Newsdesk Archive

The fossilised skull of a big cat unearthed in north-west China has been identified as the most primitive cheetah ever found. The skull, which is between 2.16m and 2.55m years old, is superbly preserved and its location has cast doubt on ideas that cheetahs evolved in the Americas.One theory is that modern cheetahs shared a common ancestor with pumas in the Americas, but the fossil record of the puma goes back only around 400,000 years in the US. Because the current find is so much older, it is strong evidence for an evolutionary origin for cheetahs in Asia.

Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team.

Residents are concerned about the long-term health effects of last week's coal ash spill, one of the worst in U.S. history. Relations with a Depression-era federal utility are damaged, too.Reporting from Roane County, Tenn. -- The gunk on the water had thinned to a gray scrim in front of Mike Thomas' riverfront home -- a small sign of progress one week after one of the worst coal ash spills in American history.

More than 250 tremors have been recorded since Friday including nine greater than magnitude 3.0 on the Richter scale, according to the University of Utah. The largest, a magnitude 3.9, struck on Saturday and the area was shaken by a 3.3 tremor just after midday on Monday.While earthquakes are common in the giant park, which covers parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana and experiences about 1,000 to 2,000 tremors a year, the intense burst of seismic activity lasting several days has been described as unusual.

Frank Dörnenburg, author of "Pyramidengeheimnisse" will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout January to discuss his latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

US aerospace'n'killware goliath Northrop Grumman yesterday took the wraps off one of the most advanced robot aircraft in the world, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS). The X-47B is intended to operate from the flight deck of US Navy aircraft carriers, carrying out entire missions including air-to-air refuelling without pilot input.

The U.S. Army says it will honor the "heroism and sacrifice" of 350 U.S. soldiers who were held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.The decision by the Army effectively reverses decades of silence about what the soldiers endured in the final months of the war in 1945 at Berga an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald where soldiers were beaten, starved, killed and forced to work in tunnels to hide German equipment.

Forty years ago this week, three men in a tiny spacecraft slipped their earthly bonds and traveled where no one else had before, circling the moon 10 times and bringing back an iconic image of a blue-and-white Earth in the distance, solitary but bound as one against the black vastness beyond.The voyage of Apollo 8 from December 21-27, 1968, marked humans' first venture to another heavenly body.

We are told that driving alone in our cars is a waste of our dwindling fuel supplies.But scientists now claim they have developed a way to use the movement of cars along a street to generate electricity.And, to prove it, they will be opening the world's first road of its kind next month.The scientists in Israel say that cars travelling along a mile length of asphalt could generate more than 640 kilowatts - enough power to run 12 small cars.

Plans to test a super-efficient plasma space drive aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been confirmed. The Ad Astra Rocket Company, which is developing the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), has announced the signing of an agreement for the tests with NASA.The deal was inked on December 8 by Ad Astra chief and former astronaut Dr Franklin Chang Díaz, and for NASA by space-ops honcho William Gerstenmaier.

A mysterious form of energy that is speeding the universe's expansion is now showing itself as a cosmic craftsman of sorts.Astronomers have discovered that the repulsive force known as dark energy sets limits on how large clusters of galaxies can grow.The new results, based on observations from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Telescope, provide a long-sought confirmation of dark energy's influence on the cosmos. That influence was first discovered serendipitously in the 1990s by astrophysicists studying the expansion rate of the universe. They found the universe's expansion rate was not slowing down as expected, but speeding up.

Working on a shoestring budget, researchers have found no reason why a low-cost approach to nuclear fusion won't work.President-elect Barack Obama's pick for energy secretary has said he's aware of the approach, known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion or Polywell fusion - and although it's probably not on his radar screen right now, it just might show up in the future.

Archaeologists are stumped after finding a 100-year-old Swiss watch in an ancient tomb that was sealed more than 400 years ago.They believed they were the first to visit the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral.But inside they uncovered a miniature watch in the shape of a ring marked 'Swiss' that is thought to be just a century old.

Contrary to popular belief, poinsettias are not toxic to people or animals, suicides do not increase over the Christmas holidays, and sugar does not make kids hyperactive. Also, Wales winning the rugby grand slam does not influence the death of popes, and douching with Coca-Cola is not an effective contraceptive method.

You are dying. Twenty seconds ago your heart and breathing stopped and your pupils became fixed and dilated. Your brain cells are in a state of panic, trying every trick they know to get hold of oxygen and glucose. An electroencephalogram (EEG) would show no electrical activity in your cortex, the thin outer layer of your brain. You have flatlined.

If you've outgrown sending letters to the North Pole, NASA has an even more remote destination for you: the International Space Station.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has set up a Web site to send postcards to the five crew members currently aboard the station. The Expedition 18 crew includes three from America, one from Russia and one from Japan.

PARIS: The mystery is set in the Louvre and the clues are hidden behind a 16th-century masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Remind you of anything?Lovers of Dan Brown novels will be salivating at the discovery of three previously unknown drawings on the back of one of Leonardo's major works. A curator spotted the sketches on the back of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne when it was taken down in September for restoration.

Much has been made of Barack Obama's interest in "Team of Rivals," Doris Kearns Goodwin's best-selling book on President Lincoln and his cabinet.But the president-elect may want to put a new Lincoln book on his nightstand, "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" (Penguin).

The SMS-style communications are transmitted in the hope that alien life forms will intercept them and discover Earth.The messages are sent through a website originally created to send romantic declarations and expressions of love into the cosmos.

The streets of south London and a famous corner of Berkshire may hold little interest for treasure-hunters of the fedora-wearing, whip-cracking school, but they are starting to attract a new breed of archaeologists who enjoy plunging their trowels into the very recent past.Homegrown excavators have started to chronicle modern protest structures while they are still warm, from eco-warriors' treehouses to crisp packets buried at the Greenham Common peace camp.

Pope Benedict XVI is marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope.Benedict said Sunday he wanted to salute all who are marking the 2009 anniversary and UNESCO's World Year of Astronomy.

At this time of the year, the pressure to shop, buy and wrap is overwhelming. And so we drag ourselves to the mall, a hopefully one-stop shopping place where any number of stores can accommodate any holiday shopping list. Checking that twice, we schlep up and down until our bags are full and our minds are empty.And every year, it seems like the list grows longer, the schlep more tedious, and the time deciding on gifts endless. Eventually we sit down, have a holiday drink and thank our lucky stars for the mall, because without this modern market place, we'd be also be driving all over town and screaming.

LIMA (Reuters) - Researchers digging at the Cerro Patapo archeological site in northern Peru have discovered the ruins of an entire city, which may provide the "missing link" between two ancient cultures, investigators said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi soldiers have seized 228 apparently stolen antiquities and arrested seven members of a gang suspected of trafficking in such items, a security official in Basra said Tuesday.

We're all familiar with the concept of modern technology having ancient Chinese analogues. But a 2002 discovery in remote Qinghai province is anachronistic enough to constitute an OOPart. Out-of-place-artifacts are so unusual, or found in such improbable contexts, that mainstream science has no plausible explanation for them.The crystal skulls of Mexico referenced in the latest Indiana Jones movie, the iron pillar of Delhi, and the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism are examples of OOPart yet to be explained. Like these, the pipes of Qinghai's Mount Baigong suggest a level of technology simply inconceivable for the apparent era of their manufacture. Those open-minded enough to think "extraterrestrial" when searching for a theory, while often dismissed out-of-hand, have like-minded souls in some of the Chinese scientists investigating.

Peering at structures only atoms across, researchers have identified the clockwork that drives a powerful virus nanomotor. Because of the motor's strength--to scale, twice that of an automobile--the new findings could inspire engineers designing sophisticated nanomachines. In addition, because a number of virus types may possess a similar motor, including the virus that causes herpes, the results may also assist pharmaceutical companies developing methods to sabotage virus machinery.

In a recently conducted study, a multidisciplinary French-American research team with expertise in archaeology, past climates, and ecology reported that Neanderthal extinction was principally a result of competition with Cro-Magnon populations, rather than the consequences of climate change.

UC Davis Cancer Center researchers report today the discovery of a molecule that targets glioblastoma, a highly deadly form of cancer. The finding, which is published in the January 2009 issue of the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, provides hope for effectively treating an incurable cancer.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have identified a common gene variant that appears to influence people's risk of developing high blood pressure, according to the results of a study being published online Dec. 29, 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Just a few sessions of heavy drinking can damage someone's ability to pay attention, remember things and make good judgments, research shows.Binge drinkers are known to be at increased risk of accidents, violence and engaging in unprotected sex. But the study is the first to identify brain damage as a danger of consuming more alcohol than official safe limits.

The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.In a presentation today to the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans..

Imagine having GeneVision: the uncanny ability to view the activity of any chosen gene in real time through a specially modified camera.With GeneVision, military commanders could compare gene expression in victorious and defeated troops. Retailers could track genes related to craving as shoppers moved about a store. "The Bachelor" would enjoy yet one more secret advantage over his love-struck dates.

Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded in reversing brain birth defects in animal models, using stem cells to replace defective brain cells.The work of Prof. Joseph Yanai and his associates at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School was presented at the Tel Aviv Stem Cells Conference last spring and is expected to be presented and published nest year at the seventh annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Barcelona, Spain.

The largest garbage dump in the world is roughly twice the size of the continental U.S.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a continent-sized constellation of discarded shoes, bottles, bags, pacifiers, plastic wrappers, toothbrushes and every other type of trash imaginable, floating in the Pacific Ocean about halfway between Hawaii and San Francisco. The ocean's swirling currents have pushed the piles of debris, accumulated detritus of sea vessels and decades of under-the-radar ocean dumping, together in loose configurations just below the water's surface.

Space Images of a spectacular intergalactic collision between galaxy clusters have provided new evidence for the existence of dark matter, which scientists believe forms an invisible framework for the Universe.The pink in the picture above indicates ordinary matter - mostly hot gas - while the blue area is believed to indicate the presence of dark matter. As the two clusters merged at millions of miles per hour, the hot gas collided and slowed down, while the dark matter did not, explaining the wider spread of blue.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Marta Karouw was one of about 2,000 Indonesians who gathered in the city of Manado, on the northern tip of Indonesia's Sulawesi island, on Saturday morning to practice and prepare for the unthinkable -- a huge tsunami.The drill comes one day after the fourth anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that smashed coastal villages in parts of Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, killing about 230,000 people.

Daffodills at Christmas and snow in October were just some of the unusual weather patterns noticed by the National Trust in the last year as climate change begins to takes its toll on the British landscape.

A proposed Internet filter dubbed the "Great Aussie Firewall" is promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries.Consumers, civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and politicians from opposition parties are among the critics of a mandatory Internet filter that would block at least 1,300 Web sites prohibited by the government - mostly child pornography, excessive violence, instructions in crime or drug use and advocacy of terrorism.

A research group lead by scientists at the University of Warwick has discovered the trigger that pulls together X chromosomes in female cells at a crucial stage of embryo development. Their discovery could also provide new insights into how other similar chromosomes spontaneously recognize each other and are bound together at key parts of analogous cell processes. This is an important mechanism as the binding togetgher of too many of too few of a particular chromosome can cause a number of medical conditions such as Down's Syndrome or Turner's Syndrome.

A NASA robot tested last winter in an icy Wisconsin lake will complete a monthlong underwater mission in Antarctica on Thursday, having successfully explored dark, deep waters frozen off from the outside world tens of thousands of years ago.Managed by a team from Chicago and Texas, the robot has hit its marks while patrolling Lake Bonney, a body of water locked under 15 feet of ice. The Antarctic lake is the nearest thing on Earth to outer space, and scientists hope lessons learned there will inform a future hunt for life in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's frozen moon Europa.

A vampire moth, a gremlin-like primate, and an "alien" squid were among the discoveries that haunted the animal kingdom in the most read stories about creatures covered by National Geographic News in 200810. Wildlife Park Official Arrested in Gorilla KillingsIn March Congolese authorities arrested a senior park official in connection with the 2007 execution-style killings of several endangered mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park.

In the Bible, a celestial beacon now known as the Star of Bethlehem led the Magi, or wise men, to Jesus's manger.Astronomers have been debating for centuries whether the star existed and, if so, what it might have been. Comets, meteor showers, and supernovae have all been proposed, but in recent years two main theories have come to dominate the discussion.

COWS, sheep and goats may seem like innocent victims of humanity's appetite for meat, but when it comes to climate change they have a dark secret. Forget cars, planes or even power stations, some of the world's worst greenhouse gas emitters wander idly across rolling pastures chewing the cud, oblivious to the fact that their continuous belching (and to a lesser degree, farting) is warming the planet.

If successful scientific theories can be thought of as cures for stubborn problems, quantum physics was the wonder drug of the 20th century. It successfully explained phenomena such as radioactivity and antimatter, and no other theory can match its description of how light and particles behave on small scales.The quantum world is now one of the most closely scrutinised areas of science, and throughout 2008 new discoveries have poured in.

The deep sea is full of surprises, and the four-eyed spookfish is up there with the best of them. It is the first vertebrate found with eyes that use mirrors, rather than a lens, to focus light.In clear water, sunlight can penetrate to a depth of 1000 metres, so some deep-sea fish have developed tubular, upward-looking eyes. "It is like having a telescope on your head that points towards the surface," says Ron Douglas from City University London.

Ethiopians are rushing to get their hands on free energy-saving light bulbs which are being handed out by a utility to stop power cuts.Four million low-energy light bulbs are being given away in exchange for old-style incandescent ones by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation.Nearly all Ethiopia's electricity comes from hydro-power. But without rain the dams cannot fill and the lights go out.

Experiments in rats may have revealed why some painkilling drugs are less effective in women compared with men.US researchers found brain differences affecting the potency of opioids such as morphine.The Journal of Neuroscience study also found drug effectiveness varied during the rats' menstrual cycles.Another expert said it showed the growing importance of tailoring pain relief to match the individual needs of the patient.

#1.) The Real Da Vinci CodeThis was not a year for shy science. Between a plucky space probe digging for ice on Mars, colossal creatures plumbed from the Antarctic deep, and the biggest science experiment in history, the spotlight had a parade of competition for its attention. As 2008 comes to a close, we share 10 stories that may not have topped the nightly news, but nevertheless reveal the horizons of human curiosity, from the tiniest of creatures to the vastness of space.

Another reason to celebrate under the mistletoe this holiday season is that researchers have just determined a medicine made out of fermented mistletoe may prolong the lives of cancer patients.The plant is Viscum album, the most common holiday mistletoe of Europe, and the species that first inspired the tradition of couples sharing a kiss under its evergreen leaves and waxy berries.

New studies on peppermint, the key flavoring in traditional candy canes, reveal the herb may do everything from kill germs to treat digestive troubles.Some researchers now advise consumers to eat a tablespoon or more of fresh peppermint, and other green herbs, daily.

Jane Goodall Institute staff members are mourning the death of Gregoire, Africa's oldest known chimpanzee. Gregoire, who was 66 years old, was an international symbol for the conservation of all animals, particularly those which suffered human-inflicted abuse prior to their rescue.On Dec. 17, Gregoire passed away peacefully in his sleep at JGI's Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center in the Republic of Congo. He died next to a female chimpanzee named Clara, from whom he had been inseparable for many years.

Life on Earth went from single microscopic cells to blue whales and giant sequoias in 3.5 billion years in two distinct bursts tied to the planet's geological evolution, according to a new study.The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, goes against the common hypothesis that life slowly evolved from a single-celled organism to complex multi-celled organisms.

The European Union's huge digital library Europeana, which crashed last month just hours after its launch, is back online.The website's server capacity has been quadrupled to cope with demand, European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told reporters.But the homepage - at www.europeana.eu - warns that "the user experience may not be optimal in this test phase".The site gives multilingual access to cultural collections across the EU.

Physically "acting out" dreams when asleep could be an early warning sign of dementia or Parkinson's disease.Canadian researchers studied 93 people with "REM sleep behaviour disorder", which can involve punching or kicking out while dreaming.The Neurology study found more than a quarter were diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition over the next five years.UK experts said the research could help doctors predict the condition.

He probably hasn't dated in two decades, but the survival of a species may depend on whether Tam can get lucky soon.A male rhinoceros recently rescued on the edge of Borneo's rain forest is expected to become the first participant of a Malaysian breeding program for his critically endangered ilk, a wildlife expert said Wednesday.The roughly 20-year-old Borneo Sumatran rhino, nicknamed "Tam," was found wandering in an oil palm plantation in August with an infected leg likely caused by a poacher trap.

The Asia-Pacific faces an era of large-scale natural disasters which could kill up to one million people at a time, with Indonesia, the Philippines and China most at risk, according to an Australian report.The Sydney Morning Herald cited a scientific report which found that the impact of natural events such as earthquakes and tsunamis would in coming years be amplified by rising populations and climate change.The paper said the report, by government body Geoscience Australia, had prompted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to create a joint disaster training and research centre.

The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering - a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

An Australian man has been arrested at Cairo airport after security staff found ancient Egyptian animal mummies in his luggage, reports say.An airport official said the mummies of a cat and an ibis, a long-beaked bird, dated back to 300 BC.He said another 19 figurines of ancient Egyptian gods were also found in the passenger's bags.The man has been charged with smuggling antiquities, which can carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Wishing you all a merry Christmas from the team at GrahamHancock.com. May your holidays be filled with love, light, joy and happiness.

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain

For eight years, a small Fitchburg, Wis., company has been working to create inexpensive portable sensors that detect deadly gases, pesticide exposure, even rotting fish and meat. The challenge now is to perfect a product that companies and consumers want to buy.

A new wireless technology called femtocells could finally mean the end of crummy cell phone coverage in your home or office. A femtocell is a toaster-size plastic box that plugs into a regular broadband Internet connection.Once plugged in, the device emits a wireless cellular signal that's big enough to cover most houses.Think of it as a Wi-Fi hotspot for cell phones.

In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food.

In this ongoing quest, a group of Scripps Research Institute scientists, along with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) have borrowed from physics to deliver one of those research rarities -- an unmitigated success. The group has devised a computational method that, with remarkable accuracy, predicts how bacterial proteins fold and interact.

Just one extra hour of sleep a day appears to lower the risk of developing calcium deposits in the arteries, a precursor to heart disease, US researchers said on Tuesday. The finding adds to a growing list of health consequences - including weight gain, diabetes and high blood pressure - linked to getting too little sleep.

NASA, rejecting aerospace giants Lockheed and Boeing, awarded $3.5 billion in contracts to start-up companies on Tuesday to deliver cargo to the International Space Station after the space shuttles are retired.Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a Hawthorne, California-based company headed by PayPal founder Elon Musk, and Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp are due to start cargo shipments to and from the space station beginning in 2010.

For a species that went extinct more than 25,000 years ago, 2008 has been a hell of a year for Neanderthals. The ancient humans got their first complete mitochondrial genome sequence, their stone tools turned out every bit as efficient as ours, and we even heard them speak.Here are some of our favourite Neanderthal discoveries of 2008.

Fire-cracked rock piles found across North America received little scientific attention for decades, but two new studies reveal their importance as early Native American earth ovens. For thousands of years, they were used to cook a favorite food staple: smoky, sweet camas bulbs.Based on charred remains of plant material found at hot rock oven sites, cooked versions of this root vegetable -- somewhat like a cross between an onion and a potato -- is thought to have been the tortilla of the Stone Age.

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space."Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An ancient underground water basin the size of Libya holds the key to Australia avoiding a water crisis as climate change bites the drought-hit nation.Australia's Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world, covering 1.7 million sq kms (656,370 sq miles) and lying beneath one-fifth of Australia.The basin holds 65 million gigaliters of water, about 820 times the amount of surface water in Australia, and enough to cover the Earth's land mass under half a meter of water, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee.

Bonnie's whistling isn't so surprising to her caregivers. The 140-pound (63.5-kilometer) orangutan at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., has been whistling for about two decades.Now a new study suggests that the sounds she makes could hold clues about the origins of human language.

All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

Scientists have discovered that a blind person can navigate through a maze of obstacles unaided using the power of sense alone.

Ancient treasures stolen from museums in the anarchic aftermath of the United States-led invasion of Iraq five years ago have been found in Basra, in one of the biggest recoveries of the loot, The Independent can reveal.The priceless artefacts, about 230 of them, were saved as they were about to be smuggled abroad in a "sting" operation organised by investigators. Seven members of the gang, which is said to have specialised in trafficking the country's stolen antiquities, have been arrested and are being questioned. They are also suspected of being involved in the systematic stripping of archaeological sites.

Volumetric 3D displays have been around for nearly a century, but they face several challenges that have prevented their use in widespread applications. Recently, a team of researchers from the UK and the US have made some significant improvements that may pave the way toward commercializing volumetric displays for 3D viewing.

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.Earth's creatures come in all sizes, yet they (and we) all sprang from the same single-celled organisms that first populated the planet. So how on Earth did life go from bacteria to the blue whale?

A water drop placed on a soap film that vibrates up and down may bounce as if on a trampoline -- but it's much more than that, according to MIT mathematicians who say the "fluid trampoline" is the simplest fluid example of chaos theory ever explored.MIT math professor John Bush and visiting student Tristan Gilet built the system in the Applied Math Laboratory, then demonstrated that the drop bouncing may be accurately described with a single simple equation. They report their findings in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.

Savour the egg-nog while you can - a lethal disease is wiping out vanilla plantations in Madagascar, the world's major producer of the spice.Last week Simeon Rakotomamonjy and his team at the National Center for Research Applied to Rural Development in Antananarivo reported that an unknown fungus has struck 80 per cent of plantations in two of the country's main growing areas.

Roving bands of men might have waged history's first traceable war against the ancestors of all Europeans, Asians and other non-Africans, some 60,000 years ago.A new analysis of DNA variations in contemporary humans indicates that non-Africans descend from a population that contained far more males than females.

HOW does a snowflake form? A new generation of ice cloud chambers is set to give us the first detailed insightinto this delicate process and could even help weather forecasters better predict when snow is likely to fall.Next year, Paul Connolly from the University of Manchester, UK, will study ice crystal aggregation in the Manchester Ice Cloud Chamber. This giant three-storey stainless steel cylinder can be cooled to temperatures as low as -50 °C to simulate the conditions that produce snow. Ice crystals form when a burst of compressed air enters the tank. The air expands and cools, triggering water vapour in the chamber to freeze. As the ice crystals drift down the chamber they merge to create snowflakes.

Eyewitnesses told Sky News that up to 70 bright circular objects could be seen near Halesowen.Stunned residents watched in disbelief, convinced they were viewing an extra-terrestrial spectacle.Each object was encircled with lights and had lights in the middle, according to witness Steven Randall who lives in Halesowen with is wife and three children.

Lebanese are lobbying for a majestic cave complex to be named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World in an online competition that has drawn natural attractions from across the globe.The Jeita Grotto, in a river valley near the capital Beirut, is currently ranked 24th out of 77 on the list of nominations compiled by contest organisers "New 7 Wonders of Nature".

A woman from London will give birth next week to the first British baby screened to be free of an altered gene which causes breast cancer.Women in three generations of her husband's family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s.Without the embryo screening, any daughter born would have a 50-80% chance of experiencing breast cancer.But one expert warned the technique would not be suitable for all couples with this disease in their family.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA has been pummelled by non-stop tidal waves and unusually high tides that have forced 75,000 people from their homes this month, the United Nations says.

The ruins of an entire city have been discovered in northern Peru, researchers say.Archaeologists say the find could provide the missing link between the ancient cultures of the Wari people and the earlier Moche civilisation.The site, near the Pacific coastal city of Chiclayo, probably dates to the Wari culture which ruled the Andes of modern Peru between the 7th and 12th Century.The once buried city showed evidence of human sacrifice.

Ron Ace says that his breakthrough moments have come at unexpected times - while he lay in bed, eased his aging Cadillac across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge or steered a tractor around his rustic, five-acre property.In the seclusion of his Maryland home, Ace has spent three years glued to the Internet, studying the Earth's climate cycles and careening from one epiphany to another - a 69-year-old loner with the moxie to try to solve one of the greatest threats to mankind.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has given the green light for the world's first commercial spaceport, New Mexico authorities said Thursday.The FAA granted Spaceport America a license for vertical and horizontal space launches following an environmental impact study, according to the New Mexico Space Authority (NMSA)."These two governmental approvals are the next steps along the road to a fully operational commercial spaceport," said NMSA Executive Director Steven Landeene.

Earth's location in the Universe is utterly unremarkable, despite recent theories that propose toppling a foundation of modern cosmology, according to a team of University of British Columbia researchers.Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus's 1543 book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, moved Earth from being the centre of the Universe to just another planet orbiting the Sun. Since then, astronomers have extended the idea and formed the Copernican Principle, which says that our place in the Universe as a whole is completely ordinary. Although the Copernican Principle has become a pillar of modern cosmology, finding conclusive evidence that our neighbourhood of the Universe really isn't special has proven difficult.

The Head of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh who died in 1375BC, was stolen 18 years ago by a British smuggler.Jonathan Tokeley-Parry disguised the stone head as a souvenir, coating it in plastic and painting it black to make it appear to be a tacky copy of a historical artefact.The antiques restorer, renowned in the art world for his skill, later removed the plastic with acetone.Now, more than 10 years after Tokeley-Parry was jailed for his activities, the head is be returned to Egypt at a ceremony at the country's London embassy.

Exposed by erosion at the edge of a crumbling bluff, the pit discovered beneath 2 feet of sandy dirt at first appeared to be a grave just long and deep enough to bury a human body.An excavation by archaeologists on Ossabaw Island revealed something more puzzling - just a few small bones, apparently from fingers or toes, mixed with charcoal, bits of burned logs and pottery shards more than 1,000 to 3,000 years old.The find has led researchers to suspect that American Indians used the ancient pit to burn bodies of the dead, making it a rare example of cremation among the early native inhabitants of the southeastern U.S.

The world's first cargo ship partly propelled by solar power took to the seas on Friday in Japan, aiming to cut fuel costs and carbon emissions when automakers export their products.Auriga Leader, a freighter developed by shipping line Nippon Yusen K.K. and oil distributor Nippon Oil Corp., took off from a shipyard in the western city of Kobe, officials of the two firms said.The huge freighter capable of carrying 6,400 automobiles is equipped with 328 solar panels at a cost of 150 million yen (1.68 million dollars), the officials said.

The beak of a giant flying reptile and the leg of a giant long-necked plant eating dinosaur were found in Morocco.The British and Irish scientists also discovered rare dinosaur footprints and other fossils including the remains of 18m long crocodiles and predatory fish.At the time the creatures lived, the Sahara was covered in lush vegetation, waterways and lakes.

NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics."At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."

It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on the planet had been snuffed out.Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray.

WASHINGTON - A peculiar amphibian that was clad in bony armor prowled warm lakes 210 million years ago, catching fish and other tasty snacks with one of the most unusual bites in the history of life on Earth.The creature called Gerrothorax pulcherrimus, which lived alongside some of the early dinosaurs, opened its mouth not by dropping its lower jaw, as other vertebrate animals do.

Archaeology magazine's top 10 finds of 2008 include Maya paint and ancient poop. And there are bonus finds as well, including a monumental discovery that the discoverers have been trying to keep under wraps.Most of these revelations haven't gotten the kind of hype that we saw this year for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

At least 12 well conducted studies have examined how children react to diets with varying levels of sugar and none of them found a link with hyperactive behaviour, two professors of paediatrics have written in the British Medical Journal.Even children who were considered 'sensitive' to sugar and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder did not behave differently when on high sugar or sugar free diets.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Surgeons have replaced 80 percent of a woman's face, transplanting bone, teeth, muscle and nerve in the first such operation in the United States.They said the woman suffered severe trauma that cost her an eye, much of her nose and her upper jaw and left her unable to breathe, smell, taste or smile properly.

Regulars of the Science Weekly podcast will remember our interview with Jo Marchant, the author of Decoding the Heavens. The book tells the story of the Antikythera mechanism, a mysterious clockwork object made up of numerous meshed cogs that was discovered more than a century ago among the cargo of a Greek shipwreck.The mystery of how the Greeks had made a machine that appeared to be 1800 years ahead of its time and why that knowledge was seemingly lost is fascinating, but Marchant's story is really about the scientists and engineers who have fallen under the spell of the Antikythera mechanism over the last century. It is a gripping tale of scientific obsession, rivalry and skulduggery.

Plummeting gasoline and diesel prices have given consumers relief at the pump. But oil pessimists believe the current slump in demand will pass. And when it does, the world will be in the same fix it was before the global recession. The era of easy oil is behind us. According to those who believe in what's called "peak oil theory," world oil production has already peaked, or flattened, and in the foreseeable future, the declining resource will inevitably change the way we live.