Newsdesk Archive

Earthlings have had an over-inflated view of how far the planet's atmosphere extends into space. Turns out, the ionosphere, the layer of electrically charged particles that comprises the outer atmosphere, is thinner than expected -- and cooler.Understanding the shape and size of the ionosphere is an important first step in figuring out how particularly dense regions within it may distort radio, radar and navigation signals. Such distortions can make communications and satellite-based systems less reliable.

The Hubble Space Telescope has inadvertently caught 14 runaway stars speeding through dense interstellar gas. The discovery may shed light on whether the turbulence they create could prevent surrounding gas from collapsing into new stars.Astronomers led by Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had been searching for ageing, bloated stars with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2005 and 2006 - before the instrument failed permanently in 2007.

FIVE years after he lost a leg to a landmine in Afghanistan, American war veteran Mike McNaughton can run well enough to coach his 11-year-old son's soccer team. This amazing comeback comes partly from his determination to get back on two feet, but also from a piece of high-tech hardware: a computerised, hydraulic knee that monitors and adjusts every step, with a response time in milliseconds. "Now I can run with the kids full blast and kick the ball around with them," he says.

THE sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful cosmic rays could falter in the early 2020s, just in time to threaten the health of NASA astronauts as they return to the moon.As well as the 11-year cycle of sunspots and solar flares, the sun's activity experiences longer-term shifts lasting several decades. The sun is currently in a long-term high, having been relatively active for nearly a century, but it is not known when this will end.To find out, a team led by Jose Abreu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Duebendorf analysed 66 long-term highs from the past 10,000 years, as recorded in fluctuating levels of rare isotopes such as beryllium-10 in ice cores from Greenland. These are produced when cosmic rays break down the nuclei of oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. Production of these isotopes peaks when the sun is inactive, as the weaker solar wind lets more cosmic rays enter the solar system, which hit the Earth.

One of the current handicaps of cancer treatments is the difficulty of aiming these treatments at destroying malignant cells without killing healthy cells in the process. But a new study by McMaster University researchers has provided insight into how scientists might develop therapies and drugs that more carefully target cancer, while sparing normal healthy cells.

An extract from grape seeds can destroy cancer cells, US research suggests.In lab experiments, scientists found that the extract stimulated leukaemia cells to commit suicide.Within 24 hours, 76% of leukaemia cells exposed to the extract were killed off, while healthy cells were unharmed, Clinical Cancer Research reports.The study raises the possibility of new cancer treatments, but scientists said it was too early to recommend that people eat grapes to ward off cancer.

A bloodstream 'cleaner' which could save thousands of lives a year by quickly disabling poisons has been invented by British scientists, and and may even provide an instant hangover cure.

Filling the atmosphere with Greenhouse gases associated with global warming could push the planet into a new ice age, scientists have warned.

A mixed-race British couple has defied the odds - twice - by producing two sets of twins in which one sibling appears to be black and the other white.Dean Durrant's newborn daughter Miya has dark skin like him. Twin sister Leah has fair skin like her blue-eyed, red-haired mother, Alison Spooner.Their older siblings Lauren and Hayleigh, born in 2001, also have strikingly different skin tones and eye colors.

UFO enthusiasts are claiming damage to a Lincolnshire wind farm turbine was caused by a mystery aircraft.The turbine at Conisholme lost one 66ft (20m) blade and another was badly damaged in the early hours of Sunday.County councillor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a "round, white light that seemed to be hovering".

US researchers say they have harnessed the power of gold nanoparticles to devise a better way of delivering drugs to treat diseases such as cancer.The fledgling system could release a number of drugs in a specific part of the body at desired intervals, the MIT team wrote in the journal ACS Nano.The device makes use of the fact that different particles melt when exposed to different levels of infrared light.Different drugs on the particles could thus be released in a controlled way.

A spectacular pink type of Galapagos iguana promises to rewrite the family's evolutionary history in the islands.Rosada was missed by Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit, but appears to indicate the earliest known divergence of land animals in the archipelago.Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers say rosada split from other land iguanas about 5.7 million years ago.

Scientists from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) have devised an ultra-hard vehicle armour to protect military personnel.Details of the steel armour, called Super Bainite, were outlined during a seminar at the University of Cambridge.Unexpectedly, the MoD team has given the armour a protective advantage by introducing holes into it.

Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics,­ or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Two embryonic stars discovered just a few light years away from the Milky Way's center show that stars can form in the potentially destructive reach of the powerful black hole at our galaxy's center.Astronomers have long known that young stars could be found near the center of the galaxy, but they had no idea how the stars got there.

A composite of simulated lunar regolith and powdered aluminum heats up via wires as part of the fusion process that forms a brick. A team of Virginia Tech students, under the advisement of Kathryn Logan, a professor in the materials science and engineering department, designed the brick as a potential building tool for future colonies on the moon. The NIA carved into the stands for National Institute of Aerospace, which includes Virginia Tech.(PhysOrg.com) -- Dwellings in colonies on the moon one day may be built with new, highly durable bricks developed by students from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.

As mass-produced electric cars come closer to reality, their makers are trying to polish the image of what experts say could be a hard sell in the current recession."Please erase your image of electric cars being like golf carts," a spokesman for Japan's fourth-biggest automaker said before taking a zero-emission vehicle out for a spin."It's fast, powerful and smooth," Mitsubishi Motors Corp. spokesman Kai Inada said of the iMiEV electric car, which is due to be launched next year.

MIT engineers have developed a new, highly efficient way to pair up cells so they can be fused together into a hybrid cell. The new technique should make it much easier for scientists to study what happens when two cells are combined. For example, fusing an adult cell and an embryonic stem cell allows researchers to study the genetic reprogramming that occurs in such hybrids.The researchers, led by a collaboration between Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Rudolf Jaenisch, professor of biology and a member of the Whitehead Institute, report the new technique in the Jan. 4 online edition of Nature Methods.

Evolution isn't just for living organisms. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity. The finding, published in American Mineralogist, could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.

Earth-like planets may in fact be common in the galaxy, increasing the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.By observing the remains of smashed up asteroids around dead stars, astronomers were able to deduce their chemical composition. They found that the dust of many chewed-up asteroids resembles the materials inside Earth and the other small, rocky inner planets of our solar system.

No more batteries, no more chargers and no more wire spaghetti. This is the future promised by "wireless power", a means of broadcasting electricity through the air to laptops, iPods and other gadgets without the need for cables and sockets.Untethered lighting, audio speakers and digital picture frames are expected to be among the first commercial products demonstrated in Las Vegas this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the world's biggest gadgets tradeshow.

The lessons learned by medics from a trip to Everest could help the treatment of critically ill patients.The team that braved the Himalayan summit to study the body's responses to extreme adversity has recorded the lowest ever human blood oxygen level.The results could see treatment plans for some patients with similarly low blood oxygen levels re-evaluated.The "Caudwell Xtreme Everest" work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Improved management techniques can reduce environmental effects of the practiceAquaculture production of seafood will probably remain the most rapidly increasing food production system worldwide through 2025, according to an assessment published in the January 2009 issue of BioScience. The assessment, by James S. Diana of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, notes that despite well-publicized concerns about some harmful effects of aquaculture, the technique may, when practiced well, be no more damaging to biodiversity than other food production systems. Moreover, it may be the only way to supply growing demand for seafood as the human population increases.

STONE circles on Mars are prompting a rethink about the planet's ancient climate.Using cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Matt Balme of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and his colleagues mapped the Elysium Planitia, a region near the equator. They saw rings up to 23 metres across made up of stones sorted by size into concentric bands.

Pre-construction work by archaeological experts at the sites where two new Ohio River bridges will be built has produced a wealth of information about people who lived there as long ago as 3500 B.C.Without the costly and extensive bridges project, the extensive archaeological work would not have been done, said Susan Neumeyer, an archaeologist with the Kentucky Department of Transportation.

As I said in my previous post, it's that time of the year when you can find New Year forecasts everywhere.My last update of 2008 will be no exception. I'll stick with tradition and offer my predictions for the new year.

This year saw several important discoveries, the restoration of ancient Egyptian, Coptic and Islamic monuments, and the return of artefacts smuggled illegally out of Egypt.Almost every day, excavators carrying out routine excavation or cleaning stumbled on a new discovery. It might be potsherds or decorative fragments, but it could be a major discovery leading to further understanding of Egypt's history and culture.

The US space agency's (Nasa) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet.The first robot, named Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later.It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone.

LOS ANGELES - Seventy-six years after the invention of the modern sprinkler helped revolutionize farming, lasers may revolutionize it again.Jan Kleissl and a handful of his students at the University of California at San Diego think technology using laser beams might lead to a better way to conserve the millions of gallons of water sprayed each year on thirsty crops.

NASA's plans to ship people to the moon and some day Mars are very much up in the air these days, with debate over Barack Obama's plans for the space agency a hot water cooler topic in the aerospace industry. Budget battles aside, one new study asks, how should these future astronauts steer their way around our solar system?Brain waves, suggests the current Acta Astronauticajournal report. Fans of Neuromancer may recall the story's hero using brain implants to navigate around cyberspace, but the researchers led by Carlo Menon of the European Space Agency, see astronaut brain-machine interfaces as a the way to get around outer space.

A giant rock formation resembling a city wall has been discovered under the Taiwan Strait.The 220m stretch of basalt rock was found by biodiversity researcher Jeng Ming-hsiou.

It can take months for bones to heal after even a small break. Now a U.K. company, RegenTec, hopes to speed up the healing process by injecting a white powder designed to seal broken bones together in minutes."You won't be able to just walk out of a hospital with a broken leg," said Robin Quirk, a professor at the University of Nottingham who, along with Kevin Shakesheff in the United States, originally developed the technology. "What we are trying to do in the short term is have something that fills the void left by a break that acts like normal spongy bone and encourages natural regeneration." .

The 12th phase of Burnt City archeological excavations in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province has yielded 12 ancient graves.A brick-walled quadrangular grave was found at the site, which is believed by archeologists to be unique among the discoveries of the past 30 years.The skeletons have been eroded and no artifacts have been found inside the graves.

VietNamNet Bridge - A mere five years ago, construction workers stumbled on an archeological treasure trove, the ancient citadel of Thang Long (Ascending Dragon). The site which is now open to the public.Historians and books may be able to tell generations of Vietnamese about the rich 1,000 year history of the capital city, but the Thang Long (Ascending Dragon) Ancient Citadel can do more; it is history you can reach out and touch.

Dr. Judy Garber, director of the Cancer Risk and Prevention Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, answers listeners' questions about genetic testing.

GREEN BANK, W.Va. - Of all the threats to scientific research Wesley Sizemore has stymied over the years, satellites and cell phone towers don't stick in his memory quite like the possessive old hound and its treasured heating pad.Sizemore is an interference hunter, vigilantly pursuing stray electromagnetic signals that bedevil researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which sits on 13,000 square miles tucked away in the nation's only radio-free quiet zone.

Palaeontologists hate the phrase "missing links": they prefer the term "potential transitional forms", and the journal Nature uses this plodding construction again this week in a valuable online resource for Darwin's defenders, in this, evolution's anniversary year. There are good reasons for not using the phrase to describe those remarkable mammals that slipped back into the water, tens of millions of years ago, to evolve blubber, blow-holes and baleen, or the Cretaceous dinosaurs that made nests, laid eggs and sprouted feathers but may never have flown.

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Scientists have dramatically revised the mass of the Milky Way, saying our home galaxy is half again as heavy as previously thought.The Milky Way is now on par with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy in terms of heft. The Milky Way spins a lot faster than was thought, too.

A new article is up on the GrahamHancock.com forum, entitled Geometry of the Great Pyramid, by Nick Kollerstrom PhD. Enjoy.The three Giza pyramids are located at 30° North, within an arcminute.

On Dec 25, the round-faced Mr Sawaguchi will get up in the icy predawn of northern Japan, put on his uniform of suit and tie and head off for another day as a civil servant in the construction division of Aomori Prefectural Government.But on his way out the door of his home, in the hamlet of Shingo, he will probably give a nod in the direction of the mound of earth topped by a wooden cross that is the last resting place of the man that Christianity reveres as the Messiah.

Ask America's foremost molecular gastronomist about the Willy Wonka comparisons, and Homaro Cantu will insist that he's just an average guy who likes cheeseburgers. But it's not cheeseburgers that have earned the Chicago chef fame: it's dishes prepared with industrial lasers, inkjet printers and liquid nitrogen.

Augustus Granville unpacked his props: he had bandages, bottles of chemicals, a bundle of candles and various bits of an Egyptian mummy. Mummy-mania was in full swing and public unrolling all the rage. But this wasn't going to be a shilling-a-ticket spectacle: Granville was giving a scientific lecture. He had spent weeks unwrapping and dissecting a mummy, meticulously measuring, recording and experimenting as he sought to unravel the mysteries of the embalmer's art. Yet even he couldn't resist one small theatrical flourish. To transport his audience back to the time when his mummy was so perfectly prepared for life after death, he lit the room with candles made from the very wax he believed had preserved her.

These 3D scans of human and animals bodies recently earned the Lennart Nillson Award for scientific photography and were created by Anders Persson, director of the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization at Linköping University, Sweden.Persson and his colleagues have refined CT scanning, even allowing police to perform "virtual autopsies". Their images have featured prominently in CSI.

750,000-year-old ice cubesThey may look like long-lost objects from a distant high-tech civilisation, but these large black objects buried in the Canadian Arctic are huge chunks of ice - the oldest ice ever found in North America. Researchers say the discovery could help predict the fate of the deep Arctic permafrost.The din of acidifying oceansOcean sounds travel further now than they did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic. In future, whales may be able to communicate over greater distances - but it's not all good news

Ancient hunters painted the sections of their cave dwellings where singing, humming and music sounded best, a new study suggests.Analyzing the famous, ochre-splashed cave walls of France, scientists found that the most densely painted areas were also those with the best acoustics. Humming into some bends in the wall even produced sounds mimicking the animals painted there.

TEHRAN (FNA)- The restoration of the tomb of the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, was completed and its metal scaffolding removed.After three stages of restoration, the structure stands strong and will not sustain any further damage. The work on the historical site has gained UNESCO approval.According to manager of the restoration work, Hassan Rahsaz, the restoration and documentation of the process has been carried out with great precision by 8 archeological experts and modern-day equipment, press tv reported.

An inscribed limestone block might have solved one of history's greatest mysteries -- who fathered the boy pharaoh King Tut."We can now say that Tutankhamun was the child of Akhenaten," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.The finding offers evidence against another leading theory that King Tut was sired by the minor king Smenkhkare.

An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, have published a ground-breaking study that characterizes the common ancestor of all life on earth, LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor).Their findings, presented in a recent issue of Nature, show that the 3.8-billion-year-old organism was not the creature usually imagined.

University of Minnesota anthropology professor Kieran McNulty (along with colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York) has made an important contribution toward solving one of the greatest paleoanthropological mysteries in recent history -- that fossilized skeletons resembling a mythical "hobbit" creature represent an entirely new species in humanity's evolutionary chain.

The monument has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history but academic Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves.Mr Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks., believes the standing stones had the ideal acoustics to amplify a "repetitive trance rhythm".The original Stonehenge probably had a "very pleasant, almost concert-like acoustic" that our ancestors slowly perfected over many generations.

One of the planet's most fragile and pristine ecosystems sits atop a bounty of untapped fossil fuels.The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 90 billion barrels of oil, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in the frozen region north of the Arctic Circle.

Cut off in the seclusion of space, crew members living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) depend on regular deliveries of air, water, food and fuel for their survival.But when the ageing space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, the US space agency (Nasa) will lose a principal means of ferrying crew and cargo to the ISS.The shuttle's replacement - Ares-Orion - will not enter service until 2015 at the earliest.

The fate of ancient rock-cut tombs found earlier this month on the site of the planned new St James Hospital is still uncertain as investigations into the discovery are still at an early stage, the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage said.The tombs were discovered during excavation works for the new hospital in Zejtun.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL director Mike Emery believes new evidence shows a direct link between his dig south of Chester and Stonehenge.His team has uncovered a 4,500 year-old limestone plaque at the Poulton excavation, bearing a mysterious crisscross pattern.

Humans have pondered the mysteries of Mars for thousands of years, with one question eliciting particular interest: Is there life up there?While there is no good evidence that life ever existed on Mars, the tantalizing possibility that the planet may once have been able to support life garnered some of the strongest support yet this year, as the orbiters, landers and rovers recently sent to investigate our rusty neighbor gathered key evidence of the planet's watery past, climatic shifts and other points of geology and chemistry that could have impacted the emergence of any potential Martian life.

Archaeologists in Germany say they have found an ancient battlefield strewn with Roman weapons. The find is significant because it indicates that Romans were fighting battles in north Germany at a far later stage than previously assumed.

Extremes are exciting. Does anyone really think dinosaurs would capture our imagination the way they do if they hadn't been so huge? You don't see natural history museums vying for fossil skeletons of prehistoric rodents. It's the Tyrannosaurus rex fossils they salivate and squabble over. And would the Hollywood glitterati cart around those little teacup pups if they weren't so dang tiny and cute? Not likely.

Cancer cells cheat death by reversing a process which causes normal cells to commit suicide at the end of their natural life, scientists have shown.They showed cancer cells were able to recover even after exposure to a chemical cocktail which triggers suicide in normal cells.The ability may help cancer cells to block the effect of chemotherapy drugs.

A passenger plane has successfully completed a two-hour test flight partly powered by vegetable oil.Air New Zealand hailed the flight as a "milestone" in the development of sustainable fuels that could lower aeroplane emissions and cut costs.One engine of the Boeing 747-400 was fueled by a 50-50 mixture of jatropha plant oil and standard A1 jet fuel.

The US space agency (Nasa) has released a detailed report into the deaths of the crew of space shuttle Columbia.It comes almost six years after the orbiter disintegrated when re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.The report includes grim details of the crew's final moments as the shuttle broke up over the state of Texas.It concludes that the accident was not survivable but makes the point that astronaut seat restraints, suits and helmets did not work well.

A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of "new fundamentals", according to a leading food expert.Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing "structural failures", such as "astronomic" environmental costs.The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.Professor Lang is a member of the UK government's newly formed Food Council."Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s," he told BBC News."It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.

More than 130 hieroglyphics, most of them still legible, inscribed on the Sabana Piletas staircase, located in northeast Campeche, is the most extensive reported Maya inscription of Yucatan Peninsula. According to recent studies, rulers could have used the Glyphs Building staircase to celebrate sacrificial rituals.

In the late afternoon heat, Graham Clarke is kneeling down and drawing circles in the sand dunes known as the Walls of China.Lake Mungo in western NSW is one of 17 in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area that dried up from 18,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age.

More than 10,000 graves containing ancient amphorae, "baby bottles," and the bodies of soldiers who fought the Carthaginians were found near the ancient Greek colony of Himera, in Italy, archaeologists announced recently."It's probably the largest Greek necropolis in Sicily," said Stefano Vassallo, the lead archaeologist of the team that made the discoveries, in September.

KHARTOUM, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered three ancient statues in Sudan with inscriptions that could bring them closer to deciphering one of Africa's oldest languages.The stone rams, representing the god Amun, were carved during the Meroe empire, a period of kingly rule that lasted from about 300 BC to AD 450 and left hundreds of remains along the River Nile north of Khartoum.

WE MAY soon find out exactly what our ancestors ate when they sat down to dinner. The discovery that DNA can be extracted from ancient cooked bones overturns the expectation that heat would destroy such genetic material.Claudio Ottoni of the University of Rome, Italy, and his team studied 1100-year-old cattle bones from an archaeological site in the UK. By heating modern cattle bones, they found that temperatures of 140 °C damaged the collagen, and 170 °C destroyed it. While the team are unsure how hot the ancient bones got, they did find that only up to 16 per cent of the collagen that remained in them was undamaged. In contrast, the DNA they extracted from the old bones was identifiably bovine.

Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the "surveillance society" threatening personal privacy.

What would it mean if Jesus did have sex and let his DNA loose into the general population? How special would that make his would-be descendants, such as a character in the fictional "The Da Vinci Code"?And what kind of DNA would Jesus have, considering that his mother was reportedly a virgin?I wrote about genetics and the virgin birth last fall and found two surprising conclusions. First, most Catholic and Protestant theologians do not get insulted by this question. Second, they don't agree.

They came over the prairie in their pickup trucks, in the cool, quiet hours before dawn. They rolled through the gentle foothills of the Ozarks in air-conditioned tour buses with paintings of stagecoaches airbrushed on the black-lacquered side panels. They came wearing mud-smudged 10-gallon hats and frayed John Deere baseball caps. And then they stepped down out of their vehicles, each one of these farmers, and set foot on holy ground.

US president elect Obama may have appointed a "green dream team" to help him govern, but it is far from obvious how they will tackle the thorny problem of how to make our energy use more sustainable.Yet we may already have seen the solutions, amongst the latest crop of innovations in green fuels. Here's a reminder of the discoveries from the past year that may revolutionise the way we power our lives.

DRY land may be something of a novelty. Until around 2.5 billion years ago our planet was almost completely covered by water, a model of the early Earth suggests.Today, some 28 per cent of Earth's surface is above sea level. Exactly how the ratio of land to sea has varied through Earth's history is unclear, but it is generally agreed that the amount of continental crust has increased over time.

PITY future cyborg insects. As if being remotely controlled by a human isn't bad enough, their every movement may be harnessed to power the electronics that hijack their bodies. This could also extend the length of their enslavement, since the microchips had previously relied on tiny batteries with short lifespans.Engineers have been attempting to gain control of insects' bodiesMovie Camera for some time, to act as discreet spies or to take advantage of their advanced sense of smell to detect chemicals or explosives.

Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. These findings imply that religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives.

Biological fuel cells use enzymes or whole microorganisms as biocatalysts for the direct conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy. One type of microbial fuel cell uses anodes (positive electrodes) coated with a bacterial film. The fuel consists of a substrate that the bacteria can break down. The electrons released in this process must be transferred to the anode in order to be drawn off as current. But how can the electrons be efficiently conducted from the microbial metabolism that occurs inside a cell to the anode?

Sailors, fishermen and cruise passengers should be on the alert. If anybody spots a yellow rubber duck bobbing on the ocean waves, Nasa would like to know.The US space agency has yet to find any trace of 90 bathtub toys that were dropped through holes in Greenland's ice three months ago in an effort to track the way the Arctic icecap is melting. Scientists threw the ducks into tubular holes known as "moulins" in the Jakobshavn glacier on Greenland's west coast, hoping they would find their way into channels beneath the hard-packed surface, to track the flow of melt water into the ocean.

Scientists have discovered what they say is a completely unexpected new giant dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago in Argentina.At 16.5 to 21 feet long (5 to 6.5 meters) long, depending on its tail size, Austroraptor cabazai is among the largest of the slender, carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called raptors, said Fernando Novas, the lead researcher behind the discovery.

BEIJING: Paleontologists in east China have dug up what they believe is one of the world's largest group of fossilised dinosaur bones, including the remains of an enormous "platypus," state press said on Tuesday.Paleontologists have discovered 15 areas near Zhucheng city in Shandong province that contain thousands of dinosaur bones, the Beijing News reported."This group of fossilised dinosaurs is currently the largest ever discovered in the world... in terms of area," the paper cited paleontologist Zhao Xijin of the China Academy of Sciences as saying.

It's the stuff of science fiction: robots that can hunt down and kill humans, powerful lasers that can destroy targets without leaving a trace, and a weapon that can supposedly knock you down without even touching you - all of these, and more, came one step closer to reality in 2008.

Long before humans in North America grew corn and beans and wheat, they were harvesting and cooking the bulbs of lilies, wild onions and other plants, roasting them for days over hot rocks, says a Texas archeologist.

On the shortest day of each year during the winter solstice, sunlight enters through the roof box above the main entrance to Newgrange and slowly makes its way up the passage to the main burial chamber where it hits the back wall and thus illuminates the tomb.Nowadays the phenomena can be witnessed live on the internet.

DARAA, Syria, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Archaeologists in Syria say they've found a Roman-era stone sarcophagus carved with women's faces and images of flowers, a lion and a bull.

Tiny diamonds found in the soil are "strong evidence" a comet exploded on or above North America nearly 13,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of dozens of mammal species, according to a study.The scientific report also suggests the cataclysm also reduced the population of the earliest people to inhabit the region and triggered a 1,300-year-long cold spell that stretched around the world.

The Toronto Star recently reported an old discovery of very old human footprints.In 1908, construction workers came across a clay layer near Hanlan's Point in Toronto Bay in which they found 100 impressions of what appeared to be moccasin-clad feet. The claim was dismissed at the time, because the clay was thought to be more than 100,000 years old, and it is exceedingly unlikely that people lived on this continent so long ago.

CAIRO: While stunning archaeological revelations are expected to make headlines by the beginning of 2009, archaeology-enthusiasts were let down by unfulfilled promises of exciting excavations made in 2008.What marked the year 2008, however, were the landmark restorations that highlighted archaeological events, especially in the field of Islamic architecture.

Egyptian archaeologists say they have discovered a pair of 4,300-year-old tombs that indicate a burial site south of Cairo is bigger than expected.The tombs at the Saqqara necropolis belong to two officials from the court of the Pharaoh Unas, Egypt's antiquities chief said.

Some of Britain's most famous historic sites are at risk as the number being saved for the nation declines amid budget cuts, according to a report published today.The Tory party accused the Government of "betraying" the country's heritage after it emerged that only 57 threatened sites were renovated in the past year, while 69 were added to the "at risk" register. It is the first time since the list was drawn up nine years ago that the drive has gone into reverse.

European researchers say they are pushing online culture and heritage research way beyond Google by using a smart search system that is multilingual, multimedia and optimised for cultural heritage. Better yet, this promising system has wide application in other fields.European researchers have developed an optimised search system that can access an enormous quantity of cultural heritage resources that reside online. Current technology like Google takes a scattergun approach, dishing up dozens of links of sometimes variable quality.

POLARH (KAITHAL): Unknown to them, 3,500 people have been living in a village in Haryana, which has turned out to be the ruins of the Mauryan empire, a 2000-year-old civilization the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) now wants to unearth.The residents of this dusty hamlet on Kaithal-Patiala road in Rohtak district fear dislocation as the ASI has decided to recover the lost heritage. The action follows a Punjab and Haryana high court directive asking ASI to clear all sites of historical importance in the region by September 30 next year.

LEON, SPAIN -- A group of archaeologists has found in the northern Spanish region of Leon a ceramic lamp dating from the beginning of the 1st century that shows a representation of the gynecological exam performed on a sick woman.Archaeology professor at Madrid's Universidad Complutense Angel Morillo, told Efe that this is a "unique find without parallel in the Roman world."

Analysis of DNA obtained from Neanderthal remains has revealed key differences from modern humans that suggest their bodies produced excess heat.While in the cold climate of an ice age this would have provided the species with an advantage, as the earth warmed they would have been less able to cope. Ultimately this would have caused their extinction around 24,000 years ago.Scientists at Newcastle University have put forward the theory after examining a particular form of genetic material which was obtained from the fossilised bones of Neanderthals.By comparing it with that found in modern humans, they discovered that Neanderthals had key differences in the sections responsible for producing energy in all living cells.

Uncovered are the first traces of the old Macedonian language in the country, says "Dr. Dushko Aleksovski, paleolinguistics professor and honorary president of the World Rock Art Academy."This is a very rare artifact, the name of the Goddess Vesta is written on it. However, the first written name is Bsefa, which later became Vesta. This is the oldest artifact written in the old Macedonian language discovered on our territory." says Dr. Aleksovski.

A 3rd to 2nd century BC Celtic village was discovered four miles east of Krakow. Archaeologists from the Krakow Highway Exploration Team (Krakowski Zespol do Badan Autostrad) had been exploring it during preparatory archaeological works done on the future A4 highway premises.The archaeologists managed to explore almost the entire area of the village, which is unique in Poland. They found treasured coins, jewellery and everyday articles, thanks to which they will be able to reconstruct the life and fate of the Celts in the Malopolska district and make valuable scientific discoveries.

EGYPTIAN archaeologists were in high spirits this week as a greywacke head of the 18th Dynasty King Amenhotep III was returned to Egypt after two decades of being shunted back and forth between Switzerland, Britain and the US, reports Nevine El-Aref.The distinctive features, with full cheeks, wide, raised and slightly arched eyebrows above elongated but sharply edged narrow eyes, are a supreme example of the sculptural style that dominated King Amenhotep III's reign. Originally part of a larger statue of Amenhotep III, the head is thought to have been made in the studios located within the Ptah Temple enclosure at Memphis, near the Saqqara necropolis

In a major breakthrough, Spanish scientists have discovered the blood group and two other genes of the early humans who lived 43,000 ago.After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk.The investigating team from Spain's government scientific institute, CSIC, used the very latest forensic techniques to remove the bones for analysis to prevent them getting contaminated with modern DNA.

More than a dozen skeletons thought to be thousands of years old, have been found by Oxford archaeologists working at an ancient burial site in Dorset.Excavations are taking place at the site in Weymouth before builders move in to build an access road to the Olympic sailing centre for 2012.Archaeologist David Score said they had catalogued finds from almost every period of human life.He said it "really added to knowledge of the Bronze and Neolithic eras".

According to a new doctoral dissertation at Stockholm University in Sweden, based on analyses of deposits of pollen grains, it is possible that all of Sweden was virtually free of ice for long periods during the latest ice age. The findings show that the glaciation might have started some 20,000 later than was previously assumed.

An ancient mariner who lived and died 10,000 years ago on an island west of Ketchikan probably doesn't have any close relatives left in Alaska.But some of them migrated south and their descendents can be found today in coastal Native American populations in California, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina.That's some of what scientists learned this summer by examining the DNA of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians in Southeast Alaska.

About a fifth of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) has disappeared in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, an archaeologist said on Tuesday.The vanished parts were 157.515 km long, said Tala, head of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology.

Long before early humans in North America grew corn and beans, they were harvesting and cooking the bulbs of lilies, wild onions and other plants, roasting them for days over hot rocks, according to a Texas archaeologist.The evidence for this practice has long been known of in fire-cracked rock piles found throughout the continent, but archaeologists have tended to ignore it "because a new pyramid or a Clovis arrow point is much sexier," said archaeologist Alston V. Thoms of Texas A&M University.

FORT MOUNTAIN STATE PARK, Ga. -- The remains of the 855-foot stone wall that gives Fort Mountain its name wind like a snake around the northeast Georgia park, and its very presence begs a question: Who put them there?A Cherokee legend attributes the wall to a mysterious band of "moon-eyed people" led by a Welsh prince named Madoc who appeared in the area more than 300 years before Columbus sailed to America.