Newsdesk Archive

Ensuring a pound of butter is indeed a pound, or a gallon of milk a full gallon, has long been the province of government agencies that deal with weights and measures. But now it seems scientists are having a little trouble with the golf-ball-size piece of metal that is used to set the standard weight for a kilogram, or kilo.

A German baby born after only 21 weeks and five days in the womb has equalled a world record for surviving premature infants, the hospital said Saturday.When Frieda was born on November 7 she measured 11 inches (28 centimetres) and weighed only one pound (460 grammes).

On Tuesday, October 19, 2010, while en route to Oregon to offer ayahuasca ceremonies, Kametsa traditional healer and Colombian national Taita Juan Bautista Agreda Chindoy was detained at Houston International Airport, in Texas. His baggage was searched and he was formally arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for possession of ayahuasca (yage). The substance was seized and analyzed, and he was charged with possession with intent to distribute a Schedule 1 drug, facing up to 20 years in federal prison.

The Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team.When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, the Earth increased its ability to pull carbon from the air. This led to a recovery that was quicker than anticipated by many models of the carbon cycle - though still on the order of tens of thousands of years, said Gabriel Bowen, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have leveraged the latest browser technology to create GigaPan Time Machine, a system that enables viewers to explore gigapixel-scale, high-resolution videos and image sequences by panning or zooming in and out of the images while simultaneously moving back and forth through tim.

Archaeologists working on a ruined Tameside castle have concluded it was built to prevent parts of England coming under Scottish rule.Buckton Castle in Stalybridge by the Earl of Chester was built in the 1100s.It was occupied for less than 100 years during a time when the King of Scotland lay claim to Lancashire and Cumberland.The University of Salford's Brian Grimsditch said, due to the unrest, "local rulers like the Earl had to protect their lands".

The Antarctic ozone hole is changing weather patterns across the Southern Hemisphere, even affecting the tropics, scientists have concluded.The scientists behind the new study added the ozone hole into standard climate models to investigate how it might have affected winds and rains.Writing in the journal Science, they say rainfall has moved further south, towards the pole.They deduce that the effect has been notably strong over Australia.

NASA said today that new data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has demonstrated that the amount of atmosphere on the Red Planet depends entirely on the tilt of its axis. This is significant, the space agency said, because that axis tilt may well impact the stability of any liquid water that exists on Mars, as well as the frequency and strength of dust storms.

NASA is looking at using the International Space Station as a testbed for a human mission to Mars, beginning with a planned week-long simulation to be staged next summer.Initial studies would focus on figuring out effective and safe ways for NASA's ever-present Mission Control to give the astronauts more autonomy.

Researchers from Kingston University in London have carried out a full scientific survey of an historic churchyard widely believed to be the site of the crowning of at least two Anglo-Saxon kings. The team used an earth resistance meter to survey a graveyard at the site where possibly as many as seven kings were crowned, during the 10th Century, including Athelstan, the first king of a unified England in 925, and Ethelred the Unready in 978-9.

Astronauts on long space missions may not be able to take paracetamol to treat a headache or antibiotics to fight infection, a study has found.Scientists at the Johnson Space Center have shown that the effectiveness of drugs declines more rapidly in space.Continuous doses of radiation onboard spacecraft may be to blame, according to the study published in the AAPS Journal.

One year ago this week, an oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico touched off a deep-sea leak amounting to 2.5 million gallons of Louisiana light crude every day for months. In all, nearly 207 million gallons (4.9 million barrels) of oil are thought to have gushed from the leak, along with huge volumes of methane. So what's happened to all those petrochemicals over the past year? The answer is surprisingly complex and contentious.Or maybe it shouldn't be so surprising. After all, the task requires figuring out what effect Mother Nature and millions of gallons of dispersants had on the plumes of oil and gas, as much as a mile beneath the sea's surface. What's more, the question carries policy implications: BP and the other companies that operated the well would have an interest in downplaying the spill's long-term legacy, while that's exactly the issue that BP's critics want to highlight.

Albert Einstein, whose theories exploded and reshaped our ideas of how the universe works, died 56 years ago, on April 18, 1955, of heart failure. He was 76. His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine's Ralph Morse. Armed with his camera and a case of scotch -- to open doors and loosen tongues -- Morse compiled a quietly intense record of an icon's passing.

Across the street from a bowling alley in Toulouse, a French scientist unlocks the passageway to a hidden refrigerated laboratory where a centuries-old blight is about to be wiped up."Show him Project Propec," says Cedric Cabanes, president of Agronutrition SAS, a boutique fertilizer company with annual sales of $26 million, which may be on the cusp of transforming a global industry that plowed 163.7 million metric tons of nutritional muck into the soil last year. The metal door swings open and the foul aroma of the excremental experiment inside the chamber overwhelms the possibility of accurate visual observation.

You are a beautiful and unique snowflake. Soon there will be 7 billion humans on Earth, and yet with Dr Seussian confidence I can state that "there is no one alive who is Youer than You". Even if you are an identical twin, you'll know that you are not exactly the same as your sibling. This is borne out in the DNA of identical twins, whose genetic code diverges in small but measurable ways during their lives.

The latest article to feature on GrahamHancock.com's forum is by Luis Eduardo Luna, author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), and with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991). He is co-editor with Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine (2000). In 1986 he co-founded with Pablo Amaringo the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting of Pucallpa, Peru, and served as its Director of International Exhibitions until 1994. He was Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (1994-1998), has lectured about Amazonian shamanism and modified states of consciousness worldwide, and has curated exhibitions of visionary art in several countries.Luna has over 30 years of experience with ayahuasca in various contexts: as an anthropologist with indigenous groups and among urban and rural mestizo ayahuasqueros in Peru and Colombia, with all the syncretic Brazilian religious organizations that use ayahuasca as a sacrament, and as a facilitator in specially designed workshops. See his website at www.wasiwaska.org.

The natural port of Sanitja has played an important role throughout the history of the Balearic Islands being strategically located along the northern coastline of the Spanish island of Menorca. Today, this part of Menorca is largely undeveloped, making it an ideal place to undertake both terrestrial and underwater archaeological investigations.During 2011, The Ecomuseum of the Cape of Cavalleria will continue to carry out underwater archaeological explorations of the port of Sanitja and the surrounding coast, accompanied by its fieldschool participants.

Thousands of people marched in Tokyo on Sunday to demand an end to nuclear power in Japan and a switch to alternative energy after the crisis at an atomic plant hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.Brandishing placards bearing the slogan: "Bye Bye Genpatsu" (Goodbye Nuclear Power), demonstrators -- including many young people and families -- walked along a route from Yoyogi Park in the centre of the capital.

One of the central issues critical to an interstellar mission, which could be completed on timescales of a human lifetime, will be the method of propulsion.For the Project Icarus space vehicle, the decision was made early on to use a fusion-based main engine, which can theoretically have almost 1 million times better performance than currently used chemical rockets. This would allow an Icarus top speed of around 10 percent the speed of light, assuming its size and mass are similar to the Daedalus starship.

(Malleodectes (left) aka "Hammer-Biter" and the pink-tongued skink (right) are examples of convergent evolution, suggesting both were highly-specialized snail-eaters;Meet "Hammer-Biter," a newly discovered marsupial that lived 10 million to 17 million years ago and had hammer-like teeth similar to those seen in modern skinks, according to a paper in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – As 20-year-old Hailey Daniswicz flexes muscles in her thigh, electrodes attached to her leg instruct a computer avatar to flex its knee and ankle -- parts of Hailey's leg that have been missing since 2005.Daniswicz, a sophomore at Northwestern University who lost her lower leg to bone cancer, is training the computer to recognize slight movements in her thigh so she can eventually be fitted with a "bionic" leg -- a robotic prosthesis she would control with her own nerves and muscles.

The dinosaur raises its head and long neck and lets out a loud, earth shaking call before returning its attention to some lush looking plantlife.This is not a scene from Jurassic Park, rather what visitors will see at the Natural History Museum's Age of the Dinosaur exhibition, which fuses animatronics with rarely seen fossils and interactive displays.The exhibition, which took around 18 months to prepare, will run alongside the museum's existing dinosaur artefacts, said Dr Paul Barrett, from the museum's department of paleontology.

EXPLORING a gorge in south-east France in 1994 for prehistoric artefacts, Jean-Marie Chauvet hit the jackpot. After squeezing through a narrow passage, he found himself in a hidden cavern, the walls of which were covered with paintings of animals.But dating the beautiful images - which featured in Werner Herzog's recent documentary film Cave of Forgotten Dreams - has led to an ugly spat between archaeologists. Could the bones of cave bears settle the debate?.

Self-healing materials are a thing of the future, but certainly not a distant future. For instance, NASA plans to wrap airliners in a self-healing skin within the next 20 years, and things like flexible, self-healing concrete have already been demonstrated, albeit only in the lab. Now researchers at Case Western Reserve University, along with partners in the U.S. and Switzerland, have demonstrated self-healing polymers that rejuvenate themselves after just a minute under UV light.

Easter may sound a little different this year.It's purely a coincidence, but U.S. Catholics and Protestants alike are being introduced this Easter season to separate "official" updated translations of the Christian Bible, which arrive in the year the magisterial King James Version celebrates its 400th birthday.But with millions of dollars in publishing revenue and the trust of millions of churchgoers hanging in the balance, the new versions aren't being met with universal acceptance.

Rare pygmy rabbits are being reintroduced to their native Columbia Basin in the United States, bringing them back from the brink of extinction. It will be the first time that the endangered species has been seen in the wild since 2004, after a mere 16 of the remaining little fluff balls were taken into captivity in an attempt to save their species in 2001.

A grisly discovery has produced an archaeological mystery during recent excavations at Fin Cop hillfort in Derbyshire, England. Archaeologists working alongside community volunteers, uncovered nine bodies dating to the Iron Age, roughly thrown into the defensive ditch.Fin Cop is located on the crest of a steep sided bluff overlooking the valley of Monsal Dale. The actual hillfort itself commands panoramic views over the surrounding countryside. However, activity on the site dates much further back in time than the Iron Age construction.

new research project led by Professor Jennifer Westerfeld, of the University of Louisville, Kentucky, is taking a look at a unique set of graffiti scribbled onto the walls of a 3,200 year old Egyptian temple.The temple was built at Abydos by Seti I, a powerful Pharaoh who pushed the borders of the Egyptian empire as far as modern day Syria. It contains two courtyards, two hypo-style halls, chapels and an enigmatic structure known as the Osireion, – which may commemorate the Egyptian story of creation.

Scientists seeking to understand the origin of the human mind may want to look to honeybees -- not ancestral apes -- for at least some of the answers, according to a University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist.CU-Boulder Research Associate John Hoffecker said there is abundant fossil and archaeological evidence for the evolution of the human mind, including its unique power to create a potentially infinite variety of thoughts expressed in the form of sentences, art and technologies. He attributes the evolving power of the mind to the formation of what he calls the "super-brain," or collective mind, an event that took place in Africa no later than 75,000 years ago.

Peter Hohenstatt was skeptical at first, especially when he learned the drawing dated to about 1500.The sketch was "absolutely Leonardesque," the University of Parma art historian thought, but it was probably the product of one of the master's students, imitators or admirers. When a technical exam showed the drawing originated closer to 1473, his skepticism waned.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – The gravesite of a Union Army major general sits largely forgotten in a small cemetery along the Massachusetts Turnpike.A piece of the coat worn by President Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated rests quietly in a library attic in a Boston suburb. It's shown upon request, a rare occurrence.

LONDON (AFP) – Christians have long celebrated Jesus Christ's Last Supper on Maundy Thursday but new research released Monday claims to show it took place on the Wednesday before the crucifixion.Professor Colin Humphreys, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, believes it is all due to a calendar mix-up -- and asserts his findings strengthen the case for finally introducing a fixed date for Easter.

A laser beam has been developed that can cook brain tumors. The research from Washington University could help save the lives of people with, until now, inoperable brain tumors, and could soon be extended to destroy other tumors in other parts of the body without resorting to surgery."This tool gives us a treatment for patients with tumors that were previously deemed inoperable," said Eric Leuthardt, a doctor at Washington University. "It offers hope to certain patients who had few or no options before.

Last year I visited gallery of Harappan Civilization at the National Museum, New Delhi. Among the artifacts, I saw a small 'chillum' (hand-held twin pipe) similar to that 'sadhus' (wandering Hindu monks) use in smoking 'charas' (hand-made hashish) and 'ganja' (marijuana). Discussing the history of cannabis, the Wikipedia quotes that charred cannabis seeds were found in a 3rd millenium BC grave in Romania.

Human language originated in Africa, according to a newly completed University of Auckland study. The study results parallel and complement recent genetic and phenotype studies that support an African origin for Homo sapiens, or modern humans, strengthening the notion that the development of language was a key innovation that enabled modern humans to spread across the globe.

Archaeologists excavating in the area where remains of the 1607 James Fort on Jamestown Island in Virginia were discovered are now encountering possible traces of the 1608 church where Pocahontas, the daughter of the Indian Emperor that headed the Powhatan tribal nations, and who arguably saved the life of the legendary 17th century explorer John Smith, was baptized and then married in 1610. Jamestown Island was the location of the first successful, permanent English colony in what is now the United States.

Had we been traveling overland, it would have taken two or three days to get from the end of the road at Carmelita to El Mirador: long hours of punishing heat and drenching rain, of mud and mosquitoes, and the possibility that the jungle novice in our party (that would be me, not the biologists turned photographers Christian Ziegler and Claudio Contreras) might step on a lethal fer-de-lance or do some witless city thing to provoke a jaguar or arouse the ire of the army ants inhabiting the last great swath of subtropical rain forest in Mesoamerica.

Like the Easter Bunny, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit of Washington state may soon exist only in our imaginations. None have been seen in the wild since 2004. But a new breeding program is aiming to rebuild this endangered species into a thriving wild population.With adults weighing barely a pound, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is North America's smallest rabbit. Fragmentation of its habitat, along with disease and other stresses, sent the Columbia Basin population into a tailspin in the 1990s.

Pluto has an atmosphere? Shocking, right?It may not have official planetary status, but the dwarf planet does have an atmosphere. In fact, it's the only dwarf planet with a known atmosphere. What's more, it has just been announced that its atmosphere reaches nearly one quarter of the way to Pluto's largest moon Charon and swept back -- like a cometary tail -- by the weak pressure of the solar wind.

The longer a man's fourth or ring finger is compared to his index finger, the more likely he is to be judged attractive by women, according to a study released Wednesday.The results, published in the British Royal Society's journal Biological Sciences, unveil intricate links between foetal exposure of males to hormones, the development of certain physical traits, and what turns on the opposite sex.

There's a new UFO crash video making the rounds titled, "Dead Alien Found in UFO Hotspot in Russia," and it shows two Russian men finding what appears to be a dead extraterrestrial alien near a tree stump in a snowy field in Irkutsk, Siberia.In the video, the alien looks to be about two or three feet tall, with a large head and long, thin limbs. It's gotten over 1 million hits so far, with many commenters asking if it could be the real thing. A message on the YouTube video, which was uploaded about a week ago, states that "Your government is lying to you about UFO & alien visitation."It seems clear that someone's lying, all right.

It may just be an elaborate hoax, but a video has surfaced showing the body of an alien found dead in snow in Siberia.The slender, badly damaged corpse was found lying on a bed of snow with its head to one side and mouth slightly open, the Daily Mail reported.The video, posted on April 17 on YouTube, has already had over 100,000 views and showed the body of the unidentified "creature".

Pluto's has a highly elliptical orbit that takes it inside the orbit of Neptune and then out into the distant icy reaches of the Solar System.Astronomers have long believed that this would have important effects on the dwarf planet's atmosphere. Their models indicate that Pluto's atmosphere is likely to swell as it moves closer to the Sun and the poles sublimate. Later, the atmosphere should condense as it cools down.

In the 21st century it is hard to think there were still parts of the earth left undiscovered.But scientists have just 'found' 657 barrier islands along the world's coastlines.Using satellite images, topographical maps and navigational charts they have identified a total of 2,149 such islands worldwide.This is significantly higher than the 1,492 identified in a 2001 survey conducted without the aid of publicly available satellite imagery.

A shimmering patch of light as big as Sweden detected at the north pole of Saturn is the spectacular result of a giant stream of electrically charged particles from the planet's moon Enceladus, scientists find.On Earth, surges of charged particles from the sun colliding with our planet's magnetic field create the northern and southern lights, or auroras. Similar patches of light have been seen on Jupiter, caused by electrons and ions originating from that planet's volcanically active moon Io.

Evidence for a likely 50,000-year-old Neanderthal burial ground that includes the remains of at least three individuals has been unearthed in Spain, according to a Quaternary International paper.The deceased appear to have been intentionally buried, with each Neanderthal's arms folded such that the hands were close to the head. Remains of other Neanderthals have been found in this position, suggesting that it held meaning.

Anopheles mosquitoes, which transmit the malaria parasite by their bite are present almost throughout the world. Only five areas are exceptions: Antarctic and Iceland, where there are no mosquitoes at all, New-Caledonia, the Central Pacific islands, like French Polynesia, and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

Research released in anticipation of World Malaria Day finds that plants in East Africa with promising antimalarial qualities -- ones that have treated malaria symptoms in the region's communities for hundreds of years -- are at risk of extinction. Scientists fear that these natural remedial qualities, and thus their potential to become a widespread treatment for malaria, could be lost forever.A new book by researchers at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Common Antimalarial Trees and Shrubs of East Africa, provides a detailed assessment of 22 of the region's malaria-fighting trees and shrubs. While over a thousand plant species have been identified by traditional healers as effective in the prevention or treatment of malaria symptoms, the species in the book were assigned by both traditional medicinal practitioners and scientists as those that have potential for further study.

Scientists have unearthed the largest spider fossil ever found.The spider, a new species called Nephila jurassica, stretches about two inches from end to end. It was found in a fossil-rich rock formation near Daohugou village in northeastern China. The fossil dates back to the Middle Jurassic, about 165 million years ago, researchers reported in the April 20 Biology Letters.Spiders from the same family still exist today. Female giant golden orb-weaver spiders can grow to a whopping 4 or 5 inches in diameter (although males tend to be less than a quarter that size). These spiders are known for spinning huge webs of golden silk and have been known to trap bats and small birds.

Deforestation in parts of the Peruvian Amazon has increased six-fold in recent years as small-scale miners, driven by record gold prices, blast and clear more of the lowland rainforest, according to a new Duke University-led study.The study, published April 19 in the online journal PLoS ONE, combined NASA satellite imagery spanning six years with economic analyses of gold prices and mercury imports to document the forces responsible for deforestation in Peru's biologically diverse Madre de Dios region.

For years, Elon Musk has been saying that three years after the government puts up the cash, he could have a new ride for astronauts ready to fly.On Monday, NASA decided to take him up on the pledge. Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, will share $269 million with fellow aspiring rocketeers Sierra Nevada Corp and Blue Origin, along with an established aerospace giant, Boeing, to develop human orbital space transportation services.Boeing and SpaceX will use NASA's investment to further designs for capsules -- the seven-seaters CST-100 for Boeing and Dragon for SpaceX -- while Sierra Nevada pursues a winged craft known as Dream Chaser.

Sea urchins, prized for their edible gonads, resort to cannibalism when starved and forced into overcrowded tanks, according to new research.There are no documented reports of cannibalism among wild sea urchin populations, according to the study, so little doubt exists that manmade conditions are driving this behavior. Aquaculture of sea urchins is particularly popular in Japan and China, where millions of tons are harvested each year.

Scientists studying the fossils of tiny ocean-dwelling plankton, called foraminifera, have uncovered another piece in the puzzle of why species evolve or become extinct.The issue of whether extinctions and evolution are controlled more by the environment or by the existing diversity of species in an ecosystem is one that scientists have been debating since Darwin's time.Writing in the journal Science on April 15, researchers from Imperial College London and Cardiff University say their study of foraminifera, or 'forams', suggests that new species are more likely to evolve when there are fewer species already and that extinctions are more closely linked to a change in environment than they are to the number of existing species.

Britain's soil bacteria have been mapped for the first time in the most comprehensive study of a country's soil biodiversity to date. The results are published April 20, 2011 in the journal Environmental Microbiology.To complete the map the scientific team, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), Newcastle University and the University of Oxford, analysed over 1000 soil cores from England, Scotland and Wales, examining microbial DNA sequences in the laboratory to map bacterial biodiversity.

Research shows that a walk in the park is more than just a nice way to spend an afternoon. It's an essential component for good health, according to University of Illinois environment and behavior researcher Frances "Ming" Kuo."Through the decades, parks advocates, landscape architects, and popular writers have consistently claimed that nature had healing powers," Kuo said. "But until recently, their claims haven't undergone rigorous scientific assessment.

The first research to actively analyze adult male sea turtles (Caretta caretta) using satellite tracking to link geography with pollutants has revealed the potential risks posed to this threatened species by humanmade chemicals. The research, published April 19 in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, examines the different levels of chemicals in the blood of both migratory and residential turtles."The risks posed by persistent organic pollutants (POPs) remain largely a mystery for threatened loggerhead sea turtles," said lead author Jared Ragland from the College of Charleston, South Carolina. "A clear understanding of these risks is critical for wildlife managers trying to maintain both the health of reproductively active individuals and a sustainable population overall.

(TOKYO) -- The newest title holder of the world's oldest living man celebrated his 114th birthday in Japan Tuesday.Jiroemon Kimura, who was born on April 19, 1897, rang in another year of life at home with his family in Kyoto, according to Japanese officials.The supercentenarian became the oldest living man in the world after his predecessor, Walter Breuning, died last Thursday in Montana. Breuning passed away from natural causes at the age of 114.

An international team of scientists has developed a way to predict how much a person can learn, based on studies at UC Santa Barbara's Brain Imaging Center.A study published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) details the findings.Researchers collected brain imaging data from people performing a motor task and then analyzed this data using new computational techniques. They found evidence that the flexibility of a person's brain can be used to predict how well someone will learn. The researchers view flexibility as how different areas of the brain link up in different combinations.

A worldwide growth in the price of gold has accelerated the pace of deforestation in some of the most pristine parts of the Peruvian Amazon, where miners are cutting down trees in order to extract the valuable natural resource.From 2003 to 2009, found a new study, the rate of deforestation in two gold-mining areas increased six-fold alongside record-setting leaps in the international price of gold. During one two-year period, as gold prices climbed steadily, forests disappeared at a rate of 4.5 American football fields a day from one of the two sites.

Cuckoos have evolved plumage patterns that give them a hawk-like appearance to scare the birds whose nests they invade, say scientists.A study has shown that reed warblers - a cuckoo host species - are less likely to attack more "hawk-like" cuckoos.This helps the parasitic birds to lay their eggs undisturbed.The visible similarity between cuckoos and sparrow hawks was already clear, but this is the first study to show the effect the trickery has on host birds.The findings are published in the journal Behavioural Ecology.

A Korean satellite has caught an eye-catching view of an island in Mexico known for a deep, rocky hole and waters so dark that they earned it the name Holbox, a name that means "black hole."The photo was taken by the Korea Multi-purpose Satellite 2, or Kompsat-2, and shows Holbox Island and its Yalahau lagoon at the northeast corner of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.Holbox Island is a 26-mile-long (42-kilometers) strip of land separated from the mainland by the lagoon.

Mapping of Maya's "Holtun" site in Central Lakes region of Guatemala locates triadic pyramid, astronomical observatory, ritual ball court, residential mounds, plazasArchaeologists have made the first three-dimensional topographical map of ancient monumental buildings long buried under centuries of jungle at the Maya site "Head of Stone" in Guatemala.The map puts into 3-D perspective the location and size of Head of Stone's many buildings and architectural patterns, which are typical of Maya sites: 70-foot-tall "triadic pyramid," an astronomical observatory, a ritual ball court, numerous plazas and also residential mounds that would have been the homes of elites and commoners, according to archaeologist Brigitte Kovacevich, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Notorious for being a cruel megalomaniac tyrant who persecuted early Christians, had his stepbrother, two of his wives and even his own mother murdered, Rome's fifth emperor, Nero, has never been held dear in Roman history.In fact, he has been accused of nearly destroying Rome, itself, by allegedly setting the Great Fire in 64 A.D. that devastated the city.Now tourists can tour his first palace.

Do you like a good UFO detective story? Well, here's one for you. And it's ongoing, so we don't yet know the ending. It involves President John F. Kennedy's interest in UFOs shortly before his death and an allegation that he may have angered officials in his administration when he asked for information on the subject.Recently, the FBI opened a new website, "The Vault," that lets you view a variety of documents, including those regarding UFOs. I looked into one document that appears to include a phony UFO story and mentioned how important it is to be extremely careful when looking at UFO documents and how it's critical to know the background of this information.

An uncovered letter written by John F Kennedy to the head of the CIA shows that the president demanded to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs 10 days before his assassination.The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he made a request while researching his new book 'A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.

An elderly reptile living approximately 275 million years ago in what is now Oklahoma was probably walking around with a throbbing mouth, suggests a new study finding evidence of what may be the world's first known toothache.The find predates the previous record-holder (another land vertebrate with dental disease) by nearly 200 million years. The newly discovered tooth infection may have been the result of animals adapting to life on land after living in the sea for so long.

Is that pain really all in your head? Maybe about half of it is, according to a new study on meditation and pain relief.Study volunteers were subjected to a pain test before and after 80 minutes' worth of meditation training. After meditating, they reported that the same pain was 40 percent less intense and 57 percent less unpleasant. Brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of pain-reception regions revealed significant changes before and after meditation, too.

Can you fool the human sense of taste in the world of virtual reality? Up until recently that question was impossible to answer, most because it had not been tested. Most of virtual reality relied on sight and sound. Virtual touch is also a fairly new area of research. Now, with the help of your nose, virtual taste may be on the way.

Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass has been sentenced to one year in jail on Sunday for refusing to fulfill a court ruling over a land dispute.The Egyptian criminal court also said Hawass must be relieved of his governmental duties and ordered him to pay a LE1000 penalty.Hawass failed to adhere to a ruling in favour of his opponent over a land dispute when he was in charge of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

I have to tell the world right now, there is a story going around that I am going to be in jail, which is a complete misunderstanding.Last year, we were taking bids from different companies to run a book store inside the Egyptian Museum. There is a person, who was renting a bookstore inside the Museum. He wanted to stop the bidding process, because he thought he should keep his contract. This person filed a case with the Misdemeanor Court in Agouza, Cairo, in order to stop the bidding process. This case was filed against the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), not against me personally, but against the role I was holding at that time.

A new study from the University at Buffalo contradicts the dark flow theory, showing that exploding stars in different parts of the universe do not appear to be moving in sync. Working with data on 557 such stars, called supernovae, UB scientists deduced that while the supernovae closest to Earth all shared a common motion in one direction, supernovae further out were heading somewhere else. An article announcing the research results will appear in a forthcoming edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

One trillion years from now, an alien astronomer in our galaxy will have a difficult time figuring out how the universe began. They won't have the evidence that we enjoy today.Edwin Hubble made the first observations in support of the Big Bang model. He showed that galaxies are rushing away from each other due to the universe's expansion. More recently, astronomers discovered a pervasive afterglow from the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background, left over from the universe's white-hot beginning.

Archaeologists are currently excavating further areas of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first and most infamous Emporer of China. The site, where the magnificent terracotta warriors were discovered relatively recently - 1974 - contains the undisturbed tomb of the Emperor. With rumours of flowing mercury and incomparable treasures, the question on everyone's lips is - what's inside?.

In 2000, Roy Cullimore, a microbial ecologist and Charles Pellegrino, scientist and author of Ghosts of the Titanic discovered that the Titanic --which sank in the Atlantic Ocean 97 years ago -- was being devoured by a monster microbial industrial complex of extremophiles as alien we might expect to find on Jupiter's ocean-bound Europa. What they discovered is the largest, strangest cooperative microorganism on Earth.Scientists believe that this strange super-organism is using a common microbial language that could be either chemical or electrical -a phenomenon called "quorum sensing" by which whole communities "sense" each other's presence and activities aiding and abetting the organization, cooperation, and growth.

Most of us are familiar with the idea of lost civilizations. Whether it is through television, or comic books or through the original source of Plato's Timaeus, we have all at one point or other heard about the 'lost kingdom of Atlantis' as well as slightly less known examples such as Lemuria.Those of us who are educated can be entertained by these notions, but ultimately dismiss them as being fanciful and unfounded. Our modern and well developed understanding of archeology and of our history tells us that the legend of Atlantis is just that, a legend.What if, however the answers were not as 100% airtight as you might think, and that while conventional wisdom may indeed be true, that there are serious and legitimate questions to be asked about and explored regarding our history.One person doing just that is journalist and world renowned author and historical/archeological sleuth Graham Hancock.

In what many in the textile industry have for years been calling the holy grail of materials science, genetic engineers from Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc. have succeeded, using Sigma Life Science technology, in creating genetically modified silkworms that are able to produce a silkworm/spider silk combination that is much stronger and more elastic than natural silk, paving the way for improved products such as sutures, other medical devices and even airbags.

Jamie Simon worked on a barge in the oily waters for six months following the BP spill last year, cooking for the cleanup workers, washing their clothes and tidying up after them.One year later, the 32 year old said she still suffers from a range of debilitating health problems, including racing heartbeat, vomiting, dizziness, ear infections, swollen throat, poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

The political tussle over U.S. spending has ensnared an unlikely victim, the gray wolf, whose long-time status as an endangered species will likely be axed due to a late addition to the budget deal.The annex, or rider, attached by two senators to the federal budget bill after weeks of tumultuous debate, marks the first time that Congress has removed an animal from the endangered species list and passed in a vote Thursday.Added Tuesday, a few days after a deal to prevent the government from shutting down was agreed on, the move has left environmentalists both seething and admitting defeat after years of legal wrangling over the fate of the wolves."There is nothing we can do to sue because the rider actually bans the citizens from suing the government over this issue," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Prince Charles has called it the "biggest environmental disaster of all time," while Monsanto and others maintain it's safe for humans and the environment. Genetically modified foods are a contentious issue, but Ireland is erring on the side of caution, placing a ban on growing any genetically modified crops.Ireland will ban growing of GM crops, and a voluntary GM-free label can be placed on all animal products--such as meat, poultry, eggs, fish, crustaceans, and dairy--that are raised with GM-free feed, according to a GM-Free Ireland press release. Ireland joins Japan and Egypt as one of the few but growing number of countries that have banned the cultivation of GM crops.

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.Map of sitesThe items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artefacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this latest research.

NASA chief Charles Bolden announced today that the retiring four space shuttles will go on permanent display in Washington, New York City, Los Angeles and Florida.More than 20 museums, educational institutions and planetariumswere vying for one of the coveted space vehicles.Bolden, his voice frequently breaking with emotion, made the announcement on the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle flight.

The reappointment of renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass as overseer of Egypt's antiquities portfolio in Essam Sharaf's caretaker cabinet has whipped up something of a storm in the archaeological world. While Hawass's supporters insist he is the most suitable candidate, his opponents cast doubt on the integrity of his return.

A controversial filmmaker says he found nails that may have been used to crucify Jesus. CNN's Kevin Flower reports.

The single most important connection between IVC and the ancient Tamil country is the reference to the migration of people under the leadership of Agastya starting from Dwaraka and going on into the Tamil country. As this story is already very old in the Sangam age it must refer to an ancient migration following the collapse of the Indus civilisation. The single most important element connecting the Indus civilisation with modern Tamil culture is the Kavadi, the ceremonial yoke used to carry offerings to the deity. As Parpola has shown in one of his earlier papers (1981), the Yoke and the name Kavadi are even now found all over India.

WASHINGTON POSTHuman language arose only once, in southern Africa, a first-of-its-kind analysis of world languages suggests.Verbal communication then spread across the globe as humans walked out of Africa, reaching Australia and New Zealand last.This verbal spread parallels the dispersion of early human genes across the world, leading the researcher to conclude that language may have prompted the great human migration.

In a small room at Caltech, space physicist Ed Stone and four of his colleagues puzzle over a trove of data that has just arrived from the bulbous edge of the solar system."What, exactly, are we looking at?" Stone asks.The data form a map of invisible matter, a slush of atomic particles once part of stars that exploded around 10 million years ago. The information has come from Voyager 1, the spindly little spacecraft that rocketed from Florida more than 30 years before and is still traveling, farther from Earth than any human-made object ever has.Stone and his associates are stumped. "What are we going to find?" Stone wonders. "Right now, I don't think anybody knows.

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.

Seventy metal books allegedly discovered in a cave in Jordan have been hailed as the earliest Christian documents. Dating them to mere decades after Jesus' death, scholars have called the "lead codices" the most important discovery in archaeological history, and leading media outlets have added fuel to the fire surrounding the books in recent weeks."Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history," reported the BBC.Slowly, though, more and more questions have arisen about the authenticity of the codices, whose credit-card-size pages are cast in lead and bound together by lead rings. Today, an Aramaic translator has completed his analysis of the artifacts, and has found what he says is incontrovertible evidence that they are fakes.

A statue of King Tutankhamun, which was looted during Egypt's anti-government protests, has been returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo along with three other pharaonic artifacts, Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities, announced today.Stolen when vandals and looters broke into the Cairo museum during the January revolution that brought down President Hosni Mubarak, the statue, cataloged as JE 60710.1, is one of three gilded wooden statues of King Tutankhamun that were declared missing in March (the official list of the items that were stolen from the Egyptian museum included a total of 63 objects).

After years of planning, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is easy to glimpse. The next-generation Curiosity rover is on track to land on Mars next year. For the moment, the craft is still being put through its paces at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. By fall, the Curiosity will be shipped to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., where a launch is slated between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18. The target area remains undecided but NASA scientists hope the Curiosity will be able to shed light on whether Mars has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life or whether Martian life has ever existed.

Pigeons may not instill the same aura of fear as a Tyrannosaurus rex, but they inherited their sense of smell from such prehistoric killers.Birds are known more for their flying abilities and their senses of vision and balance than for their sense of smell. According to conventional wisdom, the sense of smell declined during the transition from dinosaurs to birds as the senses of vision and balance were improved for flight. But new research published today by scientists at the University of Calgary, the Royal Tyrrell Museum and Ohio University suggests that millions of years ago, the winged critters also boasted a better sense for scents than their dinosaur ancestors.

Biofuel produced from algae, essentially pond scum, has long titillated green energy boosters as a potential big time player in the U.S. renewable fuels portfolio. Now, a-first-of-its-kind look at industrial-scale freshwater farming of algae suggests it could indeed make a sizeable dent in U.S. oil imports, but drain water resources.Specifically, the U.S. could produce enough of the algae-derived fuel to eliminate 48 percent of the fuel it currently imports for transportation needs, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But doing so would require 5.5 percent of the land area in the lower 48 states and consume about three times the water currently used to irrigate crops.

Nick Kollerstrom has another article for us at the GrahamHancock.com forum, titled 'Plato's Mistake'.Nick Kollerstrom is historian of science, a former honorary research fellow in Science and Technology Studies at University College, London (UCL), and a former lunar gardening correspondent for the BBC. He is the author or co-author of a number of books, including Gardening and Planting by the Moon (an annual series beginning 1980), Newton's Forgotten Lunar Theory (2000), 'Crop Circles - The Hidden Form' (2002), and Terror on the Tube (2009)

Back in the Middle Ages, maps showed terrifying images of sea dragons at the boundaries of the known world. Today, scientists have observed strange new motion at the very limits of the known universe -- kind of where you'd expect to find new things, but they still didn't expect this. A huge swathe of galactic clusters seem to be heading to a cosmic hotspot and nobody knows why.The unexplained motion has hundreds of millions of stars dashing towards a certain part of the sky at over eight hundred kilometers per second. Not much speed in cosmic terms, but most preferred cosmological models have things moving in all directions equally at the extreme edges of the universe. Something that could make things aim for a specific spot on such a massive scale hasn't been imagined before.

NASA's Swift, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts yet observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location.Astronomers say they have never seen anything this bright, long-lasting and variable before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, but flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.

Bibhu Dev Misra has written two articles that are now available for viewing on the articles page.See: A Day and Night of Brahma: The Evidence from Fossil Records and The Opet Festival of Ancient Egypt: Has it been derived from the Jagannatha Rathyatra of Puri, India?

Published in Science, a new report from biologist Quentin D. Atkinson from the University of Auckland is sparking controversy among linguists. Atkinson has been analyzing the sounds of the many languages around the world and has detected signals that lead to southern Africa as a place where all human language began.

Abraham Lincoln is known for many things. He led the nation through the Civil War, emancipated the slaves and delivered eloquent speeches about democracy and liberty. But Lincoln's religious views have long been a matter of debate.Now, a newly resurfaced letter from the 19th century is raising questions once again about the 16th president's relationship with God. The three-page letter, which was written by Lincoln's old law partner, William Herndon, and just went up for sale for a price of $35,000, claims that Honest Abe was driven not by faith, but by politics.

Why (as far as I know) was all the chert obtained from the Rohri Hills and distributed everywhere else? What does this tell us about the nature of the Harappan economy and society? Submitted by Gharial Abramnova from school student questionsJane McIntoshSuch raw materials were of immense importance to all the civilized societies of the period (and other periods), either for their practical use (eg metals for tools, timber for houses and ships) or for social, political and religious display (eg adorning temples). In terms of the efforts involved, the Harappans were fortunate in being able to obtain many of their raw materials far more easily than many of their contemporaries: the hills and mountains surrounding the Indus region on 2-3 sides were neighbouring sources of many of the minerals they required and were inhabited by friendly cultures, whereas the Mesopotamians, for example, were frequently in conflict with the peoples of the neighbouring regions from or through which they had to obtain raw materials.

We've all seen photographs of the Civil War: black-and-white images of bearded Union generals or mustachioed Confederate colonels posing to one side of the camera, dead bodies stacked on the battlefield or common soldiers around a camp tent.Looking back 150 years to the start of the Civil War this month, what impact did photography have on the war? On the people who lived during the time? What do these images tell us today about the soldiers and their families.