine beings, made of pure light. People lived in a finite, spherical cosmos, with a clear vertical hierarchy: the goal of earthly life was to pave the way to the final ascendancy into Heaven. In other words, people's lives and ambitions mirrored, in a direct way, the geometry of the universe.

HOUSTON, Texas -- Russia's mission control has reported an abnormal situation with a space freighter that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome bound for the International Space Station, NASA said Wednesday.The rocket was carrying 2.9 tonnes of food, fuel and supplies, NASA said, but has no passengers on board.The Progress 44 cargo craft, which launched at 7 p.m. Kazakhstan time, is due to dock with the ISS on Friday.

It's a new week, which means a new featured cosmic sight. This week's feature: somewhat of a rarity to the sky, a comet, specifically Comet Garradd. Yes, while the comet has been up in the sky for quite some time now, shining away at around magnitude 8, making it an easy target for telescopes, this week, it will be set against some very easy to navigate regions of the sky, making for no better time than the present to take a look.Last week, Garradd passed through the constellation of Saggita the arrow, which lies in the impossible to miss asterism that is the Summer Triangle. On Friday, the comet passed very near the globular cluster M71.

The existence of an ancient, frigid ocean on Mars that was surrounded by glaciers could explain the unusual minerals found making up the northern lowlands of the Red Planet, a new study suggests.These findings add new evidence to the idea that ancient Mars was once cold and wet, not cold and dry nor warm and wet as is often argued.Astrobiologist Alberto Fairén at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center and his colleagues investigated why the early crust of the northern Martian lowlands apparently lacks a mineral group called phyllosilicates when compared to similarly aged crust in the planet's southern lowlands. These minerals are common in marine sediments on Earth.

Blazing with the fury of a mini-sun this amazing video shows the moment a suspected meteor streaked across the sky over the city of Cusco in Peru. It was captured blasting through the upper levels of the atmosphere at 2pm yesterday afternoon, leaving an irredescent trail in its wake.Astonished residents watched as the impressive natural phenomena eventually disappeared over the horizon. Experts believe it may have caused forest fires to the south of the city, which have been ravaged by drought.Local officials and the National Police are currently trying to determine where the meteorite may have landed and are speaking to farmers south of the city.

The astronomical community is buzzing over the discovery of a Type 1a supernova in a nearby galaxy called M101 -- also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy.There are actually several types of supernova but those of the Type 1a variety are not the result of the explosion of a massive star, but the destruction of a white dwarf orbiting a younger binary partner, or two white dwarfs slamming into one another. In the former case, material is stripped from the binary partner until the material reaches "critical mass" around the white dwarf. At that point, the supernova ignites.Supernovae of this type have been observed for decades and we have learned that they are very predictable in the way they evolve. For example, it's easy to calculate how much energy they are pouring into the Universe by studying the way their output of energy changes with time. This makes them very useful as a tool to measure cosmic distances.

(Reuters) - "Blade runner" Oscar Pistorius passed his first test with flying colors on his world championships debut by finishing third in his heat to reach the semi-finals of the 400 meters Sunday.The South African, who has had to overcome huge legal and performance obstacles just to be allowed to race in Daegu on his prosthetic legs, delighted the crowd with a strong run of 45.39 seconds from an outside lane.The crowd rose to the double amputee as he powered down the final straight before a band of his compatriots chanted "Oscar! Oscar!" to confirm the 24-year-old as one of the sentimental favorites of the championships.

A newborn, nearby supernova with the potential to significantly improve our knowledge of the universe has been discovered by a supercomputer, two telescopes on opposite sides of the world, a sharp-eyed astronomer, and his helpful Oxford colleague.The Reg spoke with Peter Nugent, the California astronomer who first spotted the supernova, and who is a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.Nugent explained that images of the exploding star were captured by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope in Palomar Mountain, California. PTF scans the sky nightly, and sends its data to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Berkeley for analysis.

So much from so little. When Japanese scientists opened the sterile canister from their sample-return mission to Asteroid Itokawa, they dared to hope they would have something to analyse.They did - more than a thousand rocky fragments, but none of them bigger than a couple of tenths of a millimetre across. But with today's powerful laboratory tools, this mini-haul proved just ample, and, in the current edition of Science magazine, the Hayabusa mission-scientists report their key findings.The headline discovery - the one I guess that has most significance to the wider research community - is the confirmation that S-type asteroids, as objects like Itokawa are known, are the source for most of the small meteorites that fall to Earth - rocks labelled as ordinary chondrites.

NASA is spending roughly $175 million on three new technology demonstration projects, one of which is aiming to take HD data streaming to Mars. The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will explore reliable optical communications technologies that could boost data rates between Earth and deep space by a couple of orders of magnitude.The premise is simple enough: for the same mass, size, and power load an optical communications system can provide drastically higher data rates compared to standard radio frequency (RF) systems. But it also calls for a trickier setup, requiring a clear line of sight between transmitter and receiver and considerations for variables like weather and atmospheric conditions.

In Mexico, a group of terrorists (or possibly a lone soul, trying to make it seem as if he's a member of a group) has been mailing bombs to nanotechnology researchers at major universities. The bomber(s) cite the Unabomber, a convicted American bomber, anti-technology activist, and former professor as inspiration for their crimes.So far, the group, which posts screeds online under the name Individualities Tending Toward Savagery, has mailed a handful of bombs to nanotechnology professors at Mexican universities, so far injuring two (and thankfully killing none). According to criminologists, the writer of the site seems to have some academic background--he references journals and even singles out specific scientists for quotes.

We cover biomedical science and engineering a lot, and sometimes I get to wondering: if I was rebuilding my own flimsy, flesh-based body--presumably because I'd had some ghastly dismembering, eviscerating accident--and replacing my limbs, joints, senses, and organs with the most futuristic, top-of-the-line bionics, what would I get? Would I want an artificial lower leg that sprinters use in Olympic-level races, or a motorized leg that can climb a slope as well as a natural leg? I gathered a list of 15 bionic body parts that I'd want to wear, or have installed.

Proponents of panspermia theory say life on Earth came from elsewhere, hitching a ride on rocks sheared from other worlds or from migratory asteroids. But what if life did originate here and then it left, hitching a ride on Earth-departed rocks? Earth could seed other worlds, instead of the other way around. A new analysis says the rocks could conceivably make it as far as Jupiter.Scientists have found several meteorites that originated on Mars or the moon, after being ejected in asteroid collisions, forcefully thrown into space and finally arriving on Earth. It makes sense that the opposite could be true, and that after mega-collisions, some pieces of Earth could be thrown toward Mars or Venus.

CNN: TED Talk TuesdaysIt was much too late on a Tuesday when a fellow astronomer friend and I found ourselves catching a cab back to Berkeley, having missed the last train home. My friend promptly dozed off in the taxi, leaving me to chat with our driver -- who wondered how we could be out so late with jobs to go to in the morning.I explained that we were astronomers, and naturally tended to be night owls (although I added that my now-snoring friend was a theorist and therefore accustomed to a more regular schedule). "Astronomers!" Our driver immediately began to pepper me with questions about the universe, and so I launched into telling him about my work. Think of it as "Astronomy 101: Wee Hours of the Morning Edition.

Move over Commander Data, there's a real robot in space, now. The International Space Station got a new crewmember today, one made not of flesh and blood, but of gears and clockwork instead.Called Robonaut 2, the automaton astronaut was activated by human spaceflyers today (Aug. 22) after months in storage since being delivered to the space station earlier this year. An initial series of tests checked the robot's power systems and camera eyes."Those electrons feel GOOD!" read a post on Robonaut 2's Twitter page. "One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind.

A new drama tells the story of a Jewish lawyer who confronted Hitler 80 years ago - earning the dictator's life-long hatred. So who was Hans Litten?In the Berlin courtroom, Adolf Hitler's face burned a deep, furious red.The future dictator was not accustomed to this kind of scrutiny.But here he was, being interrogated about the violence of his paramilitary thugs by a young man who represented everything he despised - a radical, principled, fiercely intelligent Jewish lawyer called Hans Litten.

When archeologists recently excavated a 3,800-year-old palace near the eastern German city of Weimar, they discovered about 100 valuable weapons buried next to a massive structure. Now they are puzzling over how an ancient chieftain buried nearby became so rich.In 1877, when archeology was still in its infancy, art professor Friedrich Klopfleisch climbed an almost nine-meter (30-foot) mound of earth in Leubingen, a district in the eastern German state of Thuringia lying near a range of hills in eastern Germany known as the Kyffhäuser. He was there to "kettle" the hill, which entailed having workers dig a hole from the top of the burial mound into the burial chamber below.

Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics. Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called "supersymmetric" particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory.Theorists working in the field have told BBC News that they may have to come up with a completely new idea. Data were presented at the Lepton Photon science meeting in Mumbai.They come from the LHC Beauty (LHCb) experiment, one of the four main detectors situated around the collider ring at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) on the Swiss-French border. According to Dr Tara Shears of Liverpool University, a spokesman for the LHCb experiment: "It does rather put supersymmetry on the spot.

A subterranean river said to be flowing beneath the Amazon region of Brazil is not a river in the conventional sense, even if its existence is confirmed. The "river" has been widely reported, after a study on it was presented to a Brazilian science meeting last week.But the researchers involved told BBC News that water was moving through porous rock at speeds measured in cm, or inches, per year - not flowing. Another Brazilian expert said the groundwater was known to be very salty.Valiya Hamza and Elizabeth Tavares Pimentel, from the Brazilian National Observatory, deduced the existence of the "river" by using temperature data from boreholes across the Amazon region.

What does it take to be a genius nowadays? Can a 3 year old possess genius-like qualities or at least be smart enough to join the high-IQ organization Mensa?To answer the latter, two very young U.S. Mensa members were inducted recently -- a 6-year-old brother and his 3-year-old sister, according to one source. In fact, American Mensa boasts some 2,600 members under the age of 18 already.Though the organization's namesake, meaning "table" in Latin, serves to unite all people who score in the top 2 percent of the population on IQ tests, some elements of genius can't be accounted for through standardized IQ measures.

In the film The Matrix, a world-spanning machine civilization uses humans as batteries to power itself. The machines might have done better to allow people to walk around, as that would be a far better way to generate energy for electronics.The idea was hatched by Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Krupenkin, a professor of mechanical engineering, descibes in a recent Nature Communications paper an energy-harvesting technology known as "reverse electrowetting," a phenomenon discovered by the two researchers. The mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy by using a micro-fluidic device consisting of thousands of liquid micro-droplets interacting with a nano-structured substrate.

British and U.S. scientists have confirmed that an atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) near London is the most accurate long-term timekeeper in the world, the NPL said.The NPL-CsF2 is a cesium fountain clock that's used as a standard for International Atomic Time and Universal Coordinated Time. The machine is apparently accurate to within two 10 million billionths of a second. Not bad, I guess.The NPL's Krzysztof Szymaniec joined scientists from Pennsylvania State University in evaluating the clock. The team published its results in the journal Metrologia. The analysis concludes that the clock will lose only a billionth of a second every two months, and represents an unprecedented accuracy.

In my article pertaining to the history of revolution, I mentioned that the ancient Egyptian civilization was not given to revolt. For five thousand years, they seemed to have the secret of living together in peace and harmony. Are there quantitative reasons for this? Are there unique characteristics that existed in this time in history? Will our search of history enable us to discover other civilizations which seem to be revolt free?There were occasions during the history of Egypt when there was strife with their neighbors and they were able to conduct war, but did not become involved in hostilities among themselves. It seemed to be a society which worked; producing an abundance of things which would have been possible only with the highest level of cooperation. Biblical history tells that the building of the tower of Babel was fraught with so much argument and the insistance of the satisfaction of individual needs that God had to step in. There is no evidence of this in the building of the pyramids. If the task was attempted today, you would have 17 different unions all crying out for control and frequent revolts would be instigated.

The hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Michigan are being advised to stay closed indefinitely, legal experts said Thursday in the wake of a major appeals court ruling.The ruling, handed down Wednesday, banned medical marijuana sales at a facility in Mount Pleasant. It prompted the estimated 400 to 500 dispensaries in Michigan to shut down and outraged the nearly 100,000 carriers of medical marijuana cards."They have to stay closed until further notice," said Paul Tylenda, a Grosse Pointe Park lawyer. "If they open, they are at risk of getting treated like criminals.

Saudi Arabian officials said archaeologists have begun excavating the site of a 9,000-year-old civilization, including horse fossils, suggesting people in the Arabian Peninsula domesticated horses in the ancient culture.HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman, president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), submitted the discovery to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah. Salman said the discovery at the al-Maqar site challenges the popular notion that horses were only domesticated 5,500 years ago in Central Asia.Ali al-Ghabban added that the discovery changed what was known about the evolution of culture in the late Neolithic period.

The 'bloon' can climb to a height of 36km, offering wannabe-astronauts the chance to glimpse the sun dawning on the earth.It's described as a 'near-spaceship' and each trip will cost 90,000 pounds per person, with the journey lasting about five hours.Included in that time is a three hour cruise at an altitude where the blackness of space can be seen above and the curvature of the earth below.A cabin with room for four passengers and two pilots is attached to a huge, 129 metre diameter balloon.

Researchers got their first up-close look at dust from the surface of a small, stony asteroid after the Hayabusa spacecraft scooped some up and brought it back to Earth. Analysis of these dust particles, detailed in a special issue of the journal Science this week, confirms a long-standing suspicion: that the most common meteorites found here on Earth, known as ordinary chondrites, are born from these stony, or S-type, asteroids. And since chondrites are among the most primitive objects in the solar system, the discovery also means that these asteroids have been recording a long and rich history of early solar system events.

Believe it or not, one thing that predicts how well a CEO's company performs is -- the width of the CEO's face! CEOs with wider faces have better-performing companies than CEOs with long faces. That's the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues study how top management teams work. But they have to do it in indirect ways. "CEOs and top executives don't typically have time to talk with researchers or take batteries of tests," she says. "Our research has primarily been at a distance." They've analyzed the content of letters to shareholders and looked at things like how a CEO's educational or personal background affects how well his or her company does. Wong and her colleagues, Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, wanted to look at another aspect of CEOs -- their faces.

Archaeologists searching for King Arthur's round table have found a "circular feature" beneath the historic King's Knot in Stirling. The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years. Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.Archaeologists from Glasgow University, working with the Stirling Local History Society and Stirling Field and Archaeological Society, conducted the first ever non-invasive survey of the site in May and June in a bid to uncover some of its secrets.

Most of history's great thinkers are remembered for their completed works. Think of Newton's Principia, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or Darwin's Origin of Species. These are people who slaved away for decades, each producing works that are today widely regarded as masterpieces.Not so for 17th century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat. To be sure, Fermat accomplished many feats. He helped develop analytic geometry along with fellow Frenchman René Descartes. He planted the seed that would blossom into differential calculus. He made important contributions to optics, probability theory, and most of all, number theory. He was fluent in five languages. And he managed all of this while holding down a job as a lawyer.

Scientists have undone the progress made by evolution by altering chicken DNA to create embryos with alligator-like snouts instead of beaks.Experts changed the DNA of chicken embryos in the early stage of their development, enabling them to undo evolutionary progress and give the creatures snouts which are thought to have been lost in the cretaceous period millions of years ago.The scientific revelation of 'rewinding' evolution could pave the way for scientists altering DNA in the other direction and use the same process to create species better able to adapt to Earth's climate.

To view the Taj Mahal far from the hawkers and crowds, I had hoped to approach it in a small boat on the Yamuna River, which flows in a wide arc along the rear of the majestic 17th-century tomb.My guide, a journalist and environmental activist named Brij Khandelwal, was skeptical. The river was low, he said; there may not be enough water to float a boat. But he was game. So one morning, we met in downtown Agra, a city of more than 1.4 million people, near a decaying sandstone arch called the Delhi Gate, and headed for the river, dodging vegetable carts and motorized rickshaws, kids and stray dogs. Sometimes drivers obeyed the traffic signals; other times they zoomed through red lights. We crossed the Jawahar Bridge, which spans the Yamuna, and made our way into a greener area, then took a turn where men and women were selling repaired saris on the side of the road. Eventually we arrived at a spot opposite the Taj. There we hoped to find a fisherman to take us across.

Simon was one year old, playing in the dining room. He picked up a pink block from the pile beside his knee. Carefully, he positioned a blue brick alongside. He reached across for more pink bricks and slid them against the blue.His mother, halfway through folding napkins into bishops' mitres, stopped in astonishment.One blue, one pink.One blue, two pinks.One blue, three pinks.From the disarray of nature, her baby son was enforcing regularity.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's."So starts H G Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, which continues with a military invasion by Martians. While contact with aliens may be a common theme in science fiction, could it also be a serious topic in science?Indeed it could. Ever since 1960 with the first serious search for radio transmissions from other civilisations (known as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), scientists have been thinking about what would happen if evidence for ET were found. Examples of their efforts include the 2010 Royal Society conference on "The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society.

Dozens of Laredo residents woke up to see a bright light in the sky that some say they just cannot explain.Many people are now saying what they saw was a UFO in the sky over south Laredo before four this morning.But not everyone believes it.Annette Garcia has more.Caught on camera.This video shot a Pro 8 News viewer allegedly shows a light some say is coming from a UFO.The light that seems like an ordinary star shone brightly over Laredo around four Tuesday morning.

A small, 160-million-year-old Chinese fossil has something big to say about the emergence of mammals on Earth. The shrew-like creature is the earliest known example of an animal that used a placenta to provide nourishment to their unborn young. Its features clearly set it apart from marsupial mammals, which adopt a very different reproductive strategy.The discovery pushes back the date the two groups took up their separate lines, according to Nature magazine. The journal carries a paper written by a team of palaeontologists led by Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, US. It describes the fossil remains of an animal unearthed in China's northeast Liaoning Province, which has produced so many stunning fossils in recent years.

Next time you're out picking tomatoes in your garden and you come across a 'daddy long legs,' realize that you are looking at a species whose body design hasn't changed much in 300 million years. Need proof? How about a 3-D model?Researchers from the Imperial College London and an international team of scientists have developed 3-D models of two ancient types of harvestmen, also know[n] as 'daddy long legs'. The two fossilized species, Dyspnoi and Eupnoi, skittered across the earth before the dinosaurs during the Carboniferous period.Harvestmen were found on all continental landmasses, except Antarctica. Despite being the third most-diverse arachnid order, their itinerant life on earth and their poorly mineralized exoskeleton made many fossils unfit for preservation.

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what University of Manchester astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way.The discovery has been made by an international research team, led by Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is reported in the journal Science.The researchers, from The University of Manchester as well as institutions in Australia, Germany, Italy, and the USA, first detected an unusual star called a pulsar using the Parkes radio telescope of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and followed up their discovery with the Lovell radio telescope, based at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, and one of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

For the first time, a black hole has been caught in the act of tearing apart and swallowing a star that got too close.Scientists, who until now had witnessed only the aftermath of such events, say the observation is shedding light on "relativistic jets," bursts of matter that shoot out at nearly the speed of light.At the centers of virtually all large galaxies are supermassive black holes. These monsters, which are millions to billions of times the mass of the sun, can rip apart passers-by, gravitationally pulling at stars in gigantic versions of how our moon tugs on Earth's oceans to generate tides.

Cheer up, Star Trek fans, looks like string theory may allow for universe-bridging "wormholes" to cross the cosmos.A favorite of science fiction since the 1950's,wormholes are shortcuts through space and time theoretically allowed by Einstein's theory of gravity that would permit rapid travel across many light years' distances. (One of our readers notes that they are vital to the Stargate science fiction series.)

If we don't reverse the current trend in food prices, we've got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists.What causes riots? That's not a question you would expect to have a simple answer.But today, Marco Lagi and buddies at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, say they've found a single factor that seems to trigger riots around the world.This single factor is the price of food. Lagi and co say that when it rises above a certain threshold, social unrest sweeps the planet.

A new study deals a blow to the idea that most European men are descended from farmers who migrated from the Near East 5,000-10,000 years ago.The findings challenge previous research showing that the genetic signature of the farmers displaced that of Europe's indigenous hunters. The latest research leans towards the idea that most of Europe's males trace a line of descent to stone-age hunters. But the authors say more work is needed to answer this question.The study, by an international team, is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Archaeological finds show that modern humans first settled in Europe from about 40,000 years ago - during a time known as the Palaeolithic.

(Reuters) - Flecks of gold and vibrant swirls of royal blue grace the pages of illuminated royal manuscripts at the British Library in London, which will shortly go on show to the public.The 150 manuscripts in the exhibition represent the most stunning pieces from the library's collection, the largest group of medieval manuscripts in Britain and one of the most important in the world."The manuscripts contain tens of thousands of the best medieval decorative and figurative paintings, which are as vivid as they were when they were first painted," said Scot McKendrick, head of history and classical studies at the British Library.

Graham's latest book, Entangled, has been released in Japanese under the title "Ria & Leoni". See Graham's Official Japanese website for more details, or click the book image to the right to find it on Amazon.