Newsdesk Archive
Indigenous activists in Bolivia have been holding a mass coca-chewing protest as part of campaign to end an international ban on the practice.Hundreds of people chewed the leaf outside the US embassy in La Paz and in other cities across the country.Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes.But the US has said it will veto the amendment because coca is also the raw material for making cocaine.
Bandar Seri Begawan - The findings from the archaeological site of Kota Batu have revealed that the country had a higher and advanced civilisation that used stones to construct buildings.The historical site has educational value for the younger generation to learn about the country's advanced civilisation and also has commercial value in attracting tourists.
MEXICO CITY.- Mexican Archaeologists discovered 3 Clovis projectile heads associated to remains of gomphotheres with an age of at least 12,000 years, in the northern region of the Mexican state of Sonora. The finding is relevant because these are the first evidences in North America of this extinct animal linked to the human species.The finding opens the possibility of the coexistence of humankind with gomphotheres, animals similar to mammoths, but smaller, in this region of America, which contrasts with theories that declare that this species disappeared 30,000 years ago in this region of America and did not coexist with humans
The cultural relics administration office of Qingshen county in Sichuan Province has completed its first excavation of the Chenjiashan ruins site, according to a report by Chinanews on Jan. 19.According to the office, archaeologists found five tombs belonging to Song and Yuan periods and clear cultural layers from periods ranging from the Tang dynasty to Qing dynasty. They collected nearly 1,000 samples of various kinds of pottery and porcelain.
When Europeans found their way to the Americas, native Americans endured many devastating changes; not only cultural, but biological as well.When we think of European and Native American Indian contact, we often think of warring and complete takeover of a large group of people. Though this is true, many of the changes that occurred due to European contact are more subtle in nature and some are viewed archaeologically as well as historically.
Can we be sure which mummy was the daddy? When a state-of-the-art DNA analysis of Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian royals was published last year, its authors hailed it as "the final word" on the pharaoh's family tree. But others are now voicing doubts.The analysis of 11 royal mummies dating from around 1300 BC was carried out by an Egyptian team led by Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The project was overseen by two foreign consultants, Albert Zink of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, and Carsten Pusch of the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Just 13 days after receiving a pioneering larynx transplant, a Californian woman was able to speak her first words in a decade. Her own larynx was permanently damaged by an operation 11 years ago.The first combined larynx and thyroid transplant was performed in 1998, but in the latest operation Brenda Charett Jensen of Modesto, California, received a section of trachea too. The feat, which took 18 hours, was performed last October at the Medical Center of the University of California, Davis, but announced only yesterday.
Although we're convinced that baby is brilliant when she mutters her first words, cognitive scientists have been conducting a decades-long debate about whether or not human beings actually "learn" language.Most theoretical linguists, including the noted researcher Noam Chomsky, argue that people have little more than a "language organ" -- an inherent capacity for language that's activated during early childhood. On the other hand, researchers like Dr. Roni Katzir of Tel Aviv University's Department of Linguistics insist that what humans can actually learn is still an open question -- and he has built a computer program to try and find an answer.
For more than a century, all measurements of weight have been defined in relation to a lump of metal sitting in Paris. The "international prototype" kilogram has been at the heart of trade and scientific experiment since 1889, but now experts want to get rid of it.Today, scientists will meet at the Royal Society in London to discuss how to bring the kilogram into the 21st century, by defining this basic unit of measurement in terms of the fundamental constants of nature, rather than a physical object.
People who live in the biggest cities are most likely to recycle, volunteer for environmental organizations and participate in other "green" behaviors, found a new study, which surveyed urban dwellers in a variety of Chinese cities.The study didn't consider whether city size also affects green living tendencies in other countries. But the choices people make in China are likely to have environmental consequences throughout the world in years to come, said lead researcher Jianguo "Jack" Liu, a sustainability scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Like two strangers in the night, a US spacecraft and a speeding comet will dash by one another on Valentine's Day, NASA said Wednesday, and skywatchers are eager to see what happens.The Stardust-NExT spacecraft will be rapidly snapping pictures of the Tempel 1 comet as they pass at a mere distance of 200 kilometers (about 124 miles).Space experts are curious to see how a trip around the Sun has affected the surface of the Tempel 1, which is about six kilometers (3.7 miles) wide and travels on an orbit that brings it as close to the Sun as Mars and as far away as Jupiter.
Plants are fundamental to life on Earth, converting light and carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. Plant growth may be an important part of human survival in exploring space, as well. Gardening in space has been part of the International Space Station from the beginning -- whether peas grown in the Lada greenhouse or experiments in the Biomass Production System. The space station offers unique opportunities to study plant growth and gravity, something that cannot be done on Earth.
One of the most important predictions of Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the existence of black holes. The dynamics of these systems are not yet fully understood, but researchers from Queen Mary, University of London have now provided a rigorous way of determining the evolutionary stage of a black hole by analysing the region outside where matter cannot escape, the event horizon.Dr Thomas Bäckdahl and Dr Juan A. Valiente Kroon at Queen Mary's School of Mathematical Sciences have developed a method based on properties of the Kerr solution, a time-independent solution to the equations of General Relativity.
Earth may be 2.4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis.Work from the Universal Ecological Fund, the U.S. branch of Argentina-based nonprofit Fundación Ecológica Universal (FEU), sketches a somber portrait for world hunger by the end of the decade.Rising temperatures will slash yields for rice, wheat and corn throughout the developing world, exacerbating food price volatility and increasing the number of undernourished people, the report warns.It projects that food demand will substantially dwarf available supply.
If you want to build a small tower or pyramid, flying robots can now do the heavy lifting for you.Daniel Mellinger and his team from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a system that allows flying robots to construct just about any structure (see video above). A human only needs to decide on the design before an algorithm takes over to determine where parts should be placed to create it. Tiny helicopters then follow these instructions and coordinate with each other by choosing the next part placement in a list.
OK, by now we know that Ophiuchus has crashed the zodiac party to the great consternation of many Sagittariuses (Sagitterii?).Thanks to the inscrutable ways of the Internet, the world has apparently now discovered what astronomers have known for millennia: that the 12 signs of the zodiac are about as scientifically accurate as "Mission to Mars," and that, in fact, there is a 13th sign of the zodiac, Mr. Ophiuchus.Granted, first impressions didn't go that well. But we're here to say that Ophiuchus isn't such a bad guy. In fact, according to one myth, he would have healed the entire world and made humankind immortal if Zeus hadn't gotten a wee big jealous and struck him down with a thunderbolt. (Been there, done that). But at least the big Z had the heart to put our man in the heavens and give him a nice snake to hold. Sort of like a Homeric pension plan.
Telltale hearts beat with anticipation during a rainy, midnight dreary and beyond, hoping the mysterious visitor to Edgar Allan Poe's grave would return after a one-year absence.But once again, the unknown person who for decades has left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's grave on the anniversary of the writer's birth failed to appear Wednesday, fueling speculation that he may have died.
Get ready for the next generation of passenger airplanes.NASA has taken the wraps off three concept designs for quiet, energy efficient aircraft that could potentially be ready to fly as soon as 2025, joining these planes of the future (and these). The designs come from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Company. In the final months of 2010, each of these companies won a contract from NASA to research and test their concepts during 2011.
The Indian state of Gujarat is planning to host Asia's first commercial-scale tidal power station.The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India's west coast, with construction starting early in 2012.The facility could be expanded to deliver more than 200MW.The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240MW, while South Korea is planning several large facilities.
The research team at the Centre for the Studies of Archaeological and Prehistoric Heritage (CEPAP) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have implemented an innovative system to register archaeological artefacts which eliminates problems in manual markings, such as errors in writing or erosion of data. The system, based on direct labelling using bi-dimensional data matrix (DM) codes, has been used by the CEPAP team during two years, in which numerous artefacts and bone remains from sites in Spain and Africa were registered.
CHENNAI: Cardiologists in Chennai have implanted a drug-coated absorbable stent that would dissolve in the body within two years. The biodegradable stent, which is in the last phase of clinical trials, can make scarred blood vessels appear and function like normal ones. Doctors who did the implant will make a formal announcement in Chennai at 3 pm on Tuesday.
Virgin Galactic may be funded by a billionaire from Britain, but the company's new president emphasizes the private space effort's "Made in America" stamp.President and CEO George T. Whitesides can't quite match Virgin founder Richard Branson's bank account. When it comes to credentials in the space community, however, he's hard to beat.Whitesides, the son of award-winning Harvard chemist George M. Whitesides, is a co-creator of the Yuri's Night space celebration, which will be marking the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight and the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle program in April. (His wife, Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, also was present at the creation of Yuri's Night in 2001.) He served as executive director of the National Space Society from 2004 to 2008. When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Whitesides was on the transition team for NASA and became chief of staff for the agency's new administrator, Charles Bolden.
In wine there is truth, in vino veritas, as the ancient Romans put it. And the truth is that people first cultivated grapes for vino about 8,000 years ago, finds a genetics study.In the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Sean Myles of Cornell, looked at "1,000 samples of the domesticated grape, Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera, and its wild relative, V. vinifera subsp. sylvestris." Comparing the gene maps across the grapes, the team concludes that humanity has only begun to explore the genetic diversity of the humble grape.
A $1.1 million archeological dig that has been under way for months as part of the proposed Scudder Falls Bridge replacement project has turned up evidence that Native Americans lived at the site as long ago as 500 B.C. and as recently as 1500 A.D."The most intriguing evidence (in Ewing) are the physical remains of a large number of hearths," said John Lawrence, a senior archeologist with AECOM, the Trenton-based engineering firm hired by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, which owns and operates the Scudder Falls Bridge and is paying for the dig.
A recently discovered megalithic site and a mass grave in South Sumatra is now regarded as sacred and the land on which it was found as holy ground by the villagers of Segayun in the Gumay Ulu district of LahatThe South Sumatra Archaeology Center has said it would first need to coordinate with the villagers in Segayun. The villagers are defending the site as their own protected land, before any excavation could begin or survey plans could materialize.A researcher for the South Sumatra Archaeology Center, Kristantina Indriastuti, said on Tuesday that the site was a prehistoric residential area, judging by a statue of half a human body found 30 meters away from the grave.
Trained dogs are smart enough to find bombs, drugs, people, and the safest way to cross the street -- but only with a capable handler nearby. Now a new system developed at Auburn University could turn canines into remotely guided "super dogs" that can take on risky tasks."With our system you don't have to be in eyesight, versus human guides that do have to be within sight," said David M. Bevly, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University who worked on the research.
Organisms dating to 34,000 years ago were recently found buried alive in California, according to a new GSA Today paper.To put that time in perspective, Neanderthals were still marching around Europe. Woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and numerous other now-extinct animals were going strong.Salt-loving bacteria from Death Valley and Saline Valley, Calif., however, were just getting their proverbial second wind then, since the very same bacteria still thrives today.
Today's heaviest flying bird, the 48-pound Kori Bustard, was a lightweight compared to dinosaur-era flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, according to a new study that presents a novel method for estimating pterosaur weight.Calculations based on footprints left behind by pterosaurs, also known as pterodactyls, reveal these animals weighed up to 320 pounds. The study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, is believed to be the first to use fossilized footprints to infer the body weight of an extinct animal.
A 1,250-year-old temple has been saved from collapse using "granite stitching" in southern India.The Kailasanathar Temple in the town of Uthiramerur is more than 1,250 years old, according to studies of its inscriptions.Uthiramerur town, which is one of the oldest settlements in the state of Tamil Nadu, was highly developed according to inscriptions found in the town, which describes a society which held elections and had a government.The temple dedicated to the god Shiva was built during the reign of Pallava King Dantivarman with additions made by later rulers.
MEXICO CITY.- Hundreds of images of Prehispanic monuments and sites, created during the Colonial period and located in diverse archives, most of them outside Mexico, are being studied by archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan, and have became helpful documentary sources for the location of Mesoamerican sculptures and ceremonial sites.
Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are the first to develop a curvilinear camera, much like the human eye, with the significant feature of a zoom capability, unlike the human eye.The "eyeball camera" has a 3.5x optical zoom, takes sharp images, is inexpensive to make and is only the size of a nickel. (A higher zoom is possible with the technology.)
University of Arizona physicists have discovered a new way to measure how single atoms interact with a surface. Their findings help develop nanotechnology and test new theories about the internal structure of atoms.Measuring the attractive forces between atoms and surfaces with unprecedented precision, University of Arizona physicists have produced data that could refine our understanding of the structure of atoms and improve nanotechnology. The discovery has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Stunning new pictures show the latest developments from the heart of an intrepid British expedition aimed at uncovering a part of the country where no human has set foot before.Digging 300ft below the surface of England, these cavers are part of a team trying to link the counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria by excavating collapsed caves deep underground.Suspended inside a stomach-churning 130 metre deep shaft inside Boxhead Pot on Leck Fell, Tim Allen and other adventurers are digging in an effort to find a link in the vast network of 30 entrances and 70 miles of passages twisting underneath the north of England.
The letter, sent by King Alaungphaya, was an effusive and gushing appeal for camaraderie and trade with Britain. But although engraved on a gold sheet and adorned with 24 rubies, it was simply banished to a vault in the King's home town of Hanover, Germany, and not deemed worthy of a reply.The letter has languished there, in the Leibniz library, for more than 250 years as nobody could read it. But historians who have spent three years examining the document have now unravelled its contents.
The lost tomb of Caligula has been found, according to Italian police, after the arrest of a man trying to smuggle abroad a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site.After reportedly sleeping with his sisters, killing for pleasure and seeking to appoint his horse a consul during his rule from AD37 to 41, Caligula was described by contemporaries as insane.With many of Caligula's monuments destroyed after he was killed by his Praetorian guard at 28, archaeologists are eager to excavate for his remains.
As Hitler's armies began to crumble on fronts as far apart as Stalingrad and North Africa, he turned in increasing desperation to his scientists to create a war-winning super-weapon.Some, like the V2 rockets and the first jet fighters, saw action but came too late to halt defeat.Others were so outrageously ambitious that they never got past the drawing board. The idea of building flying saucers to bomb London and even New York could have been just such a scheme.
Within a few years the Brits may deploy invisible armored tanks onto the battlefield, a breakthrough in stealth technology that Harry Potter would certainly applaud.Defense contractor BAE Systems is working on the technology, which uses a "display system within the structure of the vehicle" to display images captured by cameras on one side of the vehicle on the opposite side so that the vehicle "blends in with the background scenery," company spokesman Mike Sweeney explained to me today.
To produce ethanol from grass, fuel farmers need land on which to grow the grass. But with over 7 billion hungry mouths on this planet, high quality farmland is needed more urgently to fill bellies than gas tanks.Luckily for the would-be fuel farmer, many grasses can thrive in areas where corn or rice would wither and die. Recent research suggests there may be enough of that land to provide over 50 percent of our current liquid fuel needs.Researchers at the University of Illinois analyzed land-use maps to determine just how much land was suitable for growing biofuel crops without encroaching on agricultural lands. Lead researcher, Ximing Cai, and his team looked first at marginal lands, like abandoned and degraded farmland.
It seems that the world was shocked to learn this week that astrology no longer reflects astronomical realities. But such shifts are merely part of the routine in a changing universe. They don't always come to our attention, but they can make more of a difference in your daily life than your horoscope.Parke Kunkle, an astronomer who teaches at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, set off an Internet-wide viral buzz when the Star-Tribune published his observation that the constellations don't match the traditional astrological signs. Back in the days of Babylonian soothsayers, the sun might have been in the constellation Capricorn at this time of year. But due to the changing tilt of Earth's axis, it's actually in Sagittarius right now.
Even blindfolded, a 7-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Tanner was able to mimic another dolphin's behavior -- proof, according to Florida researchers, that dolphins are masters of imitation second only to humans.When his sight was blocked, Tanner used other senses to figure out what the other dolphin was doing and copy it, the researchers at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys said in a study published in the International Journal of Comparative Psychology.
Elisabeth Daynès has won the John J. Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize in the category of 3-Dimensional Art, for her hyper realistic reconstruction of early humans. The Prize was awarded to this talented and internationally recognised paleoartist during the Awards Ceremony for the 70th Anniversary Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.The Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize rewards exceptional achievement in PaleoArt, depicting or sculpting paleontological subjects and fossils. Thanks to these artists, paleontologists can communicate their discoveries, and make them accessible to a larger audience.
An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.
Twenty-eleven will be the "year of launchers", says European Space Agency director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain.Europe expects to have three different rockets operating from its French Guiana spaceport in the coming months.The workhorse Ariane 5 will be joined by the Russian Soyuz vehicle and a new small launcher called Vega.
ecent research on seed samples gathered over the years at medieval archaeological sites in the historic old quarter of Hondarribia, has that these are the remains of the oldest fruit trees in Southern Europe.The town of Hondarribia, lies on the coast of the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, Spain.The research was undertaken by the archaeobiology research team from the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) under the direction of Doctor Leonor Peña-Chocarro, with the financial aid of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Government.
Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute of Zhengzhou in Henan Province announced that two large city ruins covering an area of 1.68 million square meters from Xia and Shang dynasties (21st-11th century BC) were found on the site of WangJing Tower (望京楼) in Xinzheng, Henan Province. Experts initially speculated that Xia city ruins probably are one member state's capital city and Shang city ruins probably a military town.
During the first part of the Bronze Age (circa 2200 to 1400 BC) in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, a large proportion of the population lived in what are known as tell-building societies. In a new thesis by Claes Uhnér from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, it shows that the leaders of these societies had the ability to combine several sources of power in an effective way in order to dominate the rest of the population, which contributed towards creating a stable social system.
There have been a lot of things said about the Amazon: That it was a vast virgin jungle, that its only inhabitants were hunter-gatherers and that the rain forest was too hostile to have ever supported big civilizations. But increasingly, archaeologists say they are discovering the Amazon was home to large, even advanced civilizations before the Europeans arrived.
Apparently the revolution that was touch screens on mobile phones was not enough for some hardware developers.The device maker PLX Devices is now offering a headset called XWave that "can sense and detect human brainwaves, interpret them and connect it to everyday technology," according to promotional material on their website.PLX Devices founder and CEO Paul Lowchareonkul told the U.K. Daily Mail that it was only a matter of time before products like the XWave entered the mainstream.
Insects produce much smaller quantities of greenhouse gases per kilogram of meat than cattle and pigs. This is the conclusion of Dutch team of scientists at Wageningen University, who have joined forces with government and industry to investigate whether the rearing of insects could contribute to more sustainable protein production. Insect meat could therefore form an alternative to more conventional types of meat.
The growing popularity of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems across the United States has made it more important to maximize their power input. That's why UC San Diego environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl is working on technologies and methods that will better predict how much power we can actually harness from the sun.
Life expectancy was probably the same for early modern and late archaic humans and did not factor in the extinction of Neandertals, suggests a new study by a Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist.Erik Trinkaus, PhD, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor and professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, examined the fossil record to assess adult mortality for both groups, which co-existed in different regions for roughly 150,000 years. Trinkaus found that the proportions of adults aged 20-40 versus adults older than 40 were about the same for early modern humans and Neandertals.
If you are an archaeologist, determining when a pot was made is not just a matter of checking the bottom for a time stamp. Dating clay-based materials like ceramics recovered from archeological sites can be time consuming, not to mention complex and expensive.Patrick Bowen, a senior majoring in materials science and engineering at Michigan Technological University, is refining a new way of dating ceramic artifacts that could one day shave thousands of dollars off the cost of doing archaeological research.
During the first part of the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, a large proportion of the population lived in what are known as tell-building societies. A thesis in archaeology from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) shows that the leaders of these societies had the ability to combine several sources of power in an effective way in order to dominate the rest of the population, which contributed towards creating a notably stable social system.
Astronomers have released the largest ever colour image of the whole sky, stitched from seven million images, each made of 125 million pixels.The Sloan Digital Sky Survey's latest effort tops its own record, published publicly for professional astronomers and "citizen scientists" alike.Data from Sloan has helped to identify hundreds of millions of cosmic objects.The release was announced at the 217th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, US.
China has conducted the first test-flight of its J-20 stealth fighter, Chinese President Hu Jintao has confirmed to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.The confirmation came after images of the 15-minute flight in Chengdu appeared on several Chinese websites.Mr Hu said that the flight had not been timed to coincide with Mr Gates' visit, the US defence secretary said.The US is currently the only nation with a fully operational stealth plane.
A new robotic probe is headed to the launch pad, aiming for a spot aboard what is called the A-train -- a fleet of Earth-orbiting spacecraft keeping tabs on the planet's changing climate.The problem seems simple enough: Take the total amount of energy coming to Earth from the sun, subtract what gets reflected back or re-radiated from particles in the atmosphere and see what you have left. If more energy is coming in than going out, it's getting hotter.
When the planting season arrives later this year, farmers in the United States will have a new way to safeguard their crops from drought. Last week, DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International, headquartered in Johnston, Iowa, announced plans to release a series of hybrid maize (corn) strains that can flourish with less water. The seeds will compete with another maize strain unveiled last July by Swiss agribusiness Syngenta. Both companies used conventional breeding rather than genetic engineering to produce their seeds.
The 9 billion people projected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 need not starve in order to preserve the environment, says a major report on sustainability out this week.Agrimonde describes the findings of a huge five-year modelling exercise by the French national agricultural and development research agencies, INRA and CIRAD. It is the second report on sustainability launched this week to provide a healthy dose of good news.
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs can learn to do complex tasks simply by watching a fellow member of their troop.When researchers showed one lemur how to manipulate a simple snack machine, all other lemurs in its troop successfully performed the same trick on their first try. That lemurs can learn socially like their distant primate relatives, including apes and humans, suggests they possess an underpinning to human-like culture.
After 48 years on the United Nation's list of narcotic substances Bolivia is pushing to legalize the coca plant - the base substance for cocaine. Maryam Ishani reports.
A remote-controlled stereo vision system now under development could revolutionize the science of watching how, where and when waves tear up coastlines, say researchers.Storm swells that pound at coastlines -- thrilling surfers and worrying coastal engineers -- have always been hard to monitor. Wave-measuring buoys don't work well in the surf zone. Like other methods, they only provide data for one small point of surf rather than the beach-wide, broader-scale surf event.
Marc Millis steeples his fingers, leaning back in his chair to ponder a question from one of the practitioner scientists of the Tau Zero Foundation.He's in Austin, Texas, for a session devoted to roughing-out ideas and organization plans for the young organization with an ambitious goal: Build a practical groundwork for interstellar flight within sound, peer-reviewed physics; establish the basics that will one day lead -- whether in decades or centuries -- to technologies that can take us to the stars.The blackboard is littered with his organizational chart, arrows connecting boxes, people attached to study groups. Solar sails, fusion, ion drives -- they're all up for discussion.
Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested by a collaboration of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and the California Institute of Technology. What's more, even better versions of this new glass may be on the way.
Dying young was not likely the reason Neanderthals went extinct, said a study out Monday that suggests early modern humans had about the same life expectancy as their hairier, ancient cousins.Scientists have puzzled over why the Neanderthals disappeared just as modern humans were making huge gains and moving into new parts of Africa and Europe, and some have speculated that a difference in longevity may have been to blame.
A SCUBA expedition in Australia and New Zealand to find the rare embryos of an unusual shark cousin enabled American and British researchers to confirm new developmental similarities between fish and mammals.Elephant fish, a relative of sharks, utilize the same genetic process for forming skeletal gill covers that lizards and mammals use to form fingers and toes, researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge found. The precise timing of when and where that gene is expressed during embryonic development produces dramatic anatomical differences between elephant fish and their close relatives, the dogfish.
University of California, Berkeley, astronomers may have found the missing link between gas-filled, star-forming galaxies and older, gas-depleted galaxies typically characterized as "red and dead."In a poster to be presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, UC Berkeley astronomers report that a long-known "early-type" galaxy, NGC 1266, is expelling molecular gas, mostly hydrogen, from its core.
In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient -- iron -- is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron.By day, it uses iron in enzymes for photosynthesis to make carbohydrates; then by night, it appears to reuse the same iron in different enzymes to produce organic nitrogen for proteins.
Cora Crippen, better known as Belle Elmore, last graced London's dancehalls in January of 1910. Her final performance, however, came at the murder trial of Dr. Hawley Crippen that same year. Dr. Crippen was convicted and then hanged for the murder of his wife after jurors were shown a chunk of human flesh, unearthed from the basement of the Crippen home, that had a scar similar to one Cora had on her torso. And experts testified the flesh carried traces of poison as well. The motive? Investigators said Dr. Crippen was entertaining a mistress.
THE next time you gaze deep into someone's eyes, you might be shocked at what you see: tiny circuits ringing their irises, their pupils dancing with pinpricks of light. These smart contact lenses aren't intended to improve vision. Instead, they will monitor blood sugar levels in people with diabetes or look for signs of glaucoma.The lenses could also map images directly onto the field of view, creating head-up displays for the ultimate augmented reality experience, without wearing glasses or a headset. To produce such lenses, researchers are merging transparent, eye-friendly materials with microelectronics.
A Japanese medical marijuana patient battling Crohn's disease, in what he describes as a fight for his life, is desperately trying to gain political/medical asylum in the United States, because his homeland's government says cannabis is not a medicine.Kenichi Nalita, the very first medical marijuana user to fight for his rights in Japanese courts, told Toke of the Town that he hopes the U.S. will accept him as a political prisoner seeking asylum, since he can obtain medicinal cannabis in California but not in Japan."I'm a patient of Crohn's disease," Nalita told us. "And I guess you might know that my disease is able to be taken care of by a couple grams of cannabis per day. It controls my immune system and inflammation, and also helps rebuilding mucous membranes in my bowel."That's exactly what Western medications (steroids, immune inhibition treatment, anti-inflammatories) are trying to do," he said. "And it's even better, without any diet limitation and no severe side effects."
Could a floating dome that can house up to 10,000 people be a model for future living?Russian architect Alexander Remizov thinks so -- and his prototype design, called "The Ark," bears more than a passing resemblance to the classic children's toy, the Slinky.
A NASA spacecraft has detected a rocky planet that is the smallest ever discovered outside the Sun's solar system, the agency announced Monday.The exoplanet -- so named because it orbits a star other than the Sun -- has been dubbed Kepler-10b. It measures 1.4 times the Earth's diameter and was confirmed after more than eight months of data collection, the agency said. It is the first rocky, or Earth-like, planet discovered by Kepler.
The hunt for the elusive Higgs boson particle - crucial to current theories of physics - looks set to become a one-horse race after 2011.A US "particle smasher" has been denied an extension that would have kept it running until 2014.The Tevatron accelerator will now end operations this year as was originally planned.After that, Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will have a clear run at searching for the particle.
UK technology could aid a US company's ambitions to send spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit.Bigelow Aerospace's plans include telescopes that could be sent into deep space.The UK's Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Bigelow.UK ATC has developed an infrared sensor for the US-European James Webb Space Telescope.
MEXICO CITY.- Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) conducted for the first time the three-dimensional registration of a shaft tomb, underground spaces used during Prehispanic time as funerary chambers in the western region of Mexico.Shaft tombs are integrated by a vertical shaft of variable depth and one or more funerary chambers. Specialists managed to conduct 3 dimensional imaging of one of these great spaces at the Cerro del Teul Archaeological Site, in Zacatecas, by using Total Station, an electro-optical device.
TABUK: New archeological discoveries may have been uncovered in Taima after excavations took place recently, according to Dr. Ali Ibrahim Al-Gabban, Deputy Chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA).He said Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, the SCTA Chairman, visited the site and was briefed on the new discoveries. Verification is now taking place before the full results are made known publicly.
WASHINGTON - The Hubble Space Telescope got its first peek at a mysterious giant green blob in outer space and found that it's strangely alive. The bizarre glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, some only a couple million years old, in remote areas of the universe where stars don't normally form.The blob of gas was first discovered by a Dutch school teacher in 2007 and is named Hanny's Voorwerp (HAN'-nee's-FOR'-vehrp). Voorwerp is Dutch for object.
When considering the prospect of alien life, humankind should prepare for the worst, according to a new study: Either we're alone, or any aliens out there are acquisitive and resource-hungry, just like us.These two unpalatable options are pretty much the only possibilities, according to the new study. That's because evolution is predictable, and alien biospheres should thus produce intelligent creatures much like us, with technological prowess and an ever-increasing need for resources.But the fact that we haven't run across E.T. yet argues strongly for the latter possibility -- that we are alone in the universe's howling void, the study suggests.
Last fall, the Journal of Cosmology published an article by a couple of scientists making the case for one-way trips to the planet Mars.The idea so tickled the imagination of readers that 400 have written in to volunteer, according to FoxNews.com. The article, co-authored by Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, and Paul Davies of Arizona State University, argue that humans must begin colonizing another planet to hedge against the possibility of a catastrophe that wipes out life on Earth.
The world's oldest winery has been uncovered in a remote cave in the mountains of Armenia.A grape press, fermentation jars and even a cup and drinking bowl dating to about 6,100 years ago were discovered by an international team of researchers.
New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.
Biologist J. Craig Venter helped crack the human genome. His next goal: create life. Jorge Ribas talks to him about the promise and perils of synthetic biology.
The US' national archives occupy more than 500 miles (800 kilometres) of shelving; France's archives stretch for more than 100 miles of shelves, as do Britain's.Yet a group of students at Hong Kong's Chinese University are making strides towards storing such vast amounts of information in an unexpected home: the E.coli bacterium better known as a potential source of serious food poisoning.
IF MOLTEN rock once rained onto Earth's surface, it might explain puzzling differences between the chemical compositions of our planet and the moon.After a Mars-sized body struck the infant Earth, a common atmosphere of rock vapour enveloped the resulting magma-covered Earth and its disc of orbiting magma. This atmosphere should have thoroughly mixed material from Earth and the disc, which later formed the moon.
A Japanese spacecraft that overshot Venus last month may get a chance to redeem itself one year earlier than scientists had originally thought.The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is now considering trying to send the Akatsuki spacecraft into orbit around Venus five years from now, Japan's Mainichi Daily News newspaper reports.Previously, JAXA officials had said a second try could be attempted sometime between December 2016 and January 2017 after Akatsuki missed its Venus arrival. An earlier attempt to swing back on course would be welcome news for the Akatsuki spacecraft and mission team.
Queen's University Classics professor emeritus Ross Kilpatrick believes the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, incorporates images inspired by the Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch.The technique of taking a passage from literature and incorporating it into a work of art is known as 'invention' and was used by many Renaissance artists.
The Moon, Earth's closest neighbor, has long been studied to help us better understand our own planet. Of particular interest is the lunar interior, which could hold clues to its ancient origins. In an attempt to extract information on the very deep interior of the Moon, a team of NASA-led researchers applied new technology to old data. Apollo seismic data was reanalyzed using modern methodologies and detected what many scientists have predicted: the Moon has a core.
In a groundbreaking achievement that could help scientists "build" new biological systems, Princeton University scientists have constructed for the first time artificial proteins that enable the growth of living cells.The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.
Six Australian birds that have not been seen in decades have been declared extinct by a team of scientists assessing the health of the country's bird species. In most cases they could have been saved, says team leader Stephen Garnett, professor of tropical knowledge at Charles Darwin University in Australia's Northern Territory.The lost birds include one species, the white-chested white-eye (Zosterops albogularis), along with five subspecies: the central Australian thick-billed grasswren (Amytornis textilis modestus), the Tiwi Island hooded robin (Melanodryas cucullata melvillensis), the southern star finch (Neochmia ruficauda ruficauda) as well as varieties of the spotted quail-thrush (Cinclosoma punctatum) and pied currawong (Strepera graculina ashbyi).
Working out their own variation on the politically charged sci-fi subgenre pioneered by District 9, filmmakers David Gidali and Itay Gross inject a dark dose of civilian paranoia into an Israeli setting with their striking new short film, Secular Quarter #3.Juiced up by UFOs, the visual-effects-rich clip (embedded above) pictures an alien intervention that takes place in a slightly futuristic Jerusalem ridden with walls and dome-shaped cages.
At least 18 people have been killed in flash floods and mudslides in Sri Lanka, as monsoon rains have swamped parts the country.The Disaster Management Centre said on Tuesday that more than 120,000 people have been forced from their homes and were living in camps. Many were staying in government buildings set up as makeshift lodgings.The eastern and northeastern areas of the country have been worst hit, with vast areas of rice paddies destroyed.
Wine makes superconductors better at their jobs. And apparently, it makes some scientists better at their jobs too.Superconductors behave like most metals; they conduct electricity. They do so, however, with a twist. All metal has some resistance to the flow of electricity. But when the temperature drops, superconductors get less and less resistant (and therefore more conductive). When they reach very low temperatures, their resistance drops to zero.
One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War began, we're still fighting it -- or at least fighting over its history. I've polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even on why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States' rights? Tariffs and taxes?As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war's various battles -- from Fort Sumter to Appomattox -- let's first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.
Vang Pao, the former general and leader of his Hmong ethnic group in Laos, has died in exile in the US, aged 81.He had been in hospital for about 10 days before his death late on Thursday.As a young man, he had fought against the Japanese during World War II, and with the French against the North Vietnamese in the 1950s.
Resource-poor Japan plans to use deep-sea mining robots to exploit rare earths and precious metals on the ocean floors around the island nation within a decade, according to a media report.The state-backed Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) plans to deploy the remote-controlled robots at depths of up to 2,000 meters (6,600 feet), the Yomiuri Shimbun said without naming sources.
Earth's population stands at nearly 7 billion, and demographers project we may reach 9 billion by the middle of this century.In the past 50 years, population has grown at a rate never before seen in human history. Pastures have become towns, cities have sprawled across the landscape, and humans now live in places once considered remote. The change is so dramatic that some scientists now refer to this as "the age of man."But as humanity's reach expands, forests are vanishing, glaciers are melting and almost 1 billion people go hungry each day.
In one University of Illinois lab, invisibility is a matter of now you hear it, now you don't. Led by mechanical science and engineering professor Nicholas Fang, Illinois researchers have demonstrated an acoustic cloak, a technology that renders underwater objects invisible to sonar and other ultrasound waves."We are not talking about science fiction. We are talking about controlling sound waves by bending and twisting them in a designer space," said Fang, who also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "This is certainly not some trick Harry Potter is playing with.
Earthlings will surely thrill at finding their planetary double: our calculation suggests the discovery could happen next yearIn 2010, one new exoplanet appeared every four days or so; by the end of the year, the total topped 500. But in September, a truly exceptional find punctuated this steady drumbeat of discovery: the first alien planet that could host life on its surface.Gliese 581 g, spotted by a team led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, inhabits a "Goldilocks" zone around its host star, a band just warm enough to boast liquid water. At 3.1 to 4.3 times the mass of Earth, it is also small enough that it should be made mostly of rock. Although a second team of astronomers failed to find signs of Gliese 581 g in their data, if its existence is confirmed, it will be the most habitable exoplanet yet found.
One of the most beautiful churches in Naples, Italy, conceals a musical score within its unusual stone-clad facade, a new study has concluded.Famous for its triumphant Neapolitan Baroque interior and lavishly decorated with colored marble and frescoes, the fortress-like church of Gesù Nuovo has long puzzled historians for the mysterious symbols engraved on the diamond-shaped stones protruding from its facade.
Adventures in archaeology are hard to come by in these days of satellite technology and the increasing loss of remote locations around the world. One example of this lies in the far north of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and only 100km from Dubai. Ras al-Khaimeh (RAK) is one of the seven Emirates that make up the UAE, and is now transforming into a modern 21st century state with even talk of building a space port.