Newsdesk Archive

The good, the bad and the ugly: That's a quick summary of the effects of dopamine, a natural brain chemical that's linked to pleasure, addiction and disease.This little molecule -- it consists of only 22 atoms -- is essential to life but can be a curse sometimes. Too much or too little of it can lead to drug abuse, reckless thrill-seeking, obesity, the tremors of Parkinson's disease, even restless leg syndrome, an irresistible urge to move your legs.

For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America. At their peak around 900 A.D., Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile -- comparable to modern Los Angeles County. Even in rural areas the Maya numbered 200 to 400 people per square mile. But suddenly, all was quiet. And the profound silence testified to one of the greatest demographic disasters in human prehistory -- the demise of the once vibrant Maya society.

About 2,000 stolen artifacts were returned to Afghanistan and unveiled at the National Museum in Kabul on Tuesday, the New York Times reports. The artifacts had been stolen over the years of war in Afghanistan and smuggled into Britain.

As smoke rises in the distance, Stone Age travelers haul their boats onto the shores of England's River Avon at newly discovered Bluestonehenge, shown in a new illustration.Found at the foot of a 1.75 mile (2.8 kilometer) earthen avenue to Stonehenge near Salisbury, United Kingdom, the 5,000-year-old mini-Stonehenge may have been a prehistoric crematorium, archaeologists announced on October 5, 2009.

Mercury's mysterious bright spot finally got a close-up, thanks to NASA'S MESSENGER probe, which flew within 142 miles (228 kilometers) of the sun's nearest planetary neighbor.Close-up or no, scientists still don't know why the region appears spotlighted. But thanks to the highest-resolution images of the area so far, they now know that the halo holds an irregular depression, possibly the result of volcanic forces.Last week's flyby was MESSENGER's third, and it's intended to put the probe on course to begin orbiting Mercury in 2011.

For the first time, physicists have demonstrated the quantum entanglement of three light beams, all of different wavelengths. Entanglement of two light beams of different wavelengths has already been demonstrated, but the researchers explain that going beyond two beams is important since three beams can serve as connections at the nodes of a quantum network.The team of scientists, from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, both in Erlangen, Germany, has published their results in a recent issue of Science Express.

Some of the world's most dangerous volcanoes can erupt much more quickly than scientists had suspected, according to a new study of the massive 2008 eruption of Chile's Chaitén volcano.Normally scientists can track the seismic rumblings that precede most volcanic eruptions for weeks or even months, as magma in the volcano slowly rises to the surface.

Massive volcanic eruptions wiped out the world's forests about 250 million years ago, leaving the planet teeming with wood-eating fungi, according to a new study.The finding confirms that even hardy trees didn't survive the Permian mass extinction, one of the most devastating losses of life Earth has ever known.

Discoveries like the ancient Greek Antikythera computer (1500 years before the invention of precision geared devices) the Baghdad batteries (2000 years before Volta "invented" the battery) or dental and brain surgery artifacts found in ancient Pakistan (8000 years out of historical sequence) appear "anomalous" within our current paradigm of history. However, they are not unexpected according to the ancient cyclical view.Giorgio de Santillana, the former professor of the history of science at MIT, tells us that most ancient cultures believed consciousness and history were not linear but cyclical, meaning they would rise and fall over long periods of times. In his landmark work, Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio and co-author Hertha von Dechend showed that the myth and folklore of over 30 ancient cultures around the world spoke of a vast cycle of time with alternating Dark and Golden Ages that move with the precession of the equinox. Plato called this the Great Year.

The pictures were captured by a specialist thermal camera as part of a Nasa mission to search for the presence of water on the moon.The Thermoteknix camera also tookphotos of the earth and moon at distances as great as 560,000km and 850,000 km away.It is the first time a space craft has travelled to the far side of the moon with a thermal imaging camera."The camera has worked flawlessly for nearly 100 days, and counting, in interplanetary space," said Anthony Colaprete, payload manager and chief scientist for Nasa's LCROSS mission.

The Bay Area-based SETI Institute, dedicated to the search for alien life, is asking space enthusiasts around the world to think about what we should say if we ever get a cosmic phone call.

ARCATA, Calif. -- Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.

An ancient document that details the moment when King William the Lion of Scotland granted Royal Burgh status to Perth in 1210 has been restored.Experts at the National Archive of Scotland repaired and cleaned the historic parchment and reattached its official wax seal.The work has been completed ahead of next year's Perth 800 celebrations.The year-long programme of culture and sporting events will mark the 800th anniversary of the honour.

The island of Sri Lanka has been known by many names throughout its history: Ratnadipa, or the 'land of gems' in Buddhist Sanskrit literature, Taprobane among Greeks and Romans, Serendib to the Arabs, and Ceylon under the British Empire. This small island, only 25,000 square miles in size, lies off the southern tip of India. Early Iron Age culture was introduced to the island, presumably from South India, at the beginning of the First Millennium B.C., but few sites of this period are known, except for cemeteries with megalithic graves. Archaeological work in Sri Lanka has concentrated instead on large monastic settlements which were established in the Early Historic Period, ca. 300 B.C. - 300 A.D. and mark the spread of Buddhist influence over the island.

AMMAN - Ancient burial chambers in the Jordan Valley are being threatened by modern development and may be demolished, according to an international report released this week.The dolmens foothills of Damiyah were listed among 77 endangered sites around the world on the World Monuments Fund (WMF) annual watch list.Damiyah, located in the northern Jordan Valley, is home to hundreds of dolmens, megalithic table-shaped block formations, which some experts believe may date back to the Chalcolithic period, around 4500-3500BC.

France's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient Egyptian fresco fragments at the centre of a row with Egyptian officials.Earlier, Egypt's head of antiquities Zahi Hawass told the AFP news agency that the Louvre had bought the fragments knowing they were stolen.Egypt had severed co-operation with the Louvre, pending their return, he said.The Pharaonic steles, on display in the Louvre, are reported to be from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor.

A colossal ring of debris found around Saturn is the largest in the solar system. The new ring could be the 'smoking gun' that explains the curious two-faced appearance of Saturn's moon Iapetus, whose leading hemisphere is much darker than its trailing side.Until now, the biggest known rings in the solar system were Saturn's E ring and faint, gossamer sheets of dust orbiting Jupiter. Saturn's E ring, a diffuse disc of icy material fed by the moon Enceladus, extends from 3 to perhaps 20 times the radius of Saturn.

Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power.

Scientists have pinpointed a gene linked to more than half of all breast cancers.The gene, NRG1 (neuregulin-1), is also thought to play a role in many bowel, prostate, ovarian and bladder tumours.The University of Cambridge team said the breakthrough should provide "vital information" about how cancer spreads.Experts agreed the finding, published in the journal Oncogene, could represent a very significant advance in the fight against cancer.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Computer owners are being invited to scour CCTV footage and spot crimes being committed from the comfort of their own homes in a move branded as "sick" by civil liberties campaigners.A new British company called Internet Eyes is signing up viewers to watch live streams of CCTV cameras from shops and businesses and report anything they believe to be suspicious.

As if teensy night-lights were dangling from tree trunks and branches, glow-in-the-dark mushrooms illuminate the forests across the globe. Now, scientists have discovered several species of such radiant 'shrooms.The freaky findings, reported today in the journal Mycologia, increases the number of aglow mushroom species from 64 to 71, shedding light on the evolution of luminescence in nature.

An international team of astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity.One of the astronomers, Dr Hongsheng Zhao of the SUPA Centre of Gravity, University of St Andrews, suggests that an unknown force is acting on dark matter. The findings are published this week in the scientific journal Nature.

A high demand for Predators and Reapers on the front lines has led the U.S. Air Force to take an unusual step: asking human pilots to mimic the drones for training purposes back in the States.Cessna 182 aircraft have become converted "Surrogate Predators" with the installation of a "Predator ball" that typically serves as the surveillance and tracking eyes for drone operators. Such Predator balls give the manned Cessnas the ability to lock onto targets and track them."We're using a manned aircraft to simulate an unmanned aircraft," said CAP-U.S. Air Force Commander Col. Bill Ward. A group of 18 pilots from the Civil Air Patrol have volunteered for initial training to learn the same tactics and procedures of Predator operators on combat missions. All CAP pilots have prior military experience.

A spoonful of herbicide helps the sugar break down in a most delightful way.Researchers at Brigham Young University have developed a fuel cell - basically a battery with a gas tank - that harvests electricity from glucose and other sugars known as carbohydrates.The human body's preferred energy source could someday power our gadgets, cars or homes.

The chunk of stone, which is the right side of a boy's head and his lower face, is to be scanned using sophisticated technology and the remainder generated by computer to suggest what he may have looked like.Archaeologists suspect the sculpture, which was found at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, is of Nero as a young boy.The only other known statues of Nero are in the Italian National Museum of Antiquities in Parma and the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth's magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to changes in climate.By taking a closer look at the 1.1 billion-year-old volcanic rocks on the north shore of Lake Superior, the researchers have found that Earth's ancient magnetic field was a geocentric axial dipole -- essentially a large bar magnet centered in the core and aligned with the Earth's spin axis.

For almost 100 years, scientists have been trying to create a meandering river in the laboratory. Christian Braudrick and Bill Dietrich of University of California, Berkeley, finally found a recipe and published it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

The world's largest wind farm officially got up and running Thursday, with all 627 towering wind turbines churning out electricity across 100,000 acres of West Texas farmland.The Roscoe Wind Complex, which began construction in 2007 and sprawls across four counties near Roscoe, is generating its full capacity of 781.5 megawatts, enough to power 230,000 homes, the German company E.ON Climate and Renewables North America said."This is truly sign milestone for us," said Patrick Woodson, the company's chief development officer. "In three years to be able to take this project from cotton fields to the biggest wind farm in the world is something we're very proud of.".

Researchers studying the evolution of culture say analysis of Polynesian canoe design suggests New Zealand was at least partially settled from Hawaii.The concept of Hawaii as the ancestral home of Maori fell out of fashion among archaeological circles more than 60 years ago.However, the new research in the November Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests a course of Polynesian settlement that started in the far western islands and jumped to the far eastern islands before then working backwards towards the original point of origin.

The first rune stone discovered in Norway since 1947 dates to about 400 AD and may contain a grave, archaeologists in the city of Mandal said.

Archaeologists have discovered a mini-Stonehenge, a mile from the site of Wiltshire's famous stone circle."Bluehenge", named after the hue of the 27 stones from Wales which once formed it, has been described by researchers as a "very important" find.All that now exists of the 5,000-year-old site is a series of holes where the dolerite monoliths once stood.Bluehenge lies at the end of the "Avenue" - a pathway connecting the larger Stonehenge to the River Avon.

Researchers have used electrodes to make people move in slow motion.The scientists "boosted" human subjects' brain waves - applying a small alternating current via electrodes on the volunteers' scalps.These waves are patterns generated naturally by groups of neurons, or brain cells, firing in a rhythm.In the journal Current Biology, the researchers described how their finding shows that brain waves directly affect human behaviour.The results also reveal clues about movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease, sufferers of which have difficulty making voluntary movements.

This year's Nobel prize for medicine goes to three US-based researchers who discovered how the body protects the chromosomes housing vital genetic code.Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak jointly share the award.Their work revealed how the chromosomes can be copied and has helped further our understanding on human ageing, cancer and stem cells.The answer lies at the ends of the chromosomes - the telomeres - and in an enzyme that forms them - telomerase.The 46 chromosomes contain our genome written in the code of life - DNA.

A remarkable view of our Galaxy has been obtained by Europe's billion-euro Herschel Space Observatory.The telescope was put in a special scanning mode to map a patch of sky.The images reveal in exquisite detail the dense, contorted clouds of cold gas that are collapsing in on themselves to form new stars.Herschel, which has the largest mirror ever put on an orbiting telescope, was launched in May as a flagship mission of the European Space Agency.

The state archaeologist says a team will travel to Millard County to investigate the site where 1,000-year-old bones may have been found last month.Boys riding all-terrain vehicles in a sand pit south of Fillmore found the remains Sept. 25. Kevin Jones, the state archaeologist, said his office is still investigating the bones, but they may be 1,000 years old or more and locals have indicated Indian artifacts have been found in the sand pit before.

BLANDING, Utah -- High above the spiky sandstone spine known as Comb Ridge that snakes for 120 miles through the desert, archaeologist Winston Hurst treads carefully through a cave of ruins.The sun blazes down, illuminating the ghostly dwellings carved into the alcoves more than a thousand years ago. To a stranger the pre-Columbian pueblo ruins seem breathtakingly intact - walls and windows and rooms still standing, storage chambers for corn strewn with thousand-year-old cobs, large stone grinding slabs and brightly colored pottery sherds scattered throughout.The archaeologist sees only destruction.

The "pot-hunting" culture of the Southwest dates back to the 1800s, when a Colorado ranching family began exploring and excavating the ruined cliff dwellings of the Anasazi, an ancient civilization that flourished centuries ago.Richard Wetherill and his brothers discovered entire homes filled with decorated pottery, jewelry, tools, sandals and finely woven baskets dating from about 600 to 1300 A.D. Thousands of grave sites, where the dead were wrapped in blankets and buried with their most valuable possessions, also were discovered.

Spartans! Prepare for, well, embarrassment. It seems that far from being elite, noble warriors, each worth 1,000 of any rival soldiers, King Leonidas' crack troops were a bunch of bullying thugs. And Alexander the Great? A mummy's boy: in fact, his mum was a better fighter by a long chalk and died a soldier's death on the battlefield.They and other figures from antiquity are to have their reputations shattered by a new British study which reveals the "truth" behind long-established legends. Michael Scott, a classicist at Cambridge University, points to evidence that could change the way we think about our classical heroes.

You know Stonehenge, of course: a haunting silhouette from the past that stands gaunt and defiant on the chalky grassland of Wiltshire, just where the busy A303 and A344 meet. This inspirational stone circle, a triumph of the human spirit, was bequeathed millennia ago. It is now protected by English Heritage and forms part of a Unesco World Heritage Site.Last year, almost 900,000 visitors stepped from their cars and coaches to get closer to the neolithic wonder. An enriching experience, set to become better still when a new visitor centre opens next year. It is tantalising, though, to be so close to the stones, yet unable to wander through them and wonder at the forces that brought them here. Since 1978, they have been off-limits because of worries about vandalism and erosion caused by rising visitor numbers.

Gary David, author of Orion Zone will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout October to discuss his latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

In an attempt to both strengthen the US's negotiating hand in the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks, and to prod domestic lawmakers into swifter action on lasting legislation, the White House has told the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with new rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Ranging from the simple, like publicly available electric bikes and moving sidewalks, to the more futuristic, like a personal helicopter backpack and personal maglev car/pods, a new vision breaks down the future of public transportation.In the latest issue of European Union Infrastructure Magazine, it features the pros, cons and feasibility of implementing the world's most advanced public transportation system.

The team of four British explorers and their Indonesian guide tracked through dense and treacherous jungle in the Kerinci National Park of Sumatra where two of them caught a glimpse of the Orang Pendek - or short man.The team have brought back hair samples and a piece of palm they hope will provide DNA evidence of the Orang Pendek - a creature sighted in the area since colonial times and reputed to be immensely powerful.

The chunks of ice and dust that make their home in the Oort cloud, far beyond the orbit of Pluto, sometimes become dislodged and head into the solar system as streaky comets. Some disruptions, caused by passing stars and other interactions with the Milky Way galaxy, are severe enough to send Oort comets into orbits that buzz or even collide with Earth. New simulations have revealed a novel mechanism for their entry into our part of the solar system, a method that also suggests that comet showers may not have been strongly involved in major extinctions on Earth.

Most babies born in rich countries this century will eventually make it to their 100th birthday, new research says. Danish experts say that since the 20th century, people in developed countries are living about three decades longer than in the past. Surprisingly, the trend shows little sign of slowing down.In an article published Friday in the medical journal Lancet, the researchers write that the process of aging may be "modifiable." .

Marketers are escalating the media blitz for the "2012" disaster movie to Defcon 2 tonight with a TV teaser that touts the coming apocalypse. If you watch the two-minute scene, here are two words of advice:DON'T PANIC!The teaser is due to run on major broadcast networks as well as scads of cable channels and local stations sometime between 10:50 and 11 p.m. ET/PT, and it's sure to get viewers whipped up in advance of the movie itself, which premieres on Nov. 13.

The recent discovery of water on the Moon by India's inaugural lunar mission almost never happened because of a twin helping of good old-fashioned red tape and lingering Cold War suspicions, reports science writer Pallava Bagla.Hidden behind the euphoria of the find is a less publicised tale of complex back room dealings between Indian and American space science teams.Back in 2004, scientists from the two countries were eager to collaborate, but the Bureau of Export Control in the US did not share this enthusiasm. In fact it was seen by some on the Indian side as being singularly obstinate.

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees.

Professor Stephen Hawking has given up a prestigious academic title.The physicist, who has motor neurone disease, is completing his last day as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.The university said it was policy for holders of the title to retire at 67 and Prof Hawking was 67 in January.Prof Hawking, who is one of the world's leading cosmologists, will continue working at the university and a new Lucasian Professor will be appointed.

BRUSSELS - The European Union launched a free satellite navigation network on Thursday that could help pilots, drivers and blind people by fine-tuning the accuracy of the U.S. global positioning system (GPS) to around 2 meters.The EGNOS system will use three satellites and 34 ground stations to narrow the horizontal accuracy of GPS from around 7 meters previously and improve its vertical accuracy to help pilots during landings.

COSMIC radiation has been used to peer inside an erupting volcano, a technique that could allow eruptions to be predicted.Short-lived particles called muons are produced in Earth's atmosphere when charged particles from space slam into gas molecules. These muons can travel through solid rock, though some get absorbed, and the percentage lost depends on the mass of material along their path.

WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest - and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.

September 28, 2009--A fanged frog, seen above in Thailand in 2008, is one of 163 new animal and plant species discovered last year in the jungles of Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong region, according to a report issued this week by the international conservation nonprofit WWF (video of the fanged frog and other new species found in the Mekong area.)Known to scientists as Limnonectes megastomias, the Khorat big-mouth frog is an ambush predator prone to pouncing on insects, other frogs, and even birds--as evidenced by its feather-laden feces.

The major 2004 earthquake in Sumatra may have weakened the San Andreas fault, 8,000km away in California.This is according to scientists who took measurements from the fault over two decades.Reporting in the journal Nature, the team found that small "repeating earthquakes" became more frequent as the San Andreas Fault weakened.This pattern, they say, could help to forecast earthquakes in the future, something that is currently impossible.The team, led by Taka'aki Taira, of the University of California at Berkeley, studied a section of the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, which is sometimes called the "earthquake capital of the world".

In a special issue of Science, an international team of scientists has for the first time thoroughly described Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. This research, in the form of 11 detailed papers and more general summaries, will appear in the journal's 2 October 2009 issue.This package of research offers the first comprehensive, peer-reviewed description of the Ardipithecus fossils, which include a partial skeleton of a female, nicknamed "Ardi." .

British archaeologists have unearthed an amphitheatre at a ancient port outside Rome which may have played host to emperors such as Hadrian and Trajan.The team, led by the University of Southampton, say the arena could have held up to 2,000 people and been used for gladiator games or animal baiting.It was found inside a gigantic imperial-style palace within the well-preserved old harbour of Portus.

Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old.It was a chance find discovered when a team of scientists were locating a place to excavate an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu.As they dug deeper they saw layers of what looked like fossilised eggs.The photos and samples were then sent to various universities who confirmed that they were dinosaur eggs.Each egg is the size of a football - about 13 to 23cm in diameter, lying buried in sandy nests.

India suffered its weakest monsoon for nearly 40 years, the country's meteorological department says.Rainfall nationwide is 23% below average at the end of the monsoon season, making it the worst drought since 1972, officials said.India is the world's second biggest producer of rice, wheat and sugar and millions of farmers in rural India rely on the monsoon to grow their crops.Officials admit the weak monsoon will have a negative impact on the economy.

BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is the most ambitious attempt yet to map the expansion history of the Universe using the technique known as baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO). A part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), BOSS achieved "first light" on the night of September 14-15, when it acquired data with an upgraded spectrographic system across the entire focal plane of the Sloan Foundation 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- LSD is back in labs after years of disrepute, joining other hallucinogens as legitimate subjects of research, a researcher in Santa Cruz, Calif., said.The first new studies of LSD in human subjects started at Harvard University last year. Scientists are looking into it as a treatment of cluster headaches, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday.

The first scientific autopsy on an ancient Egyptian mummy probably got the cause of death wrong, research suggests.Dr Augustus Bozzi Granville caused a sensation when he described the autopsy to the Royal Society of London in 1825.He concluded the mummified woman, Irtyersenu, died of ovarian cancer.But a University College London study, published in the Royal Society journal Biological Sciences, strongly suggests she died of tuberculosis.

The discovery of a prehistoric irrigation system in the Marana desert is giving archaeologists a deeper glimpse into one of the first groups of people to farm in the Tucson basin."What we're looking at is, perhaps, the earliest sedentary village life in the Southwest with people depending on agriculture as a primary food source," said project director Jim Vint.

Life's ability to replicate itself is essential for evolution, yet even the simplest kind of replication requires a relatively complex system. So what kind of non-replicating system might have served as the predecessor of evolution, paving the way for life as we know it? The answer, according to a recent study, is a kind of "prelife" -- a chemical system that can lead to information and diversity, and that is capable of selection and mutation, but does not yet have the ability to self-replicate.

Kozhikode: A rock engraving, indicating clear remnants of Harappan culture, has been found in the Edakkal caves in neighbouring Wayanad district, linking the Indus Valley civilisation with South India."There had been indications of remnants akin to the Indus Valley civilisation in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, but these new findings give credence to the fact that the Harappan civilisation had its presence in the region too and could trace the history of Kerala even beyond the Iron Age," historian M R Raghava Varier said.

AFTER five years of arguments over the so-called hobbits, the University of New England paleoanthropologist who formally described the tiny new hominin species from the Indonesian island of Flores is facing another wave of controversy.This time, Peter Brown could raise the ire of some of the scientists who supported him in an academic debate that degenerated into an international scandal.

On a good day, you can see it from a distance. It stands proudly on a ridge below a higher peak at a site where you would least expect to see a fine Roman structure. Although it lies in ruins, the white structure stands out in a landscape of black basalt rocks, typical of the Golan. Before 1967, it was the site of a Syrian military bunker.Khirbet Omrit (the Arabic name) rests on the border between the Galilee and the Golan, on what was the boundary between civilization and barbarity. At first, during the Roman occupation of Palestine, the Galilee was also a wild and unruly area where the young Herod was sent to restore order. He did this with his usual ruthless brutality, not allowing humanity to stand in the way of good order. As a result of his success, his masters in Rome saw he was suited to become King of Judea. Later this cruelly successful mode of operation also gained him rule over the Golan, which was added to his kingdom in about 30 BCE.

MATSUE--Twenty stone tools believed to be the oldest discovered in the nation have been excavated from a mid-Paleolithic period geological layer, dating back 120,000 years, at an archeological site in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, researchers said Tuesday.According to a team of experts, led by Prof. Kazuto Matsufuji of Doshisha University, that has researched the Sunabara remains, the tools are tens of thousands years older than any previously discovered.

Down under in Australia, down underground, scientists have found 850 previously unknown species living in subterranean water, caves and micro-caverns.These insects, crustaceans, spiders and worms are likely only about one-fifth of the number of undiscovered species the researchers think exist underground amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback. Two species of blind fish and two of blind eels were also uncovered.

Australian researchers have discovered a huge number of new species of invertebrate animals living in underground water, caves and "micro-caverns" amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.A national team of 18 researchers has discovered 850 new species of invertebrates, which include various insects, small crustaceans, spiders, worms and many others.

Spotted hyenas may not be smarter than chimpanzees, but a new study shows that they outperform the primates on cooperative problem-solving tests.Captive pairs of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) that needed to tug two ropes in unison to earn a food reward cooperated successfully and learned the maneuvers quickly with no training. Experienced hyenas even helped inexperienced partners do the trick.

Buried for centuries in a field in central England, this finely worked, 1,300-year-old fragment of gold plate was revealed today as part of the largest Anglo-Saxon hoard ever found.Showing two eagles flanking a fish, the Dark Ages treasure was one of more than 1,500 scattered gold and silver artifacts unearthed in July by metal detector enthusiast Terry Herbert on his friend's farm near the town of Burntwood.

A diminutive chihuahua and a lumbering Irish wolfhound look completely different, yet most us know they both belong to the concept called "dog". Now the brain regions responsible for our ability to organise the world into separate concepts have been pinpointed.Forming a concept involves selecting the important characteristics of our experiences and categorising them. The degree to which we are able to do this effectively is a defining characteristic of human intelligence. Yet little is known about how conceptual knowledge is created and used in the brain.

A gang of ancient sharks took on an enormous "sea monster" 85 million years ago, according to a new fossil analysis.The bones of the prehistoric reptile, known as a plesiosaur, were found in Japan in 1968. But a lack of comparative samples and other resources meant that scientists didn't release a formal description of the fossil until recently.

Mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia and South America have resolved the first one trillion cases of an ancient mathematics problem. The advance was made possible by a clever technique for multiplying large numbers, which are so enormous that if their digits were written out by hand they would stretch to the moon and back. The biggest challenge was that these numbers could not fit into the main memory of available computers, so the researchers had to make extensive use of the computers' hard drives.The problem, which was first posed more than a thousand years ago, concerns the areas of right-angled triangles. The surprisingly difficult problem is to determine which whole numbers can be the area of a right-angled triangle whose sides are whole numbers or fractions. The area of such a triangle is called a "congruent number..

Last week, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, broke with precedent by proposing federal rules that enforce Net neutrality -- the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) shouldn't play favorites with the traffic traveling over their networks.Proponents argue that Net neutrality promotes innovation. If software developers find more efficient ways to use the Internet, the argument goes, they shouldn't fear reprisal from ISPs that sell competing products. Broadband providers that also offer landline phone service shouldn't degrade the quality of Internet telephone calls in order to preserve their market share; the same goes for cable companies and Internet video.

Next time you're in Afghanistan, make sure to keep an eye out for the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command's giant blimp-like surveillance airship.The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), as it's called, will be 250 feet long, autonomous, and able to float at up to 20,000 feet for an impressive three weeks at a time. As for its surveillance capabilities, a 40-foot-long stretch behind the cockpit will house a selection of spy gear, including a motion sensor and radar.

A team of Austrian scientists have recently taken their colleagues to task for limiting their extraterrestrial search to carbon-based, water-reliant life. In response, they've begun experiments to see whether, water aside, any other solvents have the necessary properties to support extraterrestrial life.Recently we spoke to Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at SETI, on just why it is we think extraterrestrial life requires water and carbon. Is it simple scientific fact? Not quite. A lack of humility? Not that either. The answer, as is often the case in the annals of science, is one of practicality.

HOW far could an astronaut travel in a lifetime? Billions of light years, it turns out. But they ought to be careful when to apply the brakes on the return trip.Ever since cosmologists discovered that the universe's expansion is accelerating, many have wondered just how much this will constrain what we could see with telescopes in the future. Distant regions of the universe will eventually be expanding so fast that light from any objects there can never reach us.

New approaches are needed to help humanity deal with climate change and other global environmental threats that lie ahead in the 21st century, according to a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A biodiversity researcher has found a huge basalt rock formation in the Taiwan Strait, resembling a city wall and rivaling similar monoliths on land.

NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft known as MESSENGER will fly by Mercury for the third and final time on Sept. 29. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the planet's rocky surface for a final gravity assist that will enable it to enter Mercury's orbit in 2011.Determining the composition of Mercury's surface is a major goal of the orbital phase of the mission. The spacecraft already has imaged more than 90 percent of the planet's surface. The spacecraft's team will activate instruments during this flyby to view specific features to uncover more information about the planet.

Inspired by the success of cochlear implants that can restore hearing to some deaf people, researchers at MIT are working on a retinal implant that could one day help blind people regain a useful level of vision.Inspired by the success of cochlear implants that can restore hearing to some deaf people, researchers at MIT are working on a retinal implant that could one day help blind people regain a useful level of vision.

Imagine a gift wrapped in paper you really do treasure and want to carefully fold and save. That's because the wrapping paper lights up with words like "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Holidays," thanks to a built in battery -- an amazing battery made out of paper. That's one potential application of a new battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper, being described in the October 14 issue of ACS' Nano Letters.

Onerous searches often are compared with finding needles in haystacks. But two Mercyhurst College archeologists are involved in a search dramatically more challenging.That's because they've had to find the proverbial haystacks long before even thinking about finding the proverbial needles.

In a study published in the September 24th issue of Nature, an international team describes how they harnessed modern genomic technology to explore the ancient history of India, the world's second most populous nation.The new research reveals that nearly all Indians carry genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations. Following this ancient mixture, many groups experienced periods of genetic isolation from each other for thousands of years. The study, which has medical implications for people of Indian descent, was led by scientists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, India together with US researchers at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Scientists have turned up new evidence showing that ocean noise can affect the communication of whales.Studying blue whales off the eastern Canadian coast, they found the animals changed their vocalisations in response to an underwater seismic survey.The survey was conducted using gear considered to have a low impact.Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers say this is the first evidence that whales will increase calls in response to underwater noise.

A network of floating docks could harness clean energy for New York City and provide new space for parks, researchers now propose.Each dock could generate power off the city's river currents. Three vertical turbines fastened out of sight to the underside of each station would harness the 4 mph currents, with each module generating up to 24 kilowatts of constant energy from the Hudson and East Rivers.

Anyone who has visited the ancient ruins of great civilizations can appreciate the difficulty of visualizing the buildings at their peak. Today's visitor to the British Museum can see structures of the Aztecs, thanks to one professor's research into the ancient architecture that served as the center stage of Aztec ceremonial life, combined with an ultra-modern electronic digital modeling process.

Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.The creatures are all more than 150 million years old.The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the "oldest bird" recognised by science.Professor Xu Xing and colleagues tell the journal Nature that this represents the final proof that dinosaurs were ancestral to birds.

Small Australian dinosaurs endured around six months of darkness each year during the Early Cretaceous, with freezing temperatures and huge predators.So the diminutive dinosaurs took refuge underground, according to a new study.The findings, which will be presented at next month's Geological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, reveal how dinosaurs and certain other animals developed strategies for surviving harsh environments and predation.

If you've ever eaten a sandy batch of shellfish, you know the feeling: the terrible crunching and grinding that cracks through your jaw, making you question the wisdom of your choice of food. Now imagine that feeling with every bite you take, every meal of every day.If a new study is right, that's what early humans and animals felt after the Laacher See supervolcano exploded in central Europe 13,000 years ago, and it drove them out of the region.Laacher See was a tremendous blast. It devastated 540 square miles of forested land right around the crater and conservative estimates suggest an area the size of Minnesota was covered in a blanket of ash and rock bits.

Is this week's revelation that water ice is more prevalent on the moon than scientists expected a "game-changer" for future spaceflight, as some experts think? Actually, the rules of the game for going beyond Earth orbit haven't changed - but the latest findings could bring new attention to options in the old playbooks.The publication of three studies in Science about ice on the moon, plus yet another study about buried water ice on Mars, comes at an interesting time. More than five years after the White House set a goal of sending humans back to the moon by 2020, an independent panel chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine is wrapping up a full report that takes a second look at all the options for human spaceflight. (A summary report was sent to the White House earlier this month.).

Four silver coins dating from Norman England have been found in Gloucestershire.It is believed they were minted in Gloucester in 1073-1076 and represent an unrecorded type of penny.The coins were found by a metal detector enthusiast but details of the site have not been revealed.Archaeologist Kurt Adams said the coins, which are just 0.8mm thick and about the size of a 10p piece, were incredibility rare.

Archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the biblical Joseph, Cairo's Al Ahram newspaper recently reported. Excerpts provided by MEMRI show that the coins were discovered among a multitude of unsorted artifacts stored at the Museum of Egypt.According to the report, the significance of the find is that archeologists have found scientific evidence countering the claim held by some historians that coins were not used for trade in ancient Egypt, and that this was done through barter instead.

We here at PopSci enjoy our green dreams for future buildings as much as any other geek. So imagine the excitement when Beijing-based MAD Ltd. unveiled its solar eco-skin design for the Taichung Convention Center in Taiwan.The landmark building design aims to meld future tech with natural shapes that evoke mountains dotted with crater-like openings. We can only hope that a recovering post-apocalyptic landscape would look so pleasing.

Recent research on the Cohen Y chromosome indicates the Jewish priesthood, the Cohanim, was established by several unrelated male lines rather than a single male lineage dating to ancient Hebrew times.The new research builds on a decade-old study of the Jewish priesthood that traced its patrilineal dynasty and seemed to substantiate the biblical story that Aaron, the first high priest (and brother of Moses), was one of a number of common male ancestors in the Cohanim lineage who lived some 3,200 years ago in the Near East.

Dark energy is a mysterious force that cosmologists use to fill gaps in our model of why our universe continues its ever-faster expansion. But now two mathematicians have found a way to explain those baffling observations of the universe without the dark energy question mark hanging overhead.Cosmologists first proposed dark energy to explain why astronomers saw supernovae receding into the distance at an accelerating pace. That suggested a massive amount of energy must exist somewhere to counter the gravity that would otherwise slow down such universal expansion. Such dark energy must make up roughly 70 percent of the universe, in addition to 20 percent constituting dark matter. A measly 4 percent belongs to humans, planets and stardust.

Sydney - Bundanoon on Saturday became the first town in Australia, and possibly the world, to ban the sale of bottled water. The 2,500 residents voted in July to stop shops from stocking single-use bottles and switch to retailing bottles that are refillable for free at taps around the town.

A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately 150 to 350 years ago. The study, published this week in the journal Science, "brings us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age," says lead author Joe Licciardi, associate professor of Earth sciences at the University of New Hampshire. "The more we know about our recent climate past, the better we can understand our modern and future climate.".

Large deposits of nearly pure water-ice may lurk just below the Martian surface, much nearer the equator than previously thought, suggest new images.The pictures acquired by a Nasa orbiter show white material exposed by fresh meteorite impacts fading over time - behaviour expected of ice on Mars.An onboard instrument also detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water.