Newsdesk Archive

Beni Suef, 15 July (AKI) - Excavations in Upper Egypt's Ehnasia archaeological area in Beni-Sueif recently uncovered the remains of a 3,000 year old temple dating from the reign of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II."Inside the remains of this temple, excavators uncovered ten cartouches of Ramesses II and beneath them a relief saying that the ruler had built this temple for himself in Ehnasia," said the head of Egypt's Supreme Archaeology's Pharaonic Section, Sabri Abdel Aziz in a statement on Thursday.

WASHINGTON: Researchers at Monash University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography have developed a new theory to explain the global motions of tectonic plates on the earth's surface.The new theory extends the theory of plate tectonics - a kinematic description of plate motion without reference to the forces behind it -with a dynamical theory that provides a physical explanation for both the motions of tectonic plates as well as motion of plate boundaries. The new findings have implications for how scientists understand the geological evolution of Earth, and in particular, the tectonic evolution of western North America, in the past 50 million years.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Big Bang theory has formed the basis of our understanding of the universe's origins since it was first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaitre. And for good reason: the theory is supported by scientists' latest observations and experiments, and is based on Einstein's widely accepted theory of general relativity. But scientists are always on the lookout for any evidence that might suggest an alternative to the Big Bang. The latest in this area of research comes from astrophysicists Maximo Banados and Pedro Ferreira, who have resurrected a theory of gravity from the early 20th century and discovered that a modified version of the theory may hold some surprises.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Through observations of massive galaxy clusters, scientists have made the most precise measurements to date of the effects of dark energy and gravity on cosmological scales. This work is an important step toward understanding why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Something is pushing our universe apart, faster and faster, with each passing moment, and future work using similar methods should determine whether that something is dark energy or a change in the way gravity works on cosmological scales.

Researchers have discovered the skull of a 29 million-year-old animal that could be a common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes, including humans.It indicates that apes and Old World monkeys diverged millions of years later than previously thought, say the scientists.

In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.

AMELBOURNE: Australian scientists have claimed that the human brain has the ability to "rewire itself" and the findings could revolutionize the way brain injuries are treated in the future.The Hobart-based Menzies Research Institute has been investigating how the brain responds to trauma, particularly what occurs within the cerebral cortex or the outer layer of grey matter. "The most unique finding that we've found is that another group of these nerve cells are actually able to remodel their processes and change their shape in order to respond to the injury," Tracey Dickson, a senior researcher at the institute, said.

Science is playing an increasing role in supporting fields in the humanities, like Egyptology. As evidence, interpretations of the historical chronology of ancient Egypt--which are generally based on historical documents and archeological findings--have been verified by radiocarbon dating, which uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of organic remains from archeological sites.In a recent study published in Science Magazine on 18 June 2010, an international team of nine research professors (French, Austrian and Israeli) led by Bronk Ramsey, director of Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the Oxford University, have apparently determined more accurate dates for the ruling dynasties of Ancient Egypt by analyzing 211 samples.

Boeing has unveiled its unmanned hydrogen-powered spy plane which can fly non-stop for up to four days.The high-altitude plane, called Phantom Eye, will remain aloft at 20,000m (65,000ft), according to the company.The demonstrator will be shipped to Nasa's Dryden Flight Research Center in California later this summer to prepare for its first flight in early 2011.

Norway has launched the innovative AISSat-1 spacecraft to monitor shipping in its territorial waters.The small satellite will track vessels over 300 gross tonnes by picking up the signals from their AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponders.AIS is a safety and navigation tool, and can be used by the authorities near the coast to keep watch on cargo, passenger and fisheries activity.

The King Arthur we know is one of romance, ephemera and myth. But is he real? Arthur has been in and out of fashion more than denim: one year his veracity is being argued by every archaeologist in Britain, the next he's ignored or derided. In Revealing King Arthur: Swords, Stones and Digging for Camelot, Christopher Gidlow shows how archaeologists over the last 50 years have interpreted the evidence from Dark Age Britain. At first they were happy to link their discoveries to legendary names. Then came a backlash, when Arthurian links were ignored or derided. Now, new discoveries have raised again the possibility of a real King Arthur. He recalls ten sites that suggest Arthur was much more than an old wives' tale.

Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years.The archaeologists, from the universities of Cambridge and Southampton and the British School at Rome, believe the canal connected Portus, on the coast at the mouth of the Tiber, with the nearby river port of Ostia, two miles away.

Scientists studying ancient species migration believe northern birds had the ability to colonise continents that southern species lacked. The research, published in Ecography, reveals how the ancient 'land bridge' of Panama, which first connected North and South America, caused an uneven species migration, leading to a new understanding of species diversity today.The continents of North and South America were historically isolated until they were abruptly joined three million years ago through the tectonic uplift of Central America and the formation of a land corridor in modern day Panama, creating a land bridge.

A new geological study has set a more accurate age for planet Earth, according to scientists.Researchers say their investigation shows the Earth is 70 million years younger than the 4.537 billion-year-old planet "we had previously imagined".To confirm Earth's age, the team compared elements in its mantle to those in meteorites that are the same age as the Solar System.

An obscure language in Siberia has similarities to languages in North America, which might reshape history, writes Randy Boswell.A new book by leading linguists has bolstered a controversial theory that the language of Canada's Dene Nation is rooted in an ancient Asian tongue spoken today by only a few hundred people in Western Siberia.

SEOUL, South Korea -- In a political about-face, a South Korean commission investigating a century of human rights abuses has ruled that the U.S. military's large-scale killing of refugees during the Korean War, in case after case, arose out of military necessity.Shutting down the inquiry into South Korea's hidden history, the commission also will leave unexplored scores of suspected mass graves believed to hold remains of tens of thousands of South Korean political detainees summarily executed by their own government early in the 1950-53 war, sometimes as U.S. officers watched.

Giant propeller-shaped structures have been discovered in the rings of Saturn and appear to be created by a new class of hidden moons, NASA announced Thursday.NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted the distinctive structures inside some of Saturn's rings, marking the first time scientists have managed to track the orbits of individual objects from within a debris disk like the one that makes up Saturn's complicated ring system.

We can now tweet from the International Space Station and make phone calls from the summit of Mount Everest, so why can't we get any check our email from the ocean floor? A new Lockheed Martin program, plainly named Communications at Speed and Depth, will plug deep-diving stealth submarines into the DoD's Global Information Grid, just like any other surface vessel.The system is not unlike other previously attempted schemes to link submarines into surface comms. Like other buoy-based systems, Communications at Speed and Depth requires an antenna to be floated to the surface, but unlike previous systems it will be able to transmit both ways (most previous schemes only allowed subs to receive communications).

The rapidly aging population of the United States as the Baby Boomers reach their golden years doesn't bode well for our collective vision: 30 percent of Americans over age 75 suffer from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common condition that causes the retina to degrade and decay, resulting in partial blindness. But after five years of deliberation, the FDA has approved the first implantable miniature telescope (IMT) that fits directly into the eye to correct the effects of AMD.Those effects are pretty serious; as the retina degenerates, the center part of a person's vision grows blurry or completely dark. The IMT corrects this by expanding an incoming image onto the peripheral parts of the retina that are still in good health. Once implanted directly into the cornea, the device makes use of the remaining working retina cells to produce a donut-like image that users can see.

The Romans called malaria the "rage of the Dog Star," since its fever and chills so often arrived during the caniculares dies, the dog days of summer, when Sirius disappeared in the glow of the sun. To avoid it, ancient Romans built their grand villas high in the hills, fled the mosquito-ridden wetlands that encircled Rome, and prayed for relief at temples dedicated to the fever goddess, Febris.It was the emperor Caracalla's physician, Serenus Sammonicus, who in the second century came up with Rome's first antimalaria quick-fix, one that later became literally synonymous with magical solutions everywhere. An amulet should be worn, Sammonicus advised, inscribed with a powerful incantation: "Abracadabra."

Physicists working at the CERN nuclear research lab on the border of Switzerland and France have generated the coldest particles of antimatter ever recorded.The team cooled down antiprotons to temperatures colder than the surface of Pluto, as low as -443 degrees F (9.26 kelvin) -- just 17 degrees above absolute zero. Physicists studying cold antimatter hope to ultimately glean insights into why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter.

Although we have yet to detect an alien ping, improvements in technology have encouraged us to think that, if transmitting extraterrestrials are out there, we might soon find them. That would be revolutionary. But some, Stephen Hawking included, sense catastrophe.Hawking is worried about aliens. The famous physicist recently suggested that we should be wary of contact with extraterrestrials, citing what happened to Native Americans when Europeans landed on their shores. Since any species that could visit us would be far beyond our own technological level, meeting them could be bad news.

Archaeologists today unveiled a newly-unearthed double tomb of a father and son.The tomb includes two false doors with colourful paintings depicting the two men who served as heads of the royal scribes and were in charge of part of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.Decorated with vivid wall paintings, the two tombs were found in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo.Abdel-Hakim Karar, a top archaeologist at Saqqara said it could be the start for uncovering a vast cemetery in the area.

How can scientists compare today's climate to conditions of the distant past, long before humans started happily jotting down records of the weather? The climate of the past is kept like a secret in objects all around us. Ice from glaciers and sediments beneath our feet keep a catalog of temperatures hidden in their chemical composition.

Tigers are Rapidly Disappearing from the WildAccording to the latest estimates, there are only about 3,200 tigers left in the wild on the entire planet. That's a catastrophically sharp decline from the 100,000 tigers that were estimated to be in the wild in 1990. The WWF experts warn that "The big cat, which is native to southern and eastern Asia, could soon become extinct unless urgent action is taken to prevent hunting and loss of habitat." Read on for more details on the fight to keep tigers from extinction.

The first batch of a new range of powerful superconductors which could revolutionise the production of machines like hospital MRI scanners and protect the national grid has been developed by scientists.Engineers at the University of Cambridge used new techniques to manufacture high-temperature superconducting materials, producing samples that can carry record quantities of electrical current for their type and size.

Much of life on Earth gets regularly wiped out every 27 million years, according to boffins. It had been thought that this was caused by a dark star named "Nemesis", but apparently that was wrong. The next globo-extinction event is due in about 16 million years' time.The revelations are made in a new paper from paleontologist Richard K Bambach of the Smithsonian Institution and astronomer Adrian Melott, flagged up by the Physics arXiv blog and viewable online here.

There are lots of scientists trying to determine the fate of plant and animal species in the context of global warming. Few command as much processing power as Healy Hamilton, director of the Center for Applied Biodiversity Informatics at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. She got her start number-crunching nature with her PhD thesis, a DNA analysis of river dolphins. It required spending more than a month on the Amazon in 2001, subsisting on fried piranha and collecting tissue samples by nicking the aquatic mammals with a crossbow. (No Flippers were killed.) Tricky enough, but the real challenge began when she tried sequencing the samples on turn-of-the-millennium hardware.

A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000-kilometre (6,800-mile) arc over the Pacific, plunging remote isles into darkness in a heavenly display climaxing on Easter Island. The skies grew black in the middle of the day as the moon slipped in front of the sun and aligned with the Earth, blotting out the sunshine that just moments earlier had swathed the island's silent, ancient stone guardians. Applause erupted from thousands of stargazers who began gathering days ago on this remote Chilean outpost for the rare four-minute, 41-second eclipse

The journal, Nano Letters, recently published an article highlighting the fascinating nanogenerators developed by Dr. Yong Shi, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stevens Institute of Technology. The paper was entitled, "1.6 V Nanogenerator for Mechanical Energy Harvesting Using PZT Nanofibers.

Anyone who has seen teosinte, the wild grass from which maize (corn) evolved, might be forgiven for assuming many genetic changes underlie the transformation of one plant to the other.However, a method for exploring the genetics of domestication called Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) mapping has revealed that only modest modifications are needed to convert a wild plant to a crop plant. Some major transitions in phenotype can even be achieved by a single genetic change.The few artificial experiments in domestication that have been conducted have also shown that it is possible to achieve domesticate-like plants in fewer than 20 generations.

Excavations began on Thursday at an ancient city in the western Turkish province of Canakkale.Executives with the Canakkale Archeological Museum launched excavations at the ancient city of Madytos in Canakkale's Eceabat town in order to declare new archeological protection sites.vExcavation team has unearthed remains of architectural buildings dating to late Byzantine and Ottoman eras, graves, coins and ceramics.

Marriage and family were the core of ancient Egyptian society, and their practice of early marriage stemmed from their belief that a committed and happy family would lead to secure and contented children who would be the future adults of a stable society."Although we don't have any texts that mention marriage formalities, legal documents show clearly that married men and women had well-defined responsibilities," Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass says.This marks the recording of the oldest music notation in the history of the world.

Millions of years ago our ancestors, who were adapted to living in trees, started to experiment with walking upright. These chance experiments turned out to be a useful skill, and over time we humans evolved bodies built for upright walking. From our neck to our feet, this brought many changes to our skeletal structure.

No one knows when the very first life on Earth appeared though what little evidence scientists have indicates that life was present not very long after our planet formed.Fossil hunters are continually scouring the globe for rocks betraying signs of even more ancient life forms, and controversy reigns over claims of the earliest evidence for life.One such fossil hunter is Nora Noffke, a trace fossil sedimentologist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. Noffke and team recently found rocks in South Africa with evidence of cyanobacteria dating from 2.9 billion years ago, which is the oldest confirmed evidence of these life forms. Cyanobacteria is a type of single-celled bacteria still thriving on the Earth today that gains its energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.

Where did all the mammoths go?It's a subject that has fascinated naturalists for 300 years. Scientists generally agree that most mammoths died off gradually during the late Pleistocene, probably due to a combination of hunting from humans and environmental change.They've also known that a few isolated mammoth communities managed to survive into the Holocene, which began about 10,000 years ago.

Scientists have determined the evolutionary timeline for the microscopic parasites that cause one of the world's most widespread infectious diseases: malaria.Having an understanding of the origins of the lineages of such pathogens, or disease-causing organisms, is fundamental to understanding emerging diseases, according to the researchers.The origin of malaria in humans has been dated to as recent as 10,000 years ago and as long as several million years ago.

Ancient Polynesians went from building small-scale temples to constructing monumental, pyramid-shaped temples in just 140 years, not in four or five centuries as previously calculated, according to research led by a University of California, Berkeley, anthropologist and published this week in the print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The world's earliest illustrated Christian book has been saved by a British charity which located it at a remote Ethiopian monastery.The incredible Garima Gospels are named after a monk who arrived in the African country in the fifth century and is said to have copied them out in just one day.Beautifully illustrated, the colours are still vivid and thanks to the Ethiopian Heritage Fund have been conserved.Abba Garima arrived from Constantinople in 494 AD and legend has it that he was able to copy the gospels in a day because God delayed the sun from setting.

Zecharia Sitchin says he's willing to stake everything he's written about alien astronauts on DNA tests that could be performed on the 4,500-year-old remains of a high-ranking Sumerian woman. It's the latest - and possibly the last - cause celebre for a fringe celebrity.The way Sitchin sees it, the long-dead woman's genome could contain the signature of the gods and demigods he's been talking about since 1976.The 90-year-old Sitchin was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Palestine and now lives in a New York apartment. He has written 14 books about way-out subjects, starting out with claims that a "12th planet" named Nibiru swung past Earth thousands of years ago and dropped off alien visitors who were looked upon as gods by Middle Eastern cultures. Sitchin says these aliens were the Annunaki mentioned in Sumerian scriptures, and the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible.

When Apollo astronauts first rounded the far side of the moon, they were stunned to find a very bright crescent of light glowing on the horizon at sunset. And, just before sunrise, faint columns of light appeared shortly after the glow.Now, a new model proposes that fountains of moon dust jet high into the sky and stay there, allowing sunlight to scatter and create glows not usually thought possible in such a tenuous atmosphere. The electrostatic properties of lunar dust have shifted scientists' attention to the moon's boundary of day and night, where a very strong electric field may kick dust high into orbit.

Finds in Turkey could answer key questions about ancient human origins, but palaeoanthropologists there must first bury their disputes. Rex Dalton reports from the field.Sparkling like black diamonds in the sun, countless obsidian pieces carpet a hillside in central Turkey. The slope is an ancient rubbish heap, littered with castoffs from toolmakers who chipped away at the prized rock to make knives, blades and other implements.

A reader reminded me that today is the 63rd anniversary of the so-called Roswell UFO Incident. Even if you know nothing else about the UFO phenomenon, you certainly have heard about what supposedly happened in Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947: a crashed flying saucer, autopsies on alien bodies, Government cover-ups. It ushered in the 1950s kitsch of bubble-headed little green space jockeys inside silvery saucers flitting across our skies.

Just over 2000 years ago, ancient Egyptians carved a map of the sky onto two enormous sandstone blocks and set them into the ceiling of a temple at Dendera, on the west bank of the Nile.This "Zodiac of Dendera" was blasted from its surrounds by a French treasure hunter in 1821, and is now on display in the Louvre museum in Paris, France. The circular design contains many intricate hieroglyphs, as well as human and animal figures, including several that represent the signs of the zodiac. As Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz discuss in their book The Zodiac of Paris (which I have reviewed, here), it arrived in France to a stormy debate over its meaning and origins.

GUILLEMOTS and gannets do it. Cormorants and kingfishers do it. Even the tiny insect-eating dipper does it. And if a plan by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) succeeds, a remarkable airplane may one day do it too: plunge beneath the waves to stalk its prey, before re-emerging to fly home.The DARPA plan, announced in October 2008, calls for a stealthy aircraft that can fly low over the sea until it nears its target, which could be an enemy ship, or a coastal site such as a port. It will then alight on the water and transform itself into a submarine that will cruise under water to within striking distance, all without alerting defences.

A spectacular haul of ancient flint tools has been recovered from a beach in Norfolk, pushing back the date of the first known human occupation of Britain by up to 250,000 years.While digging along the north-east coast of East Anglia near the village of Happisburgh, archaeologists discovered 78 pieces of razor-sharp flint shaped into primitive cutting and piercing tools.

Cairo, 7 July (AKI) - A team of archaeologists has discovered two colourful tombs, believed to be around 4,300 years old, at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egyptian culture minister Farouq Hosni said on Wednesday.Both tombs, found west of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in the Giza area, are carved into rocks and and date from the 6th Dynasty (2,374-2,191 BC), the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said.

Scientists have designed a nanoparticle that appears to effectively deliver genetic material into cells with minimal toxic effects.In lab experiments, the researchers have found that this device, a vector, is able to deliver DNA deeply enough into a cell to allow genetic material to be activated - a critical step in gene therapy. This vector is between 2 1/2 and 10 times more effective than other experimental materials, according to the research.

LONDON: European Space Agency has released what it says is the first ever image of the entire universe which will give scientists new insight into how the stars and galaxies form.The image produced by space telescope Planck can also tell how the Universe came to life after the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. The satellite was launched last year by the ESA under a project to record the origins of the universe by studying the heat left behind by the Big Bang.

HIV research is undergoing a renaissance that could lead to new ways to vaccinate against the AIDS virus and other viral diseases.In the latest development, U.S. government scientists say they have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered. They are now deploying the technique used to find those antibodies to identify antibodies to influenza viruses.

The Orlando-based owner of Red Lobster is trying to do something no one has ever done on a large commercial scale: Lobster farming.It won't be easy and will take years to figure out. Lobsters are tough to raise in captivity. They take a long time to grow, eat a lot and are susceptible to a contagious, fatal disease.

The final resting places of six German U-boats sunk in the final months of the Second World War's greatest naval conflict have finally been identified. After years of research, maritime experts say their discoveries will force historians to re-evaluate the battle for control of the Atlantic.

PESHAWAR: Archaeologists are resuming excavation at historic Gor Khatri monument to discover the exact archaeological profile of ancient Peshawar, presently enjoying the distinction of oldest living city in South Asia.A recent archaeology excavation at Gor Khatri has established the city's historical profile and now Peshawar is officially claimed by Archaeology Department to be the 'Oldest Living City' in South Asia, boasting a recorded history that goes back as far as at least 539 BC.

Remains of an early Neanderthal with a super strong arm suggest that Neanderthal fellows were heavily pumped up on male hormones, possessing a hormonal status unlike anything that exists in humans today, according to a recent paper.Neanderthal males probably evolved their ultra macho ways due to lifestyle, genes, climate and diet factors, suggests the study, published in the journal Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia.

Ruins of a fire temple dating back to the Sassanid era have recently been discovered during a series of archaeological excavations in the Vigol region near Kashan in central Iran.The discovery was made during the latest season of excavations, which are being carried out by a team of archaeologists led by Mohsen Javeri and began in mid-June, the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization announced in a press release on Monday.The cruciform temple has four entrances leading to the ruins of a fireplace embellished with unique stucco designs, Javeri said.

Four gigantic stones recently salvaged from the bottom of the Yangtze River near Jiaoshan Mountain in Zhenjiang City in east China's Jiangsu Province, may be the remnants of an inscription more than 1,000 years old.

James Leininger looks and acts like most other 11-year-olds; but, beneath the playful spirit is a very deep soul.

WAKEHURST PLACE, England -- Scientists at the Millennium Seed Bank in this idyllic rural area some 30 miles south of London are racing against time to gather seeds from as many of the world's plant species as they can before habitat loss and climate change erases them from the face of the Earth.In the decade since they started, it has been an uphill struggle against tight budgets, political whims and local suspicion. Now the toxic combination of the global recession, the rise of the climate skepticism, the failure to advance a global treaty and empty government coffers risk making it far harder.

Anxiety and uncertainty can cause us to become more idealistic and more radical in our religious beliefs, according to new findings by York University researchers, published in this month's issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.In a series of studies, more than 600 participants were placed in anxiety-provoking or neutral situations and then asked to describe their personal goals and rate their degree of conviction for their religious ideals. This included asking participants whether they would give their lives for their faith or support a war in its defence.

NASA has confirmed that its Phoenix Mars Lander has not survived the harsh Red Planet arctic winter, and appears to have suffered serious ice damage to its solar panels.The agency has been attempting to contact the lander since January, in the slim hope it may have supported the weight of up to 30cm of accumulated carbon dioxide frost. However, NASA says that although its Odyssey orbiter last week "flew over the Phoenix landing site 61 times during a final attempt to communicate with the lander", Phoenix remained silent.

Research into artificial atoms could lead to one startling endpoint: programmable matter that changes its makeup at the flip of a switch.The hardest thing you can ask them is how old they are. The question seems to rock them back, to give them pause. "I guess I'm 38," one of them tells me uncertainly. "I must be 54," another answers, after even longer deliberation. It's not that these men are slow, it's that they're physicists. And they're involved in a new research area as promising as it is strange, so if they seem a little distracted, well, c'est la vie. Despite modesty and caution so deeply ingrained that it might well be genetic, they also project an air of barely contained excitement. They're building the future, and they know it.

A small black hole has been observed blowing a vast bubble of hot gas 1,000 light-years across.The gas is expanding because it is being heated by powerful particle "jets" being released by the black hole.The observations were made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile and Nasa's Chandra space observatory.Astronomers have unveiled the findings in the latest edition of Nature journal.

The proton seems to be 0.00000000000003 millimetres smaller than researchers previously thought, according to work published in today's issue of Nature1.The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace.

A beautiful Norfolk estuary with ample hunting, but watch out for those sabre-toothed cats.Norfolk just ain't what it used to be. Some 850,000 years ago, coniferous forests covered East Anglia, and on the floodplains of the Thames estuary roamed herds of giant elk, horses and mammoths. Early human hunters of the species Homo antecessor would have been spoilt for choice, according to a study published in Nature yesterday.

Archaeologists have begun a major dig to unearth the hidden mysteries of a buried ancient stone circle site that is ten times bigger than Stonehenge.The enormous 4,000 year old Marden Henge, in Wiltshire, is Britain's largest prehistoric structure stretching for 10.5 hectares, the equivalent of 10 football pitches.English Heritage is carrying out a six-week dig hoping to reveal the secrets behind the giant henge which has baffled historians for centuries.Most of the Neolithic henge has been destroyed over the years due to farming and erosion but minor excavations in 41 years ago estimate the site to between 2,000 and 2,400BC.

Two solar energy companies are looking to expand with the help of nearly $2 billion in new financing through the US Recovery Act, President Barack Obama announced over the weekend.During his weekly address, Obama said the Department of Energy would provide $1.45 billion in conditional commitment funds to Abengoa Solar, as well as additional funding to Abound Solar Manufacturing for three massive construction projects.Abengoa Solar plans to build the largest concentrating solar plants in the world in Arizona. When completed, the 250-megawatt facility known as Solana is expected to provide enough clean energy to power 70,000 homes.

A "psychic" octopus in Germany, which appears to have correctly predicted every World Cup game involving the national team so far, has picked Spain over Germany in the semi-final.

When Apollo astronauts first rounded the far side of the moon, they were stunned to find a very bright crescent of light glowing on the horizon at sunset. And, just before sunrise, faint columns of light appeared shortly after the glow.

A group of 15 monkeys at Kyoto University's primate research institute in Aichi Prefecture, which are the focus of a string of high-profile scientific studies, escaped from their forest home which is encased by a 17ft high electric fence.The monkeys made their bid for freedom by using tree branches to fling themselves one by one over the high voltage electric fence located nearly three metres away.However, despite the intelligence shown in their great escape, the primates appeared unsure as to what to do with their newfound freedom: the monkeys remained by the gates of the research centre and were lured back into captivity by scientists armed with peanuts.

Just like people in a bar or other noisy location, North American right whales increase the volume of their calls as environmental noise increases; and just like humans, at a certain point, it may become too costly to continue to shout, according to marine and acoustic scientists."The impacts of increases in ocean noise from human activities are a concern for the conservation of marine animals like right whales," said Susan Parks, assistant professor of acoustics and research associate, Applied Research Laboratory, Penn State. "The ability to change vocalizations to compensate for environmental noise is critical for successful communication in an increasingly noisy ocean.

A canister recovered from the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid and return to Earth, contains dust particles, say Japanese scientists.Japan's space agency (Jaxa) began to open the Hayabusa craft's sample container on 24 June.It has now revealed images of tiny dust particles inside the container.Whether the particles are from the near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, or from Earth is still unknown.Jaxa released two photographs of the inside of the Hayabusa sample container.

Clusters of heated, magnetic nanoparticles targeted to cell membranes can remotely control ion channels, neurons and even animal behavior, according to a paper published by University at Buffalo physicists in Nature Nanotechnology. The research could have broad application, potentially resulting in innovative cancer treatments that remotely manipulate selected proteins or cells in specific tissues, or improved diabetes therapies that remotely stimulate pancreatic cells to release insulin.The work also could be applied to the development of new therapies for some neurological disorders, which result from insufficient neuro-stimulation.

Physicists working at the CERN nuclear research lab on the border of Switzerland and France have generated the coldest particles of antimatter ever recorded.The team cooled down antiprotons to temperatures colder than the surface of Pluto, as low as -443 degrees F (9.26 kelvin) -- just 17 degrees above absolute zero. Physicists studying cold antimatter hope to ultimately glean insights into why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter.

Scientists have just returned from a voyage with samples of rare animals and more than 10 possible new species in a trip which they say has revolutionised their thinking about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean.One group of creatures they observed - and captured - during their six weeks in the Atlantic aboard the RRS James Cook is believed to be close to the missing evolutionary link between backboned and invertebrate animals.

Satish Kumar is an Indian, currently living in England, who has been a Jain monk and a nuclear disarmament advocate, and is the current editor of Resurgence, founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a "peace walk" with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries - Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.Visit his homepage at http://www.resurgence.org/, and see the Video Page for more interviews.

Rocks that may have originated deep within the Moon were spied on its surface by a Japanese probe.The Kaguya (Selene) mission surveyed Earth's satellite until a year ago.Scientists report in Nature Geoscience that it saw exposures of rocks rich in the mineral olivine in concentric rings around craters.

The use of the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, obtained from infusing the shredded stalk of the malpighiaceous plantBanisteriopsis caapi with the leaves of other plants such asPsychotria viridis, is growing in urban centers of Europe, South and North America in the last several decades. Despite this diffusion, little is known about its effects on emotional states. The present study investigated the effects of ayahuasca on psychometric measures of anxiety, panic-like and hopelessness in members of the Santo Daime, an ayahuasca-using religion. Standard questionnaires were used to evaluate state-anxiety (STAI-state), trait-anxiety (STAI-trait), panic-like (ASI-R) and hopelessness (BHS) in participants that ingested ayahuasca for at least 10 consecutive years. The study was done in the Santo Daime church, where the questionnaires were administered 1 h after the ingestion of the brew, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled procedure. While under the acute effects of ayahuasca, participants scored lower on the scales for panic and hopelessness related states. Ayahuasca ingestion did not modify state- or trait-anxiety. The results are discussed in terms of the possible use of ayahuasca in alleviating signs of hopelessness and panic-like related symptoms.

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

Researchers have simulated the sound of the Higgs Boson and other sub-atomic collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Which face is more attractive? If you chose the face on the left, you share the tastes of most heterosexual men. It is a composite face, or "morph", made from the faces of eight women with unusually small feet. The face on the right is a morph of eight women with unusually large feet.It's quite a difference, isn't it? Women with smaller feet have prettier faces, at least according to the men who took part in this study. So do women with longer thigh bones and narrower hips, as well as women who are taller overall. And the contest isn't even a close one. "These are the most strikingly different morphs I've ever seen," says Jeremy Atkinson, an evolutionary psychologist at the University at Albany, New York.

STEPHEN HAWKING is worried about aliens. The famous physicist recently suggested that we should be wary of contact with extraterrestrials, citing what happened to Native Americans when Europeans landed on their shores. Since any species that could visit us would be far beyond our own technological level, meeting them could be bad news.Hawking was extrapolating the possible consequences of my day job: a small but durable exercise known as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.Although we have yet to detect an alien ping, improvements in technology have encouraged us to think that, if transmitting extraterrestrials are out there, we might soon find them. That would be revolutionary. But some people, Hawking included, sense a catastrophe.

Just when did Egyptian pharaohs such as King Tut and Rameses II rule? Historians have heatedly debated the exact dates. Now a radiocarbon study concludes that much of the assumed chronology was right, though it corrects some controversial dates and may overturn a few pet theories."This is an extremely important piece of research that shows clearly that historical dating methods and radiocarbon dates are compatible for ancient Egypt," says Kate Spence, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

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This unique dialogue brings together two leading counterculture thinkers, Daniel Pinchbeck author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age, and Breaking Open the Head, and Graham Hancock author of Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural and most recently the fantasy adventure novel Entangled. Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar "end-times" date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995. Hancock's evidence for a great lost civilisation wiped out in a global cataclysm 12,500 years ago is explored in depth together with his suggestion that the survivors of that civilisation may have sought to pass down a message to the future and indeed specifically to us in the twenty-first century -- a warning that the next great lost civilisation may be our own. From the geology of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Egypt to the mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant, from ancient maps showing the world as it looked during the last Ice Age to out-of-place artefacts indicative of high technology in ancient times, the discussion ranges widely across some of the most intriguing evidence for an immense forgotten episode in human history, and moves on to consider the spiritual crisis of the modern age. Could a new paradigm emerge from our present state of chaos? Hancock and Pinchbeck see hope in efforts by people all around the planet to reclaim sovereignty over their own consciousness, and identify a powerful role for shamanistic visionary plants such as Ayahuasca and Psilocybin in ushering in a gentler, less toxic, more nurturing state of mind. "It does seem like when you ingest them," says Pinchbeck, "you get a lot of messages about how to reintegrate into the larger community of life." For further information see http://www.realitysandwich.com/, and for Graham's latest book see http://www.entangledthebook.com/.

Eating all your vegetables was a lot better for you in the '50s. Store-bought veggies weren't as pretty back then, but according to USDA data, they were packed with a lot more nutrients than their modern counterparts. The likely reason for the nutritional drop is that hybrid crops are often bred for size and color, not nutrients. Below, the stats for a few crops that have gone to seed.

Everybody likes a good soak in a hot bath from time to time. But new research suggests that some dinosaurs took it to the extreme, laying their eggs in the steaming hot soils near hot springs and Old Faithful-like geysers in what is now northwestern Argentina.In the Cretaceous period over a hundred million years ago, Argentina's Sanagasta Valley was alive with hydrothermal activity, much like Yellowstone National Park or Iceland are today. Tunnels of near-boiling, mineral-rich water crisscrossed the subsurface (figures below, from the paper), and explosive geysers pockmarked the landscape. Doesn't seem like a very inviting place to raise a family.

Famous for its crater-pocked face, it now turns out that the moon has whiskers too. How did the moon get such adornments?Slender wisps of carbon graphite, rolled up into sheets just a single atom thick, have been found in a sample of lunar rock. The best bet is that they arrived in a meteor shower that may also have dumped molecules essential for life.

NASA may not be sending astronauts back to the moon anytime this decade, but the space agency hopes to give virtual explorers a sense of what life on the moon would be like in a new computer game launching this month.The game, "Moonbase Alpha," will allow players to work together in a futuristic lunar base. It will be available for PC download from Valve's Steam network on July 6. Players must tackle the challenge of restoring oxygen flow and critical systems after a meteor strike cripples a solar array and life support system.

This is the extraordinary place where we all live - the Universe.The picture is the first full-sky image from Europe's Planck telescope which was sent into space last year to survey the "oldest light" in the cosmos.It took the 600m-euro observatory just over six months to assemble the map.It shows what is visible beyond the Earth to instruments that are sensitive to light at very long wavelengths - much longer than what we can sense with our eyes.

For more than a century, neuroscientists believed that the brains of humans and other mammals differed from the brains of other animals, such as birds (and so were presumably better). This belief was based, in part, upon the readily evident physical structure of the neocortex, the region of the brain responsible for complex cognitive behaviors.

Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, died from swallowing a lethal drug cocktail and not from a snake bite, a new study claims.According to Christoph Schäfer, a German historian and professor at the University of Trier, the legendary beauty queen was unlikely to have committed suicide by letting an asp -- an Egyptian cobra -- sink into her flesh.

PALERMO - The wreck of a Roman ship from the first century AD which is still whole and has over 500 wide-mouthed amphorae onboard has been discovered to the south of the island of Panarea. The discovery, which was made by the Sea Superintendence together with the American Foundation 'Aurora Trust' and the support of the Environment Ministry, was illustrated in a press conference this morning in Palermo by the Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage, Gaetano Armao, and by the Superintendent, Sebastiano Tusa.

To the untrained eye, University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Craig Lee's recent discovery of a 10,000-year-old wooden hunting weapon might look like a small branch that blew off a tree in a windstorm.Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Lee, a research associate with CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research who found the atlatl dart, a spear-like hunting weapon, melting out of an ice patch high in the Rocky Mountains close to Yellowstone National Park.

An ARCHAEOLOGICAL dig where the Orkney Venus was found last year has entered an "exciting phase" as excavations resumed.Archaeologists hope the Links of Noltland dig will reveal more about people who lived on the Orkney island of Westray thousands of years ago.

Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an inaudible music, a 'harmony of the spheres'. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books.

A Greek mans home is not necessarily his castle. Land can be owned, houses and businesses can be built, but only the land above ground belongs to the owner. Whatever is beneath the ground belongs to Greece. The law is very strict concerning ancient sites and artefacts. If something is discovered below ground it must be turned over to the Greek government and the owner will not become rich from his find as those who own oil land do, but is more likely to lose it.

Researchers are one step closer to identifying the origin of two historic cannons found more than two years ago near Arch Cape. They also can now say conclusively where the remarkably well-preserved cannons were made.Tualatin beachcomber Miranda Petrone spotted a part of one of the cannons while walking on the beach with her dad, Michael Petrone, in February 2008. They didn't know what they'd stumbled upon until they dug deeper and recognized the emerging shape. The second cannon was soon discovered nearby. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department removed the antique weapons from the beach and stored them first in water tanks, then moved them to the Center for Marine Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

If you took biology and natural history years ago, you learned a fascinating tale of a microbe dominated primeval earth. In this story, one-celled critters swarmed in primeval oceans, blissfully free of larger predators, for billions of years. Then along came snowball earth, followed by the blooming Cambrian Explosion over half a billion years ago that changed everything.

An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.