Newsdesk Archive

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.

TO CRUSH the virus, test everyone for HIV and treat those who have it immediately.That's the conclusion of Charles Gilks of the World Health Organization, and his colleagues, who calculated the impact that such action would have in South Africa, which has a very high prevalence of HIV. They worked out that treating everyone with the virus with antiretroviral drugs would reduce incidence from 20 per 1000 people to just 1 per 1000 within 10 years (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61697-9). That's because the drugs keep levels of the virus in the blood down, making people less infectious - even if they have unsafe sex.

A comet orbiting our Sun may be an interloper from another star system.Comet Machholz 1 isn't like other comets. David Schleicher of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, measured the chemical makeup of 150 comets, and found that they all had similar levels of the chemical cyanogen (CN) except for Machholz 1, which has less than 1.5% of the normal level. Along with some other comets, it is also low on the molecules carbon2 and carbon3.Schleicher suggests three possible explanations.

Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, a new book by businessman and climate-change commentator Chris Goodall, says climate change can be overcome if we adopt the following energy sources and technologies:1. Wind powerDespite a reputation for being unreliable, wind power has the potential to provide more than 30% of the world's electricity. The wind does not blow constantly, of course, so we will need to develop better ways of storing the energy we generate with it. And rather than being used purely locally, wind energy will have to be distributed between different states and countries.

REMEMBER your first kiss? Experiments in mice suggest that patterns of chemical "caps" on our DNA may be responsible for preserving such memories.To remember a particular event, a specific sequence of neurons must fire at just the right time. For this to happen, neurons must be connected in a certain way by chemical junctions called synapses. But how they last over decades, given that proteins in the brain, including those that form synapses, are destroyed and replaced constantly, is a mystery.

An ancient predecessor to the virus that causes Aids evolved in wild primates many millions of years earlier than previously believed, according to research published yesterday by the Stanford University School of Medicine.The findings open a critical new avenue in the quest to understand the origins of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which unleashed a pandemic that since 1981 has claimed more than 25 million lives worldwide, and threatens millions more.

The span of history a giant tortoise can live through is vividly illustrated in this remarkable picture of two of the animals on the British island colony of St Helena in the year 1900.

Two U.S. lawmakers have urged U.S. Army Secretary Peter Geren to recognize 350 American soldiers held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II, saying "these heroes have not received the recognition and honor they deserve.""As Anthony Acevedo, one of the soldiers chosen, recently described to CNN, the Nazis picked those soldiers who looked Jewish, had a Jewish name or were considered 'undesirable,' " Reps. Joe Baca, D-California, and Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama, said in a letter sent to Geren last week.

Picture a small group of men and women, say 20 to 30 people, cautiously making their way through a dense forest along a small stream, searching for a place to camp for the night and to find food.Roughly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, that's probably what happened in the land now known as Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Such a small cluster of people likely left the first footprints on the Smokies.

The ancient town of Parsa has begun to emerge from the shadows of Persepolis. An Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team has brought to light the first remains of the town of Parsa, which was the residential area of commoners just outside the palaces of Persepolis.The Iranian director of the team, Alireza Askari Chaverdi of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, told the Tehran Times that the two areas investigated yielded important results.

A rare amber necklace believed to be about 4,000 years old has been uncovered in Greater Manchester.Archaeologists made the find while excavating a cist - a type of stone-lined grave - in Mellor, Stockport.It is the first time a necklace of this kind from the early Bronze Age has been found in north-west England.Experts from the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit said an amber necklace was one of the ultimate status symbols of the period.

What we eat can say a lot about us - where we live, how we live and eventually even when we lived. From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death.

Thanks to poor dental hygiene, researchers are getting a more detailed understanding of what people ate thousands of years ago in what is now Peru.Dental plaque scraped from the teeth of people who lived as much as 9,200 years ago revealed traces of cultivated crops, including squash and beans, according to a report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Politicians searching for historical precedents for the current financial turmoil should start looking a bit further back after an Oxford University historian discovered what he believes is the world's first credit crunch in 88BC.The good news is that Philip Kay knows how the Romans got themselves into financial bother. The bad news is no one knows how they got themselves out of it.

Rare artefacts from the late Stone Age have been uncovered in Russia.The site at Zaraysk, 150km south-east of Moscow, has yielded figurines and carvings on mammoth tusks.The finds also included a cone-shaped object whose function, the authors report in the journal Antiquity, "remains a puzzle".

The first comprehensive inventory of the sea and land animals living in a polar region has been carried out by British and German scientists.A team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Hamburg University found that Antarctica's South Orkney Islands were surprisingly rich in life.

Laptop, cell phone and iPod owners tired of having their devices run out of charge after a few hours have been patiently waiting for the next portable power source to arrive.Tiny fuel cells, powered by combustible liquids or gasses, have long been touted as the eventual solution. Potentially, they could power a laptop for days between refills.But fuel cells have perennially remained a year or two away from reaching the market as companies have worked on making them small, cheap and long-lasting, while making sure they don't overheat.

A planet outside of the solar system has been discovered orbiting a dying, puffed-up star called a red giant.The finding could help astronomers learn more about the fate of our solar system

David Frawley is an author on Hinduism, Yoga and Ayurveda, and the founder and director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout December to discuss his latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

In December of 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law on Poland, orchestrating a brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy Solidarity trade union movement that eventually saw some 90 people killed, and around 10,000 detained in internment camps. But as Jaruzelski and six other former top officials set out their defense in a criminal trial over their coup and crackdown, many of the former leaders of Solidarity have emerged among the general's staunchest defenders. In a bizarre twist of history, the leaders of the very movement Jaruzelski sought to crush 27 years ago now say he was right, at the time, to curb Solidarity's growing appetite for power.

A group of Peruvian archaeologist at Torontoy Archaeological Complex dug up an amazing discovery located in the historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu. A tomb of a person of unidentified gender and age was found accompanied by funerary trappings, pots, plates, an aryballos, a pitcher and a pair of garment pins or tupus.

Israeli authorities called it "the fraud of the century": fakes passed off as archaeological finds with biblical ties. The most notorious object was the James ossuary, a limestone box inscribed in Aramaic with the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Five men were charged, and the trial has been dragging on for three years.

A PORTABLE scanner could raise the alarm when ancient manuscripts deteriorate and need to be restored.Normally, chemical tests are used to estimate the quality of paper and determine what treatment it needs. But this process destroys up to half a page of the work - and the tests are time-consuming.

SOFIA, Bulgaria - A well-preserved wooden dugout canoe, likely dating back to the prehistoric age, has been discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea, scientists said Saturday.

PLATE tectonics, crucial for creating the oceans and atmosphere essential for life, began around a billion years earlier than we thought.

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has accelerated for the first time in four years, Brazilian officials say.Satellite images show 11,968 sq km of land was cleared in the year to July, nearly 4% higher than the year before.The government said the figure was unsatisfactory but could have been a lot worse if it had not taken action against illegal logging.High commodity prices had allegedly tempted farmers to clear more land.

Archeological discoveries on the Iranian Plateau prove that primitive man once passed through the region millions of years ago.Artifacts dating back to the Stone Age have been found on these plateaus, helping experts retrace the steps of a tribe of primitive men that lived in the prehistoric period more than 2 million years ago and passed through the region on their way to other countries.

Planet hunters searching for planets suitable for life will likely find them first around low-mass stars because it's technically easier than finding such planets around hotter, more massive stars, researchers predict.But Earth-like planets around stars smaller than our sun won't be liveable for long, according to a study led by Rory Barnes, a research associate with The University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Such planets can face "tidal extinction" within about a billion years

An international team of biochemists has discovered how an experimental drug unleashes its destructive force inside the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB). The finding could help scientists develop ways to treat dormant TB infections, and suggests a strategy for drug development against other bacteria as well.

A super-efficient system that has the potential to power, heat and cool homes across the UK is being developed at Newcastle University.It works by burning vegetable oil to power a generator and provide electricity for the home.

Robert Ballard became famous as the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic. But what most people don't know about that expedition is that Ballard also secretly worked with the U.S. Navy to learn more about two lost nuclear submarines.

IT SEEMS we got off lightly in the cosmic lottery. Deadly comet impacts may be much rarer in our solar system than in others nearby.

Hundreds of billions more dollars are likely to be needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a 2030 target, according to UN estimates published on Friday ahead of global talks on climate change.

Scientists have discovered that a type of hard mineral called zeolite can provide a high rate of gas flow in a micro-scale gas pump. Because the pump is based simply on temperature differences and has no moving parts, it could provide reliable and precise control of gas flow for a variety of applications, such as gas-sensing breath analyzers and warfare agent detectors.Mechanical engineers Naveen Gupta and Yogesh Gianchandani from the University of Michigan have published their study on the zeolite gas pump in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. The researchers used a type of zeolite called clinoptilolite that, like all zeolites, contains billions of nanopores which a gas can flow through. The nanopores in clinoptilolite are packed much more densely than could be achieved through lithographic techniques, and so the mineral can enable a higher rate of gas flow.

The virus that causes AIDS could theoretically be eliminated in a decade if all people living in countries with high infection rates are regularly tested and treated, according to a new mathematical model.It is an intriguing solution to end the AIDS epidemic. But it is based on assumptions rather than data, and is riddled with logistical problems. The research was published online on Tuesday in the medical journal, the Lancet.

Neanderthals may have gone extinct because their cells couldn't cope with climate change, according to a new hypothesis presented at a genetics conference this month.Metabolic adaptations to Ice Age Europe may have proved costly to Neanderthals after the continent's climate started to change, says Patrick Chinnery, a molecular biologist at Newcastle University, UK.He and colleague Gavin Hudson identified potentially harmful mutations in the newly sequenced Neanderthal mitochondrial genome. In particular, the researchers found genes that are associated with neurodegenerative diseases and deafness. "If they were found in modern humans they would be bad news," Chinnery says.

Far from being a modern concept that came to pass only with the formation of the European Union and the Barcelona process, the dialogue between the different cultures of the Mediterranean region has been in place since time immemorial. This is becoming increasingly clear as more and more archaeological finds are discovered. Indeed, considering the Mediterranean as an entity deserving research in its own right has recently become a topic of discussion.

SYDNEY: A new study reveals that the solar wind strips away the atmosphere of Mars by ripping chunks of air away, sending them tumbling into deep space.The surprisingly violent mechanism could also help solve a longstanding mystery, say researchers."It helps explain why Mars has so little air," said David Brain an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who presented the discovery at the 2008 Plasma Workshop, held in Huntsville, Alabama, last month.

SYDNEY: New evidence backs up the idea that a shockwave from the explosion of massive star triggered the collapse of a dense, dusty gas cloud to form our Sun and its retinue of planets.For many decades astronomers have postulated that the after effects of this violent supernova led to the birth of the Solar System.

Authorities have recovered a stolen 18-carat gold bookmark that reportedly was given to Adolf Hitler by his longtime mistress, Eva Brauny.

From a remote valley in Northern California, Jill Tarter is listening to the universe.Her ears are 42 large and sophisticated radio telescopes, spread across several acres, that scan the cosmos for signals of extraterrestrial origin. If intelligent life forms do exist on other planets, and they try to contact us, Tarter will be among the first to know.

An intact skeleton of a woolly mammoth on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. (S. C. Schuster)Last week, the woolly mammoth came back.Into the news, that is. For it has had its genome sequenced, and is the first extinct animal to have done so

A Florida man's quest to find hundreds of U.S. Marines buried anonymously after one of World War II's bloodiest battles could lead to the largest identification of American war dead in history.

ZHENGZHOU - The color red, which represents luck, happiness and passion in China, could have been used in clothing 15,000 years ago.

IN THE not too distant future, a person in need of a heart transplant could be offered a pig's organ. That's the hope of a group that met in China last week to agree global guidelines for the first clinical trials of "xenotransplants".The meeting of clinicians, researchers and regulators in Changsha, Hunan province, which was organised by the World Health Organization, resulted in the so-called Changsha Communiqué - a document that should eventually guide global regulation of xenotransplants.

A newly discovered fossil from China has shed light on how the turtle's shell evolved.The 220 million-year-old find, described in Nature journal, shows that the turtle's breast plate developed earlier than the rest of its shell.The breast plate of this fossil was an extension of its ribs, but only hardened skin covered its back.Researchers say the breast plate may have protected it while swimming.

A PREGNANT woman who knows her unborn child has Down's syndrome might one day be able to prevent some symptoms before giving birth.That at least is the hope raised by experiments in mice. When fetal mouse pups that had a syndrome similar to Down's were treated with nerve-protecting chemicals, some of the developmental delays that are part of the condition were removed.

An archaeological discovery of a great importance has been during an anti-treasure hunting action.During an inspection damages on the mould have been noticed and that provoked a further investigation of the site.At the level of the antique terrain a funeral ritual had been performed.Several bronze objects were found, a ring and silver earrings.Another silver earring was found on the upper level of the mould, dating from IV B.C.

DUBAI // Customs officials have refused to give details of the origin or likely fate of a priceless haul of ancient artefacts seized as they were being smuggled in to Dubai.Dubai Customs inspectors discovered 128 items, including pottery, jewellery and coins, behind a false wall in a dhow that was boarded in June, but the raid was kept secret until this week while investigations were carried out.

Member states of the European space agency (Esa) have agreed a 10bn-euro budget at their meeting in The Hague.The figure, which covers the next three to five years, represents a substantial increase in funding.

An upgraded Russian cargo ship launched toward the international space station early Wednesday, hauling fresh supplies for astronauts aboard the orbiting lab. An antenna failed to deploy shortly after reaching orbit, making it likely that the spacecraft will have to be guided in manually by the station's crew, NASA officials said.

WASHINGTON - Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn's moons say there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life.Their research, appearing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, adds to the growing push to explore further the moon Enceladus as one of the solar system's most compelling places for potential life.

A simple sugar that is an ingredient of life has been found for the first time in a relatively hospitable part of the galaxy.As molecules go, glycolaldehyde is not an impressive one, but its link to the origins of life make it significant.It can react to form ribose, a key constituent of the nucleic acid RNA.The study, in Astrophysical Journal Letters, is important as it shows organic molecules in a region of space where planets could form.

In the newly released 'paranormal' anthology Darklore Volume 2 (paperback available from Amazon US and Amazon UK, or as a limited edition hardcover - three free sample articles also now available on the Darklore website), European researcher Theo Paijmans employed technology to open up a relatively new area for UFO studies - reports in newspapers about alien and UFO encounters during the 19th century

High Bank Works is an ancient earthwork built along the Scioto River Valley in Ross County nearly 2,000 years ago by the Ohio Hopewell culture. It consists of an enormous 20-acre circle connected to an octagonal enclosure that is nearly as large.Originally, the walls of the earthwork were 12 feet tall, but after decades of plowing, they have been reduced to a few bumps in a cornfield. The remnants of the earthwork are preserved as part of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park.

Carbon dioxide has been spotted in the atmosphere of a gas-giant planet called HD 189733b, which orbits a star 63 light years from Earth.Along with water and methane, which have already been detected in the atmospheres of other extrasolar planets, the presence of carbon dioxide could give astronomers clues about whether a planet might support life.Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, reported his team's findings on 19 November at the Paris conference on Molecules in the Atmospheres of Extrasolar Planets.

Archaeologists have uncovered 2,700 previously unrecorded historic features along the length of Hadrian's Wall by studying thousands of aerial pictures.The English Heritage experts found ancient burial mounds, medieval sheep farms and 19th Century lead mines.They were working from more than 30,500 pictures taken during the past 60 years as part of a push to map and interpret archaeological sites across England.Hadrian's Wall, in northern England, is a World Heritage Site.

Indian scientists are exploring various options to cool down a sudden surge of temperature inside the country's first unmanned lunar craft, Chandrayaan 1.The temperature inside the satellite has gone over 50C, prompting scientists to take drastic measures.They say that the problem arose because of very hot temperatures during the lunar orbit.The mission is regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Scientists have detected an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life, in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets could exist. The discovery, part funded by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), is published today (25th November) on the Astro-ph website.

A new "barcode chip" developed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) promises to revolutionize diagnostic medical testing. In less than 10 minutes, and using just a pinprick's worth of blood, the chip can measure the concentrations of dozens of proteins, including those that herald the presence of diseases like cancer and heart disease.

The spot in the Roman Forum where Romulus, the first King of Rome, is said to have met a grisly end at the hands of senators who resented his high handed autocratic rule is to be shown as a tourist attraction after being covered up for half a century.Professor Angelo Bottini, Superintendent of Archeology in Rome, said the underground area of black marble paving stone or "Lapis Niger" marking the spot where Romulus is traditionally said to have been killed and dismembered, had been covered over with cement in the 1950s and surrounded by iron railings to protect it.

In the 44 days that his brother and two other young civil rights workers were missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi, 12-year-old Ben Chaney was quiet and withdrawn. He kept his mother constantly in sight as she obsessively cleaned their house, weeping all the while.Bill Eppridge, a Life magazine photographer, arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. Inside the Chaney home in nearby Meridian, Eppridge felt that Ben was overwhelmed, "not knowing where he was or where he should have been," he recalls. "That draws you to somebody, because you wonder what is going on there."

The science minister Lord Drayson called today for a major new space facility to be built in Britain in a speech to the European Space Agency (Esa).Government officials are drawing up plans for a space centre that will focus on observing climate change from space and developing robotics for future missions. The facility would be based at Harwell in Oxfordshire.Speaking at the agency's ministerial meeting in the Hague, Lord Drayson said British scientists would receive "a real boost" from a UK-based Esa facility, which would also "enable Esa to make the most of the UK's world-class expertise in environmental change, climate science and robotics".

Enormous cave bears, Ursus spelaeus, that once inhabited a large swathe of Europe, from Spain to the Urals, died out 27,800 years ago, around 13 millennia earlier than was previously believed, scientists have reported.

COLLEGE PARK, MD, Nov. 25, 2008 -- Researchers in Ohio and France have solved a longstanding scientific mystery involving magnetic resonance -- the physical phenomenon that allows MRI instruments in modern hospitals to image tissues deep within the human body. Their discovery, a new mathematical algorithm, should lead to new MRI techniques with more informative and sharper images.

Investigation of the fireball that lit up the skies of Alberta and Saskatchewan on November 20 has determined that an asteroid fragment weighing approximately 10 tonnes entered the Earth's atmosphere over the prairie provinces last Thursday evening. And University of Calgary researcher Alan Hildebrand has outlined a region in western Saskatchewan where chunks of the desk-sized space rock are expected to be found.

The U.N. weather agency says the three main greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere have reached new record highs.Geir Braathen of the World Meteorological Organization says carbon dioxide was up the most in 2007, one-half percent, with methane and nitrous oxide rising by lesser amounts.Braathen says that it was the first time in a decade that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has increased.

"After almost two decades of trying ... plasma physicists now believe that they have a good chance to demonstrate that power can be produced from controlled fusion reactions," wrote Michael Seif in the journal Science.Sounds familiar? Seif was writing in August of 1971. Fusion power, the modern-day perpetual motion machine, one promising more power out than it takes in, perpetually remains just outside the grasp of humankind. "The dream is as ancient as humanity: unlimited power," writes science journalist Charles Seife (no relation to Seif) in the just-released Sun In A Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. "It has driven generation after generation of scientists to the brink of insanity," he writes.

A recent study has found that the Southern Ocean has proved more resilient to global warming than previously thought and remains a major store of mankind's planet-warming carbon dioxide.Oceans act as a brake on climate change by absorbing large portions of the extra CO2 released by mankind through burning fossil fuels or deforestation and experts say the Southern Ocean is the largest of these "carbon sinks."

Will the next Einstein come from Africa? If Neil Turok gets his wish the answer will be a resounding yes. When he's not pondering the origin of the universe, Turok is setting up mathematical science institutes across Africa. Ivan Semeniuk caught up with him at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada to find out how Turok plans to change not only who does physics, but how physics is done

The science of sustainability is a mess. In 16 years it seems to have gone backwards as the world rushes on towards a frankly terrifying future. It is time it got its act together.I was at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992. The whole world seemed to be there, promising to find a way out of our growing environmental predicament: climate change, disappearing species, fouled-up oceans, spreading deserts, thinning ozone layer, frying rainforests and the rest. Scientists were at the fore, promising to find a path to a sustainable future

If you were to soak even your best raincoat underwater for two months it would be wet through at the end of the experience. But a new waterproof material developed by Swiss chemists would be as dry as the day it went in.

LIMA -- A team of Peruvian and German archaeologists has discovered the remains of a human settlement 5,500 years old near the southern town of Nazca, south of Lima, the capital daily El Comercio reported Sunday.The archaeologists, who are members of the Nazca-Palpa project, said that the discovery was made in a sector known as Pernil Alto, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Palpa.

Chinese archaeologists have claimed that a 1,000-year-old miniature pagoda, unearthed in Nanjing, holds a piece of skull belonging to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.The pagoda was wedged tightly inside an iron case that was discovered at the site of a former temple in the city in August.

It was hailed as an archeological discovery of global importance showing, among other things, the oldest representation of Christ on the cross and proof that ancient Egyptian influences had survived deep in Roman Spain.

Engineers are using archaeological techniques to unearth the secrets of Thirlmere Aqueduct.Sophisticated radar technology, used to find buried treasures, is being used to inspect the 84-mile underground tunnel which brings water from the Lake District to Manchester.Work on the tunnel, built to serve the water needs of Manchester's cotton industry, began in 1885. Parts of the aqueduct were hewn from solid rock, while others were constructed by Victorian builders

Here's the next question in the evolution debate: We know roughly how the sequence of life ran forward in time. What about running it backward? How would you feel about rewinding human evolution to a species that's almost like us, but not quite?Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. They reconstructed it from two fossilized hair samples. One was 20,000 years old; the other was 65,000 years old. Now, according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother."

When space shuttle astronauts dispatched NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Telescope into orbit in 1991, scientists figured they would learn more about supernovas, black holes and other phenomena that blast off high-energy rays.

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have reported for the first time that mammals can be stimulated to regrow inner nerve cells in their damaged retinas. Located in the back of the eye, the retina's role in vision is to convert light into nerve impulses to the brain.

Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have shown that insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells can form after birth or after injury from progenitor cells within the pancreas that were not beta cells, a finding that contradicts a widely-cited earlier study that had concluded this is not possible.

Something vital is missing in the far distant reaches of the Universe: hydrogen - the raw material for stars, planets and possible life.The discovery of its apparent absence from distant galaxies by a team of Australian astronomers is puzzling because hydrogen gas is the most common constituent of normal matter in the Universe.

Swiss dinosaur experts on Monday exhumed the skeleton of a 150 million year-old marine crocodile unearthed during motorway construction works in the Jura mountain, Swiss news agency ATS reported.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have figured out how a macromolecular machine is able to unwind the long and twisted tangles of DNA within a cell's nucleus so that genetic information can be "read" and used to direct the synthesis of proteins, which have many specific functions in the body.

University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 24.

New research shows that we should be looking to the ground, not the sky, to see where climate change could have its most perilous impact on life on Earth.Scientists at the University of Toronto Scarborough have published research findings in the prestigious journal, Nature Geoscience, that show global warming actually changes the molecular structure of organic matter in soil.

The Indian Space Research Organisation's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 released a probe that impacted close to the lunar south pole on 14 November. Following this, the instruments on the spacecraft are being switched on to get the science observations started.

NASA is officially moving forward on a mission to conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter.Called Juno, the mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our early solar system."Jupiter is the archetype of giant planets in our solar system and formed very early, capturing most of the material left after the sun formed," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Unlike Earth, Jupiter's giant mass allowed it to hold onto its original composition, providing us with a way of tracing our solar system's history."

The 73-mile long Roman wall, built in AD 122 to defend the Roman Empire from hostile Celtic tribes, created a thriving economy to serve the occupying army, according to aerial surveys.Farmers, traders, craftsmen, labourers and prostitutes seized the occasion to make money from the presence of hundreds of Roman troops.

A team of Bulgarian archaeologists has recently discovered an entire wooden chariot, sheathed with bronze platings, inside an old Thracian tomb. The ancient vehicle is thought to be about 1,800-year-old and it was found in a southeastern region of the country, close to the village of Karanovo. Alongside the chariot, some well-preserved leather and wooden tools were also uncovered, which the experts assume to have been harnesses for the horses whose bony remains were found close by

Scientists are today searching for remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky in western Canada before breaking into pieces.Alan Hildebrand, a University of Calgary planetary scientist, called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.Video images showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball over Saskatoon which became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.Mr Hildebrand said that he received about 300 e-mail reports from witnesses to the event

An international team of researchers has discovered a puzzling surplus of high-energy electrons bombarding Earth from space. The source of these cosmic rays is unknown, but it must be close to the solar system and it could be made of dark matter. Their results are being reported in the Nov. 20th issue of the journal Nature."This is a big discovery," says co-author John Wefel of Louisiana State University. "It's the first time we've seen a discrete source of accelerated cosmic rays standing out from the general galactic background."

President-elect Barack Obama has plans to invest $150 billion in clean energy technology over the next 10 years. With similar initiatives in other countries, when might we expect exciting alternative technology to deliver true energy independence?

erry Fujimoto sees the future of agriculture in the exposed roots of the leafy greens he and his students grow in thin streams of water at a campus greenhouse.The program run by the California State Polytechnic University agriculture professor is part of a growing effort to use hydroponics -- a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil -- to bring farming into cities, where consumers are concentrated.

Conservationists are planning to bring the sea eagle, the UK's largest bird of prey, back to the skies above England.The bird, known as "flying barn doors" because of its size, could be reintroduced into Norfolk next summer if the scheme gets the go-ahead.The government's conservation agency Natural England, the RSPB and Anglian Water hope to bring back the species.It was driven out of England more than 200 years ago and had disappeared from the UK by 1918.

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter

Cloaked by time's leafy shroud, the prehistoric settlement of Gaer Fawr lies all but invisible beneath a forest in the lush Welsh countryside.Commanded by warrior chiefs who loomed over the everyday lives of their people, the massive Iron Age fortress once dominated the landscape.Now the 2,900-year-old structure lives again, thanks to a digital recreation following a painstaking survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales

Archaeologists have unearthed a well-preserved 1,800-year-old bronze chariot at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Friday

An Egyptian mummy who died wearing a pained facial expression could be Prince Pentewere, suspected of plotting the murder of his father, Pharaoh Ramses III, according to a new analysis.Recent examinations of the mummy, found in 1886 and now located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, have helped archaeologists piece together a story of attempted murder, suicide, and conspiracy.

An implant which works by firing infrared light into the inner ear is being investigated by US researchers.Nerves in the ear can be stimulated by light as well as sound and the team from Northwestern University, Illinois, is aiming to harness this.Infrared light shone onto guinea pig nerve cells produced better results than standard cochlear implants, a report in New Scientist magazine said.But UK charity RNID said a device for human use might take years to develop.