Newsdesk Archive

A grave of a man filled with burial gifts, dating from the early Neolithic period, was recently discovered by archaeologists Georgi Ganetsovski from the Vratsa History Museum, during the renewed excavations of the prehistoric settlement in the Valoga area near the north-western Bulgarian village of Ohoden.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL June 17, 2010 -- In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt.The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of Egyptian history with archaeological phases at Tell el-Dab'a, the ancient capital of the Hyksos, located in the northeastern region of the Nile delta, do not fit in terms of radiocarbon dating.

It's already been shown that hyenas ate humans, but did early humans likewise dine on hyenas? They might have, say Spanish researchers who found evidence of human "processing" of hyena bones in an ancient hyena den."Although the interaction between hyenas and hominids is a constant throughout human evolution, consumption of these animals by our ancestors has never before been documented," said researcher Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo of the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. His paper announcing the discovery appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Taphonomy.

ADELAIDE, Australia - A team of scientists flew to the Australian Outback on Monday and recovered a Japanese space capsule that they hope contains asteroid samples providing clues into the evolution of the solar system.The Hayabusa explorer returned to Earth overnight after a seven-year, 4-billion mile (6-billion kilometer) journey, burning apart on re-entry in a spectacular fireball just after jettisoning the capsule. It was the first time a spacecraft successfully landed on an asteroid and returned to Earth.

An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form, scientists now say.From the tiniest bacteria to the complex human body, all living beings require an energy-transporting molecule called ATP to survive. Often likened to a "rechargeable battery," ATP stores chemical energy in a form that can be used by organic matter.

Apocalyptic thought has a tradition that dates to the Persian prophet Zoroaster in the 14th century BC. Recently, anxiety has grown over the prediction of the end of the world in the Mayan calendar.It's true that the Mayan odometer will hit zeros on 21 December 2012, as it reaches the end of a 394-year cycle called a baktun. But this baktun is part of a larger 8,000-year cycle called a pictun, and there's no evidence that anything astronomically untoward will happen as the current baktun slides into the next. However, that hasn't stopped the feverish speculating that sells books and cinema tickets.

Goodbye computer mouse, keyboard and monitor.Say hello to a new, simpler era of human-computer interaction -- this time, with no clunky hardware standing between you and digital information.In this new world, there are options aplenty.

Hundreds of indigenous Canadians are to give evidence before a commission of their experiences at state-funded schools set up to enforce assimilation.About 150,000 children attended the Church-run boarding schools which operated up to the 1990s.The pupils were forced to abandon their cultural identity and many were physically and sexually abused.The truth and reconciliation commission is part of a settlement agreed by the Canadian government four years ago.

Experts have used scientific dating techniques to verify the historical chronology of ancient Egypt.Radiocarbon dating was used to show that the chronology of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms is indeed accurate.The researchers dated seeds found in pharaohs' tombs, including some from the tomb of the King Tutankhamun.They write in the journal Science that some of the samples are more than 4,500 years old.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has completed a visit to London marking the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's defiant wartime broadcast.After visiting the BBC radio studio where the general urged France to resist the Nazis, he expressed "eternal gratitude" for Britain's war effort.Mr Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni met the Prince of Wales to lay wreaths at Gen de Gaulle's statue.The president and British PM David Cameron also met 200 WWII veterans.

WE humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age.Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox."Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he told The Australian this week.

Miami Beach voters could cast ballots for Mary Jane come November should a budding effort to decriminalize marijuana possession in the city gain traction.

The researchers from three different countries took more than three years to come up with a mathematical formula to mimic what most children can do by the age of 10.The complex equation, which takes into account inertia, gyroscopic and centrifugal forces as well as gravity, has 31 numbers and symbols and nine sets of brackets.The formula boils down to: Inertia forces + gyroscopic forces + the effects of gravity and centrifugal forces = the leaning of the body and the torque applied to the handlebars of a bike.

Chronic pain can disrupt brain function and cause problems such as disturbed sleep, depression, anxiety and difficulty making simple decisions, a U.S. study finds.

A bloody 10-year dispute in the Ugandan jungle ended in mid-2009 with the victors seizing territory held by the vanquished. The episode represents the first solid evidence that chimpanzees kill their rivals to acquire land, and could help explain the evolutionary origins of some aspects of belligerent as well as cooperative behaviour in humans.John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and his team have observed the Ngogo chimpanzee troop in Uganda's Kibale National Park for over a decade. Between 1999 and 2009, they witnessed 18 lethal attacks led by Ngogo males on another, smaller group of chimps. They also found indirect evidence of another three lethal attacks, making the Ngogo troop one of the most violent groups of chimpanzees so far studied.

Bands of chimpanzees violently kill individuals from neighboring groups in order to expand their own territory, according to a 10-year study of a chimp community in Uganda that provides the first definitive evidence for this long-suspected function of this behavior.University of Michigan primate behavioral ecologist John Mitani's findings are published in the June 22 issue of Current Biology.

The bio-tech company Monsanto can sell genetically modified seeds before safety tests on them are completed, the US Supreme Court has ruled.A lower court had barred the sale of the modified alfalfa seeds until an environmental impact study could be carried out.But seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices decided that ruling was unconstitutional.

I'm sure you remember how just 18 short years ago a German engineer named Rudolf Gantenbrink sent his robot 'Upuaut 2' up the (so-called) air shafts in the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and discovered a 'door' blocking the southern passage from the Queen's chamber. Well, it seems that things are progressing quickly, and the Egyptian authorities - led by Dr Zahi Hawass - are already investigating them further. In a recent blog entry on his website, the Big Z informs us of the 'Djedi' team (may the force be with them) currently working in the Great Pyramid.

Sydney - A potential cancer drug developed from an Australian rainforest plant is set to progress to human trials after fighting off inoperable tumours in pets, the company behind it said on Monday.

After a year of tests, a hyperspectral spy satellite is being called into service this weekend as a military reconnaissance tool, the Air Force says.The Tactical Satellite-3, or TacSat-3, uses hyperspectral imaging to identify objects of interest in the ground and supply coordinates for them. Within 10 minutes of passing overhead, laptop-sized ground terminals can mark points of interest for combat troops, as the Register reports.

The complexity of the brain makes it one of the most fascinating and sophisticated pieces of biology that we know of. But when things start to go sideways up there, modern medicine is often calls for treatments like surgery or shock stimulation, practices that can result in even more damage to fragile brain tissues. But a new method of noninvasive brain stimulation could diagnose and treat an array of neurological ailments using nothing but pulses of harmless ultrasound.

The Federal Aviation Administration wants you to fly the robot-friendly skies, but the regulatory overseer has more than a few challenges to overcome before it can extend that invitation in earnest. The FAA today announced it has added a research project aimed at figuring out exactly how the U.S. can safely fold unmanned aircraft into its national infrastructure and eventually the airspace it governs.

One of the world's hottest, sunniest spots will soon be home to the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, helping an oil-rich emirate achieve its renewable energy goals.Though the plant will produce 100 MW of electricity, it won't exactly wean Abu Dhabi off its bread and butter. It's a special kind of solar plant that uses oil along with the power of the sun.Abu Dhabi's state-owned renewable energy firm, Masdar, announced Wednesday that a French oil firm and a Spanish solar firm will build Shams 1 -- named for the Arabic word for sun -- starting later this year. Construction will take about two years.

Directed energy weapons -- the laser weapons of the future -- have shown promise in both their power and their precision. But there are some serious technological challenges involved in weaponizing devices like powerful chemical lasers, not least of which is dealing with the vast amounts of waste heat they generate. General Atomics recently tested a wax-fueled storage device that might just overcome that hurdle, opening the door to the next generation of energy weapons.

The fifth season of excavations at Akdepe settlement in Chandybil district of the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, has come to an end. Deputy Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan Professor Ovez Gundogdiev led the first national expedition.According to the Neitralny Turkmenistan newspaper, during the excavations the age of the settlement was defined. Until recently, Akdepe was dated to V-IV century BC, i.e. the Eneolithic age. However, the archeologists of the national expedition found pottery belonging to the Neolithic period (VI millennium BC), which corresponds to the Jeitun culture.

Sperm whale faeces may help oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air, scientists say.Australian researchers calculate that Southern Ocean sperm whales release about 50 tonnes of iron every year.This stimulates the growth of tiny marine plants - phytoplankton - which absorb CO2 during photosynthesis.The process results in the absorption of about 400,000 tonnes of carbon - more than twice as much as the whales release by breathing, the study says.

A solar-powered plane is getting ready to hit the skies once again - this time, at night.It will be the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by solar energy.Solar Impulse will lift off from an airfield in Switzerland, on a sunny day sometime at the end of June.

US scientists have created working liver grafts in the lab, and say the research could one day allow the growth of livers for transplant.There is a shortage of liver donors, but so far it has been difficult to grow replacement organs.In the work, published in Nature Medicine, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital, created successful grafts using rat cells.A UK expert said it was "a big step in the right direction".

The public wants a say in how research in to the manufacture of synthetic life is conducted, according to a report.The Synthetic Biology Public Dialogue was commissioned by the two UK research councils responsible for funding what has been dubbed "synthetic biology".It sets out to advise the funders of this research how best to proceed.The report revealed that people are comfortable with the the idea of creating life, but only if it is properly regulated.

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 latest Mars robot may be dead, but NASA scientists have plenty to keep them busy as they scout out four potential stomping grounds for an ambitious new rover pegged to be the next red planet explorer.NASA declared the Phoenix Mars lander its youngest Mars probe officially dead in late May after photos taken of it from orbit revealed substantial damage from its environment in the Martian arctic. Those photos came from the same powerful orbiter that has been searching for the ultimate drop zone for NASA's new Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) which is currently set for a November 2011 launch.

Giant reptiles that ruled dinosaur-era seas might have been warm-blooded, a new study says.Researchers found that ancient ocean predators possibly regulated their body temperatures, which allowed for aggressive hunting, deep diving, and fast swimming over long distances."These marine reptiles were able to maintain a high body temperature independently of the water temperature where they lived, from tropical to cold-temperate oceanic domains," said study co-author Christophe Lécuyer, a paleontologist at Université Claude Bernand Lyon 1 in France.

A new jumbo-sized genus and species of horned dinosaurs has been found in New Mexico.The Ojoceratops fowleri is the apparent ancestor of the more famous and common Triceratops and Torosaurus that lived at the end of the reign of dinosaurs 65 to 70 million years ago.The key to discovering the new species, pieces of which had been mistaken for a Torosaurus for more than 30 years, was fossil evidence of the frill on the beast's head, explain paleontologists.

3D has come a long way in the last 50 years. With the mega success of Avatar at the box office, and at least two 3-D channels in the works, the rush is on to bring dimensionality to the small screen.But one thing has stayed remarkably consistent: the eyewear. Those pesky, disposable 3-D glasses look just as awkward as they feel perched on the bridge of your nose. (And some people think that 3-D vision might actually be bad for you.

Belgium -- that land of chocolate and waffles (at least from an outsider's perspective) -- is certainly not the first country that would come to mind if we were to toss you the words "elections" and "turmoil" and "separatist movement" all in the same sentence.But the New Flemish Alliance (NVA) is a separatist party whose platform calls for the gradual dissolution of the Belgian state. And it's been successful in recent elections, raising the notion of a Belgium divided and the creation of two new nations.

Io is one of the four moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered after he turned his new telescope heavenward. They shocked him and his contemporaries because they demonstrated that heavenly bodies can orbit objects other than the Earth.Io in particular continues to amaze scientists. It orbits closer to the cloud tops of Jupiter than our moon does to the earth, and is strongly subjected to Jupiter's powerful gravitational field and its intense radiation belts.

A new type of baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has been developed which can efficiently ferment pentose sugars, as found in agricultural waste and hardwoods. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Biotechnology for Biofuels describe the creation of the new S. cerevisiae strain, TMB3130, which demonstrated significantly improved aerobic growth rate and final biomass concentration on sugar media composed of two pentoses, xylose and arabinose.

US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US "national asset".Local lobby groups and academics have rounded on the plan, saying that, rather than combat terrorists, it would actually do them "the biggest favour ever" by terrorising the rest of the world, which is now heavily reliant on cyberspace.The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.

"A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

MEXICO CITY.- After 5 years of uninterrupted archaeological, restoration and iconographic interpretation work, the Mexican delegation in charge of conservation at the Theban Tomb 39, in Egypt, will begin the 6th field season in September 2010. The goal is to open the site to public in 2013.Exploration at the Theban Tomb 39 continues to the exterior of it, since work at the interior is concluded, informed Dr. Angelina Macias Goytia, researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).The specialist mentioned that archaeological work to be conducted in September will focus on the retirement of 6 tons of debris accumulated from nearby hill runoffs. This material obstructs the line of sight of the 3,500 years old monument.

Ever since Tutankhamun's intact tomb was discovered in Egypt's Valley of Kings by the archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, the public has been enamoured of the boy pharaoh, who lived some 3200 years ago and died when he was only nineteen.Exhibits from Tutankhamun's gold-filled tomb have previously toured the world and have always attracted huge crowds. Now a major exhibition of King Tut's effects is back in New York, and on display at the Discovery Times Square Exposition are many of the exquisite objects that King Tut and his family used in his lifetime.

It might have been a treasured pet, or the victim of traditional destruction of property after its owner's death. The reason for its burial remains a mystery.But 18 centuries ago, someone carefully positioned the body of a small dog in what was likely a shallow grave in the marshlands of Laguna Canyon, then turned over a stone grinding bowl to cover the animal.Four years ago, the dog's burial place was discovered by archaeologists keeping watch for artifacts during the widening of Laguna Canyon Road.

PALAKKAD: Officials of the Archaeology Department who visited Dayananda Ashram at Puliyankad, near Kollengode, on Wednesday confirmed that the site was an old Megalithic settlement. The port-holed cists found there dated back to the Megalithic period of 1000 BC to 200 AD.

Syria (Idleb) - 54 Km away from Aleppo, lies the excavated site that used to be the capital of an ancient kingdom. Ebla the ancient city found at Tal Mardikh is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Syria.The name "Ebla" means "White Rock", and refers to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built.

Your mother was right: Fish really is "brain food." And it seems that even pre-humans living as far back as 2 million years ago somehow knew it.A team of researchers that included Johns Hopkins University geologist Naomi Levin has found that early hominids living in what is now northern Kenya ate a wider variety of foods than previously thought, including fish and aquatic animals such as turtles and crocodiles. Rich in protein and nutrients, these foods may have played a key role in the development of a larger, more human-like brain in our early forebears, which some anthropologists believe happened around 2 million years ago, according to the researchers' study.

An ancient town that was discovered 6.3 kilometers west of the Lop Nor Creek Tomb in Xinjiang is most likely the mysterious town of Zhubin, according to a report from Chongqing Evening News.After more than one year of investigation and study, Lu Houyuan and others recently released the important research results in China's authoritative magazine, the Chinese Science Bulletin.

London, England (CNN) -- The British government Tuesday released a damning report into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, placing blame overwhelmingly on the British soldiers who killed 14 people in Northern Ireland that day.The 1972 shootings at a civil rights march in Londonderry hardened anti-British sentiments in Northern Ireland, according to analysts, and led to many fresh recruits to the Irish Republican Army. Three decades of violence followed, known as The Troubles, in which almost 3,000 people died.There was some provocation by the Irish Republican Army in Derry on that day, but nothing that justified the shootings of civilians, the report found.

An inexpensive but unlicensed drug called bevacizumab can prevent sight loss for people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to new research. Bevacizumab is many times cheaper than a similar, alternative drug, but was originally developed to treat bowel cancer, and hadn't previously been tested as a treatment for AMD.

Back in 1970, President Richard Nixon was having a lot of trouble trying to get something (anything!) accomplished in Vietnam. So he decided to wage a war that he thought he could win, and most of the American populace would support -- a war on drugs. He signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. He said, "Public enemy no. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

Romanian experts have discovered the most ancient cave paintings found to date in Central Europe, aged up to 35,000 years old, Romanian and French scientists said Sunday.The pictures show animals including a buffalo, a horse and even a rhinoceros.

Guam- It's been nearly a week since an Ancient Chamorro burial pit was discovered in Agat. and since then, one local archaeologist is taking steps to advise the public on how to identify and protect this part of Guam's rich cultural history.

An archaeologist has called for the wreck of the HMS Victory to be brought to the surface to avoid further damage.Dr Sean Kingsley is an archaeological consultant for Odyssey Marine Exploration, who found the shipwreck in the English Channel in April 2008.He said the site would continue to suffer damage from bottom fishing and could not be protected by exclusion zones as it is too far from land.

"If one finds something once, it's accidental. If it is found twice, it's puzzling. If found thrice, there is a pattern," the archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte say.In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.

MEXICO CITY.- Recent interdisciplinary investigations regarding 31 marine fossils found at Palenque Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas, reveal that Maya people conceived their beliefs parting from this kind of vestiges, so their idea of the underworld was associated to water.For Palenque inhabitants, marine fossils were the convincing proof of the land being covered by the sea long time ago, and parting from this fact they created their idea of the origin of the world, declared archaeologist Martha Cuevas, responsible, with geologist Jesus Alvarado, of research conducted by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

NANJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Buddhist monks and archaeologists revealed what they believed to be top part of the skull of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, Saturday morning in east China's Jiangsu Province.The object, taken out for the first time around 9 a.m. from a miniature gold coffin nestled inside a silver one, was part of Buddha's parietal bone, said Master Chuan Yin, president of the Buddhist Association of China, after attending the worshipping ceremony held in Qixia Temple in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

Slowly but surely an extinct glacier in a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes is being returned to its former colour, not by falling snow or regenerated ice sheets, but by whitewash.It is the first experimental step in an innovative plan to recuperate Peru's disappearing Andean glaciers.But there is debate between those who dismiss the idea as just plain daft and those who think it could be a simple but brilliant solution, or at least one which should be put to the test.

By building a machine that uses 2,000 bouncing beads to spin a paddle and perform work, researchers from the University of Twente have finally realized a long-debated thought experiment. A similar machine was first proposed in 1912 by the Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski. In his thought experiment, he suggested that tiny moving particles could generate enough force to spin a windmill-type paddle. A locking mechanism such as a pawl could prevent backward motion, forcing the wheel to move in the forward direction only.

A new book by researchers at Oregon State University uses the snapshot-in-time miracle of amber to offer a pioneering viewpoint on all types of animal and plant fossils - not just what ancient life forms looked like, but how they functioned and behaved, especially at the moment of death.

Even before they learn to speak, babies are organizing information about numbers, space and time in more complex ways than previously realized, a study led by Emory University psychologist Stella Lourenco finds. "We've shown that 9-month-olds are sensitive to 'more than' or 'less than' relations across the number, size and duration of objects. And what's really remarkable is they only need experience with one of these quantitative concepts in order to guess what the other quantities should look like," Lourenco says.

If you've ever been lucky enough to see a hole-punch cloud form in the afternoon sky (above), you'd be forgiven for thinking a UFO landed somewhere near by. But according to a new study, the clouds form when much more pedestrian flying objects -- turboprop and jet airplanes -- fly through and change water droplets into ice crystals.

In a quest to understand how life began on Earth, scientists have discovered that a blast of ultraviolet light may have been the spoon that stirred the simmering primordial soup. The research demonstrates a more commonplace scenario for creating RNA -- believed to be an early coding system for life. And that opens a wider door for life's evolution not only on Earth, but possibly elsewhere in the solar system and beyond.

How many children people have can be predicted by their personality, at least in certain populations with high birth rates, a new study finds. For women, high levels of neuroticism, a personality trait meaning a tendency to feel anxious and moody, was associated with having more children. Not surprisingly, extroversion was linked to more offspring for men.

New research by astronomers in the Physics Department at Durham University suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong. Graduate student Utane Sawangwit and Professor Tom Shanks looked at observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite to study the remnant heat from the Big Bang. The two scientists find evidence that the errors in its data may be much larger than previously thought, which in turn makes the standard model of the Universe open to question.

People who regularly meditate apparently find pain less unpleasant, because their brains are busy focusing on the present and so anticipate the pain less, blunting its emotional impact, a new study reveals.

As early as May 9 it was announced that FEMA evacuation protocol for forest fires in and around Tampa, Florida could be activated at a moment's notice in the event of the oil slick approaching Florida's coastline. One proposal is to undergo a 'controlled burn' of surface oil in the Gulf to prevent the oil reaching Florida's coast. This would result in highly toxic fumes blowing ashore. In fact, toxic fumes have already been reported elsewhere as Gulf residents complain of breathing difficulties and nausea.

SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years. But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama

The sun waking from a deep sleep may not sound like such a bad thing and years ago it might not have been.However in today's world reliant on technology for the basics of everyday life, increasing levels of solar activity and the flares from the consequent 'space storm' could wreak complete havoc.

In a new study, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that eating five or more servings of white rice per week was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, eating two or more servings of brown rice per week was associated with a lower risk of the disease.The researchers estimated that replacing 50 grams of white rice (just one third of a typical daily serving) with the same amount of brown rice would lower risk of type 2 diabetes by 16%. The same replacement with other whole grains, such as whole wheat and barley, was associated with a 36% reduced risk.

A US-based physics experiment has found a clue as to why the world around us is composed of normal matter and not its shadowy opposite: anti-matter.Anti-matter is rare today; it can be produced in "atom smashers", in nuclear reactions or by cosmic rays.But physicists think the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and its opposite.

On June 3rd, 2010, something hit Jupiter. A comet or asteroid descended from the black of space, struck the planet's cloudtops, and disintegrated, producing a flash of light so bright it was visible in backyard telescopes on Earth. Soon, observers around the world were training their optics on the impact site, waiting to monitor the cindery cloud of debris which always seems to accompany a strike of this kind.

Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans.Paleoanthropologists from Brazil, Chile and Germany compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, dating back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with the more recent remains of more than 300 Amerindians.

A potential cancer drug developed from an Australian rainforest plant is set to progress to human trials after fighting off inoperable tumours in pets, the company behind it said Monday?

The Japanese space capsule which landed in the Australian Outback on Sunday night (local time) has been recovered.The Hayabusa pod was picked up by a helicopter team and transferred to a control centre on the Woomera Prohibited Area.The canister, which is believed to hold the first samples ever grabbed from the surface of an asteroid, will now be shipped to Tokyo.

This is an illustration of what Mars might have looked like some 3.5 billion years ago when an ocean likely covered one-third of the planet's surface, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. (Illustration by University of Colorado) Credit: University of ColoradoA vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Colorado at Boulder scientists.

A vast ocean covered the northern lowlands of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, suggest planetary scientists.In the current Nature Geoscience journal, Gaetano Di Achille and Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado, Boulder, looked at Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) measurements made from NASA's 1996 Mars Global Surveyor. The pair find 17 of 52 delta features appearing in the data correspond to a common sea level, suggesting an ocean once covered about 1/3 of Mars.

The North Atlantic Ocean is looking more like a rubbish bin, with plastic and polystyrene flotsom spreading far and wide, according to four French explorers just back from eight months at sea.Once out of the Brittany port of Trinite-sur-Mer in October, they typically spotted at least four to five pieces of trash a day -- only to sail into a veritable floating dump in April in the Sargasso Sea around Bermuda.

SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

It's supposed to be the "gold standard" of evidence supporting the standard model of cosmology – including dark matter, dark energy and the exponential expansion after the big bang known as inflation.But could it be wrong? Might misleading measurements by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have been leading us towards the wrong theory of cosmology? One astrophysicist thinks so, and he says the planet Jupiter is to blame – though others insist that there is nothing amiss.

BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhuanet) -- A batch of new relics from the ancient sunken ship Nan'ao 1 is open to the media. They are among the nearly five thousand antiques found underwater. Not only broken pieces are on display but well-preserved ones are also being shown.

Israeli archeologists have found a large cache of intact pagan vessels piled one atop the other in a natural hollow of bedrock in Tel Qashish, southeast of Haifa.Used by the ancient Canaanite people in a pagan cult that worshiped idols, the 3,500-year-old vessels belonged to a previously undiscovered temple.

Scientists say a world-first space landing in South Australia's outback should create a spectacular fireball.Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa was due to re-enter the earth's atmosphere around midnight (AEST) on Sunday.It will end a seven-year, five billion-kilometre journey to an ancient far-flung asteroid to collect the first ever asteroid material to be brought to Earth, and it will be Australia's first ever space landing.

It's the only disease that humankind has successfully wiped out - and the eradication of smallpox was brought about by Edward Jenner.He famously vaccinated a young boy against the deadly disease back in 1796.

Harbour seals may be able to detect fish up to 100m (328ft) away using only their whiskers, say scientists.Researchers used an artificial fish in their experiment, to create a "trail" in the water that a seal could detect.The described how a trained seal, named Henry, was able to indicate, with a twitch of its head, whether the fish moved to the right or to the left.

Heat might explain why we lost our fur and now strike an upright and slim (in theory, anyway) pose.If our ancestors lived somewhere really hot, the theory goes, it would have made sense for us to lose body hair, start sweating more, become slender and even walk upright -- to create distance between our bodies and the hot ground.

A team led by University of Arizona astronomer Joshua Eisner has observed in unprecedented detail the processes giving rise to stars and planets in nascent solar systems. The discoveries, published in the Astrophysical Journal, provide a better understanding of the way hydrogen gas from the protoplanetary disk is incorporated into the star.

Almost the entire adult population of Scotland (97.5%) are likely to be either cigarette smokers, heavy drinkers, physically inactive, overweight or have a poor diet, according to a new study.

If you think summer in your hometown is hot, consider it fortunate that you don't live in the Turkana Basin of Kenya, where the average daily temperature has reached the mid-90s or higher, year-round, for the past 4 million years.The need to stay cool in that cradle of human evolution may relate, at least in part, to why pre-humans learned to walk upright, lost the fur that covered the bodies of their predecessors and became able to sweat more, Johns Hopkins University earth scientist Benjamin Passey said.

Blimps and balloons are routinely used on Earth for aerial surveillance or to conduct research in hard-to-reach places. Similar unmanned flying vehicles, or aerobots, could open up new vistas in planetary exploration, providing an inexpensive way to observe large swaths of alien terrain without ever touching the ground.

In the time before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a cooler central Pacific Ocean has been connected with drought conditions in Europe and North America that may be responsible for famines and the disappearance of cliff dwelling people in the American West.A new study from the University of Miami (UM) has found a connection between La Niña-like sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific and droughts in western Europe and in what later became the southwestern United States and Mexico, as published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The 2006 launch of the multinational Hinode satellite changed the picture of the Sun for astrophysicists. For two astrophysicists in particular, the resulting imagery offered a voyage of discovery and the thrill of unraveling a long-held solar mystery.Earth's atmosphere can obscure the view of unaided ground-based telescopes, but, unimpeded by this problem, the high-resolution telescope flying on Hinode captures images of the Sun in unparalleled detail.

They are more than a 100 times the mass of the Sun, glow more than 10 million times as brightly, and, over the course of their lives, spew out more than half their mass in the form of a relentless stellar wind. Yet the origin of the young massive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy has been a mystery for astronomers for decades.

THE federal government wants your personal internet data, and they don't want to have to apply to a court to get it.Revelations that the federal government wants Australia's 400-odd internet service providers (ISPs) to log and retain customers' web browsing data, so law enforcement can access it during criminal cases, have sparked alarm in the industry.

JAXA confirmed that the third trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-3) was successfully carried out for the Asteroid Explorer "HAYABUSA" at 1:44 p.m. on June 5 (Japan Standard Time.) This operation completed the guidance of the HAYABUSA from the Earth's outer rim to the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia.

Peering through a transmission electron microscope (TEM), researchers from Germany, Spain, and the UK have observed graphene sheets transforming into spherical fullerenes, better known as buckyballs, for the first time. The experiment could shed light on the process of how fullerenes are formed, which has so far remained mysterious on the atomic scale.

IN THE movie Avatar, the Na'vi people of Pandora plug themselves into a network that links all elements of the biosphere, from phosphorescent plants to pterodactyl-like birds. It turns out that Pandora's interconnected ecosystem may have a parallel back on Earth: sulphur-eating bacteria that live in muddy sediments beneath the sea floor.Some researchers believe that bacteria in ocean sediments are connected by a network of microbial nanowires. These fine protein filaments could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Now Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and his team have found tantalising evidence to support this controversial theory.

Six hundred recent observations of the Mars landscape from an orbiting telescopic camera include scenes of sinuous gullies, geometrical ridges and steep cliffs.Each of the 600 newly released observations from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter covers an area of several square miles on Mars and reveals details as small as desks.

A warmer Arctic climate is influencing the air pressure at the North Pole and shifting wind patterns on our planet. We can expect more cold and snowy winters in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America."Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception," says Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. Dr Overland is at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) to chair a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.Loss of sea ice causes major climate change.

Your mother was right: Fish really is "brain food." And it seems that even pre-humans living as far back as 2 million years ago somehow knew it.A team of researchers that included Johns Hopkins University geologist Naomi Levin has found that early hominids living in what is now northern Kenya ate a wider variety of foods than previously thought, including fish and aquatic animals such as turtles and crocodiles. Rich in protein and nutrients, these foods may have played a key role in the development of a larger, more human-like brain in our early forebears, which some anthropologists believe happened around 2 million years ago, according to the researchers' study.

Melting glaciers in the Himalayas will have varying impacts on the region's five major river basins, a study says.Changes to the flow of meltwater as a result of global warming is likely to have a "severe" impact on food security in some areas, say scientists.Yet people living elsewhere are likely to see food productivity increase, they added in a paper published in Science.Overall, the food security of 4.5% of 1.4bn people in the region is threatened, the researchers conclude.More than 1.4bn people depend on water from the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze and Yellow rivers.