Newsdesk Archive

PHOENIX (AP) - The federal Bureau of Land Management says an ancient petroglyph has been chiseled from the face of a sandstone cliff in northern Arizona.BLM officials announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the culprit's arrest and conviction on Wednesday.

Life has been discovered in the barren depths of Rome's ancient tombs, proving catacombs are not just a resting place for the dead. The two new species of bacteria found growing on the walls of the Roman tombs may help protect our cultural heritage monuments, according to research published in the September issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

By using kangaroo fossils as archaeological biosensors, scientists could help solve one of Australia's enduring mysteries.Aborigines arrived 45,000 years ago, spreading across the continent with startling rapidity. Then, in anthropological terms, they cooled their heels for the next 40,000 years: no significant population expansion. No fundamental changes in lifestyle.That changed 5,000 years ago. Populations shot up. Settlements increased in number, and their inhabitants grew more sedentary. Scientists can't explain it.

A press conference was held in Gia Lai province on September 22, to announce the results of an excavation at the Ia Mor archeological site in Chu Prong District.The site was discovered by the Gia Lai Provincial Museum in 2005. A group of archaeologists led by Associate Professor Nguyen Khac Su, from the Vietnam Archaeology Institute, excavated a 1,100sq.m plot in Klah village, bordering Cambodia.Thousands of stone and pottery objects, including a large jar tomb were unearthed. They said the tomb belonged to a pre-historic man, and contained bones, 20 teeth, stone-made jewelry and pottery.

Egypt's antiquities council says that archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old red granite head believed to portray the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II.The Supreme Council of Antiquities says the discovery was made recently at Tell Basta, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Cairo.The council's statement Thursday says the 30-inch-high head belonged to a colossal statue of Ramses II that once stood in the area. Its nose is broken and the beard that was once attached to the king's chin is missing.

Research into the lives of Neanderthals is progressing at such a pace that National Geographic could probably produce a new documentary like "The Neanderthal Code" (airing Sunday, September 21, at 9:00 pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel) every couple of years and still fill it with new breakthroughs. This program covers a vast amount of science, both old and new, and serves as a thorough and entertaining summary of the latest interpretations and data on our species's closest fossilized relatives. The show addresses several important questions: Did Neanderthal's make art? Were they tougher than professional bull-riders? Did they have religion? If so, were they such a bunch of Puritans that they wouldn't mate with the Homo sapiens who invaded their territory in Europe roughly 40,000 years ago?

VIZNAR, Spain - The tranquil, pine-carpeted hills in this patch of southern Spain hold awful secrets. Now, one of them has been thrust into the spotlight of a still painful accounting of atrocities committed in the Spanish Civil War.The dispute has arisen over whether to open the grave of Federico Garcia Lorca, widely considered Spain's best 20th century poet and playwright.At the start of the 1936-39 war, Viznar, near the ancient city of Granada, became one of many execution grounds for perceived opponents of Francisco Franco, the army general who unleashed the conflict by rising up against the elected, leftist Republican government.

When the first internet protocol structure was put in place in 1977 by Vince Cerf and his team, little did they know that 31 years later, the world would be on the verge of running out of free IP addresses.According to Cerf, out of the 4.2 billion possible addresses (that's 256 x 256 x 256 x 256), there are only around 600 million left and with the expected explosion in the number of mobile devices connected to the internet, the world could run out of free addresses as early as late 2009/early 2010.He told The Times that "This is like the internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can't have more subscribers".

China has launched its third manned space mission - which is to feature the country's first spacewalk.The Shenzhou VII capsule soared into orbit atop a Long-March II-F rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport in Gansu province in the northwest of China.The 70-hour flight will include a spacewalk undertaken by 42-year-old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang.Mr Zhai is joined on the mission by two other "yuhangyuan" (astronauts) - Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng.

A motion-sensitive security camera has captured ghostly images at a Kansas gym. Affiliate KSHB reports.

The sun is taking a once-in-a-century nap, say solar researchers. The sun's wind of hot particles is now blowing with less vigor and less heat than at any time since the start of the Space Age in the mid-20th century, according to data collected by the 18-year-old Ulysses spacecraft.As a result, the cozy bubble of charged solar particles that fills the solar system is shrinking, exposing Earth and other planets to the onslaught of needling galactic cosmic rays which are normally held at bay by the solar wind."It's a big deal," said Nancy Crooker, solar researcher at Boston University. "It's the first time we've measured these conditions. It's expanding our horizons of what we can do and compare."

Scientists have discovered a "chemical equator" that divides the polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere from the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.Researchers found evidence for an atmospheric chemical line about 30 miles wide in cloudless skies in the Western Pacific, with levels of carbon monoxide four times higher on the northern side.The discovery will provide clues to help scientists model simulations of the movement of pollutants in the atmosphere more accurately, and to assess the impact of pollution on climate, the researchers said in a statement on Tuesday.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

A global search has begun for food crops with traits that are able to withstand changes to the climate.The project, co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is searching national seed banks for "climate proof" varieties, including maize and rice.The team will screen seeds for natural resistance to extreme events, such as floods, droughts or temperature swings.They hope the strains will help protect food production from the impacts of climate change.

Students and visitors at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will be able to look at the stars through Albert Einstein's long lost telescope starting Thursday, university officials said, after it was retrieved from a storage shed and renovated.The legendary physicist who theorized the famous relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died. It was a gift from a friend named Zvi Gizeri, who probably made it himself, university officials said.

Even in the dinosaur world, the small and dainty existed, in the form of a mini-dino that likely didn't terrorize any creatures other than termites.The newly described dinosaur, called Albertonykus borealis, was about the size of a chicken and is now considered the smallest dinosaur to have existed in North America.

The utopian lepidopterist holds a pin in each hand. His style is ambidextrous and probably unique. He catches two forewings of a dead moth simultaneously and pins them to his drying board, and then, in a continuous sweep, he does the same with the hind wings. He repeats these motions again and again, like a conductor with tiny batons. Outside, it is hot and bright. Inside, it is hot and dark. The lepidopterist, whose name is Dan Janzen, has been working here in this Costa Rican forest for more than 40 years.

In the future, soldiers may be communicating silently with sophisticated "thought helmets." The devices would harness a person´s brain waves and transmit them as radio waves, where they would be translated into words in the headphones of other soldiers.The US Army has recently awarded a five-year $4 million contract to researchers from the University of California at Irvine (led by UCI´s Mike D´Zmura), Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland to study the concept. It will likely be a decade or two before the thought helmet becomes a reality, but the rough technology is already under investigation. Researchers have been working on other brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv Systems´ brain-wave headset for video games, which is expected to be available commercially next summer.

An egalitarian Neolithic Eden filled with unique, geometric art flourished some 7,000 years ago in Eastern Europe, according to hundreds of artifacts on display at the Vatican.Running until the end of October at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, the exhibition, "Cucuteni-Trypillia: A Great Civilization of Old Europe," introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian scientists said Monday they had discovered in an outback mountain range a reef that was under water 650 million years ago and could provide fresh insight into early life on earth.The University of Melbourne researchers said the find could reveal fossils of the earliest examples of primitive animal life and also help trace the pattern of global climate change.

The diet of prehistoric Neanderthals living in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar included seals and dolphins, showing once again that the hominids had skills rivaling those modern humans living then, according to a new study.The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub.Archaeologists found the mammals' remains among Neanderthal hearth sites in Vanguard and Gorham's Caves on the Rock of Gibraltar. The bones of some of the animals have cut marks that were likely made by Neanderthals using flint knives, also found on site, to cut the meat off.

HIDDEN in rugged ranges in north-west Arnhem Land, a spectacular treasure-trove of Aboriginal rock art is set to rewrite the history of Australia.In a find that has stunned archaeologists and anthropologists, a vast wall of about 1500 paintings chronicles the history of Aboriginal contact with outsiders, from Macassan prows and European sailing ships to 19th-century steamships and a World War II battleship.

LONDON - The first excavation of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has uncovered evidence that the stone circle drew ailing pilgrims from around Europe for what they believed to be its healing properties, archaeologists said Monday.Archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill said the content of graves scattered around the monument and the ancient chipping of its rocks to produce amulets indicated that Stonehenge was the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, the French shrine venerated for its supposed ability to cure the sick.

NEW YORK - Crews excavating the World Trade Center site this summer for the foundations of a new skyscraper have uncovered features carved into the bedrock by glaciers about 20,000 years ago, including a 40-foot-deep pothole.Exposing the solid rock beneath at the ground zero site in lower Manhattan is critical for supporting what will be Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties."You want to make sure you're not perching something on a ledge," said Anthony Pontecorvo, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, which is working on the project.

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

The populations of the world's common birds are declining as a result of continued habitat loss, a global assessment has warned.The survey by BirdLife International found that 45% of Europe's common birds had seen numbers fall, as had more than 80% of Australia's wading species.The study's authors said governments were failing to fund their promises to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.The findings will be presented at the group's World Conference in Argentina.

It was certainly a Great Escape, even if it did not get the Hollywood treatment of Steve McQueen on his motorbike. The little known story of the prisoners of war who tunnelled out of a German camp in 1918 is to be told in a major exhibition that will show how they pioneered the subterfuge before their celebrated Second World War counterparts.

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 sage brush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin.

Development: Colorado university to lead mission to MarsWhat it means: NASA just gave the University of Colorado at Boulder its largest research contract ever - to lead the mission that will launch an orbiting probe to Mars in 2013. The benefits of the nearly half-billion-dollar project are many: Every dollar spent on space exploration has an eightfold economic benefit; studying other planets helps us better understand our own; space expeditions are the 21st century equivalent of Columbus' voyages. And NASA's $16 billion annual budget is a drop in the bucket compared with the $10 billion a month we spend in Iraq. Still, a half-billion dollars could help with some urgent problems down here on Earth.

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have traced the origin of fingers and toes to fish-like creatures that roamed the seas 380 million years ago, according to a new study.The findings, published Sunday in the British-based science journal Nature, upend the prevailing theory on the evolution of digits.

A millionaire businessman from Nottinghamshire has said ghosts forced him to flee his 52-room mansion.Clifton Hall was bought by Anwar Rashid for £3.6m in 2007, but he has now handed it back to the bank.Mr Rashid claimed that during the eight months the family lived there they were haunted by mysterious figures and found unexplained blood stains on bedclothes.He called in paranormal investigators and said he stopped paying the mortgage as a last resort.

Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300BC - a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious edifice was built.The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring's original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.

A handful of scraps of charred wood and a little pile of stone chips - finds from the first excavation at Stonehenge in over 40 years - have added thousands of years to the history of one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments.

Kidnappers have taken 15 people in Egypt, including five Italian tourists, five Germans, one Romanian and their four Egyptian guides.The group is thought to have been captured at a remote location near the Sudanese-Egyptian border south of Aswan while on a desert adventure last Friday in four jeeps across an area of the western desert famed for its prehistoric cave paintings.

For centuries, people have used the human body, and the hand in particular, as an inspiration and blueprint for engineering innovations.But copying the human hand hasn't been easy. Its complex muscular and skeletal structure offers a unique, tricky balance: It is dexterous, stable and precise, but also fast moving, strong and flexible.

Is the Earth a rare place in our galaxy, or are Earth-like planets as common as stars? Scientists do not yet have the data to answer this question, but should get it through NASA's upcoming Kepler Mission. Personally, I find the Kepler Mission to be inspiring. With this space mission, we're taking a big step on the quest to understand our place in the universe.

HONOLULU - A newly discovered dwarf planet in the solar system has been given a Hawaiian name: Haumea (how-MAY'-ah), after the Hawaiian goddess of earth and fertility. Haumea's name was approved Wednesday by the International Astronomical Union in Paris.It is the solar system's fifth dwarf planet, in the same category and region as Pluto.

MOSCOW - A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

CALCUTTA, India - The stooped man in the yarmulke fights his way through this chaotic city, the weight of generations heavy upon his shoulders.He squeezes past tea stalls and sidewalk electricians, past idle rickshaws and honking cars. He edges through rows of vendors selling sparkly hair clips and, finally, pushes open a rusty gate hidden from the street.

Artists and scientists have created the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.She has been put together using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalised.The model has been nicknamed Wilma after she was found to have red-hair like the Flintstones character.The findings had suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin, and possibly freckles.Created for an October 2008 National Geographic magazine article, Wilma has a skeleton made from replicas of pelvis and skull bones from Neanderthal females.

Some see a tunnel or a bright light. Others float above their hospital bed, looking down at doctors and nurses from the ceiling of an operating theatre.Now - in the biggest study of its kind - scientists are to examine the near-death experiences of 1,500 hospital patients to see if out-of-body experiences are real or just a trick of the mind.During the three-year investigation, doctors will place pictures on shelves high up in hospital rooms so that they can be seen only from above.

William Yuan, a seventh-grader from Portland, OR, developed a three-dimensional solar cell that absorbs UV as well as visible light. The combination of the two might greatly improve cell efficiency. William's project earned him a $25,000 scholarship and a trip to the Library of Congress to accept the award, which is usually given out for research at the graduate level.

SAN DIEGO -- To the world it might be called a robot boat, but its proper name is the Unmanned Surface Vehicle, and the U.S. Navy expects it to be a major tool in countering what officials believe is a growing threat posed by quiet diesel-powered submarines owned by rogue nations.

The proposed Rosemont copper mine has been the focus of a huge amount of attention in the Tucson area, but one issue has largely evaded public concern so far: the impact of the mining operation on ancient Hohokam archeological sites in the area.

GENEVA - The world's largest particle collider malfunctioned within hours of its launch to great fanfare, but its operator didn't report the problem for a week.In a statement Thursday, the European Organization for Nuclear Research reported for the first time that a 30-ton transformer that cools part of the collider broke, forcing physicists to stop using the atom smasher just a day after starting it up last week.

European scientists and engineers are working on a potential new mission to bring back material from an asteroid.The venture, known as Marco Polo, could launch in the next decade, and would be designed to learn more about how our Solar System evolved.The plan is to select a small asteroid - less than 1km across - near Earth and send a spacecraft there to drill for dust and rubble for analysis.

Summer excavations at Bosnia and Herzegovina's Mt. Visocica yielded results, but not the kind an entrepreneur turned amateur archaeologist was looking for. Semir Osmanagic, a US businessman of BiH origin, has invested large amounts of his own money in a personal quest to unearth what he says are Europe's first pyramids.

Until recently researchers believed the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model.

RENO, Nevada (AP) -- A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.Then others appeared -- people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" -- an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

New evidence suggests the telescope may have been invented in Spain, not the Netherlands or Italy as has previously been assumed.The findings, outlined in the magazine History Today, suggest the telescope's creator could have been a spectacle-maker based in Gerona, Spain.The first refracting telescopes were thought to have appeared in the Netherlands in 1608.But the first examples may actually have been made for Spanish merchants.

The Food and Drug Administration proposed rules today to regulate genetically engineered animals that are raised for food or to produce medications. The agency would use its existing authority over animal drugs to regulate genetic engineering, the addition of genes to animals to improve food quality, build disease resistance or produce medicines for humans, the FDA said in a statement. Producers would have to demonstrate that altered animals, if intended for use as food, are safe to eat.

Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences, and quite possibly the oldest use of astronomy is navigating by the stars. This craft dates from prehistoric times among humans, and is even practiced by certain animals.For example, during the 1960s, a study undertaken by New York's Cornell Lab of Ornithology demonstrated through use of planetarium simulations that the indigo bunting, a brilliantly blue bird of old fields and roadsides, migrates at night using the stars for guidance. It learns its orientation to the night sky from its experience as a young bird observing the stars.

WASHINGTON - China's demonstrated anti-satellite capability makes it critical for Washington to work with Beijing to avoid an arms race in space, a leading U.S. think tank said on Thursday.The Council on Foreign Relations report, "China, Space Weapons, and U.S. Security," urges the next U.S. administration to update policy for "an era where space is a potentially far more contested domain than in the past, with few rules."

OTTAWA (AFP) - Astronomers searching for solar systems capable of supporting life may be looking in the wrong places, according to a new study that suggests our sun is far from its origins in the galaxy.Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of Central Lancashire in Britain and Hamilton, and McMaster University in Ontario built a computer model that simulated the movement of stars within the Milky Way over nine billion years.

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The remains of two outsized earthenware pots, a ditch and evidence of a gate dating back more than 3,000 years are changing scholars' perceptions about the city of Troy at the time Homer's ``Iliad'' was set.The discoveries this year show that Troy's lower town was much bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, according to Ernst Pernicka, the University of Tubingen professor leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey.

AFP reported today that the collider was stopped due to an electrical problem involving a cooling system. A spokeswoman for CERN, the organization that runs the LHC, said that "it's normal for there to be stoppages." The work was expected to resume sometime today.What's more surprising is that the exceedingly complex, $5 billion, 17-mile collider hasn't had more problems during the startup phase. Getting beams of particles around the ring in both directions on the first day of operation was better than expected. The process is actually ahead of schedule and the first collisions, originally planned for Oct. 21, could happen within weeks.

A rudimentary form of natural selection likely existed in the primordial soup even before life arose on Earth. If so, the complex "ecosystem" of prebiotic molecules may have made the eventual arrival of life much more probable.Most experts presume that life arose from complex molecules such as nucleic acids and proteins, which were assembled from a mix of simpler units strung together with chemical bonds.To examine how this might occur, Martin Nowak and Hisashi Ohtsuki, mathematical biologists at Harvard University, used simple equations to model the growth of such chains of building-blocks.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is ready to help Cuba develop its own space center, Russia's space agency chief said on Wednesday after talks in Caracas with Venezuelan and Cuban officials, Itar-Tass news agency reported.Russia has stepped up efforts to develop closer links with both countries, which are ideological enemies of Washington, including sending Russian strategic bombers on a mission to Venezuela this month.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Internet titan Google and technology colossus General Electric said Wednesday they are joining forces to promote a "smart" US electric power grid and clean energy.The companies said they will work together on green energy technologies and lobby US political leaders to support "visionary policies" on renewable energy.

Using satellite imaging, the outlines of the ruins can be clearly seen about three feet below the earth in what is now open countryside.The discovery of the extensive town was found at Altino, known in Roman times as Altinum, more than seven miles north of Venice, and close to Marco Polo airport.

During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking, robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of finding wives.The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense competition over eligible women.

Parts of ancient Mars may have been wet for a billion years longer than scientists previously thought, a new study of images of the red planet's surface suggests.Along with Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system, Mars formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists have long known that flowing water formed many of the features seen on Mars today, but previous studies suggested that water runoff from precipitation had ceased after the first billion years of Mars' history, called the Noachian Epoch.

Physicist Stephen Hawking has unveiled a revolutionary clock with no hands or numbers.The £1million Corpus Clock has taken a team of specialist engineers seven years to create and will stand outside the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.Designed by inventor and horologist John Taylor, a student at the college in the 1950s, it has been described as the strangest clock on earth.

The idea of painting our roofs and roads white to offset global warming is not new, but a recent study has calculated just how significantly white surfaces could impact greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley presented their study at California's annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento.

Scientists at Durham University have found the "missing link" between small and super-massive black holes.For the first time the researchers have discovered that a strong X-ray pulse is emitting from a giant black hole in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth.The pulse has been created by gas being sucked by gravity on to the black hole at the centre of the REJ1034+396 galaxy.

It may look like a futuristic arcade game, but it's a scene from an official Air Force animated video: Bad guys of indiscernible origin being shadowed, from a careful distance, by small robotic drones designed to resemble birds and insects.When one of the bad guys opens his apartment door, a tiny robo-bug, looking like a garage door opener with wings, sneaks in to spy. In another scene, a bug - the Air Force calls them Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs - creeps into a sniper's roost and delivers a deadly shot to the back of his head.

By comparing the genomes of humans and five other mammals, Cornell researchers have identified 544 genes that have been shaped by positive selection over millions of years of evolution."To our knowledge this is the largest and most comprehensive analysis of positive selection to date," write the researchers in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal PLoS Genetics, reporting on research mainly funded by the National Science Foundation. Natural selection (favorable traits becoming more common over successive generations) that tends to favor new forms of genes is known as positive selection.

The Milky Way's spiral arms could have cast the Sun far from its birthplace, a new simulation suggests. The results could help explain why stars near the solar system vary widely in their chemical composition.A number of stars seem to have been pushed by the Milky Way's arms into wild or elongated orbits that take them far from where they were born.

A soldier scaled the fragile wall of the monastery and struck a pose. His buddies kept shouting up to him to move over some.He shifted to the left and stood the stadia rod straight to register his position for the survey laser on the tripod below.The 94th Corps of Engineers of Fort Leonard Wood, whose members normally sprint to their data points in full body armor and Kevlar helmets, are making a topographical map of the ancient Assyrian monastery that until recently had been occupied by the Iraqi Republican Guard and then by the 101st Airborne Division in the once verdant river valley near Mosul.

On a remote tropical island in the South Pacific Ocean, geologists have uncovered signs of ancient devastation.Sitting on the west coast of the flat, unassuming island of Tongatapu are seven giant boulders made of coral. Identical in makeup to the reefs that line the coast, they may represent the largest rocks ever deposited by a mega-tsunami, a furious wall of water some 130 feet high that stormed ashore thousands of years ago.

Cleopatra's palace sank long ago into the Mediterranean, but visitors to Alexandria, Egypt, may eventually view the complex's remnants via the world's first underwater museum.A site for the museum has been proposed near the New Library of Alexandria, where the famed queen of Egypt is believed to have sheltered herself with her lover Marc Antony before taking her own life.

Clovis points are the hallmark of one of America's earliest cultures: the Paleoindians.Since archaeologists found Clovis points lodged in the skeleton of a mammoth, they have viewed Paleoindians as big-game hunters par excellence.Nearly every book on the subject includes an image of a brawny hunter thrusting his spear into the side of a trumpeting mammoth. This macho view of Paleoindian prehistory has prevailed even though surprisingly little evidence exists to support it.

Sea ice in the Arctic appears to have passed its minimum extent for 2008 without breaking last year's record.The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says the ice covered 4.5 million sq km (1.7 million sq miles) at its lowest point on 12 September.Last year's minimum was 4.1 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles).This summer's ice cover was the second lowest since satellite records began 30 years ago, which NSIDC says emphasises the "strong negative trend".

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The 7000-year-old mound of Pardis in the Qarchak region is currently being bulldozed by a factory for brick production.The mound is located in an area owned by individuals using the earth from the mound for producing bricks in their nearby factory, an informed source who preferred to remain anonymous.The individual in question had destroyed the site without the fear of prosecution as he must have had the support of the ruling clerics, either by having some family ties or have included them in this lucrative but treacherous act against Iranian heritage.

Eighty skeletons and stockpiles of textiles found in caves near the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu may shed light on the role that the so-called lost city of the Inca played as a regional center of trade and power, scientists say.Researchers found the artifacts and remains at two sites within the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in southeastern Peru, said Fernando Astete, head of the park.

Talk about a cold case.The male victim died more than 10,000 years ago and left behind few clues beneath the thick clay in rural Medina County.But one of those clues is intriguing.It's a humerus, a long forelimb bone, and it's got a hole on one side and grooves on the other.

A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could be one of the earliest British victims of tuberculosis, experts believe.Archaeologists hope the discovery will reveal clues about how the deadly disease spread across Britain.The man's remains - which date from the fourth century AD - were found on a construction site at York University.The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age - but finding cases from Roman times is still rare, especially in the north.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe is the oldest on the planet, dating back around 120 million years.Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the 3-millimeter-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants."It's by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career," said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday.

An object that brightened intensely and then faded back into obscurity over a period of about seven months is unlike anything astronomers have seen before, a new study reports.The object, called SCP 06F6, was first spotted in the constellation Bootes in February 2006 in a search for supernovae by the Hubble Space Telescope.Nothing had been seen at its location before it started to brighten, and nothing was spotted after it dimmed. That suggests it is normally too faint to observe and that it brightened by at least 120 times during its firefly-like episode.

Criminals with an appetite for fast food could be tracked down more easily with a new fingerprinting technique that utilises the salt in their sweat.Police can now detect corrosion left on metal by finger-tip sweat - the saltier the diet, the more the metal corrodes.The technique works better than traditional fingerprinting which relies on residue that can be wiped away.Northamptonshire Police's Dr John Bond, who developed the method, said it had so far been used in four active cases.

A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could reveal clues about to how tuberculosis spread across Britain, archaeologists said.The man's remains were found on a construction site at York University and date from the fourth century.The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age but finding cases from the Roman period are still fairly rare and have been mainly confined to the southern half of England, experts said.

COLONIE, N.Y. - An ancient coin from Asia has been discovered in an archaeological dig behind a 19th-century tavern in upstate New York.The copper alloy coin was unearthed as archaeologists combed the soil behind the 200-year-old Ebenezer Hills Jr. house, a former way station located in Latham, on a busy turnpike between Albany and Schenectady.

A sprawling 35-acre stretch, flanked by a lake and a little hillock, in Siruthavur, 50 km from Chennai, is soaked in history. The Archaeological Survey of India has discovered a megalithic burial site here that dates back to over 2,000 years ago.The site has more than 300 burial spots that could provide a rare peek into the period. Since the ASI began its excavation in July, the area has thrown up a treasure trove of sarcophaguses, or stone coffins, carnelian beads, iron implements and pieces of bones, all traces of an ancient civilisation that once thrived in the region.

Professor Michael Reiss has quit as director of education at the Royal Society following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.Last week Prof Reiss - a Church of England minister - said creationism should be discussed in science lessons if pupils raised the issue.He was criticised by other scientists - though misquoted as saying creationism should be "taught" in science classes.The society said some of his comments had been "open to misinterpretation".This had damaged its reputation.

Prof Ian Fells, emeritus professor of Energy Conversion at the University of Newcastle, said the country will lose a third of generating capacity in the next twelve years as old nuclear and coal fired power stations close down.With the current politicial situation making it difficult to rely on imported gas or oil, he said Britain will face regular power cuts lasting long enough to delay operations in hospitals, close down schools and bring cities to a standstill.

U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or unneeded. Some are simply unused because patients refuse to take them, can't tolerate them or die with nearly full 90-day supplies of multiple prescriptions on their nightstands.

LONDON: Modern battlefields may soon resemble something out of a science fiction flick, thanks to advances in robotics. And, the latest weapon to be unveiled is the robodog - four-legged, petrol-powered robots.Scientists have developed the 'BigDog', billed as "the most advanced quadruped robot on earth", which they claim is able to carry up to four packs of military equipment on awkward terrain unsuitable for vehicles.

LONDON: The church of England is to officially apologise to Charles Darwin for misunderstanding his theory of evolution - 126 years after his death.The church the will address its contrition directly to the Victorian scientist himself. It will concede in a statement that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin's ideas, calling "anti-evolutionary fervour" an "indictment" on the church.

Just a mere 70,000 years ago humanity was on the brink of extinction, according to a recent study. At that time the entire population, which now numbers about 6.6 billion people, contained perhaps only about 2,000 individuals!Just imagine at that time you probably knew just about each and every person on earth or at least one of his or her cousins. That pretty much means the six degrees of separation boiled down to almost zero. The expression that the entire world was watching the Olympics, for example, would have meant literally that at the time. You pretty well could easily fit the entire world's population into any high school arena.

More than 1,200 years ago, Vikings from Norway set out on a series of daring voyages that would eventually result in their being the first Europeans to explore the east coast of North America. In stages they established settlements in the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and finally Newfoundland and Labrador.

Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut.That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions.

The key to our energy future may be in space. A new long-range energy transmission experiment opens the possibility of sending solar energy from space to earth.A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 148 km between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth.

Two mummified fetuses found in Tutankhamen's tomb back in 1922 are probably twins, despite the fact that one is much larger than the other, a team of scientists recently announced.King Tut has always held a fascination for the public, and the idea that the young pharaoh and his presumably beautiful wife, Ankhesenamen, the daughter of Nefertiti, had twins adds even more drama to the story.

Police plan to map all journeys made by drivers on major roads and store the data for five years.A national network of roadside cameras will be able to read 50 million number plates each day enabling officers to reconstruct the movements of motorists.But civil rights campaigners have questioned why the data needs to be kept for so long and want reassurances on who will be allowed to access the information.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most-powerful atom smasher, is an engineering marvel constructed hundreds of feet underground.Composed of millions of individual pieces, the collider uses more than 9,000 magnets to accelerate two beams of protons to almost the speed of light. When the beams collide, they shatter into their constituent parts, allowing scientists to glimpse particles that don't exist in standard environments.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday touted his commitment to promoting alternative energy sources by commuting to work aboard a fully solar-powered taxi."I hope that this Solartaxi, one of the alternate sources of energy, can give some good messages to the people around the world that we need to be creative, we need to be practical," he told reporters as he arrived at UN headquarters."This is a fantastic experience. I hope I can enjoy another ride," he added, noting that he waved at passersby on New York streets from a Solartaxi during his 10-minute trip.

CHICAGO - Scientists who tricked monkeys by swapping images of sailboats for teacups have figured out how the brain learns to recognize objects, a finding that could lead to robots that "see.""One of the central questions of how the brain recognizes objects and faces is that you never essentially see the same image twice," said James DiCarlo, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dust devils raging across the arctic plains of Mars were caught on film by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.Phoenix captured images of at least six different dust devils that danced across the planet's surface last week, and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander.These whirlwinds, which are somewhat like gentle tornadoes and are common in the American Southwest, too, had been expected in Phoenix's landing site near the north pole (they've been seen from above by orbiting spacecraft) but not confirmed by the spacecraft until now.

A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth.John C. Mankins demonstrated the solar power transmission for the Discovery Channel, which paid for the four month experiment and will broadcast the results Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. His vision is to transmit solar power collected by orbiting satellites as large as 1,102 pounds (500 kg) to lake-sized receiver stations on Earth.

Two colossal events in Earth's history took place about 250 million years ago: a gigantic volcanic eruption and massive extinction of species. Were they related? Lindy Elkins-Tanton of M.I.T. has won a major grant to explore that question. She tells Alex Chadwick about "The Great Dying."