Newsdesk Archive

Agrigento, Italy, 20 August - An "important under water archaeological site" has been discovered in the tract of sea opposite the mouth of the river Akragas, in Agrigento, by a submarine of the Italian Naval League. Deep in the estuary, great blocks have been found along with paving stones. This is the ancient port of Agrigento. But there are also pieces of finely worked limestone. It is also thought that there was a temple. The results of the discovery have already been communicated to the Superintendency of Cultural and Environmental Goods in Agrigento, who will have to conduct further searches. (AGI)

Squaxin Island tribal member Sally Brownfield hit the jackpot Wednesday on the final day of this year's archaeological dig at an ancient tribal village on the shores of Mud Bay. As this summer's dig by South Puget Sound Community College's archaeology class came to a close, Brownfield meticulously unearthed a footlong deer or elk shoulder blade that apparently was used to shred cedar bark. Tuesday, she discovered in the same excavation plot an elk antler used to split cedar. It was one of the more significant finds of the dig, which is in its fifth year. "I'm not finding things; my ancestors are showing me things," Brownfield said. "For me, this is very personal. My great-grandmother grew up at Mud Bay."

One of the UK's rarest birds, the bittern, is enjoying its most dramatic increase in numbers, say new figures. The species appears to be recovering well from its near extinction in 1997, according to joint research by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and English Nature. Numbers of this extremely rare brown heron have reached at least 42 booming males - four times the level recorded six years ago. The RSPB says the figures are a triumph for conservation measures aimed at arresting the decline.

This brainless mud worm is a long-lost relative of human beings, scientists have discovered. It appears the slug-like creature found living at the bottom of a Swedish lake shares its ancestry with people. It does not have a brain or even sex organs and scientists are baffled about how the Xenoturbella procreates. However, researchers at Cambridge University are convinced it shares DNA with humans.

A $2bn space observatory that can study the early history of the Universe is set to be launched at the weekend by Nasa. It follows in the footsteps of the famous Hubble, Chandra and Compton observatories. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), as it is called, will detect infrared energy (heat) emitted from stars, galaxies and planets. Astronomers will be able to study cool, distant objects hidden by gas and dust that cannot be detected with visible light telescopes.

India's plans to link major rivers in the region to provide water to arid states are causing a furore among its neighbours and environmentalists. Indian officials insist that the project is at a very early stage and that concerned neighbours will be consulted before the plans are firmed up. But the proposals received new impetus recently when India's Supreme Court asked the government to speed up its plans to improve the management of water resources. India set up a task force in November last year to develop a consensus within the country and with its neighbours.

Britons are slowly starting to recycle more. Cars are much more efficient than those on the roads 20 years ago. Our houses are better insulated. And local supermarkets now stock eco-friendly devices, such as low energy light bulbs. But the environmental benefits could count for naught in the drive for economic prosperity, according to the Fabian Society. A report by the left-leaning think tank says our level of consumption stands in the way of sustainable development.

Since Ptolemiac times the port city of Alexandria has been a lighthouse for culture. True that the city has waned somewhat in certain periods but a recent face-lift together with the inauguration of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina have started to revive its original role as a city of culture. More so when the National Alexandria Museum highlighting the history of the town opens at the end of this month. The well-known timber merchant Asaad Pasha Bassily would never have dreamed that the palace, which he built in the heart of Alexandria in l925, would be turned into a museum some 75 years later.

A team of Egyptian-Japanese excavators has uncovered a square-shaped Islamic citadel covering an area of 84 square metres. The citadel which has seven defensive and two entrance towers is located in Tel Rayah area of Al Tor in south Sinai. Dr Zahi Hawas, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities disclosed that the team has found several items including a golden dinar from the reign of the Abbassid Caliph Haroun Al Rashid, minted in l81 Hajira (789AD), bearing the name of the first Minister of the Abbassid state, Jaafar Ibn Yehia Al Barmaki.

LONDON (Reuters) - American magician David Blaine, dubbed "the modern day Houdini," is to be suspended in a glass box over the River Thames in London for more than six weeks without food. The flamboyant, 30-year-old New Yorker, famed for spectacular stunts atop poles and frozen in ice, is to be hauled into solitary confinement on Sept. 5 in what he called "the most extreme exercise in isolation and physical deprivation ever attempted."

A University of Kentucky pharmacy researcher is working to create a prescription patch to deliver marijuana-like chemicals to ease nausea and stimulate appetite in people with AIDS and cancer. The patch would be a breakthrough because it could administer beneficial marijuana chemicals without inhaling the illegal plant. Most states outlaw smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes. Audra Stinchcomb's patch idea received $361,000 in funding three years ago by the American Cancer Society. "This is pioneering work," said David Ringer, scientific program director for the American Cancer Society. "It's a very novel use of cannabinoids."

A massive methane explosion frothing out of the world's oceans 250 million years ago caused the Earth's worst mass extinction, claims a US geologist. Similar, smaller-scale events could have happened since, which might explain the Biblical flood, for example, suggests Gregory Ryskin of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. And they could happen again: "It's a very conjectural idea but it's too important to ignore," says Ryskin.

Researchers have discovered the gene that controls honeybees' sex. The finding could help us understand insect behaviour and evolution, and keep beehives healthy. To become female, an insect needs two different versions of the gene, called csd. A male has one, occasionally two copies of the same version. There are at least a dozen different forms of csd. Such a gene was mooted 50 years ago, and entomologist Robert Page of the University of California, Davis, has spent the past 15 years looking for it. "I expected it to take ten," he says.

The House of the Surgeon was brought to light when Spaniard Francesco La Vega cleared the central zone of our city block of ash and lapilli in the 1770s. Characterised by its large limestone blocks and architectural layout, the structurally impressive house captured the interest of early visitors and scholars alike. It was in these early days of clearance that a set of sophisticated Roman surgical instruments was found in the house. Questions of who may have once lived here were seemingly answered--this was the House of the Surgeon! Of course, we can't be certain a surgeon actually lived in the house. Our research is more concerned with the archaeological importance of the property. It has captivated academic interest for generations; the House of the Surgeon features in textbooks on Roman domestic architecture as a key example of an early house type. We want to know when the house was built, its original layout, and how the space operated and related with neighboring properties. Now in our second season of excavating the House of the Surgeon, we're drawing closer to some of the answers. As we proceed, however, more and more questions arise.

In response to news about discovery of the mummy of Queen Nefertiti, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) Dr Zahi Hawas criticised British scientist Dr Joann Fletcher. Dr Fletcher, a member of a British archaeological team working in Egypt, recently claimed that the team from York University in England unearthed Nefertiti from a secret tomb (KV35) in the Valley of Kings.

Bacalar - Mexican archaeologists have unearthed what may be the resting place of dozens - and perhaps hundreds - of victims, including the tiny vertebrae and clavicles of children massacred during North America's last large-scale Native American war. The excavations in this Caribbean coast town have yielded a cautionary tale about the destructive power of rural conflict here. The dig at Bacalar's old San Joaquin Church illustrates how, when Mexico allows land and ethnic conflicts to simmer, they eventually explode, often with astonishing violence.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL dig in a Cheshire hamlet has emerged as one of Britain's most important excavations ever. Archaeologists working in Poulton, south of Chester, have discovered evidence of human activity dating back 9,000 years. They have unearthed five Bronze Age burial mounds, two Roman buildings and a medieval chapel and cemetery. The series of remarkable discoveries was made during excavations to find the lost Abbey of Poulton which once stood on the site.

Emergency action has been taken to ban deep water trawling in an area off the north west coast of Scotland to protect a unique coral formation. The Darwin Mounds, which lie 100 miles to the north of Cape Wrath, have been likened in importance to the Great Barrier Reef. The ban has been imposed by the European Commission following a request from the UK. The move follows fears that fishing was damaging the cold water corals, which were only discovered five years ago.

NHS patients are to be given cannabis as part of a government-funded trial. The study, which is being run by the Medical Research Council, aims to find out if the drug really can help to relieve pain. Scientists will randomly select 400 patients who have undergone surgery from 36 hospitals across the UK to take part in the study. They will be given one of four pills after undergoing surgery, two of which will be a form of cannabis. They will receive a capsule containing standardised cannabis extract or a capsule containing tetrahydrocannabinol - the active ingredient in cannabis.

The temple of Apollo, cradled in the spectacular mountainscape at Delphi, was the most important religious site of the ancient Greek world, for it housed the powerful oracle. Generals sought the oracle's advice on strategy. Colonists asked for guidance before they set sail for Italy, Spain and Africa. Private citizens inquired about health problems and investments. The oracle's advice figures prominently in the myths. When Orestes asked whether he should seek vengeance on his mother for murdering his father, the oracle encouraged him. Oedipus, warned by the oracle that he would murder his father and marry his mother, strove, with famous lack of success, to avoid his fate. The oracle of Delphi functioned in a specific place, the adyton, or "no entry" area of the temple's core, and through a specific person, the Pythia, who was chosen to speak, as a possessed medium, for Apollo, the god of prophecy. Extraordinarily for misogynist Greece, the Pythia was a woman. And unlike most Greek priests and priestesses, the Pythia did not inherit her office through noble family connections. Although the Pythia had to be from Delphi, she could be old or young, rich or poor, well educated or illiterate. She went through a long and intense period of conditioning, supported by a sisterhood of Delphic women who tended the eternal sacred fire in the temple.

If there are planets like Earth around other stars, they'll probably be water worlds, with awesomely deep, pole-to-pole oceans and no land in sight. So say Sean Raymond, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues. They have computer-modelled the late stages of planet formation, when Earth probably acquired its oceans1. The 110 planets detected so far around other stars are all much bigger than Earth, because they are the only ones that can easily be seen. But astronomers think that where there are big planets there may well be small ones - habitable ones, even. Many researchers think that liquid water is a prerequisite for habitability, as it is on Earth.

Imagine being called a bag of chips, just because that was your last supper. This unlikely fate befell an obscure marine worm, new research has revealed. The amorphous greenish-yellow sea creature was wrongly classified as a mollusc because specimens contained mollusc DNA and eggs. "Basically, the mollusc material was lunch," explains animal evolutionist Maximilian Telford of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, UK.

A hitherto unknown but vital weakness in the malaria parasite has been exposed by studying extracts from ancient Chinese anti-fever remedies. The discovery opens a new front in the fight against the parasite, which has become resistant in most parts of the world to the most common anti-malarial drug, chloroquine. Derived from the Chinese herb qinghao, or sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), the extracts have already saved millions of patients in south-east Asia who would otherwise have suffered or died when conventional drugs failed.

Good news for rational, level-headed Virgoans everywhere: just as you might have predicted, scientists have found astrology to be rubbish. Its central claim - that our human characteristics are moulded by the influence of the Sun, Moon and planets at the time of our birth - appears to have been debunked once and for all and beyond doubt by the most thorough scientific study ever made into it. For several decades, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people - most of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, the subject should have had very similar traits. The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.

In the scientific literature we can often read about some people saying they have "the third eye". Such people posses the qualities of an X-ray unit and can see through other people; they may also discern the biological structure of plants and other items Well-known researcher from the Russian city of Voronezh Anatoly Rodionov has been studying the unique phenomenon for over 40 years. The scientist has determined that the effect of bio-introscopy (diagnostic imaging) doesn't contradict the laws of nature and physics at all. In his book Experimental Bio-introscopy Anatoly Rodionov provided evidence proving that animated objects have biomagnetic fields; under some definite conditions these fields can be caught with "the third eye".

AN AMATEUR archaeological dig in King's Stanley has unearthed 800 years of secrets. Trenches have been reopened in an orchard next to St Georges Church on the site of a large 12th century dwelling - complete with kitchens, stables and even a moat. The dig was started more than 30 years ago by amateur archaeologist David Evans, but work commitments forced him to close the site in 1972. This week the project has started anew, with volunteers from the village helping Mr Evans and his wife Elizabeth uncover the secrets of the 800-year-old house. "What we have unearthed so far is the south-west corner of the house," said Mr Evans. "I could not get into the orchard the first time because it was private ground, but now the owners are happy for us to dig." During the first excavation, which was started in 1966, Mr Evans found a treasure trove of historical artefacts, from ancient silver coins to gilded horse trappings and hundreds of pieces of pottery.

Archaeologists have found the strongest evidence yet that the 1846 Donner Party -- trapped in the Sierra Nevada by early blizzards and ultimately forced to eat some of their companions -- made their winter camp at Alder Creek on the outskirts of modern Truckee. Although parts of the site have been excavated before, the team found what appears to be the camp's hearth, a key piece of evidence, as well as Donner- era artifacts and what may be a human bone scarred by the butcher marks of an ax. If the bone is human, "that would really be the smoking gun" -- the first physical evidence that the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter, said team leader Julie Schablitsky, an archaeologist who now works for the Oregon Department of Transportation. It would also provide strong support for the idea that the Alder Creek site is the actual winter camp. Although many descendants of the Donner Party view it as such, some historians claim the actual camp site is now submerged under the nearby Prosser Reservoir, and thus lost to history.

About 5,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius and the center of our galaxy, lies the bright star forming region cataloged as M17. In visible light, M17's bowed and hollowed-out appearance has resulted in many popular names like the Horseshoe, Swan, Omega, and Lobster nebula. But what has sculpted this glowing gas cloud? This Chandra Observatory image of x-rays from M17 provides a clue. Many massive young stars are responsible for the pink central region of the false-color x-ray picture, their colliding stellar winds producing the multimillion degree gas cloud which extends ten or so light-years to the left. When compared with visible light images, this x-ray hot cloud is partly surrounded by the nebula's cooler gas. In fact, having carved out a central cavity the hot gas seems to be flowing out of the horseshoe shape like champagne from an uncorked bottle ... suggesting yet another name for star forming region M17

A humble sea-sponge is showing scientists how to make better fibre-optic cables, used in modern telecommunications. According to new research published in the journal Nature, one type of sea sponge makes fibres which have significant advantages over those produced in human factories. Fibre-optic cables are the backbone of modern telecommunications, carrying telephone and computer signals in the form of light from one side of the world to the other. Even the best of human ingenuity cannot make these materials as well as the deep-sea sponge Euplectella, commonly known as the Venus Flower-Basket however.

London - Divers may have found the missing front section of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, marine archaeologists said Monday. Alex Hildred, the dive's project manager, said that if the find was confirmed it would be "the most important maritime archaeology find in England in the last 20 years." Experts have been diving to the wreck off Portsmouth on the southern English coast for the past month, and have excavated a five-metre long piece of wood they believe is the front stem of the ship's keel.

If visitors to the Acropolis in central Athens were to cast their eyes across the city to the south-east, they would soon spot a large gap in the densely populated neighbourhood of Markryianni, just a stone's-throw away. It is a building site for a controversial new Acropolis museum. For the Greek Government, the museum is a key part of the realisation of a long-held and much-cherished dream. The dream is to secure the return of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum more than 200 years after they were removed from the Acropolis and shipped to London on the orders of the British diplomat Lord Elgin.

Archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar might have pinpointed the site of the lower camp of the Donner Party about 30 miles west of Reno and might have found the evidence of cannibalism that has eluded researchers for 150 years. Artifacts dug up two weeks ago still are being examined, scientists said, but archaeologists located what might be a campfire pit in the area of Alder Creek near Truckee. They also found a bone fragment of a large mammal that bears the butcher marks of an ax.

An archeological excavation ahead of advancing highway construction crews in southern Israel turned up an 8,000-year-old Bronze Age settlement and the remains of a first century C.E. Jewish homestead, the Israel Antiquities Authority said yesterday. Contractors working on a new trans-Israel highway asked the authority to carry out an exploratory dig at Ptora, in the archeologically rich region east of the town of Kiryat Gat, before earthmovers started ripping into the ground. Kiryat Gat, founded in 1955, was named after the Philistine birthplace of the Biblical giant Goliath, which was believed to lie nearby, but most archeologists today believe Gath was located near Ashdod. The authority said remnants found at the 1.75-acre Ptora site showed that its Bronze Age inhabitants engaged in agriculture, copper production and the making of ceramics, and that they occupied the settlement continuously until about 3,000 B.C.E.

Humans could be living on the Moon within 20 years, says a leading lunar scientist. According to Bernard Foing of the European Space Agency, the technology will soon exist to set up an outpost for visiting astronauts. However, political will is needed to inspire the public to support the initiative. "We believe that technologically it's possible," the project scientist on Europe's first Moon mission, Smart-1, told BBC News Online. "But it will depend in the end on the political will to go and establish a human base for preparing for colonisation of the Moon or to be used as a refuge for the human species."

WASHINGTON - Adam and Eve may have put on fig leaves while still in the Garden of Eden but a study that looked at the most intimate of pests -- body lice -- suggests that humans started wearing clothes 70,000 years ago, scientists said on Monday. The genetic study of lice strongly suggests they -- and clothing -- arose soon after modern homo sapiens began moving out of Africa and into the cooler regions of Europe. Lice provide a unique insight into the development of clothing, according to the researchers, working in Germany. Only humans carry this particular species of louse, which lays its eggs in clothing. "It seems fairly obvious that the body louse arose when humans made frequent use of clothing," molecular anthropologist Mark Stoneking said in a telephone interview

DULLES, Va. (AP) The Smithsonian Institution unveiled a restored Enola Gay on Monday, making the B-29 bomber that helped end World War II the centerpiece of the new annex to the Air and Space Museum. The restoration, the result of 300,000 hours of work over nearly 20 years, made the B-29 bomber look as it did on Aug. 6, 1945 when it dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Over the years, some parts of the Enola Gay were replaced in normal use and others were lost or taken by collectors, said Dik Daso, the Smithsonian's curator of modern military aircraft. The Enola Gay has been restored so completely that it would probably start if fueled, officials said. But because components are so old it, wouldn't be flight worthy. Curators restored each part to the way it looked on ``mission day,'' down to particular radio tubes used at the time, Daso said.

The world's oceans are in crisis. Pollution, overfishing, invasive species, habitat destruction, and a myriad of other human impacts are impeding the oceans' ability to feed us, control the weather, and maintain Earth's chemical balance. Despite the human race's dependence on the oceans for survival, however, attention to marine conservation science lags far behind that paid to conservation of firm ground, according to Phillip Levin, a marine scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington.

Baby black holes gobbling hot gas in the cores of galaxies are more common today than they were ten billion years ago, a new census finds. The discovery confirms that black-hole activity is alive and well in our cosmic backyard, rather than it being an exotic fossil of the time when galaxies first formed. It also hints that astrophysicists will need to account for the influence of black holes on modern galaxies' evolution. Black holes lurk at the heart of most galaxies, usually doing nothing. Every so often, however, gas falls into them, is heated to millions of degrees, and gives out an X-ray glow. Niel Brandt, of Pennsylvania State University, and his colleagues searched for this glow with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite.

John P. Kuehne realized a dream this summer when he encountered a part of ancient Egyptian royalty. In the Nile Delta, halfway between Cairo and Alexandria, the Laureldale resident and Muhlenberg High School graduate discovered objects from the time of Pharaoh Merneptah, a son of Ramses the Great and the pharaoh some scholars say ruled during the Exodus. The items dating from Merneptah's rule from 1213 to 1203 B.C. were found in the New Kingdom Temple built by Merneptah near walls displaying his cartouche, a symbol Egyptians used as a sort of name tag. Kuehne dug out stone amulets, ceremonial jars and a partial skeleton of a sacrificial calf.

"Legend says Egypt never produced such beauty. Her very name means perfection. Her face adorns temples throughout the land and yet she vanished from history like a mirage." So begins the Discovery Channel documentary Nefertiti Resurrected, the record of Joann Fletcher and her 13-year quest to find the mummy of Egypt's fabled queen. The program, which debuted Sunday and encores tonight at 9 and midnight, features commentary by Fletcher and other scientists. These include Kent Weeks, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Ramses the Great's sons, and Egypt's director of antiquities, Zahi Hawass. Early on, it promises that Fletcher has "uncovered radical new facts about Egypt's legendary queen."

How does Mars appear through a small telescope? Viewed with the unaided eye or through a small telescope, possibly the most striking part of Mars' appearance is its red color. The color derives from rust, iron oxide, which composes perhaps 10% of the Martian soil. The oxygen that rusts the surface iron on Mars originates predominantly from carbon dioxide gas, which composes 95% of the Martian atmosphere. Mars nears its closest approach with Earth in nearly 60 millennia on August 27, the red planet continues to appear larger, brighter, and a good target for sky enthusiasts. Pictured above, Mars was captured from the Canary Islands of Spain during three days in three different orientations earlier this month. Visible through the small telescope are white polar caps of water and carbon-dioxide ice, light red areas rich in lightly colored craters, and dark red areas dominated by relatively smooth lowlands.

Renovation of Benjamin Franklin's London home has revealed everything from a basement pit containing over 1,200 human bones, to the windows where Franklin would sit naked facing the street, according to the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House, the London nonprofit that is readying the house for public tours. The organization is in the second phase of renovation work and recently completed interior restoration of the basement, first and second floors. Benjamin Franklin House, on 36 Craven Street, is the only original Franklin home in existence. He lived in the house between 1757 and 1775.

A 2,000-year-old spoon, used for scooping out shellfish, has been discovered at the site of a Celtic village. The tiny, copper alloy metal Romano British spoon, the handle of which is missing, was found by workmen at the Chysauster site, which is just three miles from Mounts Bay, near Penzance, Cornwall. A similar spoon was found during recent excavations in Newquay, north Cornwall. Cornwall County Council archaeologist Charlie Johns said the spoons would have had long, prong like handles to open shellfish. "They are the only two such spoons to have been found in Cornwall, and could have been of local manufacture," he said.

Experts working on the site of the Mary Rose say they have uncovered the front section of the Tudor warship. Divers have excavated a five-metre-long piece of wood, which they believe is the front stem of the vessel's keel. Archaeologists believe this stem could be attached to the front section, the bowcastle, of the ship which sunk in 1545. Experts hope the find is the missing piece of the jigsaw in the collection of artefacts from the vessel.

Somewhere off Turkey's Black Sea coast, in a grave a thousand feet beneath the waves, a ghostly mast stands erect in the gloom. Preserved for 1,500 years by the scarcity of oxygen in the Black Sea's depths, the wooden mast provides a tantalizing hint of the historical treasure that archaeologists have now begun to excavate. It is "a perfect wooden ship; it is perfectly preserved," said Lisa Jaccoma, a vice president at the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration. "It is sitting upright, in a silt layer, with a mast coming off it with a piece of line on top. It's extraordinary."

A revolutionary new type of solar powered engine will be at the centre of Europe's first ever mission to the Moon, project leaders have announced. They said the ion engines turn "science fiction into science fact" and will transform space travel by propelling craft at higher speeds over greater distances. Once in orbit around the Earth's nearest neighbour the unmanned probe, called Smart 1, will use British technology to map the entire surface of the Moon for the first time. It is hoped the mission will help form a better understanding of how the Moon was born and provide more information about its make-up.

Russian scientists have announced plans to build a nuclear power station on Mars. They say that all the necessary technical drawings have now been completed, and - after a few minor niggles have been ironed out - all will be ready for the construction work to begin. The power plant should be up and running by 2030. But experts are already asking questions about the feasibility of the project. The first extra-terrestrial nuclear power station will serve the permanent research camp which, Russian scientists believe, could be set up on Mars within the next 30 years.

A Uruguayan ship suspected of poaching protected fish in Australian waters is being chased by customs officials after it failed to heed warnings to stop. The vessel, the Viarsa, is believed to have an illegal haul of the rare Patagonian toothfish - a sought-after delicacy also known as the "white gold" of the Southern Ocean. The long-line trawler was first seen inside Australia's fishing zone about 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) south-west off the coast 10 days ago and repeatedly ignored radio orders to stop.

It already plans to build the tallest tower and artificial islands shaped like palm trees and like a map of the world. Now the ostentatious emirate of Dubai is to host the world's first underwater hotel. Called Hydropolis, the hotel will resemble a giant submarine anchored in the Gulf, accessible only by a tunnel via a waterside reception area. The German architect and investor behind the project, Joachim Hauser, said it would "address mind, body and soul in an unparalleled manner". The main challenge would be to get people to understand its philosophy, he said. Work on the $A760 million, 220-suite facility would begin this year, finishing in 2006. Mr Hauser did not elaborate on how he would build the underwater hotel or persuade holidaymakers to stay there.

You might think an ice continent is the last place scientists would look for clues to global warming. But Kiwi scientists are leading a $27 million, 10-year research project at Antarctica to figure out how global warming will affect global sea levels in the next century. Project Andrill involves 100 scientists from the US, Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand and is being managed by Christchurch-based Antarctica New Zealand. Four holes will be drilled in the 1.5m-thick Ross Ice Shelf, through 800m-900m of water and then a kilometre into the seabed.

Paleontologists are used to drab brown and gray fossils. Sediments that seep in to cast the shape of ancient organisms in stone, determine the color. Instead, long-gone beasts and the ancient worlds they inhabited, spring to life in the depths of these scientists' imaginations. Now under exceptional circumstances, scientists have uncovered and explained a 50-million-year-old beetle fossil that still retains the bright blue metallic hue it sported in life. This beetle and others from the same site, are very rare examples of fossils that retain any original color, and are the oldest colored fossils ever found.

Vaccination may induce life-long immunity to smallpox, suggest the results of the first detailed tests of their kind. This means that any terrorist release of smallpox might not spread as catastrophically fast as feared, and fewer people might die. Smallpox was declared eradicated in the wild in 1980, after a worldwide vaccination campaign. But the disease stopped circulating earlier in the west, and routine vaccination ceased in the 1970s. That means most westerners born since then have not been vaccinated, making smallpox - which is highly contagious and kills a third of its victims - potentially a horrific biological weapon.

Something was left behind when New Brunswick's historical Indian Queen Tavern was moved to Piscataway three decades ago. Now, archaeologists are surveying the outhouses once used at the Albany Street and Johnson Drive site, searching for clues about how earlier generations lived. The dig by John Milner Associates of West Chester, Pa., must be performed before the state Department of Transportation can widen Route 18 in New Brunswick. The $140 million project will add a lane in each direction between routes 1 and 27, reconstruct four interchanges and make other improvements.

The earthquake of January 18, 749, is thought to be one of the strongest ever to hit the Middle East. Till recently, researchers knew about the quake only from historical sources. A Coptic priest from Alexandria reported that support beams in houses in Egypt had shifted; a Syrian priest wrote that a village in the region of Mount Tavor had moved a distance of four miles; while other sources spoke of huge tidal waves in the Mediterranean Sea, of Damascus shaking for a few days, and of smaller cities and towns being swallowed up in the earth.

Art is part of what makes us human. Primitive or otherwise, though, it is not only about painting pretty pictures, but also about the complex use of symbols and forms of language. An Australian archaeologist once told me that he had listened to an Aboriginal man talk for three hours about the meaning of a bark painting he had made. What to the uninitiated may have appeared to be no more than an attractive but random series of dots and lines was, the awed archaeologist admitted, in fact part of a complex web of stories and ideas.

It sailed from New York on Oct. 18, 1865, carrying 59 passengers and a cargo of hope bound for a once-confident New Orleans now recovering from Civil War traumas. The storm hit off Georgia. For two days, the steamship battled hurricane winds and giant waves. Then the engine failed and the paddle wheels went dead. The crew and passengers heaved cargo overboard to lighten the ship. But the pumps failed and seawater poured into the hold. The Republic went down a week after it set sail. Most made it into lifeboats and a raft; 42 men, women and children survived. But the cargo of money, $400,000 in coins as described in newspapers of the day, went down with the ship.

Icelandic whale hunters have left port for their first hunt in 14 years, angering animal welfare groups and environmentalists. The first of three boats left port in the early hours of Sunday, having been delayed by stormy weather on Friday. The two other boats left on Sunday afternoon - their routes kept secret. No kills have been reported yet from any of the boats. "Our plan calls for the whales to be taken in specific areas," Gisli Vikingsson, lead scientist on one of the boats, told state radio. The vessels are on a six-week mission to kill 38 minke whales - a mission Iceland insists is for scientific purposes, to protect its fish stocks.

Slithering out of concealment into the Mediterranean temperatures, the UK's reptiles are delighting in the British heatwave. That means more encounters with people, and more people upset and frightened by what they see. English Nature, the government's wildlife advisers, have published a guide to identify reptiles and reassure the anxious. They expect even more snakes to be out and about once the weather breaks and rain returns.

Pakistani authorities have begun a massive clean-up campaign to tackle the thousands of tons of crude oil that have spilled from a wrecked tanker off Karachi. Maritime experts say 12,000 metric tons of oil have spilled into the Arabian Sea while another 35,000 are still on board the Greek-registered Tasman Spirit. Dead fish and turtles littered two main beaches and a key mangrove forest had been badly hit, environmentalists said, while doctors reported dozens of people suffering from nausea.

In Paris in 1876 a 31-year-old banker named Albert took an 18-year-old named Bettina as his wife. Both were Rothschilds, and they were cousins. According to conventional notions about inbreeding, their marriage ought to have been a prescription for infertility and enfeeblement. In fact, Albert and Bettina went on to produce seven children, and six of them lived to be adults. Moreover, for generations the Rothschild family had been inbreeding almost as intensively as European royalty, without apparent ill effect. Despite his own limited gene pool, Albert, for instance, was an outdoorsman and the seventh person ever to climb the Matterhorn. The American du Ponts practiced the same strategy of cousin marriage for a century. Charles Darwin, the grandchild of first cousins, married a first cousin. So did Albert Einstein.

Britain may be basking in one of the hottest summers on record, but scientists now fear that the UK could face an abrupt switch to freezing winters and Icelandic summers. Leading global warming experts suspect that climate change, instead of being a gradual and largely predictable process, could mean that Europe's weather patterns will worsen severely with very little warning. At any time after 2010, their research suggests, Britain's average temperature could drop by up to 5C within as little as three or four years - with catastrophic results for farming, transport, northern towns and tourism. That would leave Britain with the same average temperatures as Iceland, said Professor Jochem Marotze, one of Europe's leading oceanographers. "It would wreck agriculture the way we know it now," he said.

Our solar system's natural defenses are down and a vigorous cosmic dust storm is blowing through, according to a new study. The forecast calls for a prolonged and increasing blizzard of small interstellar bits. While no serious consequences are expected, the extra dust could slightly alter our night sky and might pose an increased risk to spacecraft, which are vulnerable to high-speed impacts from the tiny particles. The whole scenario is also a vivid reminder that there is no such thing as empty space. The number of incoming particles recently tripled and the pace is expected to grow over the next decade. Terrestrial weather and climate will not likely be affected, but more shooting stars could grace the night sky, said the study's leader, Markus Landgraf of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Few scientific disciplines seem to generate as many mysteries and falsehoods as astronomy and, by extension, the supporting space science effort to explore the unknown. From alleged hoaxes and conspiracies to unintentionally inaccurate accounts, there is plenty to debunk and correct. Some of the bad information out there is demeaning to real science, an affront to astronomers, astronauts and the general public. Allegations that the Moon landings were fake tops that list. Some of the misinformation is just what it is, non-facts that manage to pop up again and again, either in our brains or in print, many of them perhaps because they seem logical enough. A classic example is the erroneous suggestion that meteors burn up due to friction with air molecules.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. -- In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van, looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled. Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists are now on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships and a possible human settlement left mummified in the Black Sea's oxygen-free waters.

Three people have been arrested and accused of digging up an Indian village and stealing artifacts from the site, state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents said. A fourth person was cited in the case but not arrested. Part of the Dewey W. Wills Wildlife Management Area was dotted with yellow flags, marking where the alleged looters had been. Water bottles, soda cans, cigarette packs and cans of insect repellent were found near the holes in the ground, agents said. Jody Lynn Smith, 35, Angela M. Walker, 23, Joshua W. Huffman, 22, and Joseph B. Kilpatrick, 42, all of Deville, are accused of taking artifacts from the site. Wildlife and Fisheries Maj. Keith LaCaze said Walker and Huffman were arrested Aug. 5 after agents set up surveillance at the site. Two juveniles were with them but were not arrested or cited, he said.

Seattle could experience a one-two punch. First, an earthquake reaching 9 on the Richter Scale could strike the Pacific Northwest. A quake of this intensity would be enough to pulverize skyscrapers and kill people where they stood. Along with the predicted eruption of Mt. Rainier, this foretells a dire future for the area. Jill Stoddard, of the Columbia University Earth Institute, writes that new research on the coastal waters off Vancouver reveals that the area where the Juan de Fuca and North America plates overlap is almost twice the size seismologists thought it was, and the greater the overlap, the more friction that's built up, resulting in a more powerful earthquake. They've also discovered that the earthquake zone extends farther towards the mainland than they realized, creating an additional hazard for coastal communities.

A narrow but intense wind may be the mechanism responsible for the existence of a newly discovered ocean convection site east of Greenland, says a University of Toronto scientist. In earlier research, oceanographers discovered that deep water in the Irminger Sea (east of Greenland) was of similar temperature and salinity to that in the Labrador Sea. The latter is one of only two areas where deep ocean water is traditionally thought to form in the North Atlantic through convection (a process whereby surface water loses heat and moisture, becomes dense, sinks to the bottom and flows towards the equator).

When Sujata Halarnkar came to city staff members looking for some work, she thought she might teach a cooking class on Indian cuisine. But the city took one look at her resume and saw a much better position for the Indian native -- archaeologist-in-residence. The 42-year-old San Ramon resident now instructs "Digging the Past," one of the more popular youth programs in the city. She plants fake bones and arrow heads around the grounds of the Crow Canyon Gardens and then leads her students through the process of an archaeological dig.

Last Thursday, millions of people had an unexpectedly good view of a dark night sky. Usually, the reflection of city lights off of local air impurities makes it hard for casual observers to see more than a handful of stars from a bright urban area. A large power outage in northeast North America, however, dimmed most city lights and brought unfamiliar celestial wonders to many who looked up. The unexpected starscape was perhaps a small perk in the face of hardships endured by many during the black out. Prominent in the above four-image digital montage are two of the few celestial wonders that can be seen even above the usual glare of city light pollution: the Moon and Mars. Both appear on the far left, with Mars to the upper right of the Moon. Scrolling right will show how eerily dark New York City appeared from across the Hudson River in New Jersey at about 10 pm on 2003 August 14. Visible lights are mostly attributable to cars, local power generators, flashlights, and candles.

One of the defining characteristics of being human is the creation of objects, first seen some 2.5 million years ago at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Artefacts gave instant advantage in the quest for food and security, but these functional objects progressively took on other meanings and values. They came to symbolise human control over animals and the environment and signify relationships with other people and the spiritual world. This new exhibition illustrates the varied ways in which prehistoric objects, both the mundane and the exceptional, could be involved in the exercise of power and control from the earliest times up until the end of the European Bronze Age (800 BC). From as early as 1.5 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, flint tools of exceptional size were created, such as the Edmonsham handaxe. Size in itself had begun to matter for personal prowess, irrespective of the object's utilitarian value. By the Upper Palaeolithic (35,000 years ago), ornaments were being suspended on body and costume and the first inescapably non-functional objects had appeared. From this remote time on, humans were both creators of artefacts and authors of their meanings.

A hoard of Viking-Age silver of international importance which was found in the Isle of Man in March this year was today declared Treasure Trove by the High Bailiff, Mr Michael Moyle. The collection of 464 silver pennies, 25 silver ingots and a broken silver armlet dating to the 1020's AD was uncovered in the west of the Island by a local metal detectorist, Andy Whewell, who then very promptly reported the discovery to Manx National Heritage.

AGRA: UP Chief Minister Mayawati's plans for the Taj Heritage Corridor have expectedly proved to be a monumental error with the rain-fed Yamuna reclaiming large parts of its bed 'reclaimed' by the project and endangering the plinth of the monument. Despite the region receiving only 'moderate rainfall' so far, Archaeological Survey of India officials here say the damage to the Taj is already clear and present. With the river's girth having been reduced by the Mayawati-sanctioned reclamation, the velocity of its flow has dramatically increased, putting pressure on the plinth of the Taj Mahal, in addition to the Khani-Alam situated next to the Taj and the Mehtab Bagh, situated directly opposite the Taj, across the river.

As she turns 32 this year, writer Nukila Amal is proud to confirm that she has freed herself from "the blueprint of how women should live their lives". She does things her way, working for a certain period, and then spending the rest of her time doing what she wants. The latter may consist of traveling, taking a guitar course or making ceramics -- whatever takes her fancy. It's only when she runs out of money that she returns to the drudgery of a 9-to-5 existence. The last time was last year when she worked in a bakery -- "a need for bread, literally" -- a five-minute walk from her house in Kebun Jeruk, West Jakarta.

Bad weather conditions have prevented Icelandic whalers from carrying out their first hunt for 15 years. High winds and choppy seas halted vessels which were set to leave on a six-week mission to kill 38 minke whales. Iceland's government said it was embarking on a scientific whaling programme, and authorities had been due to issue permits on Friday. They say the mammals have become so abundant since a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling that they are threatening stocks of fish, including cod.

Scientists say there is no evidence to support claims that a popular herbal supplement reduces cholesterol. They have suggested that guggul may actually increase cholesterol rather than lower it. Guggul extract has been used in traditional Indian medicine for thousands of years. Besides its supposed impact on cholesterol, there have been claims that it protects against heart disease, stroke, tonsillitis and bronchitis. Dr Philippe Szapary and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine tested the extract on a group of volunteers.

A warming climate and not local fishermen is to blame for the falling fish harvests in Lake Tanganyika, according to new research findings published in the British journal Nature. The shortfall threatens the diets of the lake's shoreline countries of Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The study was carried out by a team of researchers led by Catherine O'Reilly of New York's Vassar College. Lake Tanganyika, the second largest lake in the world, yields 200,000 tonnes of fish a year, an important source of food and revenue for the shoreline nations.

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni allocated LE 20 million for the restoration of the archeological sites and prepare them to receive foreign and Egyptian visitors. It is known that this area groups four ancient Egyptian capitals. Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawas said the three-phase project, due to finish in three years, includes lifting the huge statue of Queen Merit Amoun found recently in Tel Basta, Sharqia.

A competition is running to test the detective skills of the physicists who will grapple with data from the next generation of particle accelerators. They have been given two months to find secret physics hidden in a simulated data set. The data is intended to mimic the results that will pour out from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) when it is switched on in 2007. The LHC, under construction in tunnels beneath the French-Swiss border at CERN, will be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.

A groundbreaking exhibition is showcasing Iraq's rich roots in Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that gave birth to the world's first urban civilization some 5,000 years ago. On view at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art through August 17, 2003, "Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus" focuses attention on the distinctive style and far-reaching influence of the art created by the Sumerians of lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, who founded the first cities, invented writing, created monumental architecture and developed irrigation, poetry and the rule of law, were also extraordinary craftsmen. "It was a very elite society," says the show's curator Joan Aruz, "with sophisticated music, art and literature."

Egyptologists believe they have recreated the face of the legendary Queen Nefertiti. A picture of the Egyptian ruler was built up by a team which discovered a mummy in what is thought to be her tomb. Dr Joann Fletcher uncovered what she believes is the tomb and worked with her team to create the face. Nefertiti - whose name means "the beautiful or perfect one has come" - lived more than 3,000 years ago and was famed for her elegant profile and swan-like neck. She was married to the pharaoh Amenhotep IV who established both his own religion and the capital of Egypt at Amarna.

WILSONVILLE - A discovery made at a popular state park near Wilsonville is changing the way Oregon's history is told. This summer at Champoeg State Park, Oregon State college students are making history, one discovery at a time. A forty-by-forty foot site is revealing evidence of a Willamette Valley settlement that's earlier than ever believed. Discovered by accident, Dr David Brauner says his students have found a brick hearth and fireplace several feet below ground level. Centerpieces of a small cabin dating back decades before Oregon Trail pioneers arrived in wagons.

On a high hilltop terrace in Oaxaca, Mexico, a team of Field Museum archaeologists discovered a 1,500-year-old underground tomb while excavating a palace-like residence. Although it was near the end of their excavation season, they dared not leave the tomb unexplored. News of this find at El Palmillo was sure to get around, and looting would follow. As it was, workers had to guard the tomb every night until the tomb was excavated. Images of the stone-lined interior snapped with a digital camera and flash through an exposure created long ago when the door of the tomb shifted helped plan the excavation and showed that the tomb remained in good shape.

A catastrophic 'superflood' following the rupture of a massive glacier-dammed lake in Canada at the end of the Ice Age probably plunged the world into centuries of climatic chaos. That single event was likely responsible for the most dramatic climate change of the last 10,000 years, according to a report by a Canadian team led by Professor Garry Clarke, a geophysicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which appears today in the journal Science. The 'superflood' was enough to alter ocean circulation in the Northern Hemisphere: analysis of ice cores taken in Greenland reveal that for the next 200 years or so, the mean temperature dropped by 5°C, snow accumulation decreased sharply and forest fires became more frequent. Clarke's team found that the water body, known as Lake Agassiz, reached a massive 163,000 cubic km in volume - at least double that of the largest contemporary lake, the Caspian Sea - and that its release was "by far the largest known glacial outburst of the past 100,000 years".

If whimsical could describe any place in Cairo, it could very well be within the walls of the Roman Fortress of Babylon to the south of the modern city. Within the looming brick walls and soaring castle towers, the cobbled streets and Roman arches blend intricately with the Coptic churches, Fatimid mosques, and surviving Ottoman structures. The words of Florence Nightingale's Letters From Egypt whirl in one's head, as ancient scenes are brought back to life in the hallways of one's imagination. "We went through narrow, narrow streets, with threads, not gleams, of sun through them," Nightingale wrote, "where the Moorish balconies not only met, but overlapped, overhead, to a Coptic Church in the Roman Fortress, where a Coptic funeral was going on. From hence we went to a Coptic convent, still on the site of the Roman fortress, of which the church is of the third century, full of beautiful Moorish screens and ivory work with saints which work all sorts of miracles.

Experts at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh are celebrating after successfully germinating the world's largest seed. The Coco de Mer - which is produced by a palm tree found in the Seychelles - is as heavy as eight bags of sugar and notoriously difficult to cultivate. Horticulturists in Edinburgh received the gift from the Victoria Botanic garden in the Seychelles in April. Fiona Inches, who is responsible for growing the seed, said her team had hoped to see some results in about 18 months. "Here we are four months down the line and we have got this emerging shoot, which is about 10 centimetres long at the moment," she told BBC Scotland. She said this could reach four metres in length before it found a spot to develop roots and shoot. If all goes well the new plant should put out its first leaf within a year.

A giant laser has cut the lifetime of a speck of radioactive waste from millions of years to just minutes. The feat raises hopes that a solution to nuclear power's biggest drawback - its waste - might one day be possible. "It is not going to solve the waste problem completely, but it reduces toxicity by a factor of 100. That's an attractive proposition," says Ken Ledingham, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, who led the British and German research team. The transmutation was performed using the Vulcan laser, which is the size of a small hotel and housed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. About a million atoms of iodine-129 were transformed into iodine-128. The half-life of iodine-129 is 15.7 million years, meaning it remains radioactive for an extremely long time. In contrast, the half-life of iodine-128 is just 25 minutes.

In the coming years, the skies are going to be increasingly dotted with all types of uncanny aircraft. But interstellar travelers won't be piloting these vehicles. What is likely to be zipping across your airspace are identified flying objects of the terrestrial kind. They are better known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and these robotic policing craft are loaded with high-tech sensors and other snooping gear. Homeland Security head, Tom Ridge, has said his department is considering the use of UAVs to monitor U.S. borders "very seriously" and plans to work with the Department of Defense in evaluating the robot planes for this task by year's end. Robert Bonner, Department of Homeland Security's commissioner of customs and border protection, told Congress in June that UAVs could offer a unique service. "UAVs may well be a good answer for stretches of the border that do not have enough sensor protection," he said.

Shards of history, discarded and lost in time, are being unearthed in an archeological dig at the Milton House Museum. From the pieces of glass, pottery, flat-head nails and broken pipe stems found Thursday buried in the sandy soil, Bob Fay is providing missing links to the city's historical legacy. Fay, 51, is an archeologist with Old Northwest Research in Two Rivers. The Milton Historical Society hired him for three weeks to help put the historical puzzle together. "There is so much we don't know about the history of the building (Milton House)," said David McKay, executive director of the society. "Whatever we find will help us tell the stories."

STEPS to permanently halt ploughing on the Gorhambury estate, which was damaging Roman remains buried there, have been backed by the Government. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has given the landowners scheduled monument consent to replace hedgerows and put in water pipes across the Roman Verulamium fields, off Hemel Hempstead Road. St Albans District Council has been pushing English Heritage and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to repeal the estate's permission to plough the land for more than two years. As part of a voluntary agreement, Gorhambury was not ploughed during this time. Yet there were fears that ploughing would resume again.

Rich star fields and glowing hydrogen gas silhouette dense, opaque clouds of interstellar gas and dust in this Hubble Space Telescope close-up of IC 2944, a bright star forming region in Centaurus, 5,900 light-years away. The largest of these dark globules, first spotted by South African astronomer A. D. Thackeray in 1950, is likely two separate but overlapping clouds, each more than one light-year wide. Combined the clouds contain material equivalent to about 15 times the mass of the Sun, but will they actually collapse to form massive stars? Along with other data, the sharp Hubble images indicate that Thackeray's globules are fractured and churning as a result of intense ultraviolet radiation from young, hot stars already energizing and heating the bright emission nebula. These and similar dark globules known to be associated with other star forming regions may ultimately be dissipated by their hostile environment -- like cosmic lumps of butter in a hot frying pan.

In 1706, Paul Lucas, traveling in southwest Turkey on a mission for the court of Louis XIV, came upon the mountaintop ruins of Sagalassos. The first Westerner to see the site, Lucas wrote that he seemed to be confronted with remains of several cities inhabited by fairies. Later, during the mid-nineteenth century, William Hamilton described it as the best preserved ancient city he had ever seen. Toward the end of that century, Sagalassos and its theater became famous among students of classical antiquity. Yet large scale excavations along the west coast at sites like Ephesos and Pergamon, attracted all the attention. Gradually Sagalassos was forgotten...until a British-Belgian team led by Stephen Mitchell started surveying the site in 1985. Since 1990, Sagalassos has become a large-scale, interdisciplinary excavation of the Catholic University of Leuven, directed by Marc Waelkens. We are now exposing the monumental city center and have completed, or nearly completed, four major restoration projects there. We've also undertaken an intensive urban and geophysical survey, excavations in the domestic and industrial areas, and an intensive survey of its vast territory. Whereas the former document a thousand years of occupation, from Alexander the Great to the seventh century, the latter has established the changing settlement patterns, the vegetation history and farming practices, the landscape formation and climatic changes during the last 10,000 years.

A hoard of Iron Age gold coins has been found at an archaeological dig in Norfolk. The coins, which are about 2000 years old, were discovered at Sedgeford in north west Norfolk. The 18 coins which show a horse on one side, were found stuffed inside a cow bone after it was x-rayed at a hospital. A number of loose coins were also found at the Sedgeford site.

ANKARA - The houses founded in Catalhoyuk, central Turkey -- one of the most ancient settlement areas in the world, have been covered with a roof for protection. After the Catalhoyuk Research Project's tenth year was completed, Culture and Tourism General Director Nadir Avci visited the excavation site and obtained information from Standford University Archeology Professor responsible for excavation Ian Hodder. Afterwards, Avci opened 20 houses excavated in southern Catalhoyuk, saying that it was necessary to take protective measures since they were trying to preserve the finds after excavating.

The Archaeological dig at Carmarthen Castle could prove to be of national importance. For over nine weeks a team from Llandeilo-based Cambrian Archaeology have spent endless hours digging and sifting through the earth at the medieval castle for time-locked clues into life of Carmarthen's past. And in the last week, they have made some significant discoveries. Probably the earliest of the man-made structure - the edge of the moat - was found. Whilst digging they also found a clutch of shoes, wooden bowls, a horse skeleton, more bones and even faeces and moss that had been preserved in the waterlogged depths of the moat, through anaerobic preservation. Another interesting find was a piece of lead, understood to have been used for decoration, with two crosses embossed on it.The dig was supposed to have finished this week, but because of the significance of the finds so far the archaeologists have been given a three-week extension."It is quite an important dig and it could turn out to be of national importance in the end, once we have done all the research and identified all the finds," said archaeologist Duncan Schlee.

The discovery in the Lac Mégantic region of three fragments of spearheads, believed to be more than 10,000 years old, is being hailed as a major find. The artifacts, which will be displayed at a press conference today, are said to be the first evidence of human habitation in Quebec after glaciers receded and the ice age ended some 12,000 years ago. They are from fluted spearheads typical of weapons used in the early Paleo-Indian period, which existed from 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The fragments are of the Clovis style, which was characteristic of weapons and tools of that era in several parts of North America.

An organism has been discovered that can thrive at a record-breaking 121 Celsius. The single-celled microbe grows at higher temperatures than any other known lifeform, according to scientists in the United States. Strain 121, as it is known, was extracted from water gushing from super-hot springs at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. These hydothermal vents, warmed by molten rock deep within the Earth's crust, teem with strange lifeforms, such as tubeworms and huge clams. The microbe, about a hundred times smaller than a grain of sand, belongs to an ancient group of bacteria-like organisms known as archae. Even autoclaving - the process used to sterilise medical instruments - cannot destroy it. The fact that it can survive temperatures reached inside a pressure cooker has implications in the search for early life on Earth and other worlds.

There is a good scientific case to extend the mission of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for a further five years, says a report published on Thursday - but astronomers will have to make it. A panel of experts commissioned by the US space agency (Nasa) believes the observatory has been so successful in unlocking the secrets of the Universe consideration should be given to keeping it serviceable beyond 2010 - its current termination date. This would ensure astronomers have access to a major space observation platform while they wait for Hubble's replacement, which is not due for launch until 2011. The panel, chaired by Professor John Bachall from Princeton University, has delivered a report that sets out the possibilities for the retention of the telescope.

The world's coral reefs, weakened by centuries of human exploitation and abuse, may disappear this century, researchers say. They believe the recent outbreaks of coral disease and bleaching could prove the final insult. But another group says some corals are proving more resilient to damage than others. Although no reef is safe, they argue, many are likely to change rather than simply disappear entirely. The contrasting views are published in the magazine Science, which also includes research suggesting forest fires pose a growing threat to coral's wellbeing.

The first Icelandic whale hunt for 15 years is about to start, with vessels ready to embark on a six-week mission to kill 38 minke whales. The government says it is embarking on a scientific whaling programme, and authorities are expected to issue permits on Friday. They say the mammals have become so abundant since a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling that they are threatening stocks of fish including cod. But the decision has been attacked by the UK and US governments, as well as animal welfare groups.

A limestone statue of Kakar, one of the servants of God Amon latest temple was unearthed in the area of Tel Basta in Zagazig, Sharqiya governorate. . Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said a mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) also discovered the remains of octagonal-shaped limestone columns with hieroglyphic inscriptions dating back to the same era of the statue, the Modern Kingdom (1550-1069 BC). He said this confirms the existence of other parts of the temple built by King Ramses II, expected to be discovered soon. SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawas said the 70 centimetres tall statue depicts Kakar in the sitting position wearing a wig, with engravings of Hat-Hor, ancient Pharaonic goddess of love and beauty, adorning the statue at the front, in addition to hieroglyphic inscriptions on its pedestal.