Newsdesk Archive

The giant earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in March were so strong that their vibrations almost reached space, a new study says.The vertical motion of the ground shaking and swelling tsunami waves produced the vibrations, which pressed upward against the overlying air, said Emile Okal, a geophysicist at Northwestern University who was not part of the study team.This process has been known from previous earthquakes, but the vibrations from Japan caused the biggest such effect yet measured.

Edwin J. Fizer got off the train to report for training at Montford Point, North Carolina in the summer of 1942. He, like all proud Marines, had to prove his mettle.Except, Fizer had another tough hurdle. He was black, and until then, the U.S. Marine Corps had been all white.But in June, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order that began to erase discrimination in the armed forces. The Marines were the last to open up and the next year, Fizer was among 18,000 young black men who trained -- not at Parris Island -- but at a segregated facility in Montford Point, North Carolina.

According to the analysis, the native Andean population in the Yucay Valley of Peru showed a remarkable ability to bounce back in the short term from the disease, warfare, and famine that accompanied the initial Spanish invasion. However, it was the repetition of such disasters generation after generation, along with overly rigid colonial administration, that dramatically reduced the population over the long term.The research, by R. Alan Covey (Southern Methodist University), Geoff Childs (Washington University in St. Louis), and Rebecca Kippen (University of Melbourne), is published in the June issue of the journal Current Anthropology.

There are more than 700 curious tunnel networks in Bavaria, but their purpose remains a mystery. Were they built as graves for the souls of the dead, as ritual spaces or as hideaways from marauding bandits? Archeologists are now exploring the subterranean vaults to unravel their secrets.Beate Greithanner, a dairy farmer, is barefoot as she walks up the lush meadows of the Doblberg, a mountain in Bavaria set against a backdrop of snow-capped Alpine peaks. She stops and points to a hole in the ground. "This is where the cow was grazing," she says. "Suddenly she fell in, up to her hips."A crater had opened up beneath the unfortunate cow.

Stone Age man created a massive network of underground tunnels criss-crossing Europe from Scotland to Turkey, a new book on the ancient superhighways has claimed.German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch said evidence of the tunnels has been found under hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over the continent.In his book - Secrets Of The Underground Door To An Ancient World - he claims the fact that so many have survived after 12,000 years shows that the original tunnel network must have been enormous.

The discovery of a large Roman Settlement in Devon was the result of a chance metal detecting coin find. Danielle Wootton, the Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and archaeologist at the University of Exeter was called on to investigate further.Two metal detectorists discovered nearly a hundred Roman coins in a series of fields a several miles west of Exeter. This would not be unusual in other parts of Britain but it has always been thought that Roman influence never made it this far into Devon as there is little evidence of Romans in the South West Peninsula of Britain.

Scientists have found opal-like crystals in the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell to Earth in Canada in 2000. This is the first extraterrestrial discovery of these unusual crystals, which may have formed in the primordial cloud of dust that produced the sun and planets of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, according to a report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Barely three feet tall and plastered with shiny panels, Xenith looks more like a spaceship for miniature aliens than a car. But the tiny vehicle is the pride and joy of the Stanford Solar Car Project, and will carry the group 2,000 miles across the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide in their bid to win the 2011 World Solar Challenge.The Solar Car Project, run by a group of 20 Stanford engineering students, will unveil Xenith on Aug. 11. "We pushed the boundaries of aerodynamics, and invented new technologies for this car to make it faster," team leader Nathan Hall-Snyder tells SF Weekly (your correspondent is also an acquaintance of his).

A significant number of Americans believe that memory is more powerful, objective and reliable than it actually is, a new survey finds. Some memory myths are so pervasive that up to 83 percent of people believe them.The survey, published online today (Aug. 3) in the journal PLoS ONE, queried a nationally representative sample of 1,500 Americans about a variety of common beliefs about memory. The survey found that almost two-thirds of Americans believe that memory works like a video camera, accurately recording events for later review.In fact, study researchers said, scientific data suggests that even confident eyewitnesses to an event are wrong about what happened 30 percent of the time.

The Ajiro--a concept from Australia--would come from the Earth fully formed. Is this the first step for a sustainable manufacturing economy?Another bamboo bicycle? Yes--but the vehicle devised by Alexander Vittouris departs from the funky, tiki-bar-friendly lines made from this sustainable, globally ubiquitous grass. A design student at Australia's Monash University, Vittouris envisions a bicycle that isn't built, but grown--the bamboo stalks of the frame being trained into shape while the plant is growing. Inspired by arborsculpture, in which tree branches are fixed in expressive shapes that they take as the plant grows, Vittouris wants to develop a reusable framework that would shape bamboo into nearly finished bicycles.

Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.

It's a radio station known for irreverent chat, where current affairs and topical discussion reign supreme.But Radio 5 Live took on a more otherworldly tone this morning when one of its own sports reporters claimed he had a close brush with a UFO.'Freaked out' sports journalist Mike Sewell said he was left gobsmacked when he spotted a huge 'disc-shaped' aircraft hovering above the Hertfordshire countryside on his way to work in the early hours of the morning.

On his way in to work this morning, Radio 5 live's sports reporter spotted a disc shaped craft circling above a field in Hertfordshire. Was it a UFO?Mike Sewell describes what he saw and Timothy Good, an unidentified flying objects expert, tells 5 live Breakfast what it could have been.

Researchers found that our basic understanding of "low pressure systems" has been flawed for more than 90 years.Scientists from the University of Manchester contradicted traditional understanding of how low pressure systems evolve.The Norwegian model in use since the 1920s is that when a storm occludes, it will automatically weaken.

The idea that other universes - as well as our own - lie within "bubbles" of space and time has received a boost.Studies of the low-temperature glow left from the Big Bang suggest that several of these "bubble universes" may have left marks on our own.This "multiverse" idea is popular in modern physics, but experimental tests have been hard to come by.The preliminary work, to be published in Physical Review D, will be firmed up using data from the Planck telescope.

Battling nomads earned you buckets of trouble around 2,500 B.C., reports an international archeology team. Scars too.But at least you earned yourself a fancy burial."Intensive excavations in the Near East, which have been carried out for over 100 years, show that this region merits to be called a cradle of civilization," begins the International Journal of Osteoarcheology report led by Jacek Tomczyk of Poland's Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University.The study team reports on two Bronze Age burials in a tomb from the ancient trade town of Terqa, a Mesopatamian archeological site in modern-day Syria.

ANTARCTICA is rising like a cheese soufflé: slowly but surely. Lost ice due to climate change and left-over momentum from the end of the last big ice age mean the buoyant continent is heaven-bound.Donald Argus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues used 15 years of GPS data to show that parts of the Ellsworth mountains in west Antarctica are rising by around 5 millimetres a year (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2011gl048025). Elsewhere on the continent, the rise is slower.

Mars's dust bowl image may need a makeover. Dark streaks seen forming in summer and fading in winter might be signs of water flowing just beneath the surface.The sudden appearance of streaks on sloping ground have been attributed to present-day liquid water before, although their origin is still debated. Light streaks have been seen appearing on steep slopes in images taken years apart by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. And seasonal dark streaks have emerged in the north polar region.Liquid water flowing downhill might explain both types of events, but dust or sand avalanches could also be to blame.

A powerful M9-class solar flare erupted from the sun at 10:09 p.m. EDT on July 29 (0209 GMT July 30).Those who look to the skies on Friday (Aug. 5) may see exceptional auroras thanks to a strong solar flare that hurled a cloud of plasma toward Earth earlier this week.The solar flare occurred yesterday (Aug. 2) when an intense magnetic event above sunspot 1261 blasted out a flow of charged particles that's now headed toward Earth, according to SpaceWeather.com, a website that monitors space weather. This could unleash a geomagnetic storm here on our planet that might disrupt satellite and radio communications.

SpaceX founder has plans for humans to be able to get to Mars on the cheap.NASA is working with Space Exploration Technologies to go well beyond simply supplying ferry flights to the International Space Station. The firm, headed by internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, is talking with NASA about going to Mars, on the cheap."We figured out that for a pretty low cost, a Dragon capsule on a Falcon Heavy (rocket) could go to Mars for hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions," Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during the NewSpace 2011 commercial space conference over the weekend.

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown the world's first 'printed' aircraft, which could revolutionise the economics of aircraft design.The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer.

THEY built the iconic pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza, which still stand as a monument to their skills and tenacity to this day.But the fall of the great Egyptian Old Kingdom may have been helped along by a common problem which remains with us now - drought.Researchers from the University of St Andrews have confirmed that a severe period of drought around 4,200 years ago may have contributed to the demise of the civilisation.

Researchers working in Uganda say they have unearthed the well-preserved fossil skull of an ancient primate.The 20 million-year-old specimen comes from the site of an extinct volcano in Uganda's north-east Karamoja region.The scientists say preliminary analysis showed the tree-climbing herbivore was roughly 10 years old when it died.

It will be one wild ride. After arcing over Jupiter's north pole, the spacecraft will rip past the planet's equator at 60 kilometres per second, threading the gap between swirling cloud tops and a zone of high-energy radiation that would fry its delicate electronics. It will then swing out into space and repeat the harrowing journey 32 times more.That's the plan for Juno, a US$1.1-billion NASA mission that is due to launch on 5 August or soon after. If all goes well, five years from now the spacecraft will drop into the highly elliptical orbit, which at closest approach will allow it to probe Jupiter's murky depths. The polar orbit will limit Juno's exposure to the worst of the radiation belt encircling Jupiter's equator, where the planet's magnetic field whips up electrons to nearly the speed of light. It also gives the spacecraft a Janus-like view. Instruments aimed away from Jupiter will map the radiation belts and magnetic fields, whereas those trained on the planet will probe its opaque layers for chemical and gravitational clues to its origins.

A new theory suggests the Earth once had a small second moon that perished in a slow motion collision with its "big sister". Researchers suggest the collision may explain the mysterious mountains on the far side of our Moon.The scientists say the relatively slow speed of the crash was crucial in adding material to the rarely-seen lunar hemisphere. Details have been published in the journal Nature.The researchers involved hope that data from two US space agency (Nasa) lunar missions will substantiate or challenge their theory within the next year.

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said.Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel.The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share a common ancestor.

The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes.Due to phenomena such as ice ages, plate tectonics, land uplift, erosion and sedimentation, tides have changed dramatically over thousands of years and may change again in the future, a new study concludes.

SUPER-STEALTHY submarines may one day glide through the water without creating a wake, if a plan to channel fluid intelligently around objects can be made to work.A vehicle moving through a fluid normally disturbs the medium in two ways. First, some of the fluid gets dragged along with the vehicle, sapping its energy and slowing it down. Second, a turbulent wake forms behind it where fluid rushes in to fill the vacant space. The churning fluid in the wake in turn creates noise that reveals the vehicle's presence.But channelling the fluid around the object in just the right way could solve both problems at once.

It's paint-by-numbers for neuroscientists. At the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, researchers have devised a faster way of computing the neural connections that make up the brain. Mapping out this intricate web previously depended on the human eye as no computer was powerful enough to handle the brain's complex network of 70 billion neurons and thousands of kilometres of circuits. For this gargantuan task, even the smallest sliver of neural tissue was painstaking, demanding an experienced team to make modest progress.

As the next generation of spaceships is being conceived, should shuttle designers take their inspiration from sci-fi illustrators?Generations of schoolchildren, openly, and many adults, perhaps more guardedly, have delighted in fantastical depictions of space travel.From Star Wars back to 2001: A Space Odyssey and even further back to comic hero Dan Dare and Victorian illustrations for the stories of Jules Verne and HG Wells, the way spaceships should look has been an important issue - before the first rocket booster ever fired.

Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding has hired Saudi Bin Laden Group to build the world's tallest skyscraper in Jeddah, Gulfnews.com reports.Jeddah Tower will be 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) tall and will contain a Four Seasons luxury hotel, apartments, condominiums and offices that overlook the Red Sea, Financial Times reported.Kingdom Holding is paying Bin Laden Group, one of the world's largest construction companies, about $1.2 billion to take on the five-year project, according to Financial Times.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska scientists have discovered the fossil of a rare, prehistoric marine reptile that is likely the most complete remnant of the creature ever found in North America.The nearly complete fossilized skeleton is of a thalattosaur, a long-tailed sea creature that plied warm, shallow waters in the early days of dinosaurs and became extinct at the end of the Triassic period some 200 million years ago.

The proponents of string theory seem to think they can provide a more elegant description of the Universe by adding additional dimensions. But some other theoreticians think they've found a way to view the Universe as having one less dimension. The work sprung out of a long argument with Stephen Hawking about the nature of black holes, which was eventually solved by the realization that the event horizon could act as a hologram, preserving information about the material that's gotten sucked inside. The same sort of math, it turns out, can actually describe any point in the Universe, meaning that the entire content Universe can be viewed as a giant hologram, one that resides on the surface of whatever two-dimensional shape will enclose it.

A new study by York University researchers finds that practicing yoga reduces the physical and psychological symptoms of chronic pain in women with fibromyalgia.The study is the first to look at the effects of yoga on cortisol levels in women with fibromyalgia. The condition, which predominantly affects women, is characterized by chronic pain and fatigue; common symptoms include muscle stiffness, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal discomfort, anxiety and depression.

The most massive fruiting body of any fungus yet documented has been discovered growing on the underside of a tree in China.The fruiting body, which is equivalent to the mushrooms produced by other fungi species, is up to 10m long, 80cm wide and weighs half a tonne.That shatters the record held previously by a fungus growing in Kew Gardens in the UK.The new giant fungus is thought to be at least 20 years old.

Health officials in Vancouver say they will launch a pilot project later this year to distribute clean, unused crack pipes to drug users.While heroin users can pick up clean needles from needle-exchange programs or the city's controversial safe-injection site, crack pipes are more difficult to come by.Some crack smokers can afford to buy small glass or Pyrex stems to use as pipes. Others fashion makeshift pipes from bottles, cans or even hollow car antennas. And in many cases, they just simply share, potentially putting themselves at risk of contracting disease.

A new study has found that children from "grow op" homes were healthy and drug-free, leading to questions about the practice of immediately removing such kids from their parents.The research from the Motherisk Program at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children suggests the automatic seizure of kids from drug-producing parents can be more detrimental to the wellbeing of the children, said Gideon Koren, a University of Toronto professor and the program's director."After examining 75 of the kids over several years, we came to very clear conclusions that a vast majority of these kids are doing well," Koren said. "Well fed, well kept, doing well in school and developing well.

Initial results from research carried out as part of the Atlas3D project on two elliptical galaxies could, if they are confirmed, call into question the current model of the formation of galaxies.An international team of astronomers, including in particular CNRS, CEA, the CFHT, the Observatoire de Lyon, ENS de Lyon and Claude Bernard Lyon 1 et Paris-Diderot universities, are due to publish their initial observations in the journal Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society.

Holocaust survivors have issued a "plea" to Facebook to "deny access to their powerful social networking platform to anyone promoting" the notion that the Holocaust should be denied or that it was a hoax.The survivors, affiliated with the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which also operates the highly regarded Museum of Tolerance, recently made the request of Facebook. The letter they wrote is shared on the center's website.

A well preserved skeleton from the copper age has been discovered in an archaeological reserve in Kozareva mound near Kableshkovo in Pomorie.The discovery marks an exciting new development for the village that was also a centre for the pottery industry during the fifth century BCE.According to the head of the excavation, Professor Petya Georgieva, this is the first confirmed tomb from such an early period in southern Bulgaria.

For the first time, scientists have devised an invisibility cloak material that hides objects from detection using light that is visible to humans. The new device is a leap forward in cloaking materials, according to a report in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

A volunteer in a medical study who had an unusual reaction to the flu virus could hold the key to developing a vaccine that protects against all pandemic strains of the infection, scientists say.Tests on a group of people who had either been infected with or vaccinated against the flu revealed one participant who produced a "super-antibody" that could fight off every strain of influenza A, the virus responsible for mass outbreaks of the illness.The person produced too little of the super-antibody to make them immune to the flu, but scientists believe they can boost its effect, and use it to make vaccines against the virus.

Neanderthals died out in Western Europe after a surge of modern humans arrived from Africa and made them a minority in their own land, researchers claim.The swarm of Homo sapiens onto the continent more than 40,000 years ago left the Neanderthals, who had thrived in the frigid conditions for 300 millennia, outnumbered by a massive 10 to one.The invasion of so many modern humans overturned the Neanderthals' domination of the land and forced them into fierce competition for food, fuel and other crucial resources.

Jon Sarkin and Hank Turgeon had battled all afternoon on the Cape Ann golf course, Massachusetts. The time was about 3pm, Thursday 20 October 1988, and the two friends had cut out of work early, Sarkin from his chiropractic office, Turgeon from his carpentry. A slight breeze rippled as Sarkin bent down, reached inside his golf bag and fished around for a tee. As he pulled out his hand, he experienced a hideous dizzying sensation, as if his brain had suddenly twisted.A part of his head seemed to unhinge, to split apart and rush away. I'm 35 years old and I'm going to die, he said to himself."Is anything wrong?" Turgeon asked.

Despite rapid and substantial growth in the amount of land and sea designated as protected habitat over the last four decades, the diversity of species the world over is plummeting, a new study has found.Over 100,000 so-called "protected areas" representing some 7 million square miles of land and nearly 1 million square miles of ocean have been established since the 1960's, noted the analysis, published Thursday in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.And yet, according to a widely cited index used to track planetary biodiversity, the wealth of terrestrial and marine species has seen steady decline over roughly the same period, suggesting that simply protecting swaths of land and sea -- a common conservation strategy worldwide -- is inadequate for preventing the steady disappearance of earth's creatures.

Rome archaeologists have unearthed a large and fine wall mosaic of the Greek God Apollo, dating from the second half of the first century after Christ, near the Colosseum, the Roman City Council said in a statement on Saturday.The mosaic, depicting Apollo and the Muses, is linked thematically to the wall paintings discovered in 1998, representing a philosopher and a Muse of an architectural background."An archaeological discovery is of extraordinary value to the city of Rome," said Mayor Gianni Alemanno, thanking the archaeologists for uncovering the treasure of ancient Rome.

If aliens are real then it appears they are becoming savvier at getting our attention.Early risers in Texas got a surprise when a UFO shot through the sky live on breakfast TV.Sharp eyed viewers spotted the white light flash across the screen as local station KXAS showed a traffic camera looking across Fort Worth at 5:40am.In the top right of the video a bright light drops out of the sky and disappears.

For the first time ever, Lapita pottery has been discovered on Vanua Levu.The pottery dating back 1100BC has been found on Vorovoro Island near Labasa.Fiji Museum Chief Archeologist, Sepeti Matararaba said they thought Bourewa in Nadroga was the first settlement in Fiji however with this new find at Vorovoro, it meant that the first people to come to Fiji not only settled in Baurewa but split up and also settled in Vorovoro.

An ocean exploration team led by Swedish researcher Peter Lindberg has found what some are suggesting is a crashed flying saucer. Lindberg's team, which has had success in the past recovering sunken ships and cargo, was using sonar to look for the century-old wreck of a ship that went down carrying several cases of a super-rare champagne. Instead, the team discovered what it claims is a mysterious round object that might (or might not) be extraterrestrial.Lindberg explained to local media that his crew discovered, on the 300-foot-deep ocean floor between Finland and Sweden, "a large circle, about 60 feet in diameter. You see a lot of weird stuff in this job, but during my 18 years as a professional I have never seen anything like this. The shape is completely round.

Any sulfurous molecules that astronomers spot on alien worlds might be a way to reveal whether or not those distant planets host life, researchers suggest.On Earth, microbes can live off the energy available in sulfurous molecules that volcanoes release, essentially "breathing" these compounds the way humans breathe oxygen. If a similar kind of metabolism evolved on an extrasolar planet, the sulfurous molecules detected in the atmosphere of that world might help reveal the presence of alien life, said researcher Renyu Hu, a doctoral student in planetary science at MIT.

The Digger D-3 is the most recent addition to my own personal list of robots not to stand in front of. It's a mine-clearing robot, and not the sort of mine-clearing robot that pokes around with a metal detector. Instead, it's the sort of mine-clearing robot that just sucks it up and tells the landmines to bring it.At the front of the D-3 is a giant spinning metal pulverizer-thing-of-death, which has tungsten hammers that beat down almost a foot into the ground, turning everything they touch into mulch. This includes landmines, and although the mines do tend to blow up before getting shredded, the robot hardly seems to notice.

A mysterious stone statue, possibly the portrait of the great Inca emperor Pachacuti, once stood in Machu Picchu, according to archival research.Likely placed against a round stone wall on one of Machu Picchu's terraces, the statue had already disappeared by the time American explorer Hiram Bingham climbed the steep jungle slope to be faced with an archaeological wonder exactly a century ago on July 24, 1911.

China is pushing forward on readying its first space station module for launch. Meanwhile, that country's first astronaut is openly discussing the prospect of China's future engagement with the International Space Station.The 8.5-ton Tiangong-1 module, the first in a series of connecting rooms that will be launched into orbit, has been transported to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's Gansu Province and is undergoing a final checkout before its liftoff on a Long March II-F carrier booster later this year.

The brains of our closest relatives, unlike our own, do not shrink with age.The findings suggest that humans are more vulnerable than chimpanzees to age-related diseases because we live relatively longer.Our longer lifespan is probably an adaptation to having bigger brains, the team suggests in their Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

Oxford University is asking for help deciphering ancient Greek texts written on fragments of papyrus found in Egypt.Hundreds of thousands of images have gone on display on a website which encourages armchair archaeologists to help catalogue and translate them.Researchers hope the collective effort will give them a unique insight into life in Egypt nearly 2,000 years ago.

Its stones witness the feel of fingers and the weight and movement of shoe-shodden feet easily numbering in the hundreds of thousands every year. For the tourists who, this past year alone, numbered more than a million, it is an otherworldly experience that catches and transfixes the eye and dazzles the mind. For most of them, like the Taj Mahal in India, knowing the history and the religious significance of Angkor Wat tends to take a back seat to the almost mind-numbing visual experience. But the beauty and grandeur of the site might fade into oblivian if current trends continue and steps are not taken to ensure its sustainability.

A stone altar from the 9th century BCE was found in an archeological dig on Tel Tzafit, a site identified with the biblical Philistine city of Gat. The altar is reminiscent of Jewish altars from the same period and sheds light on the cultural links between the two peoples, who fought each other for centuries.The altar is approximately one meter tall, half a meter wide and half a meter long. It was found by a team of diggers led by Prof. Aren Maeir of the Land of Israel and Archaeology studies at Bar-Ilan University. The most outstanding features of the altar are a pair of horns on its front and a cornice in the middle. Its form is reminiscent of the descriptions of the Jewish altars in the scriptures, with the most noticeable difference being that the altar in the Temple was described as having four horns, while the Gat altar has only two.

MEXICO CITY.- Recent interdisciplinary investigations regarding 31 marine fossils found at Palenque Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas, reveal that Maya people conceived their beliefs parting from this kind of vestiges, so their idea of the underworld was associated to water.For Palenque inhabitants, marine fossils were the convincing proof of the land being covered by the sea long time ago, and parting from this fact they created their idea of the origin of the world, declared archaeologist Martha Cuevas, responsible, with geologist Jesus Alvarado, of research conducted by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

They hope to make history by rowing 450 miles across the Arctic sea to the magnetic North Pole.The trip to the Pole, which they estimate will take between four to six weeks, has not been done before. It is only possible now because of more ice-melt in the Arctic, organisers said.Mr Wishart is leading the Old Pulteney Row To The Pole challenge to highlight the effect of climate change on the ice around the polar regions.

The global population is expected to top seven billion in 2011. By 2050, it's expected to exceed nine billion. By 2100, it's expected to rise to 10 billion.The figures were cited by a Harvard School of Public Health press release about a review article of Professor David Bloom published in Science. The global population growth is expected to be highly uneven geographically. In certain developed countries like Japan and Germany, it's expected to stay flat or even decline. In the coming decades, these countries could face a demographics crisis as society fails to produce enough adults to care for the elderly.Towards 2050, the entire developed world is expected to contribute only three percent of the projected global growth.

Researchers from Oxford University are asking the public for help in translating the millions of fragments of ancient texts that could possibly be a lost gospel.The ancient texts, called The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered a century ago in Egypt but have yet to be completely translated, according to British researchers. The papyri could provide an insight into the "mark of the beast" referred to in the Book of Revelation.

Nasa's Juno probe headed to its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, ahead of its 5 August launch date. It will blast into space and spiral off into the solar system on a five-year trek to Jupiter.A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will carry Juno out as far as the orbit of Mars, before the probe is propelled back around the sun for a flyby of Earth in October 2013 giving it a gravitational catapult towards Jupiter.It will reach the solar system's largest planet by July 2016, where the solar-powered Juno will be rocketing along at 160,000 mph, making it the fastest man-made object in history. The spacecraft will then slow down to leap into Jupiter's 11-day polar orbit.

In October 2009, medical marijuana advocates celebrated a U.S. Department of Justice memo declaring that federal authorities wouldn't target the legal use of medicinal pot in states where it is permitted.The memo from Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden was credited with accelerating a California medical marijuana boom, including a proliferation of dispensaries that now handle more than $1 billion in pot transactions.

For six centuries beginning around 500 BCE, ancient Peru was ravaged by nearly constant war. But the end result might almost have been worth it: that war seems to have been the driving force for the region's first complex civilization.The Peru of the first millennium BCE was full of smaller groups, but it isn't until the region endured centuries of war that two large, dominant societies emerged in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca: the Taraco along the Ramis River and the Pukara of the grassland pampas. UCLA archaeologist Charles Stanish explains just what they were looking for as evidence of more advanced cultures.

Let's say an abuse-ridden childhood has left you with PTSD that sparks panic whenever you hear shouts, even on TV. Or let's say a bad accident has saddled you with crippling anxiety and chronic pain. Now let's say that you could ease -- or even cure -- these woes with prescription psiloscybin. Prescription ecstasy. Prescription LSD.If a growing phalanx of scientists get their way, those prescriptions could be yours within 10 years. Research into the medical benefits of psychedelic drugs is booming. An April conference on the subject at Great Britain's University of Kent featured lectures on such topics as "Ketamine Psychotherapy" and "Ayahuasca in the Contemporary World.

NASA and SpaceX have "technically" agreed the California-based firm's first date with the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon capsule will launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on 30 November then rendezvous and dock with the ISS on 7 December, nearly one year after its first test flight.The original plan was to rendezvous and dock on separate attempts, but following the successful test flight SpaceX asked NASA to combine the two missions. "We technically have agreed with SpaceX that we want to combine those flights," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations. "We are doing all the planning to go ahead and have those missions combined, but we haven't given them formal approval yet" he says.

WHY are we here? Where did we come from? According to the Boshongo people of central Africa, before us there was only darkness, water and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun evaporated some of the water, leaving land. Still in discomfort, Bumba vomited up the moon, the stars and then the leopard, the crocodile, the turtle, and finally, humans.This creation myth, like many others, wrestles with the kinds of questions that we all still ask today. Fortunately, as will become clear from this special issue of New Scientist, we now have a tool to provide the answers: science.

Looking back, the really strange thing was the silence. The way the church bells stopped ringing as the little group of naval cadets neared the village. The way even the ducks stood quiet and motionless by the shallow stream that ran across the road where the main street began.And, when the boys thought about it afterward, they recalled that even the autumn birdsong faded as they neared the first houses. The wind had dropped to nothing, too.Not a leaf stirred on the trees they passed. And the trees appeared to cast no shadows.

Alkali, algebra, algorithm, alembic. Spotted the pattern? It's no coincidence that many scientific words in English contain the Arabic definite article. In recent years, historians and scientists such as Jim al-Khalili have done a fantastic job of shedding some light on the Arabic origins of modern science (Arabic here referring to all cultures that made use of the script, rather than just the Arab people).In particular it's the "golden age" of Arabic science, between the 8th and 13th centuries, that gets all the press. So while the Vikings were romping around northern Europe, the 8th century Persian mathematician al-Khwārizmī was developing solutions to quadratic equations. While Alfred the Great was busy fending off those Vikings, the Arab polymath al-Kindi was introducing Indian numerals into mathematics, and the Persian physician al-Razi was conducting a study into the differences between measles and smallpox.

Whether he's zooming past in a pushchair, perched on a lavatory seat or getting a little too intimate with a passing cat, it's impossible not to be charmed by Nim the chimpanzee. Nim Chimpsky, to give him his full title, was born at the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma, in the early 70s. Highly intelligent, he was chosen to be the subject of a language experiment at Columbia University, called Project Nim, that aimed to discover whether or not chimpanzees could use grammar to create sentences if they were taught sign language and nurtured in a similar environment to human children. His name is a pun on Noam Chomsky, the linguist who theorised that language is unique to humans, which the experiment hoped to disprove.

Cod and other groundfish populations off the east coast of Canada are showing signs of recovery more than 20 years after the fisheries collapsed in the early 1990s, according to research published July 27 in Nature."This early-stage recovery represents a long ecological transition for an ecosystem that was pushed out of balance and that is gradually moving back into balance," says William Leggett, a professor in the Department of Biology, former principal at Queen's, and an expert in the dynamics of large marine ecosystems.

Like a poodle on a leash, a tiny asteroid runs ahead of Earth on the planet's yearlong strolls around the sun, scientists report.The discovery of this companion, which measures only about 300 yards across, makes Earth the fourth planet in the solar system that's known to share its orbit with an asteroid.

Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, its space agency said Wednesday."After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish," said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov.

Molecular data have shown that three Australian Cucurbitaceae species initially collected in 1856 but never accepted as separate species are distinct from each other and that one of them is the closest relative of the honeymelon, Cucumis melo. The names for these species are sorted out in a study published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

A review of experiments on non-human primates over a ten year period, led by Sir Patrick Bateson, president of the Zoological Society of London, found that nine per cent resulted in no scientific or medical benefit.In addition a majority of the 3,000 experiments on monkeys funded by Britain's three chief funding bodies between 1996 and 2006 did not have a significant medical impact.

Researchers in Maryland and Beijing have learned that a component marijuana helps mitigate cocaine addiction in mice, leading some to hope that marijuana may one day become the next big anti-addiction therapy.The discovery was announced in the July 2011 edition of Nature Neuroscience.The study found that cannabidiol, an active component of marijuana that does not produce an inebriating effect, effectively turns down a receptor in the brain that is stimulated by cocaine.

Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies."It looks for all the world like a map of a bit of a country onshore," said Nicky White, the senior researcher. "It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the seabed."So far, the data have revealed a landscape about 3,861 square miles (10,000 square km) west of the Orkney-Shetland Islands that stretched above sea level by almost as much as 0.6 miles (1 km). White and colleagues suspect it is part of a larger region that merged with what is now Scotland and may have extended toward Norway in a hot, prehuman world.

Scientists have found evidence of volcanoes on the far side of the moon.The new discovery, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience is a rare example of volcanism on the lunar surface not associated with asteroid, meteor or comet impact events.Until now the best known examples of volcanism were on the moon's near side in a region known as the Procellarum KREEP terrane.

Japan will seek to extract natural gas from seabed deposits of methane hydrate, also known as "burning ice," in the world's first such offshore experiment, a news report said Monday.The test is scheduled for a stretch of ocean southwest of Tokyo, between Shizuoka and Wakayama prefectures, over several weeks in the fiscal year to March 2013, the Nikkei financial daily said.The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is preparing to request more than 10 billion yen ($127.5 million) for the project, the report said.

Warfare, triggered by political conflict between the fifth century B.C. and the first century A.D., likely shaped the development of the first settlement that would classify as a civilization in the Titicaca basin of southern Peru, a new UCLA study suggests.Charles Stanish, director of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Abigail Levine, a UCLA graduate student in anthropology, used archaeological evidence from the basin, home to a number of thriving and complex early societies during the first millennium B.C., to trace the evolution of two larger, dominant states in the region: Taraco, along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas.

An archaeologist believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art.The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.The archaeologist who found the carving on the Gower peninsula, Dr George Nash, called it "very, very exciting.

Lee Berger is standing in a death trap, smiling. It is a hole in the ground about 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg, in a ridged brown valley where herds of giraffes occasionally parade between stands of trees. The red-rock walls of the pit are higher than Berger's head, and steep enough in spots to make a scramble up, or down, rather daunting. Some two million years ago, the hole was a great deal deeper, with no possibility of escape for any creature that fell in. This accounts for the trove of fossils Berger is finding, which in turn accounts for his upbeat mood. He leans over a red boulder near the pit bottom, tracing a white-colored protrusion with his fingers. "It looks like part of an arm," he says. "That means we've found another individual.

Astronomers using Nasa's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise) have spotted Earth's first "Trojan" asteroid.Trojans are asteroids that share the same orbital path as a planet (see the Nasa animation), but because the[y] constantly lead or follow on behind, they're incredibly difficult to spot from the ground.The side-on view we have of the rest of the solar system means that trojans orbiting other planets are much easier to spot. Neptune, Mars and Jupiter all have them, and scientists have speculated that the earth too might have its own shadowy doppelganger.

The stone adze that archaeologist Pam Chester unearthed in April at Paremata's Ngatitoa Domain near a site believed inhabited since the 15th century.The significance of a Maori adze unearthed in Paremata is still unknown. Archaeologist Pam Chester discovered the adze in April while monitoring earthworks near Para-Plim Rugby Club at Ngatitoa Domain.The 40-centimetre stone adze, now at Te Papa, was notified this week by the Culture and Heritage Ministry. People have 60 days to claim ownership.

A group of Mexican anthropologists have announced their discovery through skeletal studies that the early Xixime Indians, who around 1450 inhabited a series of dwellings built inside caves, ate human flesh during a ritual associated with war and the crop cycle.In a four-year study of 40 human bones found inside Maguey Cave on the Sierra de Durango mountains in northern Mexico, the researchers observed that at least 80 percent of the remains "had cut marks and signs of having been boiled," the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said in a communique.

There are more than 700 curious tunnel networks in Bavaria, but their purpose remains a mystery. Were they built as graves for the souls of the dead, as ritual spaces or as hideaways from marauding bandits? Archeologists are now exploring the subterranean vaults to unravel their secrets.Beate Greithanner, a dairy farmer, is barefoot as she walks up the lush meadows of the Doblberg, a mountain in Bavaria set against a backdrop of snow-capped Alpine peaks. She stops and points to a hole in the ground. "This is where the cow was grazing," she says. "Suddenly she fell in, up to her hips."A crater had opened up beneath the unfortunate cow.

Russia's legendary Mir submarines have been used to reach the ocean floor beneath the North Pole, film the Titanic in its watery grave and search for the sunken treasures of Czar Nicholas II in Siberia. Now they are exploring the gigantic underwater gulches of Lake Geneva.For a moment, the image looks familiar, like something from a television documentary or movie. But slowly it begins to feel different, more real. Suddenly, in the beam of the 1,200-watt spotlight, the steering wheel of a steamship that sank over a century ago emerges from the emerald darkness. At first, only rough outlines are visible through the thick Plexiglas porthole. But slowly the vessel comes into focus.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Saturday for a second "green revolution" to feed the country's burgeoning population that is forecast to overtake China in numbers by 2025.Under India's "Green Revolution" in the 1960s and 70s -- seen as one of the world's most successful agricultural turnarounds -- planting of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice resulted in a sharp output rise."We all look back proudly to our green revolution which helped us overcome food shortages and banish the spectre of starvation," Singh told a conference of agricultural scientists.

Officials at the National Science Foundation (NSF) are scrambling to save the upcoming Antarctic research season after losing access to the Oden, a Swedish icebreaker. If a replacement can't be found, and soon, scientists hoping to study everything from geology to climate science to astrophysics may have to postpone their plans for a year.The ship was slated to clear a channel through the ice in December 2011 and January 2012 to allow supply vessels to reach McMurdo Research Station, the biggest scientific base in Antarctica. Some cargo can be flown into McMurdo using LC-130H aircraft, but the base relies on an annual visit by a freighter and fuel tanker to maintain operations. Without an icebreaker on hand, NSF might have to severely curtail work at the station and at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, which is supplied by flights from McMurdo.

The great exoplanet gold rush is on to find habitable Earth-sized planets. By definition these are planets in the "Goldilocks" zone around sun-like stars where temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist on the surface.But how do you assess the habitability of a planet that spends only part of its time in a Goldilocks zone because its orbit is so elliptical? Like a roller coaster it speeds up as it falls toward the lowest point of its orbit and then slows down as it climbs to its farthest point from its parent star.

At the Clean Technology 2011 Conference and Expo in Boston, Andre Sharon presented a new concept of using ships equipped with a wave-power system to harvest energy and deliver it back to a power grid on shore.Traditional wave-power systems are permanently located out in the middle of the ocean and send power back to the energy grid via undersea cables which typically cost $500,000 per kilometer. This new concept would eliminate the need for these costly cables and greatly reduce the cost.

Besides helping each other plant and harvest, rural Chinese neighbors also influence each other's environmental behavior -- farmers are more likely to re-enroll their land in a conservation program if they talk to their neighbors about it.Scientists from the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University used a simulation model to study the amount of land farmers in the Wolong Nature Reserve in southwestern China re-enrolled in the Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP), which aims to reduce soil erosion by converting sloping cropland to forest or grassland. Farmers receive an annual payment of either 5,000 pounds of grain or $498 for each 2.5 acres enrolled in the program. In 2005, this was about 8 percent of the farmers' income.

A newly discovered planetary nebula, the last gasps of a dying star, could provide scientists with answers about the ultimate fate of our sun and solar system, including Earth.The discovery by a team of astronomers, including Associate Professor Orsola De Marco from Sydney's Macquarie University, could also help resolve a decades-old debate about the impact stellar companions have on the formation and structure of planetary nebulae.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Atlantis returned from NASA's final shuttle mission on Thursday, ending a 30-year era that opened the space frontier, exposed its dangers and established a toehold for future endeavors beyond Earth.NASA workers lined the runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before dawn to greet Atlantis and its crew after a 13-day cargo run to the International Space Station and to mark the conclusion of the shuttle program after 135 flights."I saw grown men and grown women crying today, tears of joy to be sure," said shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. "Human emotions came out on the runway today. You couldn't suppress them.

There are only 13 "Archimidean solids" - a family of symmetrical, 3D polyhedra attributed to the Greek mathematician. Now chemists have made a molecule-scale version of one of these special structures, known as the truncated octahedron (see picture, right).The tiny, hollow structure acts as a cage, capable of encapsulating a surprising variety of ions and molecules without falling apart. It also aids the creation of substances that won't otherwise form.

A DYING star deserves a last hurrah. It is fitting then, that our sun will throw many of its comets into interstellar space when it dies, according to new simulations.In about 5 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen to burn in its core and will expand to become a red giant star. The red giant will blow off its atmosphere, leaving an ember-like core called a white dwarf.

China said Friday it had hooked its first so-called "fourth generation" nuclear reactor to the grid, a breakthrough that could eventually reduce its reliance on uranium importsThe experimental fast-neutron reactor is the result of more than 20 years of research and could also help minimise radioactive waste from nuclear energy, the state-run China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) said.

Archaeologists unearthing a biblical ruin inside a Palestinian city in the West Bank are writing the latest chapter in a 100-year-old excavation that has been interrupted by two world wars and numerous rounds of Mideast upheaval.Working on an urban lot that long served residents of Nablus as an unofficial dump for garbage and old car parts, Dutch and Palestinian archaeologists are learning more about the ancient city of Shekhem, and are preparing to open the site to the public as an archaeological park next year.

Even as the United States and its Western allies participate in a modern war in Libya, a small city in New Jersey and a congressmen are battling to bring home the remains of 13 American sailors who died there in another war more than 200 years ago.The remains couldn't be brought home until the current war ends. Eight of them lie in an unmarked mass grave under Tripoli's Green Square, where supporters of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi frequently hold anti-American protests.

On a small, floating piece of ice in the Beaufort Sea, several hundred miles north of Alaska, a group of scientists are documenting what some dub an "Arctic meltdown."According to climate scientists, the warming of the region is shrinking the polar ice cap at an alarming rate, reducing the permafrost layer and wreaking havoc on polar bears, arctic foxes and other indigenous wildlife in the region.What is bad for the animals, though, has been good for commerce.The recession of the sea ice and the reduction in permafrost -- combined with advances in technology -- have allowed access to oil, mineral and natural gas deposits that were previously trapped in the ice.