Newsdesk Archive

WHAT'S painting Mars? Every spring, dark streaks appear on its polar dunes, which may be caused by liquid water near the surface - a fillip for the hunt for life.The dark streaks of sand a few metres wide slide downslope at about a metre a day. "They show a branching pattern, so it seems like some liquid material is flowing," says Akos Kereszturi at the Collegium Budapest in Hungary.

The historical importance of the Palermo Stone has long been overshadowed by the famous Rosetta Stone, but Jill Kamil says it is now being reconsidered as a legitimate historical record of ancient EgyptThe so-called Palermo Stone is the largest and best preserved fragment of a rectangular slab of basalt known as the Royal Annals of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. Its origin is unknown, but it may have come from a temple or another important building.

The promising potential of biotechnology remains largely unused, especially in such crucial areas as healthcare and production of environmentally friendly fuels, scientists said.The experts gathered here at an annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science predicted that biotechnology was likely to experience a boom in coming years."What you have seen over the last 35 years of biotech are tremendous applications, immediate applications of biotech starting with recombinant therapeutics all the way through," said Drew Endy, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

The ancient Iranian "salt men" are in critical condition. All six of the salt men, known as Iranian mummies, were discovered at the Chehrabad Salt Mine in the Hamzehlu region near Zanjan over the past 12 years, the Persian service of CHN reported on Wednesday.Studies on the Fourth Salt Man, kept at Zanjan's Zolfaqari Museum, indicate that the body is 2000 years old and he was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death. Three other salt men are also kept at the museum.

The simple, everyday act of cooking could have given humans an evolutionary edge over apes, researchers proposed at a scientific meeting this week.Preparing meals is a "signature feature" of the human diet that likely originated in the extinct species Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago.

Launched in September of 2007, and propelled by any one of a trio of hyper-efficient ion engines, NASA's Dawn spacecraft passed the orbit of Mars last summer. At that time, the asteroid belt (where Dawn's two targets, asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres reside), had never been closer. In early July the spacecraft began to lose altitude, falling back towards the inner solar system. Then on October 31, 2008, after 270 days of almost continuous thrusting, the ion drive turned off.

Michigan State University researchers are dramatically speeding up identification of genes that affect the structure and function of chloroplasts, which could lead to plants tailored specifically for biofuel production or delivering high levels of specific nutrients.Chloroplasts, which are specialized compartments in plant cells, convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen ("fuel" for the plant) during photosynthesis. Chloroplasts also synthesize nutrients such as starch, amino acids, antioxidant vitamins and lipids, which are important to humans and other animals.

Researchers have solved the first step in treating the common cold, by mapping its entire genome, or genetic map, teams from the University of Maryland and the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported Thursday."We have the pieces all in place. They can't go in any other way. Now we have to understand what the pictures are telling us," said Dr. Stephen B. Liggett, professor of medicine and physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of its Cardiopulmonary Genomics Program.

Few relationships in American history have been more remarkable than that between President Abraham Lincoln and black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.Lincoln was born a Southerner 200 years ago, on February 12, in a rough-hewn cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He spent most of his adult life in the North, working a series of odd jobs before becoming a lawyer and a leading Illinois politician.

Dohuk, Iraq - A Kurdish archaeological expedition announced on Thursday that it had found a small statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in northern Iraq, a Kurdish news agency reported.Hassan Ahmed, the director of the local antiquities authority, told the Kurdish news agency Akanews that archaeologists had found a 12-centimeter statue of the ancient Egyptian king in the valley of Dahuk, 470 kilometres north of Baghdad, near a site that locals have long called Pharaoh's Castle.

Using the latest generation of CT scanners, researchers can now clearly "see" inside the sealed coffin of the Egyptian priestess Meresamun (ca. 800 B.C.). The imaging technology is so advanced, it can virtually strip away the coffin's outer layers of paint. A deep crack in the wig is one finding that suggests the coffin may have been dropped in antiquity.

Newly published documents show how a German archaeologist used trickery to smuggle home a fabulous sculpture of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti.The archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, listed the bust of Queen Nefertiti among his finds in Egypt in 1913.But he described it as a worthless piece of gypsum and hid it in a box.It is now regarded as a supreme artefact of the Pharaonic era and attracts half a million visitors per year to Berlin's Egyptian Museum.

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites."They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects."

Recent advances in stem cell research - including the technique for reprogramming ordinary skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells - could put human evolution on a pace that's much faster and wilder than we can handle, according to a pioneer in the field.Advanced Cell Technology's Robert Lanza, who was one of the first researchers to work on human cloning, thinks someone better be ready to put on the brakes before the breakthroughs spin out of control.

Imagine having a revolutionary idea, and keeping it to yourself for more than 20 years.That's what Charles Darwin did with his theory of evolution by natural selection. The theory was announced publicly in a lecture at the Linnaean Society in London in 1858, and formally published in the famous book, On the Origin of Species, a year later. But Darwin began to form his theory in 1836.Sean Carroll is a molecular biologist by training, but he's become a popularizer of the origins of the theory of evolution. On a visit to the Cambridge University Library, where many of Darwin's papers are stored, Carroll shows some of the key points in the evolution of Darwin's thinking.

US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in what is thought to be the biggest incident of its kind to date.The US commercial Iridium spacecraft hit a defunct Russian satellite at an altitude of about 800km (500 miles) over Siberia on Tuesday, Nasa said.The risk to the International Space Station and a shuttle launch planned for later this month is said to be low.The impact produced a cloud of debris, which will be tracked into the future.Since the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, it is estimated about 6,000 satellites have been put in orbit.

Dazzling new scientific techniques are allowing archaeologists to track the movements and menus of extinct hominids through the seasons and years as they ate their way across the African landscape, helping to illuminate the evolution of human diets.Piecing together relationships between the diets of hominids several million years ago to that of early and modern humans is allowing scientists to see how diet relates to the evolution of cognitive abilities, social structures, locomotion and even disease, said University of Colorado at Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer. Sponheimer organized a session titled "The Evolution of Human Diets" at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting Feb. 12-15 in Chicago.

An international conference on the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization will be held on Feb 21 and 22 at Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles. Prominent scholars particularly archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, religious specialists and geneticists will discus the nature of the interrelation between the Indus or Sindhu and the Sarasvati or Vedic culture(s) from about 3000 BC to 1000 BC.

A planet similar to Earth could be discovered in a distant solar system within three years, according to a leading astronomer.Planets that support life forms could be common in the universe, and about 100bn of them may exist in our own galaxy, said Dr Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington.He told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago yesterday that, according to his calculations, there is roughly one Earth-like planet for every star that is similar to our own sun.

The carved stone reliefs lined the entrance to a great palace, a testament to one of the most powerful kings the world has known. The ancient works of art have stood for 3,000 years but for the past 20 they've been threatened by the lack of a corrugated steel roof.One of the prizes of archaeology, the excavated palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud, is in peril. The World Monuments Fund lists Nimrud as one of its most endangered sites.

Rome, February 10 - Rome's underground network of catacombs is set to reveal more secrets thanks to the creation of a new laser mapping tool.A team of 10 researchers, led by archaeologist Norbert Zimmermann from the Vienna Academy of Sciences, has produced a scanner that is able to create a three-dimensional model of the catacombs from above ground.

ANTALYA - An unexpected discovery made during construction work has revealed Antalya's ancient city is even older than was believed.In the excavation of a business center in Antalya, graves from the ancient city of Attaleia were unearthed, dating the history of the southern city to 100 years earlier than previously thought.

A Holocaust denier Pope Benedict XVI welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church last month has been removed from his position as head of a seminary in Argentina.The views of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has led the seminary in La Reja since 2003, do not reflect those of The Society of St. Pius X, said Christian Bouchacourt, head of its Latin American chapter."It's obvious that a Catholic bishop cannot talk with the ecclesiastical authority, but to things related to faith and morality," Bouchacourt said in a written statement.

Roughly 10 million years ago, a major genetic change occurred in a common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Segments of DNA in its genome began to form duplicate copies at a greater rate than in the past, creating an instability that persists in the genome of modern humans and contributes to diseases like autism and schizophrenia. But that gene duplication also may be responsible for a genetic flexibility that has resulted in some uniquely human characteristics.

n just four years, the Isle of Wight, otherwise known as "Dinosaur Island," has yielded the remains of 48 new animal species, including eight new dinosaurs, six dino-era mammals, and many different types of lizards, frogs and salamanders.Together, the finds shed light on what life was like when dinosaurs dominated the planet.

As far back as 1583, a legend existed in Gozo about Ghar ix-Xih, literally The Cave of the Old Man, but possibly also The Cave of the Sheik.The legend is about a popular judge who used to sit in judgement on people accused of thefts.For a long time the legend was just that, a legend, but the location of the cave has now been discovered and along with it a treasure trove of artefacts ranging from Punic to late Roman times.

On the surface it betrays the eye; the Kalahari Desert is alive with vegetation and undulations, where life in the wild continues as usual. Down below though, the desert is hiding something precious - ancient caves that lie buried under a thick blanket of windblown sand dunes over thousands of years.

Scientists at the University of St Andrews have discovered that gorillas have a more extensive repertoire of gestures than any other mammal.Researchers examined the communication signals of the gorilla, a great ape and one of our closest relatives. The study found that ape gestures are carried out with close attention to the potential audience: silent ones are only given when other apes can see them.

AN ASTEROID that had initially been deemed harmless has turned out to have a slim chance of hitting Earth in 160 years. While that might seem a distant threat, there's far less time available to deflect it off course.Asteroid 1999 RQ36 was discovered a decade ago, but it was not considered particularly worrisome since it has no chance of striking Earth in the next 100 years - the time frame astronomers routinely use to assess potential threats.

This must be the most God-forsaken place on Earth. I'm standing on a dusty desert road in a desolate country on the south-west coast of Africa.In front of me is an unspoken border. Summoning the courage, I prepare to step across.For the past 100 years, this simple act would have got me arrested, beaten or shot.

THE morning sickness drug thalidomide, which caused pregnant women to give birth to babies without arms and legs, was first developed by the Nazis, probably as part of their chemical weapons programme, according to new research. Two separate academics have revealed the discovery of documents indicating that the drug did not originate with Chemie Grünenthal, the postwar German chemical firm, as has always been claimed.

Imagine a computer that can process text, video and audio in an instant, solve problems on the fly, and do it all while consuming just 10 watts of power.It would be the ultimate computing machine if it were built with silicon instead of human nerve cells.

A team of archaeologists presented one of the biggest Thracian rocks complexes for wine producing near the Kardzhali village Yagnevo.The complex is situated on a territory of about 5 square km. and has more than 180 stone installations for wine preparation.At the very same place, used by the Thracians more than 3000 years ago, a restoration of the ancient rituals was performed. French guests took part in the red wine drinking as the ancient inhabitants of the Rhodopes used to do.

A huge Buddhist stupa has been discovered in Bihar's Nalanda district and archaeologists on Monday said it could be the second largest such structure in the world.A team from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) located the brick stupa at Ghorakatora, about 100 km from here.

An ongoing debate among scientists looking for life beyond Earth asks whether NASA's next big adventure to the outer regions of the solar system should be to Saturn's moon Titan or Jupiter's Europa. Both are difficult places to get to, and both have become alluring targets in the quest to learn whether Earth alone supports life.A meeting on Thursday between NASA's lead scientist Ed Weiler and his European counterpart David Southwood is expected to resolve the issue.

Scientists studying the DNA of Neanderthals say they can find no evidence that this ancient species ever interbred with modern humans.But our closest ancestors may well have been able to speak as well as us, said Prof Svante Paabo from Germany's Max Planck Institute.He was speaking in Chicago, US, where he announced the "first draft" of a complete Neanderthal genome.The genetics information has been gleaned from fossils found in Croatia.

The extraordinary wildlife on the remote islands off the coast of Ecuador inspired Darwin to develop his ideas on how different animals are moulded by the environment and ultimately his ideas on the origin of mankind.

The government's top drug advisors have recommended that ecstasy should be downgraded from a Class A to a Class B substance.The Home Office has told Newsbeat it is ignoring the advice, saying there is no such thing as a "safe dose" of the drug.Ecstasy was placed in the top Class A bracket alongside heroin and cocaine back in the late 70s, before it was widely available.It means anyone carrying the drug for personal use can get up to seven years in jail or an unlimited fine, while possession with intent to supply could mean a life sentence.

The Mayor of Amsterdam has told Newsbeat he will push through plans to close down half the cannabis cafes in the centre of the city and some sections of the red light district.Authorities believe the unrestricted growth of cannabis coffee shops and legal brothels has encouraged crime like money laundering and people trafficking.

Cannabis users have been telling Newsbeat and 1Xtra News that moving the drug back to a Class B substance won't make any difference to their smoking habits.Anyone caught carrying weed could now get five years in jail after the government increased the punishment for possession.Ministers have pushed through the change because they say there is growing evidence of a risk to mental health.But the decision was made against the advice of the government's own panel of independent drug experts.

Today's dogs are descendants of ancient wolves. Now, it turns out, at least some of today's wolves inherited traits from ancient dogs.Gray wolves have that name because of their color, but in North America many of them have dark or black coats instead of the standard gray.The genetic mutation producing dark coats appears to have occurred in dogs, and then spread from them to wolves when the species mated, according to researchers led by Gregory S. Barsh of Stanford University.

Here's a chore I didn't expect to have this winter: removing snow from my solar panels.As anybody who lives in New England knows all too well by now, we've had a snowy winter. I like snow so, overall, that's just fine with me. But the white stuff delivered an unexpected hit to the electric output of the solar panels I had installed last spring. It's hard to calculate a precise impact, but my December electric bill offers a clue: it's more than twice the previous month.

A rare mummified child from the early period of Egyptian history was discovered buried with a bright green amulet stone once believed to hold magical powers, according to a new study.The finds help to explain why hieroglyphics and historical texts record that Egyptian children wore green eye makeup. It also adds to the growing body of evidence that ancient Egyptians thought color itself held sacred energy that could help or hurt individuals.

The entire genome of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Germany. The group is already extracting DNA from other ancient Neanderthal bones and hopes that the genomes will allow an unprecedented comparison between modern humans and their closest evolutionary relative.

Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script.

The small room captured the smells from the wild assortment of herbs, barks and powders scattered in bags at the feet of the local medicine man.Using the little available light, Baba Chukuri mixed together half a-cup of water, several crushed roots, and passed it to a woman who had come to him for medical treatment.She drank the mixture and cringed at the bitter taste.Baba Chukuri is one of many traditional healers across Nigeria offering treatments to hundreds of people daily for a variety of illnesses.

With its thruster motors fighting the current, the submersible pushed through a blizzard of sediment. Far above, in a darkened control room, the robot's operator squeezed his eyes shut to push away the fatigue. Making three dives a day, he had lost count of how many times he had approached suspected wrecks only to find a clump of ferrous rocks or junk from a ship. This time it would be different.

A bishop who faces a Vatican demand to recant his denial of the Holocaust said he would correct himself if he is satisfied by the evidence, but insisted that examining it "will take time," a German magazine reported Saturday.

Germany's Catholic bishops are calling for the expulsion of a bishop, recently brought back into the church by Pope Benedict XVI, after new reports that Richard Williamson denies the Holocaust.

Britain's sitting on a waste time bomb - we must recycle more and bury less... and quickly. But there is a third option, which those models of eco-awareness, the Danes, don't even blink at: burning it. Simon Cox finds out whether the British can ever be won over.

The work undertaken by the Franco- Egyptian Research Centre of Karnak Temples (CFEETK) in 2008 was slightly different from in previous years. Last year's study focussed on restoration more than excavation. The site that took up much of the centre's attention was the Osirian cults and featured the chapel of Osiris Wennefer Neb-Djefau, the path of Ptah and the neighbouring chapels of Osiris Neb-Neheh and Nebankh-Pa-Usheb-Iad, as well as the temples of Osiris from Coptos, Opet and Khonsu.To achieve an efficient progress in restoration at the chapel of Osiris Wennefer Neb-Djefau, the CFEETK had to continue excavation in the area in an attempt to complete the plan of the mud- brick walls that surround the chapel.

This year, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) celebrated Archaeologists' Day differently from the two previous years. This event focussed on paying homage to those who had led the SCA over the last three decades and the role they played in exploring, enriching, documenting and preserving Egypt's heritage.A number of specialists who had helped in restoring and exploring important archaeological sites were also honoured.

Injections of a natural growth factor into the brains of mice, rats and monkeys offers hope of preventing or reversing the earliest impacts of Alzheimer's disease on memory. The benefits arose even in animals whose brains contained the hallmark plaques that clog up the brains of patients.By delivering brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) directly into the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, the parts of the brain where memories are formed then consolidated, the researchers successfully tackled damage exactly where Alzheimer's strikes first.

In an effort to confront our most familiar malady, scientists have deciphered the instruction manual for the common cold.Writing this week (Feb. 12) in the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of researchers reports the sequences for all of the 99 known strains of cold virus, nature's most ubiquitous human pathogen. The feat exposes, in precise detail, all of the molecular features of the many variations of the virus responsible for the common cold, the inescapable ailment that makes us all sneeze, cough and sniffle with regularity.

A hallucinogenic compound found in a plant indigenous to South America and used in shamanic rituals regulates a mysterious protein that is abundant throughout the body, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered.The finding, reported in the Feb. 13 issue of Science, may ultimately have implications for treating drug abuse and/or depression. Many more experiments will be needed, the researchers say.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said while the Church had been hostile to Darwin's theory in the past, the idea of evolution could be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.

Life has not yet been found on Mars, and no one is sure whether it will be. But some researchers say it is not too early to consider the possibility that humans could do irreversible damage to indigenous Martian life.A group of international experts will meet as early as this September to discuss whether it is time to revise policies that protect Mars from contamination.

Paleontologists can still hear the echo of the death knell that drove the dinosaurs and many other organisms to extinction following an asteroid collision at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago.

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have shown for the first time that the active training of the working memory brings about visible changes in the number of dopamine receptors in the human brain. The study, which is published in the prestigious scientific journal Science, was conducted with the help of PET scanning and provides deeper insight into the complex interplay between cognition and the brain's biological structure.

Instant pictures showing how the sun's energy moves inside plants have been taken for the first time, according to research out tomorrow (Friday 6 February) in Physical Review Letters.

The number of UFO sightings logged with the Ministry of Defence more than doubled to 285 last year, a rise described as "phenomenal" by experts. It is the highest number of sightings in 10 years.

Innovation is our new column featuring the latest emerging technological ideasWhen I attended the first conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) last year, I couldn't help wondering if I was wasting my time. Many of the speakers were preparing for a world in which machines could think like humans, yet it seemed obvious that even if we ever could create such machines it wouldn't be any time soon.

The oldest known human hairs could be the strands discovered in fossil hyena poop found in a South African cave, a new study hints.Researchers discovered the rock-hard hyena dung near the Sterkfontein caves, where many early human ancestor fossils have been found.

The ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a new study says.Researchers generally agree that, during a warming period about 9,400 years ago, an onrush of seawater from the Mediterranean spurred a connection with the Black Sea, then a largely freshwater lake. That flood turned the lake into a rapidly rising sea.

The federal lawsuit against the world's largest particle-smasher may have been thrown out of court last year, but the plaintiffs have since filed an appeal, arguing that the judge was wrong when she said the U.S. legal system had no jurisdiction over the European science experiment.

Nuns and priests sacrificed their own lives to provide medical care for the poor in Renaissance France, according to a new study that implicates exposure to contagious plague victims in the deaths of several religious order members.The study is among the first to find that plague, a deadly bacterial disease also known as "the Black Death," can be quickly and accurately identified in ancient human remains.

LONDON: Materials scientists at Pennsylvania State University in University Park have successfully used sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water vapour into a range of fuels faster than ever before.Lead researcher Craig Grimes has revealed that his team used hollow titania (titanium dioxide) nanotubes, around 135 nanometres wide and a tenth of a millimetre long, to catalyse the reaction.

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, a Cell Press publication, 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.

Edgar Cayce: Association of Research and Enlightenment NewsletterI met with Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, after he spoke for an hour to our A.R.E. group. He shared that Joe Jahoda, a longtime A.R.E. member, had convinced him to drill under the Sphinx for a chamber. Back in 1997, Jahoda and his partner, Joe Schor, in cooperation with Florida State University, conducted ground-penetrating radar around the Sphinx and found an open area in the bedrock beneath the Sphinx. This opening, possibly a chamber, is 30 feet down and is estimated to be 26 feet wide and 40 feet in length. The Cayce readings identify this chamber as an ante-chamber to the Hall of Records that is off the right front paw of the Sphinx.

NIRASAKI, Yamanashi -- Driven by his love of archaeology, a junior high school student has built a pit dwelling in the yard of his home here.The straw-thatched house, measuring about 2.5 meters in height and about four meters in diameter, has become a local sightseeing spot. Similar semi-subterranean houses were common in Japan from the Jomon Period, which dates back roughly more than 10,000 years through the Nara Period (710-784).

"Contaminated by American technology" makes for a curious but enlightening description. For most of the past century, the world has viewed American technology as unrivaled, and the notion that the U.S. space industry could be shunted to the margins would have seemed absurd. But the attitude of European space-industry executives toward U.S. components and software has changed in recent years. When building, launching or operating satellites and other spacecraft, many have come to believe, American know-how is now a liability.

Traces of animal life have been found in rocks dating back 635 million years.The evidence takes the form of chemical markers that are highly distinctive of sponges when they die and their bodies break down in rock-forming sediments.The discovery in Oman pushes back the earliest accepted date for animal life on Earth by tens of millions of years.Scientists tell Nature magazine that the creatures' existence will help them understand better what the planet looked like all that time ago."The fact that we can detect these signals shows that sponges were ecologically important on the seafloor at that time," said lead author Gordon Love, from the University of California, Riverside.

Intelligent civilisations are out there and there could be thousands of them, according to an Edinburgh scientist.The discovery of more than 330 planets outside our solar system in recent years has helped refine the number of life forms that are likely to exist.The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.The work is reported in the International Journal of Astrobiology.Even with the higher of the two estimates, however, it is not very likely that contact could be established with alien worlds.

In a graveyard in Al-Kadada, north of Khartoum, the archaeologists have dug up the tomb of a man and a woman facing each other in a ditch, with bodies of two women, two goats and a dog buried nearby.

We live in uninteresting times. Since the ructions that created the planets in the solar system's first 100 million years (see "How was the solar system built?") - and apart from an early migration of the giant planets and the odd colliding comet not swept safely aside by Jupiter - nothing much has really been happening. The planets circle like clockwork, the sun burns steadily, and even delicate life has survived on at least one world.It cannot last. Something unpleasant is bound to shatter this comfortable calm.

A stellar factory millions of times larger than anything comparable in the Milky Way has been identified in a galaxy in the very early universe. The work bolsters the case that massive galaxies formed very quickly - in spectacular bursts of star formation - soon after the big bang.Regions of intense star formation, called starbursts, span a few light years at most in the Milky Way, and less than a few hundred light years in nearby, bright galaxies such as Arp 220 (pictured). But it has not been clear how large the stellar nurseries were in the early universe.

LIVING creatures took millions of years to evolve from amphibians to four-legged mammals - with larger, more complex brains to match. Now an evolving robot has performed a similar trick in hours, thanks to a software "brain" that automatically grows in size and complexity as its physical body develops.Existing robots cannot usually cope with physical changes - the addition of a sensor or new type of limb, say - without a complete redesign of their control software, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

The future, according to author and technological soothsayer Ray Kurzweil, is going to be awesome. In his books, he maps out a future for humanity in which we live forever, supported by a fleet of cleverer-than-human artificial intelligences who solve such trivial problems as hunger and disease, while simultaneously creating ever more intelligent computer minds, racing technological progress forward according to his Law of Accelerated Returns [Telegraph]. Now, Kurzweil is opening a new school, Singularity University, that will gather smart people together and encourage them to bring that future to pass.

Never mind the 40-foot snake that menaced Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie "Anaconda." Not even Hollywood could match a new discovery from the ancient world.Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds."This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.

The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope.The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth.Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury.The discovery was made by Corot, an orbiting observatory with a 27cm-diameter telescope to search for planets orbiting other stars.

Scientists say they have discovered a missing link in the way cells protect themselves against cancer.They have uncovered how cells switch a gene called p53, which can block the development of tumours, on and off.The researchers say the finding has important implications for cancer treatment and diagnosis.The study, published in Genes And Development, was carried out by teams of scientists in Singapore and the University of Dundee.

Before they brought destruction, a series of huge asteroids orbiting Mars four billion years ago may have sparked its magnetic field, giving the planet its greatest chance for harboring life.Mars has no magnetic field today. Cosmic radiation ravages its atmosphere and surface, a big reason why it is thought to be inhospitable to life. But between 4.5 and 4.0 billion years ago, its core of liquid iron and rock churned with intense heat, creating a dynamo that raised a protective magnetic force field around the planet.Then the magnetic field abruptly disappeared, and no one knows why.

Researchers have developed the first-ever biogas plant to run purely on waste instead of edible raw materials -- transforming waste into valuable material. The plant generates 30 percent more biogas than its predecessors. A fuel cell efficiently converts the gas into electricity."Corn belongs in the kitchen, not in biogas facilities" - objections like this can be heard more and more frequently. They are protesting against the fermentation of foodstuffs in biogas plants that generate electricity and heat. One thing the opponents are afraid of is that generating electricity in this way will cause food prices to escalate. In collaboration with several small and medium-sized enterprises, research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS in Dresden have developed the first-ever biogas plant that works entirely without edible raw materials.

An American inventor who plans to live for ever has been appointed head of a new school for futurologists backed by Google and the US space agency Nasa.Ray Kurzweil, who worked as a computer scientist before turning to future gazing in the late 1980s, will become chancellor of the Singularity University based at Nasa's Silicon Valley campus in California.

Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star in 1992, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified. Most look quite unlike ours, and for good reason. Planets are mainly spied by the way their gravity makes their host star wobble as they orbit. The smaller the planet, the smaller the wobble: lightweight planets like Earth produce effects too small to detect with current technology.

Charles Lindbergh felt it.During that first solo, non-stop transatlantic flight in 1927, the aviator, flying just above the ocean, was desperately struggling to stay awake. Twenty-two hours into the trip, he became aware of vague forms aboard the Spirit of St. Louis. They offered reassurance and discussed navigational problems.They stayed with him until he spotted the Irish coast, and Paris was within reach.

Londoners might have been startled last Monday to see a giant mock-up of a polar bear on an iceberg, floating on the Thames outside the Palace of Westminster. They might not have been so surprised to learn, first, that this was a global warming propaganda stunt and, second, that the television company behind it is part-owned by the BBC.

A musical experience with a difference is being previewed at the National Museum Wales in Cardiff - an attempt to recreate the sound of the Neanderthals.Jazz composer Simon Thorne was given the task of creating the "soundscape" to provide a musical backdrop to some of the ancient exhibits on display.The musician says the work is "probably the most unusual" he has undertaken.There has been strong interest in the composition and it will go on a separate live tour later in the year.

WASHINGTON - There's help for failing kidneys and failing hearts. But there's no fix for a dying liver.Doctors are trying to change that at a few hospitals around the country, testing a machine packed with human liver cells as a last-ditch chance to survive sudden liver failure.The experiment is the latest in a decades-long quest for an artificial liver, a device that could temporarily take over some of the liver's jobs much like dialysis helps kidneys work and cardiac pumps squeeze a flabby heart.

Two British companies are involved in discussions about developing a low-cost rocket capable of putting small satellites in orbit.The idea is being promoted by SSTL, a firm in Guildford, Surrey, best known for its Earth observation spacecraft, in conjunction with Virgin Galactic.It is 38 years since the UK government abandoned its successful satellite launcher programme, Black Arrow.The new venture would be an entirely commercial exercise.

HOUSTON - A faulty rocket command sequence aboard the international space station caused the 300-ton structure to shake back and forth vigorously for two minutes last month, during what was supposed to be a routine, gentle orbital adjustment. Space experts in Houston and Moscow have spent the last two weeks searching for the cause of the shaking and doing a damage assessment.

The first field season is now over at the hut village of the workmen who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. However, the archaeologists working on the excavation have found that they still have a great deal to do. The sun, the wind and tourists have left their mark on the village, originally discovered by Bernard Bruyère in 1935.

A Roman mosaic floor filled with scenes depicting pagan rites and oriental gods has emerged from the ground of a Catholic church in Italy, archaeologists announced.The mosaic pavement, which measures 13 square meters (140 square feet) and dates to the fourth century A.D., was unearthed at a depth of about 4 meters (13 feet) below the the ground's surface during archaeological investigations in the crypt of the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia, in central-northern Italy.

New research conducted in part by researchers at The George Washington University has led to novel insights into how feeding and dietary adaptations may have shaped the evolution of the earliest humans.

Even today, there are scientific phenomena that defy explanation. If history is anything to go by, resolving these anomalies could lead to a great leap forward, so what are the greatest mysteries, and what scientific revolutions might they bring?1 The missing universeEverything in the universe is either mass or energy, but there's not enough of either. Scientists think 96% of the cosmos is missing. They have come up with names for the missing stuff - "dark energy" and "dark matter" - but that doesn't really tell us anything about them. And it's not as if they're not important: dark energy is continually creating new swaths of space and time, while dark matter appears to be holding all the galaxies together. No wonder cosmologists are searching for clues to their whereabouts.

The potential of stem cell research is almost biblical in its scale. The capacity for these cells to transform into whatever the body needs to regenerate itself could, in the lifetime of the next generation, make the blind see, the crippled walk, and the deaf hear. It could cure cystic fibrosis and arrest muscular dystrophy. Yet it also raises one of the most difficult dilemmas in medical research: ensuring that something which could offer huge rewards to the nation's health is not overlooked because it does not offer huge rewards to the national economy.

Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested.Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one.Ministers have outlined their opposition to any such move.

Gas from waste could heat almost half the homes in the UK, according to a new report from National Grid.It says obtaining more gas from waste will help cut carbon emissions, improve energy security and compensate for the shortage of landfill sites.Renewable gas from landfill sites and sewage works provide 1% of the UK's gas at present.Today's report says an extra £10 billion investment could increase that to between 5 and 18%.The cost would be similar to that of other forms of renewable energy.

SAKURAI, Nara Prefecture--History buffs are being asked to help fund an archaeological survey here to uncover one of the country's great mysteries--the location of the ancient Yamatai kingdom, once ruled by the legendary queen Himiko.The Sakurai city board of education said Friday it would this month start a full-scale excavation of the central part of the Makimuku ruins, estimated to date from the late second to early fourth century.

Archaeologists cleaning a drain to flush out rainwater from an explored part of the ancient Indus Valley city of Moenjodaro have been pleasantly surprised to come across artefacts and other objects of much cultural value at the World Heritage site.'We had gone just half a metre down the level of surface of the old structures in the DK-G area and found the material of cultural value,' Dawn Monday quoted Moenjodaro director Qasim Ali Qasim as saying.