Newsdesk Archive

Fertilisers and sewage discharges entering the Nile delta have boosted fish stocks in Mediterranean coastal waters nearby, a study suggests.A team of researchers found that the dramatic increase in fish populations coincided with a sharp rise in the amount of fertilisers used by farmers.At least 60% of the area's fishery production is supported by the run-off entering the Nile's water, they added.

He was a mid-ranking official and wasn't rich - but he clearly wanted to be remembered.Nebamun was an accountant at the Temple of Amun at Karnak in ancient Egypt. The wall paintings he had commissioned for his tomb-chapel, completed around 1350 BC, are masterpieces of Egyptian art, and 11 fragments of them go on display at the British Museum this week.

LINE up Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars according to their distance from the sun and you'll see their size distribution is close to symmetrical, with the two largest planets between the two smallest. That would be no coincidence - if the pattern emerged from a debris ring around the sun.Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles, built a numerical simulation to explore how a ring of rocky material in the early solar system could have evolved into the planets. He found that two larger planets typically form near the inner and outer edges of the ring, corresponding to Venus and Earth. A number of smaller bodies also form within the ring. These are typically scattered away by the larger two, but if they experience collisions on the way, they can end up in stable orbits similar to those of Mercury and Mars. Once beyond the ring, they cannot acquire mass and so remain pint-sized.

CHARRED remains of ancient rainmaking fires are helping to date droughts in Iron Age Africa to within 20 years.After a several years of little or no rainfall, the Bantu people near modern-day Zimbabwe would send a rainmaker to nearby hills. "They'd burn fires with dark smoke to call black rain clouds from the mountains," says Thomas Huffman at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Villagers were also made to burn grain bins if they had planted "unlucky" foreign seeds.

HUMANS have actively changed the coats of domestic animals by cherry-picking rare genetic mutations, causing variations such as different colours, bands and spots, according to a new study.The study on wild and domestic pigs by Uppsala and Durham Universities, published today in the open access journal PLoS Genetics, reveals that the genetic changes happened over thousands of years.

The smallest planet around a normal star other than the Sun may be even smaller than first thought. A new analysis suggests the rocky body weighs just 1.4 Earths - less than half the original estimate. Observations over the next few months should test the prediction.Most known "exoplanets" are huge gas giants, hundreds of times Earth's mass, and were discovered by detecting the wobble they induce in their parent stars.

Life in the ancient world was risky business. The perils of war, disease, famine and childbirth are a just a few examples of circumstances that contributed to a much lower average lifespan in the ancient world than we have in the modern era. People in antiquity were no less concerned about the prevention and cure of maladies than they are now, however, and entire cults, sanctuaries and professions dedicated to health dotted the spiritual, physical and professional landscapes of the ancient world. So what exactly did ancient cultures do to combat disease and injury, and did these methods have any real basis in science as we know it today? The answers may surprise you.

The serenity and divinity at the necropolis of the Sixth- Dynasty King Teti at Saqqara was disturbed last week by a dozen Egyptian workmen and archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who assembled at the site to continue excavation work at the newly-found subsidiary pyramid of Queen Sesheshet, the mother of King Teti.Armed with brushes, buckets, ropes and shovels, the workmen crowded around the pyramid's main entrance, which was blocked with huge granite blocks erected by ancient Egyptians to prevent tomb raiders from crossing the threshold.

OUR universe may have arisen from seeds preserved in a universe that existed before the big bang - all thanks to dark energy.One of the models put forward to explain how the universe began proposes that it is just the latest phase in a never-ending cycle. Proposed in 2002 by Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok from the University of Cambridge, the model argues that our universe exists on a 3D region called a "brane" separated from similar branes by a fourth spatial dimension. Under the right conditions, these branes collide, triggering a big-bang-like event. After the collision, the branes bounce apart, before another collision occurs many billions of years later.

Imagine a world where humans could regrow damaged muscle tissue, healing themselves - thanks to the zebrafish and new research into that world could be just around the corner.Zebrafish (Danio rerio) can regrow damaged muscle tissue and researchers from the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute want to understand the process to one day have humans doing the same.

The discovery of what appears to be a full mammoth tusk on Santa Cruz Island has excited scientists and may offer a glimpse of California beach life during prehistoric times.Scientists believe 14-foot-tall mammoths swam out to the Channel Islands from the mainland nearly 20,000 years ago, possibly lured by the sweet smell of island grassland for grazing. Later stranded by rising sea levels, the animals shrank over time to a dwarf version.

There's a case for saying that the credit crunch is all down to Charles Darwin.Keynes wrote: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist."

SYDNEY, Australia - A team of researchers from Australia and the United States have uncovered new marine life, including fiery red coral and purple-spotted sea anemones, in deep waters off the Australian state of Tasmania, according to findings released Sunday.Scientists who took part in the $2 million four-week expedition also found that most reef-forming coral deeper than 4,200 feet (1,300 meters) in the area were newly dead. Researchers will study samples of the coral to try and determine whether the creatures are dying because of ocean warming, disease, a rise in ocean acidity or some other reason.

DEEP in an archive, more than two dozen letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots, lie largely unseen for centuries.Many are written in a secret code as Mary fought to preserve and protect the Catholic faith in Scotland after the 1560 Reformation which saw the country break with Rome.But soon the letters, which in recent years have only been seen by a select group of historians, will be available to view on-line.

The Earth is warming. The economy is reeling. The housing market has collapsed, and the future is unclear. We drink coffee from a paper cup, talk about the environment, the need for sustainability.Near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, a mound of dirt and rock can tell us much about subsistence in the desert. That mound now is part of a museum, but archaeologist Todd Bostwick believes it was built as a temple of sorts by the Hohokam, who lived in the Sonoran Desert for 1,000 years. They planted corn, beans, cotton and squash, and they built a community that grew to about 40,000 people. They did this without wheels or machines, without heating or air-conditioning.

An international team of researchers has found another form of light pollution that could have an adverse effect on wildlife.The scientists showed that as well as direct light sources, polarised light also triggered potentially dangerous changes in many species' behaviour.They added that road surfaces and glass buildings were among the main sources of this form of light pollution.

Street plug-points for electric cars, smart meters, and energy efficiency loans for homes are among Tory plans for an "energy revolution".David Cameron launched plans he said would lower carbon emissions, create jobs and reduce oil and gas imports.He said a £1bn upgrade for the national grid would encourage people to generate their own power and boost renewables.

Vital evidence has been discovered which could prove Colchester was a major settlement more than 2,000 years ago.Experts from the Colchester Archaeological Trust have been digging at Colchester Institute which is undergoing a radical £92 million redevelopment.And they have found artefacts which show Colchester, Britain's oldest recorded town, may have existed as a thriving settlement in the first century BC.

NARA -- Tens of thousands of wooden tablets dating back to the Nara period (710-794), have been found within the remains of the Heijo Palace here, it has been learned.It is expected to be the biggest single find of wooden tablets, or mokkan, in the remains of the palace, a survey by the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties has indicated."They were in a place where important government offices were located, and there is a possibility that we will find important historical data," an institute representative said.The previous largest find of mokkan within the palace remains was in 1966, when some 13,000 items were unearthed. The latest find is expected to far exceed that figure, and it will reportedly take several years to wash the tablets and read the writing on them.

MALBORK, Poland, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Polish authorities have unearthed the remains of 1,800 bodies and expect to find even more in a mass grave first discovered three months ago and believed to date back to the final days of World War Two.The site is in a corner of northern Poland that was part of Germany until 1945 and the authorities suspect the remains are of ethnic German civilians, at least some of whom were probably killed by advancing Soviet forces."We are dealing with a mass grave of civilians, probably of German origin. The presence of children... suggests they were civilians," Zbigniew Sawicki, a Polish archaeologist supervising the exhumation, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"Moon maps" created by a little-known Englishman 400 years ago are to go on display to mark the launch of the International Year of Astronomy.Experts say they prove their creator - Thomas Harriot - beat Galileo to become the first man to view the Moon through a telescope.The Italian philosopher is credited with the feat in December 1609.But papers at the West Sussex Record Office show that Harriot drew images of the Moon several months earlier.And Dr Allan Chapman, a science historian at Oxford University, said Harriot's composite drawing of the Moon - produced in 1612 or 1613 - marked "the birth of modern cartography".

Inexpensive solar cells, vastly improved medical imaging techniques and lighter and more flexible television screens are among the potential applications envisioned for organic electronics.Recent experiments conducted by Greg Scholes and Elisabetta Collini of University of Toronto's Department of Chemistry may bring these within closer reach thanks to new insights into the way molecules absorb and move energy. Their findings will be published in the prestigious international journal Science on January 16.

Large quantities of methane gas have been detected on Mars, Nasa scientists have announced in Science journal.The gas could be produced either by geological activity or by life.Methane was detected in the Martian atmosphere five years ago; scientists have found it is more abundant over particular parts of the planet.It should last for only a short time in the atmosphere until it is destroyed by sunlight, and so its continued presence means it is being replenished.

In an article in today's Nature, Uppsala researcher Martin Brazeau describes the skull and jaws of a fish that lived about 410 million years ago. The study may give important clues to the origin of jawed vertebrates, and thus ultimately our own evolution.

A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare--from Roman times.

They can't match Harry Potter yet, but scientists are moving closer to creating a real cloak of invisibility.Researchers at Duke University, who developed a material that can "cloak" an item from detection by microwaves, report that they have expanded the number of wavelengths they can block.

Moon rocks delivered to Earth by Apollo astronauts held a mystery that has plagued scientists since the 1970s: Why were the lunar rocks magnetic?Earth's rotating, iron core produces the planet's magnetic field. But the moon does not have such a setup.Now, scientists at MIT think they have a solution. Some 4.2 billion years ago, the moon had a liquid core with a dynamo (like Earth's core today) that produced a strong magnetic field. The moon's magnetic field would have been about 1-50th as strong as Earth's is today, the researchers say.

A trio of new studies on prehistoric weapons suggests Neanderthals made sophisticated weapons and tools -- possibly including the first sticky adhesive -- but they lacked the projectile weapons possessed by early humans.The missing technology, along with climate change and competition with arrow-shooting humans, may have contributed to the Neanderthals' eventual extinction.

SAQQARA, Egypt: A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered at Saqqara indicate that the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo is even larger than previously thought, said Egypt's top archaeologist. The rock-cut tombs were built for high officials, one responsible for the quarries used to build the nearby pyramids and the other for a woman in charge of procuring entertainers for the pharaohs.Egypt's antiquities capo, Zahi Hawass, described it as a "major, important discovery," saying that the two new tombs date "back to 4,300 years ago."

However the Otago Museum's bandage-swathed mummy may have looked 2300 years ago, it certainly wasn't like film star Elizabeth Taylor.But Taylor's memorable portrayal of Cleopatra in the movie of the same name has left its mark, Dave Wright, the museum's collections, assets and research director, said yesterday - so much so that many people think any female Egyptian mummy would look like her.The museum will reveal more of its mummy's secrets at its "Egypt Unwrapped" day on January 28.

Sue Butler decided it was time to cut the cord on fossil fuels. So when her aging gas furnace needed replacing, she turned to the Earth for a solution.She installed a geothermal system - also called a ground-source heat pump, a water-source heat pump, or geo-exchange system - which recently started heating and cooling her Cambridge, Mass. home. Butler said she was motivated by environmental reasons and concerns over carbon monoxide from burning natural gas."It's not that much more expensive and I could manage it. And it means no more combustion and it gets the building off of carbon, which is urgent," she said.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California - There will be a powerful new scientific eye in the sky come summer.NASA is prepping a Global Hawk, a version of the Air Force's top-of-the-line unmanned spy plane, for its first Earth science mission in June. Capable of staying aloft for more than 30 hours, it will sample greenhouse gases responsible for ozone depletion and verify measurements by NASA's Aura atmosphere research satellite.

When archaeologist Joel Palka ventured into the rain forests of northern Guatemala to study the disappearance of the ancient Maya, locals laughed. The "ancient" Maya had, in fact, been in the area as recently as the 1920s, they told him.In the early 1990s, when Palka was first in the region, there had been virtually no archaeological research done on the unconquered Maya. They were a mysterious people who had retreated deep into the rain forests of southern Mexico and Guatemala after the Spanish first arrived in the Yucatán in 1511.

DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

Thomas Harriot, a wealthy but publicity-shy astronomer and mapmaker, produced a series of exquisite lunar drawings, one of which is dated 26 July 1609 (above), pre-dating Galileo's much-celebrated observations of the moon by six months.A composite drawing of the moon dating to 1612 or 1613 (below) is considered by some experts to mark the birth of modern cartography. The lunar drawings by Harriot will form part of an exhibition at West Sussex Record Office in Chichester in July to mark the International Year of Astronomy.

The US could replace all its cars and trucks with electric cars powered by wind turbines taking up less than 3 square kilometres - in theory, at least. That's the conclusion of a detailed study ranking 11 types of non-fossil fuels according to their total ecological footprint and their benefit to human health.The study, carried out by Mark Jacobson of the atmosphere and energy programme at Stanford University, found wind power to be by far the most desirable source of energy. Biofuels from corn and plant waste came right at the bottom of the list, along with nuclear power and "clean" coal.

It sounds like a science fiction joke, but it isn't. What do you get when you turn an invisibility cloak on its side? A mini flying carpet.So say physicists who believe the same exotic materials used to make cloaking devices could also be used to levitate tiny objects. In a further breakthrough, two other research groups have come a step closer to cracking the mysteries of levitation.

THREE hundred and eighty-five parts per million: that's how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere now. Just 100 parts per million more than before we started mucking things up, yet the Arctic ice cap is already melting, weather patterns are changing, and plants and animals are migrating towards the poles to find their comfort zones.

Farmers could help curb rising global temperatures by selecting crop varieties that reflect solar energy back into space, researchers say.Scientists at Bristol University calculate that switching crops in North America and Europe could reduce global temperatures by about 0.1C.Temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the dawn of the industrial age.

Boffins at the UK's famous National Physical Laboratory (NPL) - birthplace of the Dambusters' bouncing bomb and perhaps the internet - say they have used an electron microscope to analyse Viking swords. In a surprise twist, it turns out that the old-time Scandinavian pests, many of whom moved to England to become our ancestors, actually imported their best steel from Afghanistan."Sword making in Viking times was important work," says Dr Alan Williams, a top archaeometallurgist at the Wallace Collection, a London-based museum of objets d'art which has a massive array of old arms and armour.

The magnificent prehistoric art discovered in caves throughout France and Spain raises many questions about early human culture. What do these superbly rendered paintings of horses, bison, and enigmatic human figures and symbols mean? How can we explain the sudden flourishing of artistic creativity at such a high level? And in what ways does this artwork reflect the underlying belief system, worldview, and life of the people who created it?

TEHRAN -- A team of archaeologists are currently excavating water wells of the ancient city of Parsa near the Persepolis.The first water well was discovered in November 2008 during the initial studies for construction of public toilets at the threshold of Paras at a distance of 500 meters west of Persepolis.

Early on a Norwich autumn morning, and I was standing naked in a hotel room.On the bed lay my new walking clothes: walking trousers, expensive pants at the cutting edge of underwear technology, assorted base layers, fleeces and waterproofs.All items of clothing I'd never owned before yet would spend the next goodness knows how many weeks wearing nothing but. .

A new series on the Discovery Channel treats underwater heritage as a commodity to be mined from the seafloorFor more than a year, the marine salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration has been embroiled in a legal battle with the government of Spain over the rights to a site they call "Black Swan," which might hold the most valuable sunken treasure ever recovered. At the same time, underwater archaeologists working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, [image] and Cultural Organization have succeeded in creating a treaty that bans treasure hunting in the territorial waters of signatory nations.

Laser-scanning and computer graphics are breathing virtual life into a 2,000 year-old statue of an Amazon warrior.The Roman statue was discovered by the Herculaneum Conservation Project in the ancient ruins of Herculaneum, a town preserved in the same eruption that buried nearby Pompeii in AD 79.

The first of a new breed of commercial rockets built by the firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is getting a workout at its Florida launch pad.The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX raised its first Falcon 9 rocket into a vertical launch position on Saturday at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to begin tests that the firm hopes will set the stage for an inaugural liftoff later this year. The Falcon 9 was hauled back down on Monday as SpaceX pushes through launch preparation paces.

An innovative new wind turbine design using a pair of vast vertical wings could some day generate electricity for the British Grid.The Nova Project is one of the first concepts to receive development funding from the newly-established Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), which seeks to find green technology solutions to help Britain meet its future energy and climate goals.The organization is a public-private partnership, and has a potential $1.6 billion in funding to invest in such solutions. Its six private members include Rolls-Royce, BP, Caterpillar, EDF Energy, E.ON and Shell, and Britain is seeking an additional five members.

A report on Tuesday suggests Australia's Aborigines will feel the impact of climate warming more than other Australians, as their remote outback homes and generally poor health making them particularly vulnerable.Researchers wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia that with temperatures in the tropical north and interior tipped to rise by three degrees Celsius by 2050, worsening already searing summer heat, the government must act fast to improve aboriginal health and housing.The report said: "Elevated temperatures and increases in hot spells are expected to be a major problem for indigenous health in remote areas, where cardiovascular and respiratory disease are more prevalent and there are many elderly people with inadequate facilities to cope with the increased heat stress."

Light-powered, bacterial enzyme-containing nanoparticles that release hydrogen from water could lead the way to new strategies for generating the energy-rich gas.The lack of low-cost ways to create hydrogen gas is one of the main barriers to the dream of economies fuelled by hydrogen not oil.A class of enzymes called hydrogenases are used by organisms to convert hydrogen ions to hydrogen gas during anaerobic - without oxygen - respiration. These enzymes have long interested chemists searching for alternatives to existing, expensive, platinum-catalysed hydrogen generation.

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday.The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood

German scientist Otto H. Warburg's theory on the origin of cancer earned him the Nobel Prize in 1931, but the biochemical basis for his theory remained elusive.His theory that cancer starts from irreversible injury to cellular respiration eventually fell out of favor amid research pointing to genomic mutations as the cause of uncontrolled cell growth.

The world's first feathers probably had nothing to do with flight or staying warm but were instead for showy display purposes, according to a new study that documents the most primitive known version of feathers, which were found on a Chinese dinosaur.The dinosaur, Beipiaosaurus, sported the likely colorful feathers on its limbs, trunk, tail, head and neck, with the neck feathers resembling a lion's mane.

Although humans come in many shapes and sizes, from the compact Inuit of the Arctic to the willowy Masai warriors of Africa, any two people are a lot more alike genetically than any pair of chimpanzees or gorillas. The reason may be our advanced culture, according to a new study. Our ancestors' different tools, eating habits, and even body decorations limited their mate choices to individuals of a similar culture, the work suggests, reducing the spread of new mutations across many groups. Because only a few of these ancient groups survived, humans are much less genetically diverse than other primates, even though there are many more of us on the planet.

A radical plan to curb global warming and so reverse the climate change caused by our rampant burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution would involve covering parts of the world's deserts with reflective sheeting, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.Engineers Takayuki Toyama of company Avix Inc in Kanagawa, Japan, and Alan Stainer of Middlesex University Business School, London, UK, complain that there have been very few innovative remedies discussed to combat the phenomenon of global warming caused by human activities, despite the widespread debate of the last few decades. They now suggest that uncompromising proposals are now needed if we are to avert ecological disaster.

The international body that advises most major governments across the world on energy policy is obstructing a global switch to renewable power because of its ties to the oil, gas and nuclear sectors, a group of politicians and scientists claims today.The experts, from the Energy Watch group, say the International Energy Agency (IEA) publishes misleading data on renewables, and that it has consistently underestimated the amount of electricity generated by wind power in its advice to governments. They say the IEA shows "ignorance and contempt" towards wind energy, while promoting oil, coal and nuclear as "irreplaceable" technologies.

TEHRAN, Jan. 11 (Mehr News Agency) -- A team of Iranian, Australian, and British archaeologists has recently begun the fifth season of excavation at the 8000-year-old site in Sorvan near Nurabad Mamasani in Fars Province.An Iranian-Australian team's joint efforts in late 2007 led to the discovery of the ruins of an Achaemenid palace at the site, which is believed to be the Achaemenid city of Lidoma that has been named in a collection of ancient tablets previously unearthed at Persepolis.The prehistoric area of Tol-e Nurabad and the Achaemenid structure at the site will be studied by the team, Iranian director of the team Alireza Asgari told the Persian service of CHN on Sunday.

Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk at the heart of essentially all galaxies bigger than our own. Their powerful gravity should be luring in galactic matter, feeding the black holes' voracious appetites.However, while plenty of gas is available for these black holes to feast upon, few of them have been observed to actively accrete gas from their home galaxy, presenting astronomers with a puzzle as to why these black holes aren't eating. Something must be preventing the black holes from accreting gas, though no one has known exactly what that was.

WASHINGTON - Hunting and gathering has a profound impact on animals and plants, driving an evolutionary process that makes them become smaller and reproduce earlier, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.Their study of hunting, fishing and collecting of 29 different species shows that under human pressure, creatures on average become 20 percent smaller and their reproductive age advances by 25 percent.

Until recently, little was known about the mysterious Tasmanian tiger, but new DNA sequences of the dog-like marsupial shed light on the striped creature's surprising family tree and its extinction 73 years ago.Researchers now believe the Tasmanian tiger, also called the thylacine, went extinct in 1936 after the death of the last known surviving individual at a Tasmanian zoo, and four decades after genetic diversity within the species dropped to a critically dangerous low.

Evolutionary biology tells us that replaying life's tape will not not look at all like the original. The outcome of evolution is contingent on everything that came before. Now, scientists at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Portugal, New York University and the University of California, Irvine, provide the first quantitative genetic evidence of why this is so.

New excavations have revealed that the town of Izmir, once believe to be 5,000 years old, may be as old as 8,500 years. Associate professor Zafer Derin of the Ege University archeology department, the head of the excavation team has reported that his team had removed 150 artifacts discovered at the Yesilova Tumulus excavation site.

Digging through thick mud and an ancient swamp of black clay, archaeologists in Istanbul have discovered a grave that proves the city is 6,000 years older than they previously thought.The skeletons of two adults and two children lie curled-up, perhaps to save space. Alongside them are pots: gifts placed in the grave to use in the afterlife.

The health of millions could be at risk because medicinal plants used to make traditional remedies, including drugs to combat cancer and malaria, are being overexploited."The loss of medicinal plant diversity is a quiet disaster," says Sara Oldfield, secretary general of the NGO Botanic Gardens Conservation International, told New Scientist.

In view of the historic significance of the site, the tourism department is raising concrete structures near the historic Akhnoor Fort at the Harappan site on the right banks of the Chenab. Although the fort is a shambles, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has recently taken up the restoration work.

An elderly Chinese woman wearing a headset concentrates intensely on a small foam ball and it begins to rise slowly into the air.It's not magic, but rather the latest game from toy maker Mattel, which allows players to move a ball around an obstacle course by using just their powers of concentration.Focusing on the ball causes a fan in the base of the game -- called Mind Flex -- to start up and lift the ball on a gentle stream of air. Break your concentration and the ball descends.

In a few days, a robot vehicle no bigger than a golf cart will complete its analysis of a small patch of red Martian soil. Then it will turn south to continue a journey that will become the longest overland trek ever made on another world.Opportunity is one of a pair of six-wheeled robots that have been trundling across Mars since 2004. In that time, Opportunity and its partner, Spirit, have uncovered vital information about the planet's past and shown that, although apparently sterile and barren today, Mars was once Earth-like, with a thick atmosphere and plenty of water.

An unusual rotating ice circle, normally found in the cooler rivers of Scandinavia or North America, has formed in the UK waterways.The cause of the rare phenomenon is unclear, with very little scientific evidence available to explain the formation of the discs. UFO-enthusiasts claim that, like crop circles, the perfect discs are created by visiting aliens, but scientists believe the extreme cold weather combined with an unusual current is the more likely reason.The 10ft disc was seen by a rambler on the River Otter in Devon, who estimated that it was spinning through 360 degrees every four minutes.The Meteorological Office said today that they could not explain why the ice circle appeared last week.

An interesting paper posted in Current Biology last week describes geographical distributions of two separate mitochondrial DNA sequences among Native Americans. The results suggest that the first Americans arrived from the Bering Strait Land Bridge between about 15,000 and 17,000 years ago, in at least two waves, along two different pathways: along the Pacific coast (called the "Pacific Coast Migration Model") and along the Ice Free Corridor, a postulated opening between two huge sheet glaciers covering North America. The researchers looked at data stored in the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation mtDNA database for two little-studied haplogroups, called D4h3a and X2a.

At Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, visitors can pay a $7 admission fee, grab a shovel and try their hand at diamond prospecting. The rule is "finders keepers." Over the past three years, annual visitation has tripled to 170,000, and in 2007 tourists pulled more than 1,000 precious stones from the ground. Some visitors use a special screen known as a seruca to wash and separate the heavier diamonds from the lighter debris. Others just get down on their hands and knees, squinting for jewels in the furrows. The 800-acre park holds out the hope, however slim, that just about anyone can strike it rich. Unfortunately, the park may also hold out a temptation for mineralogical mischief.

A new molecule that performs the essential function of life - self-replication - could shed light on the origin of all living things.If that wasn't enough, the laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand evolves in a test tube to double itself ever more swiftly."Obviously what we're trying to do is make a biology," says Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He hopes to imbue his team's molecule with all the fundamental properties of life: self-replication, evolution, and function.

The largest and to date the most comprehensive experiment to soak up greenhouse-gas emissions by artificially fertilising the oceans set sail from South Africa earlier this week.The ambitious geoengineering expedition has caused a stir among some campaigning groups, but has the scientific backing of the UK, German, and Indian governments, as well as the International Maritime Organisation.Within weeks, the ship's crew hope to dump 20 tonnes of ferrous sulphate into the Southern Ocean. Plankton need iron to grow, and the aim of the expedition is to trigger a plankton bloom and boost the amount of carbon that is sucked out of the air and locked up at the bottom of the ocean.

Japanese researchers on Friday unveiled a robot suit designed to help reduce the heavy burden of harvesting as the nation's farm industry faces an ageing, shrinking workforce.Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology demonstrated a prototype wearable assistance machine equipped with eight motors and 16 sensors.The 25-kilogramme (55-pound) device is designed to assist elderly farmers who need support for their leg muscles and joints when they keep a crouching position or lift their arms high.In a demonstration, a person wearing the suit pulled radishes from the ground and picked oranges from high branches like a robot.

"In a small basin in the hills we came the next day (27th October, 1930) upon a circle 27 feet (8.5 metres) in diameter of thin slabs of sandstone, 18 to 24 inches high. Half were lying prone, but the rest were still vertical in the sand. There was no doorway or other sign of orientation, and though we searched within and without the circle, no implements could be found. I understand that other similar circles have been found in the neighborhood of the Gilf Kebir."

Rules forcing internet companies to keep details of every e-mail sent in the UK are a waste of money and an attack on civil liberties, say critics.From March all internet service providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.Human rights group Liberty says it is worried what will happen next.The Home Office insists the data, which does not include e-mails' content, is vital for crime and terror inquiries.Some three billion e-mails are thought to be sent each day in the UK.

A new analysis of archaeological remains could explain why evidence of ancient Greek bar rooms is so elusive.In classical Greek plays there are many descriptions of lively drinking dens, but no remains have ever been discovered.

Scientists have discovered only the second example of a meteorite impact that occurred at the same time as massive volcanic activity, in research published in the Journal of the Geological Society the week of Jan 12. The first time such a coincidence was observed, at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, was the catastrophic event thought to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.This new event, uncovered after the 17 km diameter Logoisk impact structure in Belarus was precisely dated, is thought to have taken place around 30 million years ago. The crater was dated using argon isotopes, and found to have occurred at a similar time to a period of massive volcanism known as the Afro-Arabian flood volcanism, which started in NW Yemen at around 30.9 Mya, and SW Yemen at around 29.0 Mya.

The first baby in the UK tested before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born.Doctors at University College London said the girl and her mother were doing well following the birth this week.The embryo was screened for the altered BRCA1 gene, which would have meant the girl had a 80% chance of developing breast cancer.Women in three generations of her husband's family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s.

Rocks on Mars are in some areas scattered in a strangely uniform fashion, puzzling scientists for years. Now they've figured it out.Researchers had thought the rocks were picked up and carried downwind by extreme high-speed winds thought to occur on Mars in the past.Although Mars is a windy planet, its atmosphere is very thin, so it would be difficult for the wind to carry the small rocks, which range in size from a quarter to a softball, said Jon Pelletier, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists.The technique could be used to speed the healing of heart or bone damage, they claim.The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells - which help to regenerate tissue.Imperial College London scientists reported their work in the journal Cell Stem Cell, but said human trials were some years away.

"One if by land, two if by sea." In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem about Paul Revere's ride, a seminal event in the American Revolution, the number of lanterns signaled the route by which the British were coming. But for researchers studying the arrival of the first Americans, the question is still undecided: Did the immigrants follow a coastal route from their homelands in Asia and Alaska, or did they travel inland? A new study concludes that they did both.

MULTIPLE comet impacts around 1500 years ago triggered a "dry fog" that plunged half the world into famine.Historical records tell us that from the beginning of March 536 AD, a fog of dust blanketed the atmosphere for 18 months. During this time, "the sun gave no more light than the moon", global temperatures plummeted and crops failed, says Dallas Abbott of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. The cause has long been unknown, but theories have included a vast volcanic eruption or an impact from space.

The impending construction of a dam in Venezuela threatens to destroy one of the most exciting archaeological sites in the region. Experts believe the valley could be concealing as-yet-undiscovered pre-colombian ruins, but a lack of political interest in the preservation of the site may mean it is destroyed before they have a chance to investigate.

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- In addition to the more traditional archaeological excavation of a pre-historic pithouse currently underway at the Springs Preserve, remote sensing technologies have revealed the possible existence of two additional pithouses in close proximity. This new archaeological find indicates evidence of an ancestral Puebloan human settlement at the Springs Preserve.

LIMA -- A study has revealed genetic links between people who inhabited northern Peru more than 1,000 years ago and Japanese, El Comercio newspaper reported Thursday.Japanese physical anthropologist Ken-ichi Shinoda performed DNA tests on the remains of human bodies found in the East Tomb and West Tomb in the Bosque de Pomas Historical Sanctuary, which are part of the Sican Culture Archaeological Project, funded by Japan's government.

A rare brick well has been unearthed at a central Wellington building site, but the Capital's early settlers did not just depend on water to quench their thirst they were fans of ginger beer too.Archaeologist Mary O'Keeffe is gathering historical evidence as the site for a $100 million Telecom building is excavated in Boulcott St.

THE recipe for making any creature is written in its DNA. So last November, when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, there was much speculation about whether we could bring this behemoth back to life.Creating a living, breathing creature from a genome sequence that exists only in a computer's memory is not possible right now. But someone someday is sure to try it, predicts Stephan Schuster, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and a driving force behind the mammoth genome project.

In a surprise move, it seems likely the first genetically engineered animal approved for commercial use won't be a fast-growing salmon, as was expected, but a goat that produces an anti-clotting drug in its milk.A Food and Drug Administration evaluation released Wednesday found that the drug Atryn is effective and safe.The report will be presented Friday to FDA's Blood Products Advisory Board. Made up of outside experts, the panel will vote on whether to approve the application. If approved, the drug will have crossed the first hurdle toward acceptance, says FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey. There are still more steps in the FDA's drug-approval process.

In certain ways, our world is now startlingly, almost unimaginably accurate. The metre, which used to be calibrated to the charming and comprehensible platinum-iridium metre bar is now defined as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. Not something one could hope to measure at home. The kilogram is still defined by a physical object but time, once measured by observing the sun, moon and stars is now defined by reference to the vibrations of an atom of caesium. And in the closing moments of 2008, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service added a leap second to the year.

It remains one of the most scrutinised structures in the world and still its secrets remain largely elusive to us. The Great Pyramid at Giza stands 481 feet tall with each of its four base lengths measuring almost exactly 756 feet. But why did the ancient designers of this structure decide upon these particular dimensions? What rationale might they have used - or were these dimensions merely the arbitrary product of a whimsical desire on the part of the Pharaoh Khufu, in whose the name the Great Pyramid of Giza was apparently built?

It is one of the most investigated and studied structures in the world, yet Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza retains an almost impenetrable air of mystery about it to this day. There are no contemporary records of its construction and almost no mention of it in any subsequent record for thousands of years thereafter, until Herodotus wrote of it in his History in the 5th century B.C.E. Although it has long been commonly agreed that Egypt's 4th Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu built the Pyramid as a tomb for himself, these facts are not universally accepted, as great controversy surrounds both its age and purpose-controversy born of persistent legends that the Pyramid was built to memorialize certain knowledge and preserve it from the world-wide destruction wrought by the Great Flood.

Listening to the early universe just got harder. A team led by Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., today announced the discovery of cosmic radio noise that booms six times louder than expected.The finding comes from a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE, which stands for the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission. In July 2006, the instrument launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and flew to an altitude of 120,000 feet, where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

At first, figuring out how pebble-sized rocks organize themselves in evenly-spaced patterns in sand seemed simple and even intuitive. But once Andrew Leier, an assistant geoscience professor at the U of C, started observing, he discovered that the most commonly held notions did not apply.And even more surprising, was that his findings revealed answers to NASA's questions about sediment transport and surface processes on Mars. Those results are published in this month's edition of Geology.

A Pacific fish uses mirrors as well as lenses to help it see in the murky ocean depths, scientists have revealed.The brownsnout spookfish has been known for 120 years, but no live specimen had ever been captured.Last year, one was caught off Tonga, by scientists from Tuebingen University, Germany.

Would you like power with those fries?A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants' deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt each week, and its creators promise it will generate about 5 kilowatts of power.

For generations, archaeologists have been going back and forth about whether the hilltop enclosures of northeastern Ohio served as fortifications or places of ceremony.Charles Whittlesey, an early archaeologist and Civil War veteran, concluded that the Greenwood Village earthworks site in Summit County was a fort whose builders had "understood very well the art of turning natural advantages to good account."

BEIJING, Jan. 7 -- Imagine 18 colorful dragons, 540 cranes and over one-thousand golden characters on the robe of a Chinese emperor, that would be an eyeful. Recently archeologists from the Embroidery Academy of Nanjing presented a replica of a robe worn by Emperor Wan Li to the Museum of Ding Mausoleum. Experts say the ancient costume would have been used as leisure wear for the emperor.

A cosmic chicken-and-egg question may have been solved by astronomers who now say black holes came before galaxies.The findings were presented at a major astronomy meeting in California.Most if not all galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are believed to have massive black holes at their cores.It was unclear whether black holes came first, helping create galaxies by pulling matter towards them, or whether they arose in already formed galaxies.

How did the sister of Machiavelli's prince get so wealthy during an economic downturn?In popular legend, Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480- 1519), stands falsely accused of poisoning her second husband. Victor Hugo portrayed her in thinly veiled fiction as a tragic femme fatale. Buffalo Bill named his gun after her.

LONDON: In a breakthrough study, scientists from University of Aberdeen have successfully produced hydrogen from the fermentation of crops.They believe that the process could significantly reduce future dependency on fossil fuels and hydrogen can be used to provide clean electricity.It has long been thought that hydrogen could be used as a fuel, particularly for transport.

How did a giant flying reptile get off the ground? It's not a simple question: A computerized analysis of pterosaur fossils and modern-day bird bones shows that the biggest pterosaurs couldn't simply lift off into the air like a bird, because their hind legs were too weak.The researcher behind the analysis says the forelimbs were much stronger - so much stronger, in fact, that the creatures must have used their "arms" as well as their legs to propel their leap into flight. But will that claim fly with other experts? That remains to be seen.