Newsdesk Archive

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cockroaches could be more of a health benefit than a health hazard according to scientists from The University of Nottingham.Experts from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science have discovered powerful antibiotic properties in the brains of cockroaches and locusts which could lead to novel treatments for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. They found that the tissues of the brain and nervous system of the insects were able to kill more than 90 per cent of MRSA and pathogenic Escherichia coli, without harming human cells.

Scientists have developed a scan that can measure the maturity of the brain, an advance that someday might be useful for testing whether children are maturing normally and for gauging whether teenagers are grown-up enough to be treated as adults.A federally funded study that involved scanning more than 12,000 connections in the brains of 238 volunteers ages 7 to 30 found that the technique appeared to accurately differentiate between the brains of adults and children and determine roughly where individuals scored in the normal trajectory of brain development.

EVEN without climate change and even without the decline of bees, pollination is in a downward spiral. And nobody knows why.James Thomson of the University of Toronto in Canada has studied yellow avalanche lilies growing high in the Rocky mountains in Colorado since 1993. Bumblebees are their main pollinators. Each year he pollinates some plants by hand to ensure they produce fruit, and compares them with plants that fend for themselves. At first the two groups did equally well, but from 1999 onwards the unassisted plants did consistently worse, suggesting that they were not getting enough pollen (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 365, p 3187).

SETTLED on the sofa watching the usual rubbish on TV, I notice that predictable, uncontrollable, nightly craving. At first I sit there, fighting it. But the longer I fight, the worse it gets. After 20 minutes, I can't concentrate on anything, I feel anxious, and start fidgeting like crazy. Finally, admitting my addiction, I break. I go to the freezer - to my stash of white stuff - and take a hit. Almost instantly, I relax, my brain in a state of bliss as the chemical courses through my veins. Isn't it amazing what a few scoops of ice cream can do?

THE world's most powerful particle smasher could start making major discoveries sooner than we thought.Evidence of supersymmetry (SUSY), a theory that helps solve several cosmological mysteries, as well as exotic new types of matter may emerge at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, by the end of the year. That is if certain particles can decay into lighter ones via newly discovered pathways that are relatively easy to spot.

A FAMILY of asteroids that travels in lockstep with Jupiter appears to be different in one important respect from their purported kin in the outer solar system. The mismatch could spell trouble for the leading theory of how our solar system evolved.This theory, called the Nice model, suggests that as Jupiter and Saturn moved to their current orbits, they wreaked gravitational havoc in the early solar system, scattering lumps of rock in their vicinity. Some of these ended up on tilted orbits in the distant Kuiper belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Others were hurled inwards, with more than 4000 getting trapped on Jupiter's orbital path as "Trojan" asteroids.

Tiny rock-eating microbes could mine precious extraterrestrial resources from Mars and pave the way for the first human colonists. Just don't expect them to transform the red planet's surface into a new Earth on a short deadline, researchers say.One of the most promising planetary colonizers comes in the form of cyanobacteria. The ancient bacteria helped create a habitable Earth with oxygen at least 2.5 billion years ago, and have since colonized practically every possible environment while relying upon photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy.

A drug developed at the University of Kansas has the potential to stop a debilitating condition of diabetes that often leads to pain in the extremities and even amputations, KU researchers have found.,br>The researchers recently published an article showing that KU-32 can stop and even reverse diabetic peripheral neuropathy, or DPN, in mice. The condition leads to death of nerves in the extremities of individuals with diabetes."People with DPN can be very sensitive to light touch, which can cause significant pain," said Rick Dobrowsky, professor of pharmacology and toxicology and one of the paper's authors. "The other side is eventually diabetes causes death of the nerves. DPN often leads to loss of feeling in the hands and feet, which can make diabetics susceptible to wounds and infections and often leads to amputations of toes and feet."

FROM the relaxing effects of cannabis to the highs of LSD and ecstasy, illegal drugs are not generally associated with the lab bench. Now, for the first time in decades, that is starting to change.For almost 40 years, mainstream research has shied away from investigating the therapeutic benefits of drugs whose recreational use is prohibited by law. But a better understanding of how these drugs work in animal studies, and the advancement of brain-imaging techniques, has sparked a swathe of new research. What's more, clinical trials of MDMA (ecstasy), LSD and other psychoactive drugs are starting to yield some positive results. This could lead to a call for governments to take a new approach to the funding and regulation of research into the potential benefits of such chemicals.

Researchers have long overestimated the role our genes play in determining intelligence. As it turns out, cognitive skills do not depend on ethnicity, and are far more malleable than once thought. Targeted encouragement can help children from socially challenged families make better use of their potential.Eric Turkheimer jokes about people who believe environmental influences alone determine a person's character: "They soon change their tune when they have a second child," he says. A father himself, he is speaking from experience. His eldest daughter likes being the center of attention, while her sister is shy and more reticent at school.

An invasive species of mussel called quagga has recently begun eating its way through the phytoplankton population of Lake Michigan, which could have dire effects on the lake's ecosystem, scientists now warn.A giant ring of phytoplankton (microscopic plants such as algae) was discovered in Lake Michigan in 1998 by Michigan Technological University biologist W. Charles Kerfoot and his research team. The "phytoplankton doughnut" is formed when winter storms kick up nutrient-rich sediment along the southeastern shore of the lake. The disturbed sediments begin circulating in a slow-moving circle with the lake's currents, which provides a massive supply of food for phytoplankton.

The bryozoan is a simple marine organism that attaches itself to the sea bed and filters nutrients out of the surrounding water. There are many different bryozoan sub-species, but a new survey of Antarctic organisms turned up some striking similarities between two distant populations. Both live on continental ice shelves, massively thick ice platforms that are created when continental glaciers reach the sea. One population is on the Ross Ice Shelf, and the other is on the Weddell Ice Shelf. As you can see onthis map, there's a whole lot of Antarctica between those two populations. So how did such similar species get to such distant locations?

Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows.The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads.Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used.The team reports its findings in the journal Antiquity.The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. During the excavation, led by Professor Lyn Wadley from the University of the Witwatersrand, the team dug through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago.

SHOULD we consider the privacy or reputation of the individual when analysing an Egyptian mummy? The assumption that ancient corpses are fair game for science is beginning to be challenged.Though strict ethical guidelines apply to research on modern tissue samples, up until now there has been little discussion about work on ancient human remains. In a recent paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics (DOI: 10.1136/jme.2010.036608), anatomist Frank Rühli and ethicist Ina Kaufmann of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, argue that this is disturbing because research on mummies is invasive and reveals intimate information such as family history and medical conditions. And, of course, the subjects cannot provide consent.

A CELESTIAL event in the 5th century BC could be the earliest documented sighting of Halley's comet - and it marked a turning point in the history of astronomy.According to ancient authors, from Aristotle onwards, a meteorite the size of a "wagonload" crashed into northern Greece sometime between 466 and 468 BC. The impact shocked the local population and the rock became a tourist attraction for 500 years.

SOMERSAULTING stars could explain why some planets orbit backwards.Planets tend to form in a disc that surrounds their star's equator, and orbit the star in the same direction as its spin. But recently, astronomers have found about 10 stars that host planets in tilted orbits - some so extreme that the planets travel backwards. Some researchers suspected that gravitational encounters with other planets or a distant star were to blame.

Freshwater turtles are in catastrophic decline, according to a new analysis by Conservation International (CI).The group says more than a third of the estimated 280 species around the world are now threatened with extinction.The unsustainable collection of turtles for food and to supply a lucrative pet trade are the key drivers behind the fall in numbers.

A celestial event seen by the ancient Greeks may be the earliest sighting of Halley's comet, new evidence suggests.According to ancient writers, a large meteorite smacked into northern Greece between 466BC and 467BC.The writers also described a comet in the sky at the time the meteorite fell to Earth, but this detail has received little attention, say the researchers.

Spanish palaeontologists have uncovered a new dinosaur with what may be the earliest evidence of feather follicles.The researchers, whose findings are published in Nature, located the fossils near Cuenca, central Spain.They named the reptile Concavenator corcovatus, meaning "meat eater from Cuenca with a hump". The type of dinosaur that was found is known as a theropod.Theropods are mainly known from the ancient southern landmass, Gondwana.

(PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity left Victoria Crater two years ago this month, the rover science team chose Endeavour Crater as the rover's next long-term destination. With a drive of 111 meters (364 feet) on Monday, Sept. 8, Opportunity reached the estimated halfway point of the approximately 19-kilometer (11.8-mile) journey from Victoria to the western rim of Endeavour.Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission on Mars in April 2004. During its bonus extended operations since then, it spent two years exploring in and around Victoria Crater.

Tractor beams, energy rays that can move objects, are a science fiction mainstay. But now they are becoming a reality -- at least for moving very tiny objects.Researchers from the Australian National University have announced that they have built a device that can move small particles a meter and a half using only the power of light.Physicists have been able to manipulate tiny particles over miniscule distances by using lasers for years. Optical tweezers that can move particles a few millimeters are common.

The next generation of telescopes could reveal the presence of oceans on planets outside our Solar System.Detecting water on Earth-like planets offers the tantalising prospect they could sustain life.Scientists hope the relection of light, or "glint", from mirror-like ocean surfaces could be picked up by a US space telescope set for launch in 2014.The research by US astronomers has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Following a government announcement of a planned squeeze on public funding for scientific research, Professor Stephen Hawking explains why investment in scientific and academic excellence is crucial to Britain's future.He tells science editor Susan Watts it is essential to reverse what he sees as "the dumbing down of intellectual culture" in order to inspire more young people to study science at A-level and university.

These incredible images show British scientists on an expedition to map a 'never-ending' cave network in a project that dates back more than 30 years.The twisting network of caverns underneath Gunung Mulu National Park, in Sarawak, Borneo, contains the largest cave chamber in the world, the largest cave by volume and what is believed to be the largest cave passage.Scientists carry out bi-annual visits into several caves and have so far mapped out an incredible 186 miles of the underground network.

New videos have been added to the video page. To catch the latest updates as they happen, and to see many more videos relating to Graham`s work, please subscribe at the Graham Hancock YouTube Channel.Graham Hancock presenting at the 2012 Tipping Point ConferenceGraham reading The Lament Of HermesA short interview on Moving to Fiction from Non-Fiction

Three new articles up on the article page for your reading pleasure.Is Sound Creating Crop Circles? by Freddy Silva, 5 September 2010Egyptian Soul Concept by Ede Frecska, 5 September 2010The soul cluster: Reconsideration of a millennia old concept by Ede Frecska, Levente Moro and Hank Wesselman, 5 September 2010

Babies born with low vitamin D levels are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia later in life, researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute have found.But the researchers say the good news from the study is that it suggests it may be possible to prevent schizophrenia, which affects almost 200,000 Australians.Professor John McGrath from the Queensland Brain Institute says there has been suggestions for some time that there may be a link between sunlight, vitamin D and brain development.

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Sydney researchers have discovered a new super-strength light alloy and had their key findings published in Nature Communications.The alloy is much stronger than expected and the reasons are being revealed by top-end microscopy and microanalysis at the University's node of the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF).Dr Peter Liddicoat and Professor Simon Ringer from the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (ACMM) and Dr Xiaozhou Liao from the University of Sydney's School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, have headed up this international collaborative project.

Two asteroids will zip close by the Earth Wednesday and may be visible in telescopes as they zip between our planet and the orbit of the moon.The asteroids, which will not be visible to the naked eye, were discovered Sunday by astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz. They are traveling along different orbits that, by coincidence, pass near Earth about 11 hours apart. [Photo of the asteroids' orbits near Earth.]

The H5N1 bird flu virus may be evolving the ability to spread from mammal to mammal, says a team who have discovered that pigs in Indonesia have been infected with the disease since 2005. It's one step in the frightening chain of events that could lead to human transmission and a pandemic.The H5N1 bird flu kills 60 per cent of the people it infects. However, most infections occur after direct contact with an infected bird and the disease does not appear to spread well between humans. As long as human to human transmission remains rare, the virus cannot cause a flu pandemic.

When 55-year-old California software developer Pam Sakuda was diagnosed with metastic colon cancer and given six to 14 months to live, she took antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications to help her cope with the fear and uncertainty of such a diagnosis.By the time Sakuda underwent surgery in 2002, her cancer had spread throughout her body. She embarked on grueling nonstop chemotherapy as she continued to live beyond doctors' expectations.

SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU - To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck the South Island of New Zealand on Saturday occurred on a previously unknown fault.The quake occurred at 4.35 am local time due to faulting in the Pacific plate. New Zealand lies above a region where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates collide, says the British Geological Survey.The earthquake struck around 50 kilometres west-northwest of the town Christchurch - New Zealand's second largest city. Although at least 90 buildings were substantially damaged, nobody died during the event, reports the BBC, perhaps due to fortunate timing.According to geophysics researcher Euan Smith at the Victoria University of Wellington, it happened on a previously unknown fault.

One of the key drivers of human evolution and diversity, accounting for changes that occur between different generations of people, is explained by new research published today (Sept 5) by world-renowned scientist Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, who discovered DNA fingerprinting at the University of Leicester.Professor Jeffreys has spent over two decades since his landmark discovery in 1984 investigating what he describes as "pretty bizarre bits of DNA" - highly variable repeated parts of DNA called 'minisatellites' - found in the human genome. Sir Alec observed that these seemed to be changing and "picking up mutations at an extraordinary rate" when compared to other DNA.

Extracts from the brains of locusts and cockroaches can kill hospital superbugs. Work is under way to identify the active ingredients, which could ultimately result in the first antibiotics originating from insects.Nine distinct chemical extracts from the locust brain killed Escherichia coli, which can cause food poisoning, and seven killed Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the problematic superbug sweeping hospitals and communities throughout the western world.

You might imagine that vast patent royalties flow into the organisation that invented the touchscreen and the World Wide Web. But the atom-smashing outfit CERN, cradle of both these technologies, doesn't make a bean from either.The particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, has been reluctant to patent the inventions it creates in pursuit of exotic subatomic entities. But it hopes that will soon change: last week, it struck a deal with the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to ensure that it profits better from its engineers' innovations in fields like imaging, computing, particle detection and superconducting magnets, says international relations adviser Maurizio Bona.

Researchers have found that pollination levels of some plants have dropped by up to 50 per cent in the last two decades.The "pollination deficit" could see a dramatic reduction in the yield from crops.The research, carried out in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, is the first to show that the effect is real and serves as a "warning" to Britain which if anything has seen an even greater decline in bees and pollinators."This serves as a warning to other countries," said Professor James Thomson at the University of Toronto, who carried out the research.

Future space probes that operate in cooperative swarms must commit hara-kiri if they begin to fail and risk damaging their comrades, says a recent patent application by NASA.The agency foresees a day when space missions are undertaken not by one large spacecraft but by swarming formations of much smaller, cheaper ones. Such craft could collectively provide a "floating optics" system for a space telescope comprising separate craft flying in formation, for instance.

Rainforests may store much less carbon than we thought. It could be time to dramatically revise our estimates following the discovery that apparently similar forests hold vastly different amounts of the stuff.The finding is important because there are plans for governments worldwide to compensate tropical countries for protecting their forests as "carbon sinks" to curb global warming. If carbon cannot be counted, then dollars cannot be disbursed.Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, and colleagues say they used satellite mapping, laser probing of forest undergrowth from aircraft and local ground surveys across a large area of Peruvian rainforest to crack the problem of estimating how much carbon is locked up in forests. But the new technique has revealed a large, previously unknown variability in the density of carbon stored in apparently similar forests.

Cancer is a difficult disease to treat because it's a personal disease. Each case is unique and based on a combination of environmental and genetic factors. Conventional chemotherapy employs treatment with one or more drugs, assuming that these medicines are able to both "diagnose" and "treat" the affected cells. Many of the side effects experienced by chemotherapy patients are due to the fact that the drugs they are taking aren't selective enough. For instance, taking a drug that targets fast-growing tumor cells frequently results in hair loss, because cells in the hair follicle are among some of the fastest growing in the body. When it comes down to it, these drugs get the diagnosis wrong.

New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals that asteroids somewhat near Earth, termed near-Earth objects, are a mixed bunch, with a surprisingly wide array of compositions.Like the chocolates and fruity candies inside a piñata, these asteroids come in assorted colors and compositions. Some are dark and dull; others are shiny and bright. The Spitzer observations of 100 known near-Earth asteroids demonstrate that their diversity is greater than previously thought.The findings are helping astronomers better understand near-Earth objects as a whole -- a population whose physical properties are not well known.

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.Every recipe needs a secret ingredient. When astronomers discovered an unexpected cloud of water vapour around the old star IRC+10216 in 2001, they immediately began searching for the source. Stars like IRC+10216 are known as carbon stars and are thought not to make much water. Initially they suspected the star's heat must be evaporating comets or even dwarf planets to produce the water.Now, Herschel's PACS and SPIRE instruments have revealed that the secret ingredient is ultraviolet light, because the water is too hot to have come from the destruction of icy celestial bodies.

Climate change is not responsible for civil wars in Africa, a study suggests.It challenges previous assumptions that environmental disasters, such as drought and prolonged heat waves, had played a part in triggering unrest.Instead, it says, traditional factors - such as poverty and social tensions - were often the main factors behind the outbreak of conflicts.The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the United States.

Conflicting statements have emerged over whether the remains of a 2,000-year-old Parthian fortress known as Tappeh Dokhtar, or the "Virgin's Mound," dating from Iran's pre-Islamic past were recently demolished in the Iranian city of Hamadan to make room for a mosalla, a Muslim prayer center often used by hard-line supporters of the government.An official in Hamadan told Babylon & Beyond over the phone that the remains of the monument, which stood on a hilltop in the area known as Tappeh Mosalla, were still "intact" and emphasized that "no damage" had been caused to it.

COTTON impregnated with silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could provide a cheap and effective method of purifying water in remote locations.A new filter needs only gravity and a weak electric current to produce its sterilising effect, making it suitable for a portable water-treatment device.The fabric is easy to produce, says lead researcher Yi Cui at Stanford University in California. Cui's team simply dip a piece of cotton into a solution of CNTs and then pipette droplets containing silver nanowires onto the cotton.

A FAMILY of asteroids that travels in lockstep with Jupiter appears to be different in one important respect from their purported kin in the outer solar system. The mismatch could spell trouble for the leading theory of how our solar system evolved.This theory, called the Nice model, suggests that as Jupiter and Saturn moved to their current orbits, they wreaked gravitational havoc in the early solar system, scattering lumps of rock in their vicinity. Some of these ended up on tilted orbits in the distant Kuiper belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Others were hurled inwards, with more than 4000 getting trapped on Jupiter's orbital path as "Trojan" asteroids.

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most controversial questions in cosmology is why the fundamental constants of nature seem fine-tuned for life. One of these fundamental constants is the fine-structure constant, or alpha, which is the coupling constant for the electromagnetic force and equal to about 1/137.0359. If alpha were just 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars wouldn't be able to make carbon and oxygen, which would have made it impossible for life as we know it to exist. Now, results from a new study show that alpha seems to have varied a tiny bit in different directions of the universe billions of years ago, being slightly smaller in the northern hemisphere and slightly larger in the southern hemisphere. One intriguing possible implication is that the fine-structure constant is continuously varying in space, and seems fine-tuned for life in our neighborhood of the universe.

An artificial kidney powered by the circulatory system could be the first implantable device to replace kidney donation and dialysis, scientists say.Led by a University of California-San Francisco scientist, a consortium of about 10 different research teams unveiled a new artificial kidney prototype this week, saying a room-sized version has already shown promise for the sickest patients. Fabrication processes used to make silicon chips could conceivably be used to make coffee-cup-sized devices, which could take thousands of people off dialysis machines or kidney-donor waiting lists.

The Hubble space telescope has returned to view one of its favourite subjects - a giant stellar explosion that was first seen on Earth in 1987.The famous supernova is one of the most studied objects in the southern sky.The new image of SN 1987A is the observatory's first picture of the explosion since its systems were repaired and upgraded last year.

A group of Danish rocket enthusiasts trying to launch a dummy 30km into the sky had to abort the mission when a valve on their rocket jammed.The Copenhagen Suborbitals group is attempting to fly its DIY vehicle from a restricted military test area near Bornholm island in the Baltic Sea.The man-sized dummy is strapped inside a pressurised, tubular capsule.When Sunday's countdown reached zero, a puff of smoke was seen from the rocket but nothing happened.

Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime.The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work.The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials.The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells.

PERSONALITY is pointless unless someone notices you have it.Both humans and animals have personalities - consistent behavioural patterns - but how did they evolve? To find out, Max Wolf of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, created simple simulated animals with personalities that were either consistently aggressive or meek, or flipped between the two.They were pitted against each other in repeated contests designed to be representative of many seen in the real world - for instance when an individual is defending its territory.

People have been using antibiotics for nearly 2,000 years, suggests a new study, which found large doses of tetracycline embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies.What's more, they probably got it through beer, and just about everyone appears to have drank it consistently throughout their lifetimes, beginning early in childhood.While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that -- even if they didn't actually know what bacteria were.

IT'S a big skull. No, wait, it's two people under an arch. Hold on, it's a skull again. Two very different images can be perceived in the trick picture Blossom and Decay (see right). Now we are one step closer to working out how the brain spontaneously flips between such views, with the discovery of what may be the relevant brain region.The precise neural mechanism that provokes the brain to switch its view of a scene is unknown, but it is thought to play a major role in perception by acting as a sort of reality check, says Ryota Kanai of University College London. "We need a trigger to prompt possible different interpretations so that we don't get stuck with a potentially incorrect interpretation of the world."

If you wanted to hide something away for all eternity, where could you put it? Black holes might seem like a safe bet, but Stephen Hawking famously calculated that they leak radiation, and most physicists now think that this radiation contains information about their contents. Now, there may be a way to make an "eternal" black hole that would act as the ultimate cosmic lockbox.The recipe for this unlikely object was discovered by looking at an even more abstruse entity, the white hole. White holes are black holes that run backwards in time, throwing out matter instead of sucking it in. Where a black hole might form from a collapsing star, a white hole would explode and leave a star in its place. White holes have never been observed, though general relativity predicts they could exist in principle.

String theory was originally developed to describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe. The new research, led by a team from Imperial College London, describes the unexpected discovery that string theory also seems to predict the behaviour of entangled quantum particles. As this prediction can be tested in the laboratory, researchers can now test string theory.Over the last 25 years, string theory has become physicists' favourite contender for the 'theory of everything', reconciling what we know about the incredibly small from particle physics with our understanding of the very large from our studies of cosmology. Using the theory to predict how entangled quantum particles behave provides the first opportunity to test string theory by experiment.

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read.The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort.The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail.The findings from the study of 40 people are reported in Neuropsychology.

Researchers at the NanoRobotics Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal, under Professor Sylvain Martel, produced this remarkable video showing a swarm of about 5,000 flagellated bacteria--of a type which are subject to manipulation by magnetic fields--being directed to assemble six 100 μm epoxy bricks into the shape of a tiny step pyramid. IEEE Spectrum explains:

ALIEN life may already exist on Earth - us.There's an idea - common, but not popular in scientific circles - that all life on Earth was seeded from comets, asteroids or meteors which struck the planet and contained the building blocks necessary to kickstart the evolutionary process.It's called "panspermia" and it caused an all-in boffin barney some 15 years ago when several scientists backed claims there was evidence of life in a Martian meteorite found in the Allan Hills in Antarctica.

The stalled weather pattern blamed for disastrous floods in Pakistan and a record heatwave in Russia may have averted disasters elsewhere by putting the North Atlantic hurricane season on hold.Forecasters had predicted that warm sea-surface temperatures and the onset of the weather pattern known as La Niña would make a busy Atlantic hurricane season this year. In June, Phil Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University predicted 18 tropical storms, with 10 reaching hurricane force and five becoming deadly major hurricanes. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast similar numbers.

An abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama's court.Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal's energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source -- unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel.

Nasa is aiming to get closer to the Sun than ever before, with plans to plunge a car-sized unmanned spacecraft into the star's outer atmosphere.Scientists hope to launch the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) sometime before 2018.Before it is destroyed by the sizzling temperatures exceeding 1,400C (2,550F), the craft will have to obtain valuable data about our parent star.

Ancient galaxies may be cosmic senior citizens today, but some have a wild streak in their past, one packed with frenetic star birth, astronomers say.Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found that a significant set of galaxies in an ancient, distant cluster were actively forming stars about 10 billion years ago, which is how long it's taken for their light to reach Earth.

Wild chimpanzees are learning how to outwit human hunters.Across Africa, people often lay snare traps to catch bushmeat, killing or injuring chimps and other wildlife.But a few chimps living in the rainforests of Guinea have learnt to recognise these snare traps laid by human hunters, researchers have found.

WHAT glows yellow and behaves like a liquid and a solid at the same time? Water - at least in the strange form it appears to take deep within Uranus and Neptune. This exotic stuff might help explain why both planets have bizarre magnetic fields.Simulations in 1999 and an experiment in 2005 hinted that water might behave like both a solid and a liquid at very high pressures and temperatures. Under such conditions, the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the water molecules would become ionised, with the oxygen ions forming a lattice-like crystal structure and the hydrogen ions able to flow through the lattice like a liquid. This "superionic" water, forming at temperatures above 2000 °C or so, should glow yellow.

Fossils of a new type of dinosaur, which looks like a beefy version of the predatory Velociraptor, have been unearthed in Romania.The stocky dinosaur lived some 70 million years ago; higher sea levels at this time would have made the region an island archipelago.The animal is also notable for the two large and sharp claws on each foot; Velociraptor had just one.It may have used these to rip apart its prey scientists believe.

Three decades ago, Stephen Hawking famously declared that a "theory of everything" was on the horizon, with a 50 per cent chance of its completion by 2000. Now it is 2010, and Hawking has given up. But it is not his fault, he says: there may not be a final theory to discover after all. No matter; he can explain the riddles of existence without it.The Grand Design, written with Leonard Mlodinow, is Hawking's first popular book in almost a decade. It duly covers the growth of modern physics (quantum mechanics, general relativity, modern cosmology) sprinkled with the wild speculation about multiple universes that seems mandatory in popular works these days.

A Japanese rocket unfurled a 300-metre-long ribbon in space on Monday, testing technology that could one day allow spacecraft to navigate by surfing Earth's magnetic field.Conventional spacecraft have to burn fuel to manoeuvre in orbit. But the fuel adds weight and cost to the launch and eventually gets used up, limiting the probes' lifetime.In principle, it is possible to propel an orbiting spacecraft without fuel by using a long piece of metal to interact with the magnetic field surrounding our planet. "You're essentially pushing against the Earth's magnetic field," says Les Johnson of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Anthropologists have unearthed the leftovers of the world's first known organized feast, which took place around 12,000 years ago at a burial site in Israel, according to a new study.Based on the findings, approximately 35 guests ate meat from 71 tortoises and at least three wild cattle while attending this first known human-orchestrated event involving food.The discovery additionally provides the earliest known compelling evidence for a shaman burial, the apparent reason for the feasting. A shaman is an individual who performs rituals and engages in other practices for healing or divination.

Anthropologists have unearthed the leftovers of the world's first known organized feast, which took place around 12,000 years ago at a burial site in Israel, according to a new study.Based on the findings, approximately 35 guests ate meat from 71 tortoises and at least three wild cattle while attending this first known human-orchestrated event involving food.The discovery additionally provides the earliest known compelling evidence for a shaman burial, the apparent reason for the feasting. A shaman is an individual who performs rituals and engages in other practices for healing or divination.

Today, the administration of psychoactive drugs to children (6-17) is all too common and growing at an alarming rate. These drugs often cause the opposite of the intended effect, often condemning children to a life of misery and ill health. The prescription of these drugs is said to treat "chemical imbalances" which were said to cause ADHD, Depression and Bi-polar disorder. It turns out, however, that what we were calling "disease-causing chemical imbalances," is simply incorrect . The sad irony is, the inappropriate use of these medications is in fact creating different chemical imbalances, which do cause mental disorders, many of which are both life-long and debilitating.

In 2002, Paul Koehler, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennesse, and others were measuring neutron resonances in four types of platinum isotopes. These resonance patterns - which are the energies at which the nucleus of a platinum isotope absorbs neutrons - are affected by the motion of the protons and neutrons inside the nucleus. These motions are thought to be chaotic, at least according to random matrix theory, which is used to determine the behavior of large nuclei. However, in a recent study, Koehler and his colleagues found that the protons and neutrons seem to move in a collective way that can't be explained by any known model of nuclear structure.

The new site improves the ability of synthetic molecules, recently developed by the team, to attach to prostate cancer cells, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the body's immune response to the disease. Their findings appear online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.The new study builds on the team's recent development of a new class of synthetic molecules, called "antibody-recruiting molecules targeting prostate cancer" (ARM-Ps), which work by binding simultaneously to antibodies already present in the bloodstream and to a protein found on prostate cancer cells called prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA). By coating the cancer cells in antibodies, the ARM-P molecules flag them as a threat and trigger the body's own immune response, which does not recognize the cancer cells as foreign pathogens on its own.

"It is the first time that you can feel images in the air," said Norio Nakamura, senior scientist with the research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology."You can have the sense of touch like poking a rubber ball or stretching a sticky rice cake" when manipulating images, he told AFP by telephone.The technology changes the shape of three-dimensional images in response to "touches", aided by cameras that monitor how the fingers move, Nakamura said.It is not known when the technology will be put to practical use but its creators see it being used to simulate surgical operations and in video game software allowing players to experience the sensation of holding weapons or sports equipment.

In the August 26 issue of Science Express, the Yale team describes how one mutated copy of a gene called keratin 10 causes a severe skin disease known as ichthyosis with confetti. However, amidst the diseased skin, these patients also have hundreds to thousands of spots of normal skin.This phenomenon, the researchers report, occurs by the recombination of chromosomes prior to cell division. Instead of producing one normal copy of the gene and one dominant, disease-causing mutation, the exchange between chromosomes results in cells with either two mutant copies or no mutant copies. If the latter occurs, spots of normal, disease-free skin will form. The investigators used these recombination events in spots of normal skin to map and ultimately identify the disease gene.

The results are published online this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Investigators in the laboratory of Stephen Warren, PhD, chairman of human genetics at Emory University School of Medicine, used DNA microarray technology to read variant sites across the entire genomes of 471 Ashkenazi Jews. The work comes from a collaboration between Warren and Ann Pulver, ScD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who recruited the participants for a study of schizophrenia genetics.

Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists. And in our web-only article Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of Stonehenge, he explains how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured"The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors"

IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright. "Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change," says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week - organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, among others - suggests the tide is turning.

After more than a decade of work, scientists have completed a 3-D atomic-scale map of a virus that causes the common cold. It's the largest virus ever mapped. The map could help scientists re-engineer the virus for gene therapy, as well as to create possible treatments for cancer and other ailments. Robotic systems, an advanced x-ray, and years of patience made it possible.The human adenovirus family, which is responsible for a host of ailments ranging from colds to gastrointestinal disorders, is quite good at making us sick because adenoviruses can infect many types of cells. For several years, scientists have tried to use adenoviruses as a vector to carry therapeutic genes into cells, mostly for treating cancer and cardiovascular disease. Understanding its structure, including how it disassembles when it enters a cell, could help scientists design better vectors.

Wouldn't it be convenient if Red Bull could recharge your phone just as it recharges you? Researchers at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society today revealed the creation of a new breed of battery-like device that's more like the mitochondria that fuel biological cells than the anode-cathode batteries that charge our devices. As such, it could power our cell phones or other portable electronics with sugary drinks or other energy-storing media like vegetable oils.The technology is actually as old as the beginnings of life itself, but the research represents the first working fuel cell that produces power in such a way. The new biofuel cell borrows from the mitochondria that power our bodies' own cells. Mitochondria, you'll remember from high school biology, are the powerhouses of the cell, converting sugars or fats into adenosine triphosphate -- or ATP -- which stores the energy until the cell needs to burn it.The new fuel cell is still in prototype, but the researchers have demonstrated it in the lab. It essentially consists of a thin layer of mitochondria pressed between two electrodes, one of which is gas-permeable. In tests, cooking oil byproducts and sugar both produced electricity.

(AP) Scientists using cutting-edge technology to explore waters off Indonesia were wowed by colorful and diverse images of marine life on the ocean floor - including plate-sized sea spiders and flower-like sponges that appear to be carnivorous.They predicted Thursday that as many as 40 new plant and animal species may have been discovered during the three-week expedition that ended Aug. 14.More than 100 hours of video and 100,000 photographs, captured using a robotic vehicle with high-definition cameras, were piped to shore in real-time by satellite and high-speed Internet.

PARIS: The first "supermassive" black holes were created soon after the Big Bang that created the Universe, a finding which could rewrite theories about formation of galaxies, scientists say.Ordinary black holes are entities of mass whose gravitational pull is so huge that not even light can escape them. But they are dwarfs compared to so-called supermassive black holes, which are many orders of magnitude bigger.Read more: Mega black holes were born soon after Big Bang - Science - Home - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Mega-black-holes-were-born-soon-after-Big-Bang/articleshow/6442936.cms#ixzz0yAYQZOm8

LONDON: Scientists have created liver cells in a lab for the first time using reprogrammed cells from human skin, paving the way for the potential development of new treatments for liver diseases that kill thousands each year.Cambridge University scientists who reported their results in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on Wednesday, said they also found a way of avoiding the kind of intense political and ethical rows over embryonic stem cells which are currently hampering work in the US. "This technology bypasses the need for using human embryos," said Tamir Rashid of Cambridge's laboratory for regenerative medicine, who led the study. "The cells we created were just as good as if we had used embryonic stem cells."

Astronomers studying sound waves on a distant star have discovered that it has a magnetic cycle similar to our sun's solar cycle.The find marks the first time astronomers have detected a star's magnetic cycle using a method called stellar seismology, which monitors the vibrations inside a star. The result could help researchers learn more about the inner workings and evolution of stars, including our own sun."This is one piece of a larger puzzle that should help us better understand the sun," said study co-author Travis Metcalfe of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

The world's first known human cannibals ate each other to satisfy their nutritional needs, concludes a new study of the remains of cannibal feasts consumed about one million years ago.The humans-as-food determination negates other possibilities, such as cannibalism for ritual's sake, or cannibalism due to starvation. In this oldest known case of humans eating humans, other food was available to the diners, but human flesh was just part of their meat mix."These practices were conducted by Homo antecessor, who inhabited Europe one million years ago," according to the research team, led by Eudald Carbonell.

When probing the deepest reaches of the Cosmos or magnifying our understanding of the quantum world, a whole host of mysteries present themselves. This is to be expected when pushing our knowledge of the Universe to the limit.This is exactly what has been noticed in recent years; the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with "constant" decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change. School textbooks teach us this from an early age.

A study in Biology Letters written up in the BBC earlier this week has found an interesting wrinkle in Darwin's theory of natural selection. In short, evolution may not be as driven by competition as once thought.In the classic view of "Darwinism" (itself a misleading phrase, perhaps), organisms compete over resources for the right to survive and reproduce. Those that are successful pass on their genes. Those that can't cut it die out.But looking at the fossil record over the last 400 million years, Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom found that patterns of evolution don't always match this trend.

The skis and scientific instruments of a physicist who accompanied Captain Scott on his ill-fated trip to the Antarctic will be sold in London next month, Christie's auctioneers said Wednesday.Canadian scientist Charles Seymour Wright was part of the support team that set off with Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1910, although he turned back after a year, leaving Scott and four others to continue to the South Pole.Ten months later, when Scott failed to return, Wright joined the search party and it was he who spotted the tip of a green tent poking out of the ice. Inside, he found the frozen bodies of the adventurer and two of his colleagues.

But in a recent study appearing in the Aug. 26 edition of the journal, Nature, a Lawrence Livermore scientist and his colleagues used the method to trace the pathway of carbon dioxide released from the deep ocean to the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age.The team noticed that a rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations coincided with a reduced amount of carbon-14 relative to carbon-12 (the two isotopes of carbon that are used for carbon dating and are referred to as radiocarbon) in the atmosphere.

US stem-cell researchers are reeling from a court order handed down yesterday that puts a temporary hold on the current policy for federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell (ESC) research. Now, many are calling for legislation that would make such research unambiguously legal once and for all.The court order is the outcome of a lawsuit originally filed last August against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, which contends that federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells is illegal because it requires the destruction of embryos.

Pamela Sakuda, 57, was anxious and depressed. After two years of intensive chemotherapy for late-stage colon cancer, and having outlived her prognosis by several months, she'd finally lost hope. She was living in fear and was worried how her impending death would affect her husband.Sakuda's doctor prescribed antidepressants, but they didn't do any good. So, at her wits' end and feeling that she had nothing to lose, Sakuda volunteered for an experimental depression treatment being studied at UCLA.

Corneas made in the laboratory have dramatically improved the sight of 10 Swedish patients with significant vision loss.Produced entirely from synthetic collagen, the implants offer the tantalising possibility for a replacement to human donor tissues.The custom-made corneas work by prompting regeneration of the nerves and cells in the eye.This is the first time vision has been restored in this way.

Two-thirds of the British public are unable to name a single famous female scientist, according to an ICM poll.The same survey, organised by the Royal Society, revealed that 90% of 18-24 year-olds could not name a female scientific figure - either current or historical.Almost half were able to name at least one famous male scientist, such as Albert Einstein.The Royal Society's Lorna Casselton described the results as "frustrating".

Biologists have developed a new way of harmlessly collecting DNA from dolphins from their exhalations or "blow".Understanding dolphin genetics is critical to the conservation of wild populations.Current methods to collect dolphin DNA use a procedure which can be harmful.Scientists hope the new technique, successfully used to extract DNA from aquarium dolphins, can also be used in the wild.The most commonly used way of collecting DNA from dolphins and whales is by "Dart biopsying". This involves firing a dart with a small barb into the flank of the animal, which then extracts a small plug of tissue.

Oetzi, the 5,000 year old "Iceman" found in the Italian Alps, may have been ceremonially buried, archaeologists claim.An autopsy showed that Oetzi had been murdered, dying of an arrow wound.While this is not disputed, a new study suggests that months after his death, Oetzi's corpse was carried to the high mountain pass where it was found.The discovery site therefore may not be a murder scene after all, but a burial ground.The new study, led by Professor Luca Bondioli of the National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnology in Rome and his US-Italian team, is published in the journal Antiquity.

Archaeological remains dating back to the last Ice Age have been found during work to upgrade a major road, the Highways Agency said.The remains, along with Iron Age and Roman settlements, were uncovered during work to upgrade the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool in Nottinghamshire.The Highways Agency said the finds included ancient flint tools and flint knapping debris dating back to about 11,000 BC - around the end of the last Ice Age when Stone Age hunter-gathers returned as the climate began to warm up.

Damascus - An academic excavation team said Thursday it had uncovered artifacts which indicate that an ancient Bronze-Age kingdom in northern Syria had strong international trade relations with Nile river dynasties.Peter Pfalzner, a professor at the University of Tuebingen and head of a joint German-Syrian archeology team, said that gifts originating from the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia were discovered in burial chambers at the ruins of a once royal city near what is now the Syrian city of Aleppo.He believes the ancient kingdom enjoyed great wealth and wider international trade than previously thought, the Syrian news agency SANAreported.

Material monuments related to domestic and funeral traditions were found during archaeological digs in Balakan region."Though the second stage of digs is currently underway, we have already found a great many of evidences of richness of our history", the news service for the Baku Department of Culture and Tourism said.

Of the religions that expanded rapidly in the 1st-century Roman Empire, worship of Mithras was particularly popular among Roman soldiers, who spread his cult during their far-flung travels. But no written evidence from the Mithraists themselves survives, and the literary evidence we have is mostly by Christian detractors. Mithras's temples, called Mithraea, are the best archaeological evidence of the god's worship, and most of them featured a characteristic depiction of Mithras slaying a bull, a scene called the tauroctony. Sifting through this imperfect record, scholars have been able to conjecture about many aspects of this once widely practiced religion.