Newsdesk Archive

From the perspective of an extraterrestrial, I wonder if there would be much difference between a human and a deer.You might think that's an odd question, but on Wednesday, as I stood in an open plain here, at around 5,000 feet, with Mount Shasta visible far off to the north, a stunning blue sky, I watched a deer poking around at the base of what on its own would be an odd piece of astronomy equipment.In fact, though, the 20-foot-diameter antenna the deer was investigating was just one of 42 identical units that make up the Allen Telescope Array, currently the world's first large-scale telescope meant for the full-time use of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project.

MARCELLUS and his men blockaded Syracuse, in Sicily, for two years. The Roman general expected to conquer the Greek city state easily, but the ingenious siege towers and catapults designed by Archimedes helped to keep his troops at bay.Then, in 212 BC, the Syracusans neglected their defences during a festival to the goddess Artemis, and the Romans finally breached the city walls. Marcellus wanted Archimedes alive, but it wasn't to be. According to ancient historians, Archimedes was killed in the chaos; by one account a soldier ran him through with a sword as he was in the middle of a mathematical proof.

Archaeological researchers at the University of Groningen have discovered that the aurochs, the predecessor of our present-day cow, lived in the Netherlands for longer than originally assumed. Remains of bones recently retrieved from a horn core found in Holwerd (Friesland, Netherlands), show that the aurochs became extinct in around AD 600 and not in the fourth century.

Chinese archaeologists have reached a consensus that the master of a tomb dating back 2,400 years, was a king of the State of Chu in the Warring States Period (475 to 221 BC)."The tomb is the largest and best preserved found to date from the State of Chu in the Warring States Period," Liu Binhui, an expert in Chu culture with the Hunan provincial museum, who had carried out research in Jingzhou for more than 20 years before transferring to Hunan, said.

An archeological team, under the direction of Egypt's well-known Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, has begun uncovering rubble under which the largest known statue of Pharaoh Ramses II is buried in the southern Egyptian town of Sohag.The statue, which workers discovered more than 15 years ago, 476 kilometers miles south of Cairo, is finally being uncovered, according to Antiquities Chief Zahi Hawass.

Locked under ice, the hidden oceans of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, may be tumultuous rather than placid, a new study says.Such oceanic unrest translates into a higher potential for life.Robert Tyler, an oceanographer from the University of Washington, has used computer simulations to show that Jupiter's effects on its moon Europa may work differently than scientists once thought

Large and distant ocean worlds could provide a last refuge for life around Sun-like stars, long after the heat of the stars' red giant phase sterilises closer-in, Earth-like planets, new calculations suggest.Stars similar in mass to the Sun swell to become red giants at the end of their lives, engulfing their inner planets and roasting slightly more distant ones. The Sun itself is scheduled to enter this phase around 5 billion years from now, which should bake to death any remaining life here even before the planet is swallowed up altogether.

A device that can hold individual cells in an electric force field could lead to improvements in drug trials or even biofuel production, say German biochemists. For the first time, researchers will be able to clearly assess the individual cell response to a single variable, while other conditions are kept stable.In the early stages of drug development, new compounds are tested on cell cultures, with the cells' responses closely monitored.

Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo is set to take is maiden flight in the next two weeks. The flight will be the first of dozens planned for the high-altitude craft, which could become the first privately-owned vehicle to carry tourists to the edge of space.The high-altitude plane is designed to loft an eight-passenger craft called SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometres.

IF YOU want to send a robot to Mars, two space agencies are better than one. That's what NASA and the European Space Agency have decided - so long as US law doesn't block the cooperation.NASA's science chief Ed Weiler said last week that the agency had agreed with ESA in principle to join forces in sending robotic spacecraft to Mars. If the plan goes forward, both agencies could fund missions like ESA's ExoMars rover, to launch in 2016, and a tentative plan to bring a Martian sample back to Earth in the 2020s. Weiler was speaking at a briefing about a delay for NASA's costly Mars Science Laboratory rover.

BEFORE the attacks in Mumbai last month, it was India's historic first mission to the moon that was making headlines. Chandrayaan-1 entered lunar orbit on 12 November and had begun beaming back images of the surface. Indians were transfixed, and the rest of the world duly impressed.Just over a week later, the attacks justifiably garnered all the attention. A tiny probe 400,000 kilometres away no longer seemed important. "I wonder if it has already faded from everyone's memory," mused astronomer Subramaniam Ananthakrishnan, former director of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune.

Half of the globe has warmed at least one half of one degree Fahrenheit (0.3 C) in the past 30 years, while half of that -- a full quarter of the globe -- warmed at least one full degree Fahrenheit (0.6 C), according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.Globally, Earth's atmosphere warmed an average of about 0.4 C (or about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) in 30 years, according to data collected by sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount.

The James Webb Space Telescope, targeted for launch in 2013, is already taking an incredible journey right here on Earth. It's zigzagging up, down, and across the US to be "spit and polished" to perfection for its lofty space mission.

A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron.

A team of astronomers led by John Johnson of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy has used a new technique to measure the precise size of a planet around a distant star. They used a camera so sensitive that it could detect the passage of a moth in front of a lit window from a distance of 1,000 miles.

Some marine bacteria produce hydrogen sulphide, which is toxic to animals. Scientists have now discovered that bacteria also protect marine animals from this toxic gas. A bacterial bloom detoxified a vast expanse of hydrogen sulphide-containing water off the coast of Namibia, before it could unfold its full deadly impact.Hydrogen sulphide (H2S) is well known for its characteristic smell of rotten eggs. But hydrogen sulphide is not only smelly, it is also highly toxic. Humans can die within minutes when exposed to high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide. This foul-smelling gas threatens coastal fisheries, which account for 90 percent of global fish-catch. Eutrophication of coastal waters results in the episodic development of sulphidic water masses, with disastrous consequences for coastal ecosystems.

Authorities say a hoard of 4,500-year-old copper weapons recovered off a northern beach is the largest of its kind ever found in Greece.A Culture Ministry statement says the discovery includes at least 110 ax and hammer heads, but several more should be extracted from compacted masses of corroded metal.

Italian researchers have reconstructed the last hours in Pompeii of a dozen people who managed to survive Mount Vesuvius' devastating eruption for more than 19 hours.Volcanologist Claudio Scarpati, and colleagues Giuseppe Luongo and Annamaria Perrotta of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, analyzed layers of volcanic deposits in a Pompeian house and examined 13 skeletons found there on a carpet of pumice to reconstruct the events that occurred when the eruption was in progress. The team reported their findings at a recent international conference on ancient DNA in Naples.

They found that a bright star which appeared over Bethlehem 2,000 years ago pinpointed the date of Christ's birth as June 17 rather than December 25.The researchers claim the 'Christmas star' was most likely a magnificent conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter, which were so close together they would have shone unusually brightly as a single "beacon of light" which appeared suddenly.If the team is correct, it would mean Jesus was a Gemini, not a Capricorn as previously believed

A LEADING scientist has warned a new species of "humanzee," created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting.In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.

The world's population will use less oil this year than it did last year, according to a new forecast from highly-regarded International Energy Agency.Global oil demand hasn't dropped since 1983 when the world's developed economies were struggling on the tail end of a recession. This time around, it's not just the old, big economies that are struggling. China, which has experienced the greatest boom in history, appears to be in economic trouble.

Call it the justice instinct. When judging the guilt or innocence of alleged criminals, our brains seem to respond as if we were personally wronged, say researchers.Our sense of fairness in dealing with others directly could lay the biological foundation for legal systems built on the judgements of supposedly impartial jurors, the researchers hypothesise.

Salman Hameed teaches astronomy and religious studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has lectured in Pakistan on reconciling evolution with Islam.Hameed spoke with New Scientist about the rise of creationism in the Muslim world, what scientists can do to promote evolution there, and why he thinks Richard Dawkins and other atheists will push Muslims away from evolution.

ABHAY ASHTEKAR remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening?Ashtekar wanted to be sure of what he was seeing, so he asked his colleagues to sit on the result for six months before publishing it in 2006. And no wonder. The theory that the recycled universe was based on, called loop quantum cosmology (LQC), had managed to illuminate the very birth of the universe - something even Einstein's general theory of relativity fails to do.

Data and images from Mars Express suggest that several Light Toned Deposits, some of the least understood features on Mars, were formed when large amounts of groundwater burst on to the surface. Scientists propose that groundwater had a greater role in shaping the martian surface than previously believed, and may have sheltered primitive life forms as the planet started drying up.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed software that improves the accuracy of the tracking devices in its immersive, or virtual, research environment by at least 700 percent. The software can be used by scientists in other immersive environments with slight modifications for their individual laboratories. This advance is a step forward in transforming immersive technology that has traditionally been a qualitative tool into a scientific instrument with which precision measurements can be made.

Models of the universe that place us near the center of a large, sparse region don't jibe with astronomical observations. Cosmologists at the University of British Columbia reached the conclusion through a new analysis that reaffirms the presence of a perplexing dark energy

Funding of £100 million is being committed to tackling the role of cutting down forests in climate change, the Government has announced.Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said almost a fifth of emissions were caused by deforestation and changes to how land was used.Deforestation is a major source of emissions from developing countries.

A dying battery on a cell phone or iPod is usually a simple inconvenience, but it can potentially ruin lives. Research now shows that high-tech devices will be able to power themselves in the future by converting pressure waves into energy. No recharge needed.

Everything about Genetic Health's opulent Harley Street clinic says "money". As I sit nervously thumbing through copies of Harrods magazine in a comfortable armchair, smartly dressed secretaries in high-heels glide past, over the varnished wood floors.

Thanks to German astronomers, we now have the most accurate measurements yet of the giant black hole that sits at the centre of our galaxy.And what a beast it is: as wide as Earth's orbit around the sun and 4.3 million times more massive than our home star. Lucky, then, that it is 27,000 light years away.

Researchers have captured for the first time a geological event considered key in shaping the Earth's landscape.An international research team led by Eric Calais, a Purdue University professor of geophysics, was able to measure ground displacements as two tectonic plates in Africa moved apart and molten rock pushed its way toward the surface during the first so-called "dyking event" ever recorded within the planet's continental crust.The event left a wall of magma 6 miles long and 5 feet wide wedged between the two plates. A paper detailing the event will be published Wednesday (Dec. 11) in Nature.

Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America in the most serious commercial attempt yet to reverse global warming.Trials are to be started in Sussex and Belize early in the new year, backed with venture capital from Silicon Valley, on techniques to take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, where it should act as a powerful fertiliser.

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.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNN) -- More than 10,000 charred bone fragments were found buried at the site of a former Argentine government detention center, the first find of its kind at one of the secret centers, Argentine officials said.Searchers said they also found a wall with more than 200 bullet holes and an "important quantity" of spent ammunition shells on the ground nearby. In some cases, bullets were still lodged in the wall.The announcement was made Tuesday at a news conference by government officials and representatives of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, better known as EAAF, the initials of its name in Spanish.

Archaeologists have found the remains of what could be Britain's oldest surviving human brain.The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped.Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain.The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago

A careless touch could be all police or insurance companies need to determine not only your identity, but also your past drug use, if you've fired a gun or handled explosives, even specific medical conditions."A fingerprint is only good to identify a criminal if you already have their fingerprint on file," said David Russell, a professor at the University of East Anglia, who, along with Pompi Hazarika, helped developed the new technique, reported in the German journal, Angewandte Chemie. "This will give police new tools to help discover that identity."

A robot that can jump like a grasshopper and roll like a ball might be the next best thing for space exploration.The "Jollbot" is the first robot with the ability to leap over obstacles and roll over smoother terrain, said engineer Rhodri Armour and colleagues from the University of Bath's Center for Biomimetic & Natural Technologies in England. The machine, announced last week, is a desirable candidate for surface surveys of planets or moons, he said, because of these advantages:* The Jollbot's spherical build allows it to roll in any direction, giving it the maneuverability of wheels without the problem of overturning or getting stuck in potholes

Far removed from Tehran's bustling tin-roofed teashops and Isfahan's verdant pomegranate gardens, the deserts known as Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut meet at the city of Yazd, once the heart of the Persian Empire.

As Britain prepares to pull its troops out of Iraq, former BBC Baghdad correspondent Andrew North looks back to a previous military campaign and considers whether history is destined to repeat itself?

German astronomers say they have discovered conclusive proof of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy.The 16-year study involved tracking the movement of 28 stars at the center of the Milky Way using telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.Using the data collected, astronomers were able to calculate important properties about the black hole -- called Sagittarius A* -- such as its size and mass

When students ask me who was the most memorable character I've met, I never know how to reply. Was it Nelson Mandela, with a steel-trap political sense sneaking out from under the surface charm and grace? Or Margaret Thatcher in her pomp, allying clarity of thought to an utter conviction in the rightness of her judgment? Or Bill Clinton in 1991, fizzing with ideas and intellectual curiosity, before we knew how indiscipline would diminish him? Or any one of countless others?

It is widely accepted that Upper Paleolithic early modern humans spread westward across Europe about 42,000 years ago, variably displacing and absorbing Neandertal populations in the process.However, Middle Paleolithic, presumably Neandertal, assemblages persisted for another 8,000 years in Iberia. It has been unclear whether these late Middle Paleolithic Iberian assemblages were made by Neandertals, and what the nature of those humans might have been.New research, published Dec. 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is now shedding some light on what were probably the last Neandertals

Scientists say they have found evidence for water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years from Earth.The "hot Jupiter" planet's surface temperatures exceed 900C.Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say their discovery may help find planets that can support life.In a separate study, the US space agency (Nasa) says it has found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the same planet.

The government needs a more comprehensive plan for studying the risks of nanotechnology, the National Research Council said Wednesday.While the committee that prepared the report did not evaluate the safety of nanomaterials, it was critical of current research efforts into the health and environmental safety of the technology.Nanomaterials are made of extremely tiny particles -- some thousands of times finer than a human hair -- which have come increasingly into use in recent years, often in products such as skin care and cosmetics.

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

A simple and reliable method for converting one of the simplest chemical entities into one of the most difficult-to-make molecular building blocks of life, with complete control over its shape, is reported by scientists at the University of Bristol in this week's Nature [11 December].It will have major implications for the synthesis of drugs and agrochemicals.

Remember those sweltering summer days when the air was so muggy you could practically drink it? A new home appliance is promising to make that possible by converting outdoor air into nearly 13 quarts of fresh water every day.Originally envisioned as an antidote to the shortage of clean drinking water in the world, the WaterMill has the look of a futuristic air conditioner and the ability to condense, filter and sterilize water for about 3 cents per quart.

The simple act of climbing could throw space elevators off track and potentially into harm's way, a new study suggests. Fixing the problem could require agonisingly slow trips lasting nearly a month or the careful choreography of multiple climbers.Space elevators have been proposed as a cheap alternative to expensive rocket launches to send cargo, and perhaps even humans, into space.

Further evidence has emerged that King Edward VIII was seeing a mystic during the abdication crisis, prompting the Archbishop of Canterbury to intervene.Previously undisclosed archives tell the story of a king in the grip of a man known as "The Yorkshire Yogi".Dr Alexander Cannon trained as a medic, and dabbled in alternative treatments, mystic techniques and black magic.Lambeth Palace was tipped off that the King was receiving hypnotic treatment from Dr Cannon for a drink problem.

They may sound like places more likely to be found in Middle Earth, but these amusing-sounding locations actually reveal the origins of modern place names.An unusual take on the world, The Atlas of True Names shows how global places came to be named.The etymological take on the world traces Great Britain to Great Land of the Tattooed. The combination of the Greek word 'prettanoi', meaning tattoed people, and the Celtic word, 'brit', meaning light coloured or speckled, is behind the modern name.

Several stone sculptures recently found in central Mexico point to a previously unknown culture that likely built a mysterious pyramid in the region, archaeologists say.Archaeologists first found the objects about 15 years ago in the valley of Tulancingo, a major canyon that drops off into Mexico's Gulf Coast.

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, is accustomed to being presented with problems people think he should solve. Usually he says no, as he was fully expecting to do when he met with a Department of Defense official in 2005. "This guy visits and basically says, 'Look, we've had 1,600 kids go over [to Iraq] and lose an arm. Two dozen have lost two'," Kamen recalls. " 'At the end of the Civil War, we gave them a hook on a stick. Now we give them a hook at the end of a plastic tube'." His visitor then checked off a list of demands for an improved prosthetic arm: fully articulate, with an opposable thumb and fine motor control, small, lightweight and completely self-contained "He listed all this stuff, and said, 'We want it in two years'," Kamen says with a laugh.

The noggins of fierce dinosaurs like T. rex were filled with ... air. The airy skulls would have lightened the load of the head and possibly acted as resonating chambers for communication among some of the dinosaurs, new research reveals.

A European Union report has recommended banning conventional incandescent light bulbs by 2012 to save energy and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.Most light bulbs sold in the EU are of the type pioneered by Thomas Edison in 1879.But the report says the EU could save up to $12bn (£8bn) a year in energy bills by switching to low-energy bulbs.The report needs the backing of the European parliament and all 27 member states to become law.

Attitudes to nanotechnology may be determined by religious and cultural beliefs, suggest researchers writing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.They say religious people tend to view nanotechnology in a negative light.The researchers compared attitudes in Europe and the US and looked at religious and cultural backgrounds.They say the findings have implications for scientists and politicians making policy decisions to regulate the use of nanotechnology.

Damascus, Dec 7 (Prensa Latina) Syrian archeologists announced this week the discovery of one stretch of the previous wall of Raqqa Palace a few days after finding other things that enrich the country's heritage.Experts from a national mission said that after the wall fragment they found a lion bronze image and lamps made of pottery, a metal ax, a bottle of crystal and a crystal's collection.

The Malta Archaeological Society has called on MEPA and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage to take the necessary precautions to ensure that ancient rock-cut tombs recently discovered between Bulebel Industrial Estate and Tal-Barrani Road, were carefully excavated and studied.

When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons. It was a laminated card printed with Hebrew texts including imprecations against Lilith, a female demon of the night. Alluded to in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, she seduces men to sin and kills infants in their sleep. When I queried the rabbi about this, especially about some esoteric and incantation-like phrases on the card that I couldn't decipher, he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets.

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them.

Most experts agree that Homo sapiens arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and had more brainpower than earlier hominid species. But it's a matter of debate whether modern humans got smarter in one big cognitive leap or gradually developed their greater intelligence. New dating of an important hominid site in Ethiopia suggests that the road to advanced cognition was long and winding.

The fibres were discovered in a flooded Stone Age settlement just off the coast of the Isle of Wight.The four-and-a-half inch long string was made from tough stems of honeysuckle, nettles or wild clematis that were twisted together.Marine archaeologists discovered it when they found a pre-historic camp 30 feet below the surface, 200 yards off the Isle of Wight.

From the postcards bearing his swashbuckling, fedora-topped image to the luxury train emblazoned with his name that runs to the foot of the mountain redoubt of Machu Picchu, reminders are ubiquitous here of Hiram Bingham, the Yale explorer long credited with revealing the so-called Lost City of the Incas to the outside world almost a century ago.

A drug commonly used to control epilepsy could soon have a new role as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have found that sodium valproate, marketed in Britain as Epilim, stimulates the body's natural defences against the disease.They found that the drug boosted production of an enzyme which prevents the build-up of proteins in brain cells. These accumulations, or plaques, of protein have been shown by researchers to trigger the onset of Alzheimer's.

A group of the world's leading scientists has urged the United Nations to establish an international network to search the skies for asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The spaceguard system would also be responsible for deploying spacecraft that could destroy or deflect incoming objects.The group - which includes the Royal Society president Lord Rees and environmentalist Crispin Tickell - said that the UN needed to act as a matter of urgency. Although an asteroid collision with the planet is a relatively remote risk, the consequences of a strike would be devastating.

A 3,500 year old Bronze Age spearhead has been discovered in a stream in Dumfriesshire.The ancient weapon-tip was found in the waters of the Mennock Pass, close to Wanlockhead.It was found wedged in a rock crevice beneath the waters surface.It is believed to date back to between the 15th and 12th century BC.

The Great Sphinx of Giza might have originally had the face of a lion and could be much older than previously thought, archaeologists have claimed.Until now its origins have been one of history's most enigmatic mysteries, but a new study suggests that the icon did not have the face of a pharaoh.The Sphinx is a statue of a reclining lion with a human head, which stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, near Cairo.

Scientists have discovered a more efficient way of building a synthetic genome that could one day enable them to create artificial life, according to a study.The method is already being used to help develop next generation biofuels and biochemicals in the labs of controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter.

Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars.Using the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as ISO-Oph 102. Such molecular outflows typically are seen coming from young stars or protostars. However, this object has an estimated mass of 60 Jupiters, meaning it is too small to be a star. Astronomers have classified it as a brown dwarf.

Some pre-Hispanic cultures in South America had elaborate celebrations at their cemeteries, complete with feasting and drinking grounds much like modern barbecue pits, according to a new archaeological study.Excavations of 12th- and-13th-century burial mounds in the highlands of Brazil and Argentina revealed numerous earthen ovens. The finds suggest that the graves were also sites of regular festivals held to commemorate the death of the community's chief.

The way we control and interact with computers is set to change rapidly in the next five years, according to a leading computer scientist who will give this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.Prof Chris Bishop, who is chief research scientist at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and professor of computer science at the University of Edinburgh, will tell his audience that just like Tom Cruise's character in the film Minority Report, more of us will be manipulating and combining digital information by gesturing in thin air and flinging our hands over touchscreen devices.

IN 1965, a year before the first pocket calculator was invented, a young physicist from Silicon Valley, Gordon Moore, made a daring prediction. He claimed that the number of components squeezed onto a single silicon chip would double about every two years. And double, and double and continue to double. If he had been right, the best silicon chips today would contain an unbelievable 100 million single components.The true figure is more like 2 billion: Moore had underestimated how fast the shrinking trend would take off. Since the mid-1970s, though, his "law" has been a bankable certainty, influencing economic, social and scientific developments in ways that are hard to overstate. Google, genome sequencing, multiplayer video games, the search for the "God particle": all rely on silicon's seemingly limitless ability to deliver more computing speed and capacity - for an ever-diminishing price.

"I HAVEN'T paid an electricity bill since 1970," says Richard Perez with noticeable glee. He can afford to be smug. While most of us fretted over soaring utility bills this year, he barely noticed. Nor is he particularly concerned about forecast price hikes of 30 to 50 per cent in 2009.Perez, a renewable-energy researcher at the University at Albany, State University of New York, lives "off-grid" - unconnected to the power grid and the water, gas and sewerage supplies that most of us rely on. He generates his own electricity, sources his own water and manages his own waste disposal - and prefers it that way. "There are times when the grid blacks out," he says. "I like the security of having my own electricity company."

LAST month, we got our best ever view of planets orbiting nearby stars. Though this is a great achievement, the planets are much bigger than JupiterMovie Camera and are in orbits that range from 24 to 119 astronomical units (AU), where one AU equals the distance between Earth and the sun.The dream is to be able to see planets as small and as close to their host star as Earth is to the sun. That requires a telescope that can see objects nearly 3000 times smaller than those seen last month, and one that is not blinded by the host star's light - feats that are not possible with even the largest telescope today, the 10.4-metre Gran Telescopio Canarias in Spain's Canary Islands. But in less than a decade, a trio of gigantic telescopes will be able to carry off the task with ease.

ATLANTA - Historians hope a new Web database will help bring millions of blacks closer to their African ancestors who were forced onto slave ships, connecting them to their heritage in a way that has long been possible for white Europeans."Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database" launched Friday in conjunction with a conference at Emory University marking the bicentennial of the official end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Emory spearheaded the two-year interactive project, which is free to the public."It's basically doing for people of African descent what already exists for people of European descent in the Americas," said Emory history professor David Eltis, who helped direct the project.

The occasionally acrimonious debate about the planet's climate has been missing a key component: accurate measurements of how much carbon dioxide is in the air and how it is being recycled by Earth.That is the heart of a new NASA mission called the Orbital Carbon Observatory, which is set to launch early next year.

The international community must work together to tackle the threat of asteroids colliding with Earth, a leading UN scientist says.Professor Richard Crowther's comments come as a group of space experts called for a co-ordinated science-led response to the asteroid threat.The Association of Space Explorers (ASE) says missions to intercept asteroids will need global approval.The UN will meet in February to discuss the issue.

Men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm, UK research suggests.A team from the Institute of Psychiatry analysed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era.They found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more - and more mobile - sperm.The study, which appears in the journal Intelligence, appears to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too.

Italian researchers have discovered the pottery center where the oil lamps that lighted the ancient Roman empire were made.Evidence of the pottery workshops emerged in Modena, in central-northern Italy, during construction work to build a residential complex near the ancient walls of the city."We found a large ancient Roman dumping filled with pottery scraps. There were vases, bottles, bricks, but most of all, hundreds of oil lamps, each bearing their maker's name," Donato Labate, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, told Discovery News.

PAISLEY, Ore. -- For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate.Until now, they have found nothing conclusive -- arrowheads, baskets, animal bones and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sagebrush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin.

The body of first Afghan President Mohammad Daud Khan has been identified three decades after he was killed in a Communist coup, officials say.The discovery was made by members of a government-appointed commission during excavation at a military base outside the capital, Kabul.Daud Khan overthrew the last king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, in 1973.His death five years later ushered in a decade of Soviet occupation followed by the rise of the Taleban.The former president is to be given a special funeral ceremony by the government.

Scientists have found that a polymer material is an excellent catalyst in a process to produce hydrogen fuel using sunlight and water. The material meets the basic requirements for an ideal catalyst -- including being abundant, easy to work with, and non-toxic -- and could help this "green" alternative-energy production method become mainstream.

A brand new process that could revolutionise the reliability and durability of surgical implants, such as hip and knee replacements, has today, 2 December 08, received recognition for its medical and commercial potential by achieving one of the world's most sought after accolades.

The copying of DNA's master instructions into messenger molecules of RNA, a process known as DNA transcription, has always been thought to be a unidirectional process whereby a copying machine starts and moves in one direction. But in work that represents a fundamental shift in scientists' understanding of the phenomenon, MIT researchers have found evidence that two DNA copying machines frequently start from the same site and move in different directions.

Researchers from INSU-CNRS (France), working with chemists at a CNRS research unit, have explained that the high conductivity of the Earth's upper mantle is due to molten carbonates. They demonstrated the very high conductivity of this form of carbon.

"Hey DJ! Play that funky music!" might be one of the more unusual rallying cries for saving the planet. But the "Mini Sustainable Club" featured at the 12-day U.N. climate conference here has a purpose. Their disco show is one of many wacky ideas on display for cutting mankind's carbon footprint and adapting to the ravages of climate change.Also on display are fog-catchers from Cape Verde, a model of a "no-waste city" with zero carbon emissions, hydrogen-powered cars, air conditioning driven by sea water, biofuels from algae and a solar station for drying sewage sludge.

The rapid expansion of the DNA database in Britain was halted yesterday by a damning ruling by European human rights judges that the retention of the profiles and fingerprints of more than 850,000 innocent people was unlawful.

Three undergraduate students have discovered a large planet orbiting a fast-rotating star. Extrasolar planet discoveries like this have become common, but this one is unusual both for who found it and the type of star it orbits."It is exciting not just to find a planet, but to find one as unusual as this one; it turns out to be the first planet discovered around a fast-rotating star, and it's also the hottest star found with a planet," said one of the planet's discoverers, Meta de Hoon of Leiden University in The Netherlands.

CHICAGO - An analysis of rings on a stalagmite from a cave near Jerusalem reveals a drier climate in the region at a time in history when the Roman and Byzantine empires were in decline, scientists reported on Thursday.University of Wisconsin geologists analyzed the chemical composition of individual rings as small as one-hundredth of a millimeter across that formed the stalagmite growing up from the floor of the Soreq Cave near Jerusalem between 200 B.C. and A.D. 1100.

At the UN climate negotiations under way in Poland this week, politicians will be poring over forecasts of climate change. It's an opportune moment for physicist Lenny Smith to challenge the climate modellers who he believes are overselling their results. Human activity really is changing the global climate, he tells Fred Pearce, but we must stop pretending that we know the details of how it will all play out.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and their colleagues have found evidence of ancient climate change on Mars caused by regular variation in the planet's tilt, or obliquity. On Earth, similar "astronomical forcing" of climate drives ice-age cycles.Using stereo topographic maps obtained by processing data from the high-resolution camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Caltech scientists, led by graduate student Kevin Lewis and Oded Aharonson, associate professor of planetary science, along with John Grotzinger, the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology, identified and measured layered rock outcrops within four craters in the planet's Arabia Terra region. The layering in different outcrops occurs at scales ranging from a few meters to tens of meters, but at each location the layers all have similar thicknesses and exhibit similar features.

Growing crops in salt water is becoming necessary to overcome shortages of fresh water, say researchers writing in the journal Science.They suggest the domestication of wild plants that grow in salty conditions could help reduce global food shortages.Only 1% of the Earth's water is freshwater.Around the world, many agricultural areas are becoming less productive as salt levels in water supplies increase.

Engineers have doubled the efficiency of piezoelectric devices that harvest energy from movement and vibration.The trick lies purely in the size of the devices: a narrow range of thicknesses around 5,000 times thinner than a human hair.The result means that "self-powered" devices, such as phones that charge when you speak into them, are one step closer to reality.The research was reported in the journal Physical Review B

SHIMLA: A dozen of 28 historical temples submerged in Gobind Sagar lake at Bhakra Dam in Himachal Pradesh would be relocated with the help of the Centre, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said on Thursday.The CM said that the temples, built during eighth to 19th century, have also been declared as monuments of 'national importance' by the Archaeological Survey of India

Modern humans may have evolved more than 80,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study of sophisticated stone tools found in Ethiopia.The tools were uncovered in the 1970s at the archaeological site of Gademotta, in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. But it was not until this year that new dating techniques revealed the tools to be far older than the oldest known Homo sapien bones, which are around 195,000 years old

In January, President-elect Barack Obama and his family will make history, becoming the first African-American first family to move into the White House -- a house with a history of slavery. In fact, the legacy of American presidents owning slaves goes all the way back to George Washington.Twelve American presidents owned slaves and eight of them, starting with Washington, owned slaves while in office. Almost from the very start, slaves were a common sight in the executive mansion. A list of construction workers building the White House in 1795 includes five slaves - named Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel -- all put to work as carpenters. Other slaves worked as masons in the government quarries, cutting the stone for early government buildings, including the White House and U.S. Capitol. According to records kept by the White House Historical Association, slaves often worked seven days a week -- even in the hot and humid Washington summers.

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens.

The US military has carried out the first test-firing of a laser weapon system housed aboard a 747 plane.The Airborne Laser (ABL) was conceived to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles in the early stages of their flight.Engineers conducted the test on the ground, firing the laser out through a turret mounted on the nose of the plane at a simulated target.An airborne intercept of an in-flight ballistic missile is planned for 2009.The multi-billion dollar ABL programme has been running for more than 12 years.

A team of archaeologists on Tuesday announced they had discovered a fortified citadel in the remote Amazonian rainforest of northeast Peru that appears to be from the pre-Inca era.The main encampment comprises circular stone houses overgrown by lush jungle over an area of five hectares (12 acres), said archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez, quoted by the official Andina news agency.The citadel sits atop a chasm that the former inhabitants may have used as a lookout to spy on approaching enemies, said Goicochea Perez.

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world's oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.They apparently were getting high too.Lead author Ethan Russo told Discovery News that the marijuana "is quite similar" to what's grown today