Newsdesk Archive
"It's clear from space history that often it was not the prototype that experienced the problems; it was the mission that came later. That's why specific attention has to be paid to what we do now."Nico Dettmann is in charge of producing the European Space Agency's (Esa) next space freighter.He knows the near-flawless maiden voyage of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) last year does not mean the second flight is guaranteed to turn out the same way. Attention to detail is everything.The follow-up ship - dubbed Johannes Kepler - is in the process of being assembled.Its propulsion and avionics units are being prepared in Bremen, Germany.
The use of tools by hominins - the primate group which includes humans (Homo) and chimpanzees and bonobos (Pan) - has been extensively researched by archaeologists and primatologists, both of who manifest the relevance of tool-use in understanding technology and the origins of human behaviour. However, recent research has highlighted the need to include other species such as gorillas and orangutans, as well as other extinct primate groups prior to hominins, in order to situate, for the first time in history, the full evolution of human behaviour within a greater biological context. With this aim, an international group of researchers from different universities, among them Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), proposes to create a new interdisciplinary field called primate archaeology. The new field is described in detail in Nature.
WASHINGTON: A student team in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering is providing the blind with an opportunity many never thought possible -- the opportunity to drive.A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy, designed by them, uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other innovative, cutting-edge technology to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake, and accelerate.Although it is in the early testing stage, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) -- which spurred the project -- considers the vehicle a major breakthrough for independent living of the visually impaired.
SYDNEY: The male members of an ancient fish species known as sea dinosaurs impregnated females with penis like organs 380 million years ago, just like modern day sharks.Some fish species engaged in penetrative sex and gave birth to young ones, according to a study conducted by Curtin University of Technology (CUT)."The findings throw light on the evolution of vertebrates on earth, including our own species. This discovery provides a link in the chain of evolution," Kate Trinajstic, a researcher in CUT, said.
Lima - Archeologists in northern Peru have found the remains of a woman who was apparently killed in a 15th-century sacrifice to calm the wrath of nature. The find was made in Chan Chan, the oldest mud citadel in the Americas, archaeologist Raul Sosaya said Tuesday. The expert said the skeleton corresponded to a woman who was 1.55 metres tall and aged about 17. She died around the year 1460 and belonged to the Chimu culture.Archaeologists found the body as they were working on the restoration of the outer walls of Chan Chan, around 600 kilometres north of Lima.Sosaya said that one of the woman's feet had been amputated before she was hanged and her body thrown out near a wall. The gestures on her face suggest that she screamed before she died, and archaeologists think that she was sacrificed.
July 14, 2009 -- Egyptian archaeologists digging near the Suez Canal have discovered the remains of what is believed to be the largest fortress in the eastern Delta, Egypt's Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, announced.Located at the site of Tell Dafna, between El-Manzala Lake and the Suez Canal, the remains reveal the foundation of a military town about 15 kilometers (nine miles) northeast of the city of western Qantara."The fortress covers an area of about 380 by 625 meters (1,247 by 2,051 feet), while the enclosure wall is about 13 meters (43 feet) in width," Mohamed Abdel Maksoud, head of the Central Department of Lower Egyptian Antiquities and the director of the mission, said in a statement.
An international team of archaeologists started excavations near Szigetvar, S Hungary, to find the tomb of Suleiman I, the Lawgiver, regional daily Uj Dunantuli Naplo said on Monday.Suleiman (1494-1566), also called as the Magnificent, was the longest reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire, one of the most prominent monarchs of 16th-century Europe, presiding over the golden age of the empire. He died during the siege of the fortress of Szigetvar after 46 years of rule.
After nearly 30 years in the field, archaeologist Leonardo López Luján may be on the verge of the discovery of a lifetime: the only known tomb of an Aztec king.An air of excitement has been thickening around Mexico's Templo Mayor (Great Temple) since 2006, when excavations near the temple revealed a stone monolith with a carving of an Aztec goddess.Recently the anticipation intensified with the discovery of a richly decorated canine skeleton near a sealed entrance.
The expedition, which began in 2005 and focused on the Roiho sector in the east of the island, uncovered 45 caves with a host of archaeological finds, including arrowheads, spears, axes, utensils, petroglyphs (rock engravings), and some 30 human skeletons. Cave experts, or speleologists, confirmed the caves were used by inhabitants of the island as refuge from tribal wars at a time when society was on the verge of collapse as a result of infighting, severe environmental degradation caused by deforestation, droughts, and famine.
TOMORROW marks the 175th anniversary of the discovery of Scarborough's bronze age ancestor, Gristhorpe Man.Now residing in the Rotunda Museum, Gristhorpe Man, the tallest prehistoric skeleton measured to date, was found by William Beswick and members of the Scarborough Philosophical Society on Thursday July 10 1834.
July 14, 2009 -- A multi-institutional team of scientists this week reports the discovery of a giant new dinosaur in Utah, Nothronychus graffami, which stood 13 feet tall and had nine-inch-long hand claws that looked like scythes.Its skeleton, described in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, represents the most complete remains ever excavated of a therizinosaur, meaning "reaper lizard." It is one of only three such dinosaurs ever found in North America.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Usually when physicists talk about quantum teleportation, they're referring to the transfer of quantum states from one particle to another without a physical link. Now, physicists have investigated a slightly different form of teleportation, in which they teleport a quantum field, or an entire beam of light, from one location to another. This kind of "strong" teleportation is required for some quantum information applications, and could lead to the teleportation of quantum images.
The effort by Exxon, whose chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson once derided ethanol as "moonshine," includes a partnership with the biotechnology company Synthetic Genomics.A top Exxon research told the newspaper that the company has researched fuel alternatives for years."We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind," said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon's research and engineering unit.
Top scholars have gathered in Rome recently to discuss the exciting and controversial idea that Sardinia is the lost island of Atlantis.The theory, developed in a book by the Italian journalist Sergio Frau, has drawn international acclaim but also fuelled heated criticism.
Truly this is the age of Greenfinger: Billionaire Bill Gates has patented the idea to halt hurricanes by decreasing the surface temperature of the ocean.The patent calls for a large fleet of specially equipped ships which would mix warm water from the ocean surface with colder water down below, according to five new patents that include Microsoft's chairman as a co-inventor. That could then reduce or perhaps eliminate the heat-driven condensation which hurricanes feed upon, thus significantly reducing their intensity.
PORT ANGELES -- The city's archaeologist, Derek Beery, intends to employ specially trained dogs to sniff for human remains at least a century old for his ongoing waterfront archaeological survey.He is drafting requests for proposals for dogs and handlers schooled in "canine forensics," he said.Beery said the contract probably will be advertised this week."Historical human remains detection dogs" are specially trained to detect buried remains more than 100 years old, said Adela Morris, founder and president of the Institute for Canine Forensics, a Woodside, Calif.-based nonprofit organization founded in 1989.The canines would trot and sniff through Beery's 872-acre archaeological survey study area -- a three-mile stretch from Ediz Hook up to and including the site of the former Rayonier pulp mill.
MUMBAI: Is nothing sacred, wonders heritage activist Sharada Dwivedi while mourning the plight of the Buddhist Magathane Caves that were rediscovered by fellow historian Anita Rane-Kothare two years ago.Members of a political party called Rane-Kothare's husband on Saturday in a bid to persuade her to roll back her activism in the caves' precinct. "But I will not be deterred, because I am fighting for a cause,'' Rane-Kothare said.Already buried under a slum colony and now under threat of being reduced to rubble by construction activity, the Magathane Caves do not figure on the list of monuments protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In fact, an ASI official who was unaware of their existence felt that Rane-Kothare actually meant Mahakali in Andheri, not Magathane in Borivli.
LIMA.-(EFE) Peruvian archaeologists and Spanish technicians have discovered an Inca road unknown until now and apparently held sacred that led to the citadel of Machu Picchu, the Project Ukhupacha team said Friday in Lima.The discovery was made early this week by archaeologists from the Peru National Culture Institute and technicians from Jaume I University in Castellon, Spain.The Inca road is made of stone masonry approximately 1 meter (3 1/4 feet) wide, with sustaining walls along the way rising some 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) high, according to a communique from the Project Ukhupacha.Several stretches of the road have collapsed that began at what is now the Wuarqtambo archaeological premises, went up Machu Picchu mountain and then came down from the citadel.
LONDON: Forget spark plugs. You would soon be able to start your car by lasers, thanks to scientists who have developed what they claim is an ignition system which uses focused beams of laser light to ignite the fuel.A joint team from Liverpool University and car giant Ford has come up with the technology that is more reliable and efficient than current spark plug technology and would enable vehicles to start more easily in cold and damp conditions."We are running engines everyday in our lab with this system now and our ultimate objective is have it inside cars driven by consumers. Lasers can be focused and split into multiple beams to give multiple ignition points, which means it can give a far better chance of ignition.
(07-12) 15:53 PDT -- From time to time, Bill Borucki wanders into a large white structure that looms like a stranded blimp near his office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View and takes a look at one of the striking exhibits there.The exhibition, on view inside the Ames Exploration Center, depicts NASA's latest venture into the deep cosmos - the Kepler spacecraft, which is now orbiting the sun and carrying an amazing telescope that will scan the Milky Way and hunt for unknown Earth-like planets that just might hold what Borucki calls "ET's home."
A vivid new topographical map of the moon's south pole paints rainbow colors over contours, revealing craters that are permanently shadowed.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. created the new false-color map from observations gathered by the Goldstone Solar System Radar, located in California's Mojave Desert.
I HAVE entered into this wager with Rupert Sheldrake because of my interest in the details of how embryos develop, and how our understanding of this process will progress. In my latest book, How We Live and Why We Die, I suggest that it will one day be possible to predict from an embryo's genome how it will develop, and I believe it is possible for this to happen in the next 20 years.I am, in fact, being a little over-keen because 40 years is a more likely time frame for such a breakthrough. Cells and embryos are extremely complicated: for their size, embryonic cells are the most complex structures in the universe.
Dedicated research into renewable energy at sea truly began during the oil crisis of the 1970s. But progress towards harnessing the estimated 1 million gigawatt-hours of globally available ocean power has been slow, according to the World Energy Council.Pelamis, the world's first commercial wave "farm" utilises three 150-metre-long jointed steel structures that flex to drive hydraulic generators and produce 750 kilowatts of power each.Perhaps surprisingly, this renewable-power milestone off the north coast of Portugal only began operations only last year. Now, though, a suite of rivals are hard on its tail.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have designed a synthetic tree that traps carbon dioxide from the air in an attempt to combat growing emissions. The device looks less like a tree and more like a small building, but it can collect carbon about 1,000 times faster than a real tree. One synthetic tree could absorb one ton of carbon dioxide per day, an amount equivalent to that produced by about 20 cars, on average. After being trapped in a chamber, the carbon would be compressed and stored in liquid form for sequestration.
String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden (The Netherlands) theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported in Science Express.This is superb. I have never experienced such euphoria.' Jan Zaanen makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. Together with Mihailo Cubrovic and Koenraad Schalm, he has successfully managed to shed light on a previously unexplained natural phenomeon using the mathematics of string theory.
If you startled a deer, you might not expect it to jump into the nearest pond and submerge itself for minutes.But that is exactly what two species of mouse-deer in Asia do when confronted by predators, scientists have found.One other African mouse-deer species is known to do the same thing, but the new discovery suggests all ruminants may once have had an affinity with water.
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered a new sub-species of monkey in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest, a U.S.-based wildlife conservation group said on Tuesday.The newly found monkey was first spotted by scientists in 2007 in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and is related to the saddleback tamarin monkeys, known for their distinctively marked backs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.The small monkey, which is mostly gray and brown and weighs 213 grams (0.47 pound), has been named the Mura's saddleback tamarin after the Mura Indian tribe of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the new sub-species was found.It is 240 millimeters (9.4 inches) tall with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.
Astronomers love their sky maps, and this latest is a doozie. It reveals thousands of previously undiscovered knots of cold cosmic dust, each a potential star waiting to be born.The new atlas of dust covers the inner regions of our Milky Way Galaxy, where stars, gas and dust are all packed tightly together, where chaos reigns, where massive stars are born.It's so dusty in there that optical telescopes can't see anything.
PETERMANN GLACIER, Greenland -- I'm writing this blog from Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, where a cold katabatic wind is blowing off the ice onto the deck of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise.The ship is here on a scientific research mission, and to document the effects of climate warming on the world's largest island and second largest icecap. I'm on board as the expedition safety guide, which means making sure that everyone venturing off the ship is well-equipped and well-informed for dealing with conditions in the harsh and remote Arctic wilderness.
HOHHOT, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists said here on Wednesday that they have sketched out the layout of the first capital of Kublai Khan's empire, known as Xanadu in Marco Polo's Travel Notes, through a large-scale excavation."The most exciting findings are the layout of moat in front of the Mingde Gate to the royal capital and the highest building of Muqingge in the three-month long excavation on the ruins of Yuan Shangdu," said Yang Xingyu, a senior archaeologist with the Inner Mongolia regional bureau of cultural relics.
One fine day about 74,000 years ago, a giant volcano on Sumatra blew its top. The volcano, named Toba, may have ejected 1000 times more rock and other material than Mount St. Helens in Washington state did in 1980. In the process, it cooled the climate by at least 10°C, causing a global famine. But could the aftermath have been even worse? A new study puts to rest questions about whether Toba plunged Earth into a 1000-year deep freeze and whether an equivalent event today could jump-start a new, millennia-long ice age.Giant volcanic eruptions such as Toba briefly cause the opposite of global warming
The isotopic analysis of a bone from one of the earliest modern humans in Asia, the 40,000 year old skeleton from Tianyuan Cave in the Zhoukoudian region of China (near Beijing), by an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Washington University in Saint Louis has shown that this individual was a regular fish consumer (PNAS, 07.07.2009).
Infectious disease carried by Homo sapiens was responsible for the demise of the Neanderthal, according to a new theory Scientists seeking to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals should look to the modus operandi of another greatScientists seeking to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals should look to the modus operandi of another great die-off 30,000 years later, argues a Danish expert in an article submitted to the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The European and US space agencies (Esa and Nasa) have taken a significant step towards teaming up to explore Mars.They have announced a joint initiative for robotic exploration of the Red Planet following a two-day summit in Plymouth, UK, last month.But this means European space ministers now face tough decisions over the future of Esa's ExoMars rover mission.They need to decide whether to totally re-scope ExoMars in the light of new options opened up by the collaboration. Nasa and Esa have been eyeing a mutual arrangement on Mars exploration because of the growing cost of such missions and because of shared science goals.
(AP) It's not your average library collection: Bits of scorpions and snakes. Tissue from jaguars. Leeches from a hippopotamus.And on Tuesday, officials of the American Museum of Natural History and the U.S. National Park Service signed an agreement for samples from endangered species in America's parks to be added to the museum's existing DNA collection.The frozen samples provide researchers with genetic materials to study and help protect hundreds of species. The first new submissions will be blood samples from foxes in California's Channel Islands National Park, followed by specimens from the American crocodile and the Hawaiian goose.
Where the first Americans came from, when they arrived and how they got here is as lively a debate as ever, only most of the research to date has focused on dry land excavations. But, last summer's pivotal underwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico led by Mercyhurst College archaeologist Dr. James Adovasio yielded evidence of inundated terrestrial sites that may well have supported human occupation more than 12,000 years ago, and paved the way for another expedition this July.As part of their 2008 findings, the researchers located and mapped buried stream and river channels and identified in-filled sinkholes that could potentially help document the late Pleistocene landscape and contain artifacts and associated animal remains from early human occupations. Continued exploration, Adovasio said, will be geared toward assessing a human presence on the now submerged beaches and intersecting river channels.
Earth's landmasses in the late Precambrian probably weren't pleasant, but at least they were green. A new analysis of limestone rocks laid down between 1 billion and 500 million years ago suggests that there was extensive plant life on land much earlier than previously thought.The plants were only tiny mosses and liverworts, but they would have had a profound effect on the planet. They turned the hitherto barren Earth green, created the first soils and pumped oxygen into the atmosphere, laying the foundations for animals to evolve in the Cambrian explosion that started 542 million years ago.
The pages of a Bible more than 1,600 years old have been published on the Internet, The Associated Press reported. Nearly 800 pages from the Codex Sinaiticus, a Christian Bible dating to the 4th century, written in Greek and containing the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, were posted Monday at the Web site codexsinaiticus.org, coinciding with a conference on the book at the British Library in London. The original manuscript, containing about 1,460 pages written on prepared animal skin, was discovered in 1844 at the Monastery of St. Catherine, a Greek Orthodox shrine in the Sinai Peninsula, by the German Bible scholar Constantine Tischendorf. Its pages were split among Britain, Egypt, Russia and Germany.
Monday, July 1, was heavy and hot, and a full-scale summer storm passed through the city late in the morning. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania rose to speak. He knew he was endangering the respect in which he was broadly held, his "popularity," but he once again counseled caution: Slow down, separation from Britain is "premature," to declare independence now would be "to brave the storm in a skiff made of paper." When he sat down, "all was silent except for the rain that had begun spattering against the windows."
Once a major city of the ancient world, Cyrene, today rests in ruins in Libya. Now open again to the world, the site is victimized by looters, the bane of archaeologists everywhere.Governed at different times by Greek colonists, Egyptian lords and Roman emperors, Cyrene's rulers included Alexander the Great, Marc Antony and Cleopatra. In "one of the great catastrophes of history," according to a 1981 International Council on Monuments and Sites report, the city was finally conquered by an earthquake and tidal wave in 365 A.D.
Buzz Aldrin has been on many journeys in his remarkable life, and in some respects the one to the moon was the least challenging. Being the second man to walk on the moon in July 1969, stepping down from the landing craft 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong, gave him eternal name recognition, but it also brought a heap of problems in the decade that followed - alcoholism, depression, two divorces. He was on the moon for two and a half hours; his post-Nasa breakdown lasted for a decade as he looked for something to fill the space left by ... space.But now, praise the Lord and Alcoholics Anonymous, 79-year-old Buzz is sitting in front of me, tanned, alert, as sharp as the Apollo 11 badge pinned to his colourful tie, chiding me for waving the mic around carelessly, telling a fan who is showing him his grandfather's 60s space scrapbook that he doesn't sign autographs, treading the careful divide between ego and generosity, self-regard and fellowship that is essence-of-Buzz.
When the public theology think tank Theos published its study into evolution and theism in the UK earlier this year, it found that people in London were consistently more ignorant of and hostile towards Darwinism than those who lived elsewhere.Although Londoners were more likely to know that 2009 was Darwin's big anniversary (28% vs. 21% nationally), they were less likely to know what he was famous for (63% said evolution vs 70% nationally), more likely to believe that humans had been created by God at some point in the last 10,000 years (20% vs 17%), and less likely to agree that "evolution is a theory so well established that it's beyond reasonable doubt" (28% vs 37%).
Each equipped with $48,000 worth of GPS components, electronic maps, and wearable computers, troops of the Army's 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division are heading to Afghanistan as part of the resurrected Land Warrior program. The Army is hoping the revised, eight-pound set of gear will be more beneficial than when the $500 million program was canceled in 2006.As the latest futuristic military program to be made real, Land Warrior gear will allow troops to identify comrades and enemies on the battlefield, receive updated objectives, locate buildings and find the nearest exit--all through a head-mounted eyepiece.
Scientists have identified a possible crater left by the biggest space impact in modern times - the Tunguska event.The blast levelled more than 2,000 sq km of forest near the Tunguska River in Siberia on 30 June 1908.A comet or asteroid is thought to have exploded in the Earth's atmosphere with a force equal to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.Now, a University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground.Lake Cheko - though shallow - fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists.
You might call it "CSI Ancient Greece". A computer technique can tell the difference between ancient inscriptions created by different artisans, a feat that ordinarily consumes years of human scholarship."This is the first time anything like this had been done on a computer," says Stephen Tracy, a Greek scholar and epigrapher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who challenged a team of computer scientists to attribute 24 ancient Greek inscriptions to their rightful maker. "They knew nothing about inscriptions," he says.Tracy has spent his career making such attributions, which help scholars attach firmer dates to the tens of thousands of ancient Athenian and Attican stone inscriptions that have been found.
Gullies, channels and other features on the Martian surface have long suggested that water flowed across the Red Planet long ago. But a growing number of observations show frozen water is there now.The findings of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, announced throughout the mission, are now detailed in a set of four papers in Friday's issue of the journal Science. They are the first to describe the northernmost reaches of the Red Planet and shed light on the history of water on Mars, as well as the planet's potential habitability.Among the most significant finding from Phoenix, which landed on the Red Planet on May 25, 2008: a layer of rock-hard water ice just a few inches beneath the surface of the dusty arctic plains.
The planet Mars conjures images of red rocks and arid, dusty plains, but as NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed last year, it snows on Mars.The stationary robot observed ice crystals falling to the Martian surface near the end of its five-month mission in the arctic Vastitas Borealis plains last year. Scientists provided further details on this finding and others in a set of four papers in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The research could help shed light on the past and present action of water on the Martian surface and characterize the potential habitability of the Red Planet.Phoenix landed on the Red Planet on May 25, 2008, with a mission to dig up and analyze samples of Martian dirt, confirm the existence of a subsurface layer of water ice and observe the weather at its far northern locale.
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a 7 000-years-old settlement close to the northeast city of Shumen.The village dates back to the Stone-Copper Age, and is located in the locality of Chanadzhik, near the village of Sushina and the Ticha Dam.The archaeologists have discovered over 300 finds, most of which are made of marble.
Remember Ida? It's been just a month since the fossil primate made her debut on the History Channel where she was called a "missing link" between humans and primitive primates and a "revolutionary scientific find that will change everything." But Ida may be robbed of her claim to that title by a new fossil primate from Asia, published today. "It shows that Ida is out of the running as a [human] ancestor," says the fossil's discoverer, paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Researchers have long searched for the earliest anthropoids, advanced primates that were the ancestors of humans, apes, and monkeys. Until recently, most scientists thought anthropoids arose in Africa, where the oldest widely accepted members of the group lived as early as 37 million years ago in the Fayum province of Egypt.
The Home Secretary Alan Johnson killed off the Government's cherished compulsory identity cards scheme last night, promising that British citizens would never be forced to sign up for them. Critics urged the Government to retreat further and scrap its flagship £5bn policy outright.Mr Johnson's predecessors had argued that the cards were needed to help tackle terrorism, illegal immigration and serious crime. They suggested that the move to compulsory carrying would follow once more than 80 per cent of the population was covered.But, in his first major announcement as Home Secretary, Mr Johnson pledged that ID cards would remain entirely voluntary for UK nationals in future, and insisted that it should be a "personal choice" for citizens to sign up. He also abandoned plans to require some pilots and airport workers to carry ID cards in the face of bitter opposition from their unions.
It is being called the most documented case of reincarnation ever.A little boy is able to recall over 50 memories from someone else's life.A World War II Pilot's family believes it is their reincarnated brother based on the child's memories.The boy's story is so compelling, it has been published in a new book called "Soul Survivor."Fox 8's Suzanne Stratford spoke exclusively to the child and his family.
The ancient civilisation based at Angkor in Cambodia collapsed in the late 16th century because of problems with a very modern ring to them, research by an international team indicates.The Greater Angkor Project, based in Sydney, is preparing a paper arguing that extreme climate change and the failure of Angkor's complicated water systems were to blame.The temple complex was the heart of the mighty Khmer empire and its ruins are one of the most popular attractions in South-East Asia.The Angkor Wat temple, the centrepiece, was built in the ninth century and surrounded by huge reservoirs and canals - believed to be partly Hindu symbols and partly for irrigation.
Omar W. Rosales, the American Writer, Anthropologist, Expedition Leader, and Filmmaker will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout July to discuss his latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article
Palaeontologists have unveiled three new Australian dinosaur skeletons in Queensland today.The two herbivores and one carnivore, excavated from the Winton formation, roamed our land during the Cretaceous period - 98 million years ago.The research, published in the current edition of PloS One, puts Australia back on the palaeontology map and describes Australia's fauna before it separated from the supercontinent Gondwana.Palaeontologist and lead author Dr Scott Hocknull, of the Queensland Museum, says in the past dinosaur discoveries in Australian haven't been considered important because there were so few of them.
CHENNAI: "We have a triple eclipse coming up within a month and through archaeo-astronomy, using planetarium software, we found that this rare astronomical phenomenon occurred twice in ancient times and they were two most traumatic periods. It set us wondering if there is a probability of a major catastrophe awaiting us now," said Bharath Gyan conceptualiser D K Hari on Tuesday.Bharath Gyan, an initiative of Hari and his wife, has been collating information about India using ancient knowledge sources and modern scientific tools and methods. It has 400-500 hours of content, compiled in capsules on various subjects.Hari talked about the triple eclipses in 3067 BC and again in 3031 BC and the corresponding historical upheavals. "With the advancement of modern science and technology we are able to date these two triple eclipses and accord dates to the events of the Mahabharata and correlate them with the events that occurred in the rest of the world. Occurrences of many of these triple eclipses have coincided with some of the major catastrophes that mankind has experienced. Those that have changed the course of civilization! Is this a mere coincidence or do triple eclipses influence the course of civilization," asks Hari.
AS WESTERN governments dither at the negotiating table over how to help the world's poorest people cope with climate change, some unlikely saviours have stepped up to the plate: the giants of the global insurance industry.As well as providing protection from the increasingly unpredictable weather, the premiums could also be a powerful way to get poor people to adapt to climate change by encouraging them to invest in measures like drought-resistant crops. Is this profit-driven endeavour too good to be true?
In a small way, the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilized world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered.The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the environmentalist movements now; their intentions were more than good but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start. It is time to wake up and realize that Gaia, the Earth system, is no cozy mother that nurtures humans and can be propitiated by gestures such as carbon trading or sustainable development.
July 1, 2009 -- Astronomers on Wednesday said they had identified an intermediate class of black hole that could explain how supermassive, light-sucking monsters develop in the heart of galaxies.Their find -- a black hole more than 500 times the mass of the sun, on the fringe of galaxy ESO 243-249 -- is reported in the latest issue of Nature, the British-based science journal.In terms of size, it lies between supermassive black holes, which can be billions of times the mass of the sun, and relative toddlers, which are between three and 20 solar masses.
July 1, 2009 -- Vegetation helped save Earth from runaway cooling that would have encased the planet in ice, according to a study published on Wednesday.The paper sheds light on the big natural mechanisms that over hundreds of millions of years have swung the globe like a pendulum between deep chill and intense heat.Around 50 million years ago, the planet's poles were ice-free and crocodiles roamed the Arctic.
July 1, 2009 -- A new stash of fossil feathers is yielding a wealth of information about Moas, the extinct giant birds that once roamed ancient New Zealand.In a unprecedented discovery, Nicolas Rawlence of the University of Adelaide and a team of researchers found they could extract DNA from the feathers' shafts, and use the genetic material to prove the feathers belonged to four species of the flightless Moa, including the Heavy-footed Moa Pachyornis elephantopus.The team's study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Academy B: Biological Sciences.
WASHINGTON: In a new research, scientists have shown that human beings can develop echolocation, the system of acoustic signals used by dolphins and bats to explore their surroundings.The research was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Alcala de Henares (UAH) in Spain."In certain circumstances, we humans could rival bats in our echolocation or biosonar capacity", said Juan Antonio Martínez, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Superior Polytechnic School of the UAH.The team led by this scientist has started a series of tests, the first of their kind in the world, to make use of human beings' under-exploited echolocation skills.
Turkey today announced plans to resume a controversial £1bn dam project in the face of environmental protests that it would displace thousands of people, destroy habitats and drown priceless archaeological treasures.The environment minister, Veysel Eroglu, said work on the Ilisu hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river in south-east Turkey would restart after a six-month funding suspension ends next week.
For thousands of years the pyramids of Egypt have amazed and baffled people in equal measure.Tourists and scholars alike have been awestruck by the size and precision of the structures, while struggling to comprehend why they were built in the first place.Over the years, countless theories explaining their existence have been put forward, with experts struggling to reach agreement on the story behind them.
LAHORE: Foreign archaeologists involved in excavation work to explore the Indus Valley Civilisation in Pakistan have left the country due to the war-like situation.The experts from the US, Europe and UK uncovered the mysteries of the Indus Valley Civilisation for the world during their research spanning decades. The teams, consisting of senior professors Dr Richard H Meadow, Professor JM Kenoyer, Dr Jean-Francois Jarrige and late Prof George F Dales, had conducted extensive research in different parts of Pakistan. A majority of the areas that were a part of the Indus Valley Civilisation became Pakistan after the partition of the sub-continent in 1947.
Chief Sitting Bull's vision was prophetic. On the morning of June 25, 1876, the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, under the leadership of George Armstrong Custer, descended over the combined encampment of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne tribes on the eastern plains of Montana.In the blood-drenched battle that ensued, army regiments quickly fell in defeat to Indian warriors under the command of chiefs Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall.Seven months after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull and his followers headed north into Canada, where they remained until 1881, at which time the Indian leader surrendered to U.S. authorities.
Archaeologists have found a group of water wells in western Cyprus believed to be among the oldest in the world.The skeleton of a young woman was among items found at the bottom of one shaft.Radiocarbon dating indicates the wells are 9,000 to 10,500 years old, putting them in the Stone Age, the Cypriot Antiquities Department says.A team from Edinburgh University has found six such wells, near the coastal town of Paphos. They are said to show the sophistication of early settlers.
June 29, 2009 -- An important archaeological site in northern Afghanistan that was occupied by humans as far back as the sixth century B.C. is being threatened by the construction of a road, archaeologists warn.The picturesque Cheshma-e-Shafa gorge in the northern province of Balkh is just one of several ancient sites faced with destruction by a post-Taliban push for development, they say..
What will our world look like in 2050? Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society Martin Rees predicts crises in water and energy supplies as a result of increased population pressure, exacerbated by climate change. Speaking to Alok Jha earlier this month, he also discussed the prospects for mitigating global warming and the UK's role in reducing carbon emissions.This is the full-length version of the excerpt we ran in our Hay Festival special.On a lighter note - perhaps - Rees weighed up the chances that we will have discovered alien life by 2050.
Australian researchers are set to begin human trials of a tiny nano-cell that acts as a "Trojan horse" against cancer cells, a breakthrough they say may curb the need for debilitating chemotherapy.The technology could eventually allow cancer sufferers to receive treatment as outpatients, rather than being hospitalised for lengthy bouts of chemotherapy, according to the researchers.
Shooting laser beams at a submarine won't destroy it, but new technology being tested by the U.S. Navy could help find enemy subs."Instead of dumping hardware (into the ocean) you could shoot a light pulse into the water and generate acoustic signals," said Ted Jones of the Naval Research Laboratory, who presented his results at a recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America."With this, you could do communications, acoustic navigation beacons or sonar."
Microscopic analysis of scratches on dinosaur teeth has helped scientists unravel an ancient riddle of what a major group of dinosaurs ate- and exactly how they did it!Now for the first time, a study led by the University of Leicester, has found evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs- the Hadrosaurs- in fact had a unique way of eating, unlike any living creature today.Working with researchers from the Natural History Museum, the study uses a new approach to analyse the feeding mechanisms of dinosaurs and understand their place in the ecosystems of tens of millions of years ago. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Some of us might rather forget our old science exams. But sometimes they still have lessons to offer.For example, take a 1941 exam unearthed by one anatomy professor. The test is a relic of a simpler time that tells us a lot about the evolution of studying evolution."I just found the exam in one of my wife's old textbooks," says Casey Holliday of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. Folded inside a copy of the 1937 Man and the Vertebrates by Alfred Romer (a sage in reptile anatomy circles), the acetate copy of a 13-question "Zoology 1B" exam, dated May 9, 1941, intrigued Holliday.
The Egyptians who built the giant pyramids on the Giza Plateau 4,500 years ago ate dense bread, choice cuts of meat and preserved fish.They slept in military-style barracks and belonged to work gangs with names such as the "Drunkards of Menkaure."Archaeologist Mark Lehner knows these details because he spent the past two decades digging them up from their lost city.
An archaeologist who's been digging at the Topper Site in Allendale County for 11 years is uncovering new evidence that could rewrite America's history.University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert Goodyear found artifacts at this rock quarry site near the Savannah River that indicate humans lived here 37,000 years before the Clovis people. History books say the Clovis were the first Americans and arrived here 13,000 years ago by walking across a land bridge from Asia.Goodyear's discovery could prove otherwise.His findings are controversial, opening scientific minds to the possibility of an even earlier pre-Clovis occupation of America.The site is named for Beaufort County resident David Topper, a forester who led Goodyear to the site in the early 1980s. Goodyear only began intense examination of the site in 1998, after flooding of the Savannah River forced him from a nearby dig, according to several histories of the Topper site.
The paper, published on June 21 in Nature Geoscience, describes fieldwork demonstrating that a prehistoric glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years.The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of the few explicit confirmations that this phenomenon occurs.
THE sun provides ideal conditions for life to thrive, right? In fact, it periodically leaves Earth open to assaults from interstellar nasties in a way that most stars do not.The sun protects us from cosmic rays and dust from beyond the solar system by enveloping us in the heliosphere - a bubble of solar wind that extends past Pluto. These cosmic rays would damage the ozone layer, and interstellar dust could dim sunlight and trigger an ice age. However, when the solar system passes through very dense gas and dust clouds, the heliosphere can shrink until its edge is inside Earth's orbit.
DOOM-MONGERS have got it wrong - there is enough space in the world to produce the extra food needed to feed a growing population. And contrary to expectation, most of it can be grown in Africa, say two international reports published this week.The first, projecting 10 years into the future from last year's food crisis, which saw the price of food soar, says that there is plenty of unused, fertile land available to grow more crops.
For more than 50 years, many have taken the so-called Fermi Paradox to indicate that the existence of intelligent alien civilizations is an impossibility. However, a recent re-examination of the paradox points out that, rather than discounting the spread of an intelligent civilization, the Fermi Paradox merely points out that advanced civilizations with exponential growth are unlikely to exist.Enrico Fermi speculated (during a lunch break) that the age of the universe, as well as its size, meant that there should be a number of advanced societies keeping Earth company, in a galactic sense. Growth of these civilizations would be exponential, Fermi implied, and therefore if they existed, we would have encountered them already. Ergo, advanced alien societies must not exist, since their expansion hasn't brought them into the range of our detection.
June 26, 2009 -- Scientists looking for Earth-like planets in distant solar systems might find it more productive to focus on pale red dots, rather than blue ones.So concludes a team of astronomers from Spain and Florida who observed the Aug. 16, 2008, lunar eclipse from a simulated alien perspective and discovered that several biologically relevant molecules, such as oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and methane, show up stronger than expected in longer, redder wavelengths of light.
Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has obtained strong evidence that Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus retains liquid water.The probe has detected sodium salts in the vicinity of the satellite, which appear to spew from its south pole.Liquid water that is in prolonged contact with rock will leach out sodium - in exactly the same way as Earth's oceans have become salty over time.Scientists tell Nature magazine that the liquid water may reside in caverns just below the surface of the moon.
Dindigul (PTI): A glass bead-making unit and an Iron Age graveyard, both about 2,500 years old, have been unearthed during the ongoing excavation in and around Porunthal, 12-km from here, an archaeology expert said.The excavation made at Paasi Medu (bead mound) venue, a site spread over 5.5 hectares on the ancient East-West Trade route linking Tamil Nadu and Kerala, revealed presence of a glass bead manufacturing unit, Prof K Rajan, Archaeology Department, University of Pondicherry, told reporters at Palani near here on Sunday.
June 23, 2009 -- Necessity compelled Neanderthals to dry hunks of big game meat for easy transport, according to a new study on the survival needs of Neanderthals.Neanderthals also likely wore tailored clothing, according to the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeology.The findings help to explain how Neanderthals could transport meat over long distances without it rotting, as well as how they survived the often chilly conditions of Northern Europe.
A team of Bulgarian archaeologists has uncovered a Thracian settlement close to the southeast town of Nova Zagora.The team of Konstantin Gospodinov and Veselin Ignatov from the city of Burgas hope that their finding would be the first Thracian settlement to be uncovered in its entirety.The settlement is located along the Blatnitsa River. It had a moat around it, and include large buildings rising above the ground, news.dir.bg reported.
The rock hewn 18th Dynasty tomb consists of an open courtyard and two halls, one square, the other rectangular. It has a deep shaft where the mission unearthed the remains of mummies, funerary seals and fragments of pottery vessels. In the court, says Mustafa Waziri, director-general of Luxor's West Bank inspectorate, another shaft was discovered containing a well preserved mummy that may belong to the tomb's owner
June 26, 2009 -- Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date to 6,000-5,000 years ago.The cart models, which may have been ritual objects or children's toys, were found at Altyndepe, a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in Western Central Asia near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Together with other finds, the cart models provide a history of how wheeled transportation first emerged in the area and later developed.
The statue, found at the site of a pre-Islamic temple in April but only made public this week, was intact from the upper arms downwards but its head was missing, deputy culture minister Mohammad Zia Afshar told AFP.It is likely from the fifth or sixth century but this had not been established, added Zafar Faiman, a research official at the site at Naranj Hill south of Kabul.The statue is in a sitting position and is the height of a normal man, he told AFP.
The Brooklyn Museum's 2,000-year-old mummy turns out to have been a pappy.After decades of billing the preserved body from Egypt as Lady Hor, museum officials got a big surprise Tuesday when a CT scan revealed the lady was a man.The mummy, discovered 70 years ago in Thebes, was believed to be a woman because the coffin lacked the beard ornamentation male mummies sport.The ancient twist on "The Crying Game" came when doctors at North Shore University Hospital ran scans on four mummies and found Lady Hor had a penis and scrotum."It's definitely a man," said Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian art at the museum. "Physiologically, it's really clear.
Archeologists have uncovered surprisingly sophisticated grain storage that predates plant domestication.An excavation site near the Dead Sea in Jordan has revealed an 11,000-year-old granary, which even had elevated floors to prevent rodent pilfering and to increase air circulation.The stone and mud building was capped with a wattle roof (branches or reeds woven around poles) was about 9.8 feet (3 meters) in diameter. The findings, reported earlier this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal wild barley as one of the ancient building's contents. Two nearby structures also appear to have been used for food and grain processing.
Reporting from Mexico City -- Could Mexican cities become Latin Amsterdams, flooded by drug users seeking penalty-free tokes and toots?That is the fear, if somewhat overstated, of some Mexican officials, especially in northern border states that serve as a mecca for underage drinkers from the United States.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday they had discovered the largest underground quarry in the Holy Land, dating back to the time of Jesus and containing Christian symbols etched into the walls.The 4,000-square-meter (yard) cavern, buried 10 meters beneath the desert near the ancient West Bank city of Jericho, was dug about 2,000 years ago and was in use for about half a millennium, archaeologist Adam Zertal said.
MADURAI: A glass-making unit functioned in Pasimedu near Palani in Dindigul district 2,000 years ago, according to the discovery by research scholars and historians, who have been excavating this site for the last two months.Speaking to TOI, K Rajan, head, department of History, Pondicherry University, said they had started excavation in the Porunthal village on the left bank of the Porunthal river, near Palani, under a project funded by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). They had made three trenches and collected over 2,000 glass beads. The beads are of various colours. A mound in this region called pasimedu' (mound of beads) was found to be covering an Iron Age' grave dating back to 500 B.C., that is 2,500 years ago.
Aldrin, who was the second man to set foot on the moon after Neil Armstrong, said the US space agency needed to stop concentrating on simply developing new rockets and turn its attention to visiting the neighbouring planet."I think our resources should... be on a pathway that can lead us to Mars," he told reporters during a trip to Hong Kong.
Chaired by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, the committee must deal with an incredibly tight schedule, pressure from NASA contractors and their backers on Capitol Hill, and a reliance on NASA officials to provide technical analyses of rival projects.The White House charged the panel to take a hard look at NASA's manned-space strategy for the next decade, paying special attention to the agency's efforts to develop a new rocket system to replace the space shuttle when it retires next year.
Five years after the private-sector space age began, rocketeers are taking circuitous routes to turn their spaceship dreams into reality. And the pioneers of the age say that's just as it should be.The Space Age, with capital letters, dates back more than 50 years to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. That marked the first time an artificial satellite was put into orbit. The 5-year-old space age I'm talking about dates back to June 21, 2004, when the SpaceShipOne rocket plane became the first privately developed craft to carry a civilian astronaut into outer space.
WASHINGTON: Researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA), US, have achieved the first step in developing biological fuel cells that could power pacemakers, cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs.The technique, which has been described as "a significant breakthrough for nanotechnology", involved the development of a successful way to grow molecular wire brushes that conduct electrical charges.
Europe's new Herschel space observatory has provided a demonstration of its capability with a first image of the iconic Whirlpool Galaxy.The billion-euro telescope opened its "eyes" to the cosmos last Sunday when a command was given to lift a protective hatch covering the instrument bay.Herschel spied the galaxy, also known as M51, with its Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS).Scientists stress Herschel is still in its commissioning phase.They need to learn how best to operate the facility.
Hunters and farmers were using the Clwydian Hills in North Wales 10,000 years ago, new research has revealed.Analysis of a sample of earth extracted from the Clwydian Range has pieced together the timeline of human activity on the hills dating back almost 10,000 years.The sample was taken from Moel Llys y Coed near Cilcain, to provide a picture for the change in the landscape over the years to become the heather moorland seen today.
BOWS and arrows may not be the preserve of modern humans. It seems that simple stone blades make adequate arrowheads, so they might have been used in lightweight projectile weapons as far back as 100,000 years ago, when the blades first appeared.Spears and arrows would have let early hunters catch small fast-moving creatures rather than tackling large dangerous animals with hand-held blades. Matthew Sisk and John Shea from Stony Brook University in New York have shown that so-called Levallois points make effective arrowheads. They turned 51 reproduction blades into arrows and successfully shot them into an animal carcass (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.05.023).
(WIRED) -- The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn't power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could. The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over.The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept. Up near the jet stream above New York, the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter. The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy, if its intermittency can be overcome.
Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma.Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have digits 2, 3 and 4.