Newsdesk Archive

Experts have digitally reconstructed Rome's earliest major temple, the Temple of Apollo, built by the first Roman emperor, Augustus.The temple dates to 28 B.C., and its ruins stand adjacent to the emperor's imperial palaces on the city's famous Palatine Hill. (Read related story: "Sacred Cave of Rome's Founders Found, Scientists Say"

Archaeologists recently found two ancient brick-built structures at the Paharpur world heritage site which they believe belonged to a period even earlier than the site's known time, the Pala Era.The department earlier found several stone statues, including Mithun and Vayu, from the Gupta Dynasty before the recent excavation.

If you were to dig a hole 300 feet straight down from the center of the charming French village of Crozet, you'd pop into a setting that calls to mind the subterranean lair of one of those James Bond villains. A garishly lit tunnel ten feet in diameter curves away into the distance, interrupted every few miles by lofty chambers crammed with heavy steel structures, cables, pipes, wires, magnets, tubes, shafts, catwalks, and enigmatic gizmos.

PONCE, Puerto Rico - For centuries, the undulating banks of the Portugu�s River trembled beneath the feet of Taino dancers as they celebrated their most sacred rites.But as their civilization died out, so did the story of the mystical place by the river Tainos called J�cana -- until last fall, when the Army Corps of Engineers stumbled upon it while surveying the land for the construction of a dam. It soon became clear that this was the most important archaeological treasure ever to be found in Puerto Rico.

One of Saturn's moons may once have harboured a liquid ocean beneath its icy surface, scientists have told a major conference in Houston, Texas.Tethys is a mid-sized satellite with a density close to that of pure ice.But a large valley system visible today must have formed when the crust was being heated and under great strain.The team thinks that tidal heating, followed by cooling which froze Tethys' ocean, could have formed the giant Ithaca Chasma rift.

A diverse committee of experts from around the world, convened at the request of the National Science Foundation, announced 14 grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century that, if met, would improve how we live."Tremendous advances in quality of life have come from improved technology in areas such as farming and manufacturing," said committee member and Google co-founder Larry Page. "If we focus our effort on the important grand challenges of our age, we can hugely improve the future."

BAZA is believed to be one of the oldest of all human settlements in Spain. The town and its surrounding area has a rich and varied architectural, historical and archaeological heritage, having been home to many different cultures down the centuries and back to pre-historic times. Its town centre was declared a Historic Centre in 2003, and in its narrow winding streets, especially around the walled medina area where the Alcazaba was built, we can see many remnants of this rich and ancient past.

Nobody knows how life on Earth began, but the primordial soup likely got a lot of its ingredients from space.Scientists have discovered concentrations of amino acids in two meteorites that are more than 10 times higher than levels previously measured in other similar meteorites.

A new study may have been for (and about) the birds, but it also hints at how humans may have developed the ability to speak, potentially paving the way to one day to identifying the causes of speech deficiencies.Duke University scientists report in PLoS ONE this week that they attempted to pinpoint regions of the brain responsible for vocal skills by studying three types of birds (parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds) capable of picking up new songs and utterances as well as birds (zebra finches and ringed turtle doves) that lack the ability. Their findings: vocal pathways are always nestled in the same areas of the brain that control body movement.

To mark National Science Week, experts are asking whether the Earth's unplumbed depths hold clues to extraterrestrial life. Roger Highfield reportsA jelly-like leviathan slowly glides in the black waters. Towards it, surrounded by the faint sparkle of tiny blue and red plankton, swims a torpedo-shaped creature with teeth of frozen crystal, hunting for a meal.

A meteorite which ploughed into the Peruvian countryside last year should have shattered and dispersed long before reaching the ground.That is the conclusion of scientists who have been examining samples of the space rock and the 15m-wide crater it dug out in Carancas last September.The discovery of a water-filled hole, following reports of a fireball in the sky, made headlines around the world.

Large volumes of water ice have probably been detected below Mars' surface, far from the planet's polar ice caps, scientists have said.The Sharad radar experiment, on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft made the discovery in Mars' mid-northern latitudes.The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars' surface that are hundreds of metres thick.The radar data suggest that some of these features consist mostly of ice.

Pterosaurs, like their dinosaur relatives, didn't wait until they were fully grown to have sex, a new study suggests.Researchers examined microscopic tree ring-like growth markings in hundreds of bones from a species of the extinct flying reptiles discovered in central Argentina in the 1990s.

Egyptian police confiscated four ancient mummies on Wednesday and arrested three antiquities smugglers who had stolen them from an ancient graveyard, a security official said.Wrapped in layers of linen and decorated with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the mummies were found in the southern province of Minya, 135 miles (220 kilometers) south of Cairo, the official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

LIMA (Reuters) - Researchers have found the ruins of an Inca temple built for religious ceremonies in the Andes mountains, at a park in the archeologically rich region of southern Peru that includes Machu Picchu.The temple measures 2,700 sq feet, includes 11 rooms of various sizes and an area in the shape of a Chacana, an Incan religious symbol."This was an adoration center," said Oscar Rodriguez, a researcher at the Sacsayhuaman archeological park that, like the ancient Incan citadel of Machu Picchu, is a popular tourist destination.

A consensus is emerging in the highly contentious debate over the colonization of the Americas, according to a study that says the bulk of the region wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago.Researchers analyzed both archaeological and genetic evidence from several dozen sites throughout the Americas and eastern Asia for the paper.

NEW YORK - Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said.

PALENQUE, Mexico (AP) -- North American Indians assembled in the shadow of ancient Mayan pyramids Monday discussed how their tradition wisdom could help save the planet, and were told that even indigenous cultures have struggled with environmental abuse.More than 200 leaders from 71 American Indian nations in Mexico, the United States and Canada came together in this Mexican jungle to find indigenous solutions to pollution and ecological problems threatening the planet.

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Many researchers in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have focused on resonators -- tiny devices that vibrate at radio frequencies -- to replace quartz crystals and other oscillators and can be economically integrated directly into a silicon chip.

Austrians have held a candlelit vigil to mark their country's annexation by Nazi Germany 70 years ago.They lit 80,000 candles in Vienna, representing the number of Austrian Jews and others killed by the Nazis.Earlier, the president of Austria's parliament told MPs the country shared responsibility for the Nazis' crimes.In 1938, huge crowds in Vienna celebrated the arrival of German troops and Hitler, who declared "Anschluss", or political union.

A 5,200 year old piece of pottery from Iran has been discovered to embody the oldest known animation in the world -- a wild goat eating vegetation:The wild goat motif can be seen on Iranian pottery dating back to the 4th millennium BCE, as well as jewellery pieces especially among Cassite tribes of ancient Luristan. However, the oldest wild goat representation in Iran was discovered in Negaran Valley in Sardast region, 37 kilometers from Nahok village near Saravan back in 1999. The engraved painting of wild goat is part of an important collection of lithoglyphs dating back to 8000 BCE.

A researcher at the National University at San Diego has taken a mathematical approach to a biological problem - how to design a portable DNA detector. Writing in the International Journal of Nanotechnology, he describes a mathematical simulation to show how a new type of nanoscale transistor might be coupled to a DNA sensor system to produce a characteristic signal for specific DNA fragments in a sample.Samuel Afuwape of the National University, in San Diego, California, explains that a portable DNA sequencer could make life easier for environmental scientists testing contaminated sites. Clinicians and medical researchers too could use it to diagnose genetic disorders and study problems in genetics. Such a sensor might also be used to spot the weapons of the bioterrorist or in criminal forensic investigations.

ATHENS, Greece - Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday.Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement.

A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

Seven dino-era feathers found perfectly preserved in amber in western France highlight a crucial stage in feather evolution, scientists report.The hundred-million-year-old plumage has features of both feather-like fibers found with some two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods and of modern bird feathers, the researchers said.

Neolithic and III-I millennium B.C. archaeological findings belonging to Yalavlu Tepe culture have been discovered in Zaqatala Region of Azerbaijan, Jahangir Soltanov, Director of Zagatala Regional Ethnography Museum told APA.J. Soltanov said the findings had been discovered on the left bank of Alazan River near Muganli village, Zaqatala.Local farmers discovered a stone horse tooth chopper of Neolithic age under the ground and fishermen discovered Yalavlu Tepe pottery in the bank of Alazan River.

The inky black, angular, radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next month in Nevada.Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Poland's president has promised to restore citizenship to thousands of Jews who were expelled from the country by the communists in 1968.Lech Kaczynski described the decision to kick out about 15,000 Jews - many Holocaust survivors - as "shameful".The purge followed nationwide student protests that began after a decision to close down a patriotic play.People of Jewish origin were blamed, stripped of Polish citizenship and ordered out of the country.

Plans are being made for the installation of an information storage bank on the moon, experts said at a science meeting Strasbourg, France.The so-called "Doomsday ark" would provide the tools for the reconstruction of the human race in case civilization is ever destroyed, The Sunday London Times reported.

A.D. 105: The eunuch Tsai Lun shows his "invention" of paper to the Han emperor of China.Recent archaeological evidence shows that people in northwestern China were making paper in the two centuries before its formal introduction at court. But Tsai (or Cai) is notable for refining the process, experimenting with new materials and founding the Chinese paper industry.

AS if forecasting whether asteroids will hit the Earth wasn't hard enough, it now seems that primordial black holes could surprise us by nudging a rock or two our way.Some physicists think these little black holes, invisible remnants of the early universe, could be a candidate for the dark matter making up much of the universe's mass. Alexander Shatskiy of the Lebedev Institute in Moscow, Russia, points out that if all dark matter, is black holes they would likely pass through the asteroid belts in our galactic backyard. Since a metre-sized primordial black hole can have the mass of the Earth, it would need only to pass near an asteroid to knock it out of a safe orbit and towards our planet, he says

The ancient Egyptian state was built on the backs of tamed wild asses. Ten skeletons excavated from burial sites of the first Egyptian kings are the best evidence yet that modern-day donkeys emerged through domestication of African wild asses. The 5000-year-old bones also provide the earliest indications that asses were used for transport.

In California the almond orchards are in blossom and millions of honeybees are at work, pollinating, doing a job only they can do.Almonds are the first big bloom of the season and the first big test of honeybee health, CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports."It's not a vibrant hive, it's not full of bees," said Brett Adee. "A hive this time of year should be just busting bees. And it's just a scrawny little bee hive."

Thousands of human bones belonging to numerous individuals have been discovered in the Pacific island nation of Palau.Some of the bones are ancient and indicate inhabitants of particularly small size, scientists announced today.The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens, according to a paper on the discovery. However, the older bones are tiny and exhibit several traits considered primitive, or archaic, for the human lineage.

The dream of time traveling, to the past or future, is probably as old as the human imagination. When H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, he called it a "scientific romance" because no one knew whether time travel was possible.A mere 10 years later, Albert Einstein would put forth his theory of special relativity, and part of the question would be answered--to the astonishment of many--in the affirmative.One of Einstein's predictions, now verified by countless experiments, is best illustrated by the parable of the twins.

It may look like a child's toy but this unmanned spy helicopter can swoop down and squirt criminals with a liquid marker so they can later be identified by police.The £25,000 remote-controlled Microdrone, the size of a dustbin lid, can capture high-quality video footage and infrared imagery from more than 350ft away, beaming the data back to its operators on the ground.But its most revolutionary function is to mark offenders with a solution called SmartWater which identifies them to police.

Chinese police fired teargas into crowds of monks who took to the streets of Lhasa yesterday for a second day of protests in the Tibetan capital.Around 500 monks were marching near a police station to demand the release of fellow monks who had been held after protests on Monday. Eyewitnesses told Radio Free Asia they were chanting "we want freedom" and "free our people or we won't go back".The monks from the Sera monastery were surrounded by more than 1,000 armed police who fired tear gas into the crowd and used electric prods to disperse the protesters.

Fort Bragg, Calif. - From roadless villages in Alaska to remote bends in the Mississippi River, developers are staking claim to thousands of miles of America's oceans and rivers to test devices that use waves and currents to produce electric power.Their experiments are launching a new industry that has the potential to supply up to 10 percent of America's electric needs. But critics say rapid federal approval of the exclusive right to conduct these experiments amounts to a private seizure of communities' waterfronts.

PARIS (AFP) - "The sea was driven back, and its waters flowed away to such an extent that the deep sea bed was laid bare and many kinds of sea creatures could be seen," wrote Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus, awed at a tsunami that struck the then-thriving port of Alexandria in 365 AD."Huge masses of water flowed back when least expected, and now overwhelmed and killed many thousands of people... Some great ships were hurled by the fury of the waves onto the rooftops, and others were thrown up to two miles (three kilometres) from the shore."

A long time ago - a very long time ago - obsidian was all the rage. Abundant in Oregon and relatively easy to craft, Native American cultures used the volcanic rock to make prehistoric tools: knives, spear tips and the like.

One of the most intriguing developments in archaeology in recent decades is the serious study of ancient ceremonial life. Previously, "ceremonial objects" were the odd bits left over after archaeologists had identified arrowheads, cooking pots and other objects with more or less obvious functions.Sometimes, these leftovers were exceptionally beautiful works of art, but it was considered unscientific speculation to attempt to reconstruct the beliefs behind their creation and use.

Addis Ababa, March 6 - A holy monument returned to Ethiopia after years of foot-dragging is to be re-erected later this year after the final technical wrinkles are ironed out, the Italian ambassador to the East African country said Tuesday.Raffaele de Lutio told ANSA that a concrete slipway leading up to the obelisk's site has been completed and the base itself has been reinforced to prevent the monument causing damage to a recently discovered necropolis.

Some of the world's best preserved prehistoric landscapes survive in pristine condition at the bottom of the North Sea, archaeologists claimed yesterday.Academic interest in what are being described as drowned Stone Age hunting grounds is likely to increase dramatically after the discovery of 28 Neanderthal flint axes on the sea bed off the East Anglian coast.

Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists searching for the ruined house of Augustus found a tiny clue buried deep in 2,000 years' worth of rubble overlooking the Forum in Rome.The single fragment of painted plaster, discovered in masonry-filled rooms, led the experts to unearth a series of exquisite frescoes commissioned by the man who would later become Rome's first emperor.On Sunday following decades of painstaking restoration, the frescoes in vivid shades of blue, red and ochre went on public show for the first time since they were painted in about 30BC.

As she listened to the cheering crowds and roars of enthusiasm as Hitler and his army entered Austria in March 1938, teenager Ilse Roemer was fascinated at first.But then her father told her that the cries of "Sieg Heil" were a signal for the Nazis "to start hunting the Jews".She had barely been aware of her Jewishness before. "Nobody ever asked if I was Jewish," she recalls.Now everything changed.She went to a cafe with her best friend, whose father was an ardent Nazi. Suddenly Hitler's voice came on the radio as he spoke euphorically of his Austrian homeland's absorption into the Third Reich.

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found evidence that an overlooked fault in the eastern Mediterranean is likely to produce an earthquake and tsunami every 800 years as powerful as the one that destroyed Alexandria in AD 365.Using radiocarbon dating techniques, simulations and computer models, the researchers recreated the ancient disaster in order to identify the responsible fault, they said in a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday.

STONEHENGE was the site of Stone Age battles to the death, an archaeologist has claimed.Dennis Price, a Stonehenge expert and former archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, says he thinks a skeleton discovered in a ditch around the ancient monument in 1978 is evidence that the site was used for ritual combat.The skeleton belonged to a man who had been killed by arrows in 2,300 BC and after being analysed was donated to Salisbury Museum.

A cave with rare ancient inscriptions dating back to more than 10000 years has reportedly been discovered at Badungala in the PS division of Yakkalamulla in Galle. Archaeology officials say that the inscriptions date back to the Endera yugaya or the era when animals were domesticated.They say similar cave inscriptions had been so far discovered in Alauwa, Ambilikanda and Mawanella. This is the first time that such a find has been reported from the South.

A star that died 340,000 years ago has provided fresh evidence that the energetic particles known as cosmic rays are being fired out by supernovae.It is seems likely that a supernova's shock wave can boost protons to the sort of huge energies found in cosmic rays. Direct evidence for this is hard to find, however, as cosmic rays are deflected by magnetic fields and so cannot be easily traced back to their source.

A SKELETON, which has been on prominent display in Salisbury Museum for nearly a decade, could hold the secret to Stonehenge's mysterious past and show the site to be an arena of gladiatorial combat, an archaeological expert has claimed.The skeleton, that of a man who had been killed by arrows in 2,300 BC, was discovered in the ditch surrounding the stones during excavation work, carried out by Professor Richard Atkinson and J.G Evans in 1978.

LONDON (AFP) - A rare bird not seen for nearly 80 years has reappeared in the South Pacific off Papua New Guinea, Britain's leading bird protection charity said Friday.The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said an expert who travelled on a ship northeast of the islands photographed more than 30 Beck's petrels, including young birds, which suggests a breeding site nearby.Israeli ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai's account appears in the latest Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, published Friday.

Space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to blast off Tuesday carrying seven astronauts and an eighth passenger that is in some ways superior: a robot that will take the astronauts' place for many jobs in outer space.Dextre, as the robot is known, has two arms, each with seven joints that allow the limb to twist and bend more than a human arm. Each of its two hands has pincers to grip objects and built-in socket wrenches to drive bolts.Dextre will be able to handle items as small as a phone book and as big as a phone booth. Never before has such a sophisticated robot flown in space.

Earth may have a twin orbiting one of our nearest stellar neighbors, a new study suggests.University of California, Santa Cruz graduate student Javiera Guedes used computer simulations of planet formation to show that terrestrial planets likely formed around one of the stars in the Alpha Centauri star system, our closest stellar neighbors.Guedes' model showed planets forming around the star Alpha Centauri B (its sister star, Proxima Centauri, is actually our nearest neighbor) in what is called the "habitable zone," or the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface.

Millions of years before the dinosaurs were apparently killed by an asteroid hitting our planet, the Earth experienced another mass extinction that was far more devastating. The cause for that, paleontologist Peter Ward says, was actually homegrown: Hydrogen sulfide in the oceans and atmosphere turned the sky green and choked off oxygen for plants, animals and marine life.

The Temple of Athena, situated within the border of the ancient Aegean city of Assos in Çanakkale's Ayvacık district, will be the subject of a three-year restoration project starting in July.The first excavation in the ancient city was conducted from 1881-83 by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).

Athens, Greece (AHN) - Greek archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Mycenaean-era tomb on the island of Lefkada as part of a road-widening project. Since the island was never before thought to have connections to the Mycenaean civilization, it could fuel debate on a major prehistoric puzzle; where the homeland of Homer's legendary hero Odysseus was located.

The mysterious properties of black holes can be recreated on a tabletop, scientists now reveal.Solving mysteries concerning black holes could yield key clues toward a "theory of everything" that unites how we conceive of all the natural forces.Black holes rank among the greatest enigmas of the universe. Scientists theorize black holes have gravitational pulls so powerful that nothing, including light, can escape after falling past a border known as the event horizon.

A lake that might once have been habitable may have filled a crater for a long time on early Mars, new spacecraft images reveal.NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the images that suggest the debris-strewn Holden Crater once held a calm body of water that could have harbored life. There is so far no convincing evidence life does or ever did exist on Mars, however.The crater debris includes a mix of broken boulders and smaller particles called megabreccia.

On May 29, 1919, two British expeditions, positioned on opposite sides of the planet, aimed telescopes at the sun during a total eclipse. Their mission: to test a radical theory of gravity dreamed up by a former patent clerk, who predicted that passing starlight should bend toward the sun. Their results, announced that November, vaulted Albert Einstein into the public consciousness and confirmed one of the most spectacular experimental successes in the history of science.

n a week when massive flooding (see photo) is turning back the clock a bit for the Grand Canyon, a controversial new study is shedding light on just how far back the canyon's history goes.The vast gorge may have been formed millions of years earlier than thought, the report says. The findings fly in the face of long-standing theory.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Scientists have created a breakthrough substance that can change in seconds when exposed to liquid, shifting from hard plastic to soft and back again, and that has a wide range of potential medical applications.The material -- inspired by the skin of sea cucumbers -- has astounding "mechanical morphing characteristics," according to an article published in the latest issue of Science Magazine.Researchers said a plethora of possible biomedical applications exist for the malleable new material, including as part of "artificial nervous systems" for patients with Parkinson's disease, stroke or spinal cord injuries.

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming."At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."

A by-product from whisky is being used by researchers in a bid to clean contaminated ground and waste water.The team at the University of Aberdeen believe they have a new technique, potentially worth millions of pounds.They say the Device for the Remediation and Attenuation of Multiple pollutants (Dram) has major potential in industry.The Glenfiddich distillery in Speyside has helped researchers get to this stage by donating the by-product, the nature of which is being kept secret.

A four-monthly jab may one day replace the need to regularly take pills to control blood pressure, scientists say.A team from the Swiss biotechnology firm Cytos found the vaccine against a hormone in the blood significantly cut blood pressure, the Lancet reported.The jab was tested on 72 patients with high blood pressure and it was found to work without serious side-effects.

The Government has switched to Plan B on ID cards. Having failed to convince the public that this unwanted, expensive and intrusive scheme is vital on grounds of national security, it is trying a different tack.The idea now is to make them seem as desirable and essential as a credit card. In yesterday's "clarification" of the policy, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, made important concessions.

All British citizens will be signed up to a national ID scheme within 10 years under plans outlined by the Government today.Millions of people in sensitive jobs, including teachers, carers and health workers will be among the first to be entered onto the identity register.

A university student has been forced to give his DNA to police because he failed to buy a £2.40 rail fare.Jared Ahmad, 27, was arrested after completing a 20-minute journey to Salford Crescent, Greater Manchester. He claims he was unable to buy a ticket because there was no conductor on board his train.

Several teeth of mouse-sized primitive primates have been unearthed in Mississippi that are older than any other such fossils found in Europe or North America.The record-breaking tiny chompers suggest that the creatures travelled from Asia to North America across the Bering land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, and then later journeyed on to Europe across another land bridge linking North America to Greenland and Scotland.

A type of gene mutation long known to extend the lives of worms, flies and mice also turns up in long-lived humans. Researchers found that among Ashkenazi Jews, those who survived past age 95 were much more likely than their peers to possess one of two similar mutations in the gene for insulinlike growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R).The mutations seem to make cells less responsive than normal to insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF1), a key growth hormone secreted by the liver. In past studies, IGF1 disruption increased the life span of mice by 30 to 40 percent and delayed the onset of age-related diseases in the animals.

For the first time, astronomers have pinpointed the spot where the intense winds of two massive stars in a binary system violently collide and detected the production of high-energy X-rays there.The monstrously large Eta Carinae binary contains between 100 and 150 times the mass of the sun and glows more brightly than four million suns together. The so-called hypergiant contains two massive stars, the second of which was not discovered until 2005.

Tiny magnets made by bacteria could be used to kill tumours, say researchers.A team at the University of Edinburgh has developed a method of making the nanomagnets stronger, opening the way for their use in cancer treatment.The bacteria-produced magnets are better than man-made versions because of their uniform size and shape, the Nature Nanotechnology study reported.

A mysterious phenomenon causing small, unexpected deviations in robotic spacecraft trajectories near Earth may be a step closer to an explanation. Scientists have come up with a mathematical formula that successfully reproduces all the known occurrences of the effect, and they suspect the Earth's rotation may somehow be to blame.Scientists first noticed something amiss in the motion of spacecraft passing near Earth when the Galileo spacecraft flew by our planet in 1990 to get a boost from the planet's gravity. The flyby boosted Galileo's speed by several kilometres per second, as expected, but radio tracking of the spacecraft found the boost was very slightly larger than expected, by about 4 millimetres per second.

British intelligence chiefs tried to guess Hitler's plans by studying his horoscope, according to files released by the National Archives.Hungarian Ludwig von Wohl persuaded senior intelligence figures that he could replicate the forecasts of the Nazi leader's personal astrologer.He claimed that if London knew what advice Hitler, born on 20 April, was getting, they would know his next move.But the security service MI5 had warned that von Wohl was a "charlatan".

EARTH may be staring down the barrel of one of the galaxy's most beautiful and potentially deadly objects.A highly unstable star at the end of its life could unleash a burst of gamma-ray radiation directed straight at Earth, any time between now and the next couple of hundred thousand years.University of Sydney astronomer Peter Tuthill discovered an elegant rotating pinwheel system known as WR104 in the constellation Sagittarius eight years ago.

A study led by Brown University biologist Casey Dunn uses new genomics tools to answer old questions about animal evolution. The study is the most comprehensive animal phylogenomic research project to date, involving 40 million base pairs of new DNA data taken from 29 animal species.The study, which appears in Nature, settles some long-standing debates about the relationships between major groups of animals and offers up a few surprises.

ATHENS, Greece - Road construction on the western Greek island of Lefkada has uncovered and partially destroyed an important tomb with artifacts dating back more than 3,000 years, officials said on Wednesday.The find is a miniature version of the large, opulent tombs built by the rulers of Greece during the Mycenaean era, which ended around 1100 B.C. Although dozens have been found in the mainland and on Crete, the underground, beehive-shaped monuments are very rare in the western Ionian Sea islands, and previously unknown on Lefkada.

PARIS (AFP) - Venturing into the preserve of science fiction and stage magicians, scientists in the United States on Wednesday said they had made extraordinary progress towards reading the brain.The researchers said they had been able to decode signals in a key part of the brain to identify images seen by a volunteer, according to their study, published by the British journal Nature.

An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a fibre-glass body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500.It will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis.The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes - much quicker than a battery car.

AT 70, Arun dropped out. He gave away his money and possessions, traded in his long trousers for a loincloth and left home to embark on a new career as a sadhu or holy man, travelling between the temples of south India in the search of enlightenment and alms."I am waiting to die," he says merrily. "I am hoping it will be in a temple. Already I am counting the days." He sounds like a schoolboy happily anticipating the end of term.

Fossils from deep saltwater 'caves' show how human settlement has always upset the natural order, reports Roger Highfield.A pioneering study of life recorded in giant sinkholes that extend far below sea level has shown scientists the catastrophic impact that ancient communities had on their environments.

Our level of happiness throughout life is strongly influenced by the genes with which we were born, say experts.An Edinburgh University study of identical and non-identical twins suggests genes may control half the personality traits keeping us happy.The other half is linked to lifestyle, career and relationships.However, another expert said despite the research in the journal Psychological Science, we can still train ourselves to be more content.

A NASA spacecraft has taken the first-ever image of an avalanche in action near Mars' north pole.The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. The image, released today, shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.

PARIS (AFP) - Anthropologists have fired another salvo in a feud about diminutive "hobbit" people whose fossilised remains were found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island four years ago.Combatting a bid to have the hobbits enshrined as a separate branch of the human family tree, they argue the tiny cave-dwellers were simply Homo sapiens who became stunted and retarded as a result of iodine deficiency in pregnancy.

Ever since Assurbanipal, the ancient king of Assyria, compelled his astrologers, Rammanu-Sumausar and Nabu-Musisi, to record the daily movement of the planets and used their interpretations to gain political advantage, those in power have looked to the stars for inspiration.

Five months after a meteorite made an international splash in Peru, experts are suggesting explanations for some of the space rock's effects - for example, the sickening odor villagers smelled at the crash site, and the bubbles that were seen emanating from the water-filled crater left behind. But a study due to be presented next month also raises fundamental questions about the event. In fact, an international research team declares that the impact "should not have happened" at all.

Exciting new finds at the archaeological site of Pella have opened a new chapter in Macedonian history. Beneath the ruins of the ancient capital of the Macedonian kingdom is a large prehistoric burial ground that has yielded the first evidence of organized life in Pella during the third millennium BC.It was while they were engaged in conservation, repairs and other work to highlight the site that the excavation team from Aristotle University came across more than 100 Early Bronze Age burials in large jars, accompanied by marble works of art from the Cyclades, local ceramics and metalware.

Do Martians exist on that faraway planet orbiting the sun?How did ancient mountain ranges and continents form, long before the age of dinosaurs?An international research team led by earth sciences Prof. Desmond Moser at the University of Western Ontario is using three-billion-year-old data to try to answer those questions and more about deep, dark secrets held beneath the Earth's surface.

"And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.The "perceiving of the voices" has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca. "One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds," he says.

Skin secretions from a South American "shrinking" frog could be used to treat type 2 diabetes, researchers say.A compound isolated from the frog, which grows to 27cm as a tadpole before shrinking to 4cm in adulthood, stimulates insulin release.A synthetic version of the compound - pseudin-2 - could be used to produce new drugs, delegates at the Diabetes UK annual conference heard.Around two million people in the UK have type 2 diabetes.

45 B.C.: Roman dictator-for-life Julius Caesar, alarmed that the calendar is growing out of whack with the seasons, adds an extra day to the month of February every four years.Caesar was reforming a calendar based on 364 days, with an occasional extra leap month. But the Roman religious officials in charge of minding the calendar had been asleep at the switch, chronologically speaking. Caesar consulted with Egypt's top astronomers, who told him the year was 365¼ days long. While he was making the fix, Julius also decided to give his name to the month of July.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - Venezuelan scientists and military officers reached the Antarctica after a 15-day trip, opening the South American nation's first expedition to the frozen continent, officials said Saturday.The Venezuelans made the trip on an Uruguayan naval research ship, reflecting warm ties between the nations' leftist governments. President Tabare Vazquez has been criticized by his opponents for allowing Venezuelans aboard the Uruguayan vessel Oyarvide.

The looting of Iraq's cultural treasures made headlines around the world in the wake of the invasion by the US and its allies in March 2003. Now the extent of the harm to archaeological sites in southern Iraq has been quantified, thanks to commercial satellite images.Modern-day Iraq contains relics from some of the world's oldest cities and is often referred to as the "cradle of civilisation". Anecdotal reports and helicopter flyovers suggested the looting of artifacts has been widespread.

Physicists at MIT and the University of Rochester have devised a new way to take "snapshots" of the high-energy, high-temperature reactions seen as key to achieving the long-held dream of controlled nuclear fusion.The work, which is reported in the Feb. 28 issue of Science, could one day help scientists harness nuclear fusion as an energy source. It could also shed light on basic questions about the physics of stars.

Two University of Virginia researchers believe that humans are genetically predisposed to be deathly afraid of snakes.Judy S. DeLoache, a U.Va. professor of developmental psychology, said she has a snake phobia, but wonders why. "The question was, where did that fear come from?"

Mysteriously, five spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions.These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.

Liquid water has not been found on the Martian surface within the last decade after all, according to new research.The finding casts doubt on the 2006 report that the bright spots in some Martian gullies indicate that liquid water flowed down those gullies sometime since 1999."It rules out pure liquid water," said lead author Jon D. Pelletier of The University of Arizona in Tucson.

TOKYO (AFP) - Scientists at a Japanese university said Thursday they believed another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system.The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.

Another Earth may be orbiting the star next door, and we could detect its presence within a few years, a new study argues. A telescope trained permanently on Alpha Centauri should be able to pick up the slight stellar wobbles induced by a small, rocky, Earth-like planet.Alpha Centauri lies just over 4 light years away and is the closest star system to the Sun. It appears to be a triple system, with two Sun-like stars orbiting each other relatively closely (about 23 times the Earth-Sun distance). The two stars have high concentrations of heavy elements, which is characteristic of stars that are born surrounded by dusty, planet-forming discs.

Self-induced drought and climate change may have caused the destruction of the Maya civilization, say scientists working with new satellite technology that monitors Central America's environment.Researchers from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, launched the satellite program, known as SERVIR, in early 2005 to help combat wildfires, improve land use, and assist with natural disaster responses.The researchers occasionally refer to the project as environmental diplomacy.