Newsdesk Archive

A 5,000-year-old Venus figure has been found as part of an excavation being carried out in Canakkale's Ezine district.The excavation began in the field three weeks ago in cooperation with Germany's University of Tübingen. Assistant Professor Rüstem Aslan, who is vice head of the excavation, told the Anatolia news agency that the aim of the dig is to find settlements outside Troy from the Bronze Age.

The discovery of water on the moon announced this week has scientists and spaceflight buffs pumped for a return of humans to the otherwise dusty planet. But in addition to water, anyone who goes there will be looking for some oxygen.If NASA or any space agency is to set up moon bases, they'll need oxygen and water for breathing, drinking and to create fuel for return flights. Carrying all that stuff up there would be prohibitively expensive if long-term residency is the goal.

Argentina has lost nearly 70 percent of its forests in a century, the Environmental Secretariat said at a UN conference on desertification.Forests that spread across 100 million hectares (247 million acres) in 1900 have dwindled to 33.19 million hectares (82 million acres), officials said."In 100 years, we have lost between 60 and 70 percent of our forest heritage," Environmental Undersecretary Sergio La Rocca told reporters on Friday.

DNA analysis of the land-loving, spiny echidna has found it was once an amphibious platypus-like creature.The study by Australian evolutionary biologists shows the platypus and echidna diverged from the same ancestor between 19 and 48 million years ago.Their finding, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, contradicts the widely held view that monotremes, or egg-laying mammals, are "living fossils" that have not evolved.

New DNA evidence reveals that coyotes have bred with wolves in the the northeastern United States, turning mice-eating coyotes into much larger animals with a hunger for big prey, such as deer.The resulting "coywolves" may, however, benefit ecosystems, since they appear to be filling niches once occupied by wolves that were eradicated by humans."We are finding repeatedly that hybridization is more common than we used to think," lead author Roland Kays told Discovery News.

New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years.Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These ice-rich, layered deposits cover an area one-third larger than Texas and form a stack up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick atop a basal deposit with additional ice.

A West Virginia high-school student analyzing data from a giant radio telescope has discovered a new astronomical object -- a strange type of neutron star called a rotating radio transient.Lucas Bolyard, a sophomore at South Harrison High School in Clarksburg, WV, made the discovery while participating in a project in which students are trained to scrutinize data from the National Science Foundation's giant Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT).

The precise conditions inside a white dwarf star in the hours leading up to its explosive end as a Type Ia supernova are one of the mysteries confronting astrophysicists studying these massive stellar explosions. But now, a team of researchers, composed of three applied mathematicians at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and two astrophysicists, has created the first full-star simulation of the hours preceding the largest thermonuclear explosions in the universe.

SIT on the steps of Mexico's El Castillo pyramid in Chichen Itza and you may hear a confusing sound. As other visitors climb the colossal staircase their footsteps begin to sound like raindrops falling into a bucket of water as they near the top. Were the Mayan temple builders trying to communicate with their gods?The discovery of the raindrop "music" in another pyramid suggests that at least some of Mexico's pyramids were deliberately built for this purpose. Some of the structures consist of a combination of steps and platforms, while others, like El Castillo, resemble the more even-stepped Egyptian pyramids.

THEY might be bald and ugly, but naked mole rats never get cancer. If their trick can be copied it could help humans resist cancer too.It's almost impossible to culture naked mole rat cells in the lab, which made Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova from Rochester University, New York, wonder if this might be linked to their ability to resist cancer.They found that a dilute solution of naked mole rat skin cells did start to proliferate, but stopped once the cells reached a certain, relatively low density. Such "contact inhibition" is also used by human cells to inhibit growth, but cancer bypasses this mechanism so cells keep growing.

When the builders of the original Acropolis Museum first broke ground in Athens in 1865, archaeologists sifting through the rubble discovered a headless marble statue buried since the Persian Wars in the early fifth century B.C. Twenty-three years later, the head was identified and the world beheld one of the great treasures of antiquity, the Kritios Boy. Today the sculpture is on view in spectacular modern digs: the New Acropolis Museum, which opened to international fanfare on June 20, 2009, replacing its predecessor with a monumental space ten times the size.

Efficient and economical, geothermal heats, cools and cuts fossil fuel use at home. Whether you're in sunny Florida, or snowy New Hampshire, a ground-fed climate system can free a consumer from fluctuating energy prices and save money on power bills immediately. Here's how it works.

Buried in Iraq's clay and dirt is the history of Western civilization. Great empires once thrived here, cultures that produced the world's first wheel, first cities, first agriculture, first code of law, first base-sixty number system, and very possibly the first writing. A brutal plundering of this rich cultural heritage has been taking place in broad daylight ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These days Ancient Mesopotamia looks more like a scene from the movie Holes.

Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay, South Africa, overlooking the Indian Ocean, is the site of significant new discoveries that challenge long held beliefs about the evolution of human behavior.

As if they weren't considered beastly enough, black holes can dive into nearby stars and devour them from the inside out, scientists now suggest. Such invasions by such black holes could help explain the most powerful explosions in the universe, gamma-ray bursts, whose origins remain elusive.The idea needs support from further theoretical work, and observations would help, too. Meanwhile, here's what spawned the notion:

It would be tough to stick it to your refrigerator, but an ultra-cold gas magnetizes itself just as do metals such as iron or nickel, a team of atomic physicists reports. That cool trick shows that the messy physics within solids can be modeled with pristine gases, the researchers say. But others are skeptical that the team has actually seen what they claim.Condensed matter physicists can tell you essentially all there is to know about how common metals carry electricity and heat. Why some of them are magnetic is a trickier question. Physicists know the basics: The electrons that flow through iron, nickel, and other magnetic materials act like little bar magnets. Below a certain temperature the electrons align so that they all point in the same direction, at least within relatively large "domains" in the crystalline material. The question is why do the electrons align themselves?.

A surprising amount of water has been found to exist in the Moon's soil.Data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, shows that very fine films of H20 coat the particles that make up the lunar dirt.The quantity is tiny but could become a useful resource for astronauts wishing to live on the Moon, scientists say."If you had a cubic metre of lunar soil, you could squeeze it and get out a litre of water," explained US moon researcher Larry Taylor.

A day before the United Nations held a climate change summit, New York City was blanketed with 100,000 fake copies of the New York Post tabloid, filled with content related to climate change.But the Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., wasn't impressed, calling the effort by perennial pranksters the Yes Men a "Witless Spoof in Flawless Format" in a statement released Tuesday, a day after the faux Post hit the streets.The overall endeavor, the Post said, was a "limp effort," and the fraudulent newspaper "has none of the wit and insight New Yorkers expect from their favorite paper. The Post will not be hiring any of their headline writers.".

ANCIENT woodland was today being dug up and moved 200 metres away during work to turn the A46 into a dual carriageway.The three acre Roehoe Wood, near Widmerpool, is thought to have been woodland for more than 500 years.But the planned route of the new A46, between Newark and Widmerpool, passes through the wood.

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, has been hospitalized with fever and fatigue, the royal palace said Sunday.King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 81, was admitted to a Bangkok hospital on Saturday night. Doctors are monitoring his condition while administering antibiotics and intravenous fluid, the statement from the Royal Household Bureau said.The statement was carried by Thai News Agency and other local media.

There are several definitions of where the Northwest Passage begins and ends, but using the Arctic Circle is certainly the most encompassing, so we've been holding our breath until we crossed this line.The Arctic Circle (66 30N) marks the lowest latitude at which the midnight sun is ever seen. We've had some stormy weather along the Baffin Island coast.We had waves up to 8m high and winds over 40 knots. Silent Sound was being tossed around a lot, and I was thrown clear across the cabin on one occasion, suffering a minor concussion that kept me in my bunk for several days.

A European spacecraft will begin its quest this week to make the most detailed global map of the Earth's gravity field.The arrow-shaped Goce satellite can sense tiny variations in the planet's tug as it sweeps around the world at the very low altitude of just 255km.The map will help scientists understand better how the oceans move.It should also give them a universal reference to compare heights anywhere across the globe.Goce was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north-west Russia in March.

The archaeological excavations at the royal palace in the ancient city of Qatna, north east of the Syrian city of Homs, have once again unfolded a remarkable archaeological discovery. The summer excavations, due to end September 25, located a rock tomb-cellar underneath the palace containing hundreds of artifacts as well as human bones from the period 1600-1400 BC.

After decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science.

It's a common sight in the traffic-clogged streets of Istanbul, a city that straddles two continents.A taxi driver, enraged by perpetually gridlocked traffic, stepping out of his car and yelling "Maniac!" at the man driving the public bus behind him.For decades Istanbul has been growing at a breakneck speed; its population exceeding -- by some estimates -- 15 million people. Too bad traffic often moves at a snail's pace.

People with alcohol in their system appear more likely to survive head injuries, according to a new study that has led to speculation that emergency rooms might someday keep a flask on hand to treat brain-injured patients.Researchers analyzed a national trauma database containing 38,019 cases of moderate to severe head injuries where hospitals also tested the patients for alcohol. For every 100 patients with severe brain injuries who tested negative for alcohol and died, only 88 patients with alcohol in their bloodstream died, a statistically significant 12 percent difference, according to the study, which appears in the Sept. 21 issue of Archives of Surgery.

ROME - Frescoes that once adorned Roman villas are going on display in a new exhibit that shows the tastes of ancient Rome's wealthy through landscapes and the representation of gods and goddesses.

How do flags flutter in the wind? How do flowers bloom? Mathematician Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan studies questions like these, and on Tuesday he was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow, an honor that comes with a no-strings-attached $500,000 grant and the sobriquet "genius."Mahadevan, a professor of applied mathematics at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, tells NPR's Robert Siegel that he tries to explain common observations that all of us make using mathematical ideas.

First in a three-part series.In recent years, natural gas producers in the United States have struggled, mostly in vain, to be taken more seriously in the energy world. Big oil companies like Exxon had concluded that natural gas reserves in the United States were not sufficiently abundant to warrant big investments in exploration and drilling. When small independent gas producers argued otherwise, they were often ridiculed."I once had to tell the Exxon people in front of a congressional committee that I respectfully disagreed with every single thing they had presented," recalls Robert Hefner, 74, a veteran gas producer from Oklahoma.

A series of spooky lights above parts of the northeastern United States Saturday sparked a flurry of phone calls to authorities and television news stations.CNN affiliate stations from New Jersey to Massachusetts heard from dozens of callers who reported that the lights appeared as a cone shape shining down from the sky.However, the lights were the result of an experimental rocket launch by NASA from the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, a spokesman told CNN.

RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. "No one supposes," wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, "that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection."If not natural selection, then what? Despite his book's title, Darwin had little to say about human origins. He intimated that his strongest supporter, Thomas Huxley, had already dealt extensively with that question, and contented himself with a couple of pages about how we came to differ from our nearest relatives, the African apes. He concluded that the loss of body hair was due to sexual selection: that men (or more specifically, he implies, women) became hairless to attract a mate.

Scientists at a new interdisciplinary research institute in Austria are working to uncover how life might evolve with "exotic" biochemistry and solvents, such as sulphuric acid instead of water. Their research will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Johannes Leitner on Friday 18 September.The University of Vienna established a research group for Alternative Solvents as a Basis for Life Supporting Zones in (Exo-)Planetary Systems in May 2009, under the leadership of Maria Firneis.

One of the world's most famous asteroid craters, the Chicxulub crater, has been the subject of research for about twenty years. The asteroid impact that formed it probably put an end to the dinosaurs and helped mammals to flourish. Together with an Anglo-American team, an ETH Zurich researcher has studied the most recent deposits that filled the crater. The results provide accurate dating of the limestones and a valuable basis for archaeologists to research the Maya.

Scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in today's (20 September) online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces "frozen in time" that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team.Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic (KIE-yuk) was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.

The Loveland Stone Age Fair next weekend celebrates its 75th anniversary, a number that pales in comparison with 13,200 yearsthe age of its oldest artifacts.Everything on exhibit is from private collections and institutions, including a pre-eminent display of points from the Smithsonian Institution."And everything is legally obtained, all these fantastic collections that have come in from all over the country," says Andy Coca, president of the Loveland Archaeological Society, which sponsors the fair.

Ancient Greeks may have had considerable knowledge about how to care for premature babies, according to an analysis presented on Sunday during the 15th Hellenic Conference on Perinatal Medicine taking place in Thessaloniki. This was posted by doctors from Agios Savvas oncological hospital in Athens, working in collaboration with private colleagues in Hania.

Archaeologists are working at a ships' graveyard known as the Purton Hulks in Gloucestershire to expose and record the remains of a barge.

Jeff Dilyard squatted in a waist-deep pit beneath a rock overhang, contemplating a dark patch of sand he uncovered. Perhaps it's the remnants of a campfire an Indian hunting party built more than 10,000 years ago, when mastodons roamed the woods. It's a good theory. It was just a few feet away that the retired teacher and volunteer archaeologist found the base of a Paleo-Indian hunter's spear point this summer. Excavations such as this one help prove that the natural rock overhangs that dot Ohio's landscape provided shelter for hunters dating back more than 12,000 years. (These overhangs still do -- researchers sometimes find shell casings left by modern hunters). This all makes perfect sense to Nigel Brush.

It sounds kind of obvious, and a little trite: the world would be a better place to live in if we were all a bit kinder to each other. But how can we make that happen?This is fast becoming a valid scientific question. Psychologists and neuroscientists are exploring how to increase people's capacity for empathy and compassion, with two ongoing studies claiming that meditation not only increases compassionate feelings but also improves physical and emotional health.

New findings indicate that farming in the Yangtze Basin existed as early as 4,000 years ago. Excavation in the Xiezi Area of Hubei Province yielded a total of 402 cultural relics, including carbonized rice.Stone tools, pottery, bronze, jade and porcelain were unearthed, as well as a number of spinning wheels, drop spindles made of clay and other textile tools. There were also stone mounds and smelting relics such as slag. A variety of grains and seeds were found, and experts believe there may be carbonized wheat among the plant findings at the site.

A group of Queensland archaeologists have discovered evidence of settlement in the Brisbane suburb of Redcliffe suggesting it was the landing spot of the state's first European settlers.

It looks like the aftermath of a massacre - the decapitated, naked bodies of at least 51 young men found thrown into an old quarry and their heads piled on top.The mass grave uncovered by archaeologists at Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth in rural Dorset, is a rare discovery.The men had all been executed, their heads hacked off with swords - but who were they? .

CNN Video of mystery creature found in Panama.

UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again while supporting their full weight on a treadmill.Published Nov. 20 in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, the findings suggest that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not required for paraplegic rats to learn to walk again. The finding may hold implications for human rehabilitation after spinal cord injuries.

U.S. tanks broke down the gates of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the Philippines on Feb. 3, 1945, freeing 3,700 prisoners who were held there by the Japanese.These people weren't soldiers who fought on the Pacific front of World War II. They were Western civilians who got trapped in the capital city of Manila after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which pulled the United States into the conflict.About 500 of them were children, including 8-year-old Tom Crosby.

A pint-sized version of the Tyrannosaurus rex, with similarly powerful legs, razor-sharp teeth and tiny arms, roamed China some 125 million years ago, said scientists who remain startled by the discovery.The predator, nicknamed Raptorex, lived about 60 million years before the T. rex and was slightly larger than the human male, scientists said.

In an "unexpected" discovery, a rattle-wielding elite male has been found buried among powerful priestesses of the pre-Inca Moche society in Peru, archaeologists announced Monday. (See pictures of Moche treasures from the tomb.)Surrounded by early "smoke machines" as well as human and llama bones, the body was among several buried inside a unique double-chambered tomb that dates back to A.D. 850, said archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, of the Catholic University of Peru in Lima.

Researchers on a rare expedition to a now uninhabited rocky outpost north of the main Hawaiian islands found a partially finished human stone carving and the remnants of what may be a craftsman's workshop.The findings at the remote Mokumanamana island, about 460 miles northwest of Honolulu, were part of the most extensive archaeological survey of the tiny outcrop in 85 years.

Bones recovered from an ancient burial site in the Highlands could provide fresh insight of life in the Bronze Age, archaeologists have said.Parts of a skull, some bones and teeth were in a cist - a rectangular stone chamber - uncovered by a digger operator in Sutherland in February.In a report to Historic Scotland, archaeologists have described the find as "extremely rare" and "valuable".

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Harrison Ford might have four "Indiana Jones" movies under his belt and is almost approaching age 70, but the actor says he would be ready to crack the iconic archaeologist's whip again and sport the trademark fedora in another sequel."The story for the new 'Indiana Jones' is in the process of taking form," Harrison told France's Le Figaro, as reported by People.The 67-year-old actor reportedly told the mag that another movie all depends on the script.

A computer system is under development that can automatically combine images of the Martian surface, captured by landers or rovers, in order to reproduce a three dimensional view of the red planet. The resulting model can be viewed from any angle, giving astronomers a realistic and immersive impression of the landscape. This important new development was presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Michal Havlena. .

In the air, it is a serious pollutant. In the body, it plays a role in heart rate, blood flow, nerve signals and immune function. Nitric oxide, a gas well known to scientists for its myriad functions, has proven challenging to measure accurately outside the laboratory.A team of Princeton and Rice University researchers has demonstrated a new method of identifying the gas using lasers and sensors that are inexpensive, compact and highly sensitive. Such a portable device, suitable for large-scale deployment, could be of great value to atmospheric science, pollution control, biology and medicine.

(Huffington Post, September 14, 2009)Someone is arrested in the United States for a drug-law violation every 18 seconds, an FBI report released Monday shows. . . . More than four-fifths of those arrests were for possession only and nearly half were for possession of marijuana. Of the 847,863 marijuana arrests -- one every 37 seconds -- 89 percent were for possession alone. . . . And those folks do spend time in jail.

A California firm thinks it has figured out how to get the masses moving on public transportation: Give them their own pods."If you look at what we've done in last 100 years in terms of how we've had the most market buy-in for personal mobility, we need look no further than the car," said Christopher Perkins, co-founder of Unimodal Systems."With a car, it's essentially one person, or so, and one destination. We don't have to stop at all our friends' houses to get to the store. Likewise, when you use public transit, the concept here is you don't want to have to go to a bunch of stops on the way to wherever you're going.".

STV NewsA farmer's field in Moray could hold the key to the Romans failure to conquer Scotland.A major archaeological dig is drawing to a close at Birnie, near Elgin, which has revealed interesting links between the Celts and the Romans.On Wednesday archaeologists were busy unearthing the remains of a Celtic roundhouse dating back to the Iron Age.

SINGAPORE: The Sun can lash the Earth with powerful winds that can disrupt communications, aviation and power lines even when it is in the quiet phase of its 11-year solar cycle, US scientists say.Observers have traditionally used the number of sunspots on the surface of the Sun to measure its activity. The number of sunspots reaches a peak at what is called the solar maximum, and then declines to reach a minimum during a cycle.

WASHINGTON: Scientists have come up with what they claim is a new method to produce pure drinking water from storm water -- by combining natural and engineered ways of purifying."This is an exciting demonstration of the value of storm water and the drinking water that can be produced from it by using a combination of natural treatment processes and engineered methods," Dr Peter Dillon, who led an international team, said.

A remote Neolithic burial mound on an Orkney island may contain carvings of human eyes and eyebrows, it has been revealed.The stone is inside the Holm of Papa Westray tomb.Historic Scotland believes it is linked to the find of a carving believed to be Scotland's earliest human face, dating back thousands of years.That small Neolithic sandstone human figurine at Links of Noltland was believed to be up to 5,000 years old.

Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night."I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw," said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death before preserving its body in a bottle of alcohol.

WASHINGTON (AP) NASA's weakened return-to-the-moon program got a lift Tuesday on Capitol Hill.The head of a special expert panel conceded to Congress that the moon program could work if given enough money. That would mean another $3 billion a year for the program proposed by President George W. Bush.The plan has been under question because of that panel's dim look at NASA's future and concerns about support from the Obama administration. The panel issued its preliminary summary last week, concluding that there is not enough money to explore space in the current budget, including the moon plan.

A Hangeul copy of an ancient Chinese book that contains the notes of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) scholar Kim Si-seup has been discovered.The book was originally written by a Buddhist master from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and dates back to the 16th century.``We discovered the `shiphyeondam eonhaebon' while we were examining the library of Ven. Seong Cheol (1912-1993) at Baekryunam, Haein Temple, in April this year,'' Ven. Won Taek said at a press conference at the Jogye Order, northern Seoul, Tuesday.

Where we see pavement, grass and dirt, Jarrod Burks sees long-forgotten grave sites, lost artifacts and ancient civilizations.Burks, however, has a little help. He uses a machine that resembles a lawn mower to peek into the past.It's called ground-penetrating radar, a technology NASA created to study moon dust and the military used to find enemy tunnels during the Vietnam war.And in the past few years, it's revolutionized archaeology.

Fusion is best known for powering the sun and stars. But researchers have long been studying ways to transform that power source into future "green" energy that can be used on Earth. A team of researchers from UC San Diego, MIT and UC Berkeley have received a $7 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that could lead us one step closer to making that a reality. The researchers will use the five-year grant for fundamental multiscale studies of plasma-material interactions.It's well known in the fusion scientific community that plasma-surface interactions (PSI) pose an immense scientific challenge in magnetic confinement fusion; present understanding of PSI in confinement environments is highly inadequate. Under the DOE grant, the three universities will establish science co-centers that will focus on an innovative approach to PSI sciences.

Two of the so-called Bermuda Triangle's most mysterious disappearances in the late 1940s may have been solved.Scores of ships and planes are said to have vanished without trace over the decades in a vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico.

The Brazilian government has unveiled plans to ban sugar cane plantations in environmentally sensitive areas.The proposal, which must be passed by Congress, comes amid concerns that Brazil's developing biofuels industry is increasing Amazon deforestation.Environment Minister Carlos Minc said the measures would mean ethanol made from sugar cane would be "100% green".The government agenda is becoming more environmentally friendly ahead of the 2010 presidential poll, analysts say.

SYDNEY: An international team of researchers has come by molecular evidence to support a key tenet of Darwin's theory of evolution.Trevor Lithgow, Monash University's professor, said the breakthrough provides a blueprint for a general understanding of the evolution of the "machinery" of our cells. The study has been funded by the Australian Research Council."Our cells, and the cells of all organisms, are composed of molecular machines. These machines are built of component parts, each of which contributes a partial function or structural element to the machine.".

Beamed Energy Propulsion (BEP) is far more than a dream or idea: It is a powerful enabling technology that will radically transform the future of air and space transportation. It is physics, not imagination.BEP permits us to build and fly hyper-energetic vehicles driven by remote sources of laser, microwave, and mm-wave power. Such vehicles provide unique performance that would be impossible to achieve with traditional, combustion-based engines. Vehicles driven by BEP will be "greener," safer, smaller, lighter, faster, and far more efficient than any currently existing means of flight transport.

Plant-like bacteria existed in the oceans for hundreds of millions of years while the Earth's air was not fit to breathe, research suggested today.

Scientists often become immersed in their data, and sometimes even lost. The AlloSphere, a unique virtual reality environment at the University of California, Santa Barbara, makes this easier by turning large data sets into immersive experiences of sight and sound. Inside its three-story metal sphere researchers can interpret and interact with their data in new and intriguing ways, including watching electrons spin from inside an atom or "flying" through an MRI scan of a patient's brain as blood density levels play as music.Housed in a 5,760-square-meter space in the California NanoSystems Institute building, the AlloSphere is essentially a house-size digital microscope powered by a supercomputer. Its outer chamber is a cube covered with sound-absorbing material, making it one of the largest near-anechoic (nonechoing) spaces in the world. Inside are two joined hemispheres of perforated aluminum that contain a suspended bridge.

Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual properties could cause energy to flow continuously between different regions of space, resulting in a runaway transfer of energy. If an advanced civilization were able to construct a device to capture this energy, it might finally possess its own "perpetuum mobile" -- or perpetual motion.

Reptiles changed their walking posture from sprawling to upright immediately after the end-Permian mass extinction, the biggest crisis in the history of life that occurred some 250 million years ago and wiped out 90% of all species.In a detailed study of 460 fossil tracks of reptiles from below and above the extinction boundary, Tai Kubo and Professor Mike Benton from the University of Bristol have found that before the Permian extinction all the reptiles moved with their arms and legs held sideways in a sprawling posture, just like salamanders and lizards do today.

J. David Smith, Ph.D., a comparative psychologist at the University at Buffalo who has conducted extensive studies in animal cognition, says there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition -- that is, they may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind.Smith makes this conclusion in an article published the September issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Science (Volume 13, Issue 9). He reviews this new and rapidly developing area of comparative inquiry, describing its milestones and its prospects for continued progress.

If you listen to inventor Dean Kamen, the biggest health problem facing the world today is not AIDS, obesity or malnutrition. It's a shortage of water.Water is the most abundant resource on the planet, yet less than one percent of the Earth's freshwater supply is readily available to drink, according to the World Health Organization. Lack of accessible or clean drinking water, exacerbated by drought, is crippling communities in many developing countries."In your lifetime, my lifetime, we will see water be a really scarce, valuable commodity," Kamen says.

Three figurines of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love, have been found buried underground in the remains of a shop in a Roman city built in the second century B.C.The hidden figures hint at the reluctance of some denizens of the Roman Empire to give up their pagan beliefs despite the spread of Christianity.The ancient treasure, buried for more than 1,500 years, was uncovered during the tenth season of excavations that are being carried out by researchers of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

Health care as we know it didn't exist 3,000 years ago. But along the Georgia coast, the Pacific Northwest, and coastal Brazil, people grew tall and strong and lived relatively free of disease. They ate game, fish, shellfish and wild plants.But as corn farming spread through various regions of the Americas, people got shorter. Many became prone to anemia and began dying of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

The first nautical exploration of an extraterrestrial sea could come as soon as 2022, if a team of researchers can convince NASA to try sailing a boat on an alien world."The overwhelming reaction I get from scientists and engineers is, 'Oh, that's really cool.' I mean, people are just instantly kind of excited and intrigued to say, 'Could we really go do this?' " says Ellen Stofan, a planetary geologist at Proxemy Research in Maryland and an honorary professor at University College London.

Salt and paper battery can be used in many low-power devices, such as medical implants, RFID tags, wireless sensors and smart cards. This battery uses a thin-film which makes it an attractive feature for many portable devices that draws a low current.At Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers have developed a flexible battery made of two inexpensive materials: cellulose and salt.

Many people know the familiar wince when a cell phone or laptop hits the floor. But electronic devices of the future may self-repair tiny cracks or breaks in their circuitry with the help of nanotubes.Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created capsules that hold conductive nanotubes and can sit on circuit boards. Mechanical stress that causes a crack in the circuit would also split open some capsules and release the nanotubes to help bridge the gap.Technology Review reports that outside experts praised the concept, which appeared last week in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Baghdad - The massive suicide truck bombing outside Iraq's Foreign Ministry last month also shattered new display cases, windows, and doors at the Iraq Museum, underscoring the continuing struggles officials face six years after post-invasion looting stripped the museum of some of Iraq's irreplaceable antiquities."Showcases, windows, even the office of the director of excavations was damaged," says museum director Amira Eidan, interviewed on the sidelines of a Tourism Ministry conference on antiquities.She says it could be several years before the renowned institution can be opened to the public.

It is a discovery which should delight Britain's gardeners: by 2050, spring will start before Valentine's day. Cherry and pear trees will blossom in late January, while flower beds will be crowded with blooming buttercups, iris and geraniums long before winter has officially ended.A new study on the impact of our warming climate has found that across most low-lying, coastal areas of the globe, spring will begin for many plants at least a month earlier than it does now and will end several weeks later in 40 years time.

IT SHOULD be the moment of truth for the Airborne Laser (ABL). In the coming months, the multibillion-dollar laser built into a customised Boeing 747 will try to shoot a ballistic missile as it rises above the clouds.Don't expect instant reports of success, though. Instead, if all goes to plan, we're likely to hear about a series of incremental improvements.Developed by the US Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the ABL aims to focus a beam of laser energy in the megawatt range for several seconds onto a missile at a "militarily significant distance" - more than 100 kilometres.

TOKYO - Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "the alien," but it's his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world."While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year."It was a very beautiful place and it was really green."

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a posthumous apology for the "appalling" treatment of Alan Turing, the British code-breaker who was chemically castrated for being gay.The apology came after more than 30,000 people signed an online petition on the UK Government Web site calling for the government to recognize the "tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man's life and career."Turing was just 41 years old when he committed suicide, two years after undergoing a court-ordered chemical castration. He had been found guilty of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship. The punishment in 1952 was either a prison sentence or chemical castration. Turing chose the latter.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered the floor and timber beams of a 2,000-year-old roundhouse in the heart of a Moray farm, it emerged yesterday.Experts believe the structure unearthed at Dykeside Farm, Birnie, was once the multistorey-power centre of an Iron Age settlement.Last night, the archaeologist leading the excavation said it was the best-preserved roundhouse discovered on the site.

When NASA's LCROSS lunar probe slams into the moon next month as planned to look for signs of water, it will aim for the south polar crater Cabeus A, the agency announced Friday.The $79 million moon-impacting spacecraft is carrying an empty Centaur rocket stage, which has about the same mass as a sports-utility vehicle and will be hurled into the lunar surface on Oct. 9.Professional astronomers and backyard skywatchers will be watching the spectacle.

SMART implants in the brains of people with neurological disorders could eventually help develop treatments for people with Parkinson's disease, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.Last week, a team from Medtronic of Minneapolis, Minnesota, reported on their design for a neurostimulator at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society meeting in Minneapolis. The devices use electrodes to deliver deep stimulation to specific parts of the brain.

Sophisticated computer scans of fossils have helped solve a mystery over the nature of a giant, ancient raptor known as the Haast's eagle which became extinct about 500 years ago, researchers said Friday.The researchers say they have determined that the eagle -- which lived in the mountains of New Zealand and weighed about 40 pounds (18 kilograms) -- was a predator and not a mere scavenger as many thought.Much larger than modern eagles, Haast's eagle would have swooped to prey on flightless birds -- and possibly even the rare unlucky human..

PREDICTING how rumours and epidemics percolate through populations, or how traffic jams spread through city streets, are network analyst Jian-Wei Wang's bread and butter. But his latest findings are likely to spark worries in the US: he's worked out how attackers could cause a cascade of network failures in the US's west-coast electricity grid - cutting power to economic powerhouses Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Nanotechnology, lasers, genetics, and cancer? If there was also something about space, this story might have been a PopSci full house. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have figured out a way to deliver cancer-stopping RNA directly into the nucleus of a diseased cell. To get into the nucleus, the RNA is wrapped in special gold nanoshells which are then selectively opened by a laser.

Sea levels rose as much as 2 feet (60 centimeters) higher than predicted this summer along the U.S. East Coast, surprising scientists who forecast such periodic fluctuations.The immediate cause of the unexpected rise has now been solved, U.S. officials say in a new report (hint: it wasn't global warming). But the underlying reason remains a mystery.

Sniffing out any potential contaminants on the International Space Station where it was stationed for the last six months, the JPL-built electronic nose, or ENose, is homeward bound.While on the space station, the ENose sampled the air with 32 sensors that can detect various odors and pinpoint which ones are dangerous to humans. The sleek, shoebox-sized ENose, the third generation of its kind, monitored the air for 10 contaminants continuously.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - General Motors Co. is now 1 million miles into its fuel cell experiment and company officials say having everyday people drive a test fleet of pollution-free cars has convinced them they are on the right track.The automaker on Friday said it passed the 1 million-miles-driven mark in its fuel cell Chevrolet Equinox vehicles, with about 5,000 people rotating in and out of more than 100 cars over the past 25 months.

Armadillo Aerospace qualified to win a million dollars of NASA's money today by accomplishing a rocket-powered round trip modeled after a moon landing. The team's remote-controlled Scorpius rocket (formerly known as the Super Mod) blasted off from its Texas launch pad, rose into the sky and floated over to set down on a mock moon landing pad. After refueling, Scorpius blasted off again for what one observer called a "perfect flight" back to the original launch pad.

WASHINGTON: Scientists from Tel Aviv University have developed a software tool that would help blind and visually impaired provide navigational "sight".The software developed by Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University's School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch.

magine if you could see time laid out in front of you, or surrounding your body. And you could physically point to specific dates in space.Important dates might stand out - birthdays, anniversaries. And you could scan a visible timeline - to check if you were available - whenever you made plans. No actual diary necessary.According to Julia Simner, a psychologist from the University of Edinburgh, there is a reasonable chance you can. And that you may use the experience, unconsciously, every day.Dr Simner studies synaesthesia - a condition caused by an unusually high number of connections between two areas of the brain's sensory cortex, making two senses inseparable.

ACCORDING to Jurassic Park, everyone's favourite fleet-footed predators dispatched their prey by disembowelling them with deadly "killing claws"Movie Camera. Not so, say palaeontologists who have studied the biomechanics of Velociraptor claws. Instead, the notorious dinosaurs used their claws to cling to prey and to climb trees.

"Small is beautiful" has for decades been a mantra for environmentalists committed to building ecologically sound communities, economies and agriculture.But does the phrase apply to nuclear power plants?Some experts think so. They say small reactors are the right fit in the global push for carbonless energy.What is a small nuclear plant? Measured against plants that kick out 1,000 megawatts or more and power a million homes, "right sized" reactors might supply a small city or large industrial facility.

While sailing remains a purely Earth-bound pursuit for now, it could one day be the means of propulsion for hitherto impossible space missions.Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Professor Colin McInnes of Strathclyde University described the physics and feasibility of solar sailing, which harnesses the "pressure" of the sun's radiation.First described by James Clerk Maxwell, solar pressure arises from the change in momentum of photons as they are reflected from a surface. It is this effect that produces a comet's tail, which always points away from the sun.

By cramming several thousand superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS), which guide light down a track much like a rail guides trains, scientists hope to simulate the effects of a black hole.The research could help prove a 35-year-old theory originally proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking and cement humanity's fundamental understanding of the universe.