Newsdesk Archive

Indonesia's most active volcano, Mount Merapi, continued spewing ash yesterday, and reports of related fatalities are rising.According to The Associated Press, more than 350,000 people from the volcano's lower slopes and surrounding countryside have now been evacuated to emergency shelters.Indonesian government volcanologist Raden Sukhyar told the Agence France-Presse that, at 6 am yesterday (2300 GMT on Wednesday), ash spurting from the active volcano reached heights of up to 1,000 metres high. Despite this "Merapi's intensity has slowed down," he said.

South America's tropical forests flourished when temperatures skyrocketed 56 million years ago. Could this mean that climate change will spare the Amazon?Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, and colleagues excavated pollen and other plant remains from three sites in Colombia and Venezuela.Their samples span the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when soaring levels of greenhouse gases caused global temperatures to rise by 5 °C in about 10,000 years.

Which is bigger: Eris or Pluto? Eris... right? Not so fast.In 2005, the discovery of dwarf planet Eris started a chain of events that rocked the astronomical community and plutonites alike. Pluto was found to be smaller than Eris, causing the "ninth planet" to be demoted to a dwarf planet and be renamed with a "minor planet designator." (Although "134340 Pluto" does have a certain ring to it.)The nine planets of the solar system became eight, astronomers argued, Illinois wrote some nutty laws, McDonalds tried to set the record straight, schoolkids went wild... In short, it wasn't pretty.

Peruvian archaeologists have discovered six mummified dogs, all dating from the 15th century and apparently presented as religious offerings at a major pre-Columbian site just south of Lima.The dogs "have hair and complete teeth," said Jesus Holguin, an archaeologist at the museum in Pachacamac, located some 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Lima.

Driving north out of Samawa towards Baghdad, a short way beyond the Euphrates bridge, a tarmac track leaves the main road, heading eastwards into a scarred, dun-coloured wasteland. Soon you enter the real desert, swept by sandstorms. Then, after 60km or so, a haunting scene unfolds.Looming out of the haze, the eye begins to make out a low range of brown hills, at first shapeless, then taking form: the eroded stumps of ziggurats to the Goddess Ishtar and Anu ("Lord Sky"). This is Warka, a site few places on earth can match for sheer atmosphere, and a landmark in the human story.

A study in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that social hierarchies may have emerged within Southwestern Native American society as early as the 9th century.Stephen Plog and Carrie Heitman used unpublished archival information and modern radiocarbon dating, and performed an updated archeological analysis to examine Pueblo mortuary sites within the Chaco Canyon of northwestern New Mexico.The Chaco Canyon is famous for its unusual architecture and the dense packing of at least 15 multistory masonry pueblos, known as "great houses."

In a step toward solving the global energy crisis, a new plan aims to harvest the sun's energy from space with satellites then beam it down to Earth.The initiative, announced Nov. 4, is spearheaded by former president of India A.P.J. Kalam and the National Space Society, a nonprofit dedicated to making humanity a spacefaring civilization.Space-based solar power has the potential to turn Earth into a "clean planet, a prosperous planet, and a happy planet," Kalam said during a Thursday press conference announcing the Kalam-NSS Energy Initiative.

Canadian researchers have turned skin cells into blood cells, a breakthrough that could lead to new cancer therapies while avoiding the controversial use of stem cells.With the new technique, people who need blood for surgery, cancer treatment or other conditions could have a ready supply of their own blood, made from a patch of skin. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012, according to McMaster University in Ontario.During a two-year study, researchers took skin cells from adults and newborns to prove that it works with skin cells of any age.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Like a cosmic light bulb on a dimmer switch, Saturn emitted gradually less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.But unlike an ordinary bulb, Saturn's southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one. On top of that, energy levels changed with the seasons and differed from the last time a spacecraft visited in the early 1980s. These never-before-seen trends came from an analysis of comprehensive data from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), an instrument built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as a comparison with earlier data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft. When combined with information about the energy coming to Saturn from the sun, the results could help scientists understand the nature of Saturn's internal heat source.

The US Navy has created a device which turns a jet of sea water into an impromptu liquid antenna, creating a powerful, high frequency broadcast tower for ships, emergency situations and easy transportation.Created by SPAWAR System Center Pacific, the sea water antenna uses the magnetic induction properties of salt to make ordinary ocean water transmit and receive radio signals. As the pillar of water is squirted through the current probe, a magnetic field is created and signal comes through to a hooked-up communication device.

One of the biggest comet findings coming out of the amazing images and data taken by the University of Maryland-led EPOXI mission as it zipped past comet Hartley 2 last week is that dry ice is the 'jet' fuel for this comet and perhaps many others.Images from the flyby show spectacular jets of gas and particles bursting from many distinct spots on the surface of the comet. This is the first time images of a comet have been sharp enough to allow scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface features. Analysis of the spectral signatures of the materials coming from the jets shows primarily CO2 gas (carbon dioxide) and particles of dust and ice.

Paleontologists have just identified the world's oldest known dinosaur embryos, according to a paper in the current Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.The embryos, found in their still well-preserved eggs, date to the early Jurassic Period 190 million years ago. The researchers say they are the oldest known embryos for any land-dwelling vertebrate.They belong to Massospondylus, a member of a group of dinosaurs called prosauropods that were ancestors to the giant, plant-eating sauropods. Sauropods are the iconic four-legged dinosaurs known for their long necks and long tails.

Farming in Europe did not just spread by word-of-mouth, but was introduced by migrants from the ancient Near East, a study suggests.Scientists analysed DNA from the 8,000 year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany.They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq.Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide in Australia led the team of international researchers from Germany, Russia and Australia.

After nearly 20 years of planning, R&D, and construction, lead atomic nuclei have now been successfully accelerated to incredible energies in the CERN LHC and collided together in the ALICE(A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector.These collisions create tiny subatomic fireballs, reaching the highest temperatures and densities every created in an experiment, and recreating the conditions which existed just a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.When the first collisions came there was a great cheer in the ALICE control room and from ALICE physicists watching from around the World. For my part, the cheer was not just due to the excitement of finally achieving success after all these years but of relief too; everything worked at it was suppose

For decades, entrepreneurs have tried to strike it rich by gathering up ugly potato-size rocks that carpet the global seabed. Known as manganese nodules, the rocks are plentiful in nickel, copper and cobalt, as well as manganese and other elements, but lie miles down in inky darkness. Building giant machines to vacuum them up, despite much study and investment, has never proved to be economic.Now, the frustrated visionaries are talking excitedly about the possibility of belated success, and perhaps even profits.

In the esoteric world of mathematical logic, a dramatic discovery has been made. Previously unnoticed gaps have been found at the very heart of maths. What is more, the only way to repair these holes is with monstrous, mysterious infinities.To understand them, we must understand what makes mathematics different from other sciences. The difference is proof.Other scientists spend their time gathering evidence from the physical world and testing hypotheses against it. Pure maths is built using pure deduction.

The brains of Neanderthals and humans were similar at birth but developed differently in the first year of life, according to a German study published Monday in the United States.Brains of newborn human babies and Neanderthals, who became extinct about 28,000 years ago, were about the same size and appear almost identical at first, said the research which appeared in the journal Current Biology.But after birth and particularly during the first year of life the differences in development are stark, said lead author Phillipp Gunz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Charles Darwin's theory of gradual evolution is not supported by geological history, New York University Geologist Michael Rampino concludes in an essay in the journal Historical Biology. In fact, Rampino notes that a more accurate theory of gradual evolution, positing that long periods of evolutionary stability are disrupted by catastrophic mass extinctions of life, was put forth by Scottish horticulturalist Patrick Matthew prior to Darwin's published work on the topic."Matthew discovered and clearly stated the idea of natural selection, applied it to the origin of species, and placed it in the context of a geologic record marked by catastrophic mass extinctions followed by relatively rapid adaptations," says Rampino, whose research on catastrophic events includes studies on volcano eruptions and asteroid impacts. "In light of the recent acceptance of the importance of catastrophic mass extinctions in the history of life, it may be time to reconsider the evolutionary views of Patrick Matthew as much more in line with present ideas regarding biological evolution than the Darwin view."

The ancient Maya civilization is widely recognized for its awe-inspiring pyramids, sophisticated mathematics and advanced written language. But research is revealing that the complexity of Maya agricultural systems is likely to have rivalled that of their architecture and intellect.Using new techniques and extensive excavations, researchers have found that the Maya coped with tough environmental conditions by developing ingenious methods to grow crops in wetland areas. "The work shows that this intensive agriculture is more complicated and on a par with these other areas of intellectual development," says Timothy Beach, a physical geographer at Georgetown University in Washington DC, who presented his findings on Wednesday at the Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Saugus, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The image is still vivid after 65 years. Bob Attubato and his fellow sixth-grade classmates rushed to the window just in time to see a crippled twin-engine bomber trailing smoke and flames over their school."Suddenly, we heard this unearthly sound coming over the school," Attubato recalled. "It just reverberated through the building."As the class stood there and watched, the plane's wing and engine broke off and it disappeared from view. A loud explosion followed.

The Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought us those gut-wrenching pictures of pelicans covered in oil, but up to now there have been mercifully few reports of the disaster causing specific large-scale damage to the Gulf environment. That may be beginning to change: This week oceanographers report a vast swath of coral about seven miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon site that are coated in brownish-black gunk and dying off. The team says the evidence points to the oil spill as the culprit.The scientists sailed aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research boat Ronald H. Brown, and used remotely operated submersibles to survey the seafloor and find this devastation.

The Sun goes through cycles. Quiet ones, then not-so-quiet. In his new book Chasing The Sun, Richard Cohen says the next not-so-quiet phase "is expected to start sometime between 2010 and 2012" which means our Sun will soon have a fit of extra-violent explosions that release more than a billion tons of matter into space at millions of miles per hour. These are called coronal mass ejections. There will be more of them.These loops of flame fly up tens of thousands of miles like rubber bands that stretch and twist until they break, flinging matter outward. NASA has released footage of one of these storms (and just to make this extra exciting I'm showing you NASA's ultraviolet version posted by Alexander Trevi of pruned.blogspot.com and Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG.blogspot.com with help from a band called Main playing their "Haloform III").

The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation.

LONDON: Scientists claim to have uncovered an entire Ice Age ecosystem, after unearthing a wealth of bones from an excavation site in western Colorado in the US. A team from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science discovered two additional Ice Age mammal species at the fossil dig site at Ziegler Reservoir in Colorado, last week. The first find was a humerus, or upper arm bone, of a giant ground sloth. The second discovery was a deer-like animal. Partial remains of five mastodons, three bison and a juvenile Columbian mammoth, as well as plant matter and insects , have also been found.

May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Archaeologists have discovered a mass grave of Jews killed by Romanian troops during World War Two, the Elie Wiesel Institute said Friday.Quoting witnesses, the institute said more 100 Jews -- men, women, children, and elderly people -- were buried at the newly discovered site in a forest area near the village of Popricani, close to the city of Iasi, in northeast Romania."One of the witnesses saw the shooting of the Jews because the soldiers thought that he himself was Jewish and intended to also shoot him," the Elie Wiesel Institute's Romanian branch said in a statement.

WASHINGTON DC - A mysterious phenomenon called 'RNA editing' could be unexpectedly widespread, according to a genome-wide examination of the effect in humans.The study, which has yet to be published, was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Washington DC this week. The findings suggest that as many as 97% of gene transcripts are being altered once RNA molecules have been assembled into a template from the DNA code. However, some researchers warn that the results, although intriguing, might simply be the result of sequencing errors.

Could a small dose of genetic information cure complacency about weight loss and exercise? That's the suggestion made by a new study of how information from "personal genomics" companies has influenced their customers.David Kaufman of the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC quizzed 1048 customers who had ordered genome scans from Decode Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland, 23andMe of Mountain View, California, or Navigenics, based in Foster City, California.

Researchers in Germany have created bandages that turn purple at the first sign of infection.A new wound dressing, developed at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Modular Solid State Technologies EMFT in Munich, includes a special dye that reacts to different pH values.The new trauma bandage insulates wounds just like any other bandage, but it provides a special window into how a wound is healing. Typically, healthy skin and healed wounds have a slightly acidic pH, around 5 or 6. If this value increases into the alkaline range, that can indicate infection, reports Gizmag.

This is one of the most surprising and awesome tales ever told in the history of medicine. These twins are Tatiana and Krista Hogan. Their brains and sensory systems are networked together, but they have separate personalities. Their story defies belief.So much, in fact, that Tatiana and Krista Hogan shouldn't be alive at all. Their chances of surviving the pregnancy, birth and first months of life were almost zero. Surprisingly, they turned four on October 25, and they are still healthy and happy, as you can see in the photo above.

Evolutionary divergence of humans from chimpanzees likely occurred some 8 million years ago rather than the 5 million year estimate widely accepted by scientists, a new statistical model suggests.The revised estimate of when the human species parted ways from its closest primate relatives should enable scientists to better interpret the history of human evolution, said Robert D. Martin, curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum, and a co-author of the new study appearing in the journal Systematic Biology.Working with mathematicians, anthropologists and molecular biologists, Martin has long sought to integrate evolutionary information derived from genetic material in various species with the fossil record to get a more complete picture.

Underwater archaeologists have discovered the skulls of four Arctotherium - a genus of short-faced bear that went extinct 11,300 years ago - 42 metres down in a submerged cave on the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. The 25-30 cm long skulls belong to two adult bears - one of each sex - and two bears that had not reached full maturity. Guillermo de Anda Alanis and his team from the Yucatan Autonomous University discovered them whilst diving in a cavern. Skeletal remains of five humans were also found nearby. Dating of the human skeletons will establish if the two finds are related.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Birds and alligators have little in common, other than that the first is sometimes the other's lunch. That hasn't always been the case, though, and that's what attracts Arkhat Abzhanov.Alligators and birds are part of the same larger group, called archosaurs, which has existed for 250 million years and which has given rise not only to birds and crocodilians, but also to dinosaurs. Though dinosaurs are now extinct, the crocodilians, such as alligators, crocodiles, and narrow-jawed gharials live on, and scientists see in them many characteristics of the primitive archosaurs.To Abzhanov, an assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard who studies birds and how they developed, researching alligators gives him the chance to compare birds to something akin to their ancestors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists, using sophisticated recording equipment, have mapped the neural circuitry involved in processing colour vision in humans for the first time.The breakthrough by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, and the University of California reveals how the different cone photoreceptor cells within the retina communicate with the output cells to build up a colour picture.Dr Keith Mathieson, a research fellow within the in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Glasgow but currently based at Stanford University and the University of California Santa Cruz, played a key role in the research through leading the development of the 519-electrode array used to measure activity in the cells analysed in this study.

The glowing vegetation of the moon Pandora from the movie Avatar may become reality if a Taiwanese group of researchers have their way. The team have created a living light source using gold nanoparticles.The researchers, headed by Yen Hsun Su of the Research Center for Applied Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, dipped Bacopa caroliniana, an aquatic plant used commonly in indoor aquaria, into a solution of these nanoparticles, which diffuse into the plant's cells after a day or so. The plants are then exposed to ultraviolet rays, which energise electrons in the nanoparticles and cause them to emit a violet-blue light. That light in turn makes the chlorophyll fluoresce and emit red light.

MALARIA could be eradicated globally, just like smallpox was in 1979, through a global pincer movement, squeezing it closer to the equator from north and south."It could take 50 or 60 years," says Richard Feachem of the University of California, San Francisco, and author of "Shrinking the malaria map", one of a series of papers on prospects for eradication published this week in The Lancet. At a press conference in London last week, Feachem said that malaria has been eliminated in 100 countries. The challenge now is to eliminate the disease in the 99 countries where it remains.

It's barely enough to light a light bulb, but passing a very mild current of electricity through the brain can turn on a metaphorical light bulb in a person's brain.Scientists from the University of Oxford have shown that they can improve a person's math abilities for up to six months. The research could help treat the nearly 20 percent of the population with moderate to severe dyscalculia (math disability), and could probably aid students in other subjects as well."I am certainly not advising people to go around giving themselves electric shocks," said Roi Cohen Kadosh, a scientist at the University of Oxford and a co-author of a new paper. "But we are extremely excited by the potential of our findings."

Nasa's Deep Impact probe has flown by Comet Hartley 2.The first pictures revealed a roughly 1.5km-long, peanut-shaped object with jets of gas streaming from its surface.The pass, which occurred about 23 million km from Earth, was only the sixth time a spacecraft had made a close approach to a comet.Nasa said it would take many hours to retrieve all of the data recorded by Deep Impact's two visible-light imagers and one infrared sensor.But the initial pictures to get to ground gave a fascinating view of the comet's icy body, or nucleus.

Britain's enigmatic "headless Romans" lost their heads far away from home, according to a multi-isotopic analysis of the 1,800-year-old skeletal remains.Unearthed between 2004 and 2005 in a cemetery in York, England, the remains belong to 80 individuals, almost all males, who died violently at ages ranging between 19 and 45.At least 46 of them had been carefully decapitated, with their heads placed by or between their legs or pelvis.Believed by some to be gladiators, losing their heads after their last fight, the heavily built men were buried in one of the most prestigious cemeteries of York during the 2nd and 3rd century A.D.

A tiny insect species has been discovered in the UK for the first time.The sawfly, which specialises in living on birch trees, is extremely rare within Europe, previously being known to live only in Latvia and Finland.However, an entomologist has found a single specimen of the species Nematus pseudodispar living in a woodland estate in Scotland.The sawfly's discovery was announced at a biodiversity conference today. The specimen was collected on 20 August this year by biodiversity surveyor Guy Knight, an entomologist at the National Museums in Liverpool.

UNDAUNTED by NASA's cool response to its interest in the International Space Station, China is going it alone. It has announced plans to build its very own crewed space laboratory by 2020.The news comes hot on the heels of a visit to China by NASA administrator Charlie Bolden that failed to produce any plans for cooperation with the US in space.Some US lawmakers, including congressmen Frank Wolf and John Culberson, oppose forging closer space ties with China. Such critics question the intent of its space programme, which appears to be run by the military, and note the dual-use nature of much space technology.

IN THE beginning, there was water. Earth's life-sustaining liquid came from the dust from which the planet was born, a new look at these particles suggests, and not simply from collisions with objects that later crashed into the planet from space.The origin of the oceans has long been a mystery. Earth's birthplace in the dusty nebula around the young sun should have been hot enough to keep any water vaporised. So it seemed clear that the dust that coalesced to create Earth was bone dry, and that water somehow arrived later.

Red granite statues of King Amenhotep III, believed to be the grandfather of King Tutankhamun, are popping up like mushrooms in Luxor, Egypt.Today an Egyptian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) led by Dr. Zahi Hawass has found the upper half of a double statue featuring the powerful Egyptian pharaoh with the falcon-headed sun god Re-Horakhti.The ninth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhotep III (ca. 1390-1352 B.C.), reigned for 38 years during a time when Egypt was at the height of prosperity and cultural development.His mummy was found in 1898 in a tomb dubbed KV35 by French Egyptologist Victor Loret.

The first excavations of Yangshao cultural remains in the 1920s inaugurated the modern discipline of archaeology in China. The recent documentary film Cutting Through the Fog of History: The Re-appearance of the Yangshao Cultural Relics[1] is one of the first Chinese attempts in many years to address the mysterious disappearance, possibly during World War II, of many of the artifacts uncovered in the course of these excavations.In comparison with the seemingly never-ending flood of both science and fiction writings on the lost Peking Man remains, which also vanished during China's war with Japan,[2] it is curious that comparatively little attention has been given either inside or outside China to these formidable lost cultural treasures from the Neolithic era. The story of their disappearance is no less dramatic, and the lost pieces include unique cultural artifacts like the painted ceramic lid in the shape of a shaman's head, which is among the earliest human figures in East Asian art (Fig. 1, from Fiskesjö and Chen 2004,[3] pp. 148-49, and Fig. 2, from Palmgren 1934,[4] Plate XIX, cf. items 7, 8, and 9).

The British Museum's major autumn exhibition this year examines ancient Egyptian beliefs about life after death.Journey through the afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead will show off the museum's collection of papyri, a rare and very fragile collection of spells which were designed to guide the dead safely into eternal life.

Alan Boyle writes: It turns out that the $1.1 million "Hundred Year Starship" project is a yearlong study for a multigenerational mission which is yet to be named ... and for which humans might need to be re-engineered.Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, created a stir last month at a conference sponsored by the Long Now Foundation when he mentioned that the space agency was kicking in an extra $100,000 to the project, sponsored by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (You can hear him talk about it in the video referenced above.) Worden also said he was trying to get billionaires to form a starship fund.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new material with a split personality -- part superconductor, part metal -- has been observed by a Princeton University-led research team. The discovery may have implications for the development of next-generation electronics that could transform the way information is stored and processed.The new material -- a crystal called a topological superconductor -- has two electronic identities at once. At very low temperatures, the interior of the crystal behaves like a normal superconductor, able to conduct electricity with zero resistance. At the same time, the surface is metallic, able to carry a current, albeit with some resistance.

Spanish scientists on Tuesday presented a new technique to create bioartifical organs for transplant using stem cells which they said will vastly reduce the risk of rejection of the donated organ.The technique involves "stripping" a donated heart, liver or other organ which is deemed unsuitable for donation of their cells, leaving just a "scaffold", Francisco Fernandez-Aviles, chief cardiologist at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital told a news conference.Stem cells from the patient are then applied to this framework to re-grow the organ which will share their DNA, thus making it more acceptable to their body.

South Korea said Tuesday it would build a massive offshore wind farm off the west coast by 2019 to develop new sources of renewable energy and help wind turbine exporters.Under the 9.2 trillion won (8.2 billion dollars) project, companies such as Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering plan to build 500 turbines, the Knowledge Economy Ministry said in a statement.The wind farm, to be built near the southwestern counties of Buan and Yeonggwang, will generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity, it said.

A new report from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) in Berkeley projects that development of cost-competitive algae biofuel production will require much more long-term research, development and demonstration. In the meantime, several non-fuel applications of algae could serve to advance the nascent industry."Even with relatively favorable and forward-looking process assumptions (from cultivation to harvesting to processing), algae oil production with microalgae cultures will be expensive and, at least in the near-to-mid-term, will require additional income streams to be economically viable," write authors Nigel Quinn and Tryg Lundquist of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), which is a partner in the BP-funded institute.

In a new finding that could have game-changing effects if borne out, two astrophysicists think they've finally tracked down the elusive signature of dark matter.This invisible substance is thought to make up much of the universe but scientists have little idea what it is. They can only infer the existence of dark matter by measuring its gravitational tug on the normal matter that they can see.Now, after sifting through observations of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, two researchers think they've found evidence of the annihilation of dark matter particles in powerful explosions.

The great, car-sized predatory "shrimp" that was master of Earth's seas a half billion years ago may have been unable to eat anything harder than baby food.Several lines of evidence along with a new 3-D model of the way the mouth parts of Anomalocaris worked show that the infamous carnivore could not crack the hard shells of trilobites and other protected critters of the Cambrian seas."The mouth parts appear soft and bendable in (fossil) specimens," said paleontologist James "Whitey" Hagadorn of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. "That struck me as kind of funny."

An international team of scientists led by Rutgers University astrophysicists have discovered 10 new massive galaxy clusters from a large, uniform survey of the southern sky. The survey was conducted using a breakthrough technique that detects "shadows" of galaxy clusters on the cosmic microwave background radiation, a relic of the "big bang" that gave birth to the universe.In a paper published in the Nov. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal, the Rutgers scientists and collaborators at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) describe their visual telescope observations of these galaxy clusters, which were essential to verify the cosmic shadow sightings. Both observations will help scientists better understand how the universe was born and continues to evolve.

The rarest snake in the world, the Antiguan racer, has slithered back from the brink. The population has increased ten-fold, from a low of 50 in the 1990s to over 500.The snakes are confined to Great Bird Island, off the coast of Antigua, where many of them have been killed by imported rats. The snakes previously lived on mainland Antigua as well, but introduced mongooses wiped them out.

The first outbreak of plague occurred in China more than 2,600 years ago before reaching Europe via Central Asia's "Silk Road" trade route, according to a study of the disease's DNA signature.The findings flesh out long-held suspicions about the Chinese origins of the plague, which killed an estimated third of Europe's population in the Middle Ages.An international team of scientists sequenced 17 strains of Y. pestis, building a genetic "family tree" of pathogens that mutated from a common ancestor.

A new type of dolphin with a short, spoon-shaped nose and high, bulbous forehead has been identified from a fossil found in the North Sea.The Platalearostrum hoekmani was named after Albert Hoekman, the Dutch fisherman who in 2008 trawled up a bone from the creature's skull.Up to six metres in length, the dolphin lived two to three million years ago.The so-called rostrum bone and a model of the dolphin are on display at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.

Light-coloured deposits (left and forefront) on the flank of an ancient volcano on the Red Planet might act like a Martian version of amber, preserving any life present at the site 3.7 billion years ago for future study.The deposits contain the mineral hydrated silica, according to observations made by a spectrometer on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The mineral is transported and then concentrated by hot water or steam, suggesting the deposits were laid down in what was once a hydrothermal environment.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has this theory, which he calls the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. Here's how it goes: intelligence evolved as a way to deal with "evolutionary novelties"--to help humans respond to things in their environment to which they were, as a species, unaccustomed. Thus, smart people are more likely to deal with new things and try them. Those new things seem to include drugs.

A team of scientists suspects that if there is life on Mars, it may look familiar."We think that if there is life on Mars, it could be related to us," Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer and scientist Christopher Carr told Discovery News.With NASA funding, Carr and colleagues at MIT are developing a prototype device to decode alien DNA, a project known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes (SETG). They hope to fly an instrument as part of a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission to Mars slated to launch in 2018.

Crazed boffins in the USA say they have successfully carried out a Jurassic Park-style project in which enormous flesh-eating creatures from the remote prehistoric past have been successfully bred in the laboratory. Incomprehensibly this laboratory is not located on a remote island.As many readers will doubtless be aware, during the late Paleozoic era the Earth was, if not exactly ruled or terrorised, at the least very seriously bothered by swarms of gigantic dragonflies with wingspans around 70cm across. The monster insects will have been all the more troublesome as dragonflies "need to hunt live prey", according to experts.

Scientists say they have made a landmark discovery which could pave the way for new drugs to beat illnesses like the common cold.Until now experts had thought that antibodies could only tackle viral infections by blocking or attacking viruses outside cells.But work done by the Medical Research Council shows antibodies can pass into cells and fight viruses from within.PNAS journal said the finding held promise for a new antiviral drugs.

London, England (CNN) -- Alcohol ranks "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs, beating out crack and heroin when assessed for its potential harm to the individual imbibing and harm to others, according to study results released by a British medical journal.A panel of experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall, according to an article on the study released by The Lancet on Sunday.

London, Oct 30 : A new research has revealed that our ancestors from 5,000 years ago painted their homes to brighten up their places too.They used red, yellow and orange pigments from ground-up minerals and bound it with animal fat and eggs to make their paint, the new study from a Stone Age settlement on the island of Orkney revealed.Several stones used to form the buildings painted and decorated by the locals in about 3,000 BC, most probably to to enhance important buildings and may have been found in entranceways or areas of the building, which had particular significance.

XI'AN, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Ancient Chinese emperors in inland China may have dined on seafood that came from the eastern China coast more than one thousand miles away, archaeologists said Friday, after investigating an imperial mausoleum that dates back 2,000 years."We discovered the remains of sea snails and clams among the animal bone fossils in a burial pit," said Hu Songmei, a Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher."Since the burial pit appears to be that of the official in charge of the emperor's diet, we conclude that seafood must have been part of the imperial menu," Hu said.

WASHINGTON: Discovery of perfectly preserved insects in amber from a lignite mine in Gujarat has challenged the assumption that India was an isolated island continent about 52 million years ago.A team of German, Indian and US scientists have found a trove of insects in a newly-excavated amber deposit from the Vastan lignite mine, 30km northeast of Surat, in a geological zone called the Cambay Shale.The arthropods -- bees, termites, spiders, and flies -- found in the Cambay deposit are not unique as would be expected on an island but rather have close evolutionary relationships with fossils from other continents, said the scientists detailing their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The "Space Manufacturing" conference taking place this weekend in Silicon Valley might sound like the ultimate in blue-sky science fiction: Why would anyone want to manufacture anything in outer space? Well, if we're ever going to get off this rock, we're going to have to figure out what things of value we can bring back to Earth, and what resources we'll need to sustain life beyond Earth.It's no surprise that the conference is sponsored by the Space Studies Institute, which was founded by the late physicist Gerard O'Neill to further his campaign to settle "The High Frontier." It might be slightly more surprising, however, to see how many high-powered speakers are on the agenda.

Like many astronomers, I found myself (yet again) in an uncomfortable position last weekend. A stranger, upon learning I was an astronomer, said, "Oh, I'm a Gemini, what are you?" How many more times can I smile sweetly back, with a laugh, and say: "I'm not an astrologer, that's not what I do, I'm an astronomer."?Look at the statistics and you'll see that there are more people now than ever before who read their star signs in the daily news. We live in a time that is more scientifically aware than any other period in history and yet people still believe the stars and planets can determine their fate.Interestingly, astronomy and astrology share the same origins; in fact it's accurate to say that astrology came first. Ancient civilizations tried to find sense in the happenings in the sky and attribute them to their lives.

FOR decades, the world has been busy incorporating the so-called rare earth elements into all manner of high-tech devices, including disc drives, wind turbines and hybrid cars. The messy business of mining the ore and extracting the elements was left to China, and few people in the west cared that the nation controlled 97 per cent of world supply."Rare earth" is an alternative name for the lanthanides - elements 57 to 71 - plus yttrium and scandium, and despite the name most of them were not considered rare at all. The elements hit the headlines a few weeks ago, when China appeared to be blocking exports to Japan and the US. The Chinese government, which has also been tightening its export quotas, claims that it needs to clean up mining procedures and support its own growing demand for rare earths.

Speculation about a supposed time traveller talking on her cell phone at a 1928 Hollywood film premiere has sped across the Internet faster than a DeLorean time machine. But a less mind-bending possibility is that she was just hard of hearing, experts say.The story first surfaced in a YouTube video that includes film footage showing the 1928 premiere of the Charlie Chaplin film "The Circus" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Cali. Irish filmmaker George Clarke points out a woman in the old footage holding what he describes as a cell phone against her ear. The shape implies the woman is a time traveler using a modern mobile device rather than an ear trumpet, Clarke said.

This beautifully preserved fossilised skull belongs to Yizhousaurus sunae, a new species of dinosaur recently discovered in China. The 9.2 metre Yizhousaurus was an early representative of the sauropods, a group of long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs who walked on all fours and later reached huge proportions. Well known sauropods include Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, the giant sauropod Argentinosaurus weighed in at 80 tonnes and grew up to 30 metres in length.

Cargo vessel Progress M-08M docked at the International Space Station on Saturday through a manual operation following a problem with the auto-docking system, the Russian control centre said."The astronauts will soon open the doors and start to unload the vessel, which will take several days," control centre official Valery Lyndin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

(AP) -- Representatives to a U.N. conference on biodiversity agreed early Saturday to expand protected areas on land and at sea in the hopes of slowing the rate of extinction of the world's animals and plants and preventing further damage to its ecosystems.After marathon negotiations that stretched hours past the designated time, delegates also managed to overcome divisions between rich and poor countries to agree to share access to and the benefits of genetic resources such as plants whose extracts have been developed into medicines - a key sticking point that had threatened to doom the entire two-week meeting in Nagoya, southwest of Tokyo.

An unprecedented haul of records from wildlife smugglers in Borneo has revealed the scale of the illegal trade in pangolins. They show that between May 2007 and December 2008, the smugglers bought at least 22,200 endangered Sunda pangolins, or spiny anteaters, and nearly a tonne of their scales, for export.By contrast, local police seized only 654 illegally shipped pangolins between 2001 and 2008. A report on the smugglers' records from Traffic, the group that monitors wildlife trade for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), says that this "raises serious concerns for the continued survival of the species".

Humans are not the only species to prefer to use their right hand -- chimpanzees also share the trait, according to a new study by Spanish scientists.The researchers reached their findings, published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Primatology, after observing 114 chimpanzees from two primate rescue centers, one in Spain and the other in Zambia.The primates were provided with food hidden inside tubes and the scientists monitored them to see which hand they used to get at it, either their fingers or with the help of tools.

WE'RE all happier on sunny days, but why? It seems that light taps directly into brain areas that process emotion - good and bad.Although light is used to treat mood disorders, we don't understand how this works. While rods and cones in the eye process visible light, a third type of photoreceptor, particularly sensitive to blue light, mediates non-visual responses such as sleep cycles and alertness. So light may make us feel better because it helps regulate circadian rhythms.

It's that time of year again. Ghosts, goblins and other spooky characters come out from the shadows and into our everyday lives.For most people, the thrill lasts for a few weeks each October. But for true believers, the paranormal is an everyday fact, not just a holiday joke.To understand what drives some people to truly believe, two sociologists visited psychic fairs, spent nights in haunted houses, trekked with Bigfoot hunters, sat in on support groups for people who had been abducted by aliens, and conducted two nationwide surveys.

Scientists have managed to produce a small-scale version of a human liver in the laboratory using stem cells.The success increases hope that new transplant livers could be manufactured, although experts say that this is still many years away.The team from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center presented its findings at at conference in Boston.UK experts said it was an "exciting development" but it is not yet certain a fully-functioning liver is possible.

Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

Stuck in the sands of Mars, the grounded Spirit rover unearthed evidence of subsurface water in the planet's recent past."It's total serendipity," Washington University planetary scientist Ray Arvidson told Discovery News. "We're driving backwards, the right front wheel doesn't work, so wherever we went we had to drag it along. It's like pushing a shopping cart with a bad front wheel. You don't push it, you pull it, but the wheel has torque."

Strong cages of carbon, known as buckyballs, have been found not only in the exploded remains of stars, but also in interstellar space, raising the prospect that they may be the packaging to transport other molecules and atoms through the galaxy.It was just three months ago that scientists first announced they'd found the 60-packs of carbon molecules, known as buckminsterfullerens, in a planetary nebula, the death shroud of an exploded star.This week, astronomers report four more sightings of buckyballs in planetary nebula, including one located beyond the Milky Way in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy about 210,000 light-years away.

An international team of researchers, including a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered well-dated human fossils in southern China that markedly change anthropologists perceptions of the emergence of modern humans in the eastern Old World. The research, based at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, was published Oct. 25 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The discovery of early modern human fossil remains in the Zhirendong (Zhiren Cave) in south China that are at least 100,000 years old provides the earliest evidence for the emergence of modern humans in eastern Asia, at least 60,000 years older than the previously known modern humans in the region.

The fossilised footprints of a group of young children playing as they scampered after livestock have been discovered by a team of British palaeontologists in Namibia.The impressions revealed that as the children followed the herd, they were bubbling over with energy, skipping and jumping across the muddy terrain. For fossilised remains, the prints are relatively youthful, being just under 2,000 years old.All of the children's footprints, along with scores more human tracks in the Khuiseb Delta, are being recorded in detail with an optical laser scanner and are to be placed in a digital archive.The collection, the first of its kind, is designed to hold every single fossilised footprint left by humans and their ancestors, with the aim of trying to shed light on how humans evolved.

The temperatures would have killed fleeing people in just 10 seconds, according to the volcanologists and anthropologists from Naples, the city overshadowed by the volcano."Contrary to what was thought up until now, the victims didn't suffer a prolonged agony from suffocation, but rather died instantaneously from the exposure to high temperatures," the team wrote in a peer-reviewed science journal, PLoS ONE."Our findings reveal that neither asphyxia nor impact force, but heat, caused the deaths."Red-hot clouds of gas and fine ash known as pyroclastic density currents flowed down the slopes of Vesuvius, engulfing Pompeii's frescoed villas, as well as its shops, public baths and brothels, where explicit erotic paintings and the customers' graffiti can still be seen.

(CNN) -- A man depicted as a hero in the movie "Hotel Rwanda" on Thursday slammed accusations by Rwandan authorities that he helped fund a rebel group.Paul Rusesabagina's efforts to save hundreds during the 1994 genocide are depicted in the Oscar-nominated movie starring Don Cheadle.Rwanda's general prosecutor, Martin Ngoga, said he has evidence showing that Rusesabagina funded terror activities in Rwanda.He wired large sums of money from San Antonio, Texas, to commanders of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the prosecutor said. The rebel group is known by its acronym, FDLR.

When it comes to scary monsters, the ancient Egyptian Devourer is always going to be hard to top. With the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the hindquarters of a hippo, it is certainly more exotic than the average Halloween outfit. And, though it sounds risible now, for centuries in Egypt the grim fear of meeting this evil, "cut'n'shut" beast on the other side of death helped to shore up an entire system of belief, a system shared by pharaohs and artisans. In fact, the devourer played a key part in one of the most intriguing tenets of faith humankind has yet come up with: The Book of the Dead.Next month, the most comprehensive exhibition to be staged on this ancient doctrine of denying death will open inside the Reading Room at the British Museum. It will showcase, for the first time, the entire length of the Greenfield Papyrus, which, at 37 metres, lays out each detailed stage of a journey the ancient Egyptians believed they would all have to make when mortal life had slipped away.

Wildfires may seem like a fixed and unchanging force of nature. They're not. Over long time scales, research has shown that both the climate and humans have a profound effect on wildfire activity around the globe. Now new NASA research shows that while we have been suppressing this natural force for the past century, we may be, inadvertently, about to put nature back in control.Charcoal layers in sediments and methane concentration in ice cores show that the amount of global burning can fluctuate dramatically over time. The charcoal records, derived from lake sediments and peats at hundreds of sites around the world, show a distinct lull in burning from about 1600 to 1750 that leads into an unprecedented surge in fires beginning around 1800. Then, around 1900, global fire occurrence begins a rapid decline that continues until the present.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While California's marijuana ballot initiative is garnering a lot of attention this election cycle, Gallup finds that nationally, a new high of 46% of Americans are in favor of legalizing use of the drug, and a new low of 50% are opposed. The increase in support this year from 44% in 2009 is not statistically significant, but is a continuation of the upward trend seen since 2000.These results are from Gallup's annual Crime poll, conducted Oct. 7-10. Approximately 8 in 10 Americans were opposed to legalizing marijuana when Gallup began asking about it in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Support for legalizing the drug jumped to 31% in 2000 after holding in the 25% range from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.

Two swords found under the Great Buddha of Todaiji temple in the Meiji era have been identified as sacred swords that had been missing for some 1,250 years since around 760 after Empress Komyo, the wife of Emperor Shomu who built the Buddha, dedicated them along with other items to the temple, the temple said Monday.The swords, decorated with gold, silver and lacquer, appear on the top of about 100 swords in the weapon list of the Kokka Chimpo Cho (the book of national treasures to Todaiji) kept at the Shosoin repository at the temple in the ancient capital of Nara, and can be considered important historical materials in the related research.

On Tuesday, October 19, 2010, indigenous Colombian healer Taita Juan Agreda Chindoy was detained in the Houston International Airport. He was formally arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for possession of his traditional medicine Ayahuasca. He is now being charged as a federal criminal and is facing up to 20 years in federal prison. Taita Juan is certified by his community and by the Colombian ministry of health as a traditional healer. He is one of the few remaining indigenous spiritual leaders in the world that holds the ancestral medicinal knowledge of an ecosystem that is rapidly disappearing. Taita Juan is a father, a husband and a godfather to more than 20 children. With more than 3000 supporters from several countries in the world, his life and work have touched many.

On May 13, 1957, an article on the cover of Life Magazine written by a vice president of the Wall Street banking firm J.P Morgan ignited the psychedelic revolution.In 1955, R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina, journeyed to southern Mexico, where they encountered a native woman named Maria Sabena, who conducted sacred ceremonies employing hallucinogenic mushrooms. The first non-natives known to participate in these rituals, the Wassons were pioneers in consciousness exploration through the use of natural mind-altering agents. Writing about his experiences with the mushrooms, Wasson penned the now-famous article "Seeking the Magic Mushroom."

With rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, an untold story is raising greater awareness about the Muslim faith and the teachings of the Quran. That awareness comes from an unlikely source: a small Jewish congregation in Creve Coeur.Temple Emanuel is premiering a groundbreaking exhibit of photos that reveals Albanian Muslims who saved 2,000 Jews during World War II.It's a story you've likely never heard. It is a story told through the faces of Albanian Muslims who risked their own lives to live by a code of faith and honor called Besa.

One of the pillars of Germany's political establishment, the Foreign Ministry, was a "criminal organization" during the Nazi era, and the country's diplomats played a far more active role in the Holocaust than was previously acknowledged. Those are some of the troubling findings of a new 880-page government-sponsored report, called "The Ministry and the Past: German Diplomats in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic," which has shaken the nation. Drawn from thousands of historical documents, the report, due to be officially released on Thursday, makes for uncomfortable reading as it debunks a long cherished belief that Germany's Foreign Ministry was a hive of resistance to the Nazi regime and that German diplomats were not involved in the mass extermination of millions of Jews in Nazi death camps.

The outrage was heard across the British empire and beyond. Why even members of parliament were calling for action after word spread earlier this week that Britain's largest wild animal, a 9-foot tall, 300-pound red stag, had been killed by a hunter for its prized antlers.The outrage might have been premature, however, as some residents of the area near the stag's habitat say they've seen it since its reported death."The animal has been seen regularly after the time he was supposedly shot," Lesley Prior, a farmer in Oakford, was quoted by London's Daily Mail as saying.

The outrage was heard across the British empire and beyond. Why even members of parliament were calling for action after word spread earlier this week that Britain's largest wild animal, a 9-foot tall, 300-pound red stag, had been killed by a hunter for its prized antlers.The outrage might have been premature, however, as some residents of the area near the stag's habitat say they've seen it since its reported death."The animal has been seen regularly after the time he was supposedly shot," Lesley Prior, a farmer in Oakford, was quoted by London's Daily Mail as saying.

A delicate, sophisticated way to craft sharp weapons from stone apparently was developed by humans more than 50,000 years sooner than had been thought.The finding could shed light on what knowledge people were armed with when they started migrating out of Africa.The artful technique is known as pressure flaking. Early weapons' makers typically would use hard blows from a stone hammer to give another stone a rough blade-like shape, then would use wood or bone implements to carve out relatively small flakes, refining the blade's edge and tip.When done right, pressure flaking can provide a high degree of control over the sharpness, thickness and overall shape of sharp tools such as spearheads and stone knives, said researcher Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

By Graham Hancock. Last in a series of 4 articles. The rest are available here: http://www.boingboing.net/author/graham-hancock/The most common objection to science ever developing any form of time travel is called "the grandfather paradox" -- i.e. the ability to travel in time would mean, theoretically that you could kill your own ancestors, thus preventing your own birth. Indeed -- so the argument goes -- by altering any of the ingredients of the past, even by so much as the flutter of a butterfly's wing, you would inevitably change the present. Since the present manifestly exists, and is as it is, then obviously time-travel cannot occur.In a recent (July 2010) paper at arXiv.org, Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes that fiction has been grappling with these problems for far longer than science, but that even most fictional accounts, going at least as far back as the Mahabarata epic of ancient India, deal with travel into the future. "Perhaps because of the various paradoxes to which it gives rise, the concept of travel to the past is a more recent invention," says Lloyd, pointing to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. "The contemporary notion of time travel, together with all its attendant paradoxes, did not come into being until H.G. Wells masterpiece The Time Machine, which is also the first book to propose an actual device that can be used to travel back and forward in time."

HARNESSING the sun's energy could save the planet from climate change, an approach that Germany has readily adopted. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm for solar panels could overload the country's ageing electricity grid.Solar power is intermittent and can arrive in huge surges when the sun comes out. These most often happen near midday rather than when demand for power is high, such as in the evenings. A small surge can be accommodated by switching off conventional power station generators, to keep the overall supply to the grid the same. But if the solar power input is too large it will exceed demand even with all the generators switched off. Stephan Köhler, head of Germany's energy agency, DENA, warned in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung on 17 October that at current rates of installation, solar capacity will soon reach those levels, and could trigger blackouts.

Just last week we learned that Hubble has glimpsed the most distant object ever recorded, an object so far away that it offered a glimpse of what the universe looked like some 13 billion years ago. Now, Hubble has charted the movements of stars in a globular cluster much closer to home, allowing astronomers to chart how the stars there will move over the next 10,000 years, offering a glimpse of the future as well.Omega Centauri, a globular cluster here in the Milky Way containing nearly 10 million stars, is an extremely busy hub of stellar activity. Those 10 million stars, all crammed together in a relatively tight space, are all swarming around a common center of gravity. Centuries ago it appeared as a single star, but the stargazing abilities of Hubble have allowed astronomers to pick out the individual stars and chart their positions.

(PhysOrg.com) -- For centuries, the brain has been the subject of countless philosophical and scientific debates. Recently, many discoveries and theories have cropped up around how the brain works, and those theories are helping us better understand the brain's role in health and behavior."There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it."