Newsdesk Archive

An ancient midden, or rubbish dump, thought to have historical importance is under serious threat from erosion, according to archaeologists.They said it was doubtful if artefacts at Uamh an Eich Bhric on Skye's west coast would survive beyond 2010.Excavations at the site during 2008 and earlier this year were seen as the "only chance" to investigate it.A report published online by Highland Council's Historic Environment Record said it was key Iron Age site.

Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago.The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin.The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters.

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city.Italy's culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports.Among the ruins visible on the search engine's free mapping service are the town's statues, temples and theatres.

Researchers have unveiled a new species of dinosaur from the late Triassic period - a small, early relative of T.rex and Velociraptor.The 2m-long dinosaur, named Tawa hallae, was found in a "bone bed" on the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, US.The discovery of this early theropod, reported in the journal Science, sheds light on early dinosaur evolution.

A new technique for unpeeling the Earth's skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world's oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.

EAT your heart out, Noah. A flood of biblical proportions filled the present-day Mediterranean Sea in a matter of months. At its peak the mega-flood caused the sea's level to rise by over 10 metres per day.Around 5.6 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea almost completely evaporated when it became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. This was due to uplift of the Strait of Gibraltar by tectonic activity, combined with a drop in sea level. Further tectonic activity 5.3 million years ago lowered the Strait and reconnected the dry Mediterranean basin with the Atlantic.

The genetically modified cyanobacterium consumes carbon dioxide and produces the liquid fuel isobutanol by using energy from sunlight.Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.

The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere - and probably its oceans - did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University of Houston scientists.

On a mountaintop clearing in the Sierra Nevada stands a tall metal platform holding a crude furnace and a box of silver iodide solution that some scientists believe could help offer relief from searing droughts.This is a cloud-seeding machine designed to increase rainfall by spraying a chemical vapor into the clouds. Under the right conditions, it can help water droplets grow heavy, coalesce and fall to the ground.

The sequences of nonsense DNA that interrupt genes could be far more important to the evolution of genomes than previously thought, according to a recent Science report by Indiana University Bloomington and University of New Hampshire biologists.Their study of the model organism Daphnia pulex (water flea) is the first to demonstrate the colonization of a single lineage by "introns," as the interrupting sequences are known. The scientists say introns are inserted into the genome far more frequently than current models predict. The scientists also found what appear to be "hot spots" for intron insertion -- areas of the genome where repeated insertions are more likely to occur. And surprisingly, the vast majority of intron DNA sequences the scientists examined were of unknown origin.

When given the chance to consume alcohol at will, fruit flies behave in ways that look an awful lot like human alcoholism. That's according to a study published online on December 10th in Current Biology that is one of the first to consider alcohol self-administration in the insects.

Japanese researchers said Thursday they had found a way to make plant leaves absorb more carbon dioxide in an innovation that may one day help ease global warming and boost food production.The Kyoto University team found that soaking germinated seeds in a protein solution raised the number of pores, or stomas, on the leaves that inhale CO2 and release oxygen, said chief researcher Ikuko Hara-Nishimura.

Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.

Ancient DNA retrieved from extinct horse species from around the world has challenged one of the textbook examples of evolution - the fossil record of the horse family Equidae over the past 55 million years.The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved an international team of researchers and the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) based at the University of Adelaide.

Although the Internet did not get its name until the mid-1980s, December 5, 2009, marks the 40th anniversary of the day when the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) connected four computer nodes to create a "network of networks"--a fateful link-up that would evolve into the Internet.

When robotic spacecraft bring a sample of Mars back to Earth, scientists will need specially-designed facilities to study the samples and prevent them from escaping to the outside world.A returning spacecraft may someday hurtle through Earth's atmosphere bearing evidence of life from Mars. But scientists won't casually crack open the precious payload in any old laboratory. They will need a specially-designed building that not only protects the Martian samples from terrestrial contamination, but also prevents any Martian material or organisms from escaping into Earth's biosphere.

Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.

Drinking coffee could help to cut the risk of advanced prostate cancer, a US study suggests.It found the heaviest consumers had a 60% lower risk of aggressive tumours than men who did not drink any coffee.Coffee has an effect on the way the body breaks down sugar and also on sex hormone levels - both of which have been linked to prostate cancer.The Harvard Medical School study was presented to an American Association for Cancer Research conference.

People are freaking out all over Norway because of what you are seeing here. According to Norwegian news outlets, the spooky giant spiral was seen, photographed, and recorded on video from all over the country.

What's blue and white, squiggly and suddenly appears in the sky?If you know the answer, pop it on a postcard and send it to the people of Norway, where this mysterious light display baffled residents yesterday.Speculation was increasing today that the display was the result of an embarrassing failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile.The Bulava missile was test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea early on Wednesday but failed at the third stage, say newspapers in Moscow today.This emerged despite earlier reports denying a missile launch yesterday. Even early today there was no formal confirmation from the Russian Defence Ministry.

Cameras aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft have captured images of a mysterious hexagon-shaped cloud formation that is likely formed by the path of a jet stream flowing around the planet's north pole.The hexagon, which was discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, encircles Saturn with an estimated diameter wider than two Earths. The associated jet stream likely whips along the hexagon at about 220 miles per hour (100 meters per second).

Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published tomorrow in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.Methane has a short lifetime of just a few hundred years on Mars because it is constantly being depleted by a chemical reaction in the planet's atmosphere, caused by sunlight. Scientists analysing data from telescopic observations and unmanned space missions have discovered that methane on Mars is being constantly replenished by an unknown source and they are keen to uncover how the levels of methane are being topped up.

The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified, having formed between only 600-900 million years after the Big Bang.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, gives Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi an exclusive interview.

Occasionally , after dinner, when I sit on my lawn and look up at the sky, particularly during a night when the sky is clear and moon not too bright, several thoughts flash through my mind.The first one is a sense of wonder at the size of the universe. Cosmologists estimate that there are about 140 billion galaxies, many bigger than the Milky Way, in which our solar system and the earth are located. Nobody knows how many stars there are in a galaxy - maybe a hundred billion, or 400 billion.

London, England (CNN) -- It is a truth universally acknowledged -- or nearly so -- that Jane Austen, the author of "Pride and Prejudice," died of a rare illness called Addison's disease, which robs the body of the ability to make critical hormones.Katherine White doesn't believe it.White, herself a sufferer of Addison's disease, has studied Austen's own letters and those of her family and friends, and concluded that key symptoms just don't match what's known about the illness.

THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers.

PALERMO - A buried city from the Roman era has been discovered by Italian archaeologists in Libya along the eastern coast of Cyrenaica. The area has been located between the cities of Derna and Bomba, not far from Tobruk. The discovery was made by Italian archaeologists and technical experts from the Sicily region Sea Superintendence and the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples under Sebastiano Tusa.

While NASA frets over a looming hiatus in its ability to launch people into space, a commercial company is poised to unveil the first spaceship for private passenger travel.The formal presentation of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is scheduled for Monday afternoon in California's Mojave Desert, the home base of legendary designer Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites.

Artists in London are painting a grim vision of a globe ravaged by climate change.Among the 63 works on display at the Royal Academy are a print of a lonesome-looking tree clinging to a tiny island amid a yawning ocean and a huge cage-like globe clad in glowering red neon.

The international conference on global warming is going on next week in Copenhagen. In every participant's mind will be the propaganda battle over the emails and documents hacked from the University of East Anglia and posted online. To proponents of "climategate" there's now proof climate science is rigged and corrupt. To many climatologists it's astounding that so much scientific data from so many differing studies around the globe can be dismissed as phony.

Why do fakes get made? Why do people fall for hoaxes? Greed, pride, revenge, nationalism, pranks, and gullibility mix in an archaeological setting.

New research has heated up the debate over whether dinosaurs were ectothermic (cold-blooded) or endothermic (warm-blooded like us). The topic is addressed in this week's Johns Hopkins News-Letter and a recent PLoS One paper.The prevailing view for decades was that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, as reptiles, fish and amphibians are today. Now support is leaning toward the warm-blooded dinosaur theory, which opens up a slew of intriguing questions: Did dinosaurs sweat? Were they able to live in very cold regions? Did they have to eat a lot to fuel their lifestyle? and more.

Coils of nearly 4,000 year-old rope has turned up in caves on the Red Sea. Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi digs deep to bring us a new story from ancient Egypt.

Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape.Welcome to "Troy" - Mars style. NASA's robotic rover Spirit is bogged down on the Red Planet in a place the rover team named after the ancient city.So why aren't scientists lamenting?

A virus that in nature infects only rabbits could become a cancer-fighting tool for humans. Myxoma virus kills cancerous blood-precursor cells in human bone marrow while sparing normal blood stem cells, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Florida College of Medicine has found. The findings are now online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Leukemia.

COSMOLOGISTS are doing the happy dance. The European Space Agency's Planck mission is busy surveying the cosmic microwave background, aka the "echo" of the big bang, and in 2013 will release a feast of data that promises to deliver profound new insights into the origin of the universe.Surely a victory for science? Only, it seems, if cosmologists can resist the temptation to gorge themselves on all those goodies.

It looks more like the Starship Enterprise sinking in the sea - but this huge vertical vessel could be the future of ocean exploration.Called the SeaOrbiter, the huge 51m (167ft) structure is set to be the world's first vertical ship allowing man a revolutionary view of life below the surface.Although currently only a prototype its inventor Jacques Rougerie thinks his international oceanographic station will soon be setting sail.

For decades, people with vocal cord problems could only hope to communicate in the cold, robotic voice provided by a mechanical larynx. The search for a more lifelike, and individualized, voice has gone on for some time, but scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have finally designed a device that approximates actual speech in people with damaged larynges. The artificial larynx recognizes what the user is saying by monitoring mouth movement, and then uses a speech synthesizer to produce the correct words.

Cutting through solid steel with flaming bacon certainly has its appeal, but for large-scale industrial processes, the Fraunhofer institute thinks electromagnetic pulses may work better than the other white heat. Case in point: their new electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device that cuts through steel faster than a laser, and cheaper than a machine tool.The device uses a mixture of capacitors and coils to create a directed magnetic field that works like a paper-hole puncher. The shaped magnetic field pounds steel with 50,763 pounds per square inch, or three times the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. At that power, the blast can punch a hole through steel seven times faster than the lasers currently used to do the same job.

As geologists probe the world's rocky sediments for spots to safely store carbon dioxide underground, engineers are working on the first step of the process: separating pure CO2 from noxious smokestack emissions. An enzyme in our blood already has the trick down, however, and it captures two pounds of CO2 every day. Now a New Jersey company is trying to replicate the method.

While the fate of America's Yucca Mountain appears to be sealed, Finnish company Posiva is moving forward with a cutting-edge nuclear waste storage facility that it claims will safely store radioactive waste in drums deep in the ground for 100,000 years. While challenges abound, a green light from the Finnish government expected by 2012 will make the site on Finland's Olkiluoto Island the first permanent nuclear waste repository in the world, opening the door for more to follow.

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

Sumatra, Indonesia (CNN) -- The land still smolders, tinted with a depressing gray. Twisted hulks of tree trunks take on abnormal shapes. A dark black canal cuts through the wasted landscape.It looks like a scene from an apocalyptic movie where an unknown force has obliterated all life. But this is the reality of Sumatra, Indonesia's largest island.The Kampar Peninsula was once virgin rainforest, some of the most biodiverse in the world. The region has now been transformed into a lifeless plain, soon to be replanted with monocultures.

The first decade of this century is the warmest on record, a report by the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said.The agency's data also showed that 2009 was set to be the fifth warmest year.In a separate report, the UK's Met Office said the current decade was "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began.Its new analysis also showed that 2009 would almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record.

I came to South America early in 2009, in search of a cure. I was acting on a gut feeling, that the legendary visionary plant, ayahuasca, would help me. I had a brain tumor, caused by a chronic degenerative condition, called "acromegaly" which had dogged me for 20 years. I had spent many years searching and trying a plethora of complementary and alternative approaches to restoring my health, continually postponing major brain surgery and radiation therapy, despite the progressive degeneration and deformation of my body. I wanted to avoid the conventional treatments, because in my case, they would have meant severe physical trauma, the destruction of a vital organ, and ultimately destined a life monitored by a hospital and dependent on heavy medications.

Scientists working in Edinburgh and Yorkshire, in the UK, have discovered scientific evidence that the creation of the Earth and Moon was a deliberate act. The researchers found that the Earth, Moon, and beyond were engineered according to a specific equation. They have dubbed it the God Equation. The equation looks like this.

A massive volcanic eruption that occurred in the distant past killed off much of central India's forests and may have pushed humans to the brink of extinction, according to a new study that adds evidence to a controversial topic.The Toba eruption, which took place on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia about 73,000 years ago, released an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere that blanketed the skies and blocked out sunlight for six years. In the aftermath, global temperatures dropped by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit and life on Earth plunged deeper into an ice age that lasted around 1,800 years.

Think black holes are strange? Understandable considering these powerhouses of the universe (many times heavier than our sun) are collapsed stars with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape their grasp.But maybe they're not "strange" enough, suggest some astrophysicists. "Stellar" black holes, ones only a few times heavier than the sun, may actually be something even weirder called a quark star, or "strange" star.

Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon. The results have just been published in Nano Letters.

For more half a century paranoid fantasies about flying saucers, little green men and alien invasions were officially indulged by the existence of a department within the Ministry of Defence that investigated UFO sightings.But after more than 11,000 sightings spawning countless conspiracy theories, the department has been scrapped. The UFO hotline is no more.

Cannabis can reduce spasticity in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. A systematic review, published in the open access journal BMC Neurology, found that five out six randomized controlled trials reported a reduction in spasticity and an improvement in mobility.Shaheen Lakhan and Marie Rowland from the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation, Los Angeles, USA, searched for trials evaluating the cannabis extracts delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). According to Lakhan, "We found evidence that combined THC and CBD extracts may provide therapeutic benefit for MS spasticity symptoms".

In a swirl of snowflakes, the bronze bust of Peking Man is an unflinching sentinel in front of the main entrance of the museum in Zhoukoudian Caves on a bitingly cold morning.It must have been a similar day on Dec. 2, 1929, when Chinese paleontologist Pei Wenzhong made his discovery -- the first complete skull of Peking Man, or Homo erectus -- at the Zhoukoudian excavation site.

People in the past were very stressed out, suggests a new study that found high amounts of a stress hormone in the hair of Peruvian individuals who lived between 550 A.D. and 1532.The study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science, is the first to detect the stress hormone cortisol in ancient hair. Cortisol is produced in response to real and perceived threats. After its release, the hormone travels to nearly every part of the body, including to blood, saliva, urine and hair.

GUIYANG, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- The two mysterious bronze statues unearthed in central China's Henan Province in the 1980s was found to be Eros, the Greek God of Love, an archaeologist said here Tuesday.The two statues, which can be dated back to around 500 A.D., were about 5 centimeters high, each with two holes on both sides, suggesting that they may have been used as pendants.

Sarasota, FL (PRWEB) December 1, 2009 -- Six-thousand-year-old ancient temples are giving up acoustic clues for modern scientists. Intriguing new research on ancient temples in Malta and highlighted by the Old Temples Study Foundation is resonating through international archaeology and interdisciplinary classics research. Reaching beyond the scope of traditional archaeology, a multi-disciplinary approach has opened a new dimension for the study of the ancient world.

A prehistoric 'super-river' is the reason why Britain became an island and was cut off from Europe.An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea.Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France .

In most cases, replicas of ancient treasures or great works of art are treated with contempt. But with relics that are at risk of aging or disintegration, replicas can play an integral role in our understanding of the original works and the time in which they were made.In 1965, a mural was discovered in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, when local authorities decided to build a road in the middle of the Afrasiab tepe. A tepe is a mound marking an ancient site, in this case pre-Mongol Samarkand.

A throne built to a design used by the ancient Picts has gone on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.The seat was created by master furniture maker Adrian McCurdy who drew inspiration from stone carvings.It was commissioned by distillers Glenmorangie and National Museums Scotland (NMS).The Picts dominated Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde from the 4th to the 9th centuries AD.

Lord Carlile of Berriew has warned that officers, who are allowed to stop and search anyone in a designated "Section 44 authorisation zone" without giving a reason, need to be aware somebody taking a photograph is not a good enough reason to detain them."The police have to be very careful about stopping people who are taking what I would call leisure photographs, and indeed professional photographers," he said. "The fact that someone is taking photographs is not prima facie a good reason for stop and search and is very far from raising suspicion. It is a matter of concern and the police will know that they have to look at this very carefully."

Antarctica served as a climatic refuge for animals during the world's largest known, and probably global warming-fueled, mass extinction event, according to new research that focused on one scrappy survivor.The newly identified animal, Kombuisia antarctica, may not have been able to take the heat at the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago, so it moved to the cooler end of the earth.

Your article stated that "the government is ready to put evolution on the primary curriculum for the first time after years of lobbying by senior scientists" (Scientists win place for evolution in primary schools, 9 November).Andrew Copson, director of education at the British Humanist Society, found this "particularly important". The plans, you report, come "in the wake of a recent survey commissioned by the British Council which found that 54% of Britons agreed ... that 'evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism'.".

The Polar ice cap during the last Ice Age might not have been as extensive as previously thought, according to archaeologists looking at the remains of human settlements in the north of Sweden.People may have lived in the northern region of Tornedalen as far back as 11,000 years ago, according to Olof Östlund, speaking to the Norrländska Socialdemokraten newspaper.

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.Paleolithic hunters in Europe and Asia began exploiting horses for meat thousands of years ago when the last continental glaciers disappeared, yet the origin of horse domestication long has eluded archaeologists - for some captivating reasons.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could provide an alternative to carbon sequestration; instead of permanently storing CO2 underground, the CO2 could be recycled and put to use.A prototype of the machine, which was invented by Sandia researcher Rich Diver, was tested recently for the first time.

THE idea that Earth was entirely frozen over about 700 million years ago - the so-called Snowball Earth hypothesis - poses one small problem: how did our planet thaw out? The conundrum could be explained if the Earth was more mudball than snowball.Evidence for Snowball Earth comes from the discovery of glacial rock formations around the world that date back to this time. One proposed explanation for the subsequent thawing is that carbon dioxide levels soared during the freeze, warming the planet. But recent studies of oxygen isotopes suggest that the level of CO2 was only a tenth of that required to melt the ice.

Worn teeth, periodontal diseases, abscesses and cavities tormented the ancient Egyptians, according to the first systematic review of all studies performed on Egyptian mummies in the past 30 years.After examining research of more than 3,000 mummies, anatomists and paleopathologists at the University of Zurich concluded that 18 percent of all mummies in case reports showed a nightmare array of dental diseases.

HOUSTON: In a discovery that may solve the mystery behind the source of moon's water, an evidence from NASA's LCROSS mission suggested that much of it was delivered by comets that slammed into the Earth's satellite billions of years ago.Previous missions had also found hints of lunar water but its source was never clear. One idea is that it forms when hydrogen atoms from the solar wind latch onto oxygen atoms in the lunar soil, creating hydroxyl and water.

BERNE: A team of Swiss doctors is conducting about 100 autopsies a year without cutting open bodies, instead using devices including an optical 3D scanner that can detect up to 80% of the causes of death.Michael Thali, a professor at the University of Berne, and his colleagues have developed a system called "virtopsy", which since 2006 has been used to examine all sudden deaths or those of unnatural causes in the Swiss capital.

John Demjanjuk is due to stand trial in Germany accused of helping to murder more than 27,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in occupied Poland. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg returns to the site of the camp with one man who survived its horrors.

Archaeologists are preparing to excavate the site of Shakespeare's final home to find out more about the history of the building.The New Place, in Stratford-upon-Avon, was built in 1483 and is thought to be where the playwright died in 1616.The building itself was demolished in 1759, but it is thought remains of the old house are still underground.Archaeologists will start initial tests on the site on Tuesday and a full dig could be carried out next year.

A team of archeologists working for the City of Ottawa has uncovered the oldest aboriginal camp yet found within the city limits, including stone tools and pieces of artfully decorated pottery dating from 300 BC to 700 AD.Archeologists believe that the camp on the Rideau River was used periodically by Algonquin people because it was a good site for fishing, hunting and perhaps for gathering berries.

There's an experiment going on in the redwood forests of northern California: people are trying to turn trees into "carbon banks."The idea is to manage forests so they absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and slow down global warming. Carbon banking will be a hot topic at next month's big climate conference in Copenhagen, especially if negotiators can't agree on how to get industrialized countries to lower their own emissions. Carbon banking could be a way to cut those emissions by paying poor countries to save their forests and manage them better.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs.

Reading dinosaur books is often like visiting the zoo; you see fascinating animals, but you don't learn much about them nor their lives in their natural environment. In Dinosaur Odyssey, palaeontologist Scott Sampson brings dinosaurs back to life as living, breathing parts of their long-vanished ecosystems. It's a fresh and welcome approach: dinosaurs never stood alone in isolated cages - they were vital parts of terrestrial ecosystems.

SUPERCONDUCTING wires allow electricity to flow with zero resistance, as long as their temperature is below at least -123 °C. That's a major obstacle, but does the whole of the wire have to be that cold?The answer may be no, according to Yonatan Dubi and Massimiliano Di Ventra of the University of California, San Diego. They have calculated that provided some points along the wire's length stay below the threshold temperature, the material will superconduct.

SPACE is big," wrote Douglas Adams in his book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."He wasn't exaggerating. Even our nearest star Proxima Centauri is a staggering 4.2 light years away - more than 200,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Or, if you like, the equivalent of 50 million trips to the moon and back.

TISSUE grown from human embryonic stem cells, the most prized, and most controversial, cells ever grown in a lab, could at last make it into the human body.After a decade of scientific and political wrangling, several therapies are now edging towards human trials. Which will be first?.

AS THE world prepares for the largest investment in nuclear power in decades, owners of uranium mines last week raised the prospect of fuel shortages. To make things worse, the reliability of estimates of the amount of uranium that can be economically mined has also been questioned.Volatile oil and gas prices, along with the threat of global warming, have pushed governments to reconsider nuclear energy, partly because it is a low-carbon technology and partly because uranium supplies seem plentiful.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Google is putting thousands of images of ancient artifacts at Iraq's National Museum online, the Web search leader said on Tuesday, part of a U.S. bid to entice foreign firms to invest in Iraq.What is now modern-day Iraq was once known as Mesopotamia a region considered by many as the "cradle of civilization." The museum houses one of the finest Mesopotamian collections in the world.

While weapons continue to grow smarter and smarter, the U.S. Army is developing armor to match the arms. A new 'intelligent' armor under development at the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center can evaluate its own condition, identify the type of round being shot at it, and even generate electrical power from bullet strikes. Whether wrapped around a tank or an infantryman, the smart armor can relay information to soldiers in real time, extensively upping battlefield awareness.

Energy shields haven't arrived just yet, but this magnetic heat shield could do nicely in the meantime. European researchers have created a magnetic field technology that can protect spacecraft from fiery atmospheric temperatures during reentry, and perhaps cut back on the need for traditional heat shields.

Martians may have already landed on Earth, at least in ancient microbial form. The same NASA team that discovered the controversial Allen Hills meteorite has shared new data that points to a biological origin for structures within the Martian rock, Spaceflight Now reports. NASA headquarters plans to officially address the new findings within days.The Allen Hills meteorite sparked a huge debate in 1996 when both NASA and the White House announced the possible discovery of life from the red planet. President Bill Clinton gave a speech at the time that could perhaps sound prescient, if the new findings put scientific doubts to rest.

Drug users are well informed about the harms associated with the drugs they use, and perceive alcohol and tobacco to be amongst the most dangerous substances, according to a survey by UCL (University College London) and Imperial College London researchers. The findings, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, suggest that the current system of classifying psychoactive drugs in the UK may need to be revisited.

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

Andrew Collins, science and history writer, and the author of various books that challenge the way we perceive the past will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout January to discuss his latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

WASHINGTON: Researchers are turning to airwaves to power batteries in airplanes and automobiles.About half-inch by an inch in size, these devices might be mounted on the roof or tail of a car or on a plane fuselage where they would vibrate inside a flow, producing an output voltage. The power generated would be enough to run a subsystem, such as batteries to charge control panels and cellphones.

Jim Sibert has answered the questions for 46 years, ever since the night he observed the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy.Over the years, the former FBI special agent has been interviewed for books and calls and questions keep coming from teachers, authors and historians. Now, as another anniversary of the assassination arrives, Sibert, 91, was asked again about that historic day, Nov. 22, 1963."It started out like a normal day," Sibert said.

This year has seen the discovery in Ethiopia of Ardi, the fossil skeleton believed to be the oldest human relative. But long before Ardi came Java Man, who was unearthed in the Indonesian village of Sangiran 120 years ago. Christine Finn has been on a quest to find the origins of this paleo-celebrity.Sunday afternoon in Solo, also known as Surakarta, and I had a date with Java Man."Sangiran? Museum?" the taxi driver asked me.

Several lines of evidence point to the possibility of a past ocean on Mars, from apparent ancient shorelines to chemicals in the soil.Add to the list a new map of the red planet's valleys. The map shows extensive valley networks around the equator and in the southern hemisphere, suggesting a warmer Mars long ago, with extensive rainfall that would have fed an ocean in the northern hemisphere.

The Canaanites get a bad rap in the Old Testament, but some may been among the first cosmopolitan art collectors, report archaeologists Thursday.At the American Schools of Oriental Research meeting in New Orleans, Eric Cline of George Washington (D.C.) University and Assf Yasur-Landau of Israel's University of Haifa report the intriguing results this year from Tel Kabri, a vanquished Canaanite palace more than 3,500 years old.

BOULDER, Colo. - Call it Operation: Plymouth Rock. A plan to send a crew of astronauts to an asteroid is gaining momentum, both within NASA and industry circles.Not only would the deep space sojourn shake out hardware, it would also build confidence in long-duration stints at the moon and Mars. At the same time, the trek would sharpen skills to deal with a future space rock found on a collision course with Earth.

NEW ORLEANS - The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.A report released Sunday recorded 17,650 species living below 656 feet, the point where sunlight ceases. The findings were the latest update on a 10-year census of marine life."Parts of the deep sea that we assumed were homogenous are actually quite complex," said Robert S. Carney, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University and a lead researcher on the deep seas.

A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, researchers report.The volcano ejected an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, leaving a crater (now the world's largest volcanic lake) that is 100 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide. Ash from the event has been found in India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.

Walking along the bluff of an island off Chatham County, archaeologist Chris McCabe keeps his eyes on the ground looking for the stories the artifacts there can tell him."Obviously there's quite a bit going on on this site," said McCabe, the deputy state archaeologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. "There's glass, pottery, shell. It's multiple periods of occupation."Then something shiny catches his eye. It's just a shard, but it, too, tells a tale.

Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like "Happy Birthday." That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers.

Early modern humans and their predecessors in Europe were mostly big game hunters, but a pile of well-nibbled bird bones suggests that at least some prehistoric European cavemen enjoyed small prey too, according to a new study.The 202 bones, belonging to the Aythya genus of diving ducks, were found at Bolomor Cave near the town of Tavernes in Valencia, Spain. The ducks date to around 150,000 years ago, and were not eaten daintily.

So much for The Boys From Brazil: Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele didn't genetically engineer "Aryan" twins in a Brazilian town, National Geographic researchers report.

Floods in Saudi Arabia have killed 77 people and scores could be missing, after the heaviest rainfall in years.None of the casualties had been among the millions attending the Hajj pilgrimage, said a spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry.Heavy rainstorms on Wednesday had hampered the start of the annual Muslim event in the city of Mecca.

A cancer vaccine carried into the body on a carefully engineered, fingernail-sized implant is the first to successfully eliminate tumors in mammals, scientists report this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine.