Newsdesk Archive

XI'AN, April 15 (Xinhua) -- A mural unearthed from an ancient tomb in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi last week depicted how traditional Chinese medication was practiced 1,000 years ago, archaeologists said Wednesday.

Dr. Reinaldo (Dito) Morales Jr., assistant professor of art history at UCA, has confirmed a major discovery in the world of rock art: an ancient rock painting at a burial site from the Inca site of Machu Picchu in Peru.

Most chemists don't have to go to the lengths Ruth Ann Armitage has gone to answer questions of science.In January, the Eastern Michigan University assistant professor, her husband Dan Fraser, California archeologist Suzanne Baker and a team of others bounced through rainforest and jungle - by truck and mule-back - to reach remote northern Nicaragua to date prehistoric cave paintings.Armitage is an analytical chemist who uses a process called plasma chemical oxidation to carbon-date ancient drawings. She was able to obtain samples of the charcoal and the paint from the drawings and brought the samples back to her lab at EMU.

The pick and shovel can go only so far in digging up details about dinosaurs. Now supercomputers are revealing knowledge about their anatomy otherwise lost to history.Although some lucky paleontologists manage to reconstruct complete skeletons of extinct creatures, there remains much about their anatomy that remains a mystery. For instance, while features of bones can tell one where muscles were attached, they do not tell you how long these muscles were. This can lead to startling differences in the pictures that artists draw of how the animals looked in life.For example, if the muscles connected to the thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex were short, that would suggest it was angled vertically as in humans. However, if they were very long, it could have been angled horizontally as in birds.

EVERYONE has heard of Newton's apple. He watched it drop to the ground in the autumn of 1666, prompting him to ask a series of questions. "Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground?" Newton wondered. "Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the Earth's centre?"One question Newton didn't ask is whether apples or oranges fall differently. Or whether an apple would fall differently in the spring. They might seem peculiar concerns, but Alan Kostelecký, a physicist based at Indiana University in Bloomington, thinks they are important. He and his graduate student Jay Tasson have found that such flagrant violations of our best theory of gravity could easily have evaded detection for centuries.

Global warming will change how we live. Models forecast that tropical storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, drought will bring more forest fires, and shrinking ice caps will raise sea levels worldwide.Some architects are now preparing for these challenges by attempting to design "future-proof" homes.Several companies such as Monolithic will build eco-homes for you or provide specialised equipment and instructions on how to build them for yourself.

One hundred and forty-four years ago tomorrow, Abraham Lincoln was watching a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington when John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president's box and shot him.Lincoln died the next morning, and now his blood and brain matter - on part of a pillowcase at a Philadelphia museum - are being sought for DNA testing that may definitely solve a medical mystery.Was the 16th president dying of cancer at the time of the assassination?

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - British motorists will soon be offered up to 5,000 pounds ($7,460) to encourage them to buy electric or hybrid cars under a new government plan.The plan also sets aside 20 million pounds for charging points and infrastructure to develop a network of what the government calls "electric car cities".The incentives will be offered from 2011 when a new generation of electric cars is expected to become available.

The majority of Britons believe in heaven and life after death, new research suggests.The survey of 2,060 people showed 55% believe in heaven, while 53% believe in life after death and 70% believe in the human soul.The study was carried out between October and November last year for the public theology think tank Theos.It also suggested that nearly four in 10 people, 39%, believe in ghosts and 27% believe in reincarnation.A further 22% believe in astrology or horoscopes and 15% believe in fortune telling or Tarot.

Humans descended from apes that lived in trees, but researchers have been battling over whether the earliest humans remained agile climbers when they started walking upright on the ground. A new study concludes that early humans may not have been very good at tree-climbing. If correct, the results suggest that our ancestors traded in their arboreal adaptations to become fully human.

A Chinese professor is out with a theory that could turn one of the country's most important archeological discoveries on upside down.Liu Jiusheng at Shaanxi Normal University says the famed Terracotta Soldiers of Xi'an aren't soldiers at all--they're royal servants and bodyguards, most likely modeled after high-ranking Qin dynasty officials.

Newly published archaeological evidence attests to the fact that ancient Jews used human skulls in ceremonies, despite a strict Halakhic prohibition on touching human remains.British researcher Dan Levene from the University of Southampton published findings in Biblical Archaeological Review about the human skulls, known as incantation bowls, some of which bear inscriptions in Aramaic.

Creative solutions to solving the world's energy problems take center stage tonight at 8 ET/PT in the PBS special Planet Forward, the brainchild of veteran TV newsman Frank Sesno.Tonight's show showcases citizen-produced videos recently uploaded to the project's website, PlanetForward.org, launched in March. Videos are from such varied sources as Girl Scouts in Rochester, N.Y., explaining their use of solar energy in baking, to an animated segment by a Bangladeshi college student concerned about the potential of devastating sea-level rise in his home country.

Scientists at more than a hundred labs around the world will be gearing up this week for a competition to build the best machine. There is only one condition. All the parts must come from living organisms.To the scientists involved, the competition is an exercise in extreme, not to say minuscule, DIY. Instead of hinges and door knobs, they must use the microscopic components found inside biological cells. Instead of screwdrivers and hammer-drills, the tools of the trade are those of the genetic engineer.

An astronomer at the University of St Andrews will use a powerful planet-hunting telescope to find out the true size of the Universe.Researcher Dr Alan Penny will use the brightness of half a dozen stars to refine estimates of how big the Universe actually is. Dr Penny hopes to solve the problem using the 'extreme precision' of NASA's Kepler satellite launched into space last month.Developed for the search for new planets, Kepler's main task is to look for planets by monitoring the brightness of 100,000 stars. But Dr Penny, a member of a 200 strong international team, will use the same data to study a much smaller sample of stars.

A new Florida city, Babcock Ranch, will power 19,500 homes by solar power and cost the average customer's monthly bill an additional 31 cents. This will be the first city on earth powered by zero-emission solar energy.The new city is being developed by Kitson & Partners on 17,000 acres northeast of Fort Myers. The city will include the world's largest photovoltaic power plant, which will be operated by Florida Power & Light.

NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has rebooted its computer at least twice for unknown reasons.Rover project manager John Callas at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said Monday that the rover is in a stable operations state called automode and can remain that way for some time while the problem is diagnosed.The reboots occurred during the past weekend.

We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals.Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.

Biomass power - such as burning wood for energy - could do more harm than good in the battle to reduce greenhouse gases, the Environment Agency warns.Ploughing up pasture to plant energy crops could produce more CO2 by 2030 than burning fossil fuels, if not done in a sustainable way, it said.Its study found waste wood and MDF produced the lowest emissions, unlike willow, poplar and oil seed rape.The EA wants biomass companies to report all greenhouse gas emissions.

The National Institute of Culture (INC) is currently preparing a preservation project to prevent damaged caused by weather on the enigmatic Nazca Lines, (Ica region) reported Mario Olaechea, resident archaeologist of this organization in Nasca."It's a project that will serve the whole area in general, to avoid events such like the one last January, when rainwater accumulated and drained, covering with layers of clay the geoglyph called La Mano (The Hand),", he said."Only 1% of the geoglyph was covered by the clay layer, and will be withdrawn very soon", he said. .

Thank pests for the explosion of colour every autumn. A new study of thousands of breeds of apple trees bolsters a claim that red foliage evolved as a warning signal to insects in search of a winter home.Red-pigmented leaves are a clear sign of health and an indication that a tree has enough energy to fill future leaves with unappetising toxins, according to a theory first proposed by the late English evolutionary biologist, W.D. Hamilton.He noted that red foliage requires the production of new pigments, called anthocyanins. Other researchers suggest that these pigments might protect trees from the damaging effects of sun while their chloroplasts are breaking down. But Hamilton, who died in 2000, argued that photo-protection cannot explain why some trees flush red every autumn, while others don't.

I am 6 years old and it's my first day at school. The bell rings for recess and all my classmates run gleefully away. But unlike them I cannot see. At least, not with my eyes. Instead, I click my tongue, listening for echoes from the wall to my left. I walk with my hands slightly outstretched to keep me from running into chairs that may have been left askew. I hear kids laughing and shouting through the open door, and by clicking I also hear the presence of the sides of the doorway in front of me. I go through it to the playground for the first time.After a few steps, I stop to listen. I stand on a crack in the pavement that runs parallel to the building behind me. I click my tongue loudly and turn my head from side to side. The way is open, shot through with scurrying voices, balls bouncing and shoes scampering to and fro. What is around me? How do I get there? How do I get back?.

Our teeth are put to the test every day, withstanding all the crunching and munching of meals and snacks. This remarkable resilience appears to be due to the microscopic "basket-weave" structure of human tooth enamel, a new study finds.Tooth enamel, which forms the outer coating of teeth, is a strong but brittle substance.

Elephant seals equipped with electronic tags and robotic mini submarines using sonar were just two projects during the International Polar Year (IPY) that aimed to investigate the effects of global warming in polar regions.The fourth IPY, which began in March 2007 and actually covered two full years, ended last month, after 160 scientific projects were undertaken by researchers from over 60 countries.

A team of researchers in the US has discovered traces of a medicinal alcoholic drink in bottles that are more than 5,000 years old.The scientists extracted wine compounds and plant-derived ingredients from a jar taken from the tomb of one of the first pharaohs of Egypt, Scorpion I.This is the earliest sample of a human-made medicine.The researchers report their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With a June 1 deadline for settling its differences with creditors and unions looming for GM, the American automaker unveiled a joint project with Segway.Segway, the personal motorized scooter and a general source of amusement, is developing a two-seater with GM. The plan is to create an inexpensive mode of "urban transportation". The new vehicle will be called PUMA -- Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility.The idea is interesting: A tiny, 600-pound vehicle that seats two (and has two main wheels). It is supposed to be powered by batteries, so emissions will be low. However, this urban transport device is strictly for city driving only; it's top speed is about 35 miles per hour. You should be able to go 35 miles on a single three-hour charge that is estimated to cost about 35 cents. There seems to be a recurring theme...

SCIENTISTS have unearthed what appears to be a mammoth wooden version of the famous Stonehenge monument at the Hill of Tara.In a revealing new RTE documentary, many theories and insights into the country's prehistoric past and 150,000 ancient monuments are unveiled and explained.For the first time, people will be able to view a computer-generated recreation of what archaeologists believe was a major wooden structure -- a version of Britain's Stonehenge -- at the ancient seat of the Irish high kings in the Hill of Tara in Co Meath.

The diggings allowed isolating ceramic of Spanish and Mexican origin, classified by the Cabinet of Archaeology of the Office of the Havana City Historian as from a period between 1540 and 1650The conclusion of the first stage of the archaeological and historical research made at the Lieutenant's Governor House, National Monument, and in another nearby house, confirmed that the Cuban eastern city of Holguin is much older than so far believed. The diggings allowed isolating ceramic of Spanish and Mexican origin, classified by the Cabinet of Archaeology of the Office of the Havana City Historian as from a period between 1540 and 1650, together with aboriginal material, as roped vessels and fragments of carved flint.

Scientists say they have demonstrated the principle of a very effective early warning system that would give notice of huge eruptions on the Sun.Two Nasa spacecraft have been used to track massive clouds of energetic particles thrown off our star.These eruptions, when they hit the Earth, can damage satellites, disrupt communications and harm astronauts.The Stereo probes have shown how two widely separated vantage points can be used to forecast an impact's arrival.Although Stereo is only a scientific research mission, the project team says its work illustrates clearly how an operational "space weather" early-warning system could work.

McGill researchers have succeeded in finding a new way to manufacture nanotubes, one of the important building blocks of the nanotechnology of the future. Their building material? Biological DNA.A team of researchers, led by Prof. Hanadi Sleiman in collaboration with Prof. Gonzalo Cosa, both of McGill University's Department of Chemistry, can now tailor different geometries, rigidities and porosities into these nanotubes through the clever introduction of non-DNA molecules. This work is to be reported in the April 13 edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

THE midnight sun hangs low in the sky on this November evening. A plain of flat ice sweeps in all directions and mountains rise in the distance. Perched on the sea ice is a massive, teepee-shaped tent. A mechanised rumble emanates from within.Inside the tent, men in hard hats tend a rotating shaft of steel. This drill turns day and night through 8 metres of sea ice covering the surface of McMurdo Sound, off the coast of Antarctica, and through 400 metres of water beneath it and into the seabed.

CAMBRIDGE - Studying a species known to chase its own tail may seem an unlikely way to better understand the human mind. But scientists at Harvard University's new Canine Cognition Lab hope to gain insight into more than the psychology of dogs from visiting pet pooches - including an alert German shepherd named Celia and a rottweiler called Taylor who loves to eat chicken.

A recently proposed but little-noticed Senate bill would allow the federal government to shut down the Internet in times of declared emergency, and enables unprecedented federal oversight of private network administration.The bill's draft states that "the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic" and would give the government ongoing access to "all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."

When great-grandma took a nip of the elderberry wine "for medicinal purposes," she was following a tradition that goes back thousands of years.Indeed, researchers say they have found evidence that the Egyptians spiked their wine with medicinal herbs as long as 5,000 years ago.A chemical analysis of pottery dating to 3150 B.C. shows that herbs and resins were added to grape wine, researchers led by Patrick E. McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday claimed its own version of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, after the birth of a cloned camel in Dubai this month."This is the first cloned camel in the world," said Dr Nisar Wani, researcher at the Camel Reproduction Centre.Injaz, a female one-humped camel, was born on April 8 after more than five years of work by scientists at the Camel Reproduction Centre and the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, The National newspaper reported.

NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has rebooted its computer at least twice for unknown reasons.Rover project manager John Callas at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said Monday that the rover is in a stable operations state called automode and can remain that way for some time while the problem is diagnosed.The reboots occurred during the past weekend.Callas says Spirit's batteries are charged, its solar arrays are producing energy and its temperatures are within allowable ranges.

Savant-like skills, such as astounding memory, perfect pitch or the ability to multiply very high numbers together, may be much more common among people with autism than previously thought.A new study of about 100 adults with autism shows that one third have skills that stand out, both in comparison with their other abilities and with the skills of the general population. Previous studies put the prevalence of savantism in autistic people as around 1 in 10.

BURPS of hot ionised gas from the sun can knock out satellites and power grids when they hit Earth. Till now their arrival has been hard to predict, but the first images of an earthbound burst captured by two satellites simultaneously have shown that we could get warnings 24 hours in advance that trouble is heading our way.These clouds of plasma, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), reflect sunlight and can sometimes be seen as expanding haloes around the sun. Unfortunately they are often faint, so CMEs travelling towards Earth are easily confused with material flowing out in other directions.

Deep under the ocean's surface lies a treasure trove of new life forms, fuel sources and knowledge. But, given the darkness, freezing temperatures and crushing pressure, it's not easy to get there. Indeed 95 percent of the ocean remains unexplored; we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the seafloor. "More than half of the planet is covered by water more than 3,000 meters [two miles] deep," says Chris German, chief scientist for the deep submergence group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass. "Most of the life that exists on the planet exists in the oceans. But we know so little about it."

Despite the great cultural, physical, and genetic diversity found amongst the numerous West Central African human populations that are collectively designated as "Pygmies," a report published online on February 5th in Current Biology finds that they diverged from a single ancestral population just about 2,800 years ago.The new study is the first to reconstruct the history of the numerous forest-dwelling pygmy populations, who make their livings as hunter-gatherers, and their immediate sedentary, agriculturalist neighbors, according to the researchers.

1815: Tambora volcano in the East Indies erupts with a mighty roar. It sends enough pulverized rock into the atmosphere to disrupt weather around the globe for more than a year.Tambora sits on Sumbawa Island, east of Java in what is today Indonesia. Geological evidence shows it probably hadn't erupted in 5,000 years.

AFTER billions of years of runaway expansion, is the universe starting to slow down? A new analysis of nearby supernovae suggests space might not be expanding as quickly as it once was, a tantalising hint that the source of dark energy may be more exotic than we thought.For more than a decade, astrophysicists have grappled with evidence of a baffling force that seems to be pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate. Exactly what constitutes the dark energy responsible for this cosmic speed-up is unknown, says Michael Turner at the University of Chicago. "The simplest question we can ask is 'does the dark energy change with time?'".

Scientists say they understand more about how the body responds to pleasurable touch.A team, including scientists from the Unilever company, have identified a class of nerve fibres in the skin which specifically send pleasure messages.And people had to be stroked at a certain speed - 4-5cm per second - to activate the pleasure sensation.They say the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, could help understand how touch sustains human relationships.

It's Good Friday, the day that Christians believe Jesus was crucified. Jerusalem's Old City is crowded with the faithful, retracing the steps of Jesus along the Via Dolorosa -- the Way of Suffering -- to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christians believe he was crucified.But they're all taking the wrong route, according to Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson. In a new book, titled "The Final Days of Jesus," Gibson says he has found the location of Jesus' trial, where Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, condemned him to death by crucifixion.Traditionally it is believed that the trial took place at the Antonia Fortress, outside the Temple Mount, near Lion's Gate. But Gibson believes the trial was actually conducted in an area just outside what is now the western wall of the Old City.

Packed with treasure in the styles of two ancient orders, the 1,500-year-old tomb of the Moche Indian "king of bling" is like no other, according to archaeologist Steve Bourget.Discovered in Peru at the base of an eroded mud-brick pyramid, the tomb gradually yielded its contents last summer.

In a striking hilltop position, with views over land and sea, stand the remains of an ancient temple.Built of yellow limestone, it glows in the sun. Its raised forecourt leads into a central aisle flanked by semicircular apses, altars, carved bowls and faint remembrances of decorative reliefs.This is thought to be among the oldest buildings in the world - constructed a thousand years before the Pyramids and long before Stonehenge. It is not in Egypt or Greece or anywhere in the Middle East, but in Malta. This little country of sun and package holidays has more to offer than just relaxing by the pool.

MOSCOW, April 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russian archaeologists working at Egypt's Fayoum Oasis have uncovered a number of mummies wearing golden masks, as well as other artifacts of historical value, a Russian Egyptologist said on Wednesday.A group of Russian archaeologists has been working in the Fayoum province, some 80km southwest of Cairo, since 2003. It has been carrying out excavations at the Deir Al-Banat necropolis for the past two years.

An egg collected by Charles Darwin during his voyage on HMS Beagle has been rediscovered at Cambridge University.The small dark brown egg, with Darwin's name written on it, was found by a retired volunteer at the university's zoology museum.It bears a large crack, caused after the great naturalist put it in a box that was too small for it.The egg is the only one known to exist from Darwin's Beagle collection.

On March 18, 2009, a U.S. District Court judge, Owen Panner, found that the U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protects the Santo Daime's use of DMT-containing ayahuasca as part of their sincere religious practices.

Curved tracks could help direct lightning or steer particle beams around colliders.The Norse thunder god Thor deflected lightning with his hammer. Physicists could soon replicate this feat using curved laser beams.Bending lightning around tall buildings and away from airports, power plants and other facilities is just one application for curved laser beams, says Jerome Moloney at the University of Arizona, Tuscon. He and his colleagues have now made the first such beams1. "The real novelty is that we can curve light in the lab," he says.

OLD GOA: Scientists have conducted a DNA analysis on bones believed to have been relics of Georgian queen Ketevan preserved in St Augustine's complex at Old Goa, but the mystery continues as a matching analysis of her other relics in Georgia needs to be done to confirm the findings.The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Goa, received the DNA report recently from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. "We were able to isolate the ancient DNA but the amplification and sequencing needs to be done following a different protocol, which is still not commercially available in the laboratory, and we require an advanced kit to carry out a phase 2 analysis," N Taher, deputy superintending archaeologist, Goa said.

Archaeologist Magnus Artursson at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, demonstrates in his thesis that societies during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age had a significantly more varied and complex structure than was previously thought. This power structure was based on social networks rather than on permanently established institutions. Society was organised into small and medium-sized chiefdoms that were typically involved in ongoing struggles for dominance between various powerful families.

The perception that much of prehistory was relatively peaceful is changing. New research has identified evidence of violent assault in the Neolithic. What does this tell us about Stone Age life as a whole? Forensic archaeologist Martin Smith explains.Whilst many Neolithic burials have been excavated during the last 150 years, they have received only limited study. Modern analysis of these remains by osteo-archaeologists is revealing shocking evidence for violent assaults involving clubs, axes, and arrowshot about 5,500 years ago.Arrowheads.

New CCTV cars to catch drivers using their mobile phones or being otherwise distracted at the wheel are being piloted by Greater Manchester Police.The small Smart cars, which have a 12ft (3.6m) mast with a camera attached, are parked at junctions to monitor traffic.

A 64-year-old woman has reported to doctors at Geneva University Hospital the presence of a pale, milky-white and translucent third arm.After examining the case, the woman's neurologist, Asaid Khateb of the hospital's experimental neurophysiology laboratory, called the rare phenomenon credible.The arm appeared to the woman a few days after suffering a stroke, doctors said.But this case of what is known as a supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) is a genuine head-scratcher.The upshot is that the woman can use the apparitional extremity to relieve very real itches on the cheek. It cannot penetrate solid objects.

In the race to renewable energy, organic solar cells are now really starting to take off. They can be manufactured easily and cheaply, they have low environmental impact, and since they are compatible with flexible substrates, they could be used in many applications such as packaging, clothing, flexible screens, or for recharging cell phones and laptops.

Tinkering with Earth's climate to chill runaway global warming - a radical idea once dismissed out of hand - is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option, the president's new science adviser said Wednesday.

Scattered around the shores of this tiny Polynesian island, many of the more than 900 male-shaped stone monoliths, called moai, can be found face-down rather than gazing calmly from an upright position as in the iconic image of the Easter Island statues.

Fruit and veggies without the fuss are the promise of a new robot being developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The robot could someday plant, tend and harvest your garden for you."Right now we are just using cherry tomatoes," said Nikolaus Correll, a professor at MIT who, along with his students, is developing the robotic gardener. "But in the future I could see us doing all kinds of fruits and vegetables."

1865: Gen. Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the first war of the modern era.The American Civil War was different from all the wars that preceded it, mainly because it coincided with the flowering of the industrial age. Mass production, the advent of the railroad and telegraph, aerial observation and the appearance of even more terrible weapons made the tactics of all previous wars obsolete.

The building blocks of life may be more than merely common in the cosmos. Humans and aliens could share a common genetic foundation.That's the tantalizing implication of a pattern found in the formation of amino acids in meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and simulations of primordial Earth. The pattern appears to follow basic thermodynamic laws, applicable throughout the known universe."This may implicate a universal structure of the first genetic codes anywhere," said astrophysicist Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

WASHINGTON: A new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our Sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or "prebiotic," chemicals.Astronomers used Spitzer to look for a prebiotic chemical, called hydrogen cyanide, in the planet-forming material swirling around different types of stars.Hydrogen cyanide is a component of adenine, which is a basic element of DNA.

In cult sci-fi tale Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most powerful computer in the universe was charged with finding the answer to life, the universe, and everything.In the real world, a newly built supercomputer that is the most powerful ever dedicated to science will be tackling questions about climate change, supernovas, and the structure of water.The projects were chosen in a peer-reviewed process designed to get the computer producing useful science even during the period when its performance is still being fine-tuned by engineers.

HARBIN, April 8 (Xinhua) -- A robot specially designed for underground exploration is opening up a lost world of historic treasures for Chinese archaeologists.Scientists are planning its second excursion next week when it will go into an ancient tomb in Xi'an, China's ancient capital in the northwestern Shaanxi Province.

The Egyptian researchers who, in early January, entered the burial room in the latest pyramid to be discovered in Saqqara, south of Cairo, labored for five hours before they could lift the lid of the sarcophagus within. Inside was a mummy wrapped in a flax shroud. In addition to pottery shards, gold wrappings were also found in the sarcophagus, which apparently were used to cover the fingers of the mummified body. Although no inscriptions were found in the tomb, the researchers assume, with a high level of probability, that it contains the body of the mother of the founder of the Egyptian Sixth Dynasty: Pharaoh Teti.

Stuttgart, Ark. - Within 35 miles and less than a one-hour drive from Stuttgart is Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park, just off Highway 165 North.The Toltec Mounds, located in the park, are some of the largest and most impressive archeological sites in the Mississippi River Valley Region of the United States."People started living at this place we call Toltec Mounds some time before 700 A.D.," Robin Gabe, park interpreter at Toltec Mounds Archeological Park, said. "Distinctive aspects of the culture of the people who lived here are the arrangement and construction of the mounds, the style of decoration on the pottery and the kinds of stone tolls."

Drought and dams have vastly shrunk a lake in Iraq's western Anbar province, revealing ancient dwellings and burial sites that archaeologists fear will now be targeted by thieves."We found recently opened graves with destroyed grave items around. We found some bones scattered nearby. Some of this is due to the water, but this was also due to recent activity," said Yassin Jbara, an archaeologist supervising Haditha sites.Recently broken ancient jars lie scattered on the lake's banks, where an eerie forest of skeletal trees have re-emerged from water that flooded the area in 1986 when a dam was built.

It's not quite Eleanor Dare's jewelry box, but the artifacts that archaeologists recently dug up at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site might hold some historic dazzle."We definitely found a historic site from the Colonial period," said Nick Luccketti, a founding member of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation. "It's a candidate for the first permanent English settlement on Roanoke Island, but I certainly wouldn't want to bet on it at this point."

Europe's innovative Goce satellite has switched on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity.The sophisticated gradiometer will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe.The spacecraft has also fired up the British-built engine that will help maintain its orbit.

Doctors may soon be able to patch up damaged bones and joints anywhere in the body with a simple shot in the arm.A team at Keele University is testing injectible stem cells that they say they can control with a magnet.Once injected these immature cells can be guided to precisely where their help is needed and encouraged to grow new cartilage and bone, work on mice shows.The aim is to treat patients with injuries and arthritis the UK National Stem Cell Network conference heard.

Stronger, faster and harder is the promise of a new exoskeleton developed by Lockheed Martin for U.S. soldiers. Dubbed the Human Universal Load Carrier, or HULC, the device helps a soldier carry up to 200 pounds at a top speed of 10 mph."The soldier has the feeling of maybe an extra five to 10 pounds," said Doug Medcalf, Business Development Manager at Lockheed Martin. Today some soldiers are carrying loads of up to 130 pounds into combat.

This illusion shows the interaction between color perception and afterimages. First, notice that the left image has a color imbalance to the right and left of the fly. Now, fixate your gaze on the fly in the right image for...

Protected areas can rapidly become parks only on paper if their status as reserves is not backed by the authorities and supported with cash. But a study by scientists in the United States suggests that efforts to protect parts of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest could be working.Stuart Pimm and his colleagues at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have found that fewer fires are being lit to clear trees inside reserves in the Brazilian Amazon than outside them. Crucially, they find that this difference does not merely stem from the fact that reserves have fewer roads in them.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne and Princeton University have shown for the first time that the difference in reflection of light from the Earth's land masses and oceans can be seen on the dark side of the moon, a phenomenon known as earthshine.

Why should we go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren't there better causes here on Earth?In a way, the situation is like that in Europe before 1492. People might have argued it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the new world made a profound difference to the old. Just think, we wouldn't have KFC or the Big Mac.

The Knights Templar secretly guarded the Shroud of Turin -- an ancient linen cloth believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus -- for more than 100 years, according to the Vatican's in-house newspaper.Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Barbara Frale, a scholar at the Vatican Secret Archives, said new archival documents reveal "missing clues" to the fate of the Shroud between 1204 A.D. and 1351, a period during which it cannot otherwise be accounted for.

Is "life as we don't know it" closer than we think? Are microbes behind the world's biggest extinctions? Is most of our morality bound up in hidden "dark morals"? Blow your mind with six flights of scientific fancy from the Origins Symposium, presented by Arizona State University.The weekend forum, organized to inaugurate ASU's Origins Initiative, focused on the beginnings of life, the universe and everything - including consciousness and culture. Among the luminaries in attendance were biologist Richard Dawkins, neuroscientist Steven Pinker, anthropologist Donald Johanson and a basketball team's worth of Nobel laureates.

The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler.Tel Aviv University archaeologists Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region.

'The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot'"The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous "foot", that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory.

What are the archaeological signatures of shamans? An interesting paper by Christine VanPool appearing in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology in the nearish future gives us a framework for answering that question.First VanPool provides a useful delineation of the cultural traits of shamans and priests, which I've used to build a couple of detailed definitions (here: Priest and Shaman). In brief, though, the way VanPool sees it, shamans and priests are two ends of a continuum of religious specialists.What are Religious Specialists?

Sydney - A list of Jews saved by Oskar Schindler that inspired the novel and Oscar-winning film Schindler's List has been found in a Sydney library, its co-curator said on Monday.Staff at the New South Wales State Library found the list, containing the names of 801 Jews saved from the Holocaust by the businessman, as they sifted through boxes of Australian author Thomas Keneally's manuscript material.

Japanese scientists have unveiled a female humanoid walking robot at Tsukuba City, north east of Tokyo.The robot, named HRP-4C, has 30 motors in its body that allow it to walk and move its arms as well as eight motors on its face to create expressions like anger and surprise.

The evolution of flight by dinosaurs, widely accepted as the ancestors of modern birds, has been a controversial subject among palaeontologists for decades.While some believe avian dinosaurs learned to fly by jumping out of trees and gliding to the ground, almost all of the bird-like ancestors found as fossils were ground-dwelling creatures.Instead scientists have suggested that these "proto-birds" flapped their forelimbs like wings to give them additional thrust to help them climb while attempting to escape from predators.

BAGHDAD: Iraqi archaeologists have discovered 4,000 artifacts, most of them from ancient Babylonian times, including royal seals, talismans and clay tablets marked in Sumerian cuneiform - the earliest known form of writing.The treasures came to light, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said, after two years of excavations across 20 different sites in the regions between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the land ancient Greeks referred to as "Mesopotamia."

An immigration judge with the U.S. Justice Department has granted a stay to John Demjanjuk, the Nazi war crimes suspect who had been ordered deported to Germany, his lawyer said Friday.John Broadley said the stay was ordered after Judge Wayne Iskra in Arlington, Virginia, decided to reopen deportation proceedings."In the four years since his deportation was ordered, his health has seriously deteriorated," Broadley told CNN in a telephone interview.

The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it's slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.A bald, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room.It's not human -- but it is paying attention.Below the soft silicon skin of one of Japan's most sophisticated robots, processors record and evaluate information. The 130-cm (four-foot, four-inch) humanoid is designed to learn just like a human infant.

Visitors to the Alhambra fortress-palace in Granada have for centuries fallen into a reverie before its intricately carved medieval walls, wondering at the meaning of the Arabic inscriptions that adorn them from floor to ceiling. The script that winds round the filigree arches and pillared courtyards is so stylised that it's often difficult to disentangle words from images, and few can decipher the classical Arabic in which they are written.Now, the carvings have been logged and translated, finally answering the question that has perplexed generations of visitors to Europe's jewel of Muslim architecture: "What are these walls telling me?"Researchers have produced an interactive DVD that decodes, dates and identifies 3,116 of some 10,000 inscriptions carved on the building that symbolises centuries of Muslim rule in Spain and is today the country's top tourist landmark.

The global market for rocket launches may require more stringent regulation in order to prevent significant damage to Earth's stratospheric ozone layer in the decades to come, according to a new study by researchers in California and Colorado.Future ozone losses from unregulated rocket launches will eventually exceed ozone losses due to chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which stimulated the 1987 Montreal Protocol banning ozone-depleting chemicals, said Martin Ross, chief study author from The Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. The study, which includes the University of Colorado at Boulder and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, provides a market analysis for estimating future ozone layer depletion based on the expected growth of the space industry and known impacts of rocket launches.

Astronomy has come a long way since humans peering at the night sky began asking, "what the heck is going on up there?"From Galileo's first use of the telescope -- which ushered in the dawn of modern astronomy -- to the discovery of the Big Bang's cosmic calling card, here we've chiseled out 10 of the biggest moments in astronomical history.

Paleoanthropologists working in Africa have discovered stone blades more than a half-million years old. That pushes the date of the earliest known blades back a remarkable 150,000 years and raises a question: What human ancestor made them?.

WHAT makes so many people want to believe in fabulous creatures? Chris Lavers and Joshua Blu Buhs set out to explore this question, and although one tackles an ancient myth and the other a modern one, they come up with remarkably similar answers.The Natural History of Unicorns might sound whimsical, but in fact it is an erudite, scholarly book which uses the unicorn to illuminate millennia of social and geographical change. Unicorns appear in many guises in many cultures - from the ferocious one-horned ass described by the Greeks to the courtly, Christianised goat of medieval Europe and beyond. Lavers's achievement is to show how each of these is a chimera based on startlingly accurate reports of real animals, carried over trade routes stretching from the African jungle to the Arctic Circle.

Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.Called the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS), the project scanned 41% of the sky, measuring positions and distances for 110,000 galaxies within 2 billion light years of Earth.No previous survey has covered as much of the sky at such a distance. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which is based in the northern hemisphere, has probed about twice as far but covers only 23% of the sky.

Seahenge, NorfolkIn 1998, a man walking his dog on the beach at Holme-next-the-Sea stumbled on a circle of tree trunks buried in the sand. The mysterious bronze age monument was uncovered and the 4,000-year-old timbers were carted off for conservation. Channel 4's Time Team constructed a full-size replica a few miles inland in Thornham. The original is in the Lynn Museum, Kings Lynn.

A major reconsideration of the complex links between social anthropology and archaeology will take place at the University of Bristol when experts from around the world meet at the annual conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA).Ian Hodder, Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, will give a public lecture on 'Archaeology and Anthropology: the state of the relationship' on Tuesday 7 April at 11.15 in the Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building. Professor Hodder, who was born in Bristol, will then receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University.

The Valley of the Kings is one of the richest and most fascinating archaeological sites in the world. It was here that in 1922 Howard Carter found the tomb and treasures of Tutankhamun, perhaps the most sensational discovery in the history of archaeology. In 2005, a team from the University of Memphis in the United States located the first new tomb found in the valley since Tutankhamun, bringing the number of known tombs to 63, of which 26 belonged to kings. Yet, although explorers and archaeologists had been combing the Valley of the Kings for centuries, not a single tomb had been found by an Egyptian. Not, that was, until early last year, when the first all-Egyptian archaeological mission ever to work at the Valley of the Kings opened a new chapter of discovery. The team has recently made several important and revolutionary discoveries that are helping to solve some of the enigmas surrounding the site.

The Russian space agency is expected to unveil development plans for a next-generation manned spacecraft on Monday.Roscosmos should name the ship's prime developer, which has competed to win government funds for the project.The proposed new spacecraft should enter into service sometime towards the end of the next decade.

One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton tried, but narrowly failed, to become the first man to reach the South Pole. Descendants of his team have been retracing and completing his journey.There was no map of the Antarctic in 1908 when the men of Shackleton's expedition set out for the South Pole.The unexplored continent was marked as "terra incognita" or land unknown and Shackleton's only guide as they set out was a compass."A glorious day for our start. Brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky. Fair wind from the north. Breakfast at 7am. We started to strive to plant the King's flag on the last spot in the world"

Biblical scholar Rachel Havrelock is a MythBuster in her own right, dispelling popular beliefs about Christianity. The University of Illinois at Chicago professor traveled to the Holy Land to co-host the Discovery Channel documentary "Who Was Jesus?" which premiers April 5, Palm Sunday.Havrelock recently sat down to speak with Discovery News' Jennifer Viegas about the historical Jesus, what she feels are some common misconceptions, and the role women played during Christianity's earliest years.

NASA does not have to imagine the consequences of fire in space. As a partner in Russia's Mir space station 12 years ago, the space agency got first-hand experience when a faulty oxygen candle exploded in flames, filling the outpost with thick smoke and blocking half the crew from reaching their lifeboat."I did not expect smoke to spread so quickly," NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger, who was aboard Mir as part of a U.S.-Russian astronaut exchange program, recalled after his return to Earth.

A huge population of rare dolphins threatened by climate change and fishing nets has been discovered in South Asia.Researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society estimate that nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins, marine mammals that are related to orcas or killer whales, were found living in freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest and adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal.There has been hardly any marine mammal research done in this area up to this point.