Newsdesk Archive

A 9-year-old Cub Scout, Owen Page, when walking with his grandfather in the village of Little Totham, in Essex (England), prevented his grandfather from discarding a rare artifact. On the walk Tony Page, the grandfather, had been throwing stones for his dogs to chase. His grandson noticed something unusual about one of the stones and his suspicions were confirmed when it turned out to be a Neolithic hand axe which had undergone the first stage of polishing.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have now identified a genetic switch that controls oxidative stress in stem cells and thus governs stem cell function.

Surprising new evidence which overturns current theories of how humans colonised the Pacific has been discovered by scientists at the University of Leeds, UK.

Indiana Jones, put down your whip. To scour the globe for archaeological sites these days all you need is a desktop computer.Almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia have been discovered from an office chair in Perth, Australia, thanks to high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth."I've never been to Saudi Arabia," says David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia, Australia. "It's not the easiest country to break into.

In the last instalment we set the scene and introduce the players. Now it is time for us to delve ever deeper into the mystery and enter the murky world where science and legend may walk hand in hand once more. Welcome to the 2nd and final act of a lost Roman legion in China.Li-Jien - I may have left you wondering the significance of this seemingly innocuous place. Li-Jien is the very foundation of the whole theory, the building block that may spout a magnificent discovery coated in the marble of history changing impact...or just a great and ultimately sad story. There is a tiny village in the western Chinese province of Gansu, more than 200 miles from the nearest large city. A village called Liqian (also known as Zhelaizhai) Just outside that village are the ruins of a fortified settlement, this in itself is not unusual as there are many of these ruins to be found dotted along the Western corridor.

A 95-million-year-old fossil is helping scientists understand how snakes lost their legs through evolutionary time.Found in Lebanon, the specimen is one of only three examples of an ancient snake with preserved leg bones.One rear leg is clearly visible but researchers had to use a novel X-ray technique to examine another leg hidden inside the fossil rock.Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the team says the snake records an early stage in limb loss.

In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop.That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be."I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model aeroplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.

Island-based designer and engineer Garry Lavin has set out to revolutionise ideas on how the ancient monument of Stonehenge was built.The current accepted theory is that each three-quarter tonne stone was rolled for more than 200 miles on logs, but Mr Lavin disagrees.He thinks the historic monument could have been built using wicker basket constructions to roll the boulders all the way from Wales."I constructed a 0.5-metre diameter structure in hazel and willow into which I placed a sharply rectangular 40kg stone from a collapsed dry stone wall," he said.

Eating chips, chocolate and cake may be damaging to a child's intelligence, according to researchers at Bristol University.Their study suggests a link between a diet high in processed foods and a slightly lower IQ.Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they suggest poor nutrition may affect brain development.The British Dietetic Association said more young parents needed to be educated about healthy eating.

MEXICO CITY.- Eight archaeological sites, some of them occupied 8,000 years ago by nomadic groups, were discovered by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the municipality of Ensenada, Baja California. Lithic tools were found at the settlements mainly made out of obsidian, similar to those discovered in Riverside County, California.

One of the most significant socioeconomic changes in the history of humanity took place around 10,000 years ago, when the Near East went from an economy based on hunting and gathering (Mesolithic) to another kind on agriculture (Neolithic). Farmers rapidly entered the Balkan Peninsula and then advanced gradually throughout the rest of Europe.Various theories have been proposed over recent years to explain this process, and now physicists from the University of Girona (UdG) have for the first time presented a new model to explain how the Neolithic front slowed down as it moved towards the north of the continent. The study has been published in the New Journal of Physics.

Researching your family tree can only go back so far in time before records become patchy.Now genealogists from the University of Leicester are using DNA tests to trace Manx ancestry back to the Viking era.Local men with popular Manx surnames are being asked to give a DNA sample to help researchers explore the links between Y chromosomes, surnames and common ancestry.The investigation starts on Saturday, 19 February 2011 at the Manx Museum.

Dinosaurs left lasting footprints only when conditions were just right, scientists have claimed.University of Manchester researchers used computers to simulate prehistoric creatures making tracks in different types of mud.They found that soil conditions had to be perfect for different dinosaurs to leave fossil footprints behind.Dubbed the "Goldilocks effect", scientists say it explains why tracks were left at some sites and not others.

Russian scientists are on the verge of punching a hole into a vast Antarctic lake that's buried under more than two miles of ice.If the Russians break through, they may tap into and disturb a primitive and pristine ecosystem that has been untouched for millions of years.Lake Vostok is actually the third largest lake in the world, measured by the amount of water it holds. And if you're surprised to learn that there could be a vast pool of liquid water under two miles of ice, so were the Soviets.

A 33 million year old saber tooth cat fossil met state-of-the-art 21st century technology at Rapid City Regional Hospital (RCRH) today. Badlands National Park, in partnership with RCRH, completed a CT scan of the well preserved skull."Saber tooth cat skulls with intact canines are extremely rare," said park paleontologist Rachel Benton. "In addition to that, bite marks on this skull make it scientifically significant. The CT scan completed today will provide researchers with information that can be used to determine what type of animal attacked this cat and probably caused its death.

LONDON: Embarrassed of your burn marks? Don't worry, as scientists have developed a revolutionary spray gun which they say could heal severe burns "within days".Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh who are behind the innovation said the spray gun can generate healthy skin stem cells from the victim and sprays it on burned skin. The stem cell shooting gun, the experts claimed, can treat the skin in just one-and-a-half hours and reduce healing time to a few days, the Daily Mail reported.

Every day is a bad-air day on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Blanketed by haze far worse than any smog belched out in Los Angeles, Beijing or even Sherlock Holmes's London, the moon looks like a dirty orange ball. Described once as crude oil without the sulfur, the haze is made of tiny droplets of hydrocarbons with other, more noxious chemicals mixed in. Gunk.Icky as it may sound, Titan is really the rarest of gems: the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere worthy of a planet. This atmosphere comes complete with lightning, drizzle and occasionally a big, summer-downpour style of cloud made of methane or ethane -- hydrocarbons that are best known for their role in natural gas.

"I'm a little shaken. They are throwing Molotov cocktails towards the museum." Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who has spent the past 12 years working in Egypt, was speaking yesterday as the Al Jazeera TV news network showed live footage of running street battles around the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square in Cairo. "We are all nervous and scared, first and foremost for the people, but now the museum, a symbol of Egypt's vast cultural heritage and treasures, is being threatened by Mubarak's own people," she said.

Two trials of spacecraft have successfully unfurled their solar sails, and demonstrated that radiation from sunlight can power them through interplanetary space.Solar sails use photons from the sun to propel spacecraft at high speeds. On January 20, the small lightweight spacecraft NanoSail-D deployed a 10-square-meter gleaming sail in low-Earth orbit.

It has been more than 2,000 years since a Roman merchant ship foundered off the west coast of the Italian peninsula and almost 40 years since the wreck was discovered. Now, the DNA trapped in medicines found aboard the ship is yielding secrets of health care in the ancient world.Samples from two tablets analyzed at the Smithsonian's Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics reveal a dried concoction of about a dozen medicinal herbs, including celery, alfalfa and wild onion, bound together with clay and zinc.

Former "Baywatch" star Donna D'Errico has enjoyed a pretty amazing career arc.But the 42-year-old actress, who recently turned down a spot on "Dancing With the Stars," is now focusing on Noah's ark.D'Errico, 42, is in training to fulfill a lifelong dream of climbing Mount Ararat in Turkey to search for the frozen remains of Noah's ark.According to Biblical legend, the ark was built centuries ago to protect Noah's family and two of every kind of animal during a flood lasting 40 days and 40 nights.

Two-thirds of Israel's 64 developed archaeological sites are operating in the red, creating an unsustainable future for the country's incredibly rich and potentially economically rewarding cultural heritage reserves. Thousands of others remain unexplored.But applying business start-up financing models -- including community microfinance, venture capital and development bonds -- could not only help preserve and protect the country's more than 30,000 identified archaeological sites, but also provide local and national economic growth, according to Cultural Heritage as an Economic Development Resource in Israel, a new report from the Milken Institute.

A team of archaeologists have applied for permission to excavate a gallery grave at Delancey Park n the Channel island of Guernsey later this year.The park is situated in the north east of the Island. It is thought that the park was named after Oliver Delancey (1749-1822) who was the Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1733 and Barrack Master General in Guernsey from 1794 until 1804.The aim of the planned excavation is to help unlock the mysteries of Guernsey's Neolithic Age, which occurred over five thousand years ago.

AHMEDABAD: The 5,000-year-old Harappan ruins of Dholavira in Kutch have the capacity to rewrite an important portion of the history of theatre of the world. Until now, it was believed that Greek and Roman theatre, with their amphitheatres and poignant plays, were the oldest in the world - dating back 2,500 to 3,500 years. But, archaeologists who excavated Dholavira say they found remains of what can be the world's oldest stage.

Syria (Damascus) - During the sixties of the 20th century, a statue of a bull dedicated to the Greek god Orion was discovered in Younan Mountain near the town of Bloudan in Damascus Countryside.The state bore Greek inscriptions stating that the statue is an offering to Orion from an ancient warrior named Tamanaius.Orion is a mythical figure whose origin various according to the several stories. One story tells that the gods Zeus, Hermes and Poseidon come to visit a man named Hyrieus who roasts a whole bull for them, and when they offer him a favor, he asks for the birth of sons, and thus Orion is born.

Scientists in New Zealand say they have linked the modern-day decline of a common forest shrub with the local extinction of two pollinating birds over a century ago.They say the disappearance of two birds - the bellbird and stitchbird - from the upper North Island of the country has lead to a slow decline in common plants, including the forest shrub New Zealand gloxinia.Ship rats and stoats imported into the country around the year 1870 are blamed for the birds' demise.

With input from scientists around the world, American and European scientists working on the potential next new mission to the Jupiter system have announced their joint vision for the Europa Jupiter System Mission to explore "the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants."The proposed Europa Jupiter System Mission would provide orbiters around two of Jupiter's moons: a NASA orbiter around Europa called the Jupiter Europa Orbiter, and an ESA orbiter around Ganymede called the Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter."We've reached hands across the Atlantic to define a mission to Jupiter's water worlds," said Bob Pappalardo, the pre-project scientist for the proposed Jupiter Europa Orbiter, who is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Europa Jupiter System Mission will create a leap in scientific knowledge about the moons of Jupiter and their potential to harbor life.

A new ride at one of the country's biggest theme parks, in Surrey, has been moved after fears that it disturbed an ancient burial ground, prompting paranormal activity.Workers creating the water ride at Thorpe Park for the new season said they started noticing ghostly sightings nearby, including what appeared to be a headless monk.

Launched in October 2006, STEREO traces the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. It also provides unique and revolutionary views of the sun-Earth system. STEREO has given us the first view of the entire sun on February 6, 2011 and when coupled with SDO, will give us complete views of the sun's entire surface and atmosphere for the next 8 years.

IS it just a pile of plain paddock rocks placed in a semicircle, or proof Aborigines were the world's first astronomers?After years of meticulous examination, some of Australia's most distinguished astrophysicists are starting to believe it's the latter - a discovery that could turn history and cultural books upside down and render England's famous Stonehenge an also-ran.

The National Archives says a longtime Abraham Lincoln researcher has been caught telling a big lie about Honest Abe.The Archives said Monday that historian Thomas P. Lowry, 78, of Woodbridge, has acknowledged that he used a fountain pen with special ink to change the date on a presidential pardon issued by Lincoln to a military deserter, making it appear that Lowry had uncovered a document of historical significance.

Scientists with NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday that they had identified more than 1,200 likely new planets in the past year - a revolutionary development in the quest to understand what lies beyond our solar system.This celestial bonanza represents more than a tripling of the number of known distant planets. It also includes a remarkable single system with at least six planets orbiting its sun - the most populated solar system found so far outside our own.

The crew of the Mars500 simulated mission to the Red Planet have reached a key milestone.The six men, sealed since June inside steel containers representing a spacecraft, have "gone into orbit" at their destination.Three of the group will now "descend" to the planet, don real spacesuits and walk on the "surface" of Mars.In reality, this surface will just be the sandy floor of another module at the Moscow-based experiment.

The official strategy for protecting the nation's space assets, dueto be released soon, will probably focus on security from a primarily military perspective, experts say.The Obama administration is expected to announce its National Security Space Strategy in the next week or so. The NSSS spells out how the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will carry out the country's National Space Policy, which the president issued last June.The strategy will likely view the problem of space security through a military prism, according to experts. And while the NSSS - like the National Space Policy - is likely to stress international cooperation in several fields, it will probably be vague about how to make such cooperation happen.

Scientists can grow blood vessels in a lab for use in coronary bypass or dialysis, a promising alternative to harvesting from the patient, said a study published on Wednesday.The process involves taking smooth muscle cells from a human cadaver and grafting them onto tubes made of the material used in making dissolvable stitches, called polyglycolic acid.

Amo-as, diligo-is > per amare. Audio-as > per odire. Transcribing these simple conjugations, the middle-aged Leonardo da Vinci struggled to learn Latin, aspiring to read classical treatises on optics and mechanics. At the time, he was also trying to master algebra, and to improve his employment prospects by studying a book of letter-writing tips.While admirable, these efforts hardly fit Leonardo's other-worldly reputation, most memorably expressed by the Renaissance biographer Georgio Vasari 31 years after Leonardo's death in 1519. "He has been specially endowed by the hand of God himself, and has not attained his pre-eminence by human teaching or the power of man," let alone - Vasari declined to mention - by self-administered grammar lessons.

China has officially announced it will launch a program to develop a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor, taking a crucial step towards shifting to nuclear power as a primary energy source.The project was unveiled at the annual Chinese Academy of Sciences conference in Shanghai last week, and reported in the Wen Hui Bao newspaper (Google English translation here).If the reactor works as planned, China may fulfill a long-delayed dream of clean nuclear energy. The United States could conceivably become dependent on China for next-generation nuclear technology. At the least, the United States could fall dramatically behind in developing green energy.

Residents of a town on the western coast of Greenland may have seen the sun peek over the horizon 48 hours earlier than its usual arrival on Jan. 13, sparking speculation, and disagreements, over possible causes.The town of Ilulissat sits just above the Arctic Circle, meaning its residents had been without any sunlight for a good chunk of the winter, and traditionally they'd expect to see their "first sunrise" on Jan. 13.News that the sun had peeked over the horizon on Jan. 11 appeared online in British and German-language publications and it appears to trace back to a story by the Greenland broadcasting company KNR that quotes residents who noticed the change.

Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, the world's largest collection of Holocaust documents, is teaming up with Google to make its photographs and documents interactive and searchable on the Internet.The project launched Wednesday with a collection of 130,000 photos that can now be searched directly from Google, using standard keywords and other data that make it far easier than in the past to find the desired information.The collection is expected to expand to other parts of the memorial's vast archives in the future.

WASHINGTON -- An international team of astronomers say they've glimpsed the earliest galaxy yet, a smudge of light from nearly 13.2 billion years ago -- a time when the cosmos was a far lonelier place.The research hasn't been confirmed, and some astronomers are skeptical. The new findings are based on an image from the Hubble Space Telescope and are published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. The scientists calculate the new-found galaxy dates to just 480 million years after the Big Bang.

Quang Ngai, Vietnam (CNN) -- Nestled in the mountain foothills of a remote province in central Vietnam, one of the country's most important archaeological discoveries in a century has recently come to light.After five years of exploration and excavation, a team of archaeologists has uncovered a 127-kilometer (79-mile) wall -- which locals have called "Vietnam's Great Wall."Professor Phan Huy Lê, president of the Vietnam Association of Historians, said: "This is the longest monument in Southeast Asia.

Kislovodsk archaeological expedition headed by Dmitry Korobov has found about two hundred ancient settlements following a uniform architectural concept on the Kabardian Ridge, in the foothills of Elbrus.It is possible to say about discovery of an unknown civilization that once existed. And yet the researchers are at a loss regarding material samples of what culture they have unearthed.

Dueling clips of a purported UFO hovering over Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, have created an online ruckus since surfacing online.Not surprisingly, AOL is reporting on the blogosphere's ongoing debate over the legitimacy of the videos, which show round, bright objects hovering over the landmark's iconic dome before rocketing upwards. The videos, which include audio of the inspired reactions of spectators, were reportedly shot over the weekend.

A Guernsey park could be home to artefacts dating back to the Stone Age, according to a Bristol University archaeologist.Dr George Nash has asked the States for permission to excavate an area of Delancey Park in St Sampson.Dr Nash has already carried out some test digs in the area and believes a Neolithic gallery grave, with some intact artefacts, is located there.If permission is given, work should start in June.

A famous Roman artefact once considered too shocking to be exhibited is coming to The University of Nottingham as part of a major new exhibition.The Warren Cup, a silver cup decorated with scenes of male homosexual love, was recently featured in the BBC series A History of the World in 100 Objects and has its permanent home in the British Museum. It is only the second time the cup has left the Museum to be displayed outside London.

A medieval mystery in Norfolk, UK, has remained unsolved for nearly 10 years but might finally be close to a solution. Giles Emery an archaeologist from Norfolk Archeological Unit, has decided to play Sherlock Holmes and solve the gruesome mystery of 17 bodies (including 11 children) who were found at the bottom of a medieval well as workers dug foundations for a local shopping centre.Giles Emery was the archaeologist tasked in 2004 with the horrible task of removing them. Giles is determined to discover not only how they died, but why they came to be thrown down a well.

In an effort to ramp up pressure for Peru to crack down on illegal loggers in its region of the Amazon, an indigenous rights organization has released what it says are photos of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil that is threatened by the logging across the border.Survival International says the previously unpublished aerial photos, which it released Monday, show members of an uncontacted Brazilian tribe that is likely to get drawn into conflicts with Peruvian tribes who are fleeing their homes because of the logging.

Five hundred years ago, three Inca children were left to freeze high in the cold Argentinian Andes as a religious sacrifice. In time, their bodies mummified, having been swallowed in snow and entombed within the glacier, lost to time. But centuries later, in a warmer world, their perfectly-preserved corpses were discovered beneath the melting snow -- an increasingly common sight. Experts say that as glaciers continue to recede throughout the world, more of their long-guarded secrets will be revealed in the warm grip of a changing climate.

UK travel company Bales Worldwide which runs specialist Egyptian package holiday operator Ancient World Tours says it is following industry practice and is offering full refunds for a limited time as the situation in Egypt changes.The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) is advising to avoid any non-essential travel to Egypt as well as urging people to leave the country via commercial transport. Check the latest FCO advisory here.British Airways is also offering refunds and exchanges.

On Sunday, 31st January 2011 Dr. Zahi Hawass was appointed to the post of Minister of Antiquities, heading a newly created department that will be charged with the care and protection of all Egyptian monuments and museums. This department will absorb the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

A row has broken out in France over whether 15- and 16-year-olds should be allowed to create transgenic Escherichia coli bacteria in the classroom.Practical experiments in which students learn how to use plasmids to alter the DNA of the bacteria have been under way for 17 and 18-year-olds in the final year of the scientific baccalaureate at schools across France for the past decade. But this year teachers have for the first time been offered the option of teaching the experiments to younger students.

Filling up your tank with hydrogen could be as simple as topping up with petrol thanks to a liquid fuel made of plastic nanobeads.Storing hydrogen aboard cars has long been a headache for engineers, as liquid hydrogen must be held at extremely low temperatures, while the compressed gas requires very large tanks. Another compact option is materials called hydrides, which release their hydrogen when heated.

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

NASA's Kepler Mission Team says the discovery shows astronomers are closer to finding a galaxy similar to the Milky Way.

The Web is humming with stories and discussion from the aftermath of President Obama's response to questions about drug legalization during last Thursday's YouTube forum. While his words this time around are a bit more encouraging than previous signals from the administration, I would strongly suggest that we all, including the president, cut through the platitudes and get to the truth about marijuana prohibition.If, as the president suggests, it is time for a "serious debate" about legalization, let's get to it, starting with a few questions that beg for truth.

Israeli scientists have created a detector, similar looking to a full-body scanner but with three concealed cartridges each containing eight specially trained mice.According to the New Scientist the mice work four-hour shifts and are more accurate than using dogs and x-ray machines, the researchers claim.Air is pumped into the cartridges every four hours so the mice can breathe.

An isolated tribe living in the Amazon rainforest on the Brazil-Peru border has been filmed for the first time.Jose Carlos Meirelles, of Funai, said his government agency needs proof of the existence of "uncontacted" Indian communities in Brazil due to the threat posed by illegal logging and mining.They are known as "uncontacted" because they have only limited dealings with the outside world.The BBC was allowed to film from 1km away using a stabilised zoom lens.

Last year's drought in the Amazon raises concerns about the region's capacity to continue absorbing carbon dioxide, scientists say.Researchers report in the journal Science that the 2010 drought was more widespead than in 2005 - the last big one - with more trees probably lost.The 2005 drought had been termed a "one in a century" event.In drought years, the Amazon region changes from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide into a net emitter.

A survey of oyster habitats around the world has found that the succulent mollusks are disappearing fast and 85 percent of their reefs have been lost due to disease and over-harvesting.Most of the remaining wild oysters in the world, or about 75 percent, can be found in five locations in North America, said the study published in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog is well known for his ambitious movies. His latest project, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," may be his wildest film yet.The documentary, which hits theaters this spring, focuses on the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in France. The cave is tens of thousands of years old, and for many thousands of those years no human being knew about it. Three French explorers discovered the cave in 1994.What makes this cave worthy of a 3D film from one of the world's great directors? For one, the cave contains amazing detailed drawings that defy explanation.Gizmodo explains: "The walls contain hundreds of animals -- like the typical Paleolithic horses and bisons -- but some of them are not supposed to be there, like lions, panthers, rhinos, and hyenas.

Archaeologists have identified the remains of the largest Stone Age building ever found in China -- thought to be a prehistoric "town hall" -- in the northwestern Shaanxi Province.The remains of the pentagon-shaped structure, discovered at the Xiahe Site in Baishui County, date back to the Yangshao culture era of 5,000 to 3,000 BC in the New Stone Age.

Israeli archaeologists announced on Tuesday they had uncovered a new section of a 2,000-year-old drainage channel linking the ancient City of David to the plaza in front of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site.The channel, which lies just to the west of the Temple Mount compound, was first unearthed in 2007, and was used by Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 A.D. to flee the conquering Romans, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

One of the things that came up in the many comments appended to the article on Bob's painting of extinct Maltese animals was the famous Egyptian tomb painting of the 'pygmy mammoth'. You're likely already familiar with this (now well known) case: here's the image, as it appears on the beautifully decorated tomb wall of Rekhmire, 'Governor of the Town' of Thebes, and vizier of Egypt during the reigns of Tuthmose III and Amenhotep II (c. 1479 to 1401 BCE) during the XVIII dynasty...

A 1,700-year-old skeleton shows that people of African descent have lived in Warwickshire for far longer than was previously thought, experts say.The skeleton of an African man was discovered buried in Tiddington Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2009.Archaeologists said they now believed the man may have been a Roman soldier who chose to retire in Stratford after serving in an African unit.Investigations into the man's background are continuing.

The explosive burning of coal seams in Siberia a quarter-billion years ago may have contributed to a mass extinction event that wiped out about 95 percent of marine life and 70 percent of life on land, a new study reports.Scientists have long thought that massive volcanic eruptions in Russia's Siberian Traps were responsible for the Permian-Triassic extinction, though many have argued that such a deadly blow likely needed an extra push.

"There is a lot of interest in creating more efficient solar cells that are also simpler than many of the designs common now," Wladek Walukiewicz tells PhysOrg.com. "We think that, through the mixing of certain semiconductors, this is possible."Walukiewicz has lead a group of scientists working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Rose Street Labs Energy and Sumika Electronic Materials, Inc. They have been studying the properties of GaNAs alloys, and they believe that the characteristics of these semiconductor alloys could lead to more efficient solar cells. Their work appears in Physical Review Letters: "Engineering the Electronic Band Structure for Multiband Solar Cells.

Glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer and the disease that killed Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, resists nearly all treatment efforts, even when attacked simultaneously on several fronts. One explanation can be found in the tumor cells' unexpected flexibility, discovered researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.When faced with a life-threatening oxygen shortage, glioblastoma cells can shift gears and morph into blood vessels to ensure the continued supply of nutrients, reports a team led by Inder Verma, Ph.D., in a feature article in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft made the only close approach to date of our mysterious seventh planet Uranus 25 years ago, Project Scientist Ed Stone and the Voyager team gathered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to pore over the data coming in.Images of the small, icy Uranus moon Miranda were particularly surprising. Since small moons tend to cool and freeze over rapidly after their formation, scientists had expected a boring, ancient surface, pockmarked by crater-upon-weathered-crater. Instead they saw grooved terrain with linear valleys and ridges cutting through the older terrain and sometimes coming together in chevron shapes. They also saw dramatic fault scarps, or cliffs. All of this indicated that periods of tectonic and thermal activity had rocked Miranda's surface in the past.

Careful dating of new dinosaur fossils and volcanic ash around them by researchers from UC Davis and UC Berkeley casts doubt on the idea that dinosaurs appeared and opportunistically replaced other animals. Instead -- at least in one South American valley -- they seem to have existed side by side and gone through similar periods of extinction.

If you are going to sell cannabis, please do it somewhere besides Malaysia. Three people, including one couple, were sentenced on Thursday to death by hanging by the high court at Temerloh, Malaysia for trafficking 4.5 kilograms (just under 10 pounds) of marijuana last year."Death by hanging is the only sentence provided for offenses under Section 39B (1) of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1952," said Judicial Commissioner Datuk Akhtar Tahir, reports Bernama, the official Malaysian national news agency.

This week a new archaeological data archive and web-based collaborative learning tool launches to provide researchers, educators, filmmakers and digital heritage enthusiasts with the most complete data to date of any ancient Maya site. The archive centerpiece is a priceless 3D record of the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza, recently voted one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" by an eponymous Swiss-based foundation(i). Computer visualization researchers at the Institute for the Study and Integration of Graphical Heritage Techniques(ii) (INSIGHT) generated the open source archaeological data archive on site in the Yucatan, through the use of 3D laser scanning equipment and digital photographs(iii).

About 30 'rock shelters,' some dating back to the Stone Age, in Islamabad (Pakistan) and its surroundings have either been partially destroyed due to construction work or facing danger of being destroyed due to the negligence of the authorities.A rock shelter is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff and is often important archaeologically. Because these sites form natural shelters from the weather, prehistoric humans often used them as living-places, and left behind debris, tools and other artefacts.

The "newest" cat species described to science, the Sunda clouded leopard, actually exists in two distinct forms, scientists have confirmed.This big cat is so enigmatic that researchers only realised it was a new species - distinct from clouded leopards living elsewhere in Asia - in 2007. The first footage of the cat in the wild to made public was only released last year.Now a genetic analysis has confirmed that the cat comes in two forms, one living in Sumatra, the other on Borneo.

For fossil hunters, it represents one of those breakthrough moments.A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg.The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time.Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest.David Unwin, a palaeobiologist in the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, was part of the research team.

Dogs can be trained to sniff out bowel cancer, even when the disease is in its early stages, researchers in Japan claim.In a series of experiments that involved sniffing the breath or stool samples of patients, a specially-trained labrador retriever proved nearly as good at identifying those with cancer as a conventional colonoscopy examination.The team, led by Hideto Sonoda at Fukuoka dental college hospital, said some dogs have such a keen sense of smell that they can detect minute traces of chemicals that appear to circulate in the bodies of people who have cancer.

Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we'd see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says... or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au.

For February 2011 Author of the Month we are very pleased to welcome scientist Nassim Haramein. In the past 20 years, Mr Haramein has directed research teams of physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians and otherscientists. He founded a non-profit organisation, The Resonance Project Foundation, where as Director of Research he continues exploring unification principles and their implications. He will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout February to discuss his work and theories featured in his Forum Article. Sign up for the forum today to discuss with Nassim.

The Roman Conquest, the Black Death and the discovery of America -- by modifying the nature of the forests -- have had a significant impact on the environment. These are the findings of EPFL scientists who have researched our long history of emitting carbon into the environment."Humans didn't wait for the industrial revolution to provoke environment and climate change. They have been having an influence for at least 8000 years." Jed Kaplan is putting forward a new interpretation of the history of humans and their environment. This professor at EPFL and his colleague Kristen Krumhardt have developed a model that demonstrates the link between population increase and deforestation. The method enables a fairly precise estimate of human-origin carbon emissions before the advent of industrialization.

The fossilised remains, which were discovered in sediment at the bottom of a drained reservoir in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, are thought to be one of the largest collection of animals from the last ice age to be found in one place and it is already providing scientists with new insights into the prehistoric environment.Contractors preparing the ground for the construction of a new dam at the reservoir near Snowmass Village, which is part of the Aspen ski resort, uncovered the bones of a mammoth and now more than 600 bones have been recovered from beneath the lake bed before heavy snow halted the excavation.

Negotiations conducted for 3 years by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) with the Austrian Government, are about to reach an historic agreement that would bring Moctezuma´s Headdress back to Mexico on a temporary basis later this year.This collaboration project between museums will hopefully allow for a better understanding of the headdress and will also enable the Mexican people to see the piece first-hand. The once spectacular but now extremely fragile headdress is made up of 400 quetzal feathers and mounted in gold and studded with precious stones.It is traditionally believed by Mexican people to have been the piece worn by Montezuma II when the Spanish arrived in 1519.

As a large crowd of people peeked around one another Sunday to watch the event happening about 20 yards beyond her, Marie Valdes stared almost straight up at the St. Augustine Lighthouse, following her 2-year-old grandson, Desmond in pointing at its beacon.About 150 people eagerly watched Lighthouse Archeological Maritime Program Archeological Conservator Starr Cox carefully chip crustations and debris from the bronze bell of a ship sunk a few miles off the St. Augustine Inlet more than two centuries ago. The bell was lifted from a water-filled crate in which it had been kept untouched since December.

New research has shown that it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, if there is the political will to strive for this goal.Achieving 100 percent renewable energy would mean the building of about four million 5 MW wind turbines, 1.7 billion 3 kW roof-mounted solar photovoltaic systems, and around 90,000 300 MW solar power plants.Mark Delucchi, one of the authors of the report, which was published in the journal Energy Policy, said the researchers had aimed to show enough renewable energy is available and could be harnessed to meet demand indefinitely by 2030.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans aged 16 to 25 view themselves as creative, but only about a third think they're inventive, according a new survey on perceptions about invention and innovation."They are checking off all the right boxes. They like science, they like math, they like solving problems for others, they think they are creative," Josh Schuler, the executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, told me today. "But they don't, for some reason, take that leap from creative to inventive."The finding points to a disconnect that threatens to hobble efforts to nurture a new generation of innovators who can help keep American society prosperous and strong.

An RNA molecule engineered to attack HIV in two different ways is showing positive results, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine. The researchers say that the molecule, which both curbs viral replication inside infected cells and neutralizes free-floating virus, could help patients who have developed resistance to HIV drugs.

The U.S. Secret Service detail assigned to President John F. Kennedy and his family discuss some of the conspiracy theories that surround the assassination. Discovery News reports.

Project Daedalus was a feasibility study for an interstellar mission, using 1970s capabilities and credible extrapolations for near-future technology.One of the major objectives was to establish whether interstellar flight could be realized within established science and technology. The conclusion was that it was possible, but that it would be very difficult.The potential of fission/fusion power as a propulsion mechanism that would allow for interstellar flight has been recognized since the first half of the 20th century. The idea was initially proposed by Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos in 1947, and then in 1958 Ted Taylor initiated Project Orion.

In 2008, an international team of scientists studying an exotic new superconductor based on the element ytterbium reported that it displays unusual properties that could change how scientists understand and create materials for superconductors and the electronics used in computing and data storage.But a key characteristic that explains the material's unusual properties remained tantalizingly out of reach in spite of the scientists' rigorous battery of experiments and exacting measurements. So members of that team from the University of Tokyo reached out to theoretical physicists at Rutgers University to help uncover the material's secrets.

For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math.On Friday, Emory mathematician Ken Ono will unveil new theories that answer these famous old questions.

As night settles upon Mt. Wilson, stars rise out of the December darkness and the wind begins to howl.Brian Kloppenborg looks overhead. There's Polaris and in the northeast, the Big Dipper, all bright and twinkling to the naked eye, but to the telescopes on this summit, they are smudges, their light blurred by the blustery streams of air and dust. If this keeps up, observing tonight will be impossible."There," he says. "It's just to right of Capella. See it?

In a step toward a generation of ultrafast computers, physicists have used bursts of radio waves to briefly create 10 billion quantum-entangled pairs of subatomic particles in silicon. The research offers a glimpse of a future computing world in which individual atomic nuclei store and retrieve data and single electrons shuttle it back and forth.

LONDON: It's now official: Life on Earth began on space, says a new study on meteorite strengthening evidence that biological raw ingredients were carried to the planet in lumps of asteroid rocks.The NASA research has suggested that a wider range of asteroids were capable of creating the kind of amino acids used by life on Earth.

Researchers at Northwestern University have placed nanocrystals of rock salt into lead telluride, creating a material that can harness electricity from heat-generating items such as vehicle exhaust systems, industrial processes and equipment and sun light more efficiently than scientists have seen in the past.

Research from Victoria University has revealed new findings on why Antarctic ice sheets have melted in the past, as well as how future melting may affect sea levels.Victoria researcher Dr. Andrew Mackintosh is the lead author of the research published today in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience. Victoria researchers Dr. Nick Golledge and Dr. Dan Zwartz also contributed.

A team of UBC physicists and engineers have designed a experiment featuring a trough of flowing water to help bolster a 35-year-old theory proposed by eminent physicist Stephen Hawking.In 1974, Hawking predicted that black holes--often thought of having gravitational pulls so strong that nothing escapes from them--emit a very weak level of radiation. According to the theory, pairs of photons are torn apart by a black hole's gravitational field--one photon falls into the black hole, but the other escapes as a form of radiation.

Distinguishing closely-related species can be tricky, especially when all we have are fossil bones. To add to the problem, the juveniles of some species can look very different from adults. During growth, an animal may develop elaborate ornamentation - like the horns and skull frills of the horned dinosaurs.

Few areas of science are more controversial than cold fusion, the hypothetical near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy. In the 1980s, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have demonstrated cold fusion - which could potentially provide the world with a cheap, clean energy source - but their experiment could not be reproduced. Since then, all other claims of cold fusion have been illegitimate, and studies have shown that cold fusion is theoretically implausible, causing mainstream science to become highly speculative of the field in general.

You might think that we could tell whether a whole planet exists or not. The scientists say it is there and the headlines echo it throughout the land. However, the story doesn't end there. Exciting new finds are constantly tested and retested and refined and checked and sometimes even thrown out completely. Let's bring this process to light with the case of 2010's favorite exoplanet, Gliese 581g.Gliese 581g rose to fame when Stephen Vogt and Charles Butler unveiled it as a potentially habitable planet around a star 20 light-years away.Despite my ever-present skepticism, it is hard not to get excited over such an announcement. It even became the favorite planet of the kids in our after-school astronomy club! However, science isn't just a run of one-off discoveries.

Betelgeuse is a dying star. It's reached the end of the line and currently in the terminal throes of shedding vast bubbles of gas into space. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star and it's so massive that it will detonate as a supernova.With all this drama happening 640 light-years away in the constellation of Orion, there's little wonder that this tumultuous star is easy headline bait.Betelgeuse is a celebrity amongst stars and no stranger to astronomers' zoom lenses. And like any celebrity, news can break at any time, for any reason, and today I received a surge of messages via Twitter and email pointing me to a big Betelgeuse scoop that can be summarized as: The star is gonna blow! Soon! Possibly around 2012!

Talk about a comeback story: A tiny NASA satellite once teetering on failure has successfully unfurled its solar sail while orbiting the Earth,The NanoSail-D satellite -- which ejected from its mothership just this week, more than a month late -- deployed its sail at about 10 p.m. EST yesterday (Jan. 20; 0300 GMT on Jan. 21) and is operating as planned. The unfurling marks the first time a NASA craft has ever opened a solar sail in low-Earth orbit, according to agency officials.NanoSail-D, whose core is only the size of a loaf of bread, sent data home indicating that deployment of its 100-square-foot polymer sail had occurred. Ground-based satellite tracking efforts further confirmed the success, officials said.

The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists.Not only does the research provide important insight into health-related problems linked to individuals with disrupted clocks - such as pilots and shift workers - it also indicates that the 24-hour circadian clock found in human cells is the same as that found in algae and dates back millions of years to early life on Earth.