Newsdesk Archive

Laboratory experiments in the last few decades have shown that some things can appear to move faster than light without contradicting Einstein's special theory of relativity, but now astrophysicists have seen real examples of superluminal speeds in the form of radio pulses from a pulsar.Superluminal, or faster than light, speeds are associated with anomalous dispersion, which is a process in which the refractive index of a medium increases with the wavelength of light passing through it..

Scientists say men are still evolving, despite earlier evidence to the contrary.Researchers at MIT reached that conclusion after completing a detailed comparison of the Y chromosomes from chimps and humans. The results were just published online by the journal Nature.

One of the world's most controversial paintings, "La Belle Ferronnière," will go on the Sotheby's auction block in New York on January 28. Many viewers are wondering: Is she or isn't she?A Leonardo, that is.Take a look and see what you think.Her eyes and mouth suggest the almost equally mysterious Mona Lisa, but experts still aren't sure who painted the regal-looking woman, believed to be Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

Abandon any notion that the duck-billed platypus is a soft and cuddly creature -- maybe like Perry the Platypus in the Phineas and Ferb cartoon.This platypus, renowned as one of the few mammals that lay eggs, also is one of only a few venomous mammals. The males can deliver a mega-sting that causes immediate, excruciating pain, like hundreds of hornet stings, leaving victims incapacitated for weeks. Now scientists are reporting an advance toward deciphering the chemical composition of the venom, with the first identification of a dozen protein building blocks. Their study is in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili grew up in Iraq and has become an expert on the golden age of Islamic science. He explains to Sanjida O'Connell how science in the Muslim world will flourish once moreFew westerners know about the golden age of Arabic science. How did it come about?The Arab empire was hugely powerful by late 8th and early 9th century; its rulers were getting taxes from across the empire and had money to spend on translations and patronage of scholarship. About this time the House of Wisdom was set up in Baghdad by one of the Abbasid caliphs, al-Ma'mun. It began as a translation house, translating Greek texts into Arabic and rapidly started to attract the greatest minds in the Islamic world, while Arabic became the international language of science. There was also a strong influence from Persia; an Arab scholar once said, "We Arabs have all the words but you Persians have all the ideas.".

The traffic-choked roads still roaring past Stonehenge in Wiltshire have earned the world's most famous prehistoric monument a place on a list of the world's most threatened sites.The government's decision to abandon, on cost grounds, a plan to bury roads around Stonehenge in a tunnel underground and the consequent collapse of the plans for a new visitor centre, have put the site on the Threatened Wonders list of Wanderlust magazine, along with the 4x4-scarred Wadi Rum in Jordan, and the tourist-eroded paths and steps of the great Inca site at Machu Picchu in Peru.

Jordan has asked the United Nations to force Israel to hand over a significant portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of some 900 ancient religious texts unearthed in the 1940s and 1950s, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.The Jordanian government has also asked the Canadian government to impound the 2,000-year-old documents, currently on display at a museum in Toronto, according to reports in the Canadian press.Jordan cited international law to request that Canada take possession of the documents until the dispute is resolved.

NASA's bold repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope has inspired engineers to tackle another challenge -- using the robotic arm on the International Space Station to refuel a satellite. Aviation Week reports that the Canadian "Dextre" arm could use a special tool to cut into a spacecraft that was never designed to be refueled, pierce the insulation, and access the fuel plumbing.

Hundreds of geometric monuments unearthed deep in the Amazon may have been left behind by a previously unknown society, say scientists.Archaeologists have found more than 200 earthworks shaped as perfect circles and squares, many connected by straight roads. They have dated one site to 1283AD but say others could be from as early as 200AD.The earthen foundations were found in a region more than 150miles across, covering northern Bolivia and Brazil's Amazonas state.The first ones were uncovered in 1999, after large areas of pristine forest was cleared for cattle grazing.Sculpted from the clay rich soils of Amazonia, the earthworks are made up of 30ft wide and 10ft deep ditches alongside 3ft high walls. The largest ring ditches founds so far are 1,000ft in diameter.

Millions of people suffering from malaria now have new hope after British scientists unlocked the genetic map of the plant used to cure the disease.Scientists from the University of York have confidently predicted they will have high-yielding anti-malaria crops available for wide spread plantation in developing countries within two years.

Cancer cells fueled by the mutant KRAS oncogene, which makes them notoriously difficult to treat, can be killed by blocking a more vulnerable genetic partner of KRAS, report scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Scorpions are notorious for harnessing a powerful, debilitating venom in their tails. Some species harbor venom potent enough to kill a human being. But other parts of that venom cocktail are only intended for other insects--and only affect other insects. If the strains of venom that do so were to be isolated, that could be a pretty potent insecticide, right? One researcher thought so--so he concocted a brand new, ecologically safe pesticide from the deadly venom found in scorpions.

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

Scientists have once again found that people with higher levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in their urine are more likely to have heart disease than those with lower urinary BPA levels.Used to make some plastic drinks bottles and the inner coatings of food cans, BPA can mimic the effects of oestrogen and has been associated with a number of conditions in animal studies, including low sperm count, prostate cancer and fetal developmental problems. In 2008, researchers first linked BPA to diabetes and heart disease in humans1, but industry lobby groups such as the American Chemistry Council in Arlington, Virginia, have vigorously disputed those findings.

Nearly a century after Capt. Robert Falcon Scott explored the southern continent, experts are working to save the British explorer's wooden hut (pictured on Ross Island, Antarctica, in August 2006) and three others in the area from slipping under the snow forever.

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Scientists film octopuses building shelters from coconut shells, citing it as the first evidence of invetebrate creatures using tools.

NASA has big plans for its Mars Exploration Program.As it decides the future of one of the two rovers exploring the planet, the agency is looking to the launch of the newest generation of robotic explorer next year.In addition, NASA tells CNN Radio that the agency is close to a deal to merge its Mars program with that of the European Space Agency, a big step toward manned missions.

On Wednesday (Jan. 13), an object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of just 130,000 km (80,000 miles). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon, ie: very close.Earlier reports had suggested the object might be manmade, but according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Small Body Database, 2010 AL30 has now been classified as an "Apollo" class near-Earth asteroid (NEA).It will miss us, and if it did hit us, it wouldn't do any damage anyway, but chatter between planetary scientists suggest that the asteroid gives us a new standard: a 10-meter-wide asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth. A pretty useful warning if you ask me.

ANKARA, Turkey - The gunman who wounded Pope John Paul II said Wednesday he would answer questions about the 1981 attack after he is released from prison next week.Little is known about what led Mehmet Ali Agca to shoot at the pope while he was greeting the faithful in St. Peter's Square, but rumors have swirled about whether foreign powers had conspired to have the Polish-born pontiff killed.

An iconic ancient monument uncovered by the tides on a Norfolk beach will soon be complete for the first time in a decade.Scientists have been studying and preserving the Seahenge timber circle since it was excavated at Holme, near Hunstanton, in early 1999.There were protests after archaeologists decided to remove the upturned oak stump and ring of 55 posts from the sands.

Using texts and images, a University of Arkansas researcher has for the first time reconstructed the time when the use of porticos -- roof-covered structures supported by columns -- gave way to loggias, or recessed porticos.In an article in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, architecture professor Kim Sexton accounts for the time between the 7th and 12th centuries when there are no surviving porticos. In European history, loggias represented more than just interesting architectural features. They also served important cultural functions.

The archaeological expeditions have discovered many archaeological findings in the central Syrian Palmyra city, conducting many surveys, excavations and restorations during certain seasons.The Syrian-Swiss expedition, working at Qasr al-Hir al-Sharqi Palace has conducted four surveys to the north of the palace with different dimensions through which the expedition unearthed the foundations of some buildings' walls made of mud and bricks.

The discovery of items including decorative purses challenges the widespread view that Neanderthals were much less intelligent than modern man, the researchers believe.

There was once a time when going fishing was an honest way to get out and experience the ebb and flow of nature's balance; when there was an art to feeling the subtle difference between the tug of the river and the tug on your lure. But as fishing technology continues to develop, that art has been replaced with industry.Now scientists have developed a fishing lure which not only attracts any fish in the area, but which also forces them to instinctively and reflexively take the bait.

Remains of a prehistoric building, the earliest ever discovered in the Tel Aviv region and estimated to be between 7,800 and 8,400 years old, were recently discovered in an archaeological excavation in Ramat Aviv.Ancient artifacts thought to be 13,000 and 100,000 years old were also discovered there.

The Maya built pyramids. The Inca constructed Machu Picchu. But what do you know about the historical exploits of the Maléku, the Cabécar or the Bribri?Chances are, not a whole heck of a lot. All three are indigenous peoples native to Costa Rica, part of a larger cultural and linguistic group that archaeologists call Chibchan. Their ancestors were the earliest inhabitants of Costa Rica, but the general public (even within that country) knows very little about them.

The Bering Strait, the 80-kilometer-wide stretch of ocean between Russia and Alaska, can strongly influence the climate of the entire Northern Hemisphere, researchers have calculated. The findings answer a question that has dogged scientists for the past decade, and they demonstrate how seemingly slight changes in certain factors can impact global climate.For the past several million years, Earth has been locked in a glacial cycle. Ice ages come and go with remarkable regularity, lasting 100,000 years or so and then letting up for 10,000 to 15,000 years. The last such ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. Within each ice age, the kilometer-thick ice sheets that cover much of the top of the world also go through cycles, thickening and thinning, extending and receding, over periods lasting a few thousand years. But until now, no one has been able to pinpoint the cause of these oscillations.

Do rocks from Mars bear the tiny fossilized signs of life? Scientists who think so say they'll subject meteorites from the Red Planet to a new round of high-tech tests in hopes of adding to their evidence.For years, only one meteorite has figured in the controversy: ALH84001, a rock that was blasted away from Mars 16 million years ago, floated through space and fell through Earth's atmosphere onto Antarctica about 13,000 years ago. Scientists reported in 1996 that the rock contained microscopic structures that looked like "nano-fossils," but skeptics said the structures could have been created by chemical rather than biological reactions.

Blobs of warm ice that periodically rise to the surface and churn the icy crust on Saturn's moon Enceladus explain the quirky heat behavior and intriguing surface of the moon's south polar region, according to a new paper using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

While governments around the world continue to explore strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a new study suggests policymakers should focus on what needs to be achieved in the next 40 years in order to keep long-term options viable for avoiding dangerous levels of warming.The study is the first of its kind to use a detailed energy system model to analyze the relationship between mid-century targets and the likelihood of achieving long-term outcomes.

The mathematician who deciphered the final, encrypted page of a letter sent to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 will visit the University of Oregon to tell how he did it.The encrypted page -- a mystery to Jefferson and everyone else -- was solved in 2007 by Smithline, then 36, an expert in code-breaking. He detailed his solution in the American Scientist.

We have more in common with Dead Sea-dwelling microbes than previously thought. University of Florida researchers have found that one of the most common proteins in complex life forms may have evolved from proteins found in microbes that live in deadly salty environments.

SUPERMAN'S sparkling Fortress of Solitude they're not, but giant outcrops of crystals, found on the moon by India's Chandrayaan-1 probe, prove that a roiling ocean of magma once engulfed the rocky body of our satellite.The moon is thought to have coalesced more than 4 billion years ago from the molten debris of an impact between the Earth and a Mars-sized object. Models suggest that heat from that impact, as well as from material compressing to form the moon, created a sea of magma that lasted for a few hundred million years. Heavy, iron-bearing minerals should have sunk through this magma to form the moon's mantle, while lighter, iron-poor minerals called plagioclases should have crystallised and floated to the surface.

BUENOS AIRES: A species of dinosaur that lived 190 million years ago has been found in Argentina, a researcher said."No discoveries with these characteristics had ever been made in the region. It's an important discovery because it helps us understand the environmental diversity of the period," researcher Santiago Bessone of the Museum Egidio Feruglio, an institution based in the Argentine Patagonian city of Trelew that was responsible for the expedition, told EFE.

Director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context.""Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

CAIRO - Egyptian archaeologists discovered a new set of tombs belonging to the workers who built the great pyramids, shedding light on how the laborers lived and ate more than 4,000 years ago, the antiquities department said Sunday.The thousands of men who built the last remaining wonder of the ancient world ate meat regularly, worked in three months shifts and were given the honor of being buried in mud brick tombs within the shadow of the sacred pyramids they worked on.

The stone window ledge has two rows of seven shallow depressions cut into it, and I am sitting next to them, trying to remember where on earth I've seen this pattern before. Far away, beyond the massive fortifications and the moat, are the white-capped mountains of Lebanon. I had not expected to see so much snow around, but then Syria throws up surprises all the time. Even this 12th-century crusader castle, Krak des Chevaliers, a fabulous place long picked over by archaeologists and historians, is full of mysteries. Like the timeworn inscription I found tucked away in a corner: "Ceso: LT:Bor . . ." What did it mean? A cryptic message from one of the Knights Hospitallers during the final Muslim siege of 1271, perhaps? My otherwise excellent guidebook to the monuments of the country by Ross Burns makes no mention of it.

The stone window ledge has two rows of seven shallow depressions cut into it, and I am sitting next to them, trying to remember where on earth I've seen this pattern before. Far away, beyond the massive fortifications and the moat, are the white-capped mountains of Lebanon. I had not expected to see so much snow around, but then Syria throws up surprises all the time. Even this 12th-century crusader castle, Krak des Chevaliers, a fabulous place long picked over by archaeologists and historians, is full of mysteries. Like the timeworn inscription I found tucked away in a corner: "Ceso: LT:Bor . . ." What did it mean? A cryptic message from one of the Knights Hospitallers during the final Muslim siege of 1271, perhaps? My otherwise excellent guidebook to the monuments of the country by Ross Burns makes no mention of it.

The search of adequate conservation of Bonampak mural paintings, located in Chiapas, turned out into the discovery of a crypt under the second room of Templo de las Pinturas (Temple of the Paintings) with rests of a man accompanied with jadeite ornaments and ceramic objects that could be more than 1,300 years old.

When it comes to measuring the properties of molecules, scientists often rely on using approximation, since quantum mechanics cannot be exactly apply to complicated situations without the use of a quantum computer. In an effort to ensure that no natural behaviors are missed, and for other purposes, scientists around the world have been working on quantum computers for decades.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered a molecular security system in human cells that deactivates and degrades foreign DNA. This discovery could open the door to major improvements in genetic engineering and gene therapy technologies.Led by Reuben Harris, associate professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysics in the College of Biological Sciences, the report's findings will be published online by Nature Structural and Molecular Biology on Jan. 10.

HIDDEN detail in the natural world could hold the key to future sources of clean energy. So say materials scientists who have created an artificial leaf that can harness light to split water and generate hydrogen.Plant leaves have evolved over millions of years to catch the energy in the sun's rays very efficiently. They use the energy to produce food, and the central step in the process involves splitting water molecules and creating hydrogen ions.

It has long been the common perception that once modern humans appeared more than 50,000 years ago, little has changed in human biology.As a result, in considerations of the biology of late archaic humans such as the Neandertals, it is common to compare them to living humans and largely ignore the biology of the early modern humans, the ones who were close in time to the Neandertals and other non-modern humans across the Old World.

Aiming his crossbow, Steven Churchill leaves no more than a two-inch gap between the freshly killed pig and the tip of his spear. His weapon of choice is a bamboo rod attached to a sharpened stone, modeled after the killing tools wielded by early modern humans some 50,000 years ago, when they cohabited in Eurasia with their large-boned relatives, the Neanderthals. Churchill, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, is doing an experiment to see if a spear thrown by an early modern human might have killed Shanidar 3, a roughly 40-year-old Neanderthal male whose remains were uncovered in the 1950s in Shanidar Cave in northeastern Iraq. Anthropologists have long debated about a penetrating wound seen in Shanidar 3's rib cage: Was he injured by another Neanderthal in a fight-or was it an early modern human who went after him?.

'It indicates that the kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE, and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research.'Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who deciphered the inscription: "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research." .

Iraqi archaeologists said on Friday they have discovered a 2,000-year-old Sumerian settlement in southern Iraq, yielding a bounty of historical artefacts.The site, in the southern province of Dhi Qar, is in the desert near ancient Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham."There are walls and cornerstones carrying Sumerian writings, dating back to the era of the third Sumerian dynasty," said Abdul Amir al-Hamdani, head of the provincial government's archaeology department.

Clearly, ancient Egyptians didn't get the memo about lead poisoning. Their eye makeup was full of the stuff. Although today we know that lead can cause brain damage and miscarriages, the Egyptians believed that lead-based cosmetics protected against eye diseases. Now, new research suggests that they may have been on to something.

Newly discovered painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain are the first hard evidence that Neandertals made jewelry. These findings suggest humanity's closest extinct relatives might have been capable of symbolism, after all.Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens). The absence of similar finds in Europe at that time, when it was Neandertal territory, has supported the notion that they lacked symbolism, a potential sign of mental inferiority that might help explain why modern humans eventually replaced them.

Wear patterns on one of the most celebrated mosaics of antiquity have allowed researchers to reconstruct exactly how ancient Romans viewed the artwork.Found during the 1831 excavations in the lava-buried town of Pompeii, the Alexander mosaic (now on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples) is the most famous example of an early tessellated mosaic.Measuring 19 feet by 10 feet, the piece was made around 100 B.C. out of roughly 4 million tesserae (small mosaic tiles).

A complex form of mathematical symmetry linked to string theory has been glimpsed in the real world for the first time, in laboratory experiments on exotic crystals.Mathematicians discovered a complex 248-dimensional symmetry called E8 in the late 1800s. The dimensions in the structure are not necessarily spatial, like the three dimensions we live in, but they correspond to mathematical degrees of freedom, where each dimension represents a different variable.

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB, Germany), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture.

High caffeine consumption could be linked to a greater tendency to hallucinate, a new research study suggests.People with a higher caffeine intake, from sources such as coffee, tea and caffeinated energy drinks, are more likely to report hallucinatory experiences such as hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, according to the Durham University study.

When scientists confirmed in October that they had detected the first rocky planet outside our solar system, it advanced the longtime quest to find an Earth-like planet hospitable to life.Rocky planets -- Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars -- make up half the planets in our solar system. Rocky planets are considered better environments to support life than planets that are mainly gaseous, like the other half of the planets in our system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Millisecond pulsars left in the wake of supernovas could provide the basis for a type of "galactic GPS," radio astronomers say. A growing constellation of known pulsars could allow the scientists to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves -- a predicted consequence of Einstein's relativity theory. The concept might even help guide future spacecraft and explorers, not to mention errant galactic hitchhikers.

Today's solar power plants work either through photovoltaics or heated steam. If Enviromission gets its way, tomorrow's plants will combine wind and solar, with acre-sized mirrors and multi-thousand-foot-tall chimneys generating turbine-spinning gusts. The technology's called solar updraft, and a $750 million, 200-megawatt project may just bring Enviromission's future into the present.

The geological time scale, with its familiar Cretaceous, Cambrian, and Eocene periods, works great as a calendar for the history of the Earth. Indeed, the different periods only cover the 3.8 billion years of life on Earth, with everything before that time lumped into one nondescript eon called the Hadean. But for some geologists, that lack of specificity simply won't work any more.

So called "non-avian theropod" dinosaurs from the Cretaceous had feathers, nests, laid eggs and roosted like birds. If they were so much like birds, why don't we just say they were birds?A paper in the February issue of Medical Hypotheses argues that these "dinosaurs" could very well, in fact, have been birds. The group includes what are now called troodontids and oviraptorids.An animal like Jinfengopteryx elegans....

Killer Whales in the in the North Atlantic Ocean come in two different flavors, and could be in the process of splitting into two species, according to new research by a team of European scientists.Orcas in different regions like the Pacific and Antarctic are known to have different diets, but are recognized as belonging to the same species, Orcinus orca. Researchers have now found that two populations living in the waters around Britain differ not only in what they eat, but also in size and genetic makeup.

What do you get when you cross aboriginal wisdom with Google Maps? Newly discovered meteor impact craters, of course!Duane Hamacher studies aboriginal astronomy as MacQuarie University in Sydney; already a very cool job. But things got even better when Hamacher followed up on a legend of the Arrernte Aborigines that told of a star falling to Earth in Australia's Northern Territory.

Escape pods and science fiction go hand-in-hand. Seriously, just think of all the films, books and comics that feature a character blasting themselves to freedom in a sealed capsule or navigable lifeboat.Is your starship's warp core about to blow? Hit the escape pod. Imperial forces boarding the ship? That's right, head for the pods. And if an alien monster happens to be overrunning your ship, first grab the cat, then head on into the escape shuttle. Also, wear some skimpy underwear and bring a grappling gun. You never know.

The discovery of fossil footprints from early backboned land animals in Poland leads to the sensational conclusion that our ancestors left the water at least 18 million years earlier than previously thought. The results of the Polish-Swedish collaboration are published online this week in Nature.

Two neuroscientists say that a now-extinct race of humans had big eyes, child-like faces, and an average intelligence of around 150, making them geniuses among Homo sapiensIn the autumn of 1913, two farmers were arguing about hominid skull fragments they had uncovered while digging a drainage ditch. The location was Boskop, a small town about 200 miles inland from the east coast of South Africa.

Crete has seduced archaeologists for more than a century, luring them to its rocky shores with fantastic tales of legendary kings, cunning deities, and mythical creatures. The largest of the Greek islands, Crete was the land of the Minoans (3100-1050 B.C.), a Bronze Age civilization named after its first ruler, King Minos, the "master of the seas" who is said to have rid the waters of pirates. According to Thucydides, he also established the first thalassocracy, or maritime empire. The Minoans were renowned for their seafaring prowess, which opened trade routes with the powerful kingdoms of Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.

Archaeologists have confirmed fossils of the world's oldest primate, which roamed the earth about 35 million years ago, have been found in a deserted coal mine in the southern province of Krabi.The fossils, discovered by Mineral Resources Department archaeologists 14 years ago, were named Siamopithecus eocaenus.

Each Christmas, Christians tell stories about the poor baby Jesus born in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.But the Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona, preaches a version of the Christmas story that says baby Jesus wasn't so poor after all.Anderson says Jesus couldn't have been poor because he received lucrative gifts -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- at birth. Jesus had to be wealthy because the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for his expensive undergarments. Even Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, lived and traveled in style, he says.

Opening a new chapter in planet hunting, NASA scientists reported Monday the discovery of five worlds orbiting nearby stars, using the space agency's Kepler space telescope.Kepler science team leader William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., made the announcement of the "roaster" planets, ones larger than Neptune and orbiting extremely close to their stars, at the American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Launched last year, the $591 million Kepler eyeballs some 156,000 stars within 3,000 light years of Earth for planets, according to a study in the upcoming Science journal. One light year is about 5.9 trillion miles.

SAN ANDREAS - Hundreds of basins carved into a football field-sized granite ledge in a remote Sierra Nevada wilderness are the remains of what may be the oldest manufacturing operation in North America, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study whose results were released in December.The researchers concluded that the more than 350 basins three to four feet in diameter were used to evaporate salt from the briny flow of a nearby spring.

A young American adventurer, 17-year-old Katie Spotz, has started rowing across the Atlantic Ocean in a solo effort to raise $30,000 for Blue Planet Run and give clean water to 1,000 people in developing nations. The young sailor pushed off from Senegal yesterday and hopes to make the 2,500-mile journey in just over 100 days.The map above shows her progress up until now (updated every 20 minutes on her twitter page by Google Earth).

When it comes to choosing a mate, female toads may have more control than previously thought, say scientists.A report in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal describes how a female cane toad inflates its body to prevent an amorous male from mating with it.This makes it difficult for the male toad to "hold on".

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at age 93.Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city.

Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, authors of Who Built The Moon will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout January to discuss their latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

A report published by the charity argues that if more GPs could offer the therapy to their patients it would slash the financial burden of depression, which costs the UK economy £7.5 billion a year.

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed the largest tomb yet discovered in the ancient Saqqara necropolis, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Monday.One of two tombs found, which were carved out of stone, consists of a vast chamber that branches off into many alcoves. One alcove contained skeletons and pottery, and led to another chamber with a seven-metre-deep (23-foot) well.

Ancients lakes that prove there could have been life on Mars have been discovered by British scientists.

Fifty years after a small desert town in southern New Mexico put itself on the map by re-naming itself after a quiz show, the inhabitants of this remote corner of America and neighbouring townships are pinning their hopes on an even more radical transformation.When Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic spacecraft propel their first $200,000-a-ticket (£125,000) space tourists into sub-orbital history, they will take off and land from a futuristic base now being carved out of the sand and rock of 25 square miles of ranch land near the town.

The ambitious plan envisages the co-operation of Nasa, the European and Chinese space agencies to pull off a mission with echoes of a Hollywood blockbuster.Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's space agency, said it would assess the difficulties of knocking the asteroid Apophis out of harm's way.

For the government of Sweden, having 237 wolves in the entire nation is a few too many. The wolves were nearly made extinct by hunting in Scandinavia until the activity was banned in the mid 60s. But now, after 45 years, the country's parliament has issued a decree allowing the population of wolves to be reduced to what it deems an appropriate maximum: 210 wolves.

Archaeologists in Egypt have said they have discovered the largest known tomb in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, to the south of Cairo.The tomb dates back 2,500 years to the 26th Dynasty and contains important artefacts, including mummified eagles.It is one of two newly discovered tombs found by an Egyptian team working close to the entrance of Sakkara, the burial ground for Egypt's ancient capital.The tomb consists of a big hall hewn out of the limestone rock.

New images of Mars suggest the Red Planet had large lakes on its surface as recently as three billion years ago.The evidence comes from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which spied a series of depressions linked by what look like drainage channels.Scientists tell the journal Geology that the features bear the hallmarks of being produced by liquid water.But they appear to have formed much later in Mars' history than many thought possible, the researchers add.

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

The earliest reference we have to unusual animal behavior prior to a significant earthquake is from Greece in 373 BC. Rates, weasels, snakes, and centipedes reportedly left their homes and headed for safety several days befor a destructive earthquake. Anectdotal evidence abounds of animals, fish, birds, reptiles, and insects exhibiting strange behavior anywhere from weeks to seconds before an earthquake. However, consistent and reliable behavior prior to seismic events, and a mechanism explaining how it could work, still eludes us. Most, but not all, scientists pursuing this mystery are in China or Japan.

Researchers have new insight into the sex lives of the much-maligned mosquitoes that are responsible for the vast majority of malaria deaths, according to a report published online on December 31st in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.In finding a partner of the right species type, male and female mosquitoes depend on their ability to "sing" in perfect harmony. Those tones are produced and varied based on the frequency of their wing beats in flight.

A rare textile woven from the silk of more than one million spiders is currently on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The incredible textile measures 11 by four feet, and is the largest piece of spider-woven textile in the world.Woven by golden orb spiders from Madagascar, the project took 70 people four years to collect enough spiders (not to mention the dozen people who spent 4 years extracting 80 feet of silk filament from each arachnid).

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have found that a group of genetic rogue elements, produced by DNA sequences commonly known as 'junk DNA', could help diagnose breast and bowel cancer. Their research, funded by Cancer Research UK, is published in this month's Genomics journal.The researchers, led by Dr Cristina Tufarelli, in the School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health Sciences, discovered that seven of these faulty genetic elements -- known as chimeric transcripts -- are more common in breast cancer cells. Five were only present in breast cancer cells while two were found in both normal and breast cancer cells.

The Solomon Islands archipelago in the Pacific was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake today causing a local tsunami, disaster agencies said. Several houses collapsed and some people were injured as they ran away from the shore in panic, Agence France-Presse reported.The quake hit at 9:36 a.m. local time about 105 kilometers (65 miles) south-southeast of Gizo, at a depth of 30.5 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Conservationists say there are just 3,200 tigers left in the world as the future of the species is threatened by poachers, destruction of their habitat and climate change.The world population of tigers has fallen by 95 per cent in the past century.The WWF said it intends to intensify pressure to save the Panthera tigris by classifying it as the most at risk on its roster of 10 critically endangered animals.

The arapaima, a giant species of fish that lurks in the Amazon river, may be threatened by overfishing.Studies reveal that errors in the classification of the species could mean that it is being pushed closer to the edge of extinction than thought.The arapaima is the largest freshwater fish with scales in the world.

A study in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Sleep found that adolescents with bedtimes that were set earlier by parents were significantly less likely to suffer from depression and to think about committing suicide, suggesting that earlier bedtimes could have a protective effect by lengthening sleep duration and increasing the likelihood of getting enough sleep.

The dodo -- an extinct bird made famous in traveling exhibitions and works of fiction -- may be ready for a comeback. In early July 2007, scientists working on the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar off of the coast of Africa, announced the discovery of the best preserved dodo skeleton ever found. It appears complete and is one of only two of the extinct bird that's been unearthed. The find, which was kept secret for several weeks while the site was examined and the skeleton collected, may provide valuable DNA samples.

Mutations are the raw material of evolution. Charles Darwin already recognized that evolution depends on heritable differences between individuals: those who are better adapted to the environment have better chances to pass on their genes to the next generation. A species can only evolve if the genome changes through new mutations, with the best new variants surviving the sieve of selection.

In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to "the link," a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer.This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing.

Six years ago, NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity touched down on the red planet with a team of scientists eagerly looking ahead to their short, three-month missions.As they embark on their seventh year on Mars, the longevity of the plucky rovers continues to amaze their minders back on Earth, even with Spirit potentially permanently stuck wheel-deep in Martian sand.

The "Copalita Eco-Archeological Park" opened on December 16. It is located near the tourist resort of Huatulco in the state of Oaxaca.The site was built on 36 hectares in the middle of a jungle, next to the River Copalita.But more work needs to be done on the site that was first explored in 1994.

Astronomers are gathering in Washington, D.C. today for what is being billed as the largest astronomy meeting in the history of the universe.

Scientists have successfully tested a system that translates brain waves into speech, raising the prospect that people left mute by stroke, Lou Gehrig's disease and other afflictions will one day be able to communicate by synthetic voice.The system was tested on a 26-year-old man left paralyzed by a brain stem stroke, but with his consciousness and cognitive abilities intact. The condition is known as "locked-in syndrome." In this condition, communication by eye movement or other limited motion is possible, but extremely cumbersome.

A brilliant but fiercely eccentric Sicilian nuclear physicist writes a string of suicide notes, then disappears. He is never seen again. Yet he was carrying his passport and enough cash to start a new life.Were the notes a clever decoy?.

During the Little Ice Age (LIA; covering approximately the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries), northern South America experienced about 10 percent more rainfall than during the twentieth century, according to Reuter et al.The authors analyzed two new records of oxygen isotopes (which track precipitation levels) from cave formations in northeastern Peru. They attribute the higher rainfall in northern South America during the LIA to cooler spring sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.

WASHINGTON: Years back, planetary scientists discovered that the Moon, long thought to have no atmosphere, actually has an extremely thin exosphere. But, they have been uncertain about how it gets the layer.In fact, they believed that the ions that make up the lunar exosphere are generated at Moon's surface by interaction with solar photons, plasma in the Earth's magnetosphere, or micrometeorites.

In the course of our journey to find out where we came from, there has been many theories most of them backed by scientific explanation and proofs. Archaeologists, Anthropologists, Geologists, Paleontologists, and Historians all have given us theories after theories and all with some amount of scientific data and evidences. In spite of all their efforts there are many archaeological, anthropological, geological, finds and evidences that defies straight logic and defies the present scientific status on the origin of civilization.