Newsdesk Archive

The rice paddies north of the Tungabhadra River in India's state of Karnataka have just been planted. Eventually the shoots will grow tall and then slump under the weight of their heavy panicles, but for now they're a tender green stubble. Massive yellow-and-pink granite boulders in some of the paddies look like surfacing whales or elephants lolling in mud on a steamy morning.

Mumbai: Few would know that the Elephanta, Kanheri, Mahakali, Jogeshwari and Mandapeshwar caves are all connected by a trade route that existed in and around Mumbai nearly 2,000 years ago.

For medicines that do not go down well in pill form, administering drugs via transdermal patches is nothing new. Patches are currently on the market for nicotine replacement, birth control, and even pain relief. But many drugs, such as an effective migraine medication called sumatriptan, do not pass easily from a patch into the skin. Drug company NuPathe has a solution: at the press of a button, an electric current running through the patch gently prods the meds into your body.

An international spaceflight company plans to launch paying passengers on weeklong orbital trips by 2013 using vehicles based on Soviet-era spacecraft built for classifed military space stations.Excalibur Almaz Limited, based on the Isle of Man, has acquired several Reusable Return Vehicles, or RRVs, spacecraft initially designed for flying cosmonauts to the former Soviet Union's super-secret Almaz space stations of the 1970s, the firm announced Tuesday at the Moscow Air Show in Russia.

As NASA's Spirit rover marks its 2,000th workday on Mars, team members back on Earth are conducting the final rehearsals for a long-range operation they hope will free the plucky robot from its Red Planet sand trap.The rover team keeps track of Spirit's timeline in Martian days, or "sols," which are slightly longer than Earth days. The result is that even though the rover passed the 2,000-day milestone a few weeks ago, as measured on Earth, the Sol 2000 mark didn't come around until Tuesday.

Poor farmers in the heart of Bolivia's Amazon are being encouraged to embrace the annual floods - by using a centuries-old irrigation system for their crops.They are experimenting with a sustainable way of growing food crops that their ancestors used.It could provide them with better protection against the extremes of climate change, reduce deforestation, improve food security and even promise a better diet.

Early humans who lived in caves more than 250,000 years ago were just as good at bringing home the bacon as their later human descendents of the Paleolithic era, though their dining habits were a little less refined, a new study suggests.The remains of early human dinners were found in Qesem Cave in Israel, which was discovered during road construction in hilly limestone terrain, 7 miles (11 km) east of Tel Aviv about nine years ago. ("Qesem" means "surprise.

NASA launched an inflatable spacecraft heat shield on Monday to test the technology for use on future space missions.The test flight lofted a vacuum-packed shroud atop a small sounding rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. Several minutes after liftoff, the shield inflated to a 10-foot-diameter (3 m) mushroom shape, and fell back down to Earth.

Faced with global warming and potential oil shortages, the US navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater.Navy chemists have processed seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into kerosene-based jet fuel. But they will have to find a clean energy source to power the reactions if the end product is to be carbon neutral.

THE journey seemed simple enough, on the map anyway. Allison Fine left her home to drive to Vermont, just a few hours north on a major highway. She had studied the route and had a GPS gadget to help her. Nevertheless, she soon had absolutely no idea where she was."I don't know what happened," she says, "but I pulled over in tears, called my husband and said, 'find me on Google Maps and talk me to Vermont'." This he did, staying on the line for more than an hour.

A STATISTICAL method that picks out the most significant words in a book could help scholars decode ancient texts like the Voynich manuscript - or even messages from aliens.Humans find it easy to identify the words that capture the theme of a text - for example, that "whale" is a key word in Moby Dick - but this is a difficult task for computers. Now Marcelo Montemurro, a systems biologist at the University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues have developed a method to identify word importance based on a branch of mathematics called information theory. "It seems that what we call semantics or meaning has a signature at the level of the statistics of words," says Montemurro.

HONOLULU - Hawaii turns 50 years old as the 50th state Friday, but there will be no grand parades, no dazzling fireworks, no lavish displays of native culture.Organizers of the observation are not even willing to call it a party. It is simply a "commemoration," one that is sensitive to a painful history of the Hawaiian monarchy's overthrow and unresolved claims of Native Hawaiians.The main event is a low-key daylong conference reflecting on Hawaii's place in the world. Behind the tourist-friendly tropical images of beaches and sunshine, many remain uncomfortable with the U.S. takeover of the islands and the idea that businesses have exploited Hawaiians' culture.

MEXICO CITY.- Looking for a good place to sow avocado, Jose Humberto Tellez and Apolinar Piceno Guillen found a pyramid covered with weed in a plot located in Ario de Rosales municipality, Michoacan.After retiring part of the weed from the monument, they took photographs and notified Michoacan INAH Center. Archaeologist Roberto Gonzalez Zuñiga went to Tipitarillo, observed the pictures and verified it is a Yacata, a base with a rectangular form that combines semi circular elements.

LONDON, (CAIS) -- A new season of excavations at the ancient citadel of Ultan Fortress has led to discoveries of architectural antiquities spanning from the Parthian dynasty (248 BCE-224 CE) to post-Sasanian (637-851 CE) eras.A graveyard, ruins of a manor-house, a tandoor, a furnace, several rooms bearing plaster decorations, and other artefacts have been unearthed at the site located at the border city of Parsabad (pārsābād) in Ardebil Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Saturday.

THE identity of the tiny human-like creature discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004 has become clearer -- and more astonishing -- thanks to a new analysis by Australian and Indonesian scientists.According to a team led by Australian National University doctoral student Debbie Argue, not only is Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the hobbit, not a deformed modern human, as a handful of critics claim, but the small-brained, long-armed biped was the first human-like creature to walk out of Africa.

THE ornate pharaonic tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings are doomed to disappear within 150 to 500 years if they remain open to tourists, the head of antiquities has warned.Zahi Hawass said humidity and fungus are eating into the walls of the royal tombs in the huge necropolis on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor, which is swamped daily by several thousand tourists.

Archeologists unearthed 16,000 year-old mother goddess figurine during excavations in Direkli Cave in the southern province of Kahramanmaras.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A prehistoric water-filled cave in the Dominican Republic has become a "treasure trove" with the announcement by Indiana University archaeologists of the discovery of stone tools, a small primate skull in remarkable condition, and the claws, jawbone and other bones of several species of sloths.The discoveries extend by thousands of years the scope of investigations led Charles Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs at IU Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and his interdisciplinary team of collaborators. The researchers' focus has been on the era a mere 500 years ago when the Old World and New World first met after Christopher Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean -- and on scintillating pirate lore. This rare find is expected to give insights into the earliest inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the animals they encountered.

Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.Researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County say that today's 6 billion people use about 90 percent less land per person for growing food than was used by far smaller populations early in the development of civilization. Those early societies likely relied on slash-and-burn techniques to clear large tracts of land for relatively small levels of food production.

heraldsun.com.au: Fright night. See our reporter terrified by a ghost while filming in Dalhousie Castle Scotland.

Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday its future electric cars will "talk" to power grids across the country, part of an effort to drive interest in alternative energy vehicles.The nation's second-largest automaker released details of a two-year collaboration with about a dozen utility companies as well as the Department of Energy on the design of a system that allows car owners to control when they charge vehicles and for how long.

Intricate wax models of humans - and their internal organs - helped educate medical students during the 19th Century. But they also offered the general public an unusual afternoon's entertainment.

Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Henson goes out on patrol with a computer on his back and a joystick in his holster. He also carries a rifle, but the military is hoping he'll soon have less need for it.A wired generation of U.S. soldiers is about to battle-test a high-tech weapon calculated to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan.A key component is the "Dragon Egg," a softball-sized robotic camera that can be thrown over a hill or into a building without endangering troops. It rights itself like a Weeble Wobble toy and delivers a 360-degree view through its four tiny cameras. If any innocents are in the area, the soldier can mark the spot using his backpack computer to ward off an air strike.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday.Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004.

LONDON (Reuters) - Chemicals in cannabis have been found to stop prostate cancer cells from growing in the laboratory, suggesting that cannabis-based medicines could one day help fight the disease, scientists said Wednesday.After working initially with human cancer cell lines, Ines Diaz-Laviada and colleagues from the University of Alcala in Madrid also tested one compound on mice and discovered it produced a significant reduction in tumor growth.Their research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, underlines the growing interest in the medical use of active chemicals called cannabinoids, which are found in marijuana.

Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the Earth's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere. That possibly caused the Earth to warm up and forever changed the climate.Lead study author William Ruddiman is a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a climate scientist.

The public's "right to starlight" is steadily being eroded by urban illumination that is the bane of astronomers everywhere, the International Astronomical Union said on Friday.The body, which wrapped up an 11-day general assembly in Rio de Janeiro that attracted galaxy-gazers from around the world, argued that authorities should use more unobtrusive lighting in cities and towns.

The Milky Way, like many other galaxies, is thought to be embedded in massive, lumpy amounts of dark matter that release gamma rays and other emissions. Although at first these emissions seem too faint to detect, recent observations have shown that they may be stronger than previously thought. In a new study, scientists have developed a model that predicts that gamma rays from hundreds of dark matter clumps should be detectable by the Fermi satellite that was launched in June 2008.

Newly-released Ministry of Defence files, documenting around 800 UFO sightings between 1981 and 1996, suggest that a US spy airplane could account for a number of British UFO reports. Some of the most notorious alien sighting have been explained away by scientists but mystery surrounds others: 1. 1947 Roswell crash: UFO proponents claimed that the US military had captured a crashed alien aircraft. This well-publicised, controversial incident became a pop culture phenomenon.

Today's robots represent islands unto themselves that don't share either software or hardware with each other. But researchers have begun developing a common operating system that could revolutionize robotics and permit easier collaboration with less reinvention of the proverbial wheel. The change could rival that which rippled through the PC industry when Microsoft's Disk Operating System (DOS), and later Windows, burst onto the scene and became standard.

In the field of robotic prostate- cancer treatment, Florida Hospital surgeon Vipul Patel is a rock star.Patel, who has performed the most robotic surgeries in the world, is an internationally recognized expert in a type of surgical procedure less invasive than traditional prostatectomies. Men who undergo the surgery are more likely to maintain their bladder control and sexual function.Patel's patients are a very appreciative bunch.Dunedin businessman Ralph Jordan is president of Patel's fan club. He was the doctor's first patient at Celebration Health, part of the Florida Hospital system. Jordan was so pleased with Patel's surgical skill and bedside manner that he started a Web site, vipfriendsonline.com. The site is filled with glowing testimonials from Jordan and other patients.

Reporting from Houston - Michele Perchonok sat contemplating a shrink-wrapped brick of freeze-dried mac and cheese just outside the test kitchen at NASA's Johnson Space Center.The dish has been served countless times on the space shuttle and International Space Station. When astronauts are so far from home, this is the comfort food they crave.

Even as a boy watching the first moon landing on TV, Brian Clegg remembers wondering, "How did it all begin?" In his latest book, Before the Big Bang, the Cambridge-educated writer examines the theories that physicists and philosophers alike have put forth to explain how we got here. TIME spoke with Clegg about science as a social network, thinking outside of the box without losing his mind, and using Buffy the Vampire Slayer to explain Einstein.

Intelligent life beyond Earth might not be as dim a hope as many scientists think, according to a new study challenging a widely held anti-ET argument.Many skeptics tout an idea called the anthropic argument that claims extraterrestrial intelligence must be very rare because the time it takes for intelligent life to evolve is, on the average, much longer than the portion of a star's existence that is conducive to such life.

KATHMANDU (AFP) – A flying frog, the world's smallest deer and the first new monkey to be found in over a century are among 350 new species discovered in the eastern Himalayas in the past decade, the WWF said Monday.But the environmental group said the vital habitats of the mountain range were facing growing pressures from unsustainable development in the region, which spans Nepal, China, India, Bhutan and Myanmar.In a report released here Monday, it said climate change, deforestation, overgrazing by domestic livestock and illegal poaching and wildlife trading threatened one of the biologically richest areas of the planet.

A huge Neolithic cathedral, unlike anything else which can be seen in Britain, has been found in Orkney.Archaeologists said that the building would have dwarfed the island's landmarks from the Stone Age — the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. Nick Card, who is leading the dig at the Ness of Brodgar, said that the cathedral, which would have served the whole of the north of Scotland, would have been constructed to amaze and create a sense of awe among those who saw it.

A HEXHAM archaeologist has challenged perceived wisdom with startling claims that Hadrian’s Wall was originally built of wood.In a 65,000 word thesis published on his website, Geoff Carter says his hypothesis answers some age-old questions.Archaeologists have long wondered why the ditch that runs parallel is several feet away from the Wall itself, reducing its effectiveness as a deterrent to invaders.

With unprecedented access to underground tunnels and reservoirs that permeate the earth around Hagia Sophia, filmmaker Göksel Gülensoy sets out to discover their histories in his new documentary. In the film he explores spaces untouched by man for centuries. ‘I believe what is beneath Hagia Sophia is much more exciting than what is above the surface,’ Gülensoy says.

Gawkers from the armed services, media and defense industry gathered this week in 98 degree heat to watch military robot demonstrations at the Unmanned Systems Demo, an event hosted by the military and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The crowd braved the sweltering Maryland summer to watch companies large and small fly sensor-studded UAVs on an unused naval aviation airfield. Here’s a roundup of five of the most notable flying droids on hand, with video of those that displayed their antics.

JACKSON, Miss. - Federal authorities will continue to investigate the 1964 Mississippi killings of three civil rights workers — a case that helped pass landmark legislation — despite the death of a key suspect, the Justice Department says.Billy Wayne Posey, 73, died Thursday. Federal investigators were looking into his possible involvement in the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had been working to register black voters.

Modern nanoparticles are revealing ancient artwork.Scientists from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and elsewhere are treating microscopic artwork from as far back as ancient Egypt with silver nanoparticles to reveal the brilliant dyes used to color now-drab pieces of art."There is one big problem when investigating ancient materials or anything that is valuable; you can't take as much material as you would like," said Marco Leona, a scientist at the MET who co-authored a new article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing the method.

At one time or another most of us wonder where we came from, where our parents or grandparents and their parents came from.

Archaeologists have unearthed eight neolithic sites in Derry, some more than 5,000 years old, the 'Journal' can exclusively reveal.The exciting discoveries were made during work on the new Maydown dual carriageway and include a pair of well-preserved 5,000 years-old Neolithic houses and 4,000 years-old Bronze Age burial places known as 'ring-ditches'.

A LARGE satellite galaxy may be lurking, hidden from view, next door to our own.

MILAN, Italy (AFP) – Italian power company Enel said Friday that it had started up a ground-breaking hydrogen-powered electricity plant producing no greenhouse gases.Enel said the 12 megawatt plant, at Fusina in Venice's industrial zone of Porto Marghera, was the first of its kind in the world to operate on such a scale.Powered by hydrogen by-products from local petrochemical industries such as the Eni group's Polimeri Europa factory, it can meet the needs of 20,000 families, while saving emissions equivalent to more than 17,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to Enel.

NASA will spend $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger spaceships; however, a presidential panel reviewing the U.S. space program says that may be just the beginning.According to the recommendations of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans committee, which delivered its preliminary findings to the White House on Friday, NASA should set aside $2.4 billion between 2011 and 2014 for rides to the International Space Station on commercial U.S. carriers.

Raw images of the moment Saturn reached its equinox have been beamed to Earth by the US Cassini spacecraft.Scientists are studying the unprocessed pictures to uncover new discoveries in the gas giant's ring system.Equinox is the moment when the Sun crosses a planet's equator, making day and night the same length.During this time, the Sun's angle over Saturn is lowered, showing new objects and irregular structures as shadows on the otherwise flat plane of the rings.

A human body, thought to date from the Iron Age, has been unearthed by archaeologists during a dig at a Peak District beauty spot.The prehistoric skeleton emerged as volunteers, who were taking part in a lottery-funded dig, excavated the site of an ancient hillfort near Monsal Head.

Spanish researchers say they're a step closer to resolving a mystery of evolution - why some people like Brussels sprouts but others hate them.They have found that a gene in modern humans that makes some people dislike a bitter chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, was also present in Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years ago.

A University of Arizona anthropologist has discovered that humans living at a Paleolithic cave site in central Israel between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago were as successful at big-game hunting as were later stone-age hunters at the site, but that the earlier humans shared meat differently."The Lower Paleolithic (earlier) hunters were skilled hunters of large game animals, as were Upper Paleolithic (later) humans at this site," UA anthropology professor Mary C. Stiner said.

The hard work is all in the name of experimental archaeology of course. The team hope that by building the replica longboat they will learn more about how past societies built sailing vessels and were able to take to the water.The three week project has just begun on the banks of Loch Tay in Scotland. It is being conducted by the Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust (PKHT) iIn partnership with the Scottish Crannog Centre, and supported by the Big Tree Country Heritage & Access Project (BTC HAAP).The boat is being carved from the trunk of a massive 12m long sitka spruce. It will be crafted using tools and techniques from around 3,000 years ago.

Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita hypothesized in the 1960s that "we see with our brains not our eyes." Now, a new device trades on that thinking and aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue's surface to send light signals to the brain.Legal blindness is defined by U.S. law as vision that is 20/200 or worse, or has a field of view that is less than 20 degrees in diameter. The condition afflicts more than one million Americans over the age of 40, according to the National Institutes of Health. Adult vision loss costs the country about $51.4 billion per year.

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

A prototype of the X-47B Navy Unmannded Combat Air System (UCAS) sits on diplay at Naval Air Station Pax River Webster Field Annex in St. Inigoes, Maryland, on August 10. The X-47B, made by Northrop Grumman Corporation, is to demonstrate the first-ever carrier-based autonomous launches and recoveries.

Anyone who has watched videos of the Apollo astronauts moving across the surface of the moon has noticed the unusual loping gait they sometimes adopted and their slow, almost graceful, movements. Now a new analysis by MIT researchers shows why astronauts moved around this way in their heavy Apollo-era space suits - and provides a mathematical method for evaluating new spacesuit designs for the moon and Mars and their effects on the efficiency of locomotion.

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.

The Israel Antiquities Authority condemned the World Archeological Congress on Wednesday for holding an international conference in Ramallah dedicated to "overcoming structural violence" and the negative impact of politics on archeology.In a fiercely worded letter to the congress's president, IAA deputy director Dr. Uzi Dahari accused the organization of excluding Israelis, not informing the IAA of the event in advance, and allowing an academic forum to be used for political propaganda against Israel.

By slamming materials together, scientists have made a mineral that is found naturally only in meteorites and the deep layers of Earth's mantle.Their successful "shock" experiment reveals new clues about the formation of our early Solar System.The team report the production of the mineral wadsleyite in the journal PNAS.Its creation in the lab shows that objects that collided to form the planets may have been far smaller than previously thought.

WASHINGTON - Four thousand years ago Egyptians had mastered the process of making madder, a red dye, according to a researcher who uncovered the earliest known example of the color still used today.Refining a technique that allows the study of microscopic bits of pigment, Marco Leona of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was able to analyze the color of a fragment of leather from an ancient Egyptian quiver.

DNA analysis of ancient remains shows that Neanderthals shared with modern humans the gene that gives the ability to taste bitter flavours.Most people find the chemical, known as PTC, very bitter, but 25% cannot taste it at all.The two groups have different taste receptors on their tongues.Analysis of the 48,000 year-old bone shows that the genetic variation responsible for this difference also existed in Neanderthals.According to the lead author, Dr Carles Lalueza-Fox from the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva in Barcelona, this means that this genetic variation predates the divergence of the lineages leading to Neanderthals and modern humans.

Accumulating carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data from fossil humans in Europe is pointing towards a significant shift in the range of animal resources exploited with the spread of modern humans into Europe 40,000 years ago.

The remains of a 9,000-year-old hunter-gatherers' house, uncovered during construction at an airport, have been unearthed in Great Britain's Isle of Man. The house was surrounded by buried mounds of burnt hazelnut shells and stocked with stone tools, according to archaeologists working on the project and a report in the latest British Archaeology.It is the earliest known complete house on the Isle of Man and one of Britain's oldest and best-preserved houses, according to the report. The find also offers a glimpse of domestic life 4,000 before Stonehenge.

If humans ever create a lunar base, one of the biggest challenges will be figuring out how to breathe. Transporting oxygen to the moon is extremely expensive, so for the past several years NASA has been looking into other possibilities. One idea is extracting oxygen from moon rock.Recently, Derek Fray, a materials chemist from the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues have built a reactor that uses oxides in Moon rocks as the cathode in an electrochemical process to produce oxygen.

When it comes to using climate models to assess the causes of the increased amount of moisture in the atmosphere, it doesn't much matter if one model is better than the other.They all come to the same conclusion: Humans are warming the planet, and this warming is increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.In new research appearing in the Aug. 10 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and a group of international researchers found that model quality does not affect the ability to identify human effects on atmospheric water vapor.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the defenders of a besieged Bosnian town prepared to retreat, the prisoners of war held captive in the local jail feared the worst."The prisoners were saying, 'If the town falls they will shoot us before they leave,'" recalls Charlotte Lindsey, a Red Cross field worker in the Balkans during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. "We went to the prison authorities and we said, "Look, you cannot let this happen. You are responsible for these prisoners."Forty-eight hours later, after the town had been captured, Lindsey and her Red Cross colleagues returned to find the prison empty. But the prisoners had all been found alive and liberated by the incoming army.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The world's population is forecast to hit 7 billion in 2011, the vast majority of its growth coming in developing and, in many cases, the poorest nations, a report released Wednesday said.A staggering 97 percent of global growth over the next 40 years will happen in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau's 2009 World Population Data Sheet."The great bulk of today's 1.2 billion youth -- nearly 90 percent -- are in developing countries," said Carl Haub, a co-author of the report. Eight in 10 of those youth live in Africa and Asia.

Rowaida Abdelaziz doesn't want your pity.She doesn't want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she's been degraded by her father.What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn't wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive."It represents beauty to me," says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey.

MUNICH - A 90-year-old former German army officer was convicted of murder Tuesday over the killings of Italian civilians during World War II, and sentenced to life in prison.The Munich state court convicted Josef Scheungraber on 10 counts of murder and also found him guilty of attempted murder.Scheungraber was a 25-year-old Wehrmacht lieutenant at the time of the June 1944 killings in Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo. The killings came after partisans killed two German soldiers.

WASHINGTON - NASA's Constellation program, conceived four years ago to return Americans to the moon by 2020, can't afford to do that -- and the agency's budget won't allow humans to explore beyond the international space station for two decades, a presidential panel has concluded.

Ongoing excavations at the ancient port city of Andriake in Lycia -- located in Antalya's Demre district -- have uncovered a centuries-old Jewish temple.Site chief Dr. Nevzat Cevik, an archaeology professor at Akdeniz University, told the Anatolia news agency that his team believes the temple is from around the third century. Located on a choice spot facing the sea, the temple was likely built following a law instituted in 212 that allowed Jews the right to become Roman citizens, Cevik said.

If Neanderthals ever shared a Thanksgiving feast with Homo sapiens, the two species may have had trouble settling on a menu.Chemical signatures locked into bone suggest the Neanderthals got the bulk of their protein from large game, such as mammoths, bison and reindeer. The anatomically modern humans that were living alongside them had more diverse tastes. As well as big game, they also had a liking for smaller mammals, fish and seafood."It seems modern humans had a much broader diet, in terms of using fish or aquatic birds, which Neanderthals didn't seem to do," says Michael Richards, a biological anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the University of British Columbia in Canada.

London's oldest timber structure has been unearthed by archaeologists from Archaeology South-East (part of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL). It was found during the excavation of a prehistoric peat bog adjacent to Belmarsh Prison in Plumstead, Greenwich, in advance of the construction of a new prison building. Radiocarbon dating has shown the structure to be nearly 6,000 years old and it predates Stonehenge by more than 500 years. Jacobs Engineering UK Ltd acted as the managing consultants, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, and the work was facilitated by Interserve Project Services Ltd.

The Maya kings of Copán were not interested in moving mountains. They preferred to build their own, like the pyramid now known as Temple 16. Rising 100 feet above the city's Great Plaza, it is the highest point among a group of holy buildings that archaeologists have dubbed "the Acropolis." Inside an excavation tunnel deep beneath the pyramid's surface, the face of the sun-king scowls at me from the wall of his temple. The city's ancient rulers built their temples--one on top of the next--to suit the needs of the moment. The moment I am visiting occurred shortly after A.D. 540 when the first of four temples was built around a small plaza at the top of the Acropolis.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After years of obscurity and a few months in jail, Ameruddin Askarzai is about to be recognized for helping save Afghanistan's gold. His role, in fact, was key.Mr. Askarzai, the 59-year-old head of cash issuance at the central bank, controls the key to a presidential vault and the treasure that for years was secretly stashed inside. He works in a dimly lighted office, behind a cluttered desk, with a drawer full of skeleton keys. Until now, the man with a pencil mustache and swept-back hair has refused to be photographed or identified by name in accounts of how he thwarted the Taliban's attempt to loot a hoard of ancient gold.

A tropical storm was not what astronomers expected to see when they pointed their telescopes toward the equator of Saturn's moon Titan last summer.But that's exactly what they found on this beguiling moon, home to a weather system both eerily familiar and perplexingly strange. The discovery was announced today.In many ways Titan's climate resembles that of Earth, but instead of a water cycle, Titan has a methane cycle. Clouds, rain and lakes all exist on Titan, but they are all made of methane. In the moon's frigid climate, any water is frozen into rock-hard ice.

If there's any life on Mars, it's not likely to exist on or just below the planet's surface, concludes a new study of Mars' mysterious methane, a gas which on Earth is tied to biological processes.The discovery of rich plumes of methane on Mars earlier this year fed theories that the planet could host underground colonies of micro-organisms. However, rapid destruction of methane suggests that the planet's environment may be too hostile to support life.

During the Dreaming, a blind man lived with his wife in the bush. Every day he told his wife to go out and hunt for emu eggs for him to eat. Even though his wife tried hard to please her husband, he was always angry with her, telling her that the eggs were too small.One day while she was out hunting, she came across some very large emu tracks. She thought of her husband and how angry he got, and followed the tracks all the way to the nest. She found a huge emu there and threw stones at it to get at the eggs, but it stood up and ran towards her and killed her.

A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.The botanists have named the pitcher plant after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.They published details of the discovery in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year.

Israel is in the grips of mermaid fever after numerous sightings of the mythical sea creature off its coast.One town council is taking the reports so seriously it is offering a $1m (£609,000) reward to anyone who can prove the existence of a mermaid in its waters.Kiryat Yam municipality, near Haifa, says it has been told of dozens of sightings in the past few months.

Residents of suburbia have long since awakened from the American dream to the downsides of tedious work commutes, bloated McMansions and lackluster civic life. Now a design competition wants to look at new ways to reinvigorate the suburbs with concepts ranging from airships to reclaimed backyard pools.The competition has narrowed the field down to 20 finalists. Some standout favorites include a "T-trees" concept of stackable cube modules providing living space and even renewable wind power, and an "Airbia" vision of suburban, teardrop-shaped airships replacing that horrendous commute through traffic.

Solar sails have long promised to harness sunlight for space exploration, just as early sailing ships harnessed the wind. Now the Planetary Society hopes to refit a NASA sail design and make a third U.S. attempt to fly the first solar sail in space.Never before has a vehicle successfully flown in space using a solar sail as its primary means of propulsion. But it hasn't been for a lack of trying.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Anne Frank's account of hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, published posthumously in English as "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl," has moved millions of readers across the decades.This fall countless more American schoolchildren will be introduced to Frank's chronicle, and for many of them it will be their first exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have found the best-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Caribbean, which could shed light on virtually every aspect of Indian life in the region, from sacred rituals to eating habits.The archaeologists believe the site in southern Puerto Rico may have belonged to the Taino or pre-Taino people that inhabited the island before European colonization, although other tribes are a possibility. It contains stones etched with ancient petroglyphs that form a large plaza measuring some 130 feet by 160 feet, which could have been used for ball games or ceremonial rites, said Aida Belen Rivera, director of the Puerto Rican Historic Conservation office.

The chemistry skills and know-how needed to extract pigment from a plant or insect and create a solid dye date back some 4,000 years to ancient Egypt, new research concludes. Previous analysis had only confirmed such techniques to about 1200 B.C.Analyzing pigment has been an important way of identifying and studying artwork for decades. Chemical profiles of colored material can tell a detailed story about when, where, how, and sometimes even by whom a piece of art was made.

Mikulovice, East Bohemia, Aug 8 (CTK) - The finds archaeologists have uncovered in Mikulovice in the Pardubice region prove that the local prehistoric people had contacts with the Black Sea area in the 6-5th centuries B.C., archeologist Jan Frolik has told CTK.The experts have uncovered remnants of ancient pottery people's settlements including bone decorations and a saddle of Scythian origin, which proves that the people were in contact with the remote Black Sea region, situated some 1000 km away in the southeast direction.

A detailed examination of the wrist bones of several primate species challenges the notion that humans evolved their two-legged upright walking style from a knuckle-walking ancestor.The same lines of evidence also suggest that knuckle-walking evolved at least two different times, making gorillas distinct from chimpanzees and bonobos."We have the most robust data I've ever seen on this topic," said Daniel Schmitt, a Duke University associate professor of evolutionary anthropology. "This model should cause everyone to re-evaluate what they've said before.".

Archaeologists have discovered several vertebrate fossils, ashes, burned bones and charcoal remnants at the Zhoukoudian caves, also known as the "Peking Man" site, China News Service reported on Monday.The discovery proves that Peking man was able to use fire roughly 200-000 to 500,000 years ago, the article said. Many foreign experts once cast doubt on whether Peking Man could use fire at that time, because in past decades they found no direct evidence for its use. The recent archaeological discoveries directly refute their doubts, the article said.

The trial of a former German infantry commander for Nazi war crimes took 11 months, and ended in what is nowadays a rare conviction.Josef Scheungraber has been jailed for life after being convicted of the murder of 10 civilians in an Italian village during World War II.A Munich state court sentenced the 90-year-old German after a type of trial that is now quite rare.The passage of time since the war and the patchy record of governments in pursuing Nazis and their collaborators mean that, while many Nazis have faced justice and been convicted, far more have slipped through the net.

MEXICO CITY. Remains of Prehispanic domestic architecture and an offering of ceramic and marine elements were found at Jonuta Archaeological Zone, in Tabasco, a discovery that confirms partial use of bricks in ancient Maya settlements at Tabasco plain near 850 AD.

A 90-year-old legally blind man regains his sight. KATU's Valerie Hurst tells us how.

COLLINSVILLE -- Human sacrifice! Victims buried alive! Read all about it in "Cahokia -- Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi."According to this new book by University of Illinois archaeologist and professor of anthropology Tim Pauketat, the mound builders were not always the idyllic, corn-growing, pottery-making, fishing-hunting gentle villagers depicted in various dioramas at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville.

THE DISCOVERY of a prehistoric boat which had been buried for more than 2,000 years beneath a farm field has already provided historians with an insight into Iron Age life in Yorkshire.But now academics say the vessel which dates back to 300BC is also helping to show how the face of the region would change in future if the sea levels continue to rise.As a debate rages over plans to allow land around the River Hull to revert to a swamp in an attempt to protect urban areas from a repeat of the 2007 floods, a group of scientists can provide a unique insight into what wide-spread flooding of the East Yorkshire countryside would look like.

WASHINGTON: A team of scientists, using images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have reported direct evidence of lake shorelines in the Shalbatana Vallis in Mars.Scientists generally believe that warm, wet conditions existed on Mars until only about 3.7 billion years ago.

Currently, most nuclear fusion power plants are large, expensive projects that will take decades to benefit from. But a startup company in Vancouver, Canada, called General Fusion is taking the fast track to fusion, with a plan to build a working prototype fusion power plant within the next decade at a cost of less than a billion dollars.General Fusion has recently raised enough financial support - $13.5 million - from public and private investors to start the project. Rather than using expensive superconducting magnets (tokamaks) like the $14-billion ITER project in France or powerful lasers like those used by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, General Fusion plans to try a relatively low-tech approach called magnetized target fusion.

Some 28,000 years ago in what is now the British territory of Gibraltar, a group of Neandertals eked out a living along the rocky Mediterranean coast. They were quite possibly the last of their kind. Elsewhere in Europe and western Asia, Neandertals had disappeared thousands of years earlier, after having ruled for more than 200,000 years. The Iberian Peninsula, with its comparatively mild climate and rich array of animals and plants, seems to have been the final stronghold. Soon, however, the Gibraltar population, too, would die out, leaving behind only a smattering of their stone tools and the charred remnants of their campfires.

Excavations led by a University of Toronto archaeologist at the site of a recently discovered temple in southeastern Turkey have uncovered a cache of cuneiform tablets dating back to the Iron Age period between 1200 and 600 BCE. Found in the temple's cella, or 'holy of holies', the tablets are part of a possible archive. The cella also contained gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects."The assemblage appears to represent a Neo-Assyrian renovation of an older Neo-Hittite temple complex, providing a rare glimpse into the religious dimension of Assyrian imperial ideology," said Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archeology in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP). "The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world, and its lasting influence on the political culture of the Middle East.".

The report, The Eastern Himalayas- Where Worlds Collide, describes more than 350 new species discovered in the last decade including 244 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds, 2 mammals and at least 60 new invertebrates.Mark Wright, WWF's conservation science advisor said: "These exciting finds reinforce just how little we now about the world around us.

Archaeologists have found that troughs (in picture) and plantations in Mġarr Ix-Xini may date back to about 600 BC.The Gozo Ministry said excavations, which began four years ago, tried to establish the date and origins of the troughs and plantations in the valley, which were probably used to cultivate vines to produce wine.

Over 1,100 years ago, an international crew of men set sail on a perilous journey. They are returning home from Tang Dynasty China with rare ceramics and gold, created by ninth-century Chinese craftsmen, desired by the rest of the world. For centuries, China has traded with the West over land, via the Silk Road. They traveled safely from the Middle East, all the way to China. But on their return voyage, they made a fateful decision. Here, off the coast of Indonesia, the reef-filled waters are so deadly that ancient sailors called the area the Treacherous Bay.

A human bone found in Devon with tool cuts thought to have been made during a ritual ceremony 9,000 years ago may be evidence of cannibalism.Torquay Museum staff identified the arm bone as they documented animal remains discovered in Kents Cavern in Torquay.The bone's marks are thought to have been made by stone tools and could indicate a ritual - or that the victim was devoured by other people.The caves are the oldest Scheduled Ancient Monument in Britain.