Newsdesk Archive

A Europe-wide study has provided "conclusive proof" that the seasons are changing, with spring arriving earlier each year, researchers say.Scientists from 17 nations examined 125,000 studies involving 561 species.Spring was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, the researchers said.

Dark matter and normal matter have been wrenched apart by the tremendous collision of two large clusters of galaxies. The discovery, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, gives direct evidence for the existence of dark matter."This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.These observations provide the strongest evidence yet that most of the matter in the universe is dark. Despite considerable evidence for dark matter, some scientists have proposed alternative theories for gravity where it is stronger on intergalactic scales than predicted by Newton and Einstein, removing the need for dark matter. However, such theories cannot explain the observed effects of this collision

Sydney - An Australian fossil find may mean living creatures left the world's oceans for the land much earlier than once thought, rewriting a small part of mankind's evolution, scientists said on Tuesday.A study of rocks collected near Buchan in Victoria state's East Gippsland has yielded a lung fish fossil more than 20 million years older than earlier finds, Macquarie University researcher Zarena Johanson told AFP.Her Macquarie colleague, Professor John Talent who found the rocks, said the fossilised lung fish - or coelacanth - sets back the timeline for when marine animals made their first excursions on to land.

A rare Anglo-Saxon belt buckle found by a treasure hunter with a metal detector is going on public display for the first time.The copper alloy buckle dates from between AD600 and AD720 and is only the second one of its type found in England.It was unearthed recently on the outskirts of London by Bill Robson, who handed it to the Museum of London.

The human brain does not contain a single "God spot" responsible for mystical and religious experiences, a new study finds.Instead, the sense of union with God or something greater than the self often described by those who have undergone such experiences involves the recruitment and activation of a variety brain regions normally implicated in different functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.The finding, detailed in the current issue of Neuroscience Letters, contradicts previous suggestions by other researchers that the there might be a specific region in the brain designed for communication with God.

Some scholars are busily debunking the Bible's account of the great King David, asking: Was he really all that great? Was he largely legendary, Judaism's version of Britain's legendary King Arthur, or totally fictional?These matters are crucial not only for Jews but for Christians, since Jesus' biblical identity as the messiah stems from David's family line.Skepticism about the Hebrew Bible's history was promoted to popular audiences in "The Bible Unearthed" (2001) by Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Their most recent book focuses on "David and Solomon" (Free Press).Though some scholars claimed David never existed, in 1993 archaeologists discovered a stone inscription from 835 B.C. that mentions "the house of David." The authors say that established the existence of a dynastic founder named David and that shortly after his 10th-century era a line of kings "traced their legitimacy back to David."

The discovery of European corpses thousands of miles away suggests a hitherto unknown connection between East and West in the Bronze Age. Clifford Coonan reports from Urumqi But this is no early Celt from central Scotland. This is the mummified corpse of Cherchen Man, unearthed from the scorched sands of the Taklamakan Desert in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in western China, and now housed in a new museum in the provincial capital of Urumqi. In the language spoken by the local Uighur people in Xinjiang, "Taklamakan" means: "You come in and never come out."The extraordinary thing is that Cherchen Man was found - with the mummies of three women and a baby - in a burial site thousands of miles to the east of where the Celts established their biggest settlements in France and the British Isles.DNA testing confirms that he and hundreds of other mummies found in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin are of European origin. We don't know how he got there, what brought him there, or how long he and his kind lived there for. But, as the desert's name suggests, it is certain that he never came out.

Neanderthals were much more advanced than has been thought, according to a new examination of finds from a famous cave site that indicates that the creatures designed and made their own jewellery. It had been assumed ornaments found with their bones were "borrowed" from ancestors of modern humans, or copied. This is now believed to have been a mistake.Neanderthals lived in Europe long before the early modern humans, Homo sapiens, 40,000 years ago. The two sub-species existed side-by-side for about 10,000 years, after which the Neanderthals vanished.Research has shown that the two sub-species were genetically different. Neanderthals used stone tools, but experts are divided about whether they were capable of abstract thought, associated with signs of creativity, such as art works and decoration.

FOUR thousand years ago work began to erect the great earthen burial mounds that comprise the Bronze Age barrow cemetery at the Knowes of Trotty, in Harray, Orkney. There are at least 16 barrows - or graves - in two rows, nestling between the edge of the farmlands and the foot of the moorland. Many were raised upon natural mounds to enhance their prominence.It is a spectacular site, even today, and there are indications that in the Bronze Age the Knowes of Trotty was a cemetery of special significance. The barrows were built to honour the dead of the local farmers and represent a change in burial ritual away from the communal interments of Neolithic farming sites like Maeshowe and more towards individual burials that often incorporated the use of fire to cremate the body. Burial in the Bronze Age celebrated the individual and often included grave goods, perhaps as an indication of status and for use in the after world.

Scientists have yoked bacteria to power rotary motors, the first microscopic mechanical devices to successfully incorporate living microbes together with inorganic parts."In far future plans, we would like to make micro-robots driven by biological motors," researcher Yuichi Hiratsuka, a nanobiotechnologist now at the University of Tokyo, told LiveScience.

Mummy dearest? Recent scholarship is changing thinking about female pharaoh Hatshepsut, whom Egyptologists once called "the vilest type of usurper."

searchers have been hotly debating (and coming dangerously close to fighting over) whether the fossils of a diminutive hominin found in Indonesia are those of a previously unknown species. The publication this week of some long-standing doubts over the 'hobbit' fossils show the debate is far from over.The dispute over the bones of Homo floresiensis has involved allegations of name-calling, nationalistic motives, and wilfully damaging specimens. One camp insists that the tiny inhabitants of the Indonesian island of Flores were a unique species; the other claims that the bones are of a diseased Homo sapiens pygmy. As the debate rages, [email protected] set out to find whether there will ever be an end to the conflict.

CHANGCHUN, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids, dating back at least 3,000 years, in Jiaohe City of northeast China's Jilin Province. The tombs, covering an area of 500,000 square meters (1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide), were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs.Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no indications of their original scale and appearance, but the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be discerned as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top.

VATICAN CITY -- The Catholic Church is rejecting claims in the United States of new "embryo-safe" stem-cells, pouring cold water on hopes by many scientists of ending ethical uproar over their research. A U.S. company says it has developed a way to create the stem cells without harming the original embryo, which the Vatican holds is a full-fledged human life.The breakthrough technique was meant to answer critics at the papal palace, the White House and beyond, who have long argued that it was ethically reproachable to attempt to save one life by taking another.But the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, told Reuters in an interview that the new method by Advanced Cell Technology Inc. failed to overcome the Church's many moral concerns. Sgreccia said the procedure was wrong footed from the start -- experimenting with embryos is reprehensible, as is use of "unnatural" in-vitro embryos created at fertility clinics, like the ones the U.S. scientists employed in their research.

The decline of the Maya civilization began some 1,100 year ago when millions of Indians working on the contruction of tall pyramidal temples and palaces learned that their kings weren't gods, Spanish anthropologist Andres Ciudad told EFE. The collapse of this culture with its brilliant mathematicians, astronomers and engineers, came when monarchs stopped being immortal in the eyes of their subjects, said Ciudad, who is deputy dean of the Faculty of Geography and History at Madrid's Universidad Complutense.The inhabitants of Mayan lands, which extended through much of what is now Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras and Mexico, at some point understood there was no sense in working themselves to death building pharaonic edifices and temples destined for the burial of kings who had no "heavenly privileges."The study weakens theories that attribute the death of this civilization to tribal warfare or prolonged drought.

A FARMER from the northwest's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region never expected to become the center of the nation's attention.But that's just what he was when on Saturday CCTV televised live the excavation of a dinosaur fossil he had discovered.Ma Yun had been out catching hedgehogs on a hill near Lingwu City in April 2004, when he unearthed a "brown stone" some 20 centimeters in diameter. He thought that the stone resembled an enormous "limb of some animal," but none of the friends he dragged to the spot was convinced.Until five months later he contacted the Lingwu Bureau of Cultural Relics and was told the "stone" could be something more precious.

BRITISH television program claims to have found evidence of a building at Windsor Castle that is linked to the myth of King Arthur and the knights of the round table.The circular structure was built by Edward III in the 14th century to house the round table intended to seat the original 300 Knights of the Garter.Archaeological proof of the 61-metre-diameter building was uncovered by members of the Channel 4 program Time Team, which is screened in Australia on the ABC on Tuesdays.Although the stones have been removed, ghost walls, consisting of rubble in-fill where they were originally located, remained in place.

The predicted rise in temperatures in the coming decades will be exacerbated by what scientists call the "urban heat island effect", in which temperatures during heatwaves can be 6-7C higher in cities than in surrounding areas. The new research, led by Professor Glenn McGregor of King's College London, analyses data from recent heatwaves and concludes that the risk of heat-related deaths is greater in urban areas, especially in London. The study concludes that predictions for climate change by 2080 mean than London is likely to be hit with more cloud-free days and more frequent periods of intense heat.

Leading scientists in the United States say the hole in the ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere above the Antarctic appears to have stopped widening. The ozone layer blocks the Sun's ultra-violet rays, exposure to which is harmful to humans, animals and plants. International agreements were reached to end the use of ozone-depleting chemicals called CFCs after the hole was discovered in 1986. It is hoped the hole may "heal" fully over the next 60 years.

The second largest volcanic eruption in human history was much larger than previously thought, scientists say.The Bronze Age eruption of Thera near mainland Greece would have devastated ancient civilisations in the region.Ash would likely have plunged much of the Mediterranean into darkness, and tsunami would have wrecked local ports. A survey around what is now the island arc of Santorini shows volcanic pumice to a depth of 80m covering the ocean floor for 20-30km in all directions.

In 1992, archeologists excavated 35,000 jiandu (bamboo slips or other wood for writing on times) in Xuanquanzhi relic site, 62 kilometers south of Dunhuang, Gansu Province.Now archeologists have almost finished a report on the discovery.

Canada's only major Arctic petroglyph site -- a 1,500-year-old gallery of mysterious faces carved into a soapstone ridge on a tiny island off of Quebec's northern coast -- has been ransacked by vandals in what the region's top archeologist suspects was a religiously motivated attack by devout Christians from a nearby Inuit community.

Iraq's most prominent archaeologist has resigned and fled the country, saying the dire security situation, an acute shortage of funds, and the interference of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had made his position intolerable.Donny George, who was president of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, achieved international recognition for his efforts to track down and recover the priceless antiquities looted from Iraq's National Museum in the mayhem that followed the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

GUNTUR: Evidence of the existence in India of the Dakiniyana school of Buddhism in the second century A.D. has been found at Kantamanenivarigudem, close to Guntupalli caves in West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh. The Archaeological Survey of India found a decorated pillar in the vicinity of a chaitya. It was excavated along with a damaged Dhyana Buddha statue, shards of pottery and chaitya pillars, ASI Director D. Jithendra Das said. The top half of the green limestone pillar carries a half-lotus medallion and a frieze of animals such as lion, deer and boar.

While the summer drought has left fields and gardens parched, it has opened up aerial architectural treasures across the country. Photographs taken from light aircraft have revealed hundreds of unknown or long forgotten sites. Archaeologists now face a busy autumn, interpreting images that will help shed light on how people lived up to 6,000 years ago.Dr Toby Driver, of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, said: "It has been a hugely successful year for aerial archaeology. We may not see another like it for a decade."I now have months of work to go through the discoveries, notifying local archaeologists and ensuring that some of the most remarkable sites are visited on the ground and studied further."Among the most significant finds are two 6,000-year-old Neolithic causewayed enclosures near Walton, Radnorshire, and near St Athan airfield, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

KURE ATOLL, Hawaii (20 August 2006) -- The ocean has revealed a secret 120 years old on the most remote island in the Hawaiian chain. In July, state workers happened upon the wreck of the full-rigged ship Dunotter Castle, vintage Falls of Clyde, in 25 feet of crystal clear water off Kure Atoll, the last island beyond Midway.The wreck made headlines in 1886 after seven survivors sailed 52 days and 1,200 miles in an open boat and were picked up off Kaua'i. A voyage to rescue crew members remaining on Kure set out the next day via the steamer Wai'ale'ale.

Prime Minister Tony Blair should intervene in the "disgrace" of the Stonehenge road saga, the RAC Foundation has said.The foundation favours putting the A303 at the Wiltshire site into a deep-bored tunnel - a £510 million option being re-examined by the Government on cost grounds. The foundation said it had written to Mr Blair, asking him to "cut through departmental inertia and get some action". A 1.3 mile tunnel was recommended after a public inquiry, but was put on hold by the Department for Transport because of the rising cost of the scheme.

OSLO (Reuters) - Ice Age evidence confirms that a doubling of greenhouse gases could drive up world temperatures by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), causing havoc with the climate, a study showed on Friday.The researchers made a novel check of computer climate forecasts about the modern impact of heat-trapping gases, widely blamed on use of fossil fuels, against ice cores and marine sediments from the last Ice Age which ended 10,000 years ago."A doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations would cause a global temperature increase of around 3 Celsius," said Thomas Schneider of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who led the report.The findings broadly back up other Potsdam forecasts about the effects of a build-up of carbon dioxide emitted by power plants, cars and factories. Some skeptics dismiss such models as exaggerations.

Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported today. Alaska was suddenly at the equator, the thinking goes.Scientists already know that the North Pole wanders over time. But a theory known as true polar wander suggests that if a very heavy object, like an oversized volcano forms far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would pull the object away from the axis the Earth spins around. Should a mass such as the very heavy volcano become unbalanced, Earth would tilt and rotate itself until the extra weight moves somewhere near the equator.Analyzed samples of ancient sediments found in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard show that such an event may have indeed happened in the past.

Archaeologists working on a gas pipeline near Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire have unearthed what they believe to be a 3,400-year-old canoe. Work has stopped on a section of the pipeline near St Botolphs to allow the Bronze Age oak relic to be recovered.It is the first such discovery in Wales and only 150 exist across Europe. Senior archaeologist Neil Fairburn said: "You could never have expected to find anything like this in this small wetland area, it's just awesome."

Cairo- Archaeologists in Luxor, central Egypt, have found five headless sphinxes which belonged to a sphinx-lined avenue connecting a temple built by pharaohs in the city with Karnak, antiquity administrators in Cairo said. Scientists are now trying to discover whether the figures match four broken sphinx heads, found a long time ago, sources said.Apart from the five statues, archaeologists also found the ruins of a flower basin and a connecting gully near a road leading to Luxor's airport, they added.

A new find of a condo-like cave suggests not all cavemen were club-wielding, nomadic hunter-gatherers, but included some farmers and shepherds.Evidence of such homebody cave dwellers comes from a recent excavation of a neolithic cave complex in Greece, dating from 5300-3900 B.C.The abode features a three-room complex with plastered floors and evidence of crop-growing and an attached stable nearby.This household was self-contained," said Panagiotis Karkanas, who conducted the excavation of the Kouveleiki Caves, which are located on the cliffs of a shallow valley in southern Peloponnese.

The IAU members gathered at the 2006 General Assembly agreed that a "planet" is defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. This means that the Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called "dwarf planets" was also decided. It was agreed that "planets" and "dwarf planets" are two distinct classes of objects. The first members of the "dwarf planet" category are Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313 (temporary name). More "dwarf planets" are expected to be announced by the IAU in the coming months and years. Currently a dozen candidate "dwarf planets" are listed on IAU's "dwarf planet" watchlist, which keeps changing as new objects are found and the physics of the existing candidates becomes better known.

An international group of archaeologists has unearthed a well-preserved, 2,500-year-old mummy frozen in the snowcapped mountains of Mongolia complete with blond hair, tattoos and a felt hat. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Hermann Parzinger, hailed the "fabulous find" at a press conference to present the 28-member team's discovery in Berlin.The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) in the Altay Mountains in an intact burial mound or kurgan. Parzinger said the tomb was practically untouched when the team discovered it.

On July 14, 1965, Mariner 4 swooped over Mars. It was a moment of high drama. Six other probes had already tried to reach Mars and failed--most malfunctioning before they even left Earth. With flawless precision, Mariner 4 dipped less than 10,000 km above the planet's surface and took 22 pictures. Mars was covered with desert sand and ancient craters.Fast-forward to September 15, 1967. Mariner 4 was cruising the dark emptiness between Earth and Mars. Having shot past Mars in '65 without enough fuel to turn around and go back, there was nothing else to do. All was quiet. Fuel was running low. Soon, Mariner 4 would fade into history.That's when the meteor storm hit....

Individuals of European descent may be 5 percent Neanderthal, while West Africans could be related to an archaic human population, according to a recent study of genes of people from Yoruba and individuals living in Utah with ancestry from Northern and Western Europe.Since both groups spread, the find suggests we all have a bit of archaic DNA in our genes. This counters the view that modern humans left Africa and replaced all other existing hominid populations.

A team of Peruvian and US archaeologists have discovered prehistoric stone tools and weapons some 10,000 years old in an Andean town, the National Institute of Culture announced Friday. Stone axes, spearheads, and weapons were found in the main square of San Pedro de Chavin de Huantar, an Andean town some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Lima, officials said."This discovery represents exceptional evidence of the presence of inhabitants in the Pleistocene era," the Institute said in a statement.

JUST when you think there can't be anything left to dig up when it comes to secret codes and Rosslyn Chapel, another layer is unearthed. The latest mystery - involving a carving scratched on the wall of the crypt - doesn't involve the Knights Templar, the bloodline of Christ or any ancient secret societies.But for Ashley Cowie - who has spent the best part of a decade trying to work out its meaning - the carving has huge global significance for Scotland when it comes to the history of ancient navigation."What is down there is an example of a lost system for measuring time and distance involving both latitude and longitude. It's a priceless mapping treasure."This navigational teaching board - if that's what it is - forms the basis of Cowie's new book, The Rosslyn Matrix, which presents his case for Rosslyn Chapel having a cartographic explanation.

MADRID (Reuters) - A Madrid museum is set to return a centuries-old mummy to the Canary Islands, adding impetus to an international trend for human remains to be handed back to their countries of origin.A Spanish Senate committee wants Madrid's Anthropology Museum to return remains of a member of the Canaries' aboriginal Guanche people which arrived in mainland Spain in the 1700s, said Rafael Gonzalez, of Tenerife's Museum of Nature and Man. The transfer now has to be approved by Spain's parliament. There has been a growing demand from around the world for the return of human remains collected by museums during the heyday of Western colonial empires.Gonzalez, the Tenerife museum's head of archaeology, was not sure when the Madrid mummy would return. But he told Reuters he wants the Canary Islands to recover all remains of the Guanches -- a people related to North African Berbers who were conquered by Spaniards in the 15th century.

Legend has it that Menehune built the Pihana heiau in one night using stones from the banks of the 'Iao Stream below the sacred site.The old stories do not say how long ago that happened, but using modern radiocarbon-dating techniques, anthropologist Michael Kolb of Northern Illinois University said he has determined the ancient temple was erected in the early 13th century, at the start of a 500-year span of heiau construction that peaked during times of great political and social change.Most of what is known about Hawaiian civilization prior to European contact was handed down through oral histories that lack accurate dates. Kolb said his research, the most extensive of its kind, was able to determine a range of eras when Maui's network of heiau was built and often rebuilt.

A medieval artefact found by two metal detector users in Shropshire may be bought by the county's museum service. The silver seal matrix - or mould - was found near Bayston Hill. Experts have been unable to identify the original owners of the seal, although it is thought to have belonged to an important family in Shropshire. After a treasure inquest held at Shrewsbury Magistrates Court, the seal matrix will go to the Treasure Valuations Committee for valuation. The three-piece, oval seal matrix has a centrally set blue gemstone. An inscription on the front face reads "SERVITE DOMINO IN TIMORE" which can be translated as "serve (the) Lord in Fear".

A team of Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah's Ark in Iran's Elburz mountain range. "I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts. Bonnema and the other B.A.S.E. Institute members hiked for seven hours in the mountains northwest of Tehran, climbing 13,000 feet before making the apparent discovery. "We got up to this object, nestled in the side of a hill," said Robert Cornuke, a member of the B.A.S.E. Institute. "We found something that has my heart skipping a beat."At first, they didn't dare to hope it was the biblical boat. "It wasn't impressive at first," Cornuke said. "Certainly didn't think it to be Noah's Ark. But when we got close, we were amazed. It looked similar to wood." In addition, some B.A.SE. members say, their discovery didn't look very distinctive."It looked like the deck of any boat today," Bonnema said.

New archaeological evidence is raising more questions about the conventional interpretation linking the desolate ruins of an ancient settlement known as Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves in one of the sensational discoveries of the last century.After early excavations at the site, on a promontory above the western shore of the Dead Sea, scholars concluded that members of a strict Jewish sect, the Essenes, had lived there in a monastery and presumably wrote the scrolls in the first centuries B.C. and A.D.Many of the texts describe religious practices and doctrine in ancient Israel.But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.

A cluster of galaxies, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, example of our universe's ongoing expansion, diffusion of matter and energy: new universe would not be a copy, but would evolve its own materials and physical lawsA radical new project could permit human beings to create a "baby universe" in a laboratory in Japan. While it sounds like a dangerous undertaking, the physicists involved believe that if the project is successful, the space-time around a tiny point within our universe will be distorted in such a way that it will begin to form a new superfluid space, and eventually break off, separate in all respects from our experience of space and time, causing no harm to the fabric of our universe.

Giant prehistoric kangaroos and wombat-like creatures the size of hippopotamuses were not killed off by human hunters but by climate change and starvation, an Australian study has found.The study, based on the re-excavation of a site at Lake Menindee in western New South Wales state, found strong evidence that the cold climates of the last Ice Age were followed by a drought which caused the mammals to starve to death.The site was first studied in the 1950s, when scientists argued that hunting implements found there meant that humans had killed off the giant beasts."Because scientists at the time couldn't date the items, they assumed they were the same age and extrapolated from that that the humans killed off the giant marsupials," Matt Cupper, a University of Melbourne scientist who led the expedition, said in a statement.

An ancient Peruvian headdress which was looted from an archaeological site almost 20 years ago has been found by police in London. It is considered a national treasure and disappeared in 1988 after a tomb in northern Peru was raided and its contents sold on the black market. It was handed to a firm of solicitors in central London by one of its clients who did not know it was stolen. The headdress, depicting a sea god, dates back to 700AD. It is an example of ancient Peruvian Mochica civilisation art and is regarded by experts as one of the most important artefacts in Peruvian cultural heritage.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Southern Africa's Catholic bishops have warned priests to stop moonlighting as witch doctors, fortune tellers and traditional healers, and to rely on Christ for miracles.The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, which represents bishops in South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana, said on its Web sites some priests were adopting the traditional African practice of calling on ancestors for healing.The bishops ordered priests to "desist from practices involving spirits," and to steer clear from witchcraft, fortune-telling and selling spiritual powers or magic medicines.

This lineup shows the 12 proposed planets, with a wedge of the sun at far left. Ceres, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313 are barely visible. The planets are drawn to scale, but without correct relative distances.

August 15, 2006: On July 31st, a tiny sunspot was born. It popped up from the sun's interior, floated around a bit, and vanished again in a few hours. On the sun this sort of thing happens all the time and, ordinarily, it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But this sunspot was special: It was backward."We've been waiting for this," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight in Huntsville, Alabama. "A backward sunspot is a sign that the next solar cycle is beginning.""Backward" means magnetically backward. Hathaway explains: Sunspots are planet-sized magnets created by the sun's inner magnetic dynamo. Like all magnets in the Universe, sunspots have north (N) and south (S) magnetic poles. The sunspot of July 31st popped up at solar longitude 65o W, latitude 13o S. Sunspots in that area are normally oriented N-S. The newcomer, however, was S-N, opposite the norm. The tiny, backward sunspot of July 31, 2006. Credit: SOHO.

Solar cells made from spinach. Algae-based biofuel fattened on greenhouse gas. Plasma-powered turbo engines. These are just some of the technologies being developed by a Manhattan Project-style research effort for new energy technologies at MIT.Scientists at MIT are undertaking a big, ambitious, university-wide program to develop innovative energy tech under the auspices of the school's Energy Research Council."The urgent challenge of our time (is) clean, affordable energy to power the world," said MIT President Susan Hockfield.

Astronomers are gathering in the Czech capital, Prague, hoping to define exactly what counts as a planet.The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hopes to settle the question of Pluto, which was first spotted in 1930.Experts are divided over whether Pluto - further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System - deserves the title.The stakes were raised when a bigger planet-type body, known as 2003 UB313, was discovered by a US astronomer.

The recent discovery of a Stonehenge of the Amazon could rewrite the books on the development of ancient societies in South America.Brazilian archaeologists say the extraordinary discovery of what appears to be a pre-colonial astrological observatory in the rainforest in the state of Amapa near the border with near French Guiana, throws new light on the ancient peoples of the Amazon, illuminating a far more intricate and advanced society than previously thought.Indigenous Indians are thought to have built the observatory 2,000 years ago, placing 127 three-metre-high granite blocks in circles to mark cosmological movements.

The meltdown of Greenland's ice sheet is speeding up, satellite measurements show. Data from a US space agency (Nasa) satellite show that the melting rate has accelerated since 2004. If the ice cap were to completely disappear, global sea levels would rise by 6.5m (21 feet). Most of the ice is being lost from eastern Greenland, a US team writes in Science journal.This Greenland glacier is now one of the fastest moving in the world

Paintings by Claude Monet could shed light on pollution in London at the turn of the 20th Century, experts say.University of Birmingham researchers have pinpointed the dates and times of depicted scenes by analysing the position of the Sun in the sky.The research also revealed the French painter's vantage point: a second floor terrace at St Thomas's Hospital.The paintings give an accurate record of Victorian London's urban atmosphere, they write in a Royal Society journal.

US researchers have taken a mouse back in time some 500 million years by reversing the process of evolution. By engineering its genetic blueprint, they have rebuilt a gene that was present in primitive animals.The ancient gene later mutated and split, giving rise to a pair of genes that play a key role in brain development in modern mammals.The scientists say the experiments shed light on how evolution works and could lead to new gene therapy techniques.

The actions of a domestic cat have thrown up a new theory about ancient stone burial cairns in Caithness. Archaeologists built a mock-up of the structures as part of an experiment. Emma Sanderson, of Caithness Archaeology Trust, said it was found that a dead rabbit had been left in the replica by a cat. She said it could mean that animal bones found in real cairns were not the remains of ceremonial offerings, as thought, but left by other creatures.Archaeologists built reconstructions of burial cairns and ancient towers called brochs as part of a series of research projects and excavations carried out in Caithness over the summer.

Fragments of ostrich eggs, perforated beads and finely shaped arrowheads have provided the first firm archaeological evidence for the "out of Africa" origins of the world's human population.Scientists have found stark similarities in the ancient cultural artefacts made and used by Stone Age people who migrated out of Africa and into Asia more than 50,000 years ago.It is the first time that archaeologists have been able to link African and Indian artefacts so closely together even though they were discovered 3,000 miles apart - suggesting they were made by the same people, albeit of different generations.

Two of Syria's most famous sites from antiquity were in the country's news this week - one for the discovery of a Byzantine tomb and the other after the arrest of alleged looters trafficking in stolen artefacts.The official news agency SANA on Tuesday reported the arrest of people suspected of looting from the ancient city of Palmyra, 220 kilometres (136 miles) northeast of Damascus, without saying how many people had been detained.It also said a stone tomb from the Byzantine era and jars, one of which was thought to hold the bones of a baby, were found in the northwest in the coastal province of Lattakia.

CO2 would be pumped beneath the world's oceansStoring carbon dioxide under the sea-bed could help to reduce global warming, according to US scientists.The proposals involve pumping the gas miles underground then injecting it under the sea floor.There is enough space for almost unlimited carbon emissions, a US team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Previous plans to store carbon under the sea have drawn criticism because of concerns over leakage and safety. Supporters of the latest idea say that it overcomes these drawbacks and can be done with existing technology.

A musical instrument made of stone, thought to be centuries old, has been discovered on a beach in south-central Vietnam.The dan da (lithophone), which was found in Binh Thuan province, possibly belongs to the Sa Huynh Culture, which existed between the second and early nineteenth centuries.But the discovery has excited archeologists since it is the first dan da found in a coastal area. They had only previously been discovered in mountainous areas.

Rice is the staple food for more than three billion people. Scientists say they have identified a gene that will allow rice plants to survive being completely submerged in water for up to two weeks.Most rice plants die within a week of being underwater, but the researchers hope the new gene will offer greater protection to the world's rice harvest. Farmers in south-east Asia lose an estimated £524m ($1bn) each year from rice crops being destroyed by flooding. The findings have been published in the science journal Nature.

LONDON (Reuters) - The case of the lithium that has gone missing since the Big Bang has been solved -- the stars swallowed it, scientists said on Wednesday.The discrepancy between the quantity of lithium estimated to have been created at the start of the universe and the small amount now actually found has long perplexed astronomers, bringing into question fundamental planetary theory.Scientific theory said that up to three times the amount of lithium -- the lightest of the solid elements -- was produced along with the main elements hydrogen and helium in the Big Bang than can now be found in the older stars.But now a team led by Andreas Korn from the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in Sweden say they may have finally solved the riddle.

Archaeologists said Monday they have uncovered underground chambers and tunnels constructed in northern Israel by Jews for hiding from the Romans during their revolt in A.D. 66-70. The Jews laid in supplies and were preparing to hide from the Romans, the experts said. The pits, which are connected to each other by short tunnels, would have served as a concealed subterranean home. Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the find shows the ancient Jews planned and prepared for the uprising. This is in contrast to the common perception that the revolt began spontaneously. "It definitely was not spontaneous," said Alexandre. "The Jews of that time certainly did prepare for it, with underground hideaways here and in other sites we have found."

New findings from an Ohio State University team of astronomers are raising the possibility that the universe is larger than previously thought.Using new measurement methods, the team found that the Triangulum Galaxy is 3 million light-years away, not the 2.6 million that had been accepted in the past.If the method proves reliable for other distant objects, the results could force a readjustment of one of the building blocks of modern cosmology: the Hubble constant."The Hubble constant used to be the one parameter that we knew pretty well. Now it's lagging behind," said Krzysztof Z. Stanek, a coauthor of a paper describing the new work, scheduled to appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

At the bottom of the world, more than two miles beneath the wind-blasted surface of Antarctica, sits a wonder of the last untouched continent. Locked deep in the Antarctic ice is Lake Vostok, the seventh-largest body of fresh water in the world, yet one that has never been glimpsed by human eyes. To scientists, it is nothing less than an alien world, where the surroundings are so extreme that they could harbor previously undiscovered forms of life. Yet just 420 feet above its unseen surface, a Russian drill is poised, ready to break through and potentially pollute a pristine and unique environment.The Russians' goal is scientific, but it points to a growing threat in the Great White South, as a new boom of activity erodes Antarctica's isolation. Once the domain of doughty explorers such as Scott and Shackleton, Antarctica is becoming increasingly crowded by curious tourists, spellbound scientists, and countries hungry for oil and minerals.

Humans naturally have the power to remember almost two bits of information per second, or a few hundred megabytes over a lifetime. Compared with a DVD movie, which holds up to 17 gigabytes, that's nothing. Worse, you might easily recall the 40-year-old dialogue from Hogan's Heroes yet forget your mom's birthday. Or memorize reams of sports stats while spacing out on work you completed just last week.

Spy satellite images taken in the 1960s and declassified in the 1990s have been used to find ancient settlements in Syria.The sites are near the ancient fortress of Jebel Khalid, which was established in the wake of conquest of Western Asia by Alexander the Great in the third century BC.Work led by Ph.D. student Mandy Mottram of the Australian National University uncovered early Islamic pottery factories, mounds of artifacts from 130,000 years ago, and a hilltop complex of megalithic tombs in Euphrates River valley, northeast of the Syrian city Aleppo.The tombs are similar to chambers of stone called dolmens that are found in Europe.

It's not Jurassic Park, but scientists have reconstructed a 530-million-year-old gene by piecing together key portions of two modern genes descended from it.We've shown some of the elements involved in the process of evolution by reversing this process and reconstructing a gene that later became two genes," said study team member Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah School of Medicine.The achievement, detailed in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, could lead to new types of gene therapy, in which a damaged gene could be restored by pairing parts of it with portions from a similar gene from another part of the body, the researcher say.

It was a science fiction fantasy come true: Ten years ago this summer, NASA announced the discovery of life on Mars.At a Washington, D.C., news conference, scientists showed magnified pictures of a four-pound Martian meteorite riddled with wormy blobs that looked like bacterial colonies. The researchers explained how they had pried numerous clues from the rock, all strongly supporting their contention that microscopic creatures once occupied its nooks and crannies.It was arguably the space agency's most imagination-gripping moment since Apollo. Space buffs and NASA officials said that it just might be the scientific discovery of the century."If the results are verified," the late Carl Sagan pronounced, "it is a turning point in human history."

Christopher Columbus, the man credited with discovering the Americas, was a greedy and vindictive tyrant who saved some of his most violent punishments for his own followers, according to a document uncovered by Spanish historians.As governor and viceroy of the Indies, Columbus imposed iron discipline on the first Spanish colony in the Americas, in what is now the Caribbean country of Dominican Republic. Punishments included cutting off people's ears and noses, parading women naked through the streets and selling them into slavery."Columbus' government was characterised by a form of tyranny," Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen the document, told journalists.

American archaeologist/educator Nelson Glueck's suggestions that a gate lay buried at the entrance to the Iron Age fortress of Khirbat en-Nahas were recently realized when archaeologists discovered a four-chamber gate (only two have been excavated). Radiocarbon dating fixed the date of its construction to the 10th century

(SPACE.com) -- An eccentric orbit in the moon's distant past might be responsible for the mysterious bulge around its middle, scientists say.The excess material around the lunar equator has been known since 1799 when French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace first noticed it. The reason, however, has been a mystery until now.The moon's peculiar shape can be explained if the satellite moved in an eccentric oval-shaped orbit 100 million years after its violent formation, when the satellite hadn't yet solidified, the researchers say.

Romantic ideas of archaeology tend to be outdoors in nature, adventurous excursions to lost cities, ancient tombs and, occasionally, temples of doom. Chemistry, by contrast, rarely conjures up such notions: Laboratory all-nighters with centrifuges whirring just aren't that stirring.But the relatively young marriage of these two sciences - only a few decades old - has developed into a deep and sometimes revealing relationship.It was radiocarbon dating, invented by University of Chicago chemist Willard Libby in 1949, that gave archaeologists the ability to determine the "absolute age" of unearthed artifacts.Mobile laboratories and new analytical technologies have carried chemistry into the field. It's now routinely practiced at most archaeological digs, said Joseph B. Lambert, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University, used for everything from analyzing exploratory soil samples to ancient DNA.

This is when you'll see them, round barren patches devoid of plants and rocks. Perfectly circular and mostly equidistant, they pockmark the landscape like Leopard's spots.The Himba people, native to the Namib Desert, believe they have always been there, much the same way a zebra has always had its stripes. Colonialists believe that they're made by fairies, yes, the creatures of myth and folklore, that migrated across stormy seas to find new breeding grounds. In the Namib, evolutionary mutations cut deep into history. White Ladies (sand spiders) do cartwheels down dunes, owls leave their night time narrative printed in the sand like tattoos and the sound of the desert turns introspective. The enigma of fairy circles, much like Stonehenge and crop circles, has attracted researchers from many schools of thought. Theories have been flung about furiously, resulting in caustic disagreements and years of extensive correspondence.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) -- An almost 7,000-year old stone tablet found in Bulgaria bears carvings that might turn out to be one of the world's oldest inscriptions, a prominent Bulgarian archaeologist said Thursday."These signs are unique and apparently bear a meaning," Nikolai Ovcharov told a press conference. Ovcharov said he had received the tablet from a private collector who had unearthed it 20 years ago.

More fragments of an ancient manuscript concealed in a Co Tipperary bog over 1,000 years ago with a view to later recovery, have been found by the National Museum of Ireland, writes Seán Mac Connell.The discoveries also include a fine leather pouch in which the manuscript was originally kept.Museum experts have excavated the site at Faddan More, in north Tipperary, since the discovery of the manuscript last month by excavator driver Eddie Fogarty.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed its ambition to an international conference in Tokyo this week but has not yet been alotted the budget for the ambitious project.JAXA hopes to launch a satellite into lunar orbit next year, followed by an unmanned spacecraft that will land on the moon and a probe ship that will collect samples from the moon. Under the plan, the astronauts will be sent to the moon by around 2020 so that they will start construction of the base to be completed by 2030, the agency said.

Britain's antiquated drugs laws stand accused of failing millions of people because they bear little or no relationship to the harm caused by everything from a hit of heroin to a seemingly harmless pint of lager. The Home Office has been warned by its own senior advisers that alcohol and tobacco are more harmful to the nation's health than the Class A drugs LSD and ecstasy.Research by medical experts, who analysed 20 substances for their addictive qualities, social harm and physical damage, produced strikingly different results from the Government's drug classification system. Read moreA run down on 20 legal and illegal drugs listing can be found here. The list includes information on the number of UK users, the number of UK deaths in 2004, the street value and the danger rating.

A series of hidden texts written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being revealed by US scientists. Until now, the pages have remained obscured by paintings and texts laid down on top of the original writings. Using a non-destructive technique known as X-ray fluorescence, the researchers are able to peer through these later additions to read the underlying text. The goatskin parchment records key details of Archimedes' work, considered the foundation of modern mathematics.

An author believes he could have unveiled the final resting place of the Holy Grail - buried within the grounds of Lincoln Cathedral. Local man Callum Jensen, 50, who has written two books based on the Da Vinci Code mysteries, believes he has decoded a parchment which reveals its location. He has now requested permission to carry out a search of the grounds using a penetrative radar scan. A cathedral spokesman said the request was currently being processed. Roy Bentham, chief executive and chapter clerk for the cathedral, said: "All we can say at the moment is that Mr Jensen's request is now going through the relevant committees. "A decision is expected to be made by the end of the year."

Ancient Hawaiians started building their monumental temples at least three centuries earlier than previously thought, a new study suggests. They also spent more time building them, renovating and constructing new temples in waves depending on the island's political situation."This research provides conclusive evidence that the Maui temple network grew and expanded over a period at least five centuries," said Michael Kolb, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois and author of the study. "It's clear that the temple system evolved as part of a long trajectory of social and political change that also saw a shift from ancestral to sacrificial worship."

A new forecasting technique using multiple Doppler weather radars to track water vapor could produce forecasts of severe weather just moments before it pours.A project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) measures changes in the speed of radar signals caused by refraction of the signal off moisture. If the technique proves successful, scientists said today, it could be added in the next few years to the national network of Doppler radars.Regular Doppler radar spots raindrops or hailstones, but not the moisture that leads to precipitation.

HOBART, Australia (AP) -- Some of the coldest temperatures on Earth brought a rare cloud formation to the skies over Antarctica, scientists said Tuesday. Meteorological officer Renae Baker captured spectacular images of the nacreous clouds, also known as polar stratospheric clouds, last week at Australia's Mawson station in Antarctica. The clouds only occur at high polar latitudes in winter, requiring temperatures less than minus 176 degrees Fahrenheit. A weather balloon measured temperatures at minus 189 degrees Fahrenheit on the day the photos were taken.

U.S. scientists say they've found strong evidence an Alaskan tree refuge existed during the last glacial period, 17,000 to 25,000 years ago.University of Illinois researchers said a genetic analysis of living spruce trees suggests that trees cannot migrate in response to climate change as quickly as some scientists have thought.

WASHINGTON - The world's oceans contain many more types of microorganisms than had been thought, scientists report."Microbiologists have formally described 5,000 microbial species. This study shows we have barely scratched the surface," said Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass."In our new study, we discovered more than 20,000 in a single liter of seawater, having expected just 1,000 to 3,000. The number of different kinds of bacteria in the oceans could eclipse 5 to 10 million," he added.

Take a cab into Rome from Fiumicino airport and the odds are that the driver will hurtle you up the Via Ostiense, across the Aventine hill, and bring you out in front of the most breathtaking welcome to any European capital.Across the Circus Maximus, the remains of the palace of the ruthless Roman emperor Septimius Severus rear up like a Grand Canyon. At the eastern end, there is a gate in a fence and beyond lies a path winding through an eery, secret corner of the city. "It was closed off in the 1960s," said Giovanna Tedone, shutting the gate behind her. Halfway along the path, which runs beneath the palace ruins, stands a warden's hut smothered with graffiti. Nearby, a broken floodlight lies by a rusting gate.The reason no one below the age of about 60 has seen at close hand Rome's most massively imposing classical remains is that it is too risky to let them in.

Researchers say they have found the first evidence that the frozen outer reaches of our solar system could be littered with many more objects than we think.Astronomers have been trying to get a picture of the region, known as the Kuiper belt, because it is believed to contain debris from the birth of our solar system and so could tell us how planetary systems form. About 1000 large bodies, including Pluto and the recently discovered Xena, have been located in the Kuiper belt so far.But smaller objects have evaded detection as they are about 15 billion kilometres from the Sun, making it impossible to see them even with a powerful instrument like the Hubble Space Telescope.Now an Australian team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) has used optical fibre technology to detect signs of smaller Kuiper belt objects for the first time.

EAST HADDAM, Conn. - Archaeologists have begun digging up the 200-year-old graves of a slave family in hopes of separating fact from fiction in the legend of "the black Paul Bunyan."The dig has the blessing of more than a dozen descendants of Venture Smith who believe science can finally lend credence to the tales they have heard all their lives about the fabulous feats of strength that helped the lumberjack slave win his freedom.Standing 6-foot-1 by his own account and weighing more than 300 pounds according to local lore, Smith is said to have carried a nine-pound ax and split seven cords of wood each day. His biography describes him carrying a barrel of molasses on his shoulders for two miles and hauling hundreds of pounds of salt.

Archaeologists who measured the Egyptian pyramids at Giza more than 100 years ago were surprisingly accurate, a review of historical surveys has shown.The paper, posted online by Australia's Queensland University of Technology, reviews the major surveying projects of the pyramids Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, built around 2600 BC south of what's now Cairo."They weren't that far out; their surveys were quite diligent and systematic and we're getting fairly good agreement using modern technology," says the paper's co-author Robert Webb, a lecturer in surveying in the school of urban development.

Provincial archeologists are refuting a claim that Chinese explorers set foot on Cape Breton in the 15th century, long before the English or the French.Cape Breton-born architect Paul Chiasson says he found ruins of a settlement while hiking on Cape Dauphin, on the eastern edge of the island.Architect Paul Chiasson claims he discovered a Chinese settlement in Cape Breton.He says there's a road, a three-kilometre-long wall that snakes down a hill and stone platforms, all of which look similar to Chinese structures.In his book, The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America, Chiasson concludes that explorers from China built the settlement.

Argentinean scientists have discovered gigantic neck, back, and tail bones from one of the largest dinosaurs ever to roam the Earth. Most impressive is a back vertebra that measures 3.48 feet (1.06 meters) tall and 5.51 feet (1.68 meters) wide, according to Fernando Novas. The paleontologist announced the find at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires on July 21. The new species is one of the titanosaurs, a group of plant-eating sauropod dinosaurs that walked on four feet and are known for their long necks and tails. Based on analysis of the vertebrae and comparison with smaller, better-known titanosaurs, the paleontologist believes the new find was 115 to 131 feet (35 to 40 meters) long and weighed between 88 and 110 tons (80 and 100 metric tons).

Scientists have long known that hurricanes that lash the Atlantic coasts of North and Central America are born in storm systems off the west coast of northern Africa. In an ironic twist, these wettest of storms are driven by weather over one of Earth's driest of places, the Sahara (the name means desert in Arabic).To learn the details of what happens, NASA and university researchers are flying to the west coast of Africa for an international campaign called the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis, or AMMA. The NASA portion of the campaign is called NAMMA

Fragments of an ancient manuscript found in an Irish bog are being hailed as comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The discovery of the Psalter, or Book of Psalms, in the south Midlands is said to be one of the most significant discoveries in archaeology for decades. National Museum of Ireland specialists believe the manuscript may have been lost in transit or dumped after a raid - possibly up to 1,200 years ago. Museum director Dr Pat Wallace said it was "remarkably well preserved". "Nobody has found anything like this for centuries - we are going to find it very hard to find people who know about it," he said. The manuscript was found by a eagle-eyed digger-driver, who acted quickly to ensure its preservation.

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish company claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.Vehicle tests are some time away because the company, Bio Fuel Systems, has not yet tried refining the dark green coloured crude oil phytoplankton turn into, a spokesman said.Bio Fuel Systems is a wholly Spanish firm, formed this year in eastern Spain after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante.

About 20,000 years ago, humans trekked along the margins of a shallow lake in Australia, leaving behind records of their passage in the soft, wet sand.In 2003, an aboriginal woman who is likely a descendant of those early Australians stumbled across dozens of timeworn footprints in the same area. Excavations of the site have since uncovered hundreds more.The discovery, detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, represents the largest collection of Pleistocene human footprints in the world, and the only footprints from that era ever found in Australia. In total, 457 footprints have now been uncovered."The preservation is just remarkable," said study team member Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne in Australia. "You can see quite clearly how mud oozes between the toes."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Language centers in the brains of rhesus macaques light up when the monkeys hear calls and screams from fellow monkeys, researchers said in a study that suggests language skills evolved early in primates. Researchers who scanned the brains of monkeys while playing them various sounds found the animals used the same areas of the brain when they heard monkey calls as humans do when listening to speech.Writing in this week's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, the international team of researchers said this finding suggests that early ancestors of humans possessed the brain structures needed for language before they developed language itself.

KYOTO, Japan -- Hiroshi Ishiguro is a busy man. Between his two jobs, countless meetings and presentations, his demanding schedule was eating up all his time. So he built an android version of himself to pick up the slack.Click here to see photos of the androidIshiguro, a senior researcher at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories outside Kyoto, has created a machine in his own image -- a robot that looks and moves exactly like him. It sits on a chair and gazes around the room in a very humanlike fashion, just like its creator. In fact, the robot is an exact duplicate.

In the early 20th century, Milutin Milankovitch, a leading astronomer and climatologist of the time, proposed that the Earth's ice-age cycles could be predicted because they correspond directly with routine changes in the Earth's orbit and its tilt over cycles of tens of thousands of years. Because of these changes, there are predictable variations in the amount of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface. Milankovitch argued that low levels of summer radiation permit snow to accumulate as permanent ice, while high levels of solar radiation melt snow and ice. It all seemed so clean and simple. And indeed the hypothesis was partially confirmed in the 1970s from marine sediment records extending through 2.75 million years of northern hemisphere ice-age cycles. As Milankovitch predicted, ice grew and melted at cycles of 23,000 and 41,000 years. But two observations were unexpected: from 2.75 until 0.9 million years ago, the ice sheets grew and melted almost entirely at the 41,000-year cycle. Since then, an oscillation near 100,000 years has dominated. This knocked Milankovitch's theory for a loop.

It has a long mane and an even longer body - 10 metres (30ft) from crested head to mirror-scaled tail. But the Ninki Nanka, legendary "killer dragon" of west Africa, continues to prove elusive.Six people from the Devon-based Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) went to Gambia this month to look for the beast, which has often been "seen" by locals but never captured or photographed. In books it is usually portrayed as a giant lizard or a kind of dinosaur. The team spent a fortnight collecting reports of sightings and traipsing through swamps believed to be the Ninki Nanka's habitat. "Lots of people claimed to us that they knew someone, usually a grandparent or uncle, who had seen the creature," said Richard Freeman, the CFZ's director of zoology. "But very few had seen one themselves.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers said they found a seventh-century painting of a mythological Persian bird in Afghanistan's Bamiyan ruins, showing the region's Buddhism was influenced by pre-Islamic Iran.The team unearthed an image of what appears to be a Simorgh, the giant and powerful bird that figures prominently in Zoroastrian-era Iranian legends.The faded painting emerged after Japanese researchers removed soot from a Buddhist cave in Bamiyan, the region where Taliban Islamic extremists dynamited the world's tallest standing Buddha statues in 2001."This is the first time a vivid image of this creature was confirmed" in Bamiyan, an expert involved in the project at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties told AFP.