Newsdesk Archive

Maybe the tablets were used as visual aids for spiritual storytelling. Maybe they were dipped in dye and stamped on deerskin to create patterns."Maybe (a tablet) was displayed when you were traveling from one place to another," said Bill Iseminger, assistant site manager at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville. "It was a passport to show your rank or status or authority."Whatever their purpose, the tablets are considered archaeologically significant because they provide rare pictures from an ancient culture.Cahokia Mounds has a newly discovered Mississippian tablet, thanks to Elizabeth Kassly, 50, of Swansea, who donated it to the historic site. It's now on display in the interpretive-center lobby."I think it was just meant to be at Cahokia Mounds," said Kassly, a contract archaeologist with Powell Archaeological Research Center in Fairmont City. "Because of its potential, because of the stories it can tell."

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

TEL HABUWA, Egypt - Egyptian archaeologists showed off white pumice Monday that they theorize was swept onto the northern Sinai desert by a tsunami triggered by the ancient volcanic eruption on Santorini island 530 miles away. Traces of the solidified lava foam from the eruption have been found on the island of Crete and in southwestern Turkey, but the archaeological team now believes it also reached the Sinai site where they were digging at an ancient fort 4 miles from the Mediterranean coast.The Santorini explosion in the 17th century B.C. was devastating. It sank most of the now-Greek island and killed more than 35,000 people of a thriving Minoan community.The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery of the pumice would open a new field of study in Egyptology.

The world's oldest known perfumes have been found on the island reputed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust, and beauty, Italian archaeologists announced last week.Discovered on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus in 2003, the perfumes date back more than 4,000 years, said excavation leader Maria Rosaria Belgiorno of the National Research Council in Rome. Remnants of the perfumes were found inside an ancient 3,230-square-foot (300-square-meter) factory that was part of a larger industrial complex at Pyrgos. The buildings were destroyed during an earthquake in 1850 B.C., but perfume bottles, mixing jugs, and stills were preserved under the collapsed walls.

Dwarka (Gujarat), Apr. 1: In a rare finding, archaeologists in Dwarka have dug up ancient coins, which they believe to be at least 1000-year-old."The coins that we found at levels are of a later era as compared to the ones found further down. So, they are all of various centuries," said Alok Tripathi, Superintending Archaeologist of Underwater Archaeology Wing, ASI.Tripathi said that the coins still needed to be cleaned up, after which they would be sent to a numismatist for identification.The work at the excavation site would be carried on further up to a depth of seven metres, he added.

A spectacular golden Macedonian funerary wreath dating back to the 4th Century BC has gone on display at the National Archaeology Museum in Greece.The wreath was returned to Athens at the weekend by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles after a 10-year battle to prove it was illegally excavated and sold.It went back, along with a 6th Century BC marble statue, as the second stage of a deal to return four stolen items. A former Getty curator has been charged with trafficking stolen antiquities.

Ancient Peruvian aristocrats dismembered their less well-off neighbors as a scare tactic, new archaeological finds suggest.Several deformed corpses were found during recent excavations at the burial necropolis of El Trigal [image], a once-downtrodden community located in the Nazca province of Peru and dating to the 1st century A.D.Members of nearby wealthier communities looking to send a message about their power may have been responsible for the mutilations, say archaeologists."When a dominant class appears, [it] always seeks mechanisms to impose fear," said Pedro Castro-Martinez of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), who headed up a study of the corpses. "The power of an elite is exercised and maintained by means of force and fear. Mutilations can be part of those tactics to frighten."

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran lost a legal fight on Thursday to recover 5,000-year-old treasures it says were looted from one of its most important archaeological sites, known as "The Lost Paradise".In a ruling that could affect other countries' attempts to secure the return of antiquities, Britain's High Court rejected Iran's claim that it owned the artifacts.Iran was trying to stop the Barakat Gallery, an antiquities specialist based in London and Beverly Hills, selling vessels made from a grey-green stone called chlorite and decorated with snakes, lions and eagles.Lawyers acting for Iran said the treasures were among thousands of pieces stolen by looters after floods washed away the topsoil and exposed the ancient city of Jiroft in 2001.

More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded the city, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains, from the likely site of Cleopatra's palace to pieces of an astonishing lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the WorldRead this story by By Andrew Lawler at the The Smithsonian Magazine website.

PARIS (March 31) - A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out. Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu's tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid."This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works," Houdin told Reuters after unveiling his hypothesis in a lavish ceremony using 3D computer simulation.

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.

Portugal has inaugurated what it says is the world's most powerful solar power plant. The array of electricity-generating solar panels covers about 60 hectares (150 acres) in one of Europe's sunniest areas in southern Portugal. Officials say the plant should produce enough energy to supply 8,000 homes. The plant is part of Portugal's efforts to cut its reliance on imported fuel and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that add to global warming. The plant is also meant to bring development and jobs to the Alentejo region 200km (125 miles) southeast of Lisbon, a poor area traditionally dominated by cork and olive production.

The fifth season of excavations of archeological mounds of Konar-Sandal around Jiroft in the Kerman Province has led to the discovery of two more stone inscriptions dating back to the first half of the third millennium B.C. Three other stone tablets have previously been discovered on the 5,000 year old site. Professor Piotr Steinkeller of Harvard University in his recent essay on the discovery in the area has called it "Eastern Script", as distinct from Elamite. The Konar-Sandal archaeological excavation team, consisting of Iranian and foreign experts as well as the head of the team Yusef Majidzadeh, have given the name "Royal" to the newly identified inscriptions.

The remains of two people were discovered in a grave from the Neolithic age in the Yeosoo area of South Cheolla Province. It is the first time that bones from two people have been unearthed from the same Neolithic grave.Gwangju National Museum chief Cho Hyun-jong who led the excavation of the shell mound grave said that the taller of the two skeletons, at 158 cm, had a shell bracelet on the right arm and belonged to a woman. The gender of the other person who was 165 cm has not yet been determined.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It was nearly a decade ago that Jose Cibelli plugged his own DNA into a cow's egg in a novel cloning attempt that was condemned as unethical by President Clinton and landed the Michigan State University researcher in a mess of controversy.Even though Cibelli and his colleagues patented the so-called interspecies cloning technique, they soon abandoned the research as a failure and the uproar subsided.Now the tempest is brewing all over again.At least three respected teams of British scientists have reignited the moral debate over inserting human genes into animal eggs by proposing experiments similar to Cibelli's.Their goal is to eliminate the need for women to donate eggs for the cloning of human embryos, a research goal they say will enable them to better understand the genetic causes of many diseases and design personalized medicines.

In the near future, longer-lasting batteries could run on virtually anything sugary, including tree sap or flat soda pop.Scientists say these sweet new batteries could operate three to four times longer than the conventional lithium ion batteries commonly used in cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and many other portable electronic devices. And they are biodegradable."By bridging biology and chemistry, we can build a better battery that's also cleaner for the environment," researcher Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at Saint Louis University in Missouri, said in a prepared statement.

The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus is renowned may come from exploiting complex acoustic physics, new research shows.The theatre, discovered under a layer of earth on the Peloponnese peninsula in 1881 and excavated, has the classic semicircular shape of a Greek amphitheatre, with 34 rows of stone seats (to which the Romans added a further 21).Its acoustics are extraordinary: a performer standing on the open-air stage can be heard in the back rows almost 60 metres away. Architects and archaeologists have long speculated about what makes the sound transmit so well.Now Nico Declercq and Cindy Dekeyser of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta say that the key is the arrangement of the stepped rows of seats. ....

PASADENA, Calif. -- In the outer reaches of the solar system, there is an object known as 2003 EL61 that looks like and spins like a football being drop-kicked over the proverbial goalpost of life.Still awaiting a more poetic name, 2003 EL61 largely escaped the media hubbub during last year's demotion of Pluto, but new findings could make it one of the most important of the Kuiper-belt objects for understanding the workings of the solar system. In this week's Nature, the original discoverer of the body, Mike Brown, announces with his colleagues that an entire family of bodies seems to have originated from a catastrophic collision involving 2003 EL61 about the time Earth was forming.Brown and his team base their assumptions on similar surface properties and orbital dynamics of smaller chunks still in the general vicinity. They conclude that 2003 EL61 was spherical and nearly the size of Pluto until it was rammed by a slightly smaller body about 4.5 billion years ago, leaving behind the football-shaped body we see today and a couple of moons, as well as many more fragments that flew away entirely.

RESEARCHERS from York Archaeological Trust have identified a remarkable artefact which shows that in 1300, York was at the forefront of science and engineering.The object, a small circular copper-alloy disc, was discovered during excavations on the site of the former York College For Girls in Low Petergate.It has been cleaned to reveal an abbreviated Latin inscription around its edge - SIGNUM ROBERTI HOROLOGIARII - which translates as "The seal of Robert the clockmaker".What makes the discovery exceptional is the fact that early historical records indicate that the first clocks prevailed at a number of major English churches only a few years before the seal was made, with York previously notable for its absence from this list - until now.

France's national space agency has opened its UFO files to the public by launching a website which documents reported sightings over five decades.So many people have already tried to look at the files that it has become impossible to access the site.France is the first country to open up fully its UFO files to the public.Although other countries including the UK collect data on UFOs, files can be requested only on a case-by-case basis under the Freedom of Information Act.

A sliver of four-billion-year-old sea floor has offered a glimpse into the inner workings of an adolescent Earth. The baked and twisted rocks, now part of Greenland, show the earliest evidence of plate tectonics, colossal movements of the planet's outer shell. Until now, researchers were unable to say when the process, which explains how oceans and continents form, began. The unique find, described in the journal Science, shows the movements started soon after the planet formed."Since the plate tectonic paradigm is the framework in which we interpret all modern-day geology, it is important to know how far back in time it operated," said Professor Minik Rosing of the University of Copenhagen and one of the authors of the paper

HOUSTON -- In labs at Johnson Space Center, away from the buzz about NASA's new spaceship and its new missions to the moon and Mars, a group of engineers are plodding away at another piece of the puzzle: spacesuits.Astronaut apparel has evolved over the decades from Mercury's aluminum foil-looking outfits to the bulky, 275-pound whites now used on jaunts outside the space station. While it's too early in the process to know how the new suits will look, the space agency is hoping to make new suits both high-tech and low-maintenance."Finding the right balance is always going to be a challenge," said veteran astronaut Jeff Williams, who has donned both the complex American suit and the spare Russian suit. "It's trade-offs."The U.S. suits are easier to work in for long periods of time, but their complexity causes more maintenance. The one-size-fits-all Russian suits are used a few times and thrown away, but they're also not as easy to work in.

"One could imagine that kids would use any piece of wood they found to play in the waves, just as kids and adults do today with their boards," Okumura said. The study confirms earlier speculation about exostoses, which have been identified in ancient skeletal remains from Yugoslavia, the Canary Islands, Middle Europe, other parts of South America and even Imperial Rome.Paleoanthropologist Georgio Manzi of La Sapienza University in Rome and colleagues studied the Roman skeletons, which dated from the first to the third centuries. The scientists established "close links between the occurrence of auditory exostoses and prolonged cold water exposure, generally due to the practice of aquatic sports, or to working activities involving water contact or diving. "In many of the Roman cases, it appeared that frequent thermal bathing led to the ear canal bone masses, since men would often warm up in saunas and hot baths before plunging in icy pools. Roman women, who usually skipped the freezing cold water routine, had far fewer exostoses.Eggers thinks Eskimos warded off the problem because they often wore hoods, a fact that should be taken note of today by water sports fanatics.

Our front-page headline last week, "Cannabis: an apology", certainly grabbed the attention of a lot of people. No issue since the Iraq war has provoked such a reaction from our readers and from other media. Today we publish a selection of letters, including many from people dismayed by our repudiation of our 1997 campaign to decriminalise cannabis.Our front page was no mere attention-seeking device, however. The Independent on Sunday has changed its view because of the growing weight of evidence that cannabis contributes to mental illness. Yes, we sought to dramatise that change, not least in order to question some outdated assumptions and suggest people look again at the latest evidence.

A dog may be man's best friend. But one dog, Lady, decided she needed more friends -- and she found plenty in the knot of toads living at the local pond. A suburban family's secret struggle with an uncommon addiction comes to light in this personal essay by NPR's Laura Mirsch.Lady "was really perky, and happy, and generally excited to see you when you came in the door every day," recalls Andrew Mirsch.But that was before the Mirsch family moved into a new house."We noticed Lady spending an awful lot of time down by the pond in our backyard," Laura Mirsch recalls.

The drug classification system in the UK is not "fit for purpose" and should be scrapped, scientists have said.They have drawn up an alternative system which they argue more accurately reflects the harm that drugs do.The new ranking system places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table, ahead of cannabis and several Class A drugs such as ecstasy.The study, published in The Lancet, has been welcomed by a team reviewing drug research for the government.The Academy of Medical Sciences group plans to put its recommendations to ministers in the autumn.

A team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of Almería has completed its second part of the "Proyecto La Puntilla", an archaeological expedition to the Peruvian province of Nazca, where last year it discovered a new type of construction. The latest findings show that a new political power based on the exercise of violence emerged on the south coast of Peru two thousand years ago. There was a State in which an aristocracy, based in Cahuachi, exercised its dominion on other, poorer communities in the Nazca Valley. The team has also observed practices such as cranial deformation.The excavations at the necropolis of El Trigal have uncovered new information on the repercussions of the emergence of the State in southern Peru. The archaeologists have found that El Trigal graves are very simple, in contrast with the extravagant tombs of the aristocracy around Nazca.The situation shows the poverty that existed among the community in El Tribal. The dominant group in the State of Cahuachi imposed the transfer of wealth through taxes and other means. This explains the poverty of those living in the area of La Puntilla.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - At least 70 percent of all new drugs introduced in the United States in the past 25 years come from nature despite the use of sophisticated techniques to design products in the lab, researchers reported on Monday.Their study indicates that a back-to-nature approach might yield better possibilities for companies looking for the next blockbuster drug.Drug discovery hit a 24-year low in 2004, with just 25 unique compounds known as new chemical entities introduced that year, said David Newman, who runs the U.S. National Cancer Institute's natural products branch.

March 21, 2007: It's enough to make you leap out of your seat: A magnetic vortex almost as big as Earth races across your computer screen, twisting, turning, finally erupting in a powerful solar flare. Japan's Hinode spacecraft recorded just such a blast on Jan. 12, 2007."I managed to stay in my seat," says solar physicist John Davis of the Marshall Space Flight Center, "but just barely."Davis is NASA's project scientist for Hinode, Japanese for Sunrise. The spacecraft was launched in Sept. 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan on a mission to study sunspots and solar flares. Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope, which some astronomers liken to "a Hubble for the Sun," produces crystal-clear images with 0.2 arc-second resolution. (Comparison: 0.2 arc-second is a tiny angle approximately equal to the width of a human hair held about 100 meters away.) "We're getting movies like these all the time now," he says..

NEW DELHI: The excavated city of Dwarka, the pristine abode of Lord Krishna, discovered by the octogenarian archeologist S R Rao under the Arabian Sea in the coast of Gujarat is once again getting buried under the sands, thanks to neglect by the authorities. This "under sea city of Dwarka" lies in close proximity to near the present Dwarka temple in Saurashtra. According to archeologists this under-sea city was the real Dwarka where Lord Krishna lived.This was discovered by Rao and his team during an underwater excavation in 1994. The excavation had lasted for nearly 14 years.

In this photo released by the local "Sovrintendenza" archeological excavation authorities in Pompeii, near Naples southern Italy, a column is seen in pieces on the ground, at a closed site in Pompeii, on Wednesday, March 21, 2007. The huge column in the garden of an ancient Roman villa at Pompeii was toppled in what officials said Wednesday was an act of vandalism. "This isn't a simple act of vandalism, which, while bad enough, could be explained by ignorance," superintendent Giovanni Guzzo said, calling it "an act of intimidation."

Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media -- but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.

MILAN, Italy -- Does your church sing? Or does its message fall flat in a mess of reverberation, boomy bass and muffled speech?Researchers here are investigating the subjective acoustic qualities of church architecture in one of the most extensive scientific inquiries yet.By studying the best-sounding spaces (and the worst), the researchers hope to assemble practical design criteria for new churches. The data can also provide the clergy with some considerations on what music works best in existing places of worship.Since 2000, the team has visited 40 churches from Gothic to contemporary in style. They picked nine of the buildings for a five-song test of their acoustics.

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

"I'd take it in a second," said Sgt. Michael Walcott, an Iraq War veteran, referring to an experimental drug with the potential to target and erase traumatic memories.Walcott, who served in a Balad-based transportation unit that regularly took mortar fire, now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Since returning to the United States two years ago, he has been on antidepressants and in group therapy as he tries to put his life back together and heal from the psychological scars of war. "There are moments," he said, "when you just want be alone and don't want to deal with everyone telling you that you've changed."

The multimillion-dollar effort to eradicate one of the world's deadliest diseases received a significant but controversial boost yesterday when scientists announced the creation of genetically modified mosquitoes that cannot pass on malaria.Trials revealed that the GM mosquitoes could quickly establish themselves in the wild and drive out natural malaria-carrying insects, thereby breaking the route through which humans are infected.

The Independent on Sunday has carried a front-page apology for its 10-year campaign to legalise cannabis.The newspaper says it has changed its stance in the face of growing fears over addiction to the drug.There are now more than 22,000 people a year, almost half under the age of 18, being treated for cannabis addiction.And the paper says mental health problems and psychosis affect thousands of teenagers who use high-strength cannabis, known as "skunk".

SADDAM HUSSEIN can't be blamed this time. Damage to important archaeological sites in southern Iran was not after all caused by smoke from oil fires ignited during the first Gulf war.Iran held Iraq responsible for the blackening of ruins at Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae, even filing an unsuccessful claim for compensation with the UN.Now researchers from Italy's National Research Council in Bologna have found that bacteria are to blame. DNA tests and electron microscopy confirmed the presence of cyanobacteria, which leave a black residue when they dry out. Analysis of the chemical composition of the deposit showed that it came from cyanobacteria and not from petroleum-based pollution (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es062176s).

Scientists studying pictures from Nasa's Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. Details were presented here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Temperature data from Mars Odyssey's Themis instrument support the idea. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant.

The scientists behind the Beagle 2 mission, which was lost on Mars in 2003, want to send a nearly identical spacecraft to the Moon.They say Beagle 2's science instruments are ideal for assessing whether humans could exploit lunar resources when Nasa returns to Earth's satellite in 2020.It could determine whether deposits of hydrogen, water-ice and hydrocarbons are trapped in the Moon's cold regions.A Beagle could be sent to the Moon on its own, or attached to a lunar rover.Scientists envisage several opportunities for lunar robotic missions in preparation for the US space agency's (Nasa) manned mission to the Moon in just over a decade.

CHENNAI: In its renewed excavation at Salavankuppam close to Tiger Cave near Mamallapuram, the Archaeological Survey of India (Chennai Circle) has discovered three granite pillars with inscriptions of Pallava and Chola kings. According to archaeologists, the inscriptions confirm that a structural temple built of bricks, dedicated to Subrahmanya, existed at the spot on the beach. It belonged to the pre-Pallava period or late Tamil Sangam age and could be 1,700 years old.The inscriptions on the pillars belong to the Pallava period of 8th century A.D. when Thirukin Kizhavar was the local chieftain, the Pallava period of early 9th century A.D. when Nripatunga Varman was the ruler, and 998 A.D. when Raja Raja Chola was in his 13th regnal year. The inscriptions, in Tamil, are about the donation of gold and land for the temple and the maintenance of its perpetual lamp at Thiruvizhchil, which is present-day Salavankuppam. There is an inscription of Raja Raja Chola on the floor near the entrance to the Shore Temple. He built the Brihadisvara temple in Thanjavur.Read more of this story ....RARE FIND: A terracotta bull, a female head made of terracotta, miniature lingam made out of green-stone, a copper bell, conches and terracotta lamps discovered by the ASI at Salavankuppam near Mamallapuram.

While every physics pupil knows that heat can usually be relied on to make objects expand, for the semi-wild sheep of the Outer Hebrides it appears to have the opposite effect.Observations of Soay sheep on Hirta island have shown that the warmer temperatures associated with global warming allow more smaller animals to survive the winter. And with greater numbers of smaller sheep living through the cold months, the average size of the animals falls.Research led by Imperial College London, published in the journal Science, is the first to establish a direct link between the genetic changes of an animal population and climate change. It indicates that mankind, on top of the ecological legacy of causing species to become extinct or vastly reduced in number, is leaving an evolutionary legacy by affecting natural selection.

Two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message. Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford. They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science. The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists.

Scientists have created a cloaking device that can reroute certain wavelengths of light, forcing them around objects like water flowing around boulders in a stream. To creatures or machines that see only in microwave light, the cloaked object would appear nearly invisible."The microwaves come in and are swept around the cloak and reconstructed on the other side while avoiding the interior region," said study team member David Smith at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. "So it looks as if they just passed through free space."

Real estate agent Dave Eschenbach is an active member of his church, but he feels uncomfortable around a sizable portion of U.S. Christians -- those who believe they could be transported to heaven at any moment. Several years ago, Eschenbach had a boss who scheduled meetings around the rapture, the term for an event that around 20 percent of U.S. Christians believe is imminent."One day he announced to the employees that they probably wouldn't be there next week because of the rapture," Eschenbach said of his former boss. "His church had decided that the rapture would happen that week."The belief has been fueled by the bestselling "Left Behind" novels, which tell how Christian believers will soon be whisked to heaven -- leaving clothes, dental fillings and eye-glasses behind -- while others are left behind to fight the anti-Christ in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ. Eschenbach is a member of Cincinnati's Episcopal Christ Church Cathedral, a mainstream Protestant church. When it hosted a Webcast of a New York conference on rapture theology, he and about 50 others signed up to participate.Speakers at the conference, organized by the Episcopal Church's Trinity Institute, minced no words in their attempt to turn a tide that has swept much of middle America."The rapture is a racket," said Barbara Rossing, whose 2004 book, "The Rapture Exposed," criticizes rapture theology as unbiblical.

The Northern Hemisphere experienced the warmest weather ever recorded from December through February because of an early El Nino, which raised ocean temperatures, U.S. forecasters said.The 10 warmest winters globally have occurred in the past 12 years. The winter of 2006 ranked No. 9. The second-warmest was in 2004, said spokesman John Leslie. The third was in 1998, followed by 2002, then 1999, he said.The United Nations, in a report released on Feb. 2, said humans were ``very likely'' the cause of global warming and warned that world temperatures and sea levels would increase by the end of the century.

Some of the largest glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are moving in unusual ways and are losing increased amounts of ice to the sea, researchers said yesterday.Although the changes in Greenland appear to be related to global warming, it remains unclear what is causing the glaciers of frigid Antarctica and their "ice streams" to lose ice to the ocean in recent years, the researchers said.

Environment ministers from the G8 have agreed to a study of the economic costs globally of species becoming extinct as a result of climate change.German minister Sigmar Gabriel said the destruction of biodiversity was "not just an issue for birdwatchers."The loss of plant and animal species was an economic disaster fuelling poverty in many areas, he said.

Enough water is locked up at Mars' south pole to cover the planet in a liquid layer 11m (36ft) deep.The Mars Express probe used its radar instrument to map the thickness of Mars' south polar layered deposits.Analysis of the Marsis radar data shows that the polar deposits consist of almost pure water-ice.The findings appear in the journal Science and were also presented this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.It was known by the 1970s that the north and south polar regions of the Red Planet were blanketed by thick accumulations of layered material.Based upon data from the Mariner and Viking projects, the polar layered deposits were considered to be accumulations of dust and ice.

At the only hospital in the capital of this tiny West African nation, a 3-year-old AIDS patient named Suleiman receives his daily dose of medication -- a murky brown concoction of seven herbs and spices served out of a bottle that once contained pancake syrup.The boy is told a spoonful a day will make him better. His mother, Fatuma, takes the same concoction, as do several dozen other AIDS and HIV patients here. Adults take two spoonfuls."It's amazing," Fatuma says. "Two weeks ago, I was very ill, weak and couldn't eat without vomiting."This has become the treatment for HIV/AIDS patients here since early January, when Gambian President Yahya Jammeh announced he had discovered a cure for the disease that has wreaked havoc across Africa. He made that announcement in front of a group of foreign diplomats, telling them the treatment was revealed to him by his ancestors in a dream.

Climate change was one of the key factors in the abandonment of Cambodia's ancient city of Angkor, Australian archaeologists said today.The centuries-old city, home to more than 700,000 people and capital of the Khmer empire from about 900AD, was mysteriously abandoned about 500 years ago.It has long been believed the Khmers deserted the city after a Thai army ransacked it, but University of Sydney archaeologists working the site say a water crisis was the real reason it was left to crumble."It now appears the city was abandoned during the transition from the medieval warm period to the little ice age," Associate Professor of Archaeology Roland Fletcher said in a statement released by the university.

A 76-year-old Kenosha County man in whose cornfield the skeleton of a mammoth believed to be about 12,500 years old was dug up in 1994 is interested in selling it, and officials of the Milwaukee Public Museum are interested in it."I'm just looking for some funds for my grandkids' college," John Hebior said the possible sale of the skeleton now in 15 large wooden crates and four plastic tubs in the basement of his farmhouse five miles west of Somers.Milwaukee Public Museum president Dan Finley said the Hebior mammoth would look great standing in the atrium of the natural history museum.If all works well, a fiberglass replica of the skeleton would be on display while the actual skeleton would be kept off display for further research."I want something jaw-dropping" to greet visitors, Finley said. "We very much would like to acquire the actual bones."Experts have suggested the bones could be worth from between $100,000 to $500,000.

A scholar looking into the factual basis of a popular but widely criticized documentary that claims to have located the tomb of Jesus said Tuesday that a crucial piece of evidence filmmakers used to support their claim is a mistake.Stephen Pfann, a textual scholar and paleographer at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said he has released a paper claiming the makers of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" were mistaken when they identified an ancient ossuary from the cave as belonging to the New Testament's Mary Magdalene.The film's director, Simcha Jacobovici, responded that other researchers agreed with the documentary's conclusions.

Sky-Sailor, the working dream of a solar-powered, autonomously-controlled microairplane, has exciting implications in two areas: one on the technological advances of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs); and another on exploring the lower atmosphere of Mars. Scientists André Noth, Walter Engel and Roland Siegwart of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems in Switzerland believe that Sky-Sailor will reach the inner orbit of Mars within a decade or two, depending on advancements in technology. While other solar airplanes have been developed since the late 1970s, the scientists have defined loftier goals for Sky-Sailor. The group plans to have the airplane fly continuously for at least several months, all by itself, and all on solar power.

The site, only 150 feet from Ind. 32 between Muncie and Yorktown, recently came to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes."It's absolutely critical we keep this one," said Don Cochran, director of archaeological research at Ball State University. "This is one we don't know anything about."With the exception of Mounds State Park, most of the 300-plus known mounds and enclosures built by the Hopewell-Adena people around 2,000 years ago in East Central Indiana have been completely or partially destroyed by agriculture, development and artifact hunters."We had printed out a large topographical map for the county surveyor or an engineering firm with contours for several square miles," said Kyle Johnson, the county's GIS coordinator. "There was a series of rings in the corner of the map that stuck out and caught our eye. You don't see things like that -- perfect circles."

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists.The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect."For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation," said Thomas Heimburg, an associate professor at the university's Niels Bohr Institute. "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced."

In the cold, dark abyss of the Pacific lurk thousands of aptly named jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas), aggressive carnivores up to six feet long and 100 pounds nicknamed "red devils" by fishermen.Still, even these creatures can become prey to leviathans. The largest predators in the world, sperm whales, have a voracious appetite for squid, devouring perhaps 220 billion pounds a year or more, roughly equivalent to the entire annual harvest of all the commercial fisheries on Earth. Yet how sperm whales hunt jumbo squid has remained a mystery. Now, by electronically tagging both to peer at their habits up to thousands of feet underwater, scientists are discovering a deep sea version of "out of the frying pan and into the fire," with squid that flee the relative heat of surface waters potentially finding themselves in the maws of whales.

The long childhoods and delayed maturity common in modern humans are traits that date back to at least the early members of our own species in Africa. Previous research had found that fossils from earlier hominids, such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus, possessed short growth periods that were more similar to chimpanzees than living humans. So it was unclear when a lengthier period of child development emerged in human evolution. The new analyses of teeth belonging to a child living in North Africa 160,000 years ago reveal longer-term growth patterns similar to those found among modern European children.The finding, detailed in the March 12 issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests some of the traits commonly attributed to our species appeared relatively late in the 6-million-year history of human evolution.

Bones found at a prehistoric burial site indicate they belonged to victims of an ancient massacre, say scientists. Remains of 14 people were discovered at Wayland's Smithy, near Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire, in the 1960s. Latest techniques date the bones at between 3590 BC and 3560 BC, and have led experts to believe the people may have died in a Neolithic Age massacre. English Heritage carried out the work with the help of Cardiff University and the University of Central Lancashire.

A thin beam of X-rays scans the writings of the legendary Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, a hidden text that may be the most important ancient scientific document discovered since the Renaissance. As faint lines emerge on a large computer monitor at Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, I can just barely make out the ghostly image of the Greek letter lambda. As a Webcast producer for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, I have been documenting this experimental use of one of the most sophisticated tools of modern science, to decipher a 1,000-year-old book made of goatskin. Known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, dubbed Archie for short, it looks terribly fragile. The edges of most of the book's 174 pages are burned, and tears, holes and spots of purple mold dot their surface. The parchment is smaller than I thought it would be, not much larger than a hardback novel.I want simply to gawk, but the hum of machinery reminds me that I have work to do. Since I've been spending so much time around Archie, the imaging team has given me the job of shift supervisor this afternoon. I check the intensity of the X-ray scanner, note the time, and record the temperature and humidity from the environmental monitors near the document. In its pages is the only known surviving record of two of Archimedes' works, and the only version of another one in the original Greek.Read more of this story by By Mary K. Miller. ....

Biologists and other scientists have long expressed amusement, and gritted their teeth, when they encounter the persistent contention by particle physicists that they alone pursue science in its most pure state. "Particle physics is the most fundamental area of science in that its goal is to reduce the wonderful diversity and complexity of our universe to a few simple mathematical laws," wrote the noted physicists Sylvester James Gates, Jr. and Warren Siegel, two decades ago, expressing a truism often shared by those in their discipline.What's worse for the long-suffering biologists, physics has long started reaching into others' fields, spawning disciplines such as biophysics, and even taken on subjects such as sociology, the far reaches of messy "soft" sciences. But maybe the physicists have it backwards, suggests one well-known biologist, embryonic stem cell scientist Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, writing in the current issue of The American Scholar, a quarterly brought to you by the folks at Phi Beta Kappa. Maybe the world is the product of one aspect of biology, the mind, and not the other way around, he argues. "As we have seen, the world appears to be designed for life not just at the microscopic scale of the atom, but at the level of the universe itself," Lanza writes. What if, Lanza asks, this means that instead of infinitesimally tiny particles creating space and time (and making life possible), "the brain can really create physical reality."

I am far from the most agile person in the world, but I can now walk my family history backward. From Connecticut to Germany to southern Spain, to the Cro-Magnons and the Ice Ages. From northern Russia, and ancestors too rare right now to generalize about, to Central Asia. Then eventually, back to East Africa. That's where people started walking it forward, as far back as 60,000 years ago, leaving Africa for, what was for them, parts unknown.I know I am a part in this great migration thanks to The Genographic Project, an ambitious five-year undertaking by National Geographic to add many new rungs to our family tree. Working in collaboration with IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation, National Geographic is hoping to get hundreds of thousands of DNA samples -- from indigenous and traditional populations, but also from ordinary people all over the globe.The end result, said Spencer Wells, the geneticist and anthropologist who heads the project, is to come up with a map with dozens of lineages looping across it, showing the complexity of these different journeys. ....By Robert Miller THE NEWS-TIMES

When scientists announce they're about to calibrate their instruments, science writers normally put away their pens. It's hard to write a good story about calibration. This may be the exception:On Feb. 25, 2007, NASA scientists were calibrating some cameras aboard the STEREO-B spacecraft and they pointed the instruments at the sun. Here is what they saw (See right)"What an extraordinary view," says Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO Program Scientist at NASA headquarters. The fantastically-colored star is our own sun as STEREO sees it in four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. The black disk is the Moon. "We caught a lunar transit of the sun," she explains.

Andy Cheng has seen it all.The scientist from Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab has worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Cassini mission to Saturn, the NEAR mission to asteroid 433 Eros and many others during his decades-long career. Alien vistas are old hat to him.But even he was amazed when he laid eyes on this photo of Io's Tvashtar volcano, taken Feb. 28th by the New Horizons spacecraft:Omigod! I can't believe it. "That was my first reaction," says Cheng. "The LORRI image of the Tvashtar plume is the best and most detailed plume image that any of us -- including longtime Jupiter experts -- have ever seen."

....Peter Kay has got it in the neck. Kay has written an autobiography, The Sound Of Laughter, which sold more than 600,000 copies in six weeks - bad news for the presumably envious professor (Richard Dawkins) whose own best-seller, The God Delusion, has not done quite so well. Both men are now shortlisted for a prize and Dawkins, a self-publicist of assured brilliance, has chosen to weigh into his rival. Peter Kay was brought up as a Roman Catholic. He is unsentimental about this in his book, and has clearly left formal Christianity behind. He does not, for example, believe in the divinity of Christ. "I think Jesus was just an ordinary person, like me and you." But Kay does go on to say that "I believe in a God of some kind, in some sort of higher being. Personally I find it very comforting". Enter Dawkins, snorting with rage. "How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it 'comforting'?" he asks. "If evidence for a Supreme Being were found, I would change my mind instantly - with pride and great surprise. Would I find it comforting? What matters is what is true and we discover the truth by evidence and not by what we would like."This may sound very clever, but there are quite a lot of things wrong with it. For a start, Peter Kay isn't asking to be 'taken seriously'. ....

King Harold Bluetooth brought Christianity to Denmark roughly 1100 years ago. At least that's what he declared on the Jelling Stone located in Jutland:'King Haraldr ordered this monument made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrvé, his mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.'A tiny crystal amulet in the National Museum's archives suggests something quite different though, that maybe Christianity arrived in Denmark six centuries earlier than previously believed.

Rock scientists from across the world will start next week to put together the first geological map of the earth in a bid to better understand the planet.The OneGeology project, bringing together scientists from more than 55 countries, will pool national geological survey information and present it on the Internet for all to see rather like Google Earth already does with satellite images.In doing so it will not only provide people with access to the first detailed images of the ground beneath their feet but also expose the yawning gaps that exist in knowledge."The geological data exists. What we are trying to do is unlock it and make it universally available," Ian Jackson of the British Geological Survey told a news conference on Thursday. "It is like piecing together a global jigsaw puzzle." "We believe that increasing the availability of geological data will increase our knowledge of environmental factors that affect human health and welfare," he added.

Most public reports and tribunals suggest a gentle correction to the tiller, but yesterday's Royal Society of Arts report on Britain's drug laws overturns the whole boat. A panel including profs, cops, hacks and do-gooders has concluded that narcotics legislation is "not fit for purpose", revealing an addiction to the current Class-A cliche of official language.In many areas of British life, the report concludes, "the harmless use of drugs is possible, indeed common". Police efforts should be diverted elsewhere and the sale and use of most heighteners by most people tolerated.

Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to approach them.Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off.The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future, based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit the redwoods of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival for millenniums - a journey that, for some trees, precedes the Parthenon.As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence" acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory and enemies, and are often capable of forethought - revelations that could affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers.

When Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he portrayed the Renaissance view of humanity as having been molded by the hand of its creator, a "perfect" physical specimen. Charles Darwin, when drafting his theory of evolution, presented imperfections in humans' anatomic structures and functions as the strongest evidence for his theory. It now appears they were both right. A coordinated network of molecular processes providing cells with nearly flawless surveillance, maintenance, and repair capabilities exemplifies the "perfection" of the human body. Living things need this precision in order to survive to reproductive maturity in the face of a hostile environment and the toxic debris that the cellular machinery of life generates. Meanwhile, subtle changes and imperfections at every level of biological organization give rise to the diseases and disorders associated with aging and impose limits on the duration of life, but ultimately, these changes and imperfections drive the evolutionary process itself. The juxtaposition of Michelangelo's perfection and Darwin's flaws embodies the linked stories of reproduction and death.Evolution has given humans a beautifully orchestrated set of genetic programs to carry most of us through to sexual maturity, but we have also been given a brain large enough to ponder our demise. Yet, if the molecular, cellular, and genetic machinery used to conceive, develop, and operate a human were designed rather than the result of evolution, humans would be different and life would look different. This is our challenge. We asked experts in gerontology, neuroscience, genetics, cell biology, development, and health and fitness science to devise a human that would stand the test of time. Here's what they've come up with.Read more of this article on the human aging problem at TheScientist.com website ...

Techniques developed by atomic physicists are being used to develop the first of what promises to be a new generation of cancer treatments in place of conventional radiotherapy. One day doctors could even be using anti-matter. Recent announcements from the CERN laboratory in Geneva have aroused considerable interest in some medical circles. Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death.These pilot experiments may have future potential. But applications borrowed from particle physics are already being used in cancer treatment to help avoid the major side effects of radiotherapy.

Sunlight can cause asteroids to spin more quickly, scientists said Wednesday, showing anew just how dynamic a place our solar system can be.International teams of scientists studying two asteroids, one about a mile wide and the other about 375 feet wide, confirmed a previously unproven theory that sunlight can affect the rotation of asteroids because they tend to be irregularly shaped and not perfectly round.Stephen Lowry of Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland said the findings boost the understanding of the physical properties and dynamics of asteroids -- hunks of metal and rock rattling around in space."This is important as asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system, along with comets, and so by studying them we gain insights into what the solar system was like some 4.5 billion years ago," Lowry said by e-mail.

Researchers from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Golden, Colo., have woven together more than a thousand images from the Landsat 7 satellite to create the most detailed, high-resolution map ever produced of Antarctica. The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) offers views of the coldest continent on Earth in 10 times greater detail than previously possible."These images give us incredibly detailed views of the Antarctic ice sheet surface and serve as maps for many locations that have never been mapped before," said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of the Laboratory for Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bindschadler oversaw the selection of the scenes used to create the mosaic. Researchers at NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, have launched a Web site with support from the National Science Foundation to offer public access to the image mosaic. This site contains original images and close-ups of various areas of Antarctica, all available for download. The research group will continue to release images through this summer.

A team of scientists and engineers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are conducting research that could one day save humanity from asteroids threatening Earth.UAH Laser Science and Engineering Group (LSEG), headed by Dr. Richard Fork, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is conducting research into characterizing and deflecting asteroids that may endanger Earth.It sounds like science fiction, but Fork, who has a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than 40 years of experience working with lasers, said someday it could be possible to locate a laser in space or on the moon to look at the properties of asteroids and perhaps alter their trajectories away from Earth.

A grandmother who "self medicates" with cannabis to ease her depression has vowed to continue to use the drug in defiance of a judge's jail warning.Patricia Tabram, 68, walked free from court despite a jury taking only 15 minutes to convict her of growing and possessing cannabis, but she was ordered to carry out 250 hours community service and pay £1,000 costs.It was her second drug conviction after she was given a suspended jail sentence for supplying cannabis in curries, casseroles and cakes which she distributed to other elderly and infirm people near her bungalow, in Humshaugh, Northumberland.

A 7,000-year-old dwelling mound has been found in Germany, causing a stir among archaeologists. It is the first find of its kind in Western Europe.A room with a view has always been a coveted thing. Over the millennia, humans discovered that it could be achieved by simply staying put over generations and not picking up the garbage. By building and rebuilding on the rubble of their own architectural remains, sedentary humans managed to achieve an impressive height.The result of this process, known to archaeologists as a dwelling mound, is most commonly associated with the Middle East; in Iraq, the structures reach a height of 40 meters. They are also known in the Balkans and South America, but not in Germany -- at least until now.Hence the discovery of a dwelling mound near Oberröblingen in Saxony-Anhalt has caused something of a stir in the German archaeological establishment. Thought to be 7,000 years old, the oval-shaped mound, which is roughly 100 meters long, 60 meters wide and 1.8 meters high, consists of the clay remains of centuries of previous structures."This is a unique find in Germany," Robert Ganslmeier of the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle told the news agency DPA. "People have been living and building here since the early Stone Age."

NEW YORK: Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from Northern Europe and drove the Celts to the western and northern fringes.But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans.The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist's point of view, seems likely to please no one. The genetic evidence is still under development, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The world's first female astronaut Valentina Tereshkova, marking her 70th birthday on Tuesday, says she still dreams of flying to Mars -- even on a one-way ticket.In June 1963, 25-year-old Tereshkova spent 71 hours in orbit on board a Soviet Vostok spacecraft, earning a niche in the history books and scoring propaganda points for the Soviet Union in its Cold War space rivalry with the United States.The story of the peasant's daughter who became a household name thanks to communism's achievements made her a role model for young Soviet women. Her photograph smiling from a space suit became an icon.President Vladimir Putin, who invited Tereshkova to his residence near Moscow to mark her birthday, said her flight remained an inspiration for the resurgent Russia of today.

The more massive a galaxy is, the faster its stars and gas will move. This relationship holds regardless of whether a galaxy looks like an ellipse, a cosmic pinwheel or some other odd shape, a new study finds.This rule even applies to "train-wrecks" left after galaxies collide and merge with one another, which is surprising, said study team member Susan Kassin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). "It indicates that there is a remarkable regularity to galaxies, irrespective of what they look like," Kassin said.The new finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, shows that the relation between a galaxy's mass and the orbital speed of its stars and gas is remarkably consistent over a wide range of galaxy shapes and over billions of years of galaxy evolution.

China is on schedule to have a man walk in space for the first time next year after engineers finished the design of a home-grown suit for the mission, Chinese state press reported Monday.The launch of Shenzhou VII, China's third manned space flight, will take place in 2008 with two of the three astronauts likely to take the nation's first-ever spacewalk, rocket engineer Huang Chunping was quoted as saying.China had previously announced that the flight of Shenzhou VII had been pushed back from 2007 to 2008 so engineers could perfect a homemade space suit to be used in the walk.

The world's oldest known copy of the Gospel of Saint Luke, containing the earliest known Lord's Prayer, and one of the oldest copies of the Gospel of Saint John have been acquired by the Vatican, according to reports from Rome. A nonsectarian New York nonprofit, Pave the Way, helped facilitate the acquisition.Now stored in the Vatican's Library, the documents are for the first time available for scholarly review. In the future, excerpts may be put on display for the general public. Collectively known as the Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV, the documents date to 175-225 A.D. and consist of 51 leaves from a manuscript that originally consisted of 72 leaves folded in the middle to form a single quire, according to Father Richard Donahoe, rector of the Cathedral of St. Paul in Birmingham, Alabama, who also helped with the acquisition.

Dr Mike Gagan will be getting into more than one of the world's most exciting archaeological digs when he abseils down to an ancient graveyard on the Indonesian island of Flores in June.The Australian National University palaeoclimatologist will also be entering a drama that has a reputation for fierce personal and ideological rivalries, international intrigue, stolen goods of priceless value, broken and mended agreements, intense media interest, and a central theme which raises questions about the very nature of what it means to be human.The recently discovered chamber is 23m below the floor of the Liang Bua Cave, where a team led by Australians Mike Morwood and Peter Brown found remains of the now famous Hobbit Homo floresiensis in 2003.Gagan's preliminary investigation when the chamber was found last year revealed bones of many extinct prey species in the top layer of an estimated 5m-deep mud floor. Cut marks showed that the animals had been butchered, indicating that the find was probably the Hobbits' rubbish tip. It could contain remains 80,000 years old.

In his quiet office at the British Museum, among the portraits of long-dead explorers and copies of 3,000-year-old inscriptions, one of the greatest experts on the archaeology of the Middle East has a series of maps of Iranian nuclear installations spread out across his desk.John Curtis's maps fill him with foreboding: because they show how many of Iran's nuclear plants are perilously close to ancient cultural sites.Natanz, home to a uranium enrichment plant, is renowned for its exquisite ceramics; Isfahan, home to a uranium conversion plant, is also a Unesco world heritage site and was regarded in the 16th century as the most beautiful city on earth.

MANTEO - Amateur historian Scott Dawson thinks he has found what archaeologists and historians have sought for decades -- the site of an English fort on Roanoke Island linked to the legendary Lost Colony.Dawson, a Civil War buff, said that documents written centuries apart led him to an overgrown tract where he believes explorer Ralph Lane established a settlement in 1585.The site, on the northern end of the island about 200 miles east of Raleigh, is on National Park Service property but not within the Fort Raleigh Historic Site or the area targeted by dozens of searches.He said he could not conclusively say that the findings, which he made public last month, confirm the site as Fort Raleigh, but he said clues from historical documents are credible.

Many of the great civilisations in our world's history had marine origins, whether they evolved in Europe, the Americas or Asia. The kingdom of Brunei Darussalam is no exception, as historical evidence lends veracity to this claim. Relics of Bruneian culture have been found around river estuaries and ancient settlements, as proven from recent archaeological finds in Kota Batu, Tanjung Batu, Limau Manis and several other areas.The powerful and opulent kingdom of Brunei Darussalam was first mentioned in various accounts of contemporaneous Asian civilisations in the 14th century. As local legend has it, Brunei was founded by Awang Alak Betatar (or Alka Betara as recorded in Hindu accounts). His move from Garang to the Brunei river estuary led to the glorious discovery of Brunei. His first exclamation upon landing on the shore, as the legend goes, was "Baru nah!" (which in English, translates into "This is it!") and thus, the name "Brunei" was derived from his words.

AN archaeological expert has claimed that two innocuous-looking stones at the side of a road in Berwick St James could hold clues to the secrets of Stonehenge.Dennis Price, who is a renowned expert on the site and used to work with Wessex Archaeology, believes the two large stones standing at the side of a lane next to the B3083 could be parts of Stonehenge's mysterious altar stone.The altar stone, which is believed to be the centrepiece of rituals carried out at Stonehenge, was first discovered in 1620 by the prominent architect, Inigo Jones, when he undertook the first ever investigation into the site.But before experts could properly document everything at the site, the altar stone was removed and the secrets of Stonehenge were thought to be lost forever.However, Mr Price believes the altar stone might well have been taken to Berwick St James, where it was first used as a bridge over a stream and now stands in two pieces by the side of a road. He said: "We have a woodcut of an easily carved stone with a distinctive shape being cut in two at Stonehenge, and we have accounts of a curious altar stone, as described by Inigo Jones, being transported to somewhere called St James.

Ick factor aside, ancient tartar-encrusted teeth may be a biological gold mine for scientists, thanks to a new technique for extracting food particles from teeth that once belonged to prehistoric humans. The method already has solved a mystery surrounding what early coastal Brazilians ate.In the future, similar studies may reveal clues about other ancient diets, particularly in areas with little plant preservation from earlier times. "There is great potential of dental calculus (old tooth tartar) analysis in past populations that inhabited tropical regions," said Sabine Eggers, co-author on a new study detailing the method.

Ever since its discovery in 1954, the magnificent 4,600-year-old wooden funerary barge of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, has been kept in poorly managed conditions. Its progressive deterioration has been calamitous. At long last, however, the responsibility of preparing a condition and conservation report on the vessel has been handed to Hani Hanna, chair of the International Conference on Heritage of the Naqada and Qus region, Egypt 2007.Hanna summarised his comprehensive study by pointing out that the boat museum's environment and tourist visitation procedures needed to be urgently addressed, since the vessel had already been adversely affected by direct and indirect damage from humidity, temperature fluctuation, light and pollution.

When humans first trekked from Asia to North America, perhaps as long as 25,000 years ago, the continent was gripped by ice sheets and glaciers. Those hardy immigrants probably traveled by boat or along the shore, where finding food and shelter would have been easier. The trouble for archaeologists is that as the ice melted, the seas rose and covered any traces of this early migration. Now marine geologists and archaeologists are hunting for underwater clues in the Gulf of Mexico.This morning, a research expedition steamed out of the Port of Galveston, Texas, for the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, about 180 kilometers off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. Led by Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut, and Kevin McBride of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut, the expedition consists of a 44-meter-long Navy research submarine, two ships, and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).The submarine and ROV will survey the bottom of the reef, 120 meters deep, which is thought to have been the location of the shoreline some 20,000 years ago.

A line of 13 towers in the Andes mountains of Peru has been revealed as a 2,300-year-old solar observatory. Archaeologists from the University of Leicester and Yale University have discovered that the 13 Towers of Chankillo span almost precisely the annual rising and setting arcs of the Sun, when viewed from two specially built observation points. The purpose of the 300m (1,000ft) line of towers aligned along a hilltop had previously been mysterious. The evidence, published in the journal Science, reveals that the line was used for watching the Sun, probably for ceremonial purposes.

An antique olive oil factory was discovered in the Milas village of Çakýralan in southwestern Turkey.Staff from Selçuk University initiated archeological digs after a search for coal uncovered tombs with adjacent chambers a short while ago, the Anatolia news agency reported. One of the archeologists working at the site, Tuncay Özdemir, said the first results of the digging had revealed an ancient olive oil factory.

It is well known that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids; they regarded these structures as a national project for ancient Egypt," said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.Hawass filed an official complaint to the Egyptian attorney general of Egypt against a Cairo high school for teaching the students that it was the Israelites who built the pyramids.Hawass, prominent figure in Egyptian culture and around the Arab world, criticized the school curriculum for "insisting that the Jews built the pyramids and highlighting the fact that those who refused to partake in the building were physically tortured."

To confront the country's growing depression epidemic, a modern phenomenon, psychologist Steve Ilardi peered backward into human history.His research steered him there, to an examination of the hunter-gatherer way of life, to a time when humans lived in roving, close-knit bands. Back to the Stone Age.What he learned led Ilardi and his research team at the University of Kansas to propose a program to reclaim six disappearing lifestyle elements. They call it Therapeutic Lifestyle Change, intended to help modern humans deal with depressive illness.The team identified factors that are antidepressant but are compromised by contemporary culture: Exercise, omega-3 consumption, light exposure, sleep, social connectedness and anti-ruminative behavior.

Archaeologists in Vanuatu have unearthed an ancient cemetery containing the headless skeletons of what are believed to be the earliest known ancestors of Pacific Islanders.The 3000-year-old remains are those of the Lapita people, who colonised Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, says Professor Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University, who led the dig.He expects tests to confirm that the skeletons belong to the ancestors of Polynesian groups like Maori, Tongans and Samoans.

A fringe group of extremist rabbis wants to resume the biblical practice of animal sacrifice at Jerusalem's Temple Mount, members said Wednesday, defying centuries of religious bans and triggering a stiff protest from a Muslim leader. The group, called the "Re-established Sanhedrin" after the Temple-era religious high court, has decided to buy some sheep and try to find one that is ritually perfect for sacrifice, with an eye toward resuming the practice."Regrettably, there are many extremist Israeli groups who want to carry out their plans," said Jerusalem's senior Islamic cleric, Mohammed Hussein. "Let them say what they want, Al Aksa is a Muslim mosque."

By fortuitous timing, a robotic science probe flew by Jupiter on Wednesday as a massive volcano on one of its moons erupted, sending a thick plume of dust into space that served as a celestial welcome mat.The plume from the volcano known as Tvashtar stretched about 150 miles above the surface of Io, a tortured moon baked and scrambled by the heavy grip of Jupiter's gravity.The images from this encounter are among 700 scientists plan to take during a six-month study of the Jovian system by New Horizons, a NASA spacecraft that is heading toward Pluto. The probe passed as close as 1.4 million miles from Jupiter early Wednesday to pick up speed for the rest of its 3-billion mile journey to Pluto.

A giant blob of water the size of the Arctic Ocean has been discovered hundreds of miles beneath eastern Asia, scientists report.Researchers found the underground "ocean" while scanning seismic waves as they passed through Earth's interior.But nobody will be exploring this sea by submarine. The water is locked in moisture-containing rocks 400 to 800 miles (700 to 1,400 kilometers) beneath the surface."I've gotten all sorts of emails asking if this is the water that burst out in Noah's flood," said the leader of the research team, Michael Wysession of Washington University in St. Louis.

THEY are among the world's most iconic structures, visited by thousands of tourists every year. But Egypt's ancient pyramids are now at the centre of an extraordinary row over a global contest to rename the seven wonders of the world.Egypt has branded the contest a "disgrace", claiming that the Pyramids of Giza - the only surviving marvel from the original list - should not have to compete. Top Egyptian officials have publicly attacked the competition, which invites people from across the world to vote for their favourite architectural wonder from 21 finalists. The modern list lumps the ancient pyramids alongside attractions such as Australia's Sydney Opera House, New York's Statue of Liberty, Britain's Stonehenge and Peru's Machu Picchu.

PALERMO (ANSA) - The face of a late Stone Age woman who lived in Sicily has been reconstructed by a sculptor working with anthropologists at Palermo University.The skeleton of the woman, who lived 14,000 years ago, was discovered in a cave near Messina in 1937, along with the incomplete skeletons of six other humans, presumably her family.The face was reproduced using reconstruction techniques that calculate the appearance of features from the form of the cranium. The same techniques have been used recently to recreate the faces of Egyptian pharaohs and Italy's own Count Ugolino, a 13th-century Tuscan noble whose bones were found in 2001.