Newsdesk Archive

The coastal savannas of French Guiana dotted with thousands of small mounds have given up some of their secrets, thanks to an interdisciplinary European collaborative research project, financed by two CNRS programs. The researchers discovered that these mounds are agricultural raised fields, vestiges of a pre-Columbian agricultural system constructed over 900 years ago. Above all, the researchers showed that following the abandonment of this system, these well-drained islands in seasonally flooded environments were colonized by other organisms (animals and plants) that have maintained these small elevated structures up to the present day.

LITTERED across the hills of Dartmoor in Devon, southern England, around 80 rows and circles of stones stand sentinel in the wild landscape. Now, striking similarities between one of these monuments and Stonehenge, 180 kilometres to the east, suggest they may be the work of the same people.The row of nine stones on Cut Hill was discovered in 2004 on one of the highest, most remote hills of Dartmoor national park. "It is on easily the most spectacular hill on north Dartmoor," says Andrew Fleming, president of the Devon Archaeological Society. "If you were looking for a distant shrine in the centre of the north moor, that's where you would put it.".

Archaeologists working in Turkey have unearthed an Assyrian tablet dating to around 670 BCE that "could have served as a model for the biblical description of God's covenant with the Israelites." What this fascinating discovery suggests, of course, is that the Bible tale of a divine pact does not represent "history" or a "factual" event, but is instead a fictional rewrite, borrowing or plagiarism of this older Assyrian treaty.

Colorado researchers have discovered and partially mapped a major urban center once occupied by the Purépecha of Mexico, a little-known people who fought the Aztecs to a standstill and who controlled much of western Mexico until diseases brought by the Spanish decimated them.The "proto-urban center," which researchers have not yet named, sat on volcanic rock on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in the central Mexican state of Michoacan, now a tourist destination. It supported as many as 40,000 people until the consolidation of the Purépecha empire about AD 1350 led most of its inhabitants to relocate to the new capital of Tzintzuntzan, six miles away.

A bejeweled mummy dressed in Roman robes has emerged from the sands of Egypt's Bahariya Oasis, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Monday.Entombed in a decorated gypsum sarcophagus, the 38-inch tall mummy belonged to a woman or girl who died in the Greco-Roman period about 2,300 years ago.Unearthed in a rock-hewn tomb at a modern construction site near the town of Bawiti, in Bahariya Oasis, some 185 miles southwest of Cairo, the mummy points to the existence of a large Greco-Roman necropolis nearby, Mahmoud Affifi, director of Cairo and Giza antiquities, said in a statement.

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- The wreck of the British warship that Paul Revere eluded at the start of his famous ride has resurfaced in Cape Cod's shifting sands, WCVB-TV in Boston reported.About a dozen timbers from the HMS Somerset III were spotted on a Provincetown beach after erosion from a series of powerful storms that ravaged the Cape Cod beaches in March.The Somerset was a "British warship that helped shape the course of American history. With 64 mounted guns and a crew of 400, the Somerset brought British power to the North Atlantic and Mediterranean," wrote National Park Service historian William Burke.

Remains of a 1.9-million-year-old human ancestor are so well preserved that they may contain a remnant of the male individual's brain, according to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, where the remains were recently examined.While DNA is very fragile and deteriorates over time, the discovery opens up the remote possibility that soft tissue with preserved DNA still exists in the prehistoric hominid, which could hold an important place on the human family tree.

Against an Egyptian Origin of the Giza Pyramids, by Nick Kollerstrom, PhD.Nick Kollerstrom is historian of science, a former honorary research fellow in Science and Technology Studies at University College, London (UCL), and a former lunar gardening correspondent for the BBC. He is the author or co-author of a number of books, including Gardening and Planting by the Moon (an annual series beginning 1980), Newton's Forgotten Lunar Theory (2000), Crop Circles (2002), and Terror on the Tube (2009)

One of the concerns that has been voiced about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is that it could result in the formation of black holes that could destroy the world. While most scientists dismiss claims that anything produced in the LHC would destroy the planet, there are some that think that black formation could be seen with LHC collisions of sufficiently high energy. This idea has gotten a further boost from recent efforts by Matthew Choptuik at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and Frans Pretorius, at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Scientists have shown in multiple contexts that DNA damage over our lifetimes is a key mechanism behind the development of cancer and other age-related diseases. Not everyone gets these diseases, because the body has multiple mechanisms for repairing the damage caused to DNA by aging, the environment and other human behaviors - but the mechanisms behind certain kinds of DNA repair have not been well-understood.

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner wants to attempt a record-breaking free fall from 120,000 feet above the Earth. It's not the kind of jump a person can do with a conventional sky-diving suit and helmet. After all, Baumgartner will break the speed of sound during his fall. He will need life-support.To that end, the space equipment manufacturer David Clark Company developed a special pressurized suit and helmet for Baumgartner that provides an artificial atmosphere as well as providing insulation against fire and extreme cold.

Evidence found by NASA's Galileo spacecraft of an ocean on Europa put the giant Jovian moon on the A-list of worlds worth investigating for signs of extraterrestrial life.Exploring that ocean won't be easy: It's covered by ice perhaps as much as 100 kilometers (62 miles) thick. But late last year, a group of NASA-funded scientists and engineers took an important step toward figuring out how it might be done.The ENDURANCE project (ENDURANCE stands for Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-Ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer) wrapped up its second field season at Lake Bonney, an ice-covered lake in Antarctica's Dry Valleys.

Space enthusiasts are celebrating nearly five decades of human spaceflight - and anxiously awaiting word on what will happen in the decade ahead.The celebration reaches its peak on Monday - which happens to be the 49th anniversary of the first human flight into outer space, made by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, as well as the 29th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. Back in 2001, spaceflight fans began organizing "Yuri's Night" parties to mark the occasion.

The Obama administration is promoting nuclear power, but at the same time it has put an end to plans to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nev.Now, a blue-ribbon committee is pondering what to do with the waste. One option under consideration is a process that would dramatically reduce its radioactive lifetime.Less than 1 percent of spent reactor fuel is made up of the nasty radioactive elements that last hundreds of thousands of years.

Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth.The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.Mr Obama said he was giving Nasa challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years.

The discovery of moa bones and other artefacts in Devonport on Auckland's North Shore is an extremely rare find, says the Historic Places Trust.The bones and an adze head were found in Torpedo Bay by workers at the new site for the navy museum.The site was significant because it was believed to be where some of the very first settlers landed in Auckland, possibly about 900AD.

April 12th marked the 49th anniversary of human spaceflight, when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth in 1961. At this moment, 13 humans are currently in low-Earth orbit, aboard the International Space Station. Several were already aboard the ISS when a Soyuz TMA-18 brought a fresh crew up from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 2nd - they were later joined by the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the 131st shuttle mission to date (only three remaining launches scheduled). NASA recently signed a new deal with Russia for six more round-trips to the ISS, at a cost of $55.8 million per seat. Collected here are recent photos of the Space Station, its current crew, their launch vehicles, and the views from above. (38 photos total).

There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before."We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK.

An ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano grounded all but emergency flights above Britain today, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.With the high-flying ash a threat to aircraft, air traffic control company Nats closed all controlled UK airspace until at least 7am tomorrow.But Nats dismissed any suggestion it had over-reacted, saying safety was paramount.

Just over a week ago, a coal-carrying ship - the Chinese Shen Neng 1 - ran around on Douglas Shoals in the Great Barrier Reef. The ship was inside a marine protected area. It then rammed into the reef, and leaked about 4 tons of heavy fuel causing a roughly 3 km oil slick. Despite that the captain of the ship belittled the concern over the damage done to the reef, teams were able to free the carrier from the reef, but not with out noting the serious damage done to the coral where the ship ran aground - damage that will take around 20 years to disappear. Now, Australia is taking legal action against the crew of the ship.

SYDNEY, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck the Solomon Islands on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported Sunday with no immediate tsunami alert or reports of damage.

LOS ANGELES -- A moderate aftershock rattled northern Mexico Friday, days after the area was struck by a deadly magnitude-7.2 earthquake on Easter Sunday.The magnitude-4.7 aftershock struck 36 miles south of Mexicali at 4:05 p.m. Friday. No damages have been reported, but the area continues to suffer from numerous aftershocks.Just a day earlier, another magnitude 5.3 aftershock struck about 30 miles south of Mexicali around 9:45 a.m Thursday, causing one building's roof to collapse and minor damage to other buildings.

A day after an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 struck the north-western Qinghai province of China, around 600 people are confirmed dead.Convoys of troops and supplies have battled for more than 800km through sleet and sandstorms to reach the earthquake epicentre in Yushu county, where some 300 people are still unaccounted for.There, thousands of homeless and injured people have spent a day amid the destruction, and a night out in the freezing cold and the darkness.

Yesterday, a 6.9-magnitude quake struck Qinghai, China, resulting in an estimated 400 dead and 10,000 injured. One week before that, a 7.7 tremor hit Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Two days before that, a 7.2 shook Baja, Mexico. At the end of February, Chile shuddered under an 8.8 earthquake, little over a month after a 7.0 crumbled Haiti and killed nearly 230,000. With such a list, 2010 appears to be the year of the apocalypse or, at the very least, unnaturally active for these natural disasters.

As the numbers of buried or dead continue to climb from today's 6.9-magnitude earthquake in China, an event so close on the heels of the devastating Chile and Haiti earthquakes, you might wonder if Earth is shaking more lately. Perhaps, scientists say, but not unusually so.Seismic activity may be higher in recent years than the long-term average, but it's still not out of the normal range, the experts contend.

Philip Pullman's new novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is opening another chapter in the often acrimonious debate between religious believers and atheists. This is not, of course, a new argument, but it is one that was given new life by the religious justifications offered by the September 11 terrorists, and there is little sign of it abating.

A space shuttle sequel?Cape Canaveral plans to launch a small, unmanned space plane later this month, the double-winged, pug-nosed X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Launch is expected as soon as April 20, atop an Atlas-V(501) rocket."The OTV is the first vehicle since NASA's Shuttle Orbiter with the ability to return experiments to Earth for further inspection and analysis," says a U.S. Air Force "fact sheet" on what it calls "the United States' newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft." Unnoticed and unpublicized, the craft makes its orbital debut even as Space Shuttle Discovery completes one of its likely last missions.

The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of relativity theory. One of its implications is that events occurring in distant parts of the universe should appear to occur more slowly than events located closer to us. For example, when observing supernovae, scientists have found that distant explosions seem to fade more slowly than the quickly-fading nearby supernovae.

WAM Umm Al Qaiwain, Apr 10th, 2010 (WAM) -- A French archaeological mission in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities and Heritage has discovered the oldest fishing rites in the Arabian Peninsula that dates back to 3500-3200 BC.

"Supervolcanoes" have been blamed for multiple mass extinctions in Earth's history, but the cause of their massive eruptions is unknown.Despite their global impact, the eruptions' origin and triggering mechanisms have remained unexplained. New data obtained during a recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expedition in the Pacific Ocean may provide clues to unlocking this mystery.

Nine megaliths in a remote part of Dartmoor, England, share features in common with Stonehenge, and may shed light on the meaning behind these prehistoric stone monuments, according to a report in the latest issue of British Archaeology.

The young horse, who was born to a chocolate brown mare, is a British spotted pony whose father shares the same unusual colouring.Perhaps rather predictably named Spotty, he was born just over a week ago at Wembury Point, near Plymouth although his family usually grazes on Dartmoor.British spotted ponies have a variety of colour types including white spots on a dark background which are known as "snowflake".

A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.On April 14, Dr. Martin Fullekrug presented his new work at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2010) in Glasgow.

Britons can now explore their French roots as 16.3 million historic birth, marriage and death records held in Paris archives are made available online.

Just 25 minutes of vigorous daily exercise can help beat depression, claim doctors.

As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.

A team of MIT researchers has found a novel way to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water and make chemical fuel to power their growth. In this case, the team used a modified virus as a kind of biological scaffold that can assemble the nanoscale components needed to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Huge new baby stars shine bright in this image of the Rosette Molecular Cloud.The previously undiscovered protostars are the small points of orangey light in the center of the image. They are up to 10 times more massive than the sun.The Herschel Space Observatory, operated by the European Space Agency, obtained the new image, which is a composite of three different wavelengths of light all in the infrared part of the spectrum. Infrared light waves are longer and scatter less than visible light, allowing scientists to probe dust-shrouded areas of space. In this image, the shortest wavelength is blue, the medium green, and the longest red.

Brainwaving.com is back online after some downtime. They are an online magazine exploring culture, consciousness, creativity, and the quest for human happiness. Read Mike Jay's article 'Enter The Jaguar' on the Graham Hancock.com article section.

WAM Umm Al Qaiwain, Apr 10th, 2010 (WAM) -- A French archaeological mission in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities and Heritage has discovered the oldest fishing rites in the Arabian Peninsula that dates back to 3500-3200 BC.

FORT COLLINS - A Colorado State University archaeologist and his team have discovered the ruins of an ancient urban center in the heart of the Purépecha Empire in Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, located in the central Mexican state of Michoacán.

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the remains of a medieval synagogue underneath a kebab shop in Northamptonshire.

A rare letter evincing a display of affection between President Theodore Roosevelt and his youngest son is up for sale by a dealer who obtained it from a Roosevelt family friend.Roosevelt sent the letter to his 6-year-old son, Quentin, during a trip to Yellowstone National Park in 1903. It is the only letter from the trip to his family to reach the market, and its existence was unknown to scholars and institutions until its discovery in the possession of a family friend, said Nathan Raab, vice president of the Raab Collection, which is selling the letter through its Web site.

Global culture officials are meeting to discuss how to recover ancient treasures which they say have been stolen and displayed overseas.Twenty countries are represented at the two-day conference in Cairo.It has been organised by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), which wants many pharaonic items returned by Western museums.The SCA said the forum would discuss "the protection and restitution of cultural heritage." .

Data from Europe's Venus Express probe suggests that Earth's neighbour may still be able to erupt volcanoes.Relatively young lava flows have been identified on the planet's surface by the spacecraft's infrared instrument.The flows show up as having a different composition to the surrounding surface material.

A newborn baby has become the first in the world to receive xenon gas treatment, pioneered in Bristol in a bid to prevent brain injury.Riley Joyce had no pulse and was not breathing when he was first delivered by emergency Caesarean section at the Royal United Hospital, Bath.

The fundamental building blocks of all computing devices could be about to undergo a dramatic change that would allow faster, more efficient machines.Researchers at computer firm Hewlett Packard (HP) have shown off working devices built using memristors - often described as electronics' missing link.These tiny devices were proposed 40 years ago but only fabricated in 2008.

The girl, from the southern town of Knin, had only just started studying German at school and had been reading German books and watching German TV to become better, but was by no means fluent, according to her parents.Since waking up from her 24 hourcoma however, she has been unable to speak Croatian, but is able to communicate perfectly in German.

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands on Sunday, but did not pose a tsunami threat, the National Weather Service said.

PARIS (AFP) - People who have "near-death experiences," such as flashing lights, feelings of peace and joy and divine encounters before they pull back from the brink may simply have raised levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood, a study suggests.Near-death experiences (NDEs) are reported by between 11 and 23 percent of survivors of heart attacks, according to previous research.

A vaccine being tested in the UK has helped been shown to help some patients fully recover from melanoma, even in its advanced stages.It attacks tumour cells, leaving healthy cells undamaged and carries agents that boost the body's response to skin cancer.

Join us for a fascinating two-hour program with author Graham Hancock. With books such as "Fingerprints of the Gods", "The Sign and the Seal", "Keeper of Genesis", "Talisman", "Underworld" and "Supernatural" he's become a legend in the field of alternative research. We begin to talk about his latest book Entangled, a novel, and ask why he's chosen to go into the field of fiction, considering his past and excellent non-fiction works. We talk about the advantages of writing fiction. We discuss how Graham's earlier books and research have influenced the writing of Entangled. Topics discussed: Ayahuasca, shamanism, Entangled, why a novel? Academic critics, Underworld, The advantage of writing fiction, the reality behind the story in Entangled, Therianthrope, Anthropos, "Sulpa" & "Illimani", DMT, Supernatural, apocalyptic themes, Rick Strassman, "The Spirit Molecule", quantum physics, the mystery of consciousness, ECG, Plato, soul, near death experience, consciousness, ancestors, cave art, psychedelic plants & substances, the computer, Steve Jobs and LSD, Watson and Crick, knowledge vs. ignorance, violence, fear of death, western civilization, Tibetan book of the dead, Hermes and more.Download Hour 1 here

As states across the country scramble to close budget gaps, many are targeting state parks. Arizona is the first to go through with it. In February, the state closed five of its 30 parks, and a number of them contain fragile archaeological sites. Now residents are taking steps to prevent looting.Protecting Hopi ArtifactsOn a clear, calm day, Homolovi Ruins State Park has one of the best views in northern Arizona. To the north are the red-rock mesas of the Hopi Nation. To the west, the Little Colorado River and snowcapped San Francisco Peaks.

Beneath the Caribbean Sea a remotely controlled vehicle came upon the world's deepest hydrothermal vents, where super-heated mineral-rich water gushes from chimney structures onto the ocean floor.The black smokers, named for how they spew out an iron sulfide compound that's black, sit 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) deep in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. While black smokers are the hottest of the undersea vents, white smokers are cooler and often contain compounds that are white in color.

A magnet at the heart of high-tech products such as cell phones and hybrid cars relies upon an increasingly scarce supply of the rare earth element known as neodymium. Now one of the original inventors of that magnet hopes to create a new generation of magnetic materials that can ease or break free of that dependence.

The Maryland Senate voted on Saturday to allow patients access to medical marijuana at state-licensed dispensaries. The bill now moves to the state's lower chamber.The bill was approved overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support and without objections or discussion, by a 35-12 margin.Maryland would join 14 other states in legalizing medical marijuana. The neighboring District of Columbia legalized it in a 1998 referendum that was only recently allowed by Congress to go into effect. The District's city council is writing rules to establish the city's medical marijuana policy.

Jesus was the son of a middle-class, highly educated architect, according to a new book, which claims the previous belief that Joseph worked as a carpenter has distorted the Bible's meaning.

Giant eruptions of ionized gas, or plasma, from the Sun called coronal mass ejections [CMEs] produce solar energetic particles that cause spacecraft anomalies and communication interruptions, and can have significant adverse effects on Global Positioning Systems. Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory's Space Science Division are studying CMEs in an effort to better understand and predict their impact on instrumentation.

When Sand City, Calif., officially opens the spigot to the state's first full-scale seawater desalination facility Wednesday, residents throughout the city will begin tapping into the Pacific Ocean as a source of drinking water. The city's goal is to provide a seamless transition so that consumers do not recognize any difference in quality or taste compared with the reservoir water that used to provide their potable water.

SUPPOSE we had a theory that could explain everything. Not just atoms and quarks but aspects of our everyday lives too. Sound impossible? Perhaps not.It's all part of the recent explosion of work in an area of physics known as random matrix theory. Originally developed more than 50 years ago to describe the energy levels of atomic nuclei, the theory is turning up in everything from inflation rates to the behaviour of solids. So much so that many researchers believe that it points to some kind of deep pattern in nature that we don't yet understand. "It really does feel like the ideas of random matrix theory are somehow buried deep in the heart of nature," says electrical engineer Raj Nadakuditi of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Late in 2009 year we witnessed the largest explosion ever recorded: a super giant star two hundred times bigger than the sun utterly obliterated by runaway thermonuclear reactions triggered by gamma ray-driven antimatter production. The resulting blast was visible for months because it unleashed a cloud of radioactive material over fifty times the size of our own star, giving off a nuclear fission glow visible from galaxies away.

Earthworms form herds and make "group decisions", scientists have discovered.The earthworms use touch to communicate and influence each other's behaviour, according to research published in the journal Ethology.By doing so the worms collectively decide to travel in the same direction as part of a single herd.The striking behaviour, found in the earthworm Eisenia fetida, is the first time that any type of worm, or annelid, has been shown to form active herds.

As our telescopes grow more powerful, astronomers are uncovering objects that defy conventional wisdom. The latest example is the discovery of a planet-like object circling a brown dwarf. It's the right size for a planet, estimated to be 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter. But the object formed in less than 1 million years -- the approximate age of the brown dwarf -- and much faster than the predicted time it takes to build planets according to some theories.

A more powerful magnetic material may have emerged to topple previous record-holder iron cobalt, until now the most magnetic material on Earth. The new iron and nitrogen compound might also force physicists to revise their understanding of magnetism, according to the Minnesota Daily.

In an ideal world, we'd use natural light to brighten every darkened nook that needs illumination. But in reality, skylights and windows can let only so much light into a structure, and the amount of light varies based on the time of day. The Sundolier robotic skylight from Boulder-based Sunflower aims to change all this by actively "pumping" natural light into interior spaces, illuminating areas of up to 2,500 square feet with a single unit.

A long time ago, in a universe much larger than our own, a giant star collapsed. Its implosion crammed so much mass and energy together that it created a wormhole to another universe. And inside this wormhole, our own universe was born. It may seem fantastic, but a theoretical physicist claims that such a scenario could help answer some of the most perplexing questions in cosmology.

Space marines won't sprout wings (probably), and so the U.S. Air Force has been pushing forward on the reusable military space planes this year. Now it's asking for a reusable booster that can launch a space plane into the upper atmosphere, do a 180-degree turn, and come back for its own runway landing, Ares Defense Blog reports.

Shape-memory alloys that change shape when heated could become tiny mechanical muscles for electronic devices. New mechanical devices based on the alloys produce three to six times more torque than electric motors, and weigh just one-20th as much.Such devices, known as actuators, can be cut from a flat sheet of metal just a fraction of a millimeter thick. They emerged from a roject that aims to build printable robots, where the robots would consist of both the metal actuators and plastic components that could be built layer-by-layer through a process similar to inkjet printing.

I'm just back from a midtown Manhattan hotel meeting room, where I rode Honda's U3-X "Personal Mobility Prototype." It's a nifty little device: essentially a sit-down Segway unicycle that looks like a figure-8-shaped boombox, with a pop-out seat and footrests.

DEEP brain stimulation has long been psychiatry's black magic: stick electrodes into a region linked to mental illness, deliver rapid pulses of weak current, and voila! Crippling symptoms of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and even substance abuse are eased.Now brain imaging of people undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat depression is revealing the mechanism behind these effects - and who it will and won't work on. The crucial discovery is that DBS seems to tune an array of brain regions, not just the area around the electrode.

The economics of the electronics industry depends on its ability to carve thousands of microchips simultaneously from silicon wafers the size of dinner plates.A new generation of greener, more powerful electronics could be born if we could make those wafers from a material that is far superior, and incomparably more glamorous: diamond. Now it looks like we might be able to.

Entangled and drowned in a fishing net off the coast of Brazil, these green sea turtles in an undated picture are just a few of the millions of sea turtles that have been unintentionally killed by fishing operations over the past 20 years, according to a study released today by the journal Conservation Letters.

Archaeologists from the museum in the city of Čačak discovered several pre-historic tumuli in the vicinity of the Mrčajevci settlement in the Krnjina region of central Serbia, national media reported recently.

The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information. The problem now is figuring out how to find and use this unpublished literature, reports Matt Ford.Archaeologists are used to gathering data by scratching in the dirt. But when Richard Bradley set out to write a new prehistory of Britain in 2004, he unearthed his most important finds while wearing sandals and a sweater rather than work boots and a hard hat.

A fragmentary pottery inscription was found during excavations conducted by the Thai Fine Arts at Phu Khao Thong in Thailand about three years ago. (Dr. Berenice Bellina of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, sent me a photograph of the object: Figure 1)The discovery of a Tamil-Brahmi pottery inscription of about the second century CE at the same site was reported earlier ( The Hindu, July 16, 2006). One can presume that the present inscription is also from the Tamil country and belongs approximately to the same period. The two characters incised on the pottery now reported are not in the Brahmi script. They appear to be graffiti symbols of the type seen on the South Indian megalithic pottery of the Iron Age-Early Historical Period (second century BCE to third century CE).

King Tutankhamun might have worn some sort of orthopedic shoes specially designed to cope with his club foot condition, an investigation into the pharaoh's footwear has suggested.Published in the book, "Tutankhamun's Footwear: Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear," the research is the first detailed analysis of the 3,300-year-old footwear since King Tut's mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

Should we put more pollutants into the air to keep Earth's temperature down? How about covering polar ice with reflective panels to cut down on melting? Or putting a giant umbrella in space to shade the planet?Some of the ideas for easing Earth's warming trend may sound crazy - but in a newly published book titled "Hack the Planet," Eli Kintisch says scientists may have no choice but to give them a try.

GENEVA - Physicists at the CERN research centre said on Wednesday they had created 10 million mini-Big Bangs in the first week of mega-power operations of their marathon probe into the secrets of the cosmos.Spokesman James Gillies said the subterranean Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in which tiny particles of matter are smashed together at a fraction of a second under the speed of light, was functioning extremely well.

The comet that created the annual Taurid meteor shower was also responsible for snuffing out large mammals in North America 13,000 years ago, a controversial new study says.The geologic record shows that global temperatures plummeted by as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius) just as Earth was thawing out from the last ice age.This cold snap probably led to the extinction in North America of large animals such as saber-toothed cats and wooly mammoths. But scientists have been unsure what triggered the abrupt change.

We don't see or hear them, but every day they quietly go about their work--filtering and cleansing our rivers and streams. And if we don't act soon, they'll disappear from the workforce just when we need them most.I'm talking about shiny pigtoes, monkeyface, pink heelsplitter, and purple wartyback--freshwater mussels with funny names that belie the seriousness of their labors. They suck water in, filter out bits of algae, bacteria and other tiny particles, and then release it back to the river cleaner than before.

A newly discovered asteroid, 2010 GA6, will safely fly by Earth this Thursday at 4:06 p.m. Pacific (23:06 U.T.C.).At time of closest approach 2010 GA6 will be about 359,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away from Earth - about 9/10ths the distance to the moon. The asteroid, approximately 22 meters (71 feet) wide, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, Tucson, Az.

New videos up online on the GrahamHancock.com video page.Ancient Wisdom of the Lost Ark (2006) - A dialogue with Echan Deravy and Graham Hancock.

A British UFO hunter said he is convinced extraterrestrials are behind recent sheep mutilations on the country's farms -- and claims he witnessed such an event.Phil Hoyle, 53, of Shrewsbury, England -- who said he has been investigating British livestock mutilations for nine years -- said he and members of his Animal Pathology Field Unit team witnessed two UFOs using some sort of light to zap sheep and releasing smaller versions of themselves closer to the animals, The Sun reported Monday.

Europe's Cryosat-2 spacecraft is set to be sent into orbit to assess the state of ice cover at the Earth's poles.The information will help researchers calculate how melting polar ice affects ocean circulation patterns, sea level and global climate.It will launch atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

India will soon launch an advanced communications satellite, put into orbit for the first time by a cryogenic engine developed by its own scientists.Cryogenic engines are rocket motors designed for fuels that have to be held at very low temperatures to be liquid. They would otherwise be gas.Officials say that only five countries in the world have this technology.BBC science reporter Jonathan Amos says a successful launch would be another milestone for India's space programme.

Researchers studying enzymes that can process seaweed are astonished to find them in humans. They say the Japanese may have acquired the ability to digest nori because of their consumption of sushi.

A giant, spectacularly colored new species of monitor lizard has just been revealed to scientists in the Philippines.The reptile, which is roughly 6 feet long (1.8 meters), is kin to Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards. Named Varanus bitatawa, this newly discovered species, decorated in stripes of gold flecks and armed with huge, curved claws for climbing trees, is one of only three fruit-eating monitor species in the world.

One of the things that makes Iceland unique in Europe is the fact that Icelanders know the year the first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson, came to Iceland from Norway. The Icelandic script, Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders), written by Ari the wise, tells of the first men coming to Iceland on explorations.Three expeditions came to Iceland, but the first men who came to Iceland to live there permanently were Ingólfur and Hjörleifur. The two came to Iceland in 874. Hjörleifur was killed by his slaves, which only left Ingólfur and his wife Hallgerdur Frodadottir. They settled in Reykjavík, now the capital of Iceland. An excavation in the center of Reykjavík seems to indicate that this story might be true. It shows that the remnants of building stem from the year 871+/-2 years. That website is worth examining. It has a number of interactive features and recreates the 871 environment.

As volunteers work to renovate a house on Hilton Head Island's north end to serve as the focal point of a planned Gullah museum, a much older treasure sits undisturbed nearby -- a 4,000-year-old Indian camp.The camp was discovered 27 years ago, when Jerre Weckhorst happened upon a fragment of a prehistoric clay bowl as he dug a water main in 1983.Though the fragment was small, he knew what he'd found and what it meant.

A study of hundreds of ancient Indus Valley civilisation sites has revealed previously unsuspected patterns of growth and decline that challenge a long-standing idea of a solely eastward-moving wave of Indus urbanisation.Researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS), Chennai, combined data from archaeology, radiocarbon dating, and river flows to study how settlements around the Indus Valley region had evolved from around 7000 BC till 1000 BC.

Sharqat, Iraq - A 4,500-year-old fortress city, the first capital of ancient Iraq's Assyrian civilisation, is in danger of falling into Iraq's Tigris River, an antiquities official warned Monday.The archaeologist, from the antiquities department for central Iraq's Salah al-Din province, said the river has already washed away more than 30 metres of the ancient city of Assur, the religious capital of ancient Iraq's Assyrian civilisation.

New findings from an excavation site in Spain are generating heated debate among palaeontologists and archaeologists about precisely when the Neanderthals disappeared and were replaced by the first anatomically modern human beings. The research, carried out by a team from the Centre for Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and published in the Journal of Human Evolution, pinpoints the transition to between 34,000 and 32,000 years ago, and supports the hypothesis that that the two species did not interact or coexist.

The Romans, as Monty Python famously acknowledged, have done many things for us. Contrary to popular wisdom, however, improving our diet was not one of them.A study of the remains of almost 20,000 people dating from the 8th century BC to the 18th century AD has found that the Roman empire reduced our level of nutrition, which increased again in the "dark ages".

For your chance to win one of three signed copies of Entangled by Graham Hancock, just complete the form at the bottom of this page and answer the simple question:How many years is Leoni flung into the past?24000 years700 years0 years.

Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible. Doc Brown would be proud.The strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe -- a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that traveling through time may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.

States which say artefacts have been stolen and displayed overseas should unite to recover their stolen heritage, Egypt's top archaeologist has said.Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), urged culture officials from around the world to draw up lists of missing items.Some 20 countries are represented at the two-day conference in Cairo aimed at recovering artefacts from overseas.The SCA wants many pharaonic items returned by Western museums.

Pat and Diane Farley decided to investigate a metal grid in their home during a family party which had been puzzling them since they moved into their house.Beneath the grid, located outside their bathroom at their home in Telford, Shropshire, was a hole which their son Gareth, 20, was able to squeeze through.He and his uncle, Matthew Lathan, 25, found a large chest which was filled with old newspapers dating back to the early 1900's and old wine and sherry bottles.

A team of archaeologists from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, along with a team of Syrian colleagues, is uncovering new clues about a prehistoric society that formed the foundation of urban life in the Middle East prior to invention of the wheel.The mound of Tell Zeidan in the Euphrates River Valley near Raqqa, Syria, which had not been built upon or excavated for 6,000 years, is revealing a society rich in trade, copper metallurgy and pottery production. Artifacts recently found there are providing more support for the view that Tell Zeidan was among the first societies in the Middle East to develop social classes according to power and wealth.

Waking From Sleep: The Causes of Higher States of Consciousness.Steve Taylor is an author and teacher, whose main interests are psychology and spirituality. His articles and essays have been published in over 30 academic journals, magazines and newspapers, including The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Transpersonal Psychology Review, The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, The Scientific and Medical Network Review, Anti-matters, Soul and Spirit, Paradigm Shift, Green Spirit, Odyssey (South Africa) Resurgence and The Daily Express. His work has been featured widely in the media in the UK, including on BBC Breakfast, BBC World TV, Five Live and in The Guardian

A leggy cosmic creature comes out of hiding in this new infrared view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.The spiral beauty, called IC 342 and sometimes the "hidden galaxy," is shrouded behind our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stargazers and professional astronomers have a hard time seeing the galaxy through the Milky Way's bright band of stars, dust and gas. WISE's infrared vision cuts through this veil, offering a crisp view.