Newsdesk Archive

A new species of butterfly has taken scientists by surprise after it was discovered fluttering in Northern Ireland.Experts had no idea that the Cryptic wood white even existed as they launched a conservation project across the UK.The rare butterfly looks identical to the Réals wood white and the wood white, a delicate insect found in English woodlands in summer.

In the age of Google and Wikipedia, an almost unlimited amount of information is available at our fingertips, and with the rise of smartphones, many of us have nonstop access. The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.

Snow White's seven dwarfs could do it. So could Andy Griffith. Lauren Bacall told Humphrey Bogart, "You just put your lips together and blow."They could all whistle, but astronauts on spacewalks will never, ever be able to whistle while they work.When you're on a spacewalk, says astronaut Jim Reilly, your voice changes. "You can't whistle, so you'll never hear anyone whistling on their way to work on a spacewalk. You'll hear them humming, but you won't hear them whistling.

An unfinished Indian canoe, apparently abandoned five centuries ago, has been discovered in a remote section of a southeast Alaska rain forest, officials said on Wednesday.The canoe, carved from cedar, was discovered under a thick layer of moss and is surrounded by trees that are several hundred years old, Sealaska Corp., the Alaska Native corporation that owns the land, said in a statement.

In the corner of a Hong Kong rooftop, amid the shining glass and steel of the city's high rise skyline, stands a humble wooden box on legs -- a beehive, packed with roughly 10,000 honey bees.Densely urban Hong Kong seems an unlikely match for any form of agriculture, but a few hardy souls have been venturing into the increasingly popular practice of beekeeping.

Arcane rules that have led to countries in the international organisation which governs whaling being widely accused of corruption, malpractice and secrecy have been swept aside in an attempt to end a series of scandals.Practices whereby delegates to International Whaling Commission (IWC) meetings would arrive with briefcases of cash, and small country delegations would have their membership fees paid by another country, are to be outlawed. From now on, all countries will have to pay subscriptions by bank transfer from government accounts, all minutes and decisions taken will have to be published within weeks rather than years, and any scientific evidence used by countries to support their arguments will have to rely on peer-reviewed work.

A colourful, spindly-legged toad that was believed to be extinct has been rediscovered in the forests of Borneo.Scientists from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) found three of the missing long-legged Borneo rainbow toads up a tree during a night time search.The team had spent months scouring remote mountain forests for the species.Prior to these images, only illustrations of the toad had existed.

A carving of a dancing shaman has been found on an ancient pottery shard unearthed years ago at an archaeological site in Aomori, making it possibly the oldest depiction of a shaman on an artifact uncovered in Japan."It is speculated to be a shaman with a ritual tool in hand, praying and dancing. It is a very valuable find," says Michio Okamura, chairman of an expedition committee for the site.The shard was uncovered in 1993 from an earth mound near the center of the Sannai-Maruyama archaeological site in the city of Aomori. The shard has been dated to the middle Jomon period, around 4,300 years ago. Last month, a worker noticed that there was a carving of a human on it.

Archaeologists in Mexico made a dramatic discovery in the state of Morelos when they uncovered an 8th century monolith featuring an Aztec God weighing 60 tonnes.With agricultural images engraved on its side, the massive stone is believed to have been used by the Aztecs to call on the god of rain."These signs on the rock are fundamentally associated with agriculture and water. We think it's highly probable that it (the monolith) was used during rituals to ask for rain and it was placed in a position facing Popocatepetl," said archaeologist Raul Gonzalez.

On a hillside overlooking Loch Craignish, Kintraw in Argyll, Scotland, is a large standing stone with a burial cairn on either side. A drawing by Edward Lhuyd from 1699 shows the cairns and standing stone and depicts a large ring of small stones to the north west of the cairns, with four of the stones aligned to the south. The ring of stones can still be seen and two large boulders in the foundations of a ruined building and a gateway in a wall might be the remains of the four stone alignment.

What does it take to survive a catastrophic meteor impact? The tough turtles of the Cretaceous know a bit about that; they seem to have survived the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs because of their slow metabolisms and aquatic lifestyles, researchers now say."Turtles are very tough animals, if times get tough they can go into a state of animation," said study researcher Tyler Lyson, of Yale University. "Animals that were living in the water were kind of protected against whatever killed the land plants and the dinosaurs.

WASHINGTON: Geologists have discovered what they say is an ancient, lost landscape that lies deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean near the northern coast of Scotland.The massive landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains is believed to be some 56 million years old. "It looks like a map of a bit of a country onshore. It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2km beneath the seabed," senior study researcher Nicky White said.

This year, a rocket will carry a boxcar-sized module into orbit, the first building block for a Chinese space station. Around 2013, China plans to launch a lunar probe that will set a rover loose on the moon. It wants to put a man on the moon, sometime after 2020.While the United States is still working out its next move as the space shuttle program winds down, China is forging ahead. Some experts worry the U.S. could slip behind China in human spaceflight - the realm of space science with the most prestige.

The alert on the Climate Ark website in January 2009 was marked urgent: "Take action: A rogue science ship is poised to carry out risky experimental fertilisation of the Southern Ocean. This is likely [to be] the first of many coming attempts to begin geo-engineering the biosphere as a solution to climate change. The chemical cargo is likely to provoke a massive algal bloom big enough to be seen from outer space..."The response was immediate and vitriolic: "You morons," fumed a woman from a Canadian university. "That isn't a rogue ship... it's one of the best marine science research groups in the world. You are no different than anti-science religious fanatics. You seek to keep the world ignorant. May you drown in your lies..."

As an author of character-driven fiction, I can spend countless hours considering motive. The thinking goes like this: If character provides a story with architecture, then motive shores up the building, giving it substance, giving it style, supplying the walls and windows of conflict and resolution. The master planner in me wants to know, needs to know, the "why" of everything: love, loss, perhaps even death.Of course, in real life, it's impossible to impose a logical grid over the baffling oddities of mature existence. Everyone knows that the bonds between humans are messy and their behaviors are mystifying. The best writing does not resist, but confirms this.

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered previously unknown volcanoes in the ocean waters around the remote South Sandwich Islands.Using ship-borne sea-floor mapping technology during research cruises onboard the RRS James Clark Ross, the scientists found 12 volcanoes beneath the sea surface -- some up to 3km high. They found 5km diameter craters left by collapsing volcanoes and 7 active volcanoes visible above the sea as a chain of islands.The research is important also for understanding what happens when volcanoes erupt or collapse underwater and their potential for creating serious hazards such as tsunamis. Also this sub-sea landscape, with its waters warmed by volcanic activity creates a rich habitat for many species of wildlife and adds valuable new insight about life on earth.

Candy Torres drove nonstop for 21 hours to see the launch of space shuttle Challenger in June 1983. She had seen shuttle launches before, but this trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Cape Canaveral, Florida, was different: Sally Ride was about to become the first female U.S. astronaut to leave the Earth's atmosphere.Torres was proud to watch the first female astronaut take flight. She was even more proud at the thought of Ride's achievement inspiring more women to work in the space program. In a field that was almost entirely dominated by men, Torres had been working as a satellite engineer for seven years.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could control your home with your thoughts alone?Medical engineering company G Tec of Schiedlberg, Austria is developing a technology to do just that as part of a pan-European project called Smart Homes for All. If successful, the innovation can help people with disabilities like Lou Gehrig's disease which leaves people severely paralyzed.Right now, 50 severely disabled people have been trying out the sophisticated, new brain-computer interface (BCI), says New Scientist. "BCIs are definitely beginning to make the transition out of the lab," Ricardo Chavarriaga, a BCI researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, told New Scientist.

Egypt's oldest pyramid has been saved from collapse by giant airbags which have been used to prop up the ceilings.The 4,700-year-old building has been stabilised so engineers can carry out permanent repairs.The giant structure was built as a burial place for Pharaoh Djoser, a warrior who reigned in the third dynasty for 19 years but has been damaged in an earthquake.The British team - who helped repair Windsor Castle after it was damaged by fire in 1993 - used technology first developed to aid in the safer disposal of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.

Tribune-Herald staff writerA video taken last month atop Mauna Kea has astronomers, online space geeks and conspiracy theorists all playing the guessing game.At approximately 3:39 a.m. June 22, a mysteriously expanding orb of light in the night sky caught the attention of astronomers at the Subaru telescope, who then alerted astronomers at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope."They called, saying they had a 'strange light ball' on their external cameras," said CFH Telescope Director of Science Daniel Devost. "We looked at our camera and there it was."

Thousands of years ago, Native American groups painted art under cliff overhangs along the Rio Grande. The arid climate preserved hundreds of these vivid pieces. Archaeologist Solveig Turpin discusses what the art reveals about changes in climate and the social structure of early Americans, and why it has become difficult to study.

A team of scientists in El Salvador say they have discovered corn cobs, leftover logs, paths and ditches at an archaeological site in an incredibly well preserved state, after a violent volcanic eruption covered the area in about the year 630.Led by the US anthropologist Payson Sheets, a team of students from the University of Colorado have been working at the Joya de Ceren site, north west of the capital San Salvador, for approximately three weeks.

A cluster of three ancient sarcophagi recently discovered in Taitung could give archeologists new insights into a nearby prehistoric site, a researcher from the National Museum of Prehistory said on Thursday.Parts of the sarcophagi, or stone coffins, have already been unearthed, showing them to be 60cm high and 50cm wide, although their lengths have yet to be determined because the excavation is still underway.

NASA scientists are seeing new evidence that suggests traces of water on Mars are under a thin varnish of iron oxide, or rust, similar to conditions found on desert rocks in California's Mojave Desert.Mars could be spotted with many more patches of carbonates than originally suspected. Carbonates are minerals that form readily in large bodies of water and can point to a planet's wet history. Although only a few small outcrops of carbonates have been detected on Mars, scientists believe many more examples are blocked from view by the rust. The findings appear in the Friday July 1, online edition of the International Journal of Astrobiology.

In 1840, renowned English botanist George Gardner reported a strange sight from the streets of Vila de Natividade in Brazil: A group of boys playing with a glowing object that turned out to be a luminescent mushroom. They called it "flor-de-coco," and showed Gardner where it grew on decaying fronds at the base of a dwarf palm. Gardner sent the mushroom to the Kew Herbarium in England where it was described and named Agaricus gardneri in honor of its discoverer. The species was not seen again until 2009.

The floor of the colosseum, where you might expect to see a smooth ellipse of sand, is instead a bewildering array of masonry walls shaped in concentric rings, whorls and chambers, like a huge thumbprint. The confusion is compounded as you descend a long stairway at the eastern end of the stadium and enter ruins that were hidden beneath a wooden floor during the nearly five centuries the arena was in use, beginning with its inauguration in A.D. 80. Weeds grow waist-high between flagstones; caper and fig trees sprout from dank walls, which are a patchwork of travertine slabs, tufa blocks and brickwork. The walls and the floor bear numerous slots, grooves and abrasions, obviously made with great care, but for purposes that you can only guess.

Humans first arrived in North America more than 2,500 years earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of ancient stone tools found in Texas. And the people who left them appear to have developed a portable toolkit used for killing and preparing meat.Researchers found a haul of thousands of artefacts near the state capital, Austin, some of which were identified as blades and other tools. The material was buried in sediments that are between 13,200 and 15,500 years old.Until now, the oldest evidence for human occupation in North America has come from the Clovis site in New Mexico. Scientists think that these people came to North America around 13,000 years ago by crossing the Bering Land Bridge from northeastern Asia. From there, they are thought to have spread across the northern and southern American continents.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Treasure continued to tumble out of the Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday with a Supreme Court-appointed committee finding more gold idols, coins and other assets on the sixth day of inspection in the shrine's hidden vaults.Among the notable discoveries was an ancient gold idol of Lord Vishnu studded with precious diamonds and emeralds. Sources said its value could not be assessed due to its antiquity. There were also human figurines made of pure gold, each weighing 1 kg as well as 18-foot-long jewelery weighing 35 kg used to adorn the deity. Bags of coins and precious stones were also found in the chamber marked A.

According to a new report published in Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have lived longer had he spent more time in the sun and allowed his body to produce more vitamin D.Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 35, and since his passing, many researchers have speculated as what caused his early death. He was buried three days after his death and no autopsy was ever performed. Previous literature had noted chronic kidney disease, strep throat and pink eye as a few conditions he battled toward the end of his life. Between 1762 and 1783, Mozart suffered numerous infections, all of which seemed to occur between mid-October and mid-May.

Marijuana has been approved by many states and the nation's capital to treat a range of illnesses, but the federal government has ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a dangerous drug like heroin.The decision, announced Friday, comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.Advocates for the medical use of the drug criticized the ruling but were elated that the Obama administration had finally acted, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts, where they believe they can get a fairer hearing. The decision to deny the request was made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and comes less than two months after advocates asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to force the administration to respond to their petition."We have foiled the government's strategy of delay, and we can now go head-to-head on the merits, that marijuana really does have therapeutic value," said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access and the lead counsel on the recently filed lawsuit.

Kenya is expected to become the fourth African country to allow the commercial production of transgenic crops.The country's National Biosafety Authority is due to publish long-awaited regulations governing the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in open fields for research and commercial purposes. Kenya follows Burkina Faso, Egypt and South Africa in giving commercial production of GM organisms the go-ahead.Kenya's agricultural researchers say the move could not come soon enough, as the absence of regulations was stalling research.

A team of researchers led by University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Professor Joe Chappell is making a connection between prehistoric times and the present -- ancient algae that can produce their own biofuel -- that could result in genetically creating a replacement for oil and coal shale deposits. Their discovery could have fundamental implications for the future of Earth's energy supplies.Tom Niehaus, completing his doctorate in the Chappell laboratory; Shigeru Okada, a sabbatical professor from the aquatic biosciences department at the University of Tokyo; Tim Devarenne, a UK graduate and now professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University; and UK colleagues, Chappell, David Watt, professor of cellular and molecular biochemistry (College of Medicine) and his post-doctoral associate Vitaliy Sviripa report their latest research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their findings go well beyond the basic science dealing with the origins of oil and coal.

Snails are able to survive intact after being eaten by birds, according to scientists.Japanese white-eyes on the island of Hahajima, Japan feast on tiny land snails.Researchers found that 15% of the snails eaten survived digestion and were found alive in the birds' droppings.This evidence suggests that bird predation could be a key factor in how snail populations spread.It is well known that plant seeds are dispersed by birds that eat fruit.

University of Toronto researchers have derived inspiration from the photosynthetic apparatus in plants to engineer a new generation of nanomaterials that control and direct the energy absorbed from light.Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.The U of T researchers, led by Professors Shana Kelley and Ted Sargent, report the construction of what they term "artificial molecules.

In the future, nano-sized computers implanted in the human body could autonomously scan for disease indicators, diagnose diseases, and control the release of the appropriate drugs. Although this scenario is still several decades away, researchers have been making significant progress in developing early types of biomolecular computers.

A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it's the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself. You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens. An energy analysis by Professors Pudritz and Higgs of McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.

The conditions on Venus are hard to describe. Many planetary scientists say "Start by imagining Hell and work up from there." It's an environment where words like "over 500 degrees Celsius" get thrown around, and it's flat-out crushed every probe we've sent into it. Even worse, there's almost no water, and the European Space Agency have been finding out why.Venus was created at about the same time as Earth, in about the same place, and it's roughly the same size - it would therefore have started with the same materials as us, drawn together from the same region of the planet forming dust left over from the sun. But Venus now has only 0.001% of our water content, and a couple of flybys by the dynamically named Venus Express may have revealed the reason.

Professor Lord John Krebs, a world expert in zoology, originally commissioned the research into whether culling badgers will stop the animals spreading cattle disease.He said the research showed that killing 70 per cent of badgers in a restricted area only reduced incidence of bovine Tuberculosis by 16 per cent.Asked if it would be a mistake to go ahead with a cull, he replied yes.

A stunning butterfly that emerged from its chrysalis as male on one side, female on the other, has astounded curators at the Natural History Museum in London.The peculiar nature of the freshly hatched great mormon butterfly was spotted when staff noticed a striking difference between its wing colourings and other features.The insect, which has a 10cm wingspan, is almost black on its male side, but the female side is much paler, with clearly visible flecks of blue, red and tortoiseshell.

There is much yet to be discovered.According to Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian director of antiquities, only about 30 percent of Egypt's buried ancient past has been discovered. The work is still going on, much of it under Hawass' direction and with his participation.In a lecture accompanying the opening of the Nevada Museum of Art's current "To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum," he claimed to be close to finding the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, the actual burial chamber of the Great Pyramid (he doesn't think the one so designated is the real one), and more royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

The space shuttle Atlantis hasn't performed like a ship ready for retirement. The first full day of the final flight of the aging space shuttle fleet - the most complicated machines ever built - was practically flawless.NASA officials say the unusually small four-person crew of Atlantis worked through lunch Saturday and finished their tasks in near-record time. After Friday's launch they inspected the shuttle's heat shield for launch damage and prepared for Sunday morning's docking with the International Space Station.

When it comes to mapping the real world on computers, University of Southern California computer scientist Cyrus Shahabi takes his work to a whole new dimension.Upon first glance, his maps contain the typical landmarks we've become accustomed to seeing on Yahoo or Google Maps. If you look a little closer, you'll see the maps are also pulsing with images of moving cars and scenes of bustling people, all in real time. It is part of a new computing concept called "Geo-Immersion" that blends the real and virtual worlds together.

The population of honeybees remains endangered, threatening the world's food supply, and scientists have decided that the best way to save the insects may be to breed a better bee.Researchers are breeding bees with the special ability to resist the mites and viruses that, according to the United Nations, have killed 10-30 percent of the bees in Europe each year, almost a third of American bees, and as much as 85 percent of the bees in the Middle East. The breeding efforts are slowly starting to succeed.

Your life is full of what NASA calls "spinoffs": ideas or products initially designed for NASA's particular (and particularly challenging) uses, but which trickled down to become commercial products. Of course, you may not recognize these items--there's no "made for NASA" sticker, and many of the iconic NASA products (Tang, Teflon, Velcro) weren't actually designed for or by NASA at all. But NASA-developed stuff is everywhere, from insulation to infant formula, from prostheses to fishing nets. Here are ten of our favorites that originated in the Shuttle program--the very program that just saw its last launch ever.

A drug originating on Easter Island, the mysterious South Pacific home of a lost statue-building people, may become the first substance to slow down human ageing, new research indicates.Rapamycin, a pharmacological product used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, has been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to 38 per cent, raising the possibility that it may delay ageing in people.Hitherto a matter for science fiction, the idea of an anti-ageing drug which would allow people to prolong their natural lifespan and also to avoid age-related diseases is now being seriously considered for the first time as a result of the findings by American researchers.

A radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria in Egypt, was completed last month as part of the ongoing search for the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. The expedition excavating the temple and its surrounding area is headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass and Dr. Kathleen Martinez from the Dominican Republic.The recent radar survey is a significant step forward and was carried out by an Egyptian team, with American expert Dr. Roger Vickers serving as a consultant. The radar revealed three possible areas of interest where a tomb may be located. These locations have been passed to the archaeological team who received the results of the survey with great interest, and will begin excavation of the targets next week.

Institute first-aid kit found on a 2000-year-old shipwreck has provided a remarkable insight into the medicines concocted by ancient physicians to cure sailors of dysentery and other ailments.Medicines found inside a wooden chest included pills made of ground-up vegetables, herbs and plants such as celery, onions, carrots, cabbage, alfalfa and chestnuts - all ingredients referred to in classical medical texts.

Ocosingo - Mexican researchers have found in the archaeological zone of Toniná, State of Chiapas, two stone sculptures representing captive warriors belonging to the allied Maya states of Palenque, Mexico and Copán, Honduras.Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico reported that the finding took place in May 2011 at the Toniná archaeological site, located in the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas. The two stone sculptures have been dated to approximately 1300 years ago and the inscriptions found on them confirm previous knowledge of a war alliance that existed between the rulers of Copán in Honduras, and Palenque, not far from Toniná in the State of Chiapas, in the Southeast of Mexico bordering Guatemala.

New discoveries indicate humans settled Cameroon 5000 years agoArcheologists say the findings mark a breakthrough that requires a rewriting of the history of Cameroon and the rest of Central Africa. Artifacts from hundreds of archeological sites from southern Chad to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Cameroon have turned up several surprises.The research was conducted between 1999 and 2004 as construction was underway on the underground petroleum pipeline. The pipeline is sponsored by the World Bank and runs from Chad to the port of Kribi, Cameroon..

A recently discovered miniature clay head with eerie eyes may have been an effigy used by a shaman more than 1,000 years ago, researchers say.The head, which was discovered near Ebbert Spring in Franklin Country, Penn., has shells for eyes and tiny holes across its top and sides that may have been used for feathers or hair. A cavity at the base of the neck indicates that it was likely mounted on a stick or wand.

Researcher Doan Ngoc Khoi, from Quang Ngai Museum, said 10 tombs containing objects from 3,000 years ago had been found at an archaeological site in the bed of Nuoc Trong Lake, in Tay Tra District.The antiques were similar to those of the pre-Sa Huynh culture period, which helped confirmed that such a culture flourished even in mountainous areas.Previously, antiques of that time had been found only on the plains and in coastal areas.

Early humans wore jewelry and likely practiced cannibalism, suggest remains of the earliest known Homo sapiens from southeastern Europe.The remains, described in PLoS One, date to 32,000 years ago and represent the oldest direct evidence for anatomically modern humans in a well-documented context. The human remains are also the oldest known for our species in Europe to show post-mortem cut marks.

Allied bombing raids during the second world war inadvertently experimented on the weather by producing huge contrails over south-east England. A study of one 1944 raid offers a rare opportunity to check our models of how contrails change temperatures.After listening to a radio programme in which an elderly woman recalled seeing a wartime sky "turn white with clouds" as fleets of bombers took off, Roger Timmis of Lancaster Environment Centre in the UK realised that the planes could have affected the weather.

Thousands of human bones have been found inside a Stone Age tomb on a northern Scottish island, archaeologists say.The 5,000-year-old burial site, on South Ronaldsay (map) in the Orkney Islands, was accidentally uncovered after a homeowner had leveled a mound in his yard to improve his ocean view.Authorities were alerted to the find in 2010 after a subsequent resident, Hamish Mowatt, guessed at the site's significance.Mowatt had lowered a camera between the tomb's ceiling of stone slabs and was confronted by a prehistoric skull atop a muddy tangle of bones.

Olympia, the Sanctuary of Zeus and venue of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, was probably destroyed by tsunamis that reached far inland, and not as previously believed, by earthquakes and river flooding.This is the latest theory put forward by University Prof. Dr. Andreas Vött from the Geographical Institute of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (JGU). Vött examined the site in the exploration of Paläotsunamis that have taken place over the last 11,000 years along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Olympic-tsunami hypothesis has been put forward due to sediments found in the vicinity of Olympia, which were buried under an 8 metres thick layer of sand and other debris, and only rediscovered around 250 years ago.

Two more species of tuna have been added to the Red List of Threatened Species.They join the Southern bluefin tuna - listed as critically endangered.The report, published in this week's Science, is the first global assessment of this highly prized family of fish, which are at risk of being over-fished.The World Conservation Union (IUCN) says there is a lack of resolve to protect against overexploitation driven by high prices.

DETROIT NEWSEveryone knows that the war on drugs is a failure.Despite more than $40 billion spent every year on the U.S. drug war and 500,000 people behind bars on drug related offenses, drugs are as available as ever. But what is the alternative? What would happen if a society decided to treat drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue? What if we stopped the futile effort of using force to decrease drug consumption? What if we decriminalized drugs, not just marijuana, but all drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth? .

Biology textbooks maintain that the main function of sex is to promote genetic diversity. But Henry Heng, Ph.D., associate professor in WSU's Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, says that's not the case.Heng and fellow researcher Root Gorelick, Ph.D., associate professor at Carleton University in Canada, propose that although diversity may result from a combination of genes, the primary function of sex is not about promoting diversity. Rather, it's about keeping the genome context -- an organism's complete collection of genes arranged by chromosome composition and topology -- as unchanged as possible, thereby maintaining a species' identity. This surprising analysis has been published as a cover article in a recent issue of the journal Evolution.

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican will display 100 select documents from its Secret Archives at an unprecedented exhibit next year that includes previously unpublished papers from its World War II papacy."Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed" opens in February at Rome's Capitoline Museums and marks the first time such precious documents, manuscripts and parchments have been allowed out of the Vatican vaults for view by the general public.The occasion is the archive's 400th anniversary.

For the first time, a patient has received a synthetic windpipe that was created in a lab with the patient's own stem cells and without using human donor tissue, researchers said Thursday.Previous lab-generated transplants either used a segment of donor windpipe or involved tissue only, not an organ.In a laboratory in London, scientists created a trachea, which is a tube-like airway that connects at the voice box and branches into both lungs.

Specialists dedicated to deciphering the Mayan writing system have uncovered a wealth of information that spans several centuries and provides fresh insight into the ruling elites of that ancient civilization and their passions, intrigues, wars and rituals, archaeologist Enrique Vela told Efe."In the Mayan glyphs, we find a history of passions and intrigues. There are close to 1,000 years of constant warfare between city-states that shared the same language, religious visions, customs and many other things," the editor of the magazine Arqueologia Mexicana told Efe.

At one time or another, perhaps in dorm rooms or around a campfire, we've all heard half-baked theories that go a little like this: "Like...in the future...we're gonna have microchips in our brains, man. And we'll be able to control computers with...just our mind, man."Turns out those dopey, sophomoric ruminations weren't too off target.Researchers at the University of Michigan recently developed a noninvasive, low-power brain implant that could lead to several technological advances, including the neural manipulation of of prosthetic limbs. This could help amputees and paralysis victims move their prosthetics with their minds.

For a while, it seemed the revolution in Egypt would end his mission before it had even begun.Thomas A. DeFanti, a research scientist and expert in data visualization at the University of California, San Diego, had been planning for months to capture spectacular 3-D surround images of Egypt's temples at Luxor on his way to Saudi Arabia early in April, where he would spend a month working with colleagues at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Bringing fresh insight into long-standing debates about how powerful geological forces shape the planet, from earthquake ruptures to mountain formations, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have identified a new mechanism driving Earth's massive tectonic plates.Scientists who study tectonic motions have known for decades that the ongoing "pull" and "push" movements of the plates are responsible for sculpting continental features around the planet. Volcanoes, for example, are generally located at areas where plates are moving apart or coming together. Scripps scientists Steve Cande and Dave Stegman have now discovered a new force that drives plate tectonics: Plumes of hot magma pushing up from Earth's deep interior. Their research is published in the July 7 issue of the journal Nature.

Pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the time of the dinosaurs, were not driven to extinction by the birds, but in fact they continued to diversify and innovate for millions of years afterwards.A new study by Katy Prentice, done as part of her undergraduate degree (MSci in Palaeontology and Evolution) at the University of Bristol, shows that the pterosaurs evolved in a most unusual way, becoming more and more specialised through their 160 million years on Earth. The work is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

If ancient gray whale populations migrated and fed the same as today's whales, what happened during the Ice Ages, when their major feeding grounds disappeared? UC Berkeley and Smithsonian paleontologists argue that gray whales utilized a range of food sources in the past, including herring and krill, in addition to the benthic organisms they consume today. As a result, pre-whaling populations were two to four times greater than today's population of around 22,000.Gray whales survived many cycles of global cooling and warming over the past few million years, likely by exploiting a more varied diet than they do today, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution paleontologists.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have, for the first time, been able to drag light by slowing it down to the speed of sound and sending it through a rotating crystal.Most people may think the speed of light is constant, but this is only the case in a vacuum, such as space, where it travels at 671million mph.However, when it travels through different substances, such as water or solids, its speed is reduced, with different wavelengths (colours) travelling at different speeds.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Ceremonies to celebrate divorces have gained momentum in Japan after the massive March earthquake and tsunami, followed by an ongoing nuclear crisis, caused unhappy couples to reassess their lives.The ceremony to mark a couple's transition to being single again costs 55,000 yen ($690), includes a buffet meal and culminates with the ritual smashing of their wedding rings with a gavel.Tomoharu Saito, who took part in Tokyo with his wife Miki days before they were set to file for divorce, said crushing the rings felt cathartic.

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A shocking moment took place in Hangzhou, a city in east China on Saturday. A two year old girl named Niu fell from a 10th floor building and was caught by a "Super-mother" with her bare arms. The figure you see on the screen behind me is this super-mother. Her name is Wu Juping. The residents from the community opened an online forum to send their blessings for Niu and the courageous Wu Juping.The accident happened at around noon while Niu's grandmother was running errands outside. The little girl woke up from her nap and her grandmother was nowhere to be found. She then climbed onto the windowsill trying to find her grandmother.

It is a widely held and scientifically viable belief that humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa some 150 to 200 thousand years ago. However our migration away from there, to populate immediate areas and, later, the planet, is currently conjecture.Archaeological evidence has thrown up question marks for previous explanations. Tracking mitochondrial DNA has shown travel patterns across the entire planet. But no one migration explanation has been able to properly explain all the evidence.

The Government has said it will go ahead with a cull as a package of measures to control bovine tuberculosis (TB) in cattle - if there is enough science-led evidence to show it will help the livestock industry. Ministers are expected to announce their plans in the next few days to allow farmers to kill the protected animals in certain areas.However animal rights groups have vowed to oppose a cull in the courts and to protest at farms.Mr Packham, presenter of Springwatch and vice President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, called on members of the public to write to their MPs to express their opposition to the proposed cull.

TWO friends meet in a bar in the online environment Second Life to chat about their latest tweets and favourite TV shows. Nothing unusual in that - except that both of them have Lou Gehrig's disease, otherwise known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and it has left them so severely paralysed that they can only move their eyes.These Second Lifers are just two of more than 50 severely disabled people who have been trying out a sophisticated new brain-computer interface (BCI). Second Life has been controlled using BCIs before, but only to a very rudimentary level. The new interface, developed by medical engineering company G.Tec of Schiedlberg, Austria, lets users freely explore Second Life's virtual world and control their avatar within it.

Almost 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing a humanitarian emergency as the region grapples with its worst drought for 60 years, the UN warned this week. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that the main climatic trigger for the droughts is La Niña, a cyclical meteorological phenomenon affecting how much rain falls in Africa and elsewhere."We've been predicting the La Niña phenomenon for the past six months, and when this happens, you get drought in the east and floods in the south," says Shukri Ahmed, an economist at the FAO. Rains usually return to this area when ocean currents switch to an El Niño, due later this year.

Final preparations are being made for the last flight of the space shuttle fleet which is due to launch on Friday.If conditions allow, Atlantis will blast off at 1526GMT with her crew of four astronauts, bringing the 30-year shuttle programme to an end.Pallab Ghosh looks back at the highs and lows of the iconic spacecraft's history.

The United States has been a space-faring nation for just over 50 years, ever since Alan Shepard's suborbital pop shot aboard Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961. In the following eight years the US, and mankind, went from being earthbound to making the first lunar landing.Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were followed by the longest lull in America's manned space program to date, but starting in 1981 with the maiden flight of Columbia, the space shuttle program became the stalwart backbone of America's manned space flight program. With the final planned shuttle mission only hours from its scheduled launch, we take a moment to look back at over 30 years of history, achievements, and tragic failures.

The question seems simple enough: What happens to Earth's temperature when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase? The answer is elusive. However, clues are hidden in the fossil record. A new study by researchers from Syracuse and Yale universities provides a much clearer picture of Earth's temperature approximately 50 million years ago when CO2 concentrations were higher than today. The results may shed light on what to expect in the future if CO2 levels keep rising.The study, which for the first time compared multiple geochemical and temperature proxies to determine mean annual and seasonal temperatures, is published online in the journal Geology, published by the Geological Society of America, and is forthcoming in print Aug. 1.

The maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland, according to a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones.Scientists in the UK, Ireland and the US analysed the teeth and skeletons of 17 brown bears that were found at eight cave sites across Ireland.The new research has been reported in the latest edition of Current Biology.Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.

It is a puzzle - how this temple at Kalakkad in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, with its wealth of inscriptions, sculptures, murals, music pillars and a towering rajagopuram with about 1,500 stucco figures has never come under the spotlight. It has a big granary too.While granary bins made of wood are found in temples and palaces in this part of southern Tamil Nadu, the one at Kalakkad temple is a masonry granary. The temple has features that go back to the Chola period and so could be more than 800 years old.Preparations are under way for the kumbabishekam of Sri Satya Vageeswarar temple on July 14 at Kalakkad, Nanguneri Taluk, Tirunelveli.

Bulgarian scientists have found the ancient shores of the Black Sea, currently deep beneath the waves, which they claim were the original shores about 7500 years ago, when the Black Sea at the time was just a fresh water lake, the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported on July 7 2011.The team, led by Professor Petko Dimitrov of the Institute of Oceanology in Varna, which is part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), returned from an expedition aboard the research vessel Akademik, saying that they have found the ancient coastline close to the Cape of Emine. Archaeological evidence suggest that this particular spot was part of the ancient coastline, the BNT said.

A recently discovered miniature clay head with eerie eyes may have been an effigy used by a shaman more than 1,000 years ago, researchers say.The head, which was discovered near Ebbert Spring in Franklin Country, Pa., has shells for eyes and tiny holes across its top and sides that may have been used for feathers or hair. A cavity at the base of the neck indicates that it was likely mounted on a stick or wand."It might have been used in a ceremony by a shaman of some sort," said lead archaeologist Ronald Powell, of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. Shell is a symbolically important object among Native American cultures and Powell believes that the use of it for eyes, combined with feathers, add weight to the idea that the artifact had a shamanistic use.

ahramONLINEFollowing the relocation of the artefacts, a team from Yale University, the University of Bologna and the Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg, Belgium, has completed the first epigraphic and digital record of a site near Nag El-Hamdulab on the west bank of the Nile, north of Aswan. The site was discovered nearly half a century ago by the famous Egyptian Egyptologist Labib Habachi. Minister of State for Antiquities Zahi Hawass said this new and thorough study has brought to light a previously unknown Early Dynastic cycle of royal images and an early hieroglyphic inscription.

This pleasant-looking fellow is diprotodon optatum, a giant marsupial that lived in Australia for millions of years. We've now discovered the first complete skeleton of this marsupial, proving the only things more bizarre than Australian animals are ancient Australian animals.This particular wombat is generally thought to be the largest marsupial to ever walk the Earth. They weighed nearly 7,000 pounds and were as much as 14 feet long. The new skeleton dates back to about two million years ago, but these creatures went extinct only recently, roughly 50,000 years ago.

A record one million spectators are expected to be at or near NASA's Kennedy Space Center this week to see the historic last launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.But for those who can't make the trip to Florida, the upcoming STS-135 mission marks the last time sky-watchers around the world will have the chance to see a shuttle passing above their backyards.Depending on where you are on Earth, both Atlantis and the International Space Station (ISS) should be visible to the naked eye during the mission, which is scheduled to last for 12 days.

The storm has caused a 'Great White Spot' on the planet which is visible from the Earth.Observations from the Cassini spacecraft - combined with images from ground-based telescopes - reveal the electric spectacle which is producing a tempest so intense the flashes are occurring at the rate of up to ten times a second, say researchers whose findings are published in two papers in Nature.Great White Spots are so-called because they are large enough to be visible by telescope from Earth and break out rarely - about once every thirty years.

A study found that repressing these memories for long enough can lead to us erasing them completely.Using EEG scans, scientists noted the parts of volunteers' brains which became active when actively trying to forget something.They were also able to pinpoint the exact moment a memory is 'forgotten', and claim that long-term supression of a memory is a sure fire way of permanently erasing it.The study authors, led by Gerd Thomas Waldhauser, from Lund University in Sweden, say that mastering the technique could be useful for people who suffer from depression or post traumatic stress disorder.

The industrious but unlovely naked mole rat is the latest creature to have its genome sequenced by scientists.A genetic blueprint for this bizarre-looking rodent could help researchers understand why it is so long-lived.Naked mole rats are also of interest to scientists because they appear to have some resistance to cancer.A team from the University of Liverpool, UK, led the project and have made the "first draft" of the genome available online for other researchers.

The basic design of the animal jaw has remained largely unchanged since it took shape in the depths of the seas some 400 million years ago, according to a study released Wednesday.After a relatively brief period when a dizzying variety of jaw-like structures proliferated among backboned animals, the hinged mouth became the enduring model among vertebrates, researchers reported.More than 99 percent of vertebrates today, including humans, have jaws which share some variation of that rudimentary architecture.

For George Washington, the first U.S. President and Revolutionary War hero, a broken chinese porcelain plate or teacup from his dining table or kitchen would go immediately and directly into his trash pit on the grounds just outside his mansion home, buried and forever forgotten. But as the saying goes, "one man's trash is another man's treasure", and well over 200 years later archaeologists would call them priceless artifacts for understanding and reconstructing history. Such was the case when an archaeological team discovered and excavated a trash pit, or "midden", just outside and south of George Washington's imposing Mount Vernon mansion house in northern Virginia.

An oil spill off China's eastern coast kept hidden from the public for weeks has caused long-term environmental damage that will hurt the area's fishing industry, state media reported Tuesday.Dead seaweed and rotting fish could be seen in waters around Nanhuangcheng Island in Shandong province, near the site of an oil spill that began "in early or mid-June", but was only made public on Friday, the China Daily said."The environmental impact caused by the oil leak is long-term," the newspaper quoted an local fisheries association official surnamed Xiao as saying.

Agent Orange is one of the most devastating weapons of modern warfare, a chemical which killed or injured an estimated 400,000 people during the Vietnam War -- and now it's being used against the Amazon rainforest. According to officials, ranchers in Brazil have begun spraying the highly toxic herbicide over patches of forest as a covert method to illegally clear foliage, more difficult to detect that chainsaws and tractors. In recent weeks, an aerial survey detected some 440 acres of rainforest that had been sprayed with the compound -- poisoning thousands of trees and an untold number of animals, potentially for generations.Officials from Brazil's environmental agency IBAMA were first tipped to the illegal clearing by satellite images of the forest in Amazonia; a helicopter flyover in the region later revealed thousands of trees left ash-colored and defoliated by toxic chemicals. IBAMA says that Agent Orange was likely dispersed by aircraft by a yet unidentified rancher to clear the land for pasture because it is more difficult to detect than traditional operations that require chainsaws and tractors.

Soil radiation in a city 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Japan's stricken nuclear plant is above levels that prompted resettlement after the Chernobyl disaster, citizens' groups said Tuesday.The survey of four locations in Fukushima city, outside the nuclear evacuation zone, showed that all soil samples contained caesium exceeding Japan's legal limit of 10,000 becquerels per kilogram (4,500 per pound), they said.The highest level was 46,540 becquerels per kilogram, and the three other readings were between 16,290 and 19,220 becquerels per kilogram, they said.

A study retracing the bananas' family tree has found their wild ancestors have rarely crossbred in the last 7,000 years, strengthening calls to diversify the popular crop.The standard yellow banana currently found on most supermarket shelves are mass cultivated as infertile clones and are therefore genetically identical.But this makes them particularly susceptible to disease, pests and ecological challenges, writes a team of European and Australian scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Strange hieroglyphs and representations of Egyptian gods and goddesses have been found in the middle of the Po valley in northern Italy, revealing a unique example of Egyptomania.Found in Casalbuttano ed Uniti, a village some 10 miles north of Cremona, the Egyptian-inspired motifs materialized as restorers removed the tapestry in a room of Palazzo Turina, an 18th century building which now houses the town hall.A blue starry ceiling emerged, while walls decorated with pink and cream colored bands revealed a wealth of hieroglyphs.

Lungless salamanders (Ensatina eschscholtzii) live in a horseshoe-shape region in California (a 'ring') which circles around the central valley. The species is an example of evolution in action because, while neighboring populations may be able to breed, the two populations at the ends of the arms of the horseshoe are effectively unable to reproduce. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology showed that this reproductive isolation was driven by genetic divergence rather than adaption to different ecological habitats.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the first study of its kind in an animal species that has not passed a critical test of self-recognition, cognitive psychologist Justin J. Couchman of the University at Buffalo has demonstrated that rhesus monkeys have a sense of self-agency -- the ability to understand that they are the cause of certain actions -- and possess a form of self awareness previously not attributed to them.The study, which will be published July 6 in Biology Letters, a journal of the Royal Society, may illuminate apparent self-awareness deficits in humans with autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and developmental disabilities.

A tiny cannibal has been caught in the act, thanks to a superbright flash of x-rays spied by cosmic hunters.The culprit is what's known as a neutron star, the tiny but very dense corpse of a massive star that died in a supernova blast. Sitting 16,000 light-years away, this particular neutron star is normally among the faintest objects in the x-ray sky.But during recent observations with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope, the star unexpectedly surged to 10,000 times its original brightness.

Seen for the first time in centuries, a 1,500-year-old tomb comes to light via a tiny camera lowered into a Maya pyramid at Mexico's Palenque (map) archaeological site in April. The intact, blood-red funeral chamber offers insight into the ancient city's early history, experts say.The tomb was discovered in 1999, though researchers have been unable to get inside due to the precarious structural state of the pyramid above. Any effort to penetrate the tomb could damage the contents within, according to the team, which is affiliated with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.Instead, the archaeologists lowered the 1.6-by-2.4-inch (4-by-6-centimeter) camera through a 6-inch-wide (15-centimeter-wide) hole in an upper floor of the pyramid.

A study in contrasts, this photo captures three illuminated moons as a darkened Saturn looms in the shadows. Only the planet's rings are visible but its shape can be traced from the way it partially obscures its rings and one of its moons.The large foreground moon is Rhea at 1528 kilometres across. Nearly a third of Rhea's size, sunny Enceladus is on the right. Dione, at 1123 kilometres wide, rounds out the trio to the left with a night-cloaked Saturn obstructing part of it.The photo was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in April. Cassini has been exploring Saturn's 62 known moons since it reached the ringed planet in 2004.

Britain is set to face an increase in harsh winters, with up to one-in-seven gripping the UK with prolonged sub-zero temperatures, a study has suggested.The projection was based on research that identified how low solar activity affected winter weather patterns.However, the authors were keen to stress that their findings did not suggest that the region was about to be plunged into a "little ice age".The findings appear in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Archaeologists and other research scientists and academicians have been eagerly engaged in uncovering the secrets that may, at least in part, explain how ancient densely populated Maya cities and communities sustained their monumental centers and large settlements in their seemingly inhospitable jungle environments. Their work goes far beyond developing answers to this question, however. The research portends the development of a whole new paradigm for archaeological investigations and conservation, and may suggest a useful new model for global sustainability.