Newsdesk Archive

Formerly, the Sun was the largest object in the Solar System. Now, comet 17P/Holmes holds that distinction.Spectacular outbursting comet 17P/Holmes exploded in size and brightness on October 24. It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the Solar system, being bigger than the Sun (see Figure). The diameter of the tenuous dust atmosphere of the comet was measured at 1.4 million kilometers (0.9 million miles) on 2007 November 9 by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from a wide-field camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), one of the few professional instruments still capable of capturing the whole comet in one image. Other astronomers involved in the UH program to study the comet include Bin Yang, Nuno Peixinho and David Jewitt. The present eruption of comet Holmes was first reported on October 24 and has continued at a steady 0.5 km/sec (1100 mph) ever since. The comet is an unprecedented half a million times brighter than before the eruption began. This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 km (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - UFOs may be fodder for comedians but there was no joking Monday when a group of former pilots recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky and demanded the US government reopen an investigation into unidentified flying objects.Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs -- including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings -- as they insisted their questions needed to be taken seriously more than 30 years after the US file was closed.

The sequencing and comparison of 12 fruit fly genomes -- the result of a massive collaboration of hundreds of scientists from more than 100 institutions in 16 countries -- has thrust forward researchers' understanding of fruit flies, a popular animal model in science. But even human genome biologists may want to take note: The project also has revealed considerable flaws in the way they identify genes.

MANILA (AFP) - Environmental groups condemned on Monday an Australian company's plan to dump hundreds of tonnes of fertiliser into Philippine waters as part of an experiment to combat climate change.The groups, including Greenpeace and civil society organisations, called on the Philippine government to stop the experiment, known as "ocean fertilisation".

The extinction of the dinosaurs has long been considered a crime committed by a lone gunman: an incoming asteroid that struck the earth 65 million years ago, filling the air with sun-blocking dust. Now, however, controversy is being stirred anew as evidence suggests that the asteroid might have had a partner in crime: volcanoes, massive ones, blasting clouds of toxic gas from the bowels of the earth and poisoning much of the planet's life.

A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.The team, led by James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory, Seattle, used data from an Earth-observing satellite and from deep-sea pressure gauges to monitor Arctic Ocean circulation from 2002 to 2006. They measured changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water, from the surface to the ocean bottom. That weight is influenced by factors such as the height of the ocean's surface, and its salinity. A saltier ocean is heavier and circulates differently than one with less salt.

The international community faces a stark choice: outlaw human cloning or prepare for the creation of cloned humans, U.N. researchers said Saturday.Previous attempts to reach a binding worldwide treaty foundered over divisions on whether to outlaw all cloning or permit cloning of cells for research.The best solution may be to ban human cloning, but to allow countries to conduct strictly controlled therapeutic research, including stem cell research, according to the report from the Japan-based United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies.

Lasers could be used to combat viruses and infections like HIV and MRSA without side effects, researchers say.Current ultraviolet light laser treatments can kill micro-organisms - but cannot be used in humans as they would also damage cells in the body.But using infrared femtosecond lasers with carefully selected wavelengths, a US team targeted viruses and bacteria without harming other cells.

In Brazil, it's the end of the burning season, when people use fire to clear land for farms and ranches. But people also use fire as a weapon in range wars to push others off their land.Scientists say this fire cycle is not just destroying parts of the Amazon's southern forests, but altering the climate as well.

LIMA, Peru - Carbon dating tests and excavation of a colorful pre-Incan temple indicate that it was built thousands of years ago by an advanced civilization, a prominent archaeologist said in comments published Sunday by a Peruvian newspaper.Unearthed in Peru's archeologically rich northern coastal desert, the temple has a staircase leading to an altar that was used for worshipping fire and making offerings to deities, Walter Alva, who headed the three-month excavation, told El Comercio.

PLOCNIK, Serbia (Reuters) - If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years.Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say.In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts.

Dreams of someday watering crops with desalinated water have hit a small snag.Farmers using drinking-quality water from the world's largest desalination plant in Ashkelon, on Israel's southern Mediterranean coast, have discovered that the water is lacking in some needed elements, like calcium and magnesium, and too rich in boron.That's not a problem for humans drinking the water, but it's terrible for tomatoes, basil, citrus trees, flowers and other economically important plants. Fortunately, with some adjustments and fertilizers, the water can be made usable for farmers, now that the problem is recognized.

Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty. Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings characteristic of royal objects.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists studying humpback whales sounds say they have begun to decode the whale's mysterious communication system, identifying male pick-up lines and motherly warnings.Wops, thwops, grumbles and squeaks are part of the extensive whale repertoire recorded by scientists from the University of Queensland working on the Humpback Whale Acoustic Research Collaboration (HARC) project.Recording whale sounds over a three-year period, scientists discovered at least 34 different types of whale calls, with data published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged swift action on global warming on the eve of a visit Friday to the Antarctic to see the effects of climate change first-hand."Galvanizing international action on global warming is one of my main priorities as secretary general," Ban said Thursday in the capital of Chile alongside the country's president, Michelle Bachelet."We must be actively engaged in confronting the global challenge of climate change, which is a serious threat to development everywhere," he said.

NASA penny-pinching risks exposing humankind to a planetary catastrophe if a big enough asteroid evades detection and slams into Earth, US lawmakers warned Thursday.But the US space agency said the chances of a new "Near-Earth Object" (NEO) like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs were too remote to divert scarce resources.Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs "given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with."

China is building its third research station in Antarctica, shoring up its presence just weeks after the UK and Chile made renewed territorial claims.Almost 200 construction workers are heading for the southern continent, the state-run Xinhua news agency says.They will build facilities including a space observatory, radar station and sewage discharge system.Mineral mining is banned in Antarctica, but analysts say this is not stopping countries from jockeying for position.

OHANNESBURG (AFP) - Around a third of Africa's existing coastline could be swallowed up by rising water levels brought on by global warming, the United Nations' top environment official said on Thursday.Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN's Environmental Programme, told reporters at a press conference that the impact of climate change was already clearly in evidence and would become more serious in the coming years.

UK pioneers of research into new materials, green energy and future communications will share a £100m government fund to back innovation.More than 76 research and development projects covering eight technology priority areas will share the money.The money has been made available through the Technology Strategy Board which promotes innovation in business.The board has funded more than 700 projects with a total of £1bn since it was formed in 2004.

Black holes are the most likely source of the mysterious ultra high-energy cosmic rays that bombard the planet, scientists have discovered.Observations at the world's largest cosmic ray detector suggest the particles are emitted by huge black holes in the middle of nearby galaxies.The findings, unveiled in Science, may solve a long-running puzzle.

Hierakonpolis is a site famous for its many "firsts," so many, in fact, it is not easy to keep track of them all. So we are grateful(?) to Max Brooks for bringing to our attention that the site can also claim the title to the earliest recorded zombie attack in history. In his magisterial tome, The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), he informs us that in 1892, a British dig at Hierakonpolis unearthed a nondescript tomb containing a partially decomposed body, whose brain had been infected with the virus (Solanum) that turns people into zombies. In addition, thousands of scratch marks adorned every surface of the tomb, as if the corpse had tried to claw its way out! [Editor's note: click here for an interview with Max Brooks and a timeline of archaeologically documented zombie outbreaks.]

A tiny Western Atlantic fish does something never before seen: It makes like a bird, living in mangrove wood for months at a time.A team of U.S. and English scientists accidentally discovered the unique behavior, which they call "logpacking," during recent excursions to Belize and Florida.

For 10 years Angelika Fleckinger has had an intimate relationship with a most unusual man.Her partner? Otzi - the world famous Iceman whose mummified body was found in an alpine glacier on the border of Italy and Austria in 1991.Fleckinger is the director of the Italian museum built in 1998 to house Otzi, who is 2000 years older than Tutankhamen. She has written three books about him. While other scientists might know more about their own specific areas of research, Fleckinger says, "I may be the person who is closest to the Iceman."

ROME - It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real.An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting."It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus."Alternate Link: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/11/09/last-supper-da-vinci.html

Seeking to impose order on largely unregulated high-seas climate engineers, the International Maritime Organization will soon announce its plans to regulate oceanic geoengineering projects.I've reported a lot on ocean fertilization lately, and this is welcome news. Feeding plankton with iron or urea could be a valuable tool for ridding the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, but there's potential for abuse: if engineers don't count the carbon benefits correctly, they could unwittingly release more CO2 than they save. With large-scale projects having potentially regional, if not global, consequences, it'd be nice if someone could make sure they make sense scientifically.

In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality.I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights.To my astonishment this apparition appeared; this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky.

Ministers must not approve commercial planting of GM crops in England, until it is proved safe, say the Lib Dems.Chris Huhne said responses to a Defra survey show planting should not be allowed until ministers can prove non-GM crops will not be contaminated.Most respondents opposed Defra's plan to allow GM crops to be grown in fields at least 35m (114ft) from non-GM crops.

BEIJING (AFP) - China is aiming to place a home-made 20-tonne space station into orbit around Earth in 2020, state media reported Wednesday in the latest indication of Beijing's lofty space ambitions.The timetable for China's first-ever space station was given by Long Lehao, one of the leading designers of the Long March 3A rocket which carried a lunar probe into space late last month, the China Daily reported.

BEIJING (AFP) - The world's tallest ancient Buddha statue, suffering from years of environmental damage, will get its latest facelift to fix damage from weathering and acid rain.The 71-metre (237-foot) Leshan Buddha, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, is looking "somewhat battered" with a blackened nose, and with moss and dark streaks coating its face and body, official Xinhua news agency said.The damage was due to acid rain, weathering and high humidity, Peng Xueyi, director of the Leshan Cultural Relics Management Institute, told Xinhua.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon will visit Antarctica and the Amazon to investigate the effects of global warming as he undertakes a 12-day foreign trip to South America, Tunisia and Spain.The UN secretary general was to leave late Tuesday on the trip, with stops in Argentina, Chile and Brazil mainly focused on climate change, before crossing the Atlantic for the other countries.Ban told reporters Tuesday that three South American countries he will tour "are politically and economically very important members of the United Nations and play a key role in our common efforts to address climate change issues."

As sea levels rise, coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University.Hydrologists here have simulated how saltwater will intrude into fresh water aquifers, given the sea level rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has concluded that within the next 100 years, sea level could rise as much as 23 inches, flooding coasts worldwide.Scientists previously assumed that, as saltwater moved inland, it would penetrate underground only as far as it did above ground.

Dinosaurs like Velociraptors owe their fearsome reputation to the way they breathed, according to a UK study.They had one of the most efficient respiratory systems of all animals, similar to that of modern diving birds like penguins, fossil evidence shows.It fuelled their bodies with oxygen for the task of sprinting after prey, say researchers at Manchester University.

Increased supervision of genetic testing is needed to ensure the usefulness of the increasingly popular tests, often promoted as a way to personalize medical treatment, according to a government draft report Tuesday.These tests look for genetic disorders and are used for such things as screening unborn babies for disease, testing for inherited diseases in adults before symptoms begin, confirming disease diagnoses and helping people who may be susceptible to some ills plan lifestyle changes.According to the National Institutes of Health there are about 900 genetic tests available.

An eight-centimeter-square piece of the 1087-year-old Aleppo Codex will be given to a representative of the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem on Thursday, following 18 years during which Israeli scholars tried to retrieve it from businessman Sam Sabbagh.Sabbagh salvaged the fragment from a burning synagogue in Aleppo, Syria in 1947.

Astronomers in the US say they have found a new planet in orbit around a star 41 light years from Earth.The discovery brings to five the number of planets orbiting the star, 55 Cancri, the most found to date in a single solar system outside our own.Astronomers have found more than 250 planets outside our own solar system - the team behind the latest discovery have found more than anyone else.

BEIJING (AFP) - China's maiden lunar probe successfully entered the moon's orbit on Monday, officials said, marking a critical step in the country's year-long mission to photograph and map the surface of the moon.Chang'e I blasted off on October 24, signalling China's rising space ambitions and Beijing's participation in a renewed race to explore the moon with rivals Japan and India."We have basically succeeded in entering lunar orbit," Wang Yejun, head mission engineer, said on China Central Television Monday.

"Nature is Wisdom" Many are familiar with this phrase, but just how true is it?If we stirred the cauldron of contemporary scientific hypotheses, and considered which among them most blurred the line between the tangible and the divine, we would find that the Gaia Hypothesis rising to the top. Yet, over the past four decades as the idea of a "living earth" continues to collect concrete evidence in its favor, scientists from various fields have become increasingly attracted to it.What is the Gaia Hypothesis? Named after the ancient Greek earth goddess, this theory imagines our planet as a living, breathing and self-regulating entity.

Most people are ready to make personal sacrifices to address climate change, according to a BBC poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries.Four out of five people indicated they were prepared to change their lifestyle - even in the US and China, the world's two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.Opinion was split over tax rises on oil and coal - 44% against, 50% in favour.Support would rise if the cash was used to boost efficiency and find new energy sources, the poll suggested.

The scene was straight out of an archaeologist's nightmare. Along the Jordan River, archaeological remains lay in heaps with no chance of ever being dated. The story behind hundreds of stone tools and animal bones was lost, along with whatever mystery slumbered beneath the soil.Eight years later Dr. Naama Goren-Inbar, an archaeologist at The Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, is still angry about what happened.

The BBC's Ian Pannell was among a small group of guests and journalists invited to watch Egypt's chief archaeologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, reveal King Tutankhamun's face to the public for the first time.We were taken deep underground into a small chamber with a low roof and hieroglyphics painted onto an ochre-coloured wall on one side.A group of workmen slowly opened the golden coffin and raised the mummy onto a wooden stretcher.Until today, only about 50 living people had seen Tutankhamun's body. Suddenly there we were, face to face with the blackened, shrivelled body of the boy king.

ERIE, PA. -- When doctors told John Kanzius he had nine months to live, he quietly thanked God for his blessings and prepared to die.Then 58, he had lived a good life, with a loving wife, two successful adult daughters and a gratifying career.Now he had leukemia and was ready to accept his fate, but the visits to the cancer ward shook him. Faces haunted him, the bald and bandaged heads, bodies slumped in wheelchairs, and children who could not play.Like him, they had endured chemotherapy treatments that caused their weight to plummet, hands to shake, bodies to weaken, and immune systems to break down to the point that the slightest germ could be deadly. Kanzius knew their agony. He believed if cancer didn't kill him first, the treatments surely would.

It is the oldest telescope in the world - and it lies at the bottom of the ocean. Ancient sea floor sediments have revealed that a supernova exploded during the Pliocene era and may have caused a minor extinction event on Earth.

Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe.Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far.But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work."What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehenge builders was," says Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.Allowing four per house, he estimates there could have been room for more than 2,000 people.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DNA scraped from inside clay vessels show that a ship that sank off the coast of Greece 2,400 years ago was carrying a cargo of olive oil, oregano, and probably wine, researchers reported on Friday.The new research may offer a way to analyze the long-gone contents of hundreds of containers, said Brendan Foley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

As sophisticated as machines are today, they still cannot navigate an automobile through crowded city streets as well as experienced human drivers. But the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working to change that with an eye toward sending automated robotic ground vehicles into battle to evacuate wounded soldiers, collect reconnaissance and carry out other dangerous missions.This weekend DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense's central research and development arm, will move closer to that goal when it hosts the final round of its 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, a competition testing the driving prowess of experimental unmanned autos. The agency has whittled the field down from 89 to 11 teams of gearheads, scientists and students who will test their autonomous creations at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. The winner will drive away with $2 million and those snagging second and third places will get $1 million and $500,000, respectively

BEIJING (AFP) - The world's earliest irrigation system is being threatened by a hydroelectric project to be built in southwest China, state press said Friday, citing critics of the project.A series of 10 small hydro plants to be built on the Botiao river in Sichuan province will destroy the natural ecology of the Dujiangyan irrigation system, a UNESCO World Heritage listed site, the China Daily reported."It is irrational to build such stations as they will destroy the natural ecology along the river," Chen Qingheng, a expert at the China Academy of Sciences, was quoted by the paper as saying.

At some point before 2050, satellites collecting solar power and beaming it back to Earth will become a primary energy source, streaming terawatts of electricity continuously from space. That's if you believe a recent report from the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, which says confidently that we will see "a basic proof-of-concept within 4-6 years and a substantial power demonstration as early as 2017-2020".

Giant hyenas, sabretoothed cats, giraffes and zebras lived side by side in Europe 1.8 million years ago.The creatures' remains were among a vast fossil hoard unearthed at an ancient hyena den in the Granada region of south-east Spain.The area appears to have been a crossroads where European animals mixed with species from Africa and Asia.About 4,000 fossils have been found at the unique site. They also include gazelles, wolves, wild boar and lynx.

Scientists in the United Kingdom have "decoded" the inscrutable language of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), revealing its strong chemical foundation in a way that may help scientists mine age-old Chinese medicines to develop tomorrow's new drugs. Their study is scheduled for the Nov./Dec. issue of ACS' bi-monthly Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.David J. Barlow, Thomas M. Ehrman, and Peter J. Hylands point out that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) - regarded by many Western experts as an archaic system doomed to extinction 50 years ago - has undergone a "remarkable renaissance" in recent years.However, the arcane language used to describe categories of medication in TCM has hindered effective understanding of one of the most developed and mature systems of alternative medicine in existence.

The Red Lady of Paviland has always been a little coy about her age - but it appears she may be 4,000 years older than previously thought.Scientists say more accurate tests date the earliest human burial found in the UK to just over 29,000 years ago.When discovered in a cave on Gower in the 1820s the bones were thought to be around 18,000 years old, but were later redated to between 25,000 and 26,000.Researchers said it casts a new light on human presence in western Europe.

A clam dredged from Icelandic waters had lived for 400 years - is this the longest-lived animal known to science?Can you imagine living for four centuries? A team of scientists from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences believe they have found an animal which did just that, a quahog clam, Arctica islandica, which was living and growing on the seabed in the cold waters off the north coast of Iceland for around 400 years.When this animal was a juvenile, King James I replaced Queen Elizabeth I as English monarch, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth and Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for espousing the view that the Sun rather than the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues have uncovered evidence of when Earth may have first supported an oxygen-rich atmosphere similar to the one we breathe today.The study suggests that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world's oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into the atmosphere.That oxygen may have helped trigger one of the largest growths of biodiversity in Earth's history.Matthew Saltzman, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, reported the findings Sunday at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

Computers don't grow on trees, but with a little prodding from engineers, nature can produce computer components.At the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, Ray Phaneuf, associate professor of materials science and engineering, has developed a template that nature can follow to produce "self-assembling" structures. The template causes atoms to be arranged in a defined pattern that can serve a variety of purposes - a semiconductor in a laptop, a component in a cell phone or a sensor in a wearable device.

GENEVA (AFP) - More than one third of European freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, according to a study released by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) on Thursday.Twelve of the 522 species are already extinct, mainly due to population growth and the accompanying use of water, pollution and overfishing over the past 100 years, the IUCN said in a statement."With 200 fish species in Europe facing a high risk of going extinct we must act now to avoid a tragedy," said IUCN programme officer William Darwall.

Even those who are not overweight should slim down if they want to cut their risk of cancer, a major international study has claimed. The World Cancer Research Fund carried out the largest ever inquiry into lifestyle and cancer, and issued several stark recommendations. They include not gaining weight as an adult, avoiding sugary drinks and alcohol, and not eating bacon or ham.Everyone must also aim to be as thin as possible without becoming underweight. 11.9Mb PDF downloadable report available

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have found the best-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Caribbean, which could shed light on virtually every aspect of Indian life in the region, from sacred rituals to eating habits.The archaeologists believe the site in southern Puerto Rico may have belonged to the Taino or pre-Taino people that inhabited the island before European colonization, although other tribes are a possibility. It contains stones etched with ancient petroglyphs that form a large plaza measuring some 130 feet by 160 feet, which could have been used for ball games or ceremonial rites, said Aida Belen Rivera, director of the Puerto Rican Historic Conservation office.The petroglyphs include the carving of a human figure with masculine features and frog legs.

Evidence of the farming methods of hunter-gatherers from more than 6,000 years ago have surfaced in .Rare criss-crossed ploughing tracks were uncovered before the construction of new business units on Smile Lane.The feint lines were uncovered during four weeks of painstakingly removing layers of soil by hand.And they were made by a rudimentary tool called an ard - a form of early plough.And flint tools buried in the soil have been bagged and tagged for proper identification.The find is significant because it shows how our ancestors farmed in the Witham Valley.

Recovery from a "megadrought" 100,000 years ago precipitated the exodus of ancient humans from tropical Africa to Europe and Asia, according to a UA researcher.Analysis of soil samples extracted from below the bottom of the 2,000-foot-deep Lake Malawi in Africa shows the area believed to the cradle of anatomically modern humans depicts an area hit hard by drought, said Andy Cohen, University of Arizona geology professor.Cohen is lead researcher and lead author of Ecological Consequences of the Early Late Pleistocene Megadroughts in Tropical Africa, which was released Monday. advertisement Cohen's findings offer an ecological explanation for the "out of Africa" hypothesis that suggests that all modern humans descended from a core group of ancient people living in Africa between 150,000 and 70,000 years ago.

Two US astronauts from the shuttle Discovery have completed a space walk in which a new room was added to the International Space Station (ISS).Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock took six hours to steer the 14-ton module from Discovery's cargo bay on a robotic arm and put it in a temporary position. Five spacewalks are planned to fit the "Harmony" unit to the space station. Harmony gives ISS crews 18% more room and is the first expansion of living and working space since 2001.

New evidence dug from the shores of the Bay of Bengal supports the radical idea that it was a series of monumental volcanic eruptions that wiped out the dinosaurs, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico.The largest of the massive Deccan traps volcanic eruptions in central India sent basalt lava east across the continent and into the sea.There, near the town of Rajahmundry, an international team of geologists has found marine fossils deposited immediately on top the largest ancient lava flow there. The fossils, which match those found elsewhere, are believed to be species that evolved just after the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction 65.5 million years ago.

They created extraordinary artifacts for hundreds of years, revealing an aesthetic sensibility that influences Western civilization to this day. Then they simply disappeared.Scholars are seeking answers to one of the great mysteries of the ancient world: What happened to the Minoans of Crete, who controlled a thriving Mediterranean trade network from around 2,200-1,450 BC? Now NOVA senior science editor Evan Hadingham reports on new evidence that a massive tsunami struck the Bronze Age society 3,500 years ago, destabilizing the culture to such a degree that social chaos brought about its ultimate destruction.As part of Massachusetts Archaeology Month, Mr. Hadingham spoke on the topic Oct. 17 at Shrewsbury Public Library.

Elders of the Kikuyu Tribe in Kenya plan to use an ancient remedy to protect a sacred hill -- a cursing ceremony. Karima Hill is believed to be part of the path God takes to Mount Kenya. But a tea company has now planted the hill with non-native trees like eucalyptus and, to add insult to injury, a cell phone company has put a tower on it.The Porini Trust, a Kenyan environmental organization, is helping to organize the cursing ceremony, The Independent (London) reported. The ceremony is scheduled for December. This is real. It's no joke, said Kariuki Thuku, who works for the trust. Everyone is worried. Already some who have been employed by the tea factory, they cannot go there again.

Mars, like Earth, is a climate-fickle water planet. The main difference, of course, is that water on the frigid Red Planet is rarely liquid, preferring to spend almost all of its time traveling the world as a gas or churning up the surface as ice. That's the global picture literally and figuratively coming into much sharper focus as various Mars-orbiting cameras send back tomes of unprecedented super high-resolution imagery of ever vaster tracts of the planet's surface. Mars, like Earth, is a climate-fickle water planet. The main difference, of course, is that water on the frigid Red Planet is rarely liquid, preferring to spend almost all of its time traveling the world as a gas or churning up the surface as ice. That's the global picture literally and figuratively coming into much sharper focus as various Mars-orbiting cameras send back tomes of unprecedented super high-resolution imagery of ever vaster tracts of the planet's surface.

WASHINGTON - NASA has agreed to search its archives once again for documents on a 1965 UFO incident in Pennsylvania, a step the space agency fought in federal court.The government has refused to open its files about what, if anything, moved across the sky and crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pa., 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.Traffic was tied up in the area as curiosity seekers drove to the area, only to be kept away from the crash site by soldiers.The Air Force's explanation for the unidentified flying object: A meteor or meteors.

Agricultural soil erosion is not a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, according to research published online today (October 25) in the journal Science. The study was carried out by an international team of researchers from UC Davis, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and the University of Exeter in the U.K. Carbon emissions are of great concern worldwide because they, and other greenhouse gases, trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and are a major cause of global climate change. "There is still little known about how much carbon exactly is released, versus captured, by different processes in terrestrial ecosystems," said Johan Six, a professor of agroecology at UC Davis and one of the study's authors. "We urgently need to quantify this if we are to develop sensible and cost-effective measures to combat climate change."

In an unprecedented feat of forensic anthropology, European researchers extracted enough DNA from two Neanderthal skulls to suggest their owners sported red hair and white skin back when they were alive 43,000 and 50,000 years ago.The hair color of humanity's closest relative might sound trivial but the finding, announced in today's issue of the journal Science, stunned anthropologists with the sheer power of genetics to reveal what Neanderthals really looked like, and how they behaved. And that, some say, will change the way humanity views itself."We are building an image of these Neanderthal people - their physical aspects, cognitive abilities, metabolism, immunity - the range is enormous," said Carles Lalueza-Fox of Barcelona, an author of the paper.Last week, the same team announced that Neanderthals and today's humans share a gene associated with language.

Penguins are turning to prostitution. But instead of doing it for money, Antarctic dolly-birds are turning tricks to get rocks off their menfolk.Stones are essential for penguins to build their nests. A shortage has led to the unorthodox tactics."Stones are the valuable currency in penguin terms," said Dr Fiona Hunter, a researcher in the Zoology Department at Cambridge University, who has spent five years observing the birds' mating patterns.Prostitution is described as the world's oldest profession. But Dr Hunter is convinced it is the first time it has been seen in animals.

A microscopic robot small enough to travel through blood vessels has been built by scientists.Less than a millimetre in size, the robot walks like a crab on six legs and has been designed to clear blocked arteries.It was produced by researchers at Chonnam National University in Korea, who found the robot was able to travel 55 yards in a week.Once inside a blocked artery, it is able to release drugs to dissolve blood clots, which are often the cause of heart attacks.The robot has three short front legs and three longer back legs which are attached to a central rectangular body.

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say

ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Human remains estimated to be more than 10,000 years old will be returned to southeast Alaska Tlingit tribes 11 years after they were found in a cave in the Tongass National Forest.It is the first time a federal agency has conveyed custody of such ancient remains to indigenous groups under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, U.S. Forest Service officials said Friday."It's a pretty substantial find," said Tongass spokesman Phil Sammon.Vertebrae, ribs, teeth, a mandible and a pelvic bone were among the remains discovered in 1996 during a Forest Service archaeological survey for a proposed timber sale on northern Prince of Wales Island. The area is the aboriginal homeland for Tlingit tribes.

Brain scans can show how the brain gets "tired and over-emotional" when someone is deprived of sleep. US researchers kept volunteers awake for 35 hours and found huge increases in brain activity when shown images designed to make them angry or sad. The research in the journal Current Biology points to links between mental illness and sleep problems, they said. But a British expert said psychiatric problems could not be blamed solely on lack of sleep.

Tunnels built into the side of an ancient mound in Wiltshire in the late 1960s are to be filled in because of fears the monument could collapse. The tunnels in Silbury Hill near Avebury have been shored up and will soon be filled with chalk. The tunnels were created during an archaeological dig in 1968. Last year the tunnels were opened by English Heritage which found they were at risk of collapse, which could have affected the whole monument.Check out this video: Inside Silbury Hill

The mystery behind the sudden death of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, may have been finally solved by scientists who believe that he fell from a fast-moving chariot while out hunting in the desert.Speculation surrounding Tutankhamun's death has been rife since his tomb was broken into in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. X-rays of the mummy taken in 1968 indicated a swelling at the base of the skull, suggesting "King Tut" was killed by a blow to the head.More recent studies using a CT medical scanner, however, revealed he suffered a badly broken leg, just above his knee just before he died. That in turn probably led to lethal blood poisoning. Now further evidence has come to light suggesting that he suffered the fracture while hunting game from a chariot.The new findings are still circumstantial but one of Egypt's leading experts on Tutankhamun will say in a television documentary to be screened this week that he believes the case is now solved on how the boy king met his sudden and unexpected end.

HARBIN -- Workers have spent three years building a huge earth dam to protect valuable dinosaur bones from being washed away by one of China's most famous rivers.A horde of dinosaur bones lies buried in a mountain that sits right on the river that forms the boundary between China and Russia - the Heilongjiang River.So far, thousands of dinosaur fossil bones have been unearthed from the mountain and assembled into 13 dinosaur skeletons, which are now exhibited in several museums nationwide.Archaeologists believe there are enough fossil bones buried in the mountain to put together at least 100 more dinosaur skeletons. Every summer, rising waters and strong currents erode parts of the mountain, leaving dinosaur fossils exposed. Many fossils have been washed away in the past.

Physicists are closing in on new techniques to put ancient archaeological sites through a cosmic "CT scan" to look for hidden chambers, using showers of subatomic particles known as muons.The idea was first put to the test in an Egyptian pyramid four decades ago - but researchers saw no surprises in that experiment. Now, scientists are hoping to enlist a new generation of muon detectors to solve long-running mysteries of the Maya.Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas in Austin, provided an update on his team's plans for archaeological scans on Sunday at the annual New Horizons in Science briefing, presented in Spokane, Wash., by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Schwitters and his colleagues are focusing on mounds in the jungles of Belize that are thought to cover the remains of structures dating back to the Classic Maya era (A.D. 250-900) or even earlier.

Hungry ants corral aphids into nearby food-producing herds by rounding them up and penning them in with trails of chemical footprints they leave behind, a new study finds.The result is "honeydew on tap," researchers say.Scientists have known that ants tend to hang out near colonies of certain types of aphids that produce a sugar-rich, sticky honeydew when they munch on plants. Because the sugary substance is a staple of the ant diet, the ants use many means to manipulate the aphid populations for their own use.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Human remains estimated to be more than 10,000 years old will be returned to southeast Alaska Tlingit tribes 11 years after they were found in a cave in the Tongass National Forest.It is the first time a federal agency has conveyed custody of such ancient remains to indigenous groups under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, U.S. Forest Service officials said Friday."It's a pretty substantial find," said Tongass spokesman Phil Sammon.Vertebrae, ribs, teeth, a mandible and a pelvic bone were among the remains discovered in 1996 during a Forest Service archaeological survey for a proposed timber sale on northern Prince of Wales Island. The area is the aboriginal homeland for Tlingit tribes.

A joint Iranian-Polish team has started excavations at the site of the Azar Barzin Mehr fire temple in Sabzevar, northeastern Iran.Iran's Archeology Research Center and a team from Warsaw University are studying the temple, a quadric-arch. Archeologists will work to figure out the plan and elevations of the building as well as the cultural elements of the area.Early studies led to the discovery of a dual-purpose space built in the heights near the temple and used as an ablution room. The group is also studying the firebox and the main hall, in which worshippers circumambulated the sacred fire.

A mission could be launched before the end of the next decade to put a balloon on Titan, the hazy Saturnian moon. The balloon is one of several ideas being considered by the European Space Agency as it sketches out where its science should be focussed in future. Other proposals include an X-ray telescope that flies in two parts; and a sample-return mission to an asteroid.All the ideas will be subjected to further study; and are likely to evolve as international partners get involved.

Neanderthals might have spoken just like humans do now, new genetic findings suggest.Neanderthals are humanity's closest extinct relatives. Since their discovery more than 150 years ago, researchers have found out they could make tools just like our ancestors could, but whether Neanderthals also had advanced language, rather than mere grunts and groans, has remained hotly debated.To learn more, scientists investigated DNA from Neanderthal bones collected from a cave in northern Spain, concentrating on a gene, FOXP2, which is to date the only one known to play a role in speech and language. People with an abnormal copy of this gene have speech and language problems.Genes similar to FOXP2 are found throughout the genomes of the animal kingdom, from fish to alligators to songbirds. The molecule that human FOXP2 generates differs from chimpanzee FOXP2's by just two amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.Call it a beach party for early man. But it's a beach party thrown by people who weren't supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that's the case being made in a study appearing in the journal Nature on Thursday.

Wading bird graffiti on wall near unfinished obelisk.The unfinished Obelisk Quarry in Aswan, Egypt, has a canal that may have connected to the Nile and allowed the large stone monuments to float to their permanent locations, according to an international team of researchers. This canal, however, may be allowing salts from ground water to seep into what has been the best preserved example of obelisk quarrying in Egypt. "Working deposits and surfaces exposed during excavation are being damaged by accumulation of salts," the researchers said at the Second International Conference on Geology of the Tethyr at the Cairo University. "These unique artifacts document quarry methods and should be preserved." The granite quarry, located on the east bank of the Nile in the center of Aswan City, contains a very large unfinished obelisk that was not completed because of latent cracks. While the cracks were bad for the ancient Egyptian stone carvers, the unfinished monument provides the opportunity for archaeologists to understand how people worked hard stone quarries.

The earliest evidence for the existence of reptiles has been found in Canada.The 315 million-year-old fossilised tracks give an insight into a key milestone in the history of life, when animals left water to live on dry land.The footprints suggest reptiles evolved between one and three million years earlier than previously thought. They were found by UK scientist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang in fossil-rich sea cliffs at New Brunswick. "The discovery was pure luck," he said.Wading bird graffiti on wall near unfinished obelisk.

POCATELLO, Idaho - Idaho State University anthropologists are retracing American Indian trade routes by bombarding arrowheads and other stone tools with radiation that helps locate their The work at the Idaho Accelerator Center in Pocatello involves a process called photon activation analysis. It allows researchers to measure trace elements in an object and use the data to match artifacts with their places of origin, such as matching arrowheads made of obsidian with the lava flows they came from. That can provide evidence about how such items were passed among the West's tribes."This is the only accelerator center in the world doing this kind of work," ISU anthropology professor Herb Maschner told the Idaho State Journal.

The skeleton of what's believed to be a new dinosaur species - a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found - has been uncovered in Argentina, scientists said Monday. Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian dinosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species of Titanosaur because of the unique structure of its neck. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for "giant" and "chief," and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton's excavation."This is one of the biggest in the world and one of the most complete of these giants that exist," said Jorge Calvo, director of paleontology center of National University of Comahue, Argentina, lead author of a study on the dinosaur published in the peer-reviewed Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

People turned to farming to grow fiber for clothing, and not to provide food, says one researcher who challenges conventional ideas about the origins of agriculture.Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, says his theory also explains why Aboriginal Australians were not generally farmers. Gilligan says they did not need fiber for clothing, so had no reason to grow crops like cotton. He argues his case in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Scientists searching for what is likely the world's most endangered whale came up empty-handed this summer during a one-month tour of an area in the Bering Sea where Pacific right whales like to feed.From July 31 to Aug. 28, an international team of scientists surveyed an area almost the size of New York in search of Pacific right whales, which have been teetering on extinction for decades."We did not see a single whale the entire time," said Phil Clapham, team leader and chief scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. "The bottom line, they were not in the places they had traditionally been in the last six or seven years."

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - The most far-reaching search for extra-terrestrial life ever undertaken began Thursday as an array of radio telescopes that will trawl deepest space were activated in northern California.A total of 42 radio dishes started collecting scientific data from the furthest reaches of the universe, part of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in Hat Creek, around 270 miles (432 kilometers) north of San Francisco.The dishes will be part of an eventual army of telescopes numbering around 350 that are being deployed to help advance radio astronomy, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute and the University of California, Berkeley said in a statement.

Explorer's reputation is victim of region's pink tide of leftwing governmentsRead more of this report in the Guardian

The ancestors of humanity are often depicted as knuckle-draggers, making humans seem unusual in our family tree as "upright apes." Controversial research now suggests the ancestors of humans and the other great apes might have actually walked upright too, making knuckle-walking chimpanzees and gorillas the exceptions and not the rule. In other words, "the other great apes we see now, such as chimps or gorillas or orangutans, might have descended from human-like ancestors," researcher Aaron Filler, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist and medical director at Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders in Los Angeles, told LiveScience.

PACHACAMAC, Peru (Reuters) - A powerful hallucinogenic vine, long revered by Amazon Indians as a tool for peering deep into the psyche, is drawing interest from urban Peruvians and enticing foreign visitors to Peru.Known as the "vine of souls" in the Quechua language of the ancient Inca empire, ayahuasca contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a chemical resembling the structure of psilocybin in psychedelic mushrooms.Banned in the United States but legal in Peru, ayahuasca increasingly draws foreigners and has grown into a million dollar business. It is also seeping into Peru's medical mainstream as a handful of psychologists and doctors tout its therapeutic benefits. ........ "In the Amazon, ayahuasqueros would give you a big cup," he said. "You would see hell and feel like you are dying. That is not the objective here."

The Dutch government said Friday that it will ban the sale of hallucinatory mushrooms, rolling back one element of the country's permissive drug policy after a series of high-profile negative incidents.The decision will go into effect within several months and doesn't need parliamentary approval, Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said."We intend to forbid the sale of 'magic' mushrooms," he said. "That means shops caught doing so will be closed."Under the country's famed tolerance policy, marijuana and hashish are technically illegal but police don't bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and they are sold openly in designated cafes.

Experts are studying a carved stone recently uncovered on Whitby Abbey Headland in North Yorkshire to see if it represents the first Bronze Age artefact from the site.St Hild founded an abbey on Whitby Headland in 657AD, which is now an important historical site. However, little was known about the site in the Anglo Saxon period in which it was founded until archaeologists carried out clifftop excavations in 2001 and 2002. They found signs of industrial activities like glass and lead-making from the Anglian period (7th-9th century), and the first evidence of an Iron Age domestic dwelling on the site, dating from 500BC-100AD.

What may be the world's first Tyrannosaurus Rex footprint, found by Dr Phil Manning, from the University of Manchester, found in Hell Creek, Montana, USA.Dinosaur hunters have uncovered what could be the oldest footprint of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex ever found.Palaeontologist Phil Manning of the University of Manchester came across the well-preserved three-toed footprint last year while on a dig at the Hell Creek rock formation in eastern Montana.These rocks have been dated by scientists as 65m-67m years old, at the boundary of the Cretaceous and Palaeocene periods, known as the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be "a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before".

For the first time, geneticists have sequenced the genome of the grapevine. Their first reading of this information already has revealed significant changes that millenniums of selective breeding have made in this fruitful plant. Meanwhile, archaeologists have found what appears to be a site where rice was first cultivated in China.Whether seen through the lens of 21st-century genetics or uncovered by traditional dig-and-sift archaeology, the story of the development of agriculture is becoming clearer. It is synonymous with the rise of civilization. The grapevine geneticists made this point when they described their work in Nature last month. They quote the ancient Greek historian Thucydides' assertion "that Mediterranean people began to emerge from ignorance when they learnt to cultivate olives and grapes."

LONDON (Reuters) - One microscopic organism has thrived despite remaining celibate for tens of millions of years thanks to a neat evolutionary trick, researchers said.Asexual reproduction has allowed duplicate gene copies of the single-celled creatures -- called bdelloid rotifers -- to become different over time.This gives the rotifers a wider pool of genes to help them adapt and survive, the researchers said in the journal Science."It is like having a bigger tool kit," Alan Tunnacliffe, a molecular biologist at the University of Cambridge, said in a telephone interview. "You can do the same job but better."

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world. The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters."It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said.

Controversial police chief Richard Brunstrom has called for the legalisation and regulation of all drugs in a new report.Mr Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, described the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as "not fit for purpose" and "immoral" and urged its repeal.Mr Brunstrom, in a report to North Wales police authority, described the current UK drugs strategy as "unwinnable".He said: "The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 should be repealed and replaced by a new Substance Misuse Act based upon the legalisation and careful regulation of all substances of abuse in one consistent manner."Discuss these issues on the Miscellaneous Message Board on this thread

ANALYSIS by Roger Harrabin, BBC Environment AnalystI have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change, but when I first watched Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' I felt a flutter of unease. Not because the central message - that climate change is happening and almost certainly caused by mankind - is untrue; but because in several points of the film, Mr Gore simply goes too far by asserting or implying facts that are contentious. This leaves the film open to attack by the ever-dwindling band of sceptics who do not want to accept that climate change is anything to do with humans, and indeed a successful attack is exactly what has happened in the UK.Because although Mr Justice Burton agreed in Wednesday's High Court ruling that An Inconvenient Truth is mainly based on consensus science, his judgement will be trumpeted more for finding that the film was studded with green "errors". Read more ....