Newsdesk Archive

Venus, with its boiling-hot surface, doesn't seem a likely place to find ET. But a new paper argues not only that Venusian clouds could harbor microbial life, but also that the life there could potentially hitch a ride aboard the solar wind to Earth. The possibility for microbial life on Venusian clouds has been suggested before, though it's still not widely thought to be likely. However, the assertion that this life could potentially float from Venus to Earth is novel, and contentious.

Neanderthal stock is on the rise. A slew of recent studies have argued that the not-quite modern humans hunted, painted and communicated like their Homo sapiens cousins. Now new research suggests that Neanderthal technology was at least as good as that of early humans.For most of the Stone Age, Homo sapiens and neanderthalensis both made disc-shaped stone tools called "flakes," says Metin Eren, an experimental archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. But around 40,000 years ago humans in Europe began exclusively producing rectangular blades.

Most people have heard of carbon dating, a process that measures the amount of radioactive carbon-14 present in an object.It can date objects to about 50,000 years ago, so it is good for dating events in archaeology and the last part of the Ice Age. For older materials, geologists must use other radioactive elements such as rubidium, potassium, lead or uranium.

FROM the river valley civilisation of 5,000 years ago, we see in India the foundations of one of the oldest continuing civilisations of the world. It is a culture based upon the belief of an underlying unity of the whole of creation. It is a vision of great compassion.

Radiocarbon dating of two Jewish ritual instruments found in London a century and a half ago has dashed hopes that they date from the period before the Jewish community was expelled in 1290. They are postmedieval and one of them may never have been finished or used in the synagogue.

The origin of the Tahitian vanilla orchid, whose cured fruit is the source of the rare and highly esteemed gourmet French Polynesian spice, has long eluded botanists. Known by the scientific name Vanilla tahitensis, Tahitian vanilla is found to exist only in cultivation; natural, wild populations of the orchid have never been encountered.

A team of international archeologists has unearthed over 100 prehistoric mounds in the Darestan region of Iran's Kerman Province.Experts from Iran, France, England and the US found evidence of pre-pottery Neolithic human settlements, which lasted until the late Bronze Age and gradually faded away for unknown reasons.Such settlements are unique among the archeological finds of the Near East.

LIMA - Archeologists working at Peru's Huaca Pucllana ruins pulled a mummy from a tomb on Tuesday, thought to be from the ancient Wari culture that flourished before the Incas.Besides the female mummy, the tomb contained the remains of two other adults and a child. It is the first intact Wari burial site discovered at Huaca Pucllana in the capital Lima, and researchers believe it dates from about 700 AD.

A catastrophic fire which "skinned" a precious moorland to its rocky bones has unexpectedly revealed some of the most important prehistoric archaeology found in Britain.The uncontrolled six-day blaze on Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire has exposed a lost landscape dating back 3,000 years which is now to be made accessible to the public by English Heritage.

Early stone tools developed by our species Homo sapiens were no more sophisticated than those used by our extinct relatives the Neanderthals.That is the conclusion of researchers who recreated and compared tools used by these ancient human groups.The findings cast doubt on suggestions that more advanced stone technologies gave modern humans a competitive edge over the Neanderthals.The work by a US-British team appears in the Journal of Human Evolution.

It's the oldest whodunit in Canadian history, and new research has conclusively ruled out one of the suspect aboriginal groups behind the retreat of Viking would-be colonists from the New World.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS from around the country are investigating Stonehenge and the surrounding areas in, and visitors are being invited to come along to see history brought to life.As part of the ongoing Riverside Project experts are going to be digging at sites near the ancient stones to find out more about their links with Stonehenge itself.

LONDON: Few political commentators ask what lies behind the thinking of those expressing boundless admiration for the Roman Empire in almost every quarter of present-day Western society.This comes across in the most sophisticated inquiries into ancient history, as witness Thorsten Opper's intelligent book "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict," to which the British Museum show that he curated, running until Oct. 26, effectively serves as an illustration.

KOLKATA: A 30-foot-high mound in a nondescript Bengal village, which has spawned many a legend and mystery, may yield one of the biggest archaeological finds in the country. The remains of a huge yet exquisite monastery are emerging from the sands of time.Archaeologists believe it is one of the missing monasteries mentioned in Hiuen Tsang's memoirs that was yet to be found. The monastery reportedly dates back to the seventh century - the time when the Chinese Buddhist monk made his 17-year walk across India.

KANAB - For a nearly 1,200-year-old home, it's held up pretty well."Amazing" and "pristine" were the words archaeologists used to characterize the site of the ancient settlement just north of Kanab in southern Utah. It is believed that the single-family dwelling belonged to the Virgin Anasazi, who once flourished in the region, said Utah Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Kitchen. The Virgin Anasazi was a prehistoric American Indian culture that lived along the Virgin River.The culture predates other American Indian tribes who inhabited the area.

ISS017-E-008285 (30 May 2008) --- Pyramids of Dashur, Egypt are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 17 crewmember on the International Space Station. While the pyramids of Giza are perhaps the most famous, there are several other ancient Egyptian royal necropolis ("city of the dead") sites situated along the Nile River and its delta.One of these sites is located near the village of Dashur (upper right). The gray-brown built area of Dashur is surrounded by green agricultural land of the Nile Delta, which forms a distinct boundary with the tan desert to the west. It is in the desert that the monuments of the ancient rulers of Egypt are found.

Authorities in Iran's Western Azerbaijan province have recovered more than 1,100 historical pieces stolen in illegal excavation operations.A golden sculpture of a sleeping lion, two 24 carrot gold human statues belonging to the Sassanid period, spear heads and glass objects are just some of the treasure found.

An ancient tar pit exposed when Venezuelan oil workers laid a pipeline has yielded a rich trove of fossils, including a type of saber-toothed cat that paleontologists had never found before in South America. Scientists say the find holds the promise of many discoveries to come.The fossils are 1.8 million years old and include skulls and jawbones of six scimitar-toothed cats - a variety of saber-toothed cat with shorter, narrower canine teeth than other species.

The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams.The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most startling, their probable neighbors -- Homo erectus.

Shuttle, the Taiwan-based computer manufacturer, has been known for making small computers, but its newest PC will be its tiniest and greenest yet.Called the X27, the mini PC will run on Intel´s low-power Atom processor. When in use, the computer uses 36 watts of power, and just 23 watts while in idling mode. Even when running at full speed, Shuttle claims the computer´s noise level reaches just 23 decibels, similar to a very small fan.

CSIRO scientists with the Minerals Down Under National Research Flagship are working closely with industry and government to develop vastly improved navigation technology for remote areas.Better navigation is critical for the safety of remote workers, and to support productivity improvements within the mining industry.The research project will develop two new Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies.

MADRID (AFP) - Descendants of refugees who fled Spain during the 1936-39 civil war or the ensuing dictatorship are contributing to a DNA bank to help identify bodies in mass graves believed to be victims of General Franco's forces.Spaniards from France, Switzerland, Italy and Brazil, where many had emigrated during the war, gathered this past week in the cultural centre in the town of Aranda de Duero, in Burgos province north of Madrid.All believe that relatives who disappeared during the war or the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco are buried in some of the seven mass graves in the area.

WELLINGTON (AFP) - New Zealand's mysterious colossal squid, the largest of the feared and legendary species ever caught, was not the T-Rex of the oceans but a lethargic blob, new research suggests.The 495 kilogramme (1,090-pound) female, accidently hauled in by a fishing boat in the Antarctic last year, was an overweight breeding machine, leading marine biologist Steve O'Shea told AFP Thursday.

Observers flying over Alaska's northwest coast spotted nine polar bears in one day swimming in the open ocean.Scientists say this is an increase from previous surveys that may indicate warming conditions are forcing bears to make riskier, long-distance swims to stable sea ice or land.A federal marine contractor, Science Applications International Corp, spotted the bears in the Chukchi Sea during a survey flight.The survey flight was scouting land for the Minerals Management Service in advance of future offshore oil development. The MMS in February leased 2.76 million acres within an offshore area slightly smaller than Pennsylvania.

Glider pilots harness upward-moving thermal air currents to keep them aloft for hours, while soaring birds use them to save energy. Uncrewed aerial vehicles may soon borrow the same technique to save precious fuel, using software that identifies regions of rising air."It could increase the vehicles' endurance during surveillance missions," says Rhys Watkin of Roke Manor Research in Hampshire, UK, a member of the team that developed the system.

1962: NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, completes its maiden voyage.In a world terrified by the prospect of nuclear war, the Savannah was meant to demonstrate the peaceful use and positive potential of nuclear power. President Eisenhower conceived the idea as part of his "Atoms for Peace" program in 1955, a time when the United States and Soviet Union were routinely testing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons.Four nuclear-powered merchant ships were eventually built.

This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.The principal reason is La Nina, part of the natural cycle that also includes El Nino, which cools the globe.Even so, 2008 is set to be about the 10th warmest year since 1850, and Met Office scientists say temperatures will rise again as La Nina conditions ease.

The 15-foot statue was originally located in the frigidarium, the coldest and largest room in the Roman baths at Sagalassos, where two other statues have already been found.Archaeologists now believe the frigidarium contained a gallery of large imperial statues running around its long walls, offering a treasure trove of antique images.

News updates will be limited during the next several days due to staff absence. Apologies.In the meantime, you can sign up to the mailing list, and receive the weekly newsletter, with additional news sources included.

Pharmacists and chemists have found another use for the multipurpose cannabis as a source of antibacterial chemicals for multidrug resistant bacteria. Ironically, inhaling cannabis is known to damage the lung's ability to fend off invading pathogens, but the ingredients in cannabis, particularly the cannabinoids, have antiseptic properties. Although scattered research has been conducted since the 1950s, no comprehensive study existed that relates the structure of cannabinoids with antibacterial activity. Giovanni Appendino, Simon Gibbons, and coworkers attempted to remedy that problem by examining the activity of five common cannabinoids and their synthetic derivatives.

It's the ghosts. The aliens. The suffering. The doomed expedition. The rivers of blood. The sheer folly of it all.It's the mystery.That's the draw of Fort Caroline, which stubbornly resists giving up its biggest secret: Where is the real fort hiding?

Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains.And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change.Everyone knows the story of Oetzi the Ice Man, found in an Austrian glacier in 1991. Oetzi was discovered at an altitude of over 3,000m.He lived in about 3,300 BC, leading to speculation that the Alps may have had more human habitation than previously suspected.

Ever since Steamboat Willie chugged onto our screens in 1928, audiences across the world have been transfixed by the magic of animation.Now 80 years later industry experts are hailing Image Metrics for making the most realistic computer generated character so far.'Emily' is an extraordinary animated woman created using a ground-breaking modelling technique that captures minute facial movements.

Researchers here have found a way to convert ethanol and other biofuels into hydrogen very efficiently. A new catalyst makes hydrogen from ethanol with 90 percent yield, at a workable temperature, and using inexpensive ingredients.

The Federal Aviation Administration celebrates its 50th birthday this week, but don't expect George Nield to be counting the candles on the cake. As the agency's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, Nield prefers to look forward rather than backward. One of his favorite topics is what he calls a new era in spaceflight - an era that includes a bigger role for America's "other" space agency.

ANTIQUITIES of great value are reportedly buried in the Kourris Valley area of the Limassol district, and have been systematically plundered by tomb raiders and illicit antiquities traders over the last century, locals living in the area have warned.The Antiquities Department has confirmed that there is a tomb raiding problem in the area, but say it is part of a wider phenomenon in an island abundant with ancient treasures.

A famous Neolithic Iceman is dressed in clothes made from sheep and cattle hair, a new study shows. The researchers say their findings support the idea that the Iceman was a herdsman, and that their technique, reported today in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, has use in the modern clothing industry.

Archaeologists digging near the town of Cioroiu Nou, in Dolj country in southern Romania, have come across a Roman fort that might have been the capital of the province of Dacia Malvensis."We've made some important discoveries. We're almost certain that we've unearthed the capital of Dacia Malvensis, something archaeologists were searching to find for hundred of years", Mihai Fifor, director of Oltenia Muzeum, told the local press agency NewsIn.

Archaelogists have made a grisly, fascinating discovery in central Berlin -- a giant medieval graveyard containing 2,000 corpses, many of them children.Archaelogists in Berlin have uncovered 2,000 skeletons in a huge medieval cemetery near the city center since they started examining the site in March 2007.The site was found during construction work in Petriplatz square. A large number of the skeletons are of children, a sign of their high mortality rate in the Middle Ages.

You could call him the Indiana Jones of surgery. Steve Mannion, an orthopaedic surgeon, has devoted his life to working in far-flung and under-resourced corners of the world."Part of my reason for going into medicine was to work overseas. I was a bit of an adventurer. As a student, I did an elective on the Afghan-Pakistan border."His sense of adventure led him into working as a trauma and war surgeon for the Red Cross and medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers.

Clouds of water ice drifting above the Martian surface eat up some of the ozone in Mars' atmosphere, a new study suggests, giving scientists new clues about the chemical environment and climate of Earth's nearest neighbor.

It was an event that lasted just 12 seconds and made it into only four newspapers the next morning.The pioneering, 120-foot flight over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, may have gone off with little fanfare that day in 1903, but it would soon have enormous implications that wrapped, very literally, around the world.

Some planets beyond our solar system might be rocky like Earth, but lack its gooey metallic middle, a new study suggests. Such 'coreless' terrestrial planets would not have magnetic fields, which would make them inhospitable to life as we know it.Rocky planets were once thought to consist of three main layers: a thin solid crust, a viscous, rocky mantle and a solid or molten iron core.

University of Virginia researchers have a plan to greatly increase algae oil yields by feeding the algae extra carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) and organic material like sewage, meaning the algae could simultaneously produce biofuel and clean up environmental problems.In the world of alternative fuels, there may be nothing greener than pond scum.

Turning everyday waste into gasoline may seem like a distant dream, but thanks to researchers with the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and Byogy Renewables Inc., it could become a reality within two years.

A space-age version of the rusty springs under old pickup trucks will help NASA fix the most pressing technical problem with its high-tech new rocket to send astronauts back to the moon.NASA is going to use 17 super-sized shock absorbers in its not-yet-built rocket to keep the top from shaking too much for astronauts, agency officials said in a Tuesday press conference.

An asteroid first spotted in 1950 has a maximum 1-in-300 chance of striking the Earth in the year 2880 scientists will report Friday in the journal Science. The odds, which might turn out to be zero, are for now greater than for any other asteroid ever determined to be a threat.However, scientists are not worried; a little chalk, some charcoal, or perhaps a giant bucket of paint and the asteroid known as 1950 DA could be flung harmlessly off course if need be.

Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.

Fleets of miniature spacecraft may now be closer to liftoff.To bring this sci-fi vision of 50-pound "micro-spacecraft" and 10-pound "nano-spacecraft" to reality, scientists have now invented a razor-thin skin that can protect craft against the extreme heat and intense cold found in outer space and withstand micrometeoroids hurtling at thousands of miles per hour.

Europe's space agency reached two milestones earlier this year. A European-built lab was installed at the International Space Station. Europe launched a robotic cargo vehicle that successfully docked with the station. The European Space Agency will be building more of those automated delivery trucks. And it's also thinking about converting the cargo vehicle into a crew vehicle that could take astronauts into orbit.

When Colorado voters were deciding whether to require that 10 percent of the state's electricity come from renewable fuels, the state's largest utility fought the proposal, warning that any shift from coal and natural gas would be costly, uncertain and unwise.Then a funny thing happened. The ballot initiative passed, and Xcel Energy met the requirement eight years ahead of schedule. And at the government's urging, its executives quickly agreed to double the target, to 20 percent.

THE ISIMILA STONE AGE SITE in Tanzania provides fascinating insights into how ancient man developed the tools to master his environment.Stone tools and artefacts found at Isimila near Iringa town, over 500 kilometres from Dar es Salaam, show that the Hehe -- one of the ethnic groups in the region -- used the site as a sort of Stone Age weapons factory.Excarvation in Iringa region, especially Mtera and Upper Kihansi, indicate that there were settlements in these areas from as early as 200,000 years ago to as late as the Iron Age.

A tiny, paper-thin pendant with a rare depiction of a Virginia Indian is among four significant archaeological discoveries this summer at Jamestown, America's first permanent English settlement.The "corn-flake" fragile copper relief is "tremendously significant" because there are so few renderings of Powhatan Indians, said William Kelso, director of archaeology at Historic Jamestowne.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS may have unearthed evidence of a prehistoric tragedy at Isle of Man Airport.They are working on a theory that fire could have razed a Bronze Age village to the ground in a cataclysmic conflagration in the area known as Ronaldsway.Prehistoric remains including three human skeletons, discovered during earthworks for the airport runway extension project, made headlines around the world.

The concept may be radical, but it might just have to be if the worst predictions of climate change are realized.The Lilypad, a floating ecopolis for climatic refugees, is the creation of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut."It is" he says, "a true amphibian, half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting biodiversity".Callebaut imagines his structure at 250 times the scale of a lilypad, with a skin made of polyester fibres coated in titanium dioxide which would react with ultraviolet light and absorb atmospheric pollution.

PALO ALTO, California - Bigfoot remains as elusive as ever.Results from tests on genetic material from alleged remains of one of the mythical half-ape and half-human creatures, made public at a news conference on Friday held after the claimed discovery swept the Internet, failed to prove its existence.

The legendary candiru, or 'willy fish' as it sometimes less politely called, is known about well outside its native range in the freshwater rivers of the Amazon basin. These small catfish are parasites and normally live in the gills of very large catfishes, to which they're attracted by the ammonia that is excreted by the fishes' gills.

If Batman had a cat, it would probably look something like this.The household pet, named Yoda, was born with an extra set of ears.Valerie and Ted Rock took him in two years ago after visiting a bar near their home in Chicago, where he was being passed round by curious drinkers.He was one of a large litter and the owners were looking for a home for him.The couple immediately fell for the freaky feline and asked the owner if they could adopt him. He agreed and the couple named the cat Yoda, after the pointy-eared Jedi knight in Star Wars.

As if it wasn't bad enough for the military to muck about with mind control, they're also bent on creating an online, self-teaching artificial intelligence.Hasn't anyone in the Pentagon watched The Terminator?Of the various possible types of AI, the "most revolutionary would be an intelligent machine that uses the Internet to train," write the authors of a military-commissioned National Research Council report on emerging cognitive neuroscience. With so much information online and constantly updated, "If a system that reasoned like a human being could be achieved, there would be no limit to augmenting its capabilities."

Something beneath the surface is changing Earth's protective magnetic field, which may leave satellites and other space assets vulnerable to high-energy radiation.The gradual weakening of the overall magnetic field can take hundreds and even thousands of years. But smaller, more rapid fluctuations within months may leave satellites unprotected and catch scientists off guard, new research finds.

Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe. Jonathan Franklin reports with pictures by Morten AndersenSebastián Piñera, one of the richest men in Chile, has a CV that includes introducing credit cards to his country and many large-scale property developments. Now he has added what every chic millionaire needs - his own private ecosystem.

In its own way, the axolotl salamander is a mighty beast. Chop off its leg, and the gilled creature will grow a new one. Freeze part of its heart, and the organ will form anew. Carve out half of its brain, and six months later, another half will have sprouted in its place. "You can do anything to it except kill it, and it will regenerate," says Gerald Pao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, CA.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered "minor planet" with an elongated orbit around the Sun may help explain the origin of comets, researchers said on Monday.The object, known as 2006 SQ372, is starting the outward portion of a 22,500-year orbit that will take it 150 billion miles away from the Sun.

China plans to launch a controversial project to extend Shanghai's magnetic levitation train in 2010 after deferring it for years amid radiation concerns, reports by state media said.The project, linking Shanghai to Hangzhou, the capital of east China's Zhejiang province, appeared on a list of construction plans of the provincial government, the Shanghai Securities News reported Monday.

Astronomers have spotted an icy object near Neptune that they say hails from the distant Oort Cloud, the distant reservoir of asteroids that encircles the solar system out beyond the orbit of Pluto. The object, at least 30 miles wide, is on the return leg of a 22,500-year journey around the sun, astronomers announced today

The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secretsSTORED in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction.

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations.It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every crease, scorch mark and unexplained stain in their years-long pursuit of the mystery:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Nine years of sleuthing, advanced DNA science and cutting-edge forensic techniques have finally put a name to a mummified hand and arm found in an Alaska glacier.The remains belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from Roanoke, Va., who was on a plane rumored to contain a cargo of gold when it smashed into the side of a mountain 60 years ago. Thirty people died in the crash.

Mount Sinai researchers have developed a new gene silencing technology that could be used to target genes that can lead to the development of certain diseases. This technology could pave the way for preventing diseases where gene dysfunction plays a role.

The athletes of the world might currently be competing for titles in Beijing, but it was in northeast China where the battle for world supremacy was played out one century ago.Manchuria, a strategic region of Asia bordering Mongolia, Russia and Korea, was the site of a war between two fledgling superpowers in 1905, whose outcome set history on a different course.

Keeping his eyes on the ground, Jarrod Barker has waded right into an archaeological debate.The Port Dover man has found several teeth in the shallow water along the shore of Lake Erie -- teeth that may be more than 10,000 years old.Barker is an avocational archeologist, someone who takes an interest in historic finds, but doesn't have a licence or formal training. He makes a habit of walking along the beach or in the surf with his head down, which is how he found the teeth.

Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What's harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.

Earliest evidence of tar used as waterproofing material was found in Veracruz and is more than 3,500 years old. Olmeca cultures that inhabited the Gulf of Mexico vicinity used it to protect soil, terracotta or wooden constructions, floor and wall covering, boat sealant, as well as glue.Earliest remains of containers with tar are those recovered in the municipality of Hidalgotitlan, Veracruz, as part of El Manati archaeological project. Containers found by INAH archaeologists may have been used to heat up tar.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan marked the 63rd anniversary of its surrender in World War Two on Friday with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda avoiding visiting a shrine for war dead seen by Asian neighbors as a symbol of Tokyo's past militarism.Former prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Junichiro Koizumi and three current cabinet ministers were among those who paid their respects at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo on Friday, domestic media reported.

For almost thirty years, scientists have known that complex carbon compounds called tholins exist on comets and in the atmospheres of the outer planets. Theoretically, tholins might interact with water in a process called hydrolysis to produce complex molecules similar to those found on the early Earth.On the Earth, complex organic molecules are believed to have been an early step in the emergence of life; such compounds are called prebiotic.

SEOUL, South Korea - Back in the days of "Commies" and "pinkos," of Red scares, black lists, suspicion and smear, Kim Soo-im stood out as a one-woman axis of evil, a villainess without peer."The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America," as the U.S. magazine Coronet labeled her, was a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time engineered 3-D materials that can reverse the natural direction of visible and near-infrared light, a development that could help form the basis for higher resolution optical imaging, nanocircuits for high-powered computers, and, to the delight of science-fiction and fantasy buffs, cloaking devices that could render objects invisible to the human eye.

For several decades, archaeologists in Greece have been painstakingly attempting to reconstruct wall paintings that hold valuable clues to the ancient culture of Thera, an island civilization that was buried under volcanic ash more than 3,500 years ago.This Herculean task -- more than a century of further work at the current rate -- soon may get much easier, thanks to an automated system developed by a team of Princeton University computer scientists working in collaboration with archaeologists in Greece.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.

CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed four small statues of the Sphinx, the mythological figure of a lion with a human head, the Higher Council of Antiquities said on Friday.The headless sandstone statues were found on a road linking the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak in southern Egypt, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said in a statement.

A pair of Georgia men faced more than a half-hour of skeptical questions from reporters Friday as they defended their claim that they stumbled upon the body of Bigfoot while hiking in a remote North Georgia forest.Introduced by a publicist and beside a man who promoted what turned out to be a fake Bigfoot discovery in 1995, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer repeatedly said that their claim is not a hoax and that scientific analysis will prove it."We were not looking for Bigfoot. ... We wouldn't know what we were doing if we did," said Whitton, a police officer on leave after being shot in the hand while making an arrest. "I didn't believe in Bigfoot at the time. ... But you've got to come to terms with it and realize you've got something special. And that's what it was."

A press conference in Palo Alto, Calif. tomorrow is planned to showcase yesterday's bold claim that the remains of a Sasquatch, or bigfoot, have been found in northern Georgia. Matthew Whitton, a police officer, and Rick Dyer, a former corrections officer, along with veteran Bigfoot tracker Tom Biscardi of Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., said they came across the seven-foot, seven-inch (2.3-meter), 500-pound (227-kilogram) body of a simianlike creature in the woods. The group also said DNA tests are being carried out and that a team of undisclosed scientists will examine the corpse.

Experts are growing increasingly concerned that the United States will have to rely entirely upon Russia to take astronauts to and from the international space station for at least five years.Observers say the situation is all the more worrying as after NASA announced a delay in the launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft.

James Hoyt delivered mail in rural Iowa for more than 30 years. Yet Hoyt had long kept a secret from most of those who knew him best: He was one of the four U.S. soldiers to first see Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp.Hoyt died Monday at his home in Oxford, Iowa, a town of about 700 people where he had lived his entire life. He was 83.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US-led team of archaeologists said Thursday they had discovered by chance what is believed to be the largest find of Stone Age-era remains ever uncovered in the Sahara Desert.Named Gobero, the site includes remarkably intact human remains as well as the skeletons of fish and crocodiles dating back some 10,000 years to a time when what is now the world's largest desert was a swampy wetland.

NASA has delayed the launch of an unmanned spacecraft to the moon to scout for potential landing sites for astronauts.The moon craft is the first step in NASA's program to send astronauts back to the moon and beyond. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was supposed to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in early December aboard an Atlas V rocket. But the launch was pushed back after NASA agreed to swap with the Air Force, which will fly a prototype space drone.

TORONTO - The University of Toronto and IBM Corp. are building Canada's most powerful supercomputer, a mammoth machine that will need its own building for storage and will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second.

Although it would've stood only waist-high next to a human, the small British dinosaur Hypsilophodon foxii could run away in a flash, and now new research suggests it even may have possessed a special adaptation that prevented its ribs from rattling during Olympic-worthy dashes.The discovery yields both bad and good news for the plant-eating dino. The bad is that scientists now believe it did not possess impressive body armor, as had previously been suspected.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.

MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) - A prehistoric crater left by an asteroid collision in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula could yield clues about what Mars was like billions of years ago, a NASA scientist says.NASA planetary geologist Adriana Ocampo is digging up rocks buried deep under southeastern Mexico for hints about what impact craters can reveal about planet formation, and says her work could shed light on a giant crater on the surface of Mars.

Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them.Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it. For example, objects can sometimes be said to exist in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously.

The prosecutors in North Dakota want Kenneth Rau to spend the next five years of his life in prison for possession of Salvia divinorum leaf! Anyone who has had the great misfortune of standing in a court room to hear the Great State of [.....] vs. Them knows prosecution throws these offers at you like a McDonald's cashier asks if you would like to Supersize your meal. They want to incarcerate a man who works, pays his taxes and is no threat to the public for five years all because he has an interest in ethnobotanicals. This is an outrage.

Neanderthals and modern humans shared an ancestor that lived about 660,000 years ago, according to scientists who have pieced together the first complete sequence of maternal DNA from humanity's closest cousins.

An Israeli scientist says a Roman temple unearthed in the center of an ancient Jewish city in northern Israel shows pagans and Jews lived and worshipped together.

Researchers have discovered an unusual molecule that is essential to the atmosphere's ability to break down pollutants, especially the compounds that cause acid rain.It's the unusual chemistry facilitated by this molecule, however, that will attract the most attention from scientists.Marsha Lester, the University of Pennsylvania's Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor, and Joseph Francisco, William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, found the molecule, which had puzzled and eluded scientists for more than 40 years.

Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world's energy woes. But the process of making the various components requires fossil fuels, both for power and for the components themselves, some of which are based on petroleum.

Michael Berkeley is clearly a man with a mission - to save beautiful British countryside from desecration by wind turbines. Hence his article asserts that "we owe it to our children's children to preserve it" (A blot of turbines, July 28).Because I have on many occasions publicly acknowledged that I live in beautiful countryside, the fact that I have "put together a new application to Herefordshire for four turbines" in the Welsh Marches makes me, in Berkeley's eyes, the ultimate vandal.

The reliability of patient MRI scans could be improved, after experts looked to the stars to find the answer.Edinburgh University astronomers and clinicians found the method used to analyse studies of distant galaxies could be used to improve scans.The astronomy algorithm, a set of mathematical instructions, can be used to correct image distortions which often occur during scanning.It is hoped the discovery will save the health service time and money.

Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light.We're talking about the very distant future, of course.

Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot to be controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers said.