Newsdesk Archive

A giant African lake basin is providing information about possible migration routes and hunting practices of early humans in the Middle and Late Stone Age periods, between 150,000 and 10,000 years ago.Oxford University researchers have unearthed new evidence from the lake basin in Botswana that suggests that the region was once much drier and wetter than it is today.

A dinosaur-killing asteroid may have wiped out much of life on Earth 65 million years ago, but now scientists have discovered how smaller organisms might have survived in the darkness following such a catastrophic impact.Survival may have depended upon jack-of-all-trades organisms called mixotrophs that can consume organic matter in the absence of sunlight. That would have proved crucial during the long months of dust and debris blotting out the sun, when plenty of dead or dying organic matter filled the Earth's oceans and lakes.

Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva confirmed Wednesday that a pre-Inca citadel was found in Zaña river's upper basin, between the departments of Lambayeque and Cajamarca.It would be an archaeological complex belonging to the Cajamarca culture, from the early Christian era.According to Alva, who discovered the royal tombs of the Lord of Sipan, so far there are only remains of stone buildings in the vegetation.

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have a new weapon in their arsenal of tools to push back the boundaries of science, engineering, veterinary medicine and archaeology.From soils and sediments, to chunks of pavement, archaeological remains and chocolate bars... the Nanotom, the most advanced 3D X-ray micro Computed Tomography (CT) scanner in the world, will help scientists from a wide variety of departments across the University literally see through solids. The machine will make previously difficult and laborious research much easier as it allows researchers to probe inside objects without having to break into them.

Known as the oldest visitor attraction in England, the 400 year old estate is up for sale for just the fourth time in its history.The estate, once part-owned by magician Paul Daniels, includes the Petrifying Well which has such a high natural mineral content in its water that objects hanging underneath it will gradually turn to stone.It also has two adventure playgrounds and a three-bedroom accomodation lodge. It is listed in the National Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

The daring repairs that fixed the Hubble Space Telescope have delivered "spectacular" results, NASA said Wednesday.Hubble is now effectively "a new state-of-the-art telescope," says NASA's Ed Weiler, with all the spacewalker repairs proving out in testing. Hubble will keep searching the cosmos until 2014, "and I'll bet much more after that," Weiler says.In a briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., space agency chief Charles Bolden and prominent Hubble advocate Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., released eight images from cameras installed during May's space shuttle Atlantis STS-125 mission.

Japan's first space cargo ship soared into orbit Thursday to begin its maiden cruise to the International Space Station.The inaugural H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV-1) blazed into a predawn sky above its seaside launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, where the local time was 2:01 a.m. Friday at the time of liftoff. It was still Thursday in the United States, where NASA officials at space station Mission Control in Houston and other centers monitored the launch.

Harvard University, one of America's premiere academic institutions, is coming under fire for running an advertisement in its campus newspaper questioning the reality of the Holocaust.Recently named for the second straight year as the No. 1 school in U.S. News & World Report rankings of American colleges, Harvard is known for its rigorous scholarly standards and prestigious reputation.On Tuesday, however, The Harvard Crimson, in what it said was an error, ran the Holocaust-questioning advertisement, which had been rejected by the paper over the summer.

It didn't look like much at first, just a broken, mud-caked stone mug.But when archaeologists in Jerusalem cleaned the 2,000-year-old vessel, they discovered ten lines of mysterious script."These were common stone mugs that appear in all Jewish households" of the time, said lead excavator Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte."But this is the first time an inscription has been found on a stone vessel" of this type.

Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields.Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in midair before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space missions or on the surfaces of other planets.

Looking at the rolling fields and jungles of the Amazon, it is tempting to think that such a vast area has endless resources.That is still the mindset for many who farm here.But the average productivity of the land used for cattle farming in the Amazon is less than one head per hectare (2.5 acres).Using already deforested land more efficiently and creating a sustainable forest economy are seen as key for the region, which faces the challenge of combining development and conservation.

The killer mould behind potato blight has a giant genome, say scientists.Potato blight was a major cause of the mid-19th Century Irish famine, when starvation killed a million people and drove a million more to emigrate.The water mould Phytophthora infestans still destroys crops worldwide worth $6bn each year. In 2003 it wiped out the entire crop of Papua New Guinea.Scientists hope the genome, published in the journal Nature, will help in developing new defences to the blight.

They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation.Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world's first educational toys.Nearly 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Catalhoyuk in Turkey - the world's oldest known town - over the last few decades. The most recent were found just last week.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Sept. 9 (UPI) -- A University of Illinois archaeologist says she will lead a team that will be the first to explore the sacred pools of the southern Mayan lowlands in Belize.Professor Lisa Lucero said she will lead a team of expert divers, a geochemist and an archaeologist in the expedition, funded by the National Geographic Society, to investigate the cultural significance and environmental history and condition of three of the 23 pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize.

For almost 20 years, Ludwig Baumann has been fighting for justice, determined to clear the names of all victims of Nazi military justice.After a long struggle, on Tuesday, the German parliament revoked the convictions of the last group of victims, those condemned as "war traitors," more than 60 years after the end of World War II.Ludwig Baumann joined Hitler's Wehrmacht when he was 19, but he became a pacifist and in June 1942, he deserted, along with his friend Kurt Oldenburg, while they were deployed in France.

Due to staff absences, news desk updates may not be available from now until the 14th September. Apologies. In the meantime, please sign up to the Graham Hancock mailing list for all news stories straight to your inbox.-Graham Hancock.com staff.

Newfoundland and Labrador's top archeologist has revealed plans to search for the remains of a 510-year-old church on the western shore of Conception Bay -- a project aimed at adding to a string of recent discoveries about explorer John Cabot's history-making voyages to Canada in the late 15th century.If the purported church is found near the town of Carbonear -- the site targeted by Memorial University's Peter Pope in what he calls a "longshot" dig proposed for next summer -- the discovery of North America's earliest Christian settlement would join the 1,000-year-old Viking site at Newfoundland's L'Anse-aux-Meadows, Jacques Cartier's recently unearthed 1541 fort near Quebec City and Virginia's Jamestown ruins among the continent's most important archeological sites.

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat historians are thrilled at the discovery of a four-km long fortification south-west of Taranga Hills, comprising Jogida, Shamalia and Dhagolia, in Mehsana district. It was discovered in May this year and kept a closely guarded secret by the state archaeology department. They have all the reasons to believe that this could be the city of Anarthpura, the fabled land of warriors and the possible origin of Gujarat.

THOUGH not famed for their intellect, single-celled organisms have already demonstrated a surprising degree of intelligence. Now a team at the University of the West of England (UWE) has secured £228,000 in funding to turn these organisms into engineering robots.In recent years, single-celled organisms have been used to control six-legged robots, but Andrew Adamatzky at UWE wants to go one step further by making a complete "robot" out of a plasmodium slime mould, Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould that moves towards food sources such as bacteria and fungi, and shies away from light.

Scientists have developed a gel that helps brains recover from traumatic injuries. It has the potential to treat head injuries suffered in combat, car accidents, falls, or gunshot wounds. Developed by Dr. Ning Zhang at Clemson University in South Carolina, the gel is injected in liquid form at the site of injury and stimulates the growth of stem cells there.Brain injuries are particularly hard to repair, since injured tissues swell up and can cause additional damage to the cells. So far, treatments have tried to limit this secondary damage by lowering the temperature or relieving the pressure at the site of injury. However, these techniques are often not very effective.

The tricky thing about buying a bike (or anything else) for a kid is that there's a 99.9-percent certainty they'll outgrow it. The genius behind the Kilobike is that while they're between the ages of 6 and 12, the bike will grow with them.The Kilobike, a concept by German firm Kilo Design, comes with swappable joints in the frame's top tube, which expand it out diagonally. When teamed with standard seat- and handlebar-height adjustments, these joints allow the bike to grow right along with a child's ever-lengthening limbs while ensuring they ride with proper ergonomics. Not to mention saving mom and dad a few dollars over the years.

Archaeologists believe they have solved one ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues.At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is one of the world's most remote places inhabited by people.Up to 1,000 years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues.The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

The stereotypical library is dying -- and it's taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it.Books are being pushed aside for digital learning centers and gaming areas. "Loud rooms" that promote public discourse and group projects are taking over the bookish quiet. Hipster staffers who blog, chat on Twitter and care little about the Dewey Decimal System are edging out old-school librarians.And that's just the surface. By some accounts, the library system is undergoing a complete transformation that goes far beyond these image changes.

What would you see if you could fly over Mars in a plane and look out the window?It must be something like the thousands of curious, intriguing and spectacular images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.The University of Arizona, Tucson, which operates HiRISE, has just released a new batch of these photos taken in the last several months.

It really does exist! Maybe! The famed chupacabra has apparently been found, and it's a Texan.Or at least it was. The beast is now dead, but news of its capture near Blanco, Texas, inspired Bigfoot-sized searches. Lookups on "chupacabra" surged a whopping 571%, and related queries on "what does chupacabra mean" also roared. (For the record, its rough translation is "goat sucker.") The find also inspired renewed interest in the equally notorious Montauk Monster.

EVER wondered what the Arabic or Chinese press are saying about the issues of the day? Finding out just got a lot easier, at least for those using the Firefox web browser.A new plug-in identifies the language used on a web page and automatically provides a translation, leaving the layout of the page unchanged.

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."People will say this is global warming disappearing," he told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference.

Japan's first unmanned spacecraft to haul cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) is nearly ready for its maiden launch next week.The new cargo ship is poised to launch toward the station on Sept. 10 at 1:01 p.m. EDT (1701 GMT) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on a shakedown cruise. If all goes well, the inaugural spacecraft, called the H-2 Transfer Vehicle 1 (HTV-1), should arrive at the station on Sept. 17.

One of NASA's most ambitious new projects isn't in space, but on the ground.The agency is planning to build its most environmentally-friendly building at its Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The structure, to be called Sustainability Base, will likely be the "greenest" building in the federal government, said Steve Zornetzer, Associate Center Director at NASA Ames.

Space tourism may face some challenges with the uncertainty over the next-generation rides into space. But that hasn't stopped Earth designers from envisioning future space hotels for paying thrill seekers.A robot concierge, a redesigned showerhead and a full-sensory exercise wall are just part of the Space Hotel Project created by master's degree students in a program hosted by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art in the UK. The concept could theoretically attach to the International Space Station, so long as the growing space outpost remains in orbit.

Last April 24, more than two dozen masked police commandos surrounded the Black Eagle, a restaurant in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Inside, globetrotting white supremacist David Duke was chatting with about 10 supporters. The conversation was cut short when the commandos charged in and arrested Duke, who'd arrived in the country earlier that day, on suspicion of denying the Holocaust and promoting the neo-Nazi movement, crimes punishable by up to three years in prison in the Czech Republic.

First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.

ANCIENT Egyptian temples were aligned so precisely with astronomical events that people could set their political, economic and religious calendars by them. So finds a study of 650 temples, some dating back to 3000 BC.For example, New Year coincided with the moment that the winter-solstice sun hit the central sanctuary of the Karnak temple (pictured) in present-day Luxor, says archaeological astronomer Juan Belmonte of the Canaries Astrophysical Institute in Tenerife, Spain.

THE man in the moon is humming a tune, but thankfully the noise won't drown out sensors on future missions peeking at the lunar interior.A steady barrage of small meteorite impacts should cause the moon to "ring", but no seismometers sent to the moon to date have been sensitive enough to hear it. So Philippe Lognonné at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and colleagues decided to work out how loud the ring is.

CLIMATE change is everywhere. Not only is the physical climate changing, but the idea of climate change is now active across the full range of human endeavours. Climate change has moved from being a predominantly physical phenomenon to being a social one, in the process reshaping the way we think about ourselves, our societies and humanity's place on Earth.

When hackers want to break into a computer system, they often attempt to reverse engineer the operating software to better understand how it works (and, of course, its vulnerabilities). While researchers have for years taken a similar approach to better understanding parts of our gray matter, neuroscientists now say that within a decade it will be possible to create a digital model that replicates all functions of the human brain.

When the chips are down, the world may one day owe a debt of gratitude to a group of potato farmers high up in the mountains of Peru.Thanks to a new $116 million global fund established this summer, the Quechua Indians are being paid to maintain their diverse collection of rare potatoes and ensure that they will be available to help the world adapt to future climate change.The Quechua are one of 11 communities around the world, chosen for the important collection of crops they farm, which together are part of a major new initiative to ensure that the world has the options it might need to cope with future food crises.

LONDON - A vintage train carrying Holocaust survivors pulled into London on Friday, ending a three-day trip across Europe that marked the 70th anniversary of their extraordinary rescue by a young British stockbroker.Waiting to greet them at London's Liverpool Street Station was Sir Nicholas Winton, 100, who organized the rail "kindertransports" that carried hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to safety in 1939.

Early humans may have taken a detour into Eurasia before embarking on their epic journey out of Africa, according to new fossil evidence.Palaeontologists in Georgia have unearthed remains of five primitive humans that date back to 1.8m years ago, suggesting some of our oldest ancestors lived in the region at the time.The partial skeletons, which represent the earliest humans discovered outside Africa, challenge the theory that our ancestors evolved entirely on the continent and left the cradle of humanity only 60,000 years ago.

The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said Tuesday.The turbine known as Hywind, which measures 65 metres (213 feet) tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, lies some 10 kilometres (seven miles) off the island of Karmoey near the Scandinavian country's southwestern coastline, the company said.It rests upon a floating stand that is anchored to the seabed by three cables. Water and rocks are placed inside the stand to provide balast.

You've heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it's there, in small but measurable quantities. There's enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Nanotechnology."As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree," said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the "dark sector."A whopping 96% of the essence of our universe lies in the dark sector, where essence refers to everything that controls evolution and large-scale properties of the cosmos. Dark matter is unseen matter -- unseen in the sense that it emits no detected electromagnetic radiation (light, radio waves, etc) -- but it has been definitively spotted nonetheless because its gravity has measurable effects on stars, things that we can see. Of all of the matter in the universe, an incredible 90% is dark matter, with galaxies and stars being only minor constituents. We do not know what dark matter is, only that it is almost surely made of kinds of elementary particles unlike those that comprise normal atoms.

The Lost Orphan Mine below the Grand Canyon hasn't produced uranium since the 1960s, but radioactive residue still contaminates the area. Cleaning the region takes an expensive process that is only done in extreme cases, but Judy Wall, a biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is researching the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria to convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances, a much more economical solution.

WASHINGTON: Bacteria that generate power could be used in microbial fuel cells to convert waste into electricity, according to the latest research.University of Massachusetts researchers isolated bacteria with large numbers of tiny projections called pili which transfer electrons to generate power in fuel cells, more efficiently than counterparts with a smooth surface.

LONDON: In a new research, it has been determined that rocky worlds have to be about the size of Earth to be conducive for life.According to a report in the New Scientist, the discovery of extra solar 'super-Earths' - rocky planets about five to ten times the mass of Earth - has raised hopes that some may harbor life.

For most of us, Labor Day means backyard barbecues, weekend sales, and a last carefree day before school starts. But the laid-back holiday has some seriously sad history, including chaos, riots, and even death. Let us explain.A tragic taleBack in the days of the Industrial Revolution, workers were expected to put in 12-hour days, seven days a week (yes, including kids). Already sounds awful, right? It gets worse. In Pullman, Illinois, a company town that employed and housed workers to build posh railway cars, times had gotten tough. In response, George Pullman cut jobs and wages. It was 1893. Thousands of workers walked off their jobs in protest, demanding higher salaries and lower rents. Other unions joined, refusing to work the Pullman cars, turning the small-town fracas into a national fury.

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.

New questions of human origin could shed light on what makes groups of people more or less prone to certain diseases, an OU researcher has found.Cecil Lewis, assistant professor of anthropology and director of the OU Molecular Anthropology laboratory, studied genetic diversity among American populations. His research is not only groundbreaking for anthropology but it could also affect future health research.

The discoveries continue to surprise for a team of UC students digging in Shawnee Lookout Park, with a major new mound being located and a rare kiln used to fire pottery excavated in recent weeks, along with even more evidence emerging to support the theory that the site could be the largest continuously occupied hilltop Native American site in the United States.

More than 10,000 years ago, an ice-age hunter likely stopped to change a broken spear point beneath a rock overhang in what is now northwestern Coshocton County.A volunteer working with an Ashland University professor found the broken point last month. It has distinctive vertical grooves, or flutes, at its base, and that means it is far older than most flint arrowheads and spear points found in Ohio.

EL MIRADOR, Guatemala (Reuters) - One of Guatemala's greatest ancient Mayan cities may have died out in a bloody battle atop a huge pyramid between a royal family and invaders from hundreds of miles away, archaeologists say.Researchers are carrying out DNA tests on blood samples from hundreds of spear tips and arrowheads dug up with bone fragments and smashed pottery at the summit of the El Tigre pyramid in the Mayan city of El Mirador, buried beneath jungle vegetation 8 km from Guatemala's border with Mexico.

That İstanbul is a real treasure chest for history, art and architecture freaks is no secret. Its colorful mosaic of historical city structures -- mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, castles and towers -- reflects the many, many social and cultural influences of a number of foreign communities that have left their indelible footprints across the city throughout its long history.The oldest settlement on the land that is now İstanbul was, however, Greek.

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor's algorithm - a well-known quantum approach - to solve a maths problem.The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes.The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing.

The spacecraft Nasa is developing to replace the shuttle has passed a critical milestone.The Orion capsule, which is intended to carry at least four astronauts into Earth orbit and beyond, has completed its preliminary design review, or PDR.The review is an essential engineering assessment that certifies the concept is fit for purpose.The completion of the PDR paves the way for the US space agency to start to build the capsule for flight.

At the first Robotics Rodeo, hosted this week by the U.S. Army and the Fort Hood III Corps in Texas, war machines replaced bulls and horses. Soldiers and civilian contractors used the opportunity, starting on Wednesday, to inspect a lineup of robots that could potentially find a place on the battlefield."If we're not fielding, we're failing; it's all about saving soldiers' lives," said Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, Fort Hood commander and co-host of the event. "It's not about technology demonstrations, not about how much money you can garner from the U.S. government, it's all about saving soldiers' lives..

This dodecahedron-shaped device currently on board the International Space Station may resemble a landmine, but in fact it serves quite an opposite purpose: within, scientist Jacques Guigne hopes to use sound waves to cleanly manipulate a brew of ingredients into custom materials that can only be made in the unique conditions of space.Dubbed Space-DRUMS (the Dynamically Responding Ultrasonic Matrix System), Guigne's ball is essentially a furnace filled with argon gas. It uses sound beams to precisely manipulate raw materials into things like porous glass ceramics (used in semiconductors) with molecular arrangements only possibly in weightless conditions.

A slate of new Hollywood science-fiction films share a common vision: In the future, we will become a race of puppet masters. In Gamer, convicts become remote-controlled drones, their brains reconfigured by nanoscale robots to engage in deathmatches. In Surrogates, humans have retired to their virtual-reality-enabled recliners, as their robot stand-ins go about the business of living. And in Avatar the military is cloning biological hosts to work on an alien world. Each movie employs its own scientific shorthand, but all three rely on a core conceit.

There's no shortage of ways to perform calculations without a standard electronic computer. But the latest in a long lineMovie Camera of weird computers runs calculations on nothing more than air.The complicated nest of channels and valves (see image) made by Minsoung Rhee and Mark Burns at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, processes binary signals by sucking air out of tubes to represent a 0, or letting it back in to represent a 1.

A manmade volcano erupting continuously to shade the Earth until greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are brought down. Thousands of mirrors boosted into geosynchronous orbit to block sunlight. Crewless ships wander the oceans spewing saltwater into the air to increase cloud cover.These are just a few of the proposals from scientists to manipulate, or geoengineer, the planet to stave off global warming.

You can't keep a good man down. In the current New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson uses his assessment of Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder (already known to club members) to propose that we might be about to enter a new Romantic age, driven by biology and computing, in which a new generation of artists would "write genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses".

Biologists at the University of California, Riverside report new evidence for evolutionary change recorded in both the fossil record and the genomes (or genetic blueprints) of living organisms, providing fresh support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.The researchers were able to correlate the progressive loss of enamel in the fossil record with a simultaneous molecular decay of a gene, called the enamelin gene, that is involved in enamel formation in mammals.Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body, and most mammals have teeth capped with it.

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances.Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed.

Scientists are beginning to understand why fearful memories are so persistent in the brain, and how they can be erased.The research could help thousands of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, including many veterans, says Kerry Ressler, a psychiatrist at Emory University and investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Some advocates think hydrogen-powered railroads could jumpstart the hydrogen economy. One fuel-cell locomotive is already undergoing tests. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the possibility of using hydrogen, rather than diesel fuel or electricity, to power trains.

Japan has serious plans to send a solar-panel-equipped satellite into space that could wirelessly beam a gigawatt-strong stream of power down to earth and power nearly 300,000 homes.The satellite will have a surface area of four square kilometers, and transmit power via microwave to a base station on Earth. Putting solar panels in space bypasses many of the difficulties of installing them on Earth: in orbit, there are no cloudy days, very few zoning laws, and the cold ambient temperature is ideal.

If a Segway and a foldable scooter got together, they might hope to conceive something like the YikeBike mini-farthing. The foldable electric bike resembles a sleek, futuristic upgrade of the old high-riding bicycles, and it can fold up for easy storage under a desk or in a cupboard.The YikeBike can accelerate to its top speed of just over 12 mph within a few seconds on its 1.2-kW electric motor, and the entire contraption weighs less than 22 pounds. A black carbon frame encloses all the mechanical moving parts inside to minimize maintenance, and also has features such as anti-skid brakes, brake lights, and indicators.

This simulator goes far beyond the olden days of the board game "Operation." Last month, for the first time, neurosurgeons rehearsed on a 3-D model of a patient's brain just hours before removing a brain tumor for real.The simulator takes advantage of fMRI brain scans to create a high-resolution model of the patient's brain. Neurosurgeons can then flex their skills by manipulating tumors or other virtual objects on screens. They even use an instrument resembling a scalpel that creates force-feedback resembling that of the real tool, and simulates the tissue resistances in different parts of the brain. How's that for a Wii-style device, Nintendo?.

EVER since a 1998 space shuttle experiment saw what appeared to be an anomalously heavy variety of matter, the hunt has been on for more of the same. Now, a search of lunar soil for so-called "strange matter" has come up short, casting doubt on whether it exists at all.The standard model of particle physics describes six types of quark, including the up and down quarks which make up protons and neutrons, found inside ordinary atoms. Physicists have long theorised about strange matter that would also contain strange quarks. Strange matter is heavier and denser than ordinary matter, as the strange quark has roughly 10 times the mass of the up or down quark.

India's first lunar mission has captured images of the landing site of the Apollo 15 craft, debunking theories that the US mission was a hoax, the country's state-run space agency said Wednesday."The images captured by a hyper-spectral camera fitted as a part of Chandrayaan-I... has reconfirmed the veracity of the Apollo 15 mission," said Prakash Chauhan, from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).NASA's 12-day Apollo 15 mission in 1971 was the first designed to explore the surface of the moon in great detail and over a long period.

WASHINGTON - Our nearest major galactic neighbor is a cosmic cannibal. And it's heading this way eventually.Astronomers have long suspected Andromeda of being a space predator, consuming dwarf galaxies that wander too close. Now, cosmic detectives are doing a massive search of the neighborhood and have found proof of Andromeda's sordid past: They've spotted leftovers in Andromeda's wake.Early results of a massive telescope scan of Andromeda and its surroundings found about half a dozen remnants of Andromeda's galactic appetite. Stars and dwarf galaxies that got too close to Andromeda were ripped from their usual surroundings.

The Chandler Wobble is a small variation in the rotation of the Earth on its axis. It has been known for some time that the phase of the Chandler Wobble jumped by 180 degrees in the 1920s, but a new study by scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the same thing also happened in 1850 and 2005. But no one knows why.Any sphere that is not perfectly spherical has a slight wobble when it spins, rather like the effect you see as a spinning top is slowing down. The Earth's wobble was discovered in 1891 by an American astronomer called Seth Carlo Chandler, and is named after him. The Chandler Wobble is one of the main components of the movement of the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the surface of the Earth. Because the axis passes through the polar regions, this motion is also called Polar Motion.

Researchers Dr. Marc Therrien at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal, and Dr. Frank Sicheri, at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, have discovered a new target that may be instrumental in the development of new, more effective cancer therapies.

The Book of Kells and similarly illustrated manuscripts of seventh- and eighth-century England and Ireland are known for their entrancingly intricate artwork -- geometric designs so precise that in some places they contain lines less than half a millimeter apart and nearly perfectly reproduced in repeating patterns -- leading a later scholar to call them "works not of men, but of angels."But behind the artwork's precision is a mystery: How did illustrators refine the details, which rival the precision of engravings on a modern dollar bill, centuries before microscope lenses were invented?.

A manned asteroid mission using two Orion spacecraft, docked nose-to-nose to form a 50-ton deep space vehicle, is being studied by Lockheed Martin Space Systems as an alternative to resumption of U.S. lunar landing missions.The Orion asteroid mission concept is being unveiled just as the Presidential committee reviewing U.S. human space flight is citing asteroid missions after 2020 as a less costly alternative to NASA's proposed lunar landing infrastructure. Results of the review will be briefed to President Obama by Norman Augustine, committee chairman, by the end of August.

When a river flows into the sea, the location is more than just a haven for water commerce. The mixing of fresh and salt water that occurs at an estuary also dissipates energy, as the different salinity waters combine into a state of less-ordered, uniform salinity. The mixing generates a significant 2.2 kJ of energy per liter of fresh water that flows into the sea.

An online petition demanding a formal apology from the British government for its treatment of World War II code-breaker Alan Turing is gaining momentum.Turing was subjected to chemical castration in 1952 after being found guilty of the charge of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship, an illegal act at the time. He committed suicide two years later.

Electronics such as phones and laptops may start shedding their power cords within a year.That's the prediction of Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, a company that's able to power light bulbs using wireless electricity that travels several feet from a power socket.

A relatively nearby galaxy that closely resembles our own Milky Way can be seen edge-on in a new image.Observations of the galaxy, NGC 4945, suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region.But that's where the similarity seems to end: NGC 4945 has a brighter center than the Milky Way; the look-alike's center likely harbors a supermassive black hole that is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space.

On Sept. 2, 1859, an incredible storm of charged particles sent by the sun slammed into Earth's atmosphere, overpowered it, and caused havoc on the ground. Telegraph wires, the high-tech stuff of the time, suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.Earth's magnetic field normally protects the surface of the planet from some storms. In 1859, the planet's defenses were totally overwhelmed. Over the past decade, similar but less powerful storms have likewise busted through, giving scientists insight into what will eventually happen again.

ARCHEOLOGISTS digging at Kents Cavern have found a 15,000-year-old weapon carved from a reindeer antler.The rare sagaie, or javelin point, was crafted by a stone age inhabitant of the caves and is the only complete example of its kind found in the UK.It is being hailed by the tourist attraction as major find and a signal that further exciting artifacts could lie just below the surface.

The Bronze Age lived on at Loch Tay yesterday, as a replica of a 3000-year-old logboat successfully completed its maiden voyage.A team of more than 30 volunteers worked for three weeks to make the boat, modelled on a prehistoric vessel discovered in the Tay estuary in 2001.Six were given the chance to paddle the craft as it made the short trip to the Scottish Crannog Centre, near Aberfeldy, from a nearby picnic site.

PANAJI: Chandrayaan's moon mineralogy mapper has confirmed the magma ocean hypothesis, meaning that the moon was once completely molten, a senior scientist said on Wednesday."It proves beyond doubt the magma ocean hypothesis. There is no other way this massive rock type could be formed," said Carle Pieters, science manager at the NASA-supported spectroscopy facility at Brown University in the US.

For 10 minutes the flaky brown earth yields nothing, bar a toenail scrap of smashed pottery and several smears of rust from the 3rd or 4th century AD. Then the trowel clicks against a solid, buried lump, the soil falls away and out rolls a smooth, stone marble."Dr Birley! Dr Birley!" I shout. "Come and see! I think I've found a Roman bullet!" The director of excavations at Vindolanda hurries over and tuts kindly. "Don't write that. You'll be showing your ignorance. The Romans didn't have bullets. That's a ballista ball.".

Yeti experts are heading to Poland after a local man filmed a "monstrous, hairy creature" while on holiday in the Tatra mountains.There have been rumours of a Polish Yeti in the area for centuries but this is the first time one of the strange creatures has been captured on film.Piotr Kowalski, 27, from Warsaw was on a walking holiday in the Tatra mountains in Poland when he saw a mountain goat on one of the slopes. As he started filming, his attention was suddenly grabbed by the Yeti creature emerging from behind some rocks.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski has voiced his anger at the Soviet role in World War II at commemorations marking the beginning of the global conflict.In front of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, Mr Kaczynski said the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact had divided Europe.

Plants are amazing: they provide food, air, medicine, and material for buildings, furniture, and art. But through an ancient yet obscure craft, still-living plants can themselves be shaped into bridges, tables, ladders, chairs, sculptures - even buildings. Known variously as botanical architecture, tree sculpture, tree-shaping, tree-grafting, pooktre, arborsculpture, and arbortecture, the craft is, essentially, construction with living plants.1. Root Bridges of IndiaIn the depths of northeastern India, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren't built -- they're grown.

Humans come in a rainbow of hues, from dark chocolate browns to nearly translucent whites.This full kaleidoscope of skin colors was a relatively recent evolutionary development, according to biologists, occuring alongside the migration of modern humans out of Africa between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Thursday is "Chinese night" at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province.Hungry guests sip cans of Coke and nonalcoholic beer and pick at a buffet that includes General Tsao's chicken, egg drop soup and slices of sweet green melon grown in nearby fields.When a vegetarian diner arrives, the hotel's Japanese owner, Hiromi Yasui, runs back to the kitchen to whip up a dish of spinach, garlic and steamed rice.

Most people don't think too much about bovine hurt when they chow down on a Big Mac or Whopper. But for those with moral pangs, scientists say genetic engineering might provide a solution, by creating pain-free animals that can satiate the human appetite without suffering.

Summer students in Cornell's new Archaeology Field School at Shoals Marine Laboratory, Cornell's marine field station, have discovered the first prehistoric archaeological site in the Isles of Shoals, six miles off the Maine and New Hampshire coast.The discovery, made earlier this month on Smuttynose Island, Maine, includes several stone tools and other artifacts. Although historians had long suspected that Native Americans had visited the isles, the artifacts now provide strong evidence that Indians inhabited the rocky isles around 800-1200 A.D. This is considered prehistoric because it was before any Native American written records and some 500 years prior to any European presence in the region, said Nathan Hamilton, director of the Archaeology Field School and a professor at the University of Southern Maine.

As in Pompeii, the volcanic covering of the archeological site at Akrotiri on Santorini, has kept an ancient settlement from disintegrating over time. The site was found by accident when the Suez Canal was being constructed in 1860. Workers quarrying Santorini's volcanic ash discovered the ruins, but serious excavations at the site didn't begin until 1967. An unfortunate collapse of the roof in 2005, which killed a British tourist, caused the site to be closed. It's scheduled to be reopened sometime after 2010. Greek bureaucracy has brought the repairs of the building to a halt, which has caused Santorini's tourist trade to suffer.

The excavations at the archeological site at Akrotiri in Santorini are ongoing, so there is scaffolding everywhere and supports in place to stabilize walls, windows and doorways that might otherwise collapse. You need to use your imagination to put yourself back in prehistoric times, but with the help of guides or signs posted along the walkways, you can get a fair idea of what life was like. An excavated toilet, pictured in the slide show, has been left in view for the amusement of the tourists and to demonstrate how advanced the plumbing and drainage system was.

Archaeologists have discovered that a hill fort in Denbighshire may be almost 3,000 years old.Experts excavated Moel y Gaer in the Clwydian Range after tests suggested the Iron Age settlement (700 BC to 34 AD) might be older than first thought.Samples of metal slag and dry stone facing taken from an entrance suggest parts may date back to the Bronze Age (2,300 BC to 700 BC).It is hoped carbon dating will identify the exact age of the samples.

Part of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World may now form part of a Maltese dockyard. Masonry blocks from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, built in western Anatolia in about 360BC, are thought to have been used by the British authorities 150 years ago when they were en route to the British Museum.Evidence for this lies in Maltese archives, according to Dr Stephen Brincat, a local cancer specialist and history enthusiast. He found that Dock No 1 at Cospicua, on the south side of Valletta Grand Harbour, was being constructed when HMS Supply called at Malta in 1858.

In September 9 AD, Germanic tribesmen slaughtered three Roman legions in a battle that marked the "big bang" of the German nation and created its first hero -- Hermann. The country is marking the 2,000th anniversary with restraint because the myth of Hermann remains tainted by the militant nationalism that would later be associated with Hitler.

ATHENS - ARCHAEOLOGISTS on the Greek island of Crete have unearthed the 2,900-year-old tomb of three women buried with jewels of surprisingly advanced skill, culture officials said on Friday.The tomb in the ancient town of Eleutherna, near the modern city of Rethymno in northern Crete, held gold necklaces and medallions decorated with lion heads and the forms of ancient gods, excavation supervisor Nikos Stambolidis said.

Although Egyptian-Israeli relations have been frosty in recent years, ties between the two lands were vibrant around 3,000 BCE during the Early Bronze Age - at least according to Tel Aviv University and University College London archeologists who discovered a rare, four-centimeter-long stone fragment at the point where the Jordan River exits Lake Kinneret.

Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us.Michael Brooks presents thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths.

A MONKEY sits on a bench, wires running from its head and wrist into a small box of electronics. At first the wrist lies limp, but within 10 minutes the monkey begins to flex its muscles and move its hand from side to side. The movements are clumsy, but they are enough to justify a rewarding slug of juice. After all, it shouldn't be able to move its wrist at all.A nerve connection in the monkey's upper arm had previously been blocked with an anaesthetic that prevented signals travelling from its brain to its wrist, leaving the muscles temporarily paralysed. The monkey was only able to move its arm because the wires and the black box bypassed the broken link.