Newsdesk Archive
NEW YORK - Rising seas, spreading deserts, intensifying weather and other harbingers of climate change are threatening cultural landmarks from Canada to Antarctica, the World Monuments Fund said Wednesday. New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged historic neighborhoods, the Church of the Holy Nativity under Palestinian control in Bethlehem, cultural heritage sites in Iraq and Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary in Peru are among the locations listed on the fund's top 100 most endangered.The U.S. locations also include historic Route 66, the fabled east-west highway flanked by eccentric, deteriorating attractions, and the New York State Pavilion, a rusting remnant of the 1964 World's Fair in New York City's Queens borough."On this list, man is indeed the real enemy," Bonnie Burnham, president of the New York-based fund, said in a statement. "But, just as we caused the damage in the first place, we have the power to repair it."
Scientists say they have an inexpensive way of predicting what extrasolar planets (otherwise known as exo-planets) are made of, simply by looking at the chemical composition of their host stars.If a distant star contains high levels of iron, for instance, chances are that inner, rocky planets circling that star will also contain similar levels of iron, the scientists say.This is because nuclear reactions deep in the cores of stars produce the elements that are blasted across the cosmos, leaving traces in everything in the universe, including planets.
The ancient Hill of Tara in Meath - once the seat of Ireland's high kings- has been named one of the world's 100 most endangered heritage sites.The World Monument Fund has placed Tara on its "crisis list" following the go-ahead for the controversial M3 motorway through the site.The project has been bitterly opposed by environmental campaigners.
Internet repression is eroding freedom of expression online as more governments block sites and arrest bloggers, a human rights group warned today.Amnesty International said the internet could change beyond all recognition unless action is taken and it called on governments and companies to respect people's right to freedom of expression online."The virus of internet repression is spreading. The 'Chinese model' - of an internet that allows economic growth but not free speech or privacy - is growing in popularity, from a handful of countries five years ago to dozens of governments today who block sites and arrest bloggers," said Tim Hancock, UK campaigns director of Amnesty International.
A Kentucky nurse has found the oldest known mushroom, entombed in a 100-million-year-old piece of amber from Burma.A closer examination of the mushroom cap measuring less than a tenth of an inch revealed it had been infected by an ancient parasite, which a second parasite was feeding on."I was amazed enough with the mushroom," said George Poinar, a retired entomology professor in Corvallis, Ore. "But then seeing the parasites was astonishing. No one has ever seen this three-tier association before."Poinar, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley, said the mushroom was detected about a year ago by Ron Buckley, a registered nurse and amber-fossil collector and photographer from Florence, Ky. Buckley sent the amber specimen to Poinar, who confirmed the discovery and found the two parasites.
University of Colorado at Boulder researchers will scan Venus during a spacecraft flyby this week using an $8.7 million instrument they designed and built for NASA's MESSENGER Mission, launched in 2004 and speeding toward Mercury.Built by CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the instrument will make measurements of the thick clouds and shrouded surface of Venus during the June 5th flyby, said LASP Senior Research Associate William McClintock, a mission co-investigator who led the CU-Boulder instrument development team. Known as the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer, or MASCS, the instrument will compare the atmosphere of Venus with data from other spacecraft that have visited the planet in the past four decades.
Forest guards in western India are using cell phones with ringtones of cows mooing, goats bleating and roosters crowing to attract leopards that have wandered into human settlements, officials said on Monday.The wild cats in the state of Gujarat often roam into villages near forests in search of food, say officials, adding that this results in attacks on people.But rather than use methods such as live bait like goats tied to trees to lure the leopards, which then fall into large pits dug by guards, officials say they have found a safer method to trap the cats.
A purple fluorescent frog is one of 24 new species found in the South American highlands of Suriname , conservationists reported on Monday, warning that these creatures are threatened by illegal gold mining.The discovery of so many species outside the insect realm is extraordinary and points up the need to survey distant regions, said Leeanne Alonso of Conservation International, which led the expedition that found the new species.
Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.
A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida's largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats -- and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again.Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found.
Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule. That the skeleton of "London's Last Roman" - or anything ancient and unknown - can be discovered in 2006 in Trafalgar Square is remarkable. But when it comes to yielding secrets, the square's church, St Martin-in-the-Fields, has a long record.When the present church was being built in the 18th Century a body was found in a reused Roman stone coffin. And in the 13th Century the authorities had to step in after treasure hunters ransacked the then church in search of "a gold hoard".
WHY IS ENKAI, THE Creator god of the Maasai, almost the same as Enki, who created the Sumerians, as well as Enoch, the Canaanite hero who stormed heaven, and Inca, the divine chief of the ancient Andeans?Is it accidental that if you reverse the syllables of those names - a word-game which ancient societies played all the time - you get Ka'in of the Sumerians, Kainan of the Canaanites, Cain of Genesis and Chanes of Mesoamerica?Thus, although Genesis informs us that Cain was Enoch's father, a scruple crosses the mind. For the book cannot make up its mind which one of them was the first city-builder. It says that Cain gave his city the name Enoch. But both words mean exactly the same thing - "founder," "settler," "city builder." It is thus certain that Cain is Enoch.
Creators of footage promoting the 2012 Olympics should not be paid after it emerged it could trigger an epileptic seizure, London's mayor has said.Ken Livingstone's comments came after a segment of the animated footage had to be removed from the organisers' website on the advice of experts.He said the designer should not be paid a penny for the "catastrophic mistake".Charity Epilepsy Action said it had received 18 calls from people who had suffered fits after watching the clip.
Archaeologists digging in western Japan have excavated what they believe to be the oldest remains of a melon ever found, an official said Friday.Based on a radiocarbon analysis, researchers estimate the half-rounded piece of fruit to be about 2,100 years old, said Shuji Yamazaki, a local official in the city of Moriyama.The remains are believed to be the oldest of a melon that still has flesh on the rind, Yamazaki said.
His name alone makes Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the late Jacques, a big fish in the world of underwater exploration. Now he's taking that big-fish status to extremes.The Paris-born, New York-based explorer had become a virtual shark, thanks to his new shark-shaped submarine. He uses the sub to dive incognito among the oceans' top predators, great white sharks.Created at a cost of more than U.S. $100,000, the 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) contraption is designed to look and move as much like the real thing as possible. It carries a single passenger, who fits inside lying down, propped up on elbows to navigate and observe.
BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Qing Dynasty imperial tombs near to Beijing which date back more than 300 years are under threat from illegal mining, China News Service (CNS) reported on Monday.The Eastern Tombs - Dongling in Chinese - form the largest preserved imperial mausoleum complex in China, housing the remains of 161 members of the Qing Dynasty royal family, including five emperors and 15 empresses. It was listed as a world cultural heritage site in 2000.But the tombs are located at the foot of a mountain in Zunhua County, Hebei Province, some 125 kilometers east of Beijing, in an area rich in iron ore."Illegal mining started two years ago with mining reaching a depth of 50 to 80 meters," said a villager from Huida Village.According to CNS, illegal mining has destroyed part of the vegetation of the Shashan mountain, which is only 200 meters from Huiling, one of the Eastern Tombs.The night reverberates with the sound of explosions from within the mines and the iron ore is shipped out during the daytime.
Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world.The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco.Institute director Prof Nick Barton said: "Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks.
A union representing 570 space shuttle program workers at the Kennedy Space Center voted to strike, less than a week before the planned launch of the shuttle Atlantis.The International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers, which represents the United Space Alliance employees, rejected the company's contract offer Saturday morning, Florida Today reported.United Space Alliance spokeswoman Tracy Yates said the union could strike as early as June 10, two days after NASA officials plan to launch Atlantis."The bottom line is, a strike would not affect the next launch or the next one after that," Yates said. The company "has a plan in place."
An Indian tribe that has had very limited contact with the outside world has been located in a remote Amazon region, federal authorities said Friday.The Metyktire tribe, with about 87 members, was found last week in an area that is difficult to reach because of thick jungle and a lack of nearby rivers some 1,200 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, said Mario Moura, a spokesman for the Federal Indian Bureau, or Funai. The tribe is a subgroup of the Kayapo tribe, and lives on its 12.1 million-acre Menkregnoti Indian reservation, Moura said.The Kayapo had no significant contact with the Metyktire until two tribe members inexplicably appeared at a Kayapo village last week, he said."We don't know why they decided to make contact now ... only time will tell. This is a very slow process," Moura said.
An ancient tomb dates back some 3,500 years ago has been unearthed in Egypt by a Dutch mission, the official MENA news agency reported Friday. The ancient tomb, located in Giza's Saqqara area in southwest of Cairo, belongs to a priest called Meri Neet, who had become known as the chief superintendent of god Aton at the time, the report said.The huge tomb, discovered by the Dutch mission from Leiden Museum, dates back to the era of King Akhenaton, the 19th dynasty of ancient Egypt. The Dutch experts found the burial chamber, but without finding the mummy.
The Giza Plateau Mapping Project is searching for the human hand in the construction of these powerful symbols of remote antiquity which have intrigued and fascinated people for generations, says Jill Kamil.We may soon have an answer to the age- old question of who were the Pyramid builders and how the whole enterprise of pyramid-building was planned and controlled.When the Millennium Project was launched at Giza its aim was two-fold: to find out as much information as possible about the ancient settlement site at the foot of the pyramids for science and posterity, and to protect it from infringement by the expanding community of Nezlet Al-Siman. What has emerged seven years down the line is a huge and wide-ranging operation in which American, British, Dutch, Egyptian, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish and Turkish scholars are working in their specialised fields of expertise while, at the same time, supervising a field school -- four teams of students in total -- each led by an experienced excavator together with an qualified SCA inspector.
Archaeologists in Kerala have discovered a 2000-year-old port settlement probably dating back to the first BC to third AD, in Pattanam about 50 km from the modern day port city of Kochi.The Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) in its findings suggests that this could be the lost town of Muzires mentioned in early Roman manuscripts when ancient Rome had trade links with South India.''Periplus mentions that the Roman ship came only up to the coast and they could not directly come up to Muzires. Then smaller boats brought goods from the ships to the site,'' said K Selvakumar, archaeologist.''This is a Roman amphora piece, the bottom bit amphora was the jar that was meant for transporting wine, olive oil, fish sauce etc. We have found 160 pieces of amphora here,'' said P J Cherian, Director, KCHR.
OSLO/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian nuclear authority Rosatom rejected a report by Norwegian environmental group Bellona that tanks of spent nuclear fuel in Russia's Arctic were leaking and risked setting off an uncontrolled chain reaction. Bellona, a whistleblower on Soviet and Russian nuclear dumping activities, quoted a Rosatom publication as saying that degradation of cement that encases nuclear waste tanks on the Kola peninsula has already allowed salt water to seep in.It said the salt water was mixing with radioactive rods in tanks at the Andreeva Bay facility, and could set off a chain reaction whose fall-out could spread across northern Europe in a worst-case scenario.
Fungi could eat dangerous radiation to survive, an unexpected finding that could one day help feed astronauts in space.Or at least astronauts willing to eat a crawling fungus.The research began with the discovery of black fungus growing on the walls of Chernobyl's damaged, highly radioactive nuclear reactor and collected by robots. The fungus was rich with melanin, the same pigment that gives human skin its color, protecting the skin from solar and ultraviolet radiation. Melanin is found in many, if not most, fungal species.
Archaeologists will dive into the lake at a stately home in Wiltshire, to find out what the valley looked like before the garden was created. Henry Hoare flooded the valley and dammed medieval fishponds at Stourhead as part of his design for the landscape garden in the 18th Century. The team from the Nautical Archaeology Society wants to find out what plant life was there before its creation. They will also search for any structures that have been flooded.The focus of the work is on the location of the Chinese Bridge to find out where exactly it stood and whether any of it remains.
NEW DELHI - An Indian zoologist says he found a new species of limbless lizard during a recent field study in a forested area in the country's east. The 7-inch long lizard looks like a scaly, small snake, and "It prefers to live in a cool retreat, soft soil and below stones," said Sushil Kumar Dutta, head of the zoology department of the North Orissa University in the eastern Indian town of Baripada."The lizard is new to science and is an important discovery," Dutta told The Associated Press on Monday. "It is not found anywhere else in the world."
DUBLIN: For a manuscript written 1,200 years ago and revered as a wonder of the Western world practically ever since, little is known about the Book of Kells and its splendidly illustrated Gospels in Latin. But the book may be about to surrender a few of its many secrets.Experts at Trinity College in Dublin, where the Book of Kells has resided for the past 346 years, are allowing a two-year laser analysis of the treasure, which is one of Ireland's great tourist draws.The 21st-century laser technology being used, Raman spectroscopy, encourages hopes among those with a romantic view for an ecclesiastical intrigue like "The Da Vinci Code" or "The Name of the Rose."
Neuroscientists Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman of the National Institutes of Health say experiments they conducted have led them to conclude unselfishness is not a matter of morality, The Washington Post reports. Rather, the two say altruism is something that makes people feel good, lighting up a primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food or sex. Grafman and Moll have been scanning the brains of volunteers who were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves. They are among scientists across the United States using imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results are showing many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, opening up a new window on what it means to be good.
UCLA molecular biologists have turned protein sequences into original compositions of classical music."We converted the sequence of proteins into music and can get an auditory signal for every protein," said Jeffrey H. Miller, distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, and a member of UCLA's Molecular Biology Institute. "Every protein will have its unique auditory signature because every protein has a unique sequence. You can hear the sequence of the protein.""We assigned a chord to each amino acid," said Rie Takahashi, a UCLA research assistant and an award-winning, classically trained piano player. "We want to see if we can hear patterns within the music, as opposed to looking at the letters of an amino acid or protein sequence. We can listen to a protein, as opposed to just looking at it."The building blocks of proteins are linear sequences of 20 different amino acids. Assigning one note for each amino acid therefore results in a 20-note scale.
Using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have determined, for the first time, the properties of a rare, extremely massive, and young binary star system.The system, known as LH54-425, is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The binary consists of two O-stars, the most massive and luminous types of stars in the Universe.
A scientific study of the teamwork of army ants has discovered how they are prepared to let their fellow ants walk all over them to get the job done.Scientists from the University of Bristol observed that, when ants were foraging on rough terrain, some of them used their own bodies to plug potholes.They even chose which of them was the best fit to lie across each hole.The technique provided the rest of the group, which can number 200,000, with a faster route between prey and nest.
All of a sudden the Milky Way is filling up with far-off solar systems never seen before -- more and more planets of all shapes and sizes, wheeling in orbits around their own sunlike stars.Astronomers on teams from UC Berkeley and Australia reported the discovery of 28 new planets all at once on Monday, and their leader -- working through the night all this week at the world's biggest telescope in Hawaii -- is now on the hunt for rocky planets that might resemble Earth."An overarching question now is whether our own solar system is really alone," said Geoffrey Marcy, the Berkeley astronomer whose team has led in the discovery of what are now widely known as "exoplanets."
Digital technology has "frozen in time" thousands of fossilized dinosaur tracks, bringing to life a caravan of paleo-beasts, from towering sauropods to Tyrannosaurus rexes, that stampeded over a rocky Earth millions of years ago.Covering near-vertical rock faces in a Spanish quarry, these trackways of oversized footprints have been preserved since the Cretaceous Period, which ended 65 million years ago.Though the prints, which range in length from less than an inch to more than three feet, now span steep surfaces, the scientists say the land was flat when the dinosaurs lived.
Today's set of image releases from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE team included this one, of a fairly bland-looking lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons. Bland, that is, except for a black spot in the center. What's that black spot? It's a window onto an underground world.This black spot is one of seven possible entrances to subterranean caves identified on Mars by Glen Cushing, Tim Titus, J. Judson Wynne and Phil Christensen in a paper they presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March (PDF format, 322k). Here's the figure from their paper that shows the seven caves, which they refer to by the names Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki, and Jeanne
Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have learned what the weather is like on two distant, exotic worlds. One team of astronomers used the infrared telescope to map temperature variations over the surface of a giant gas planet, HD 189733b, revealing it likely is whipped by roaring winds. Another team determined that the gas planet HD 149026b is the hottest yet discovered. Both findings appear May 9 in Nature."We have mapped the temperature variations across the entire surface of a planet that is so far away, its light takes 60 years to reach us," said Heather Knutson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of the paper describing HD 189733b.
A twice-weekly trip to the gym may not just give you stronger muscles - it may give you younger muscles as well.Research on over-65s has shown that regular resistance training appears to reverse signs of ageing in the muscles.Analysis of muscle tissue showed the molecular machinery powering muscle cells became as active as that in 20-year olds after exercise.Its authors say the Canadian study, published in the journal PLoS One, shows the benefits of remaining active.
An appliance being designed for developing communities in Africa and Asia not only generates electricity, but also cooks and cools using acoustic technology.The "Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity," or SCORE, could help improve the health and quality of life for the two billion or so people in the world who cook over open fires. When used in enclosed places, smoke from such fires can cause health problems. And these stoves are notoriously inefficient. A person can spend two hours a day collecting wood to burn in a fire that is so wasteful that 93 percent of the energy generated, literally, goes up in smoke."We make the burning more efficient so that they use less wood and have more time to spend on other things like education," said Paul Riley, the project director at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.
For every generation in the United States there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War's end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, including 2,000 who died in Iraq."The history of our families is intertwined with the history of our country," Tim Sullivan, chief executive of Ancestry.com, said in a telephone interview. "Almost every family has a family member or a loved one that has served their country in the military."
Ancient footprints have provided compelling evidence that some dinosaurs were able to swim, scientists report. The 15m (50ft) trackway that reveals one animal's underwater odyssey was discovered in the Cameros Basin in Spain, once a vast lake. The S-shaped prints suggest the beast clawed at sediment on the lake floor as it swam in about 3m (10ft) of water. The marks are about 125 million years old, dating to the Early Cretaceous, the team writes in the journal Geology.
Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows.Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia.The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found (see China map).
US scientists have developed "super-oxidised" water which they say speeds up wound healing. Oculus, the Californian firm which developed the water - made by filtering it through a salt membrane - says it kills viruses, bacteria and fungi. It is also effective against MRSA and UK trials are being carried out on patients with diabetic foot ulcers, New Scientist magazine reported.Experts said wound healing was a major problem for people with diabetes.
MORRISON, Colo. - Researcher Matt Mossbrucker believes four small dinosaur tracks found within sight of the skyscrapers of downtown Denver were made by two stegosaur babies, a find he says would be "incredibly rare." Some other researchers agree the tracks were left by stegosaur toddlers, but still others have their doubts.Mossbrucker, director of the Morrison Natural History Museum, said the half-dollar-size tracks were discovered in the foothills just west of Denver last year, but it took time and digging for him to conclude they were made by stegosaur babies.
A genetic study has shed light on the mystery of how fish made the move from water to land millions of years ago.Previous research had suggested that fish had made an abrupt genetic jump to acquire land-friendly limbs.But a US team has now shown this event was not an evolutionary novelty and the transition was far more gradual.The study, published in the journal Nature, follows the recent discovery of a fossil described as showing the "missing link" between fins and limbs.In 2004, the fossilised remains of the Tiktaalik roseae revealed an animal with fins that were equipped for a life in the water but also for support on land.The crocodile-like creature, which lived about 380 million years ago, was said to "blur the distinctions" between land- and water-dwelling animals.
The oceans are losing the capacity to soak up rising man-made carbon emissions, which is increasing the rate of global warming by up to 30 per cent, scientists said yesterday.Researchers have found that the Southern Ocean is absorbing an ever-decreasing proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The excess carbon, which cannot be absorbed by the oceans, will remain in the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, they said.The reduced ability to absorb carbon is thought to be a result of high winds acting on ocean currents bringing deeper waters that already contain high levels of carbon to the surface.
A tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived about 4,000 years ago was discovered by Belgian archaeologists, Egypt's culture ministry has said.The team from Leuven Catholic University accidentally found the tomb, one of the best preserved of its time.They were excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis near the Nile Valley town of Minya, 225 km south of Cairo.The tomb belonged to Henu, an estate manager and high-ranking official during the first intermediate period, which lasted from 2181 to 2050 BC and was a time of political chaos in ancient Egypt.
Even by astronomical standards, Roger Angel thinks big. Angel, a leading astronomer at the University of Arizona, is proposing an enormous liquid-mirror telescope on the moon that could be hundreds of times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope.Using a rotating dish of reflective liquid as its primary mirror, Angel's telescope would the largest ever built, and would permit astronomers to study the oldest and most distant objects in the universe, including the very first stars. "It's an idea that's been around, and we decided to flesh it out," Angel says.
How did the South American sweet potato wind up in Polynesia? New research suggests that the crop could have simply floated there on a ship.The origin of the sweet potato in the South Pacific has long been a mystery. The food crop undisputedly has its roots in the Andes. It was once thought to have been spread by Spanish and Portuguese sailors in the sixteenth century, but archaeological evidence indicates that Polynesians were cultivating the orange-fleshed tuber much earlier than that, by at least AD 1000.However, there's no hard evidence of people travelling between South America and the South Pacific so early in history. Most Polynesian crops have their origins in Asia, where the people are thought to have migrated from.
PASADENA, Calif. - A patch of Martian soil analyzed by NASA's rover Spirit is so rich in silica that it may provide some of the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now. The processes that could have produced such a concentrated deposit of silica require the presence of water. Members of the rover science team heard from a colleague during a recent teleconference that the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a chemical analyzer at the end of Spirit's arm, had measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica for this soil. "You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the Mars rovers' science instruments. "This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there."
In a thick forest of maple, willow and oak trees where 17th century European settlers fought hundreds of American Indians, algae-covered stones are arranged in mysterious piles.Wilfred Greene, the 70-year-old chief of the Wampanoag Nation's Seaconke Indian tribe, says the stone mounds are part of a massive Indian burial ground, possibly one of the nation's largest, that went unnoticed until a few years ago."When I came up here and looked at this, I was overwhelmed," said Greene, a wiry former boxer, standing next to one of at least 100 stone piles -- each about 3 feet (1 meter) high and 4 feet wide -- on private land in this northern Rhode Island town of about 10,600 people.
A senior police officer has warned that the proliferation of CCTV cameras risks creating an "Orwellian" society.Ian Readhead, Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire Police, said he did not want to live in a country with surveillance on every street corner.He questioned whether the expansion was justified in areas where there were relatively-low crime levels.The Hampshire force area includes the small town of Stockbridge, where parish councillors have spent £10,000 installing CCTV.
Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.
Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern regions were home to mysterious snake cults, according to two papers published in this month's Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy journal. From at least 1250 B.C. until around 550 A.D., residents of what is now the Persian Gulf worshipped snakes in elaborate temple complexes that appear to have been built for this purpose, the studies reveal. The first paper, by archaeologist Dan Potts of the University of Sydney, describes architecture and relics dating to 500 B.C. from Qalat al-Bahrain in Bahrain.Two rooms in what is now known as the Late Dilmun Palace each contain 39 pits, some of which surround what appears to have been an altar. At least 32 of the pits housed ceramic vessels containing bones from rat snakes and sea snakes.
Archaeologists working in Honduras have discovered an entombed human skeleton of an elite member of the ancient Maya Empire that may help unravel some longstanding mysteries of the vanished culture. The remains, seated in an upright position in an unusual tomb and flanked by shells, pottery, vessels, and jade adornments, suggest a surprisingly diverse culture and complex political system in the influential Maya city of Copán around A.D. 650.
British government ministers have caved to pressure from the medical community to allow the creation of hybrid animal-human embryos for stem cell research. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Minister of Public Health told British media that she and other cabinet members would present a proposal Thursday to lawmakers that would update a 1990 package of legal provisions on human fertilization and embryology. Under the proposed legislation, scientists would only be permitted to create the embryos for research into serious human illnesses, and they would require a government license to do so.
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows infant stars "hatching" in the head of Orion, the famous hunter constellation visible from northern hemispheres during winter nights. Astronomers suspect that shockwaves from a 3-million-year-old explosion of a massive star may have initiated this newfound birth. The region featured in the Spitzer image is called Barnard 30. It is located approximately 1,300 light-years away and sits on the right side of Orion's head, just north of the massive star Lambda Orionis.
"This is not my day job." So begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and "political" science, with materials research mixed in.As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals-making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems.
A Neptune-sized world in a distant solar system orbits very close to its star and might be covered with exotic forms of water not naturally found on Earth, scientists say.The bizarre world is being called a "hot ice planet."The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, marks the first time relatively small planets similar to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune in our solar system have been found orbiting very close to their stars.
A voyage to Antarctica's icy depths has revealed a rich array of marine life and geological features that may shed light on the region's past and future.Isis, the UK's first deep-sea remote operated vehicle, combed the area's sea bed, diving down to 3.5km (2.2 miles).The vessel imaged diverse animals, such as king crabs, anemones and sponges.It also gave the first view of ancient "meltwater channels", which will aid understanding of how the Antarctic ice sheet might change in the years ahead.
Astronomers have found one of the best pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, a mysterious quantity that pervades our Universe.They have identified what appears to be a ghostly ring in the sky which is made up of this enigmatic substance.Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists have established that the ring formed long ago after a colossal smash-up between two galaxy clusters.
Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.
While smoking marijuana is never good for the lungs, the active ingredient in pot may help fight lung cancer, new research shows.Harvard University researchers have found that, in both laboratory and mouse studies, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while impeding the cancer's ability to spread.The compound "seems to have a suppressive effect on certain lines of cancer cells," explained Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
The British government published its draft bill to overhaul the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act this week and it differs from the White Paper introduced late last year in that research using part human part animal embryos is to be allowed after all.The bill covers a number of areas, including research using three types of human-animal embryo:Cytoplasmic embryo or cybrid: where a human cell is inserted into an animal's egg that has been stripped of nearly all its nuclear DNA. The embryo would be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.Human-animal chimera: where animal cells are introduced into human embryos.True human-animal hybrids: where a human egg is fertilized by animal sperm or vice versa.
Bottlenose dolphins are talking to each other using a dialect that could be unique to Wales, claim scientists.The whistles of dolphins in Cardigan Bay are different to those living off the Irish coast, a study has found.Ronan Hickey analysed 1,882 whistles for his masters degree in marine mammal science at University of Wales, Bangor.Dolphins produce a variety of "vocalisations" including clicks, whistles, barks, and groans to navigate and communicate with each other.
More than 60 years on, the case of Helen Duncan, the last woman in Britain to be jailed for witchcraft, refuses to die. As her supporters seek a posthumous pardon, evidence has emerged that she may have been the victim of a plot involving British intelligence agents, including Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond.In the 1940s Duncan, a Dundee housewife and mother of six, travelled the country performing seances for a war-weary public often seeking reassurance about their loved ones. As a 'materialisation medium', which involved her going into a trance and producing 'ectoplasm' through which spirits would take on earthly features to communicate with the living, Duncan built a reputation as one of spiritualism's greatest heroines.
The weather in space is controlled by events at the centre of the Earth. A pity, then, that the magnetic field generated there may be about to go into reverse
A team of NASA and university scientists has found clear evidence that extensive areas of snow melted in west Antarctica in January 2005 in response to warm temperatures. This was the first widespread Antarctic melting ever detected with NASA's QuikScat satellite and the most significant melt observed using satellites during the past three decades. Combined, the affected regions encompassed an area as big as California.Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, led the team. Using data from QuikScat, they measured snowfall accumulation and melt in Antarctica and Greenland from July 1999 through July 2005.
Fruit flies have free will. Even when deprived of any sensory input to react to, the zigs and zags of their flight reveal an intrinsic, non-random - yet still unpredictable - decision-making capacity.If evolution has furnished humans with a similar capacity, this could help resolve one of the long-standing puzzles of philosophy.Science assumes that effects have causes, and that if we understand the causes well enough we can predict the effects. But if so, our experience of being free to make choices is an illusion, since we are in effect just sophisticated robots responding to stimuli. If our behaviour is unpredictable, this is only because random events prevent us from responding perfectly to our environment.
Slushy water geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus might be powered by the grinding of ice sheets against one another and the periodic widening of rifts on the satellite's surface.Results from two new studies, detailed in the May 17 issue of the journal Nature, support the idea that a process called "tidal heating" is responsible for plumes of water vapor and ice crystals recently observed spouting from the moon's unusually warm south pole.
Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice.It was thought hair follicles, once damaged, could never be replaced.But a University of Pennsylvania, US, team, writing in the journal Nature, says hair growth can actually be encouraged using a single gene.A UK expert said the study could prove more important in aiding development of better wound-healing techniques.
Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar."The psychotherapist's world was about to turn upside down.
The official Xinhua news agency says it is the first time that a foreign buyer has purchased both a Chinese satellite and its launching service.The Nigerian Communication Satellite NIGCOMSAT-1 is expected to offer broadcasting, phone and broadband internet services for Africa.China beat 21 other bidders in 2004 for the $311m contract to launch the satellite, Xinhua says.The satellite, lofted by a Long March 3-B rocket, is expected to reach its final position later this year and to remain in operation for 15 years.
An experiment aimed at finding ways to help astronauts adapt to life on Mars could end up helping insomniacs on Earth, researchers said on Monday.They found that two 45-minute exposures to bright light in the evening could help people adjust to a longer, Martian-style day.During the experiment, they found a wider-than-expected variation in an internal system the human body uses to keep track of days and nights, and they believe their treatment might help people with certain disorders of this system.
Writing in the journal Nature, a Cornell biogeochemist describes an economical and efficient way to help offset global warming: Pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by charring, or partially burning, trees, grasses or crop residues without the use of oxygen.When bioenergy is produced by pyrolysis (low-temperature burning without oxygen), it produces biochar, which has twice as much carbon in its residue than that from other sources. This makes bioenergy carbon-negative and improves soil health.This process, he writes, would double the carbon concentration in the residue, which could be returned to the soil as a carbon sink. The exhaust gases from this process and other biofuel production could then be converted into energy.
A billion people - one in seven people on Earth today - could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years as the effects of climate change worsen an already serious migration crisis, a new report from Christian Aid predicts.The report, which is based on latest UN population and climate change figures, says conflict, large-scale development projects and widespread environmental deterioration will combine to make life unsupportable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the Sahara belt, south Asia and the Middle East.
A mysterious dip in gravity over Canada has been a weighty topic for some scientists. Now satellite data reveal a thick ice sheet that once cloaked the region partially resolves this so-called gravitational anomaly.Scientists have known that the Hudson Bay region features lower gravity than surrounding areas. While two theories have emerged to explain the strange phenomenon, conclusive evidence has been elusive. One theory involved a change in the area's overlying glacial weight as the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted.The new results, reported in the May 11 issue of the journal Science, provide a crude map of the ice sheet's structure as it was during the most recent ice age. Turns out, the now-melted ice left behind an imprint from which the Earth is still rebounding, and that imprint contributes to the weird gravity.
BEACHWOOD, Ohio - The letter brought a bittersweet end to Sol Factor's 17-year search for his mother, a Holocaust survivor who disappeared in the aftermath of World War II: "We regret to inform you that we located the above mentioned person, but she would not like to be contacted by the inquirer," reads the message from Magen David Adom, the Israeli counterpart of the American Red Cross.Factor, who had found clues to his past with the help of the Red Cross and a vast archive of Nazi records, knows only that his mother, now 83 years old, is living in Israel."Of course I'm disappointed because one likes searches like this to end with happy reunions," he said in an interview in his home in this Cleveland suburb. "There's a sense of actual relief too, because now some of the mystery has been solved," he said.
Work began yesterday to save an ancient landmark in Wiltshire from collapsing. Silbury Hill, which at 130 feet high is the largest prehistoric man-made construction in Europe, continues to mystify archaeologists.English Heritage is to spend £600,000 this summer trying to preserve the mound. Specialist engineers will enter the mound through a tunnel which was dug in 1968 by a team led by the archaeologist, Prof Richard Atkinson. That tunnel was the last of three made over two centuries by archaeologists.
A Journalist at Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs series, has been reprimanded for losing his temper and screaming with rage during the making of an investigation into the Church of Scientology.John Sweeney has apologised for the outburst against a scientologist which was filmed and then put on the video-sharing website YouTube, prompting criticism of the corporation. The BBC held an internal inquiry but said Sweeney had not breached any guidelines.Video on YouTube HERESee also BBC Windows Media News report Panorama reporter's fury caught on tape."The BBC says its reporter John Sweeney was mistaken to lose his temper with a Scientologist during an interview for Panorama. Panorama, Scientology and me, will be shown on BBC One at 2030 Monday 14 May (tonight)
The US space agency Nasa has unveiled a model of a space telescope that scientists say will be able to see to the farthest reaches of the Universe.The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is intended to replace the ageing Hubble telescope.It will be larger than its predecessor, sit farther from Earth and have a giant mirror to enable it to see more.Officials said the JWST - named after a former Nasa administrator - was on course for launch in June 2013.
Paleontologists unearthed a flesh-eating dinosaur some 150 million years old in southern Argentina with all its joints in place, the first time such a beast has been dug up so intact, one of the finders told AFP on Friday.The seven-meter (23-foot) tall, two-legged dinosaur, dubbed the Condorraptor, was found fossilized with parts of its jaw and head showing in rock near the village of Cerro Condor in Patagonia, at a site where paleontologists had been working for five years.
The official cost of the controversial ID card scheme has risen to £5.31bn. The figures were released as Tony Blair announced his departure, leading to claims from the opposition that the government was "burying bad news". The Tories and Lib Dems also claimed that the Home Office broke the law by releasing the updated figures a month later than they should have. The Home Office put the £400m increased costs down to extra staff carrying out vetting and extra anti-fraud measures.
Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.
The grey, short-tailed opossum has become the first marsupial to have its DNA read through by scientists.The creature is commonly used in labs as an experimental "model" in which to study the causes of human disease, such as cancer and neurological problems. Knowing its genome will boost those efforts, and give new insight into the different evolutionary paths taken by marsupial and placental mammals. Details of the work appear in the journals Nature and Genome Research. The study is part of a grand scheme to compare the biochemistry of a range of animals with that of Homo sapiens, to understand better how the human body is built and maintained, and how all species differ from one another.
Sometimes a particular piece of plastic is just what you need. You have lost the battery cover to your cellphone, perhaps. Or your daughter needs to have the golden princess doll she saw on television. Now.In a few years, it will be possible to make these items yourself. You will be able to download three-dimensional plans online, then push Print. Hours later, a solid object will be ready to remove from your printer.
Lahore, May 8 : A team of American, Pakistani and Japanese archaeologists has claimed the discovery of rare objects in the Cholistan Desert, raising hopes of the presence of ruins identical to the civilisations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa.Archaeologists from Wisconsin, the Research Institute of Humanities and Nature, Tokyo and the Department of Archaeology, Punjab University, say they have discovered a rare copper seal, a terracotta block, three wedge-shaped bricks, pottery with distinct potter marks and four unicorns from the dried-out channel of the Hakra river.
The theory that all modern humans descended out of Africa is almost certainly correct, new research claims.According to the 'Out of Africa' theory, all modern humans come from a single group of Homo sapiens who emigrated from Africa 2,000 generations ago and spread throughout Europe and Asia over thousands of years.They then replaced other early human settlers, such as Neanderthals, rather than interbreeding with them.Some scientists have said that there is evidence which dispels this theory, but a new study claims that its DNA evidence proves Out of Africa to be true.A team led by scientists at Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin Universities found that Australia's Aboriginal population comes from the same small group of colonists as their neighbours in New Guinea.
Aboriginal Australians are descended from the same modern human ancestors who left Africa to populate other parts of the world, says a new genetic study.The study supports the Out of Africa theory about the origins of modern humans, but scientists disagree over how many entry points people used to reach Australia. Georgi Hudjashov, of Tartu University in Estonia, and colleagues report their study online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The team analysed samples of Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, previously collected from Aboriginal Australian and Melanesian people."All these lineages trace back to the same Out of Africa migration," says co-author Dr Toomas Kivisild, an evolutionary geneticist at the UK's University of Cambridge.
CBS/AP) In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers.Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
Archaeologists have unearthed the grave of King Herod the Great, the ruler of Jerusalem who attempted to kill Jesus soon after his birth, it was announced today.Professor Ehud Netzer, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said that he had finally located the king's last resting place in Herodium, Herod's fortified palace on a hilltop outside Jerusalem, after a 35-year search.
The Israel Museum unveiled a unique 2,200-year-old stele (inscribed stone block) on May 3 that provides new insight into the dramatic story of Heliodorus and the Temple in Jerusalem, as related in the Second Book of Maccabees."The Heliodorus stele is one of the most important and revealing Hellenistic inscriptions from Israel," said James S. Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. "It contextualizes the Second Book of Maccabees and provides an independent and authentic source for an important episode in the history leading up to the Maccabean Revolt, whose victorious conclusion is celebrated each year during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah."
Chimpanzees and bonobos can communicate with greater flexibility using hand gestures than they can with facial expressions or vocalizations, new research shows.Their use of hand motions to convey different meanings in different circumstances suggests that gestures may have played an important part in the evolution of language. Researchers speculate about how prehuman species developed the capacity for complex language. One theory suggests that humans' apelike ancestors first communicated through gestures.
Scientists say they have detected the brightest stellar explosion ever recorded, a new breed of supernova that may well be repeated sooner than they previously thought.The violent explosion was observed by ground-based telescopes as well as NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory in a galaxy far from our own Milky Way. But the observations hint that an erupting star in our own galaxy, called Eta Carinae, could be close to the same kind of blast, astronomers say in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
PROFESSOR Dick Bierman sits hunched over his computer in a darkened room. The gentle whirring of machinery can be heard faintly in the background. He smiles and presses a grubby-looking red button. In the next room, a patient slips slowly inside a hospital brain scanner. If it wasn't for the strange smiles and grimaces that flicker across the woman's face, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just a normal health check. But this scanner is engaged in one of the most profound paranormal experiments of all time, one that may well prove whether or not it is possible to predict the future. For the results - released exclusively to the Daily Mail - suggest that ordinary people really do have a sixth sense that can help them 'see' the future. Such amazing studies - if verified - might help explain the predictive powers of mediums and a range of other psychic phenomena such Extra Sensory Perception, dEj vu and clairvoyance. On a more mundane level, it may account for 'gut feelings' and instinct.
The mystery of how eating less boosts longevity is closer to being solved. Studies have shown that severe calorie restriction markedly extends lifespan in mice and many other species - but the reasons for this remained elusive. But now US research on nematode worms, published in Nature, has uncovered a gene linked to this unusual effect. In the future, the find could lead to drugs that mimic the consequences of calorie restriction but negate the need for severe fasting regimes.
US space pioneer Walter Schirra, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who flew Nasa's earliest flights, has died aged 84. He was the only man to fly on Nasa's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes. In 1962 he became the third American to orbit the Earth. Three years later he led the first meeting of two spacecraft in orbit, as commander of Gemini 6. "We at Nasa note with sadness the loss of yet another of the pioneers of human space flight," a Nasa statement said. "We who have inherited the space programme will always be in his debt." Mr Schirra, known as Wally, died of natural causes on Wednesday night at a hospital in La Jolla, California, the space agency said. See also: www.wallyschirra.com
Scientists in the US say that initial data from a new way of scanning Mars has shown up to half of the Red Planet's surface may contain ice. The new method of scanning for water offers vastly more accurate readings than before, they say. The data could prove vital for the Phoenix Mars Mission which launches this August and which will put a lander on the surface to dig for ice. The new data shows wide variation as to how deep below the surface ice exists.
KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Explorers have discovered a series of caves decorated with ancient Buddhist paintings, set in sheer cliffs in Nepal's remote Himalayan north, leaving archaeologists excited and puzzled.An international team of scholars, archaeologists, climbers and explorers examined at least 12 cave complexes at 14,000 feet near Lo Manthang, a mediaeval walled city in Nepal's Mustang district, about 125 km (80 miles) northwest of Kathmandu.The caves contain paintings that could date back as far as the 13th century, as well as Tibetan scripts executed in ink, silver and gold and pre-Christian era pottery shards.
TIWANAKU, Bolivia (Reuters) - Archeologists have uncovered the 1,300-year-old skeleton of a ruler or priest of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization together with precious jewels inside a much-looted pyramid in western Bolivia.The bones are "in very good condition" and belong to either "a ruler or a priest," Roger Angel Cossio, the Bolivian archeologist who made the discovery, told Reuters on Wednesday.He said the tomb -- containing a diadem and fist-sized carved pendant of solid gold -- survived centuries of looting by Spanish invaders and unscrupulous raiders who depleted Tiwanaku of many precious treasures.
Huge numbers of news sources are reporting on recent neuroscience studies that have linked the effect of cannabis on the brain to the development of psychosis. The excitement is because the 2nd International Cannabis and Mental Health Conference is currently under way in London where scientists from around the world are presenting the latest research on the effects of cannabis. It is now clear that cannabis increases the risk of psychosis in some people who have a family history of psychosis and / or certain versions of the COMT gene.However, the main thrust of the news stories is that even a single dose of THC, the main ingredient in cannabis that causes the 'high', can trigger psychotic symptoms.
Global warming could lead to a return of insect-borne diseases in Britain such as malaria, and increased incidence of skin cancer caused by exposure to the sun, a government report warns today.With temperatures forecast to rise into the high 30s this summer, scientists fear Britain could be in line for at least one extreme heatwave before 2012. Tick-borne diseases are set to increase, along with the threat of other diseases associated with hotter climates.The report by a group of scientists for the Department of Health updates earlier warnings that climate change could see heat-related deaths rise to more than 2,800 a year in Britain. Heatstroke claimed the lives of nearly 15,000 people in France in exceptional conditions in 2003, and today's report by the Department of Health warns that could be a taste of things to come in Britain.