Newsdesk Archive

OK, so the Swiss have invented a car that runs on land and underwater. But did they REALLY have to make it a convertible?It's called the "sQuba," and conjures up memories of James Bond's amphibious Lotus Esprit from "The Spy Who Loved Me." That fictional vehicle traveled on land and, when chased by bad guys in a helicopter, plunged into the water and became an airtight submarine - complete with "torpedoes" and "depth charges."

Unique marine life in Antarctica will be at risk from an invasion of sharks, crabs and other predators if global warming continues, scientists warn.Crabs are poised to return to the Antarctic shallows, threatening creatures such as giant sea spiders and floppy ribbon worms, says a UK-US team.Some have evolved without predators for tens of millions of years.

The Red Planet was too salty to sustain life for much of its history, according to the latest evidence gathered by one of the US rovers on Mars' surface.High concentration of minerals in water on early Mars would have made it inhospitable to even the toughest microbes, a leading Nasa expert says.Clues preserved in rocks that were once awash with water suggest the environment was both acidic and briny.

Over the last century about 75% of the world's crop varieties have been lost, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests.UN researchers say that we now rely on just three crops: wheat, rice and maize.The fact that poorer nations are almost twice as dependent on these cereals as richer nations has led to the question: are we now too reliant on too few crops?

Computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing, according to a leading scientific "futurologist".There will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes is that artificial intelligence could be on a par with human intellect by the 2020s, said the American computer guru Ray Kurzweil.

LONDON - British and U.S. scientists said Friday they were exploring plans for a joint lunar mission that would use an orbiter to fire missile-like penetrators into the moon's surface.The Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment, or MoonLITE, would put a satellite into orbit around the moon. Three or four projectiles packed with scientific instruments would then be fired and embed just below the lunar surface, the British National Space Center and NASA said in a statement.

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.Addressing scientists here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, presented new survey results that show religion exerts far more influence on public views of technology in the United States than in Europe.

UK space scientist Emeritus Professor Alan Wells is to speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston in February on International Cooperation in Developing Swift and its Scientific Achievements.Professor Wells' presentation will be on Saturday 16th February as part of a symposium entitled: Worldwide Hunt to Solve the Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts. In it, he will discuss the breadth of international collaborations, including the prominent contributions from UK scientists, in new discoveries about gamma ray bursts obtained from the Swift satellite and coordinated observations from a global network of ground based telescopes.

Researchers descend on the heart of Boston this week for the world's largest general science conference, but the focus of many lectures is global, with an emphasis on both learning from and helping the developing world.The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is a mix of scientific workshops, lectures and public sessions that provide cutting-edge science, while also trying to tackle hot-button political issues like adapting to global climate change and embryonic stem cell research.

Having grown up on the crowded East Coast and studied wildlife in developing countries like Uganda and Ecuador, Adrian Treves knows just how difficult balancing the needs of people and wild animals can be - and how often human interests win out."I used sometimes to despair that we could never repair the damage we'd done to nature," admits Treves, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Antarctica is a land of towering mountains and vast emptiness - a pristine continent with a big garbage problem.CBS News correspondent John Blackstone asked Mark Furnish, who is in charge of picking up at McMurdo Station, America's main Antarctic science base: "You're the garbage man of Antarctica?""Yeah, I'm the biggest trash man on the continent," Furnish said.His challenge: None of the trash produced in Antarctica can be left there because it would be there forever.

Chinese archaeologists have found a fossilized body of an octoradiate spiral organism dating back 580 million years in the southwestern part of the country, the Guangming Daily reported. The creature in question would have been a multicellular animal.The fossil was found in Wenghui village, Jiangkou County, in southwest Guizhou Province. It was jointly confirmed as an octoradiate spiral organism by a research team under the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and an expert from Switzerland's National Museum of Natural Sciences.

The newly sequenced genome of a one-celled, planktonic marine organism, reported today in the journal Nature, is already telling scientists about the evolutionary changes that accompanied the jump from one-celled life forms to multicellular animals like ourselves.In the Nature paper and a complementary Science paper also released this week, University of California, Berkeley, biologists Nicole King, Daniel Rokhsar and their colleagues present their first draft of the genome of a choanoflagellate (ko AN oh FLA je let) called Monosiga brevicollis, and their first comparisons with the genes of multicellular animals, the so-called metazoans.

Scientists claim to have discovered a new compound that will capture damaging carbon dioxide from power plants using a technique commonly used to by the pharmaceutical industry to find new drugs.The sponge-like material, called ZIF-69, promises to hold 60 times its volume in carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas scientists say is primarily responsible for climate change.The compound, along with twenty-four others like it, were discovered using so-called high-throughput screening, a massively parallel technique for testing chemicals. The new molecule could be used to capture the carbon dioxide generated by power plants when they burn coal, gas, or biomass.

A planetary system with remarkable similarities to our own has been discovered, potentially increasing the chances of finding extra-terrestrial life.Astronomers have identified two new planets orbiting a star about half the size of our sun some 5,000 light-years away.The system, called OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, resembles a slightly scaled down version of our Solar system because the two gas giant planets are similar sizes relative to their star as Jupiter and Saturn are to our sun.The smaller planet is roughly twice as far from its star as the larger one, just as Saturn is about twice as far from the sun as Jupiter.Planetary scientists who discovered them believe there could be rocky planets, like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, closer to the star.

PARIS (AFP) - Imagine a place awash with more hydrocarbons than a Texan oilman can dream of and where no one has staked a single claim -- all that energy is just going begging.The problem: this massive reserve is at least 1.2 billion kilometers (750 million miles) away from Earth, on a tiny inhospitable world where on a warm day it's minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit).

A new study by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society found that jack rabbits living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have apparently hopped into oblivion.The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Oryx, also speculates that the disappearance of jack rabbits may be having region-wide impacts on a variety of other prey species and their predators.

Indiana Jones fanatics are about to get the ultimate Valentine's Day gift: the first trailer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which hits airwaves and the Internet Thursday.The trailer, which marks the first time fans get new scenes of Harrison Ford as the intrepid archaeologist, will air on ABC's Good Morning America (between 8 and 9 a.m. ET/PT) before moving to IndianaJones.com, Yahoo and theaters.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities has achieved its goal. It has evicted what it regards as squatters (in fact 10,000 long- standing residents) from an area known as Sheikh Abdel-Qurna, one of Luxor's most important archaeological sites, where they lived over and among the tombs of the nobles. Apart from a few of the most decorative and brightly-decorated mud-brick houses, most of the homes belonging to the people, known as Qurnawis, have been demolished.

Johns Hopkins University Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her team are again sharing their work with the world through an online diary, a digital window into the day-to-day life on an archaeological expedition.Bryan, the Alexander Badawy Professor in Egyptian Art and Archaeology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins, will continue to explore the Egyptian New Kingdom (1567 to 1085 B.C.E.), considered "the golden age" of temple building in Egypt.

THE OLDEST cross-Channel ferry in the world will set sail again in 2010, giving archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of Bronze Age seafarers.Based on the 3,550-year-old vessel discovered beneath Dover town centre 16 years ago, the replica boat, lashed together from planks of wood, waterproofed with beeswax and moss, will carry up to ten men to France.

High-tech laser technology has been used to record and conserve one of the finest collections of Pictish carved stones in Scotland.The St Vigeans Stones from Arbroath are being cleaned by a specialist team of Historic Scotland experts in Edinburgh.Earlier efforts at conservation, dating back to the 1960s, carried out using the best techniques of the time have now reached the end of their life.The project removes the earlier repairs and uses more modern treatments.The project is part of works to upgrade St Vigeans Museum of Pictish Carved Stones in Arbroath.

CHICAGO - Fossil hunters say they have discovered bones of two massive meat-eating dinosaurs in Africa. In the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and co-author Stephen Brusatte named one Kryptops palaios, or "old hidden face," because of a horny covering over its face.They named the other Eocarcharia dinops, or "fierce-eyed dawn shark," for its razor-sharp teeth and bony brow.

NEW YORK - A fossil found in Wyoming has apparently resolved a long-standing question about when bats gained their radar-like ability to navigate and locate airborne insects at night. The answer: after they started flying.The discovery revealed the most primitive bat known, from a previously unrecognized species that lived some 25.5 million years ago.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prince Charles called on Thursday for a global fund to preserve tropical rainforests from destruction."In the simplest of terms, we have to find a way to make the forests worth more alive than dead," Prince Charles told the European Parliament in an address."The doomsday clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight", he said.

Only about 4% of the world's oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.A study in Science journal says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, it warns.

The White House on Tuesday rejected Russia's call for a new treaty to ban the use of weapons in space, warning that ensuring compliance would be "impossible.""The United States opposes the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit access to or use of space," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings, the National Geographic Society announced today.

New research has revealed the seemingly gentle touchdowns of the six Apollo Lunar Modules (LMs) on the moon between 1969 and 1972 were actually incredibly violent events.The Lunar Module's descent engine blew out high-velocity lunar particles that strafed the landscape."The smallest particles were seen by the Apollo astronauts to fly right out over the horizon and keep on going," said Philip Metzger of NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC). "Depending on the actual velocity they may have gone halfway around the moon or more. In most cases they would only travel until they hit a natural terrain feature, such as a crater rim or a mountain range."

A new concept car from General Motors could get 53 mpg on a propulsion system pioneered in submarines about a hundred years ago.Rechargeable batteries power an electric motor that turns the wheels. There's also an engine, which can be used to charge the batteries. The setup worked for the U.S. Navy during the Wilson Administration, so it just might also shine on 21st Century American highways. At least that's what GM apparently hopes, as it is reportedly intends to have the car in production by 2010 as an addition to the Chevy lineup.

The epic journey by which the Americas were first settled has been a great mystery for centuries. Did it happen by land or by sea? Did it happen one dozen or so millennia ago or three dozen?The answer might be "yes."

As Egyptian mummies go, Asru is a major celebrity. During her life in the 8th century B.C., she was known for her singing at the temple of Amun in Karnak; now she's famous for her medical problems. Forensic studies have revealed that although Asru lived into her 60s, she was not a well woman. She had furred-up arteries, desert lung (pneumoconiosis) caused by breathing in sand, osteoarthritis, a slipped disc, periodontal disease and possibly diabetes, as well as parasitic worms in her intestine and bladder. Her last years must have been full of pain and suffering. After all, what could her doctor do to help? Say a few prayers and recite a spell or two?

Good news for those who hate washing socks, are worried about hygiene or resent spending money on dry cleaning: self cleaning forms of wool and silk have been developed with the help of nanotechnology.Wool socks, skirts and silk ties may soon clean themselves of smells and stains in the sunshine, researchers in Australia and China suggest.

A few years ago, I needed to cite an English translation of an Aesop fable. Obedient to lessons learned in graduate school, I looked for the best. That turned out to be a winding road with distracting detours.Little in literature seems smaller or simpler than Aesop. People assume that everyone has read the fables, or had the fables read to them. Thanks to Aesop, we have a common understanding of a wolf in sheep's clothing, the lion's share, the hare versus the tortoise, the playful grasshopper, sour grapes, squeaky wheel, and much more.

A giant new species of crested duck-billed dinosaur has been unearthed in Mexico, researchers say.The discovery of the 72-million-year-old fossil adds to the rich gallery of dinosaurs that scientists now know lived in western North America during the latter part of the dinosaur era.

WASHINGTON - Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is.The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure.

ROME (Reuters) - Italian scientists say they have proved Napoleon was not poisoned, scotching the legend the French emperor was murdered by his British jailors.Napoleon's post-mortem said he died of stomach cancer aged 51, but the theory he was assassinated to prevent any return to power has gained credence in recent decades as some studies indicated his body contained a high level of the poison arsenic.

The Australian government has made a formal apology for the past wrongs caused by successive governments on the indigenous Aboriginal population.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in parliament to all Aborigines for laws and policies that "inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss".

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities searched for two nuclear experts abducted in the country's restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police said on Tuesday.The technicians went missing on the same day as Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was reportedly abducted in the same region. The abductions happened on Monday near the rugged north-western region, where Taliban and Al-Qaida militants are waging an insurgency against the US-allied government in Islamabad.

Armed police arrested a man listening to his MP3 player and took a sample of his DNA after a fellow commuter mistook the music player for a gun.Darren Nixon had been waiting at a bus stop in Stoke-on-Trent on his way home from work when a woman saw him reach into his pocket and take out a black Phillips MP3 player. The woman thought it was a pistol and called 999.Police tracked 28-year-old Nixon using CCTV, sending three cars to follow him. When he got off the bus, armed officers surrounded him. He was driven to a police station, kept in a cell and had his fingerprints, photograph and DNA taken.

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does -- and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to "shoot to kill" in the event of martial law. InfraGard is "a child of the FBI," says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats. "Then the FBI cloned it."

A set of 12 genes that are linked to prostate tumours has been identified, raising the prospect of a revolution in screening for the most common male cancer.The discoveries by three research teams, one based in Britain, have doubled the known tally of genes that influence the disease, which is diagnosed in 35,000 British men each year and kills 10,000. They could help the development of tests that reveal those who have the highest inherited risk, and lead to new treatments.

The mothers of two teenage soldiers killed in Iraq accused Tony Blair's government of going to war "on a lie" as they took their fight for a public inquiry into the conflict to the House of Lords.Beverly Clarke and Rose Gentle argue that ministers breached their duty to Britain's armed forces by failing to ensure the invasion was lawful.

Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade, a Department of Health report said today.It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%.Without preventative action, the report said that a nine-day heatwave, with temperatures at 27 degrees, would cause 3,000 immediate deaths, with another 3,350 people dying from heat-related conditions during the summer.

LINCOLN COUNTY, ARK. -- Bouncing down an empty country road, past browning cotton fields lined with signs advertising church services and cheap guns, historian John A. Lupton hunches over a minivan's steering wheel and ignores his aching back.He has been traveling for six days -- covering five states and more than 1,400 miles -- in a mentally exhilarating and physically exhausting pursuit of anything handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as documents addressed to him: a frayed envelope the president addressed to a Confederate sympathizer; a dirty sheet of paper filled with the grumblings of a cotton farmer; a faded journal entry with notes about property rights that Lincoln scrawled in the margins.

Recently a group of archaeologists got together with residents of the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem to create an alternative archaeology. Aware of the ongoing erosion of the meaning of the word "archaeology", and concerned with the political use to which archaeological research has been put, they decided to establish an organization that would try instead to represent a different archaeology. The group is called "From Shiloah to Silwan".

New Arctic sea floor data released today by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that the foot of the continental slope off Alaska is more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast than previously assumed.The data, gathered during a recent mapping expedition to the Chukchi Cap some 600 nautical miles north of Alaska, could support U.S. rights to natural resources of the sea floor beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast.

A University of Illinois at Chicago scientist will lead a team testing a robotic probe in a polar-style, under-ice exploration that may have out-of-this world applications. But the team will keep to a venue that's much closer to home.Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at UIC, will lead the team Feb. 11-15 working in the icy waters of Lake Mendota off the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.They'll conduct an under-ice test of a NASA-funded robotic probe called ENDURANCE -- an acronym for Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctic Explorer.

Humans had been speaking for a couple hundred thousand years before they got the inspiration or nerve to mark their ideas down for posterity.But when a Mesopotamian people called the Sumerians finally did scratch out a few bookkeeping symbols on clay tablets 5,000 years ago, they unknowingly started a whole new era in history we call, well ... history.

At the site, known as Z-Basin, on the north shore of Lake Qaroun, an archaeological and geological team from University College of Los Angeles (UCLA) and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) stumbled upon what is believed to be the most complete Neolithic settlement ever found in Fayoum. This discovery was made when the team was surveying the site to study fluctuations in the lake level which caused artefacts to be either covered with metres of sediment or dramatically displaced by erosion.

Historical records tell of a mystical, priestly and learned class of elite individuals called Druids among Celtic societies in Britain, but there has been no archaeological evidence of their existence. Until, perhaps, now.A series of graves found in a gravel quarry at Stanway near Colchester, Essex, have been dated to 40-60 A.D. At least one of the burials, it appears, may have been that of a Druid, according to a report published in British Archaeology.

The ancient Greek and Renaissance periods are lauded in the history of science, but what about the influence of the Arabic world, writes theoretical nuclear physicist, Jim Al-Khalili:We often forget in the West that there have been, throughout the history of human civilisation, not two but three major periods of rapid scientific progress and incredible achievements. For in between the Ancient Greeks two thousand years ago and the European Renaissance that began about 500 years ago was the golden age of Arabic science.

BLIND children from Scotland are to be taught a pioneering echo-location technique copied from bats in an effort to help them visualise their surroundings.The youngsters will be able to build up a mental library of images of the world around them by clicking their tongue and interpreting the sound as it echoes back. The technique, which is used by bats, dolphins and whales to navigate and hunt in the dark, is being piloted in Glasgow, where 10 children aged five to 17 are being taught by staff from the charity Visibility.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Underneath the homes and ragged streets of the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan lie the remnants of a glorious Jewish past: coins, seals, a water tunnel hewn by a Judean king 2,700 years ago, a road that led to a biblical Temple.But archaeology is hard-wired into the politics of modern-day Arab-Israeli strife, and new digs to unearth more of this past are cutting to the heart of the charged argument over who owns the holy city today.

BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens.Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle led by the people who lived there. The polished potteries even have ownership marks on them.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A 600-year-old gate in central Seoul listed as South Korea's number one national treasure and the country's landmark symbol has been destroyed, possibly by an arsonist, police said on Monday.The loss of the gate, whose history is drummed into South Korean school children from an early age, caused widespread shock and dismay to ordinary citizens, many of whom gathered to look in horror at a national icon reduced to ashes.

LOS ANGELES - Workers at a pioneering space tourism company were watching a rocket propellent test through a chain-link fence in the Mojave Desert when some were killed by an explosion, according to a state investigation released Thursday.

Thousands of people have brought Peru's tourist capital, Cuzco, to a near standstill in a demonstration against development near Inca monuments.A proposed law would make it easier for private investors to build near some of Peru's most famous ancient sites.In the 24-hour protest, main roads were blocked, tours were cancelled and the rail service between Cuzco and Machu Picchu was suspended.

The ancient Maya painted some of their ornate temples with mica to make them sparkle in the sun, a new study suggests.Scientists discovered traces of the shiny mineral while analyzing flakes of paint taken from the Rosalila temple in Copán, Honduras.The temple, built in the sixth century A.D., today sits "entombed" in a giant pyramid built around it.

You might become a believer in the power of magic dust, when you see how a special powder re-grew the tip of Lee Spievack's finger.He sliced off a half inch of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane. His finger never even formed a scar."Your finger grew back flesh, blood, vessels and nail?" CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

It's been more than 30 years since Italian archaeologists found a vast archive of 17,000 cuneiform tablets at the Bronze Age site of Ebla in northern Syria. But the ancient city is still surprising those who work there. Last year archaeologist Paolo Matthiae's team discovered two almost perfectly preserved figurines that confirm textual evidence for a royal cult of the dead focused on the city's queens. They also found an unusual tablet that allowed scholars to reconstruct the political climate that led to Ebla's destruction in 2300 B.C., when it was sacked by Sargon of Akkad.

On the night of Feb. 20, the full moon will pass into Earth's shadow in an event that will be visible across all of the United States and Canada.The total lunar eclipse will be made even more striking by the presence of the nearby planet Saturn and the bright bluish star, Regulus.Eclipses in the distant past often terrified viewers who took them as evil omens. Certain lunar eclipses had an overwhelming effect on historic events. One of the most famous examples is the trick pulled by Christopher Columbus.

Biofuels, or so-called "green" fuels, are under currently under speculation as two new studies show that they may actually be counteractive if the full emissions costs of production are taken into account.Biofuels are plant-based, and their production requires a massive amount of natural land to be converted into land for crops worldwide. These studies took this into account and noted that the destruction of natural ecosystems not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

The Earth's orbital behaviors are responsible for more than just presenting us with a leap year every four years. According to Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, parameters such as planetary gravitational attractions, the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun and the degree of tilt of our planet's axis with respect to its path around the sun, have implications for climate change and the advent of ice ages.

On a large scale, the Milky Way is considered to be a vast cold region punctured with isolated hot clouds and star clusters. While much of this space is cold and empty, researchers have recently discovered the phenomenon of funneling hot plasma. Flowing plasma may funnel from one region to another through empty space, connecting otherwise isolated clouds and clusters throughout the galaxy.

Ancient human remains held in Portsmouth's museum archives are set to be DNA-tested for signs of tuberculosis.Skeletons which have been dug up in the city during developments, some dating back to the Bronze Age, will now form a vital part of new research into TB.Academics from Durham and Manchester universities have asked permission to remove bits of bone and teeth to analyse as part of their research project into how tuberculosis evolved through the ages.

Dubai: A famous long-lost piece of ancient art has finally been recovered in Iraq last week, according to Arabic daily Al Khaleej.The 'Sayedat Al Warkaa', a Sumerian 20cm facial curving, known among archaeologists as the Sumerian Mona Lisa, and which is more than 5,000 years old, was found in a garden after the police and occupation forces received a report.

Bhubaneswar (PTI): Remains of an ancient city believed to be around 2500 years old have been unearthed by archaeologists at Sishupalgarh near here.The remnants at the historical site including 18 pillars came to light during a fresh research work undertaken by a team of archaeologists including Monica L Smith of The University Of California and R K Mohanty of Deccan College, Pune.

Greece's government returned two ancient statues stolen from Albania almost two decades ago.The headless marble statues, one dating back to the 2nd century B.C. and the other to the 2nd century A.D., were handed to Albanian Culture Minister Ylli Pango in Athens today. They were recovered by the Greek authorities in 1997 and identified as having been stolen from the Butrint archaeological site in 1991.

Think of the Roman legacy to Britain and many things spring to mind - straight roads, under-floor heating, aqueducts and public baths.But they were also pioneers in the health arena - particularly in the area of eye care, with remedies for various eye conditions such as short-sightedness and conjunctivitis.

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

NASA has announced substantial changes are occurring in the surface of the Sun which could bring about the next long lasting cold era.The Space and Science Research Center (SSRC) in Florida conducted further research into the announcement and discovered the sun's changes are the outcome of a family of cycles which result in climate shifts from cold to warm and back again.

Brazil will offer free satellite internet connections to indigenous tribes in the Amazon as part of its latest effort to crack down on illegal logging in the world's largest tropical rain forest."It's a way to open communications between indigenous communities, former slave villages, coconut crackers, river fishermen and the rest of society," said Environment Minister Marina Silva on Thursday after signing an accord putting the internet plan in place."These communities are the true protectors of their areas," she said.

A remote-control car produced by the toymaker Corgi is the first household item to be powered by hydrogen fuel cell technology.The car, called H2GO, uses hydrogen derived from tap water as its fuel and was developed by the Leicester-based company in partnership with Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, an international firm based in Shanghai that hopes to extend the technology to home appliances.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A telescope arms race is taking shape around the world. Astronomers are drawing up plans for the biggest, most powerful instruments ever constructed, capable of peering far deeper into the universe -- and further back in time -- than ever before.The building boom, which is expected to play out over the next decade and cost billions of dollars, is being driven by technological advances that afford unprecedented clarity and magnification. Some scientists say it will be much like switching from regular TV to high-definition.

The machine is out of control. Personal surveillance in Britain is so extensive that no democratic oversight is remotely plausible. Some 800 organisations, including the police, the revenue, local and central government, demanded (and almost always got) 253,000 intrusions on citizen privacy in the last recorded year, 2006. This is way beyond that of any other country in the free world.The Sadiq Khan affair has killed stone dead the thesis, beloved of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, that any accretion of power to the state is sustainable because ministers are in control. Whether this applies to phone tapping, bugging devices, ID cards, NHS records, childcare computer systems, video surveillance or detention without trial, it is simply a lie. Nobody can control this torrent of intrusion. Nobody can oversee a burst dam.

By mimicking the guts of the biggest dinosaurs, scientists now find the animals' diets of evergreens and ferns were more nourishing than previously thought.These new findings help solve the mystery of how such dinosaurs reached huge sizes off seemingly poor food.The largest animals to have ever lived on land were colossal vegetarians known as sauropods, which included the massive Apatosaurus (once known as Brontosaurus). Strong evidence reveals these herbivores may have reached up to 130 feet (40 meters) in length and 110 tons in weight, and sketchier data hint they might have grown even larger.

Crayfish body fossils and burrows discovered in Victoria, Australia, have provided the first physical evidence that crayfish existed on the continent as far back as the Mesozoic Era, says Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin, who headed up a study on the finds."Studying the fossil burrows gives us a glimpse into the ecology of southern Australia about 115 million years ago, when the continent was still attached to Antarctica," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory and an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne.

Cosmic flares shot from exploding black holes could provide long-sought proof of extra spatial dimensions, new calculations suggest.Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking predicted that black holes evaporate through a quantum process known as "Hawking evaporation" and can explode in brief bursts of energy before vanishing completely.

Appearances aside, the stars are not eternal and the planets do not move with clockwork precision. For these reasons, one astronomer is proposing that his colleagues ditch the astronomical unit, or AU, as the standard measure of distance within the solar system.One AU is roughly the average distance between the Sun and the Earth, or 149,597,870.691 kilometres. But its formal definition by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is rather more complicated.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. space agency is planning a mission to better understand a mysterious form of energy in the cosmos and an ambitious unmanned journey to the outer solar system, NASA officials said.NASA would initiate seven new science missions in fiscal year 2009 that starts October 1 under the budget President George W. Bush proposed to Congress this week. NASA's proposed $17.6 billion budget includes $4.4 billion for science missions.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The crew of the US shuttle Atlantis readied Tuesday for this week's delayed mission to deliver a European space laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station.Lift-off, originally scheduled for December, now is set for Thursday after a two-month delay, while engineers got to the bottom of electrical faults with fuel gauges on the shuttle's external fuel tank."Atlantis is ready to go fly," Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, assistant NASA test director, told reporters Monday, when the crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida for the launch.

PARIS (AFP) - The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday unveiled images of Mars in three dimensions to help understand the Red Planet's unique topography.The Digital Terrain Model (DTM) pictures have been built up thanks to a high-resolution stereoscopic camera aboard Mars Express, the ESA orbiter.Mars has extraordinary canyons and plains as well as the highest known mountain in the Solar System -- Mons Olympus, an extinct volcano that towers some 27,000 metres (88,500 feet) above the planet's surface.

A U.S. study suggests birds might have arisen 100 million years ago, about 40 million years earlier than has been thought.The question of whether modern birds originated around the time of the dinosaurs' demise has been hotly debated by paleontologists, whose estimates are based on the fossil record, and scientists who use molecular evidence.Now a new molecular analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Boston University and the Center for Biodiversity Conservation Mexico and Central America, suggests modern birds arose more than 100 million years ago, not 60 million years ago, as fossils suggest.

New discoveries about magnetic field lines and the first-ever direct observation of their reconnection in space are offering hope that scientists will learn how to unlock fusion power as an energy source in the future."The reconnection processes in the [Earth's] magnetosphere and in fusion devices are the same animal," said James Drake, a University of Maryland physicist.

University of Arizona optical scientists have broken a technological barrier by making three-dimensional holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.The holographic displays ­ which are viewed without special eyewear ­ are the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory ever to be developed, making them ideal tools for medical, industrial and military applications that require "situational awareness.""This is a new type of device, nothing like the tiny hologram of a dove on your credit card," UA optical sciences professor Nasser Peyghambarian said.

"Life on Mars!" declared the headlines: an image showing a tantalisingly blurred Bigfoot-like figure, captured in a panorama by Nasa's robot geologist Spirit, spread round the world last month.First identified by a Japanese blogger, it didn't take long for the image to reach thousands upon thousands of people, appearing in newspapers and becoming one of the most emailed stories on the BBC News website.It is a rock, just a couple of centimetres tall, but it is easy to understand why some envisaged a humanoid figure there.

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman."We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

A prominent Israeli archeologist said Monday that she has revised her reading of an inscription on an ancient seal uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David after various scholars around the world critiqued her original interpretation of the name on the seal.The 2,500 year-old black stone seal was found last month amid stratified layers of debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.Mazar had originally read the name on the seal as "Temech," and suggested that it belonged to the family of that name mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

When two pre-Columbian individuals died 1,000 years ago, arid conditions in the region of what is now Peru naturally mummified their bodies, down to the head lice in their long, braided hair.This was all scientists needed, they reported Wednesday, to extract well-preserved louse DNA and establish that the parasites had accompanied their human hosts in the original peopling of the Americas, probably as early as 15,000 years ago. The DNA matched that of the most common type of louse known to exist worldwide, now and before European colonization of the New World.

Turkish archaeologists unearthed a 2000-year-old lighthouse at the ancient Roman port of Patara, near southern town of Kas, Antalya, discovering probably the oldest such structure that managed to remain intact.The 12-meter-high lighthouse was built under the reign of Emperor Nero who ruled from 54 to 68, Professor Havva Iskan Isik, head of the excavation team reported.

Gungywamp is a 100-acre area in Groton that archaeologists consider a treasure. Its exact origins remain a mystery, but its unusual stonework and artifacts span centuries, if not eons.

The discovery of an ancient Roman cave has unearthed a debate about its historical purpose and delved into a deeper question for scholars: Can archaeology prove mythology?The cave was found when a camera was lowered through a hole in Rome's Palatine Hill during restorations of the palace of the Emperor Augustus, who ruled from the late first century B.C. until his death in A.D. 14. The Palatine Hill was a seat of power in ancient Rome; today it is home to the fragile remains of palaces and temples.

Archaeologists believe they could be closer to discovering the site of the palace belonging to the first King of a united Scotland.The academics at Glasgow University have been studying documents and previous archaeological finds to narrow down the location in Perthshire.They will return in August to Forteviot in the hope of uncovering evidence of Kenneth MacAlpine's wooden castle.

Many of Earth's climate systems will undergo a series of sudden shifts this century as a result of human-induced climate change, a study suggests.A number of these shifts could occur this century, say the report's authors.They argue that society should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that climate change will be a gradual process.

The EU should ban the sale of cars that do under 35 miles to the gallon, the ex-chairman of oil giant Shell says.Sir Mark Moody-Stuart told BBC News the motor industry would adapt to cope with stricter environmental rules.The UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders opposes the idea, saying drivers of the most polluting cars pay extra through road tax and petrol duty.

Dementia is three times more common in people whose blood is low in folates, a form of vitamin B particularly found in green vegetables, a study suggests.The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry study followed 518 South Korean pensioners for two years.There is growing evidence linking levels of folates - or folic acid - and Alzheimer's disease, though deficiency could be a symptom of dementia.

Dr Chris Roe places a pair of enormous fluffy earphones over the head of a blonde 20-year-old woman.He carefully slices a ping-pong ball in half and tapes each piece over her eyes.Then he switches on a red light that bathes the woman in an eerie glow, and leaves the room.After a few moments, a low hum begins to fill the laboratory and the woman begins smiling sweetly to herself as images of distant locations start to pass through her mind.She says she can sense a group of trees and a babbling brook full of boulders.Standing on a boulder is her friend Jack. He's waving at her and smiling. She begins to describe the location to Dr Roe.Half a mile away, her friend Jack is, indeed, standing on a boulder in a stream.Somehow, the woman has been able to "see" Jack in her mind's eye, even though all of conventional science - and common sense - says it is impossible.Is this simply a bizarre coincidence?

Our gift of the gab is all due to a small horseshoe-shaped bone suspended in the muscles of our neck, like a piece of fruit trapped in Jell-O.The hyoid bone, which is the only bone in the body not connected to any other, is the foundation of speech and is found only in humans and Neanderthals.

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have found more than 500 genes that account for variations across human populations including skin color, height, and vulnerability to disease, according to a study released Sunday.By comparing millions of fragments of genetics code from individuals in four groups -- from Nigeria, China, Japan and northwestern Europe -- they showed that natural selection has played a key role in these differences, according to the study.