Newsdesk Archive

WASHINGTON (Feb. 25) - Spindly orange sea stars, fan-finned ice fish and herds of roving sea cucumbers are among the exotic creatures spied off the Antarctic coast in an area formerly covered by ice, scientists reported on Sunday.This is the first time explorers have been able to catalog wildlife where two mammoth ice shelves used to extend for some 3,900 square miles over the Weddell Sea.At least 5,000 years old, the ice shelves collapsed in two stages over the last dozen years. One crumbled 12 years ago and the other followed in 2002.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Filmmakers and researchers on Monday unveiled two ancient stone boxes they said may have once contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but several scholars derided the claims made in a new documentary as unfounded and contradictory to basic Christian beliefs."The Lost Tomb of Jesus," produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron and scheduled to air March 4 on the Discovery Channel, argues that 10 small caskets discovered in 1980 in a Jerusalem suburb may have held the bones of Jesus and his family.One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son, according to the film."There's a definite sense that you have to pinch yourself," Cameron said Monday at a news conference. He told NBC'S "Today" show earlier that statisticians found "in the range of a couple of million to one" in favor of the documentary's conclusions about the caskets, or ossuaries.

It has survived the collapse of the sophisticated civilisation that built it, centuries of consumption by the suffocating jungle and the nihilism of the Khmer Rouge, who beheaded its stone Buddhas and used its walls for target practice. Now, Cambodia's awe-inspiring Angkor Wat complex is facing the biggest threat in a millennium - the fastest-growing tourist onslaught of any World Heritage site, which conservationists warn is already damaging its treasures irreparably.In 1993, after Angkor was added to Unesco's World Heritage List, just 7,650 intrepid visitors ventured to the site. Last year Sokimex, the oil company controversially granted the entrance concession on behalf of the government's Apsara Angkor management, sold almost 900,000 tickets worth $25m (£12.8m), with British travellers making up the fourth biggest contingent behind South Koreans, Japanese and North Americans. Three million visitors are expected in 2010.Teruo Jinnai, Unesco's top official at Angkor, said: 'We are very concerned by this unprecedented, uncontrolled acceleration, which is damaging the monuments and the local environment. Preservation of the park for future generations has to be the number one priority, over and above commercial exploitation, which is mainly benefiting foreign interests instead of the local population.' Kerya Chau Sun, director of tourism at Angkor, said: 'We are finalising regulations for controlling visitors. We will train guards to watch the temples and educate visitors to help us protect the monuments.'

The largest polar research programme for 50 years gets under way this week. International Polar Year (IPY) will see thousands of scientists, from more than 60 nations, working together on 220 projects at high latitudes. Scientists hope to improve their understanding of how changes to the polar regions affect the planet.

It is not the sort of discussion you imagine among the grey-suited ranks of Whitehall - defence analysts debating the existence of little green men and speculating about whether they have visited Earth.But a set of newly released internal Ministry of Defence documents gives a fascinating insight into the military's interest in UFOs. They tell the story of the MoD's decision to investigate the threat they might pose and whether alien military technology could be used in the defence of the realm. They also reveal the conflicting attitudes within Whitehall to the subject and the lengths that officials went to in order to keep the project secret.The documents, many marked "Secret UK Eyes A", lay out the rationale for the three-year Project Condign report which analysed more than 10,000 possible UFO sightings collected over several decades - many from military personnel. The existence of the 460-page report was revealed last year following freedom of information requests by David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, and his colleague Gary Anthony. It was more FOI sleuthing on their part that turned up the current slew of papers.

A European space probe has completed a close fly-by of the planet Mars in a crucial manoeuvre on its 10-year journey to land on a distant comet. The unmanned Rosetta craft passed within some 250 km (150 miles) of Mars. In a precise move, the probe used the planet's gravity to change course on its voyage to the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet out near Jupiter. Rosetta is due to reach the comet's orbit in 2014 and send a lander to its surface to study its chemistry. There is no technology to send the probe directly to the comet at the right speed. So the craft must harness the gravitational forces of Mars and the Earth to propel it to the right place at the right velocity.

If Earth had a mountain so incredibly high that its peak poked through the outermost layer of our atmosphere, mountain climbers smart enough and hardy enough to reach the top would have some idea what it will be like to be camped on the moon. For those mountain climbers, it would be quiet and there would be no wind or weather to overcome. But without long and careful preparation, those mountain climbers would have no air to breathe, no food or water and no protection from the sun's radiation. All around them would be rocks and, if they were lucky, perhaps a bit of frozen ice in the crevices that never saw the sun. Now imagine that instead of reaching the peak and glorying in the accomplishment and beauty of the view for a day or two then returning to the meadows at the base of the mountain, the mission was to climb those unforgiving miles to the top and create a base camp suitable for living months at a time. That is the enormous challenge that NASA and its future exploration partners face now that the agency has announced its intention to build an outpost on the surface of the moon -- a base camp that would become busy when visitors are there, but that could be abandoned for long periods without long-term harm.

Ten years ago, the birth of Dolly the sheep sparked a media frenzy and a prolonged ethical debate. Today, the arguments have switched focus to stem cells, and the research itself is beginning to change tack.

The lineages of humans and chimpanzees, our closest relatives, diverged from one another about 4.1 million years ago, according to a new estimate that is said to be far more precise than previous ranges for this critical evolutionary moment.However, the claim is a bad match with previous estimates based on fossil evidence and other genetic work.Asger Hobolth of North Carolina State University and his colleagues arrived at the new estimate of " the time we became human," or the time in the past when descendents of the human-chimp ancestor split into human and chimp, by statistically comparing DNA from four regions of the human, chimp and gorilla genomes.

(AP) What would happen if an astronaut came unglued in space and, say, destroyed the ship's oxygen system or tried to open the hatch and kill everyone aboard?That was the question on some minds after the apparent breakdown of Lisa Nowak, arrested in Orlando, Fla., this month on charges she tried to kidnap and kill a woman she regarded as her rival for another astronaut's affections.It turns out NASA has a detailed set of written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary.

Bulgarian archaeologists announce on Thursday they have made an incredible discovery in the Perperikon area, an ancient living region of Thracians.The archaeologists said last summer they discovered the missing link in Thracian's history. They have found evidence for the transition from the late Bronze epoch to the early Iron epoch.At the end of the Bronze epoch, as a result of cataclysms a global system is destroyed. Scientists call the system "East Mediterranean Civilization". After its end, there came the so called "dark ages" - a period, who until recent was a mystery for archaeologists.According to Associate Professor of ancient history Krassimir Leshtakov, during the "dark ages" Thracian tribes have lived peacefully, thus creating a highly developed civilization. Finally, the world can see the "fruits" of this civilization at Perperikon.

Something strange is happening in the outer reaches of our solar system. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are not where they are supposed to be. These missions, launched in 1972 and 1973, have covered hundreds of millions of kilometers, heading toward the edge of our solar system. But something is holding them back. Each year, they fall behind in their projected travel by about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles).Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist John Anderson and his colleagues have been searching for an explanation since 1980. But as of yet, they have found nothing conclusive; no spacecraft behavior or previously unknown property of the outer solar system can explain the deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft. Scientists are being forced to consider the unthinkable: something may be wrong with our understanding of the laws of physics.

MISSING stone which could be an integral part of rituals at Stonehenge may have been discovered by a Welsh archaeologist.Dennis Price, pictured below, who has done years of research on the mysterious stone structure, believes he has tracked down a previously lost altar stone, identified during one of the first studies of the site in the 17th century.He is convinced it is now in two pieces on either side of a road in a Wiltshire village, just a couple of miles from Stonehenge itself.Mr Price, who is from Monmouthshire, and now based in Exeter, has studied the archaeology of Stonehenge for years, and in 2003 filmed the excavation of the graves of the Welsh Boscombe Bowmen who helped build Stonehenge.

A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study. The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.The research is reported by experts from the Gibraltar Museum and Spain.

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.

Fish use a row of specialized sensory organs along the sides of their bodies, called lateral lines, to hunt for prey, alert them of predators, and aid in synchronized school swimming.Now scientists have developed a lateral line for submaries."Our development of an artificial lateral line is aimed at enhancing human ability to detect, navigate and survive in the underwater environment," said Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal is to develop an artificial device that mimics the functions and capabilities of the biological system."Equipped with an artificial lateral line, a submarine or underwater robot could similarly detect and track moving underwater targets and avoid collisions with moving or stationary objects, Liu and colleauges say.

For the first time, telescopes have captured the light spectra emitted directly from planets outside of our solar system. Researchers trained the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope on two extrasolar gas giant planets, called HD 209458 b and HD 189733 b. The atmospheres are most notable for what they lack: "We find no evidence for water in the spectrum, and all the theorists will tell you that there should be water (in the form of vapor) in the atmosphere[s] of these planets," says astrophysicist Jeremy Richardson of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, a member of a team that analyzed HD 209458 b. A second group measured the spectrum of HD 189733 b, which is about 60 light-years away, and a third one reanalyzed the data from the former, which resides in the constellation Pegasus, more than 150 light-years distant.

Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Jeff Lee rents out his honeybees each spring to pollinate crops of blueberries, cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes. Many are on the job in California right now pollinating almond trees.But a few months ago, Lee noticed a troubling trend. Whole hives were disappearing -- apparent victims of a mysterious disorder killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country.When he would open a bee box, it would be empty. Lee estimates he has lost about 300 of his 1,000 colonies of bees in the past six months."They are physically gone," said Lee, owner of Lee's Bees, as he poured sugar syrup into the hives to feed the bees. "That is what makes it different from other diseases."

The old story of the peopling of the Americas holds that a migration out of northeast Asia slipped into the continent bearing finely shaped stone projectiles, so-called "Clovis points," after the town in New Mexico where they were first uncovered. This Clovis culture rapidly spread throughout the empty continents and by 1,000 years after their arrival had reached the southernmost tip of South America, making them the original ancestors of indigenous Americans. A number of controversial archaeological sites have challenged this theory and now, by using more advanced dating techniques, researchers may have killed it, throwing the original population of the Western Hemisphere into question again. Geoarchaeologist Michael Waters of Texas A&M University and radiocarbon specialist Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research Laboratories re-examined 22 Clovis sites that had previously been dated. Half proved suspect because they lacked direct evidence or had other conflicting data. "Over the years, scientists, if they have a site that dates 11,000 years ago, even if they just found a few flakes and a scarper, they automatically called it Clovis," Waters explains.

MADRID - A Spanish scientific team found one of the world's oldest cities, thought to be about 5,500 years old, in Syria. The discovery, based on pottery fragments and other ceramics found at the site, was announced in Madrid by two of the scientists in charge of the investigation, Ignacio Marquez of Spain's CSIC scientific research council and Juan Luis Moreno of the Universidad de La Coruña.According to reports, the find is of "the highest level" of scientific importance because of its ramifications for the understanding of history and for the multiple lines of future research it opens up in many fields.The Hispanic-Syrian archeological work is being carried out at Tal Humeada, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the border with Iraq on the left bank of the Euphrates River.

CHENNAI: Ancient structural remains of some significance have been discovered at Dwaraka, under water and on land, by the Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Alok Tripathi, Superintending Archaeologist, UAW, said the ancient underwater structures found in the Arabian Sea were yet to be identified. "We have to find out what they are. They are fragments. I would not like to call them a wall or a temple. They are part of some structure," said Dr. Tripathi, himself a trained diver.Thirty copper coins were also found in the excavation area. The structures found on land belonged to the medieval period. "We have also found 30 copper coins. We are cleaning them. After we finish cleaning them, we can give their date," he said. Dwaraka is a coastal town in Jamnagar district of Gujarat. Traditionally, modern Dwaraka is identified with Dvaraka or Dvaravati, mentioned in the Mahabharata as Krishna's city. Dwaraka was a port, and some scholars have identified it with the island of Barka mentioned in the Periplus of Erythrean Sea. Ancient Dwaraka sank in sea and hence is an important archaeological site.

A £150 MILLION space mission should be launched to deflect an asteroid which is set to pass dangerously close to Earth, experts warned yesterday. The call for action to protect the world from Apophis - named after the Egyptian god of destruction - came from a coalition of astronauts, engineers and scientists with close links to US space agency NASA. Scientists have estimated the asteroid has a one-in-45,000 chance of striking Earth on 13 April, 2036. Travelling at 28,000mph it could release 80,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. The group believes the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission - using a vessel called a "gravity tractor" - to knock Apophis off course.

CAIRO (Reuters) - A rare double wooden statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe and his wife has been found in their tomb south of Cairo, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Monday.The double statue, dating from around 2300 BC, was among a total of five wooden statues found at the tomb in Sakkara, the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, said Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.The official was Ka-Hay, who kept divine records, and his wife, Spri-Ankh. They lived late in the 5th dynasty or early in the 6th and were buried in the part of the necropolis associated with the pharaoh Teti, he said in a statement."It is a unique statue... In general double seated statues are made of limestone and are rarely carved in wood," he said.

Brazilian scientists may have solved a shocking scientific mystery by creating ball lightning in the lab. Physicist Antonio Pavão and doctoral student Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco have created orbs of electricity about the size of golf balls that mimic natural ball lightning. The fluffy-looking spheres spin, throw off sparks, and vibrate. They also move erratically about the lab, rolling around on the floor, bouncing off objects, and burning whatever they touch (see enlarged photo for stills from laboratory video). People have reported seeing ball lightning in nature for hundreds of years, but there is no scientific consensus as to what causes the phenomenon. ........John Abrahamson and James Dinniss, of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, first proposed the ball-lightning theory that lies behind Pavão's research.

It was on the banks of the Savannah River in Allendale County where Al Goodyear in 2004 found the clues of an ancient civilization that could rewrite the history books.The University of South Carolina archaeologist and a group of volunteers unearthed artifacts estimated to be 50,000 years old, implying humans lived on this continent before the last Ice Age, far earlier than previously believed.They uncovered what appeared to be cutting tools and stone chisels used by humans that existed an estimated 37,000 years before the earliest-known inhabitants, known as the Clovis culture. It was a discovery that rocked the archaeological community and generated international media attention.To date, it's the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in North America, Goodyear said.

SAN FRANCISCO - People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens.In 1988 only about 10 percent knew enough about science to understand reports in major newspapers, a figure that grew to 28 percent by 2005, according to Jon D. Miller, a Michigan State University professor. He presented his findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.The improvement largely reflects the requirement that all college students have at least some science courses, Miller said. This way, they can better keep up with new developments through the media.A panel of researchers expressed concern that people are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes.

A new archaeological site dating back to the Harappan period had been discovered near Rohtak in Haryana. Haryana archives, Archaeology and Museums Minister Meena Mandal, who today visited the site, said it was discovered on a link road from Julana to Kirsola village, about 35 km from Rohtak, adding it could provide information about the "disappearance of Harappan culture and its merger with post Grey ware cultures." The site was discovered by a team of the state archaeological department led by Deputy Director J S Khatri in December last year.

A new archaeological site dating back to the Harappan period had been discovered near Rohtak in Haryana. Haryana archives, Archaeology and Museums Minister Meena Mandal, who today visited the site, said it was discovered on a link road from Julana to Kirsola village, about 35 km from Rohtak, adding it could provide information about the "disappearance of Harappan culture and its merger with post Grey ware cultures." The site was discovered by a team of the state archaeological department led by Deputy Director J S Khatri in December last year.

A new study suggests that barley may have undergone domestication twice, a finding with important implications for understanding the spread of farming.Archaeologists have long debated whether the so-called founder crops of the agricultural revolution--including wheat and barley--were domesticated once or multiple times. The record is ambiguous. Over the past decades, they have unearthed the earliest remains of domesticated barley at sites in the Fertile Crescent that date back 10,500 years. But there is also evidence for barley cultivation about 9000 years ago at sites further east in Central Asia. Today, the wild progenitors of domesticated wheat and other founder crops grow only in the Fertile Crescent, but wild barley is found in the western and eastern regions. As a result, archaeologists haven't been sure whether the cultivated barley in the east came from the Fertile Crescent or was domesticated directly from local wild plants.

Modern human mothers are probably happy that they typically have one, maybe two babies at a time, but for early hominids, low birth numbers combined with competition often spelled extinction. "The lineages of primates have some traits that make it hard for them to respond to rapid perturbations in the environment," says Dr. Nina G. Jablonski, professor of anthropology and department head at Penn State. "Through time we see a lot of lineages become extinct when environments where the species are found become highly seasonal or unpredictable."Primates evolved in the Paleocene and Eocene when worldwide climate was less seasonal. The beneficial environment allowed primates to evolve as relatively brainy animals that reproduce slowly. However, when climate changed so that tropical forests shrunk and the environment became patchy, many species including primate species became extinct. "While past primate populations moved with the forest, early hominid cultures 2.5 million years ago show signs of the ability to live in marginal areas and live on more dynamic, seasonal landscapes," Jablonski told attendees today (Feb. 16) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

To the west of the Serapium, during routine excavations, the Japanese mission from Wasida University discovered five Middle Kingdom shaft-tombs. Removing the sand from one of them they uncovered four splendid painted wooden sarcophagi, the first a "black type" anthropoid sarcophagus with yellow lines and scenes featuring the four sons of Horus decorating two sides.Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said early studies suggest the sarcophagus belonged to Wiai, a New kingdom craftsmen's chief of the house of Amun. "It probably dates from the 18th or early 19th Dynasty."The three others are Middle Kingdom rectangular painted sarcophagi with eye-panels and false doors, belonging to a Ka-Priest called Sebek-Hat and two mistresses of the house, Keki and Senet-It-Es.

Four intact -- and splendid -- sarcophagi were unearthed in the Saqqara necropolis by a Japanese excavation mission this week. Deeper in the desert, around ancient Memphis, the bases of three limestone papyrus columns and one fluted half-column -- belonging to an Amarna tomb -- already jut from the sand. The discoveries, made by an archaelogical team from Leiden University and Museum, are expected to reveal much detail about Ancient Egypt's 12th and 13th dynasties of the Middle Kingdom

Lasers beamed from space have detected what researchers have long suspected: big sloshing lakes of water underneath Antarctic ice.These lakes, some stretching across hundreds of square miles, fill and drain so dramatically that the movement can be seen by a satellite looking at the icy surface of the southern continent, glaciologists reported in Thursday's editions of the journal Science.Global warming did not create these big pockets of water -- they lie beneath some 2,300 feet of compressed snow and ice, too deep to be affected by temperature changes on the surface -- but knowing how they behave is important to understanding the impact of climate change on the Antarctic ice sheet, study author Helen Fricker said by telephone.

Some experts are proposing radical ideas to save us from disastrous climate change. But would they work? Professors John Latham and Stephen Salter have designed a fleet of yachts that would pump fine particles of sea-water into clouds, thickening them to reflect more of the Sun's rays. Here, Professor Latham talks about the proposal. It was in 1946 that scientists first began trying to manipulate clouds. They found that by firing tiny particles of silver iodide into rain-bearing clouds, they could induce rainfall.Our idea of a fleet of "cloudseeders", however, was largely born from a remark made by my son Mike, decades ago.

Antony and Cleopatra -- one of history's most romantic couples -- were not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, according to British academics.A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by a sultry Elizabeth Taylor, had a shallow forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose.On the other side, her Roman lover, played in the 1963 movie by Richard Burton, Taylor's husband at the time, had bulging eyes, a hook nose and a thick neck.History has depicted Cleopatra as a great beauty, befitting a woman who as Queen of Egypt seduced Julius Caesar, and then his rival Mark Antony.But the coin, which goes on show on Wednesday at Newcastle University for Valentine's Day, after years lying in a bank, is much less flattering about both famous faces.

Here's a hot, new discovery: archeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago. And it was people in tropical, lowland areas of what is now western Ecuador who first spiced up their cuisine, not those from higher, drier Mexico and Peru as was previously assumed, said Scott Raymond, a University of Calgary archeologist.His team, led by Linda Perry, researcher with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, made the finding by analyzing starch microfossils from grinding stones and charred ceramic cookware recovered from seven sites in the Americas. Their report is published in the journal Science.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Dutch archaeologists have discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Akhenaten's seal bearer, decorated with paintings including scenes of monkeys picking and eating fruit, Egyptian antiquities officials said on Wednesday.The tomb belonged to the official named Ptahemwi and was discovered during a Dutch team's excavation in the Sakkara area, the burial ground for the city of Memphis, the state news agency MENA said, quoting chief antiquities official Zahi Hawass.Akhenaten, the 18th-dynasty pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1379 to 1362 BC, abandoned most of the old gods and tried to imposed a monotheistic religion based on worship of the Aten, the disc of the sun.

New Delhi: The government has created an online database of 1.8 million ancient texts to promote them as treasures of the country and to preserve millions of neglected manuscripts. Out of the five million manuscripts, 1.8 million have been documented.As the manuscripts were lying neglected, the ministry had set up a National Mission for Manuscripts with the aim to locate them through a nation-wide surveys and then to document and catalogue them.On the occasion of its fourth anniversary, the mission has planned a host of events, including the launch of the database for which a software was developed. The National Electronic Catalogue of Manuscripts, Kritisampada provides information of individual manuscripts, manuscript collections and printed catalogues.

A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time.Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in Asia and 18 Native American populations. The study examined samples from roughly 1500 people in total, including 445 Native Americans.

An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars. Scientists long have debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life forms existing there.Images from a camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show alternating layers of dark- and light-toned rock in a giant rift valley.Within those deposits are a series of linear fractures, called joints, that are surrounded by "halos" of light-toned bedrock, according to researchers from the University of Arizona.

A large study has found that children of women who ate little fish during pregnancy had lower IQs and more behavioral and social problems than youngsters whose mothers ate plenty of seafood, a finding that challenges the U.S. government's standard advice to limit seafood while pregnant.The study finds "no evidence to lend support to the warning of the U.S. advisory that pregnant women should limit their seafood consumption," concluded the team led by Joseph R. Hibbeln, a researcher at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, writing in the Lancet.

Scientists using data from a European space probe orbiting Mars have produced new topographic maps of the Red Planet. The "hiker's maps" provide detailed height contours and names of geological features on the Martian surface.The European Space Agency (Esa), which compiled the maps, said it hoped the maps would become a standard reference for future research on the Red Planet. The data, from the Mars Express spacecraft, has also been turned into 3-D models of the surface of Mars. The topographic maps use contour lines to show the heights of the landscape.

In a new paper that challenges the Darwinian model of evolution, University of Pittsburgh professor, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, contends that evolutionary changes occur suddenly as opposed to the Darwinian model of evolution, which is characterized by gradual and constant change. Schwartz's paper, "Do Molecular Clocks Run at All? A Critique of Molecular Systematics," appears in the latest issue of the journal Biological Theory.What Schwartz dubs "Molecular Assumption" (MA) entered evolutionary lore when, in 1962, biochemists Emil Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling demonstrated species similarity through utilizing immunological activity between the blood's serum and a constructed antiserum. Upon observing the intensity of the serum and antiserum reactivity between human, gorilla, horse, chicken, and fish blood, they deduced "special relatedness" - that is, the more intense the reaction, the more closely related the species were supposed to be.

For centuries we have known only two medieval depictions of Stonehenge. Now a third has been found, taking its place with Adam and Eve and other Christian stories in a history of the world. Christian Heck describes his discovery. Today our knowledge of Stonehenge is backed by a vast bibliography. This extraordinary monument figures prominently in the development of antiquarianism and archaeology, especially between the 16th and 18th centuries, as Stuart Piggott showed. It has been depicted by famous antiquarians and artists, from John Aubrey and William Stukeley, through Constable and Turner to Henry Moore and many others. The earliest drawings, however, predate this movement with origins in the Renaissance, and instead accompany a legendary history of the site.Medieval representations of Stonehenge are extremely rare. For generations we have known of only two, dateable to the earlier 14th century. Further views do not appear until the second half of the 16th century, after a complete break in both the spirit and form of imagery. I can now describe, for the first time to the English-speaking world, a newlydiscovered medieval drawing of Stonehenge created in the 1440s. This drawing has a literary association that is identical to one of the 14th century illustrations, and extends the medieval iconography of the site while remaining firmly attached to mythical history. It is also the first known design to represent Stonehenge not just as a symbolic image, but with precise observations on its form and construction techniques. It bridges perfectly the worlds of medieval myth and Renaissance observation. The discovery provides an opportunity to reconsider the two previously known drawings. First, however, we will look at the new manuscript. Read more...

Family breakdown, drink, drugs, teenage sex and fear of violence have left British children the worst off in the world's 21 richest nations. The damning verdict was delivered in a United Nations report. Even though Britain is the fourth wealthiest nation in the world, the child welfare agency Unicef found children were far better off and better cared-for in less prosperous countries. The 20 above us included Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece and Poland. The Netherlands was ranked the best country for children to live in, with Ireland ninth.The report put Britain above only three countries for educational standards and second last for numbers of single parents and stepfamilies. It was the country where fewest children found others of the same age 'kind and helpful'.

It had been years since Jeremy (not his real name) had touched a basketball.Living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Jeremy feared contamination from dirt and germs which prevented any part of his body from touching the ground, save for the soles of his shoes.But whilst taking part in a small clinical study to investigate the effects of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in 'magic' mushrooms, on people with OCD, Jeremy's bare feet lay on the floor and he expressed a willingness to engage in an activity, playing with a ball, that just hours before he would have been considered abhorrent.

baby chimpanzee holds a pine cone Christmas treat at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia,... Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300 years ago. An international research team, led by archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary, Canada, said Monday it had uncovered the hammers, dated to that time, in the West African country Ivory Coast. It would be the earliest known use of tools by chimpanzees. The hammers were used to crack nuts, a behavior still seen in chimps in that area, the researchers said in a paper in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The finding may indicate that a "chimpanzee stone age" began in ancient times, the researchers say.

Researchers are to carry out the first detailed survey of the Great Wall of China to establish just how long the ancient barricade is, Xinhua reports.Along with checking its dimensions the four-year study, which starts in May, will map the wall's exact route.And it will check the condition of the fortification, built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire.The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, is estimated at over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) in length.

While scholars have put forth various assessments for the location of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor says that archaeological remains that have so far been ignored by scholars point to the exact location, which is in a spot that differs from prevailing opinion. The location identified by Prof. Joseph Patrich of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology places the Temple and its corresponding courtyards, chambers and gates in a more southeasterly and diagonal frame of reference than have earlier scholars. In spotting the Temple in this way, Patrich concludes that the rock, over which the Dome of the Rock mosque was built in the 7th century C.E. is outside the confines of the Temple. The rock is considered by Moslems to be the spot from which Muhammad ascended to heaven and for Jews the place at which the binding of Isaac took place.

New Forum article by Gregory Sams, titled "The Drugs Problem"

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the old saw. But when you are an archeologist and life gives you looters, often all you can do is make lamentations. Looting afflicts archaeological sites worldwide, from the wide-spread plundering of ancient Sumerian sites in Iraq, to pot-hunters in the American Southwest, to the looting of Inca and other sites in the Peruvian Andes.However, a few archaeologists have figured out a way to put the looters to work for them, as archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces demonstrated in a recent talk about her team's study of the ancient Maya ceremonial center at Yalbac in Belize. Visitors to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., may not realize that one of the nation's largest anthropology departments is housed at the museum, but dozens of researchers packed a large seminar room deep in its collections to hear Lucero's talk last week.

Most vertebrates have continuous tooth generation, meaning that lost teeth are replaced with new teeth. Mammals, however, including humans, have teeth that are generally only replaced once, when milk teeth are replaced with permanent teeth.Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki and their collaborators from Berlin and Kyoto have now shown that continuous tooth generation can be induced in mammals. The research results were published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS).

The far-reaching influence of Spanish and Portuguese colonisers appears not to have extended to South American agriculture, scientists studying a 1,400-year-old Andean mummy have found. The University of Manchester researchers compared the DNA of ancient maize found in the funerary offerings of the mummy and at other sites in northwest Argentina with that grown in the same region today."The entire culture of South America changed when the Europeans arrived in the 15th century - everything from the language to the whole way of life," explained Professor Terry Brown, who headed the research in the Faculty of Life Sciences. Surprisingly, they found both ancient and modern samples of the crop were genetically almost identical indicating that modern European influence has not been as great as previously thought. "The entire culture of South America changed when the Europeans arrived in the 15th century - everything from the language to the whole way of life," explained Professor Terry Brown, who headed the research in the Faculty of Life Sciences. "Maize is the staple food crop of the region but prior to colonisation it also had a ritual significance - the indigenous people were amazed by maize and even worshipped it.

BRADENTON - Deciding that it did not "fit our mission," the South Florida Museum is putting a prehistoric Indian mound up for sale for $200,000.Archaeologists have long held that the Pillsbury Temple Mound includes the cremation and burial site of more than 100 native Floridians whose culture vanished centuries ago."We call it an asset that the museum owns but that does not really fit our mission," said Jeff King, the president of the museum's board of directors. "I have no knowledge of it being a burial mound."State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler said the mound was listed in a state database for unmarked burial sites.But both state and county officials said the site can be legally developed."The statute does allow excavation with human remains," Wheeler said. "You have to pay someone for that work and find a home for the remains. . . . You also have to go through a process to consult with American Indian tribes about the remains."

An ancient Buddhist temple, estimated to be 1700 years old, has been discovered in Bihar Dhap area in Bogra district of northern Bangladesh.Another Buddhist shrine, about 1500 years old dating back to the pre-Pal period, was excavated earlier on the same premises by the archaeological department.

Mars' moon Phobos could be the target for a technology trial that would seek to return rock samples to Earth. A UK team is developing a concept mission that aims to land a spacecraft on the potato-shaped object and grab material off its surface. These small rock fragments would then be despatched to Earth in a capsule. "It is being seen as a technological demonstrator for an eventual Mars sample return," said Dr Andrew Ball from the Open University.

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the Aryan Holy Grail, a new book claims. Himmler visited the famous Montserrat Abbey near Barcelona where he thought he would find the Grail which Jesus Christ was said to have used to consecrate the Last Supper.According to The Desecrated Abbey, by Montserrat Rico Góngora, the Reichsführer-SS thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers.The book claims that, far from being the King of the Jews, Himmler shared the outlandish belief with other leading Nazis that Jesus Christ was actually descended from Aryan stock

The social revolution that encourages more women to go to work is putting intolerable strain on family life, the Government's sex equality advisers admitted.The warning, from the Equal Opportunities Commission, results from a poll that showed more than eight out of ten people think it is hard for parents to manage both work and raising children. It also said that seven out of ten think it is going to get harder.The findings follow years of pressure from ministers, urged on by the EOC, for mothers to leave young children in day care and return to work.More than half of women with children under five currently hold down jobs and in 2003 Patricia Hewitt, now Health Secretary, went so far as to publish a paper which described mothers of young children who decline to work as a 'problem'.

Charles Darwin could have saved himself from some of his first critics if he had remembered to include his preface in the first edition of his influential book on evolution and natural selection, "The Origin of Species."The original edition of the landmark book was published in 1859, without any introductory material. Still a public flash point today, "Origin" drew initial outcries, in part for the missing preface in which an author of the time typically would have credited and thanked his intellectual predecessors. One scientist accused Darwin of plagiarism for failing to acknowledge the giants whose work allowed him to see farther. A year later, a new edition of the classic was published with a preface describing and crediting the intellectual work upon which natural selection rests.A new study shows that Darwin was composing the introductory chapter to his book as early as 1856, even though that preface remained unpublished for six years until Origin's second edition. The findings suggest Darwin also wrote the chapter on his own accord and not in reaction to people who had read the book.

Designs for a doomsday vault for seeds of the world, to be carved deep into frozen rock on an island not far from the North Pole, were revealed today by the government of Norway.The Svalbard International Seed Vault, first annnounced last year, will act like a Noah's Ark for nearly every food crop of every country, to safeguard the agricultural heritage of humankind in the face of increasing global environmental changes.

Morocco's capital Rabat is rebuilding its seafront and in so doing uncovering a vast treasure trove of relics, artefacts and ruins."We have made some fantastic discoveries not only for the history of Rabat but of the kingdom," said archaeologist and historian Mohammed Essemmar.Essemmar, 43, heads the heritage department of the agency in charge of redeveloping the Bouregreg valley, a watercourse linking the twin cities of Rabat and Sale.Roman columns and capitals, 12th-century enclosing walls, Islamic ceramics and coins have emerged from the sands.

It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua. The site is just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig."As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti told The Associated Press by telephone from Milan. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."

Five to 10 percent of the world's total CO2 emissions come, not from automobiles or forest fires, but from manufacturing cement. The global warming gas is released when limestone and clays are crushed and heated to high temperatures.But a new understanding about the fundamental properties of nano-sized particles in concrete could put an end to burning."We are looking for materials that allow us to reduce the high temperatures required for the production of cement. Any modification we do at that stage can have an enormous impact," said Franz-Josef Ulm, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Vikings may have used special crystals called sunstones to ensure gloomy weather did not come between them and an outing to sack British villages or discover new lands to the west, scientists have discovered. Tests aboard a research vessel in the Arctic ocean found that certain crystals can be used to reveal the position of the sun, a trick that would have allowed early explorers to ascertain their position and navigate, even if the sky was obscured by cloud or fog.The finding adds weight to the controversial suggestion that the Vikings exploited an unusual optical property of crystals known as birefringence to stay on course during bad weather.

The Hedgepeth Mounds site, one of seven sites of ancient mounds in Lincoln Parish, has revealed a few secrets to Joe Saunders and his team since they refocused their attention there last December. The two main mounds, structures believed older than the pyramids of Egypt, have companions. Saunders said that shows a strong relationship to the site at Watson Brake and a larger system of organization in the culture that built them.Up to four more earthen mounds found in the area by Bayou D'Arbonne could also be man-made, American Indian mounds, Saunders said.Saunders, northeast regional archaeologist at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, is wrapping up work to determine whether the structures, revealed by recent three-dimensional images of the site, are in fact man-made.

For three years researchers have feuded over the rightful classification of the Hobbit, a diminutive, 18,000-year-old specimen unearthed from the Indonesian island of Flores. Is it an entirely new species, as its discoverers have maintained, or merely a small-brained human? Last week, officials reopened the site where the Hobbit was found as well as a newly discovered cavern underneath it, raising hope that diggers might soon bring convincing new evidence to bear.A second skull would be especially helpful. Critics of the new species theory have latched onto the Hobbit's measly 400-cubic-centimeter brain as a sure sign of an abnormality called microcephaly in which the brain does not reach normal size. Some prominent advocates of a human Hobbit say that a second skull could settle the debate. "It's the acid test," says primatologist Robert Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago, who contends that the existing Hobbit skull is a malformed human skull. If he is correct, a second skull would be closer to 1,000 cubic centimeters, he says.

Diabetes, heart disease and obesity are on the rise in Australia, thanks to our sedentary lifestyle and poor diet. Now researchers are set to test if an ancient mushroom once used by Chinese royalty can help western medicine tackle 21st century health problems.A team from the University of Western Sydney's Centre for Complementary Medicine Research (CompleMED) is working with the Cardiac Health Institute to find out if the medicinal mushroom, Ganoderma lucidum, can reduce high blood sugar, often a precursor to diabetes - as well as treat other health problems.The clinical trial is the first of its kind to rigorously test the mushroom - known in Asia as the 'King of herbs', because of its huge range of medicinal properties - and needs 170 Sydneysiders to take part.

Scientists have discovered that the surface of the moon can accumulate a huge charge of static electricity - up to 4,500 V has been detected so far. The scientists, writing in Geophysics Research Letters number 34, say that their findings could have significant implications for those planning to colonise the rocky globe.While astronauts would most likely be protected from any discharge by his or her suit, a spark from the surface could disrupt or even burn out electronic equipment.The charge could also be responsible for levitating the ultra-fine moon dust. The dust is so fine it gets into absolutely everything, getting past vacuum seals and clogging equipment.

DNA tests carried out on two British men have shed light on a mystery surrounding the ancestry of Thomas Jefferson, America's third president. In the 1990s, DNA was taken from male relatives of Jefferson to see if he fathered a son with one of his slaves. They found the president had a rare genetic signature found mainly in the Middle East and Africa, calling into question his claim of Welsh ancestry. But this DNA type has now been found in two Britons with the Jefferson surname. Professor Mark Jobling, from the University of Leicester, and colleagues discovered the two British Jeffersons possessed the same rare male (or Y) chromosome type as the third US president. Genetic analysis showed the British men shared a common ancestor with Thomas Jefferson about 11 generations ago. But neither knew of any family links to the US.

Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya's national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind's oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found.But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm -- one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism -- once largely confined to the United States -- has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind."I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."He's calling on his flock to boycott the exhibition and has demanded the museum relegate the fossil collection to a back room -- along with some kind of notice saying evolution is not a fact but merely one of a number of theories.

Britain is the most burgled country in Europe, a disturbing crime survey reveals.Levels of assault are also the highest across the EU, while car theft, robbery and sex offences are well above average.In the overall crime league, the UK comes second only to Ireland, with more than a fifth of the population in both countries exposed to crime in the past year.The findings are a blow to ministers who claim crime is falling, and to campaigners who claim the UK locks up too many offenders compared with other European countries.

The Archbishop of Canterbury launched a stinging attack yesterday on those who fail to appreciate the benefits of marriage, and described married couples as heroes who give stability to society.Dr Rowan Williams said the "commentating classes of north London" - whose own marriages often failed - were unable to see the wider cost to society of marriage breakdowns. Although he did not refer directly to Tony Blair or his Cabinet, his comments will be seen as a coded swipe at New Labour. Many influential figures in New Labour lived close to Mr Blair in Islington, north London, in the early 1990s before he became Prime Minister. They argued that marriage should have the same moral status as cohabiting.Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said last July that the traditional 1950s family had encouraged prejudice against single parents. The twice-married minister said: "We have to recognise that the modern family is not always a married family. Marriage can provide stability, but it's not for everyone.

MIT engineers and scientist colleagues have a new vision for the future of Mars exploration: a swarm of probes, each the size of a baseball, spreading out across the planet in every direction.Thousands of probes, powered by fuel cells, could cover a vast area now beyond the reach of today's rovers, including exploring remote and rocky terrain that large rovers cannot navigate."They would start to hop, bounce and roll and distribute themselves across the surface of the planet, exploring as they go, taking scientific data samples," said Steven Dubowsky, the MIT professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research team.Dubowsky's team plans to test prototypes on Earth this fall and estimates that a trip to Mars is about 10 years away. He is now working with Penelope Boston, director of the cave research program at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, to create probes that can handle the rough terrain of Mars.

The biggest science facility to be built in the UK for 30 years - the Diamond Light Source synchrotron - has opened its doors for business. The vast machine, which covers the area of five football pitches, generates intense light beams to probe matter down to the molecular and atomic scale. The South Oxfordshire-based facility will be used by many fields, including medicine and environmental science. Researchers have now commenced their experiments at its "beamline" stations.

A US astronaut accused of attacking a woman she considered competition for the affection of a shuttle pilot has been charged with attempted murder.Earlier a Florida court had ordered that Navy Capt Lisa Nowak, 43, who was facing charges of attempted kidnapping and battery, could be freed on bail.However, the introduction of the more serious charge that she intended to murder Colleen Shipman reverses that.A mother of three, Capt Nowak flew on the space shuttle Discovery last July.

He is a 'psychotic delinquent', invented by mad, deluded people. And that's one of Dawkins's milder criticisms. Dawkins, Oxford University's Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is on a crusade. His salvo of outrage and ridicule is meant to rid the world of its greatest evil: religion. "If this book works as I intend," he says, "religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." But he admits such a result is unlikely. "Dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" (that's people who believe in God) are "immune to argument", he says. I have known Dawkins for more than 20 years; we are both Oxford professors. I believe if anyone is "immune to argument" it is him. He comes across as a dogmatic, aggressive propagandist.Read more of this article by ALISTER McGRATH ....

George Smoot wants to know the answers to some big questions. "I want to know how the Universe came into being, how it developed and what its future might be," he says. The US Nobel Laureate has spent a large part of his career investigating the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - the "first light" released after the Big Bang. Scientists like Professor Smoot study this remnant radiation from the birth of the Universe in the hope of answering some of these questions.That dim afterglow, which fills the entire sky today, carries a wealth of information about the cosmos in its infancy. "When we look back to the past, we can see everything between the past and now, and that allows us to project to the future," Professor Smoot says.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- More than five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, the plundering of Afghanistan's archaeological sites and museums not only continues but has evolved into a sophisticated trade that could be financing the country's warlords and insurgents, experts say.The International Council of Museums, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of the world's natural and cultural heritage, on Friday published a "red list" of Afghan antiquities at risk, urging collectors, dealers and museums to be vigilant when they come across objects that might have been stolen.

People have been taking hallucinogenic drugs for thousands of years. Now scientists think they've figured out a key mechanism that allows tiny amounts of substances like LSD to have a powerful effect on the brain. Listen to audio report by Jon Hamilton here

ROME - Nero's Golden Palace will partly reopen to visitors next week, offering rare insight into archaeologists' efforts to preserve the first-century imperial residence from decay and humidity. Visitors will have access to half of the palace, wandering through a maze of underground passageways, officials said Wednesday. They can also climb a 43-foot scaffolding and take a close look at the building's frescoed vaulted ceilings, as restorers and archaeologists work to clean the paint."People will have the chance to get to know the monument itself and the efforts to maintain and preserve it," said archaeologist Irene Pignatelli, leading a press tour of the palace. "The aim of this type of visit is to show how the residence can be assaulted (by weather), how to intervene and what happens after the restoration."

Giant mirrors in space that deflect the sun's heat, carbon 'scrubbers' that clean up the atmosphere - where governments have failed to tackle global warming, science could yet save the day, says Steve ConnorScientists are thinking the unthinkable. What can be done to save the planet from global warming if political measures fail? If governments cannot agree on the necessary cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions, can engineering projects such as giant mirrors in space save the world? This week, more than 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists will issue their formal assessment of the threat posed by rising temperatures. In its fourth report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to say that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are causing average global temperatures to rise towards a tipping point where climate change will become dangerous, and potentially irreversible.The document will not look at how to mitigate climate change - that will be dealt with in a later report - but some scientists are already thinking about the kind of large engineering schemes that might have to be deployed if policies for cutting CO2 emissions get nowhere. These range from capturing it at power stations and burying it underground, to launching spacecraft loaded with reflective tinfoil to deflect solar radiation.

Early humans could never have come into contact with the giant carnivorous "terror bird" Titanis walleri, research suggests. It had been thought the fearsome beasts became extinct as little as 10,000 years ago - a time when humans shared their North American habitat. But a US team has now revised this date to about two million years earlier. The study, published in Geology, also sheds light on the flightless birds' migration to North America.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A village of small houses that may have sheltered the builders of the mysterious Stonehenge -- or people attending festivals there -- has been found by archaeologists studying the stone circle in England.Eight of the houses, with central hearths, have been excavated, and there may be as many as 25 of them, Mike Parker Pearson said Tuesday at a briefing organized by the National Geographic Society.The ancient houses are at a site known as Durrington Walls, about two miles from Stonehenge. It is also the location of a wooden version of the stone circle. The village was carbon dated to about 2600 B.C., about the same time Stonehenge was built. The Great Pyramid in Egypt was built at about the same time, said Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.Julian Thomas of Manchester University noted that both Stonehenge and Durrington Walls have avenues connecting them to the Avon River, indicating a pattern of movement between the sites. "Clearly, this is a place that was of enormous importance," he said of the new find.The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge -- where cremated remains have been found -- was a cemetery and memorial.

New excavations near Stonehenge could finally explain its reason for existence: as one half of a much larger temple built to celebrate the living and the dead.A dig less than two miles away has revealed the largest neolithic village in Britain. The similar dates and designs of the sites have convinced archaeologists that they were elements of a single religious complex.Stonehenge was designed as a permanent monument to the dead and constructed of rock to symbolise their enduring presence, the research suggests.The nearby settlement at Durrington Walls was a shrine to the transience of life. Its houses were made of wood, as was a timber circle mirroring the design of Stonehenge.These wooden structures were deliberately intended to rot away, as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of human existence, scientists say.

A frozen sea found on Mars is one of the most promising places to look for life on the Red Planet, scientists say. But planned missions designed to search for microbes below the Martian surface will not drill deep enough to find living cells, the UK team has said. Researchers at University College London say that microbes in the first couple of metres of Martian soil would be killed off by intense radiation. Life might survive deeper down, where conditions are more benign, they think.

(CBS) Twenty-four years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rainman." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited. Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain.

A new article has recently been added to our Forum:True Myths....by Gregory SamsAt the age of 19, Gregory Sams was pioneering the introduction of natural and organic foods within the UK. Fifteen years later, in 1983, he created and christened the world's first VegeBurger. In 1990 he opened a retail shop, "Strange Attractions", off London's Portobello Rd, dedicated to introducing chaos theory and fractal design to the culture.Sams is the author of Uncommon Sense - the State is Out of Date, published 1998. The full text of this book is now online, together with the preface of his next book, plus other writing and the stunning fractal gallery at www.chaos-works.com

A cave cut in the rock has been discovered in the Pharaonic Port of Marsa Gawasis in Safaga. In December-January, archaeologists found the timbers of sea-going vessels that were over 3,500 years old at Marsa Gawasis, which was a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast in Pharaonic times. The cedar planks, which were imported from Syria, were found in two man-made caves. Among the other finds were rigging and inscriptions about expeditions to the Land of Punt.Marsa Gawasis is located on a coral reef at the northern end of the Wadi Gawasis, 23 kilometres south of the port of Safaga. The site was discovered in the mid-1970s by Abdel Moneim Sayyed of the University of Alexandria.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have teamed up with colleagues in Egypt in a bid to discover what medicines were used by the ancient Egyptians.The KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Egyptian Medicinal Plant Conservation Project in St Katherine's, Sinai, have formed a partnership to research Egyptian pharmacy in the times of the pharaohs.The 'Pharmacy in Ancient Egypt' collaboration, which is funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust, will compare modern plant species common to the Sinai region with the remains of ancient plants found in tombs.Researcher Ryan Metcalf said: "We know that the ancient Egyptians had extensive trade routes and it is entirely possible that both medicinal plants and the knowledge to use them effectively were traded between regions and countries.

The Greeks developed mathematics as a deductive science that reached its climax with Euclid of Alexandria in his masterpiece The Elements. Before that, during the ancient Egyptian era, mathematics was an inductive discipline of a utilitarian nature used to perform practical tasks such as flood control or land measurement using rope. It has been suggested that mathematics then amounted to no more than the two-times table and the ability to find two-thirds of any number. The whole structure of Egyptian mathematics was said to be based on these two simple rules, and indeed no evidence exists of a textual geometry with constructions and proofs.Yet, looking at the Egyptians' stunning monuments, as well as a civilisation that spanned three millennia, one might expect to find a similar element of grandeur in their sciences -- especially in mathematics and astronomy. How did they configure the manpower and materials needed to build more than 90 pyramids? It is obvious that to calculate the vast amount of computations they needed, the ancient Egyptians reached a fairly advanced mathematical knowledge.Several eminent Greek mathematicians -- Pythagoras, Thales and Archimedes, to name just a few -- worked in Egypt, and it is likely that Egyptian mathematics was absorbed into the body of Greek mathematics. The Giza pyramids offer definitive evidence of the ancient accuracy of measuring.

There's a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star's core.Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gábor Ágoston, calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.Ehrlich's model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun's core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun's magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other.

The modern technology of craniotomy, a surgical operation which is performed on the brain through an incision in the skull, may have been in use in China nearly 3,000 years ago.Scientists made the conclusion after a detailed study of 13 perforated skulls that had been unearthed in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The skulls were found in a cluster of more than 2,000 ancient tombs in the desert outside Turpan, 200 kilometers east of the regional capital Urumqi, said Lu Enguo, a researcher with the Xinjiang Institute of Archeology.

BEIJING (AP) - Amid its frenzied citywide makeover for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing unveiled two centuries-old temples Friday that were salvaged from decades of neglect and saved from the current construction boom.The modest temples - one to a fertility goddess, the other to a dragon deity who controls rain and rivers - sit on either end of the Olympic Green, a 1,000-acre expanse that will be the center of the Games and that is now abuzz with construction.Their rescue is part of a promise China's leaders made in bidding for the Games - that the Olympics would foster historic preservation in an ancient capital that has often neglected the past as it hurtles toward the future."Beijing is a city very rich in cultural relics so the construction of venues had to be connected to the protection of relics," Kong Fanzhi, director of the Beijing Cultural Relics Protection Bureau, told reporters as he stood in a courtyard of the partly restored Niang Niang Temple. "Our slogan is to have a 'Cultural Olympics.'"

OSLO (Reuters) - World sea levels will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments manage to slow a projected surge in temperatures this century blamed on greenhouse gases, a draft U.N. climate report says.The study, by a panel of 2,500 scientists who advise the United Nations, also says that dust from volcanic eruptions and air pollution seems to have braked warming in recent decades by reflecting sunlight back into space, scientific sources said.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish its report, the most complete overview of climate change science, in Paris on February 2 after a final review. It will guide policy makers combating global warming.

Archaeologists who found the remains of human "Hobbits" have gained permission to restart excavations at the cave where the specimens were found.Indonesian officials have blocked access to the cave since 2005, following a dispute over the bones. But Professor Richard "Bert" Roberts, a member of the team that found the specimens, told BBC News the political hurdles had now been overcome.The researchers claim that the remains belong to a novel species of human.

Recently, scientists at the University of Oxford have discovered that 'junk' genetic material can switch off cancer tumours, preventing them from growing.Dr. Alexandre Akoulitchev at the university has found that it is possible to use large molecules of RNA to regulate the activity of a gene called dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) which produces an enzyme that is responsible for the rapid spread of tumour.Almost 34,000 genes are responsible for producing proteins according to the Human Genome Project. The rest are considered to be scrap. The DNA and the proteins they produce are connected through the RNA when the proteins are activated. Though not all RNA are directly involved in protein synthesis, about 500,000 varieties of RNA of unknown function have been estimated to be produced by 'junk' DNA.

An astonishing collection of fossil animals from southern Australia is reported by scientists. The creatures were found in limestone caves under Nullarbor Plain and date from about 400,000-800,000 years ago. The palaeontological "treasure trove" includes 23 kangaroo species, eight of which are entirely new to science.Researchers tell Nature magazine that the caves also yielded a complete specimen of Thylacoleo carnifex, an extinct marsupial lion.

A Leicester University study found that seven men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a genetic signature previously found only in people of African origin. The men seem to have shared a common ancestor in the 18th Century, but the African DNA lineage they carry may have reached Britain centuries earlier. Details of the study appear in the European Journal of Human Genetics.The scientists declined to disclose the men's surname in order to protect their anonymity.