Newsdesk Archive

Whether sexual or asexual, reproduction is a necessity for all organisms to ensure their genetic material survives after they’ve bitten the dust (or in this case, the wet sand).  Half-a-billion-year-old animals are no different. Although in many ways it’s difficult to study how these ancient organisms reproduced, doing so is a critical aspect of our research. Here are some of the things we know about reproduction in the Ediacaran Period.

Rock art is part of our common heritage, regardless of our social, cultural, religious or economic status; the sites and the images they contain were created as part of daily life in the past. These visual expressions of mankind’s ideas are found worldwide.  In a series of lectures, Karen Osland, a California archaeologist and ethnobotany teacher, explains how recent discoveries suggest people have been processing earth pigments into paint for more than 77,000 years.

Can a splash of grey pavement paint help combat global warming? In Los Angeles, California, where summer temperatures regularly surpass 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), workers are coating streets in special gray treatments in a bid to do just that.  The City of Angels, home to four million people, is the first major city to test the technology.

An astronaut wandering the moon at some time in the future could be able to use a smartphone to call home. A German company is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface.

Since the beginning of time, canines have had a special role in Native American family life – as companions, helpers, teachers, protectors, workers, and even suppliers of fiber for weaving blankets and clothing.  So, here are 10 Indian Country canine breeds you should know – from the mighty Tahltan Bear Dog to the pocket-sized Chihuahua.

Tesla is hitting the road across Australia in a tiny house powered by 100% renewable energy.  The Tesla Tiny House, which was parked at the Melbourne’s Federation Square until 15 August, will soon begin a tour of eastern Australian cities, with the option for Australians to actually book it to visit their town

A young man in Slovakia, freshly graduated from Hlohovec, saw an unusual metal object sticking out of the ground during a grill party near the Váh river. He contacted preservationists in Trnava and they recognized the object as a dagger on a stick from the older Bronze Age, almost 4,000 years old.  Only four such daggers have been found.

Rare 1,000-year-old Calusa Indian artifacts, including pieces of wood, rope, and fishing net, were retrieved from a waterlogged midden located along the ancient shoreline in Pineland, Florida. The fishing net, likely fashioned from native cabbage palm tree fiber, has some of its knots still attached in a grid an inch wide.  The deposit also contained clamshell weights and unburned seeds from a gourd-like squash, possibly all that remains of attached gourds that once enabled the net to float.

What factors determine nomophobia, otherwise known as smartphone separation anxiety, and what behaviors and descriptors can help identify people with high nomophobia who tend to perceive smartphones as their extended selves? A new study compares how people with high and low nomophobic tendencies perceive and value their smartphones.

In South American shamanism, Vilca is the most sacred of all the plant medicines, although it’s practically unknown to a world that’s already becoming remarkably aware and (ill-advisedly) comfortable with Ayahuasca.   For over 3,500 years, a human finger with a channel bored through its center has been used as an inhaler for Vilca, perhaps the most powerful psychoactive plant medicine in the world, by people seeking a glimpse of transcendence, in a sacred ceremony of the Huachuma mesada.  While the Egyptians built their physical wonder of the world, the people of Chavín in the Peruvian Andes had already perfected the Vilca ritual as the peak of mind-and-spirit-expanding shamanic practices. Inhaled while already under the powerful influence of Huachuma (AKA San Pedro, a mescaline-based psychoactive medicine similar to Peyote), it forms a bridge between life, death, and rebirth.

Located on Peru’s northwest coast, Pañamarca was one of many ceremonial centers sacred to the Moche people. This colour slideshow from Archaeological Institute of America details explanations of the iconography of some of the best preserved murals that adorn the adobe structures at the site.

The United States has not seen a total solar eclipse sail from sea to shining sea in nearly a century. That means that next Monday, 21 August, when the moon engulfs the sun in the sky, a whole new generation will experience a celestial extravaganza unlike anything else. If you are one of these millions, then prepare to feel changed forever. So say the eclipse chasers who venture great distances and go to extreme lengths to witness these ethereal occurrences.

On August 21, the shadow of the moon will sweep down from space and slide across the surface of the Earth, bringing a total solar eclipse to parts of the contiguous United States for the first time in a generation. The highlight of totality for many will be the opportunity to view the incredible solar corona — the twisted outer atmosphere that reveals the presence of the sun's active magnetic field — as well as seeing stars and planets pop into view during the daytime. But there is another unusual phenomenon that is visible only when the sun has narrowed to just a filament of light: shadow bands.

No matter where you are, the entire eclipse event will last about three hours, from the moment the moon first touches the disk of the sun, to its maximum extent an hour and a half in, to the point where the sun and moon separate and continue on their solitary journeys.  Unless you're seeing the brief moments of 100 percent coverage, or totality, it is not safe to look directly at the sun without some serious eyewear. Sunglasses are not nearly enough.

Astronaut Jack Fischer, aboard the orbiting International Space Station, snapped this incredible image of the Cuando and Zambesi rivers with the sun glinting off them, creating a fiery reflection on 6 August, 2017.

With millions of people purchasing protective eyewear in advance of the August 21 solar eclipse, Amazon is working to remove potentially counterfeit glasses from its marketplace and issue refunds to those who have already bought them online.  A company spokesperson told ABC News in a statement overnight that it asked third-party sellers offering solar eclipse glasses to provide documentation to verify that their "products were compliant with relevant safety standards."  Sellers who did not provide documentation for their listings have been removed from the site. Amazon did not name any of those listings or specific brands in its statement. Amazon confirmed that it issued refunds to some customers who purchased glasses that may not meet industry standards.

A second modern stone circle draws visitors at newly opened Tout Quarry Sculpture Park and Nature Reserve in Dorset, England.  Tout Quarry first began producing stone for London buildings in 1750.  This now abandoned quarry has been brought back to life with a series of artworks that have been etched right into the remaining stone, creating an enchanting labyrinth of stone carvings and monoliths.

On Cedros Island, Mexico, Matthew Des Lauriers got the first inkling that he had stumbled on something special when he pulled over on a dirt road, meandered across the landscape, scanning for stone tools and shell fragments left by the people who had lived on the island in the past.  After analysis of what he found was dated to 12,000 years ago, we have more evidence for disproving the crumbling Clovis First theory.

Plants that are close relatives to tobacco are being turned into polio vaccine factories. The plants have been "hijacked" to make polio vaccine in a breakthrough with the potential to transform vaccine manufacture, say UK scientists from Norfolk.  The vaccine is an "authentic mimic" of poliovirus called a virus-like particle.

A Roman-era stone road dating back to 2,000 years ago has been unearthed during the excavations in the ancient city of Aigai in the western province of Manisa.

With eclipse-mania sweeping across America, interest in solar observation is becoming paramount.  It's easy to forget there are three vintage solar telescopes on California's Mount Wilson, which is dominated by a 150-foot tower. But they’re not cutting-edge devices, they’re more like legendary movie stars who have aged out of the best roles. Groundbreaking history was made here by Hubble and others. There's even a small note pinned to one wall that read, "Einstein was here," and in this case, it's true.

An archaeological site was discovered recently in Libya in the Marsalak area located in Tobruk City.  Discovered artifacts include a number of statues, one with a woman's head, the other a rabbit head and a third with a ram head, in addition to a number of ancient coins.

A tectonic microplate discovered off the west coast of Ecuador, between the Galapagos and South America, adds another piece to the Earth's tectonic puzzle according to Rice University scientists.  Geophysicists have named the plate "Mapelo," named for an island and the underwater ridge it contains.  

An incredibly accurate circular Trelleborg-type Borgring fortress is the first of its kind to be found in Denmark for 60 years.  Its earthworks, houses and other structures are meticulously arranged within the fortress, and have V-shaped ditches that are precisely circular, with four gates at the four points of the compass.

The pocket-sized handheld gadget is a modern version of an old spinning top, with a three-pronged piece of plastic or metal rotating around a central weighted disc.  Some models come with such features as LED lights and speakers which require a battery and charger.  The US Consumer Products Safety Commission has issued warnings that recent incidents indicate these devices could be extremely dangerous.

An extremely rare white humpback whale has been spotted off the Australian coast as he undertakes his annual migration.  The albino is believed to be Migaloo, the world's most famous all-white humpback, who has built up a loyal following since first being sighted in 1991.

Seaborne mystery lovers got a fresh dose of wonder when a mysterious ringed structure rose from the sands of a Canadian beach during low tide and triggered debate over what the curious wooden structure might be.  The strange wooden ring was found on Prince Edward Island, one of Canada’s maritime provinces and oldest active settlements. Local historians are still investigating, hoping to cross reference the location of the structure with historical records of coastal settlements. The chance remains, however, that this could be an important forgotten relic of seafaring history.

Sugar maples are prized for their valuable lumber, sugary sap, and dazzling fall colours.  A new study suggests that non-native worms are eating up the forest floor, causing sugar maples to die back and perhaps harming other forest dwellers. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and corpses aren't the only casualties. A Michigan Technological University scientist has fingered non-native earthworms as a primary culprit in the decline of an iconic American tree.

A house-sized asteroid will shave past our planet on 12 October, far inside the Moon’s orbit but without posing any threat, astronomers claim.  The space rock 2012 TC4 will zoom by harmlessly at a distance of about 27,300 miles (44,000 km).

A mysterious small faded brown parcel found by a metal detectorist in Jersey is believed to date back to the first century AD.  Now in possession of a field archaeologist, the object is believed to be a curse tablet ~ a mean favoured by the Romans for either encouraging good fortune or heaping misery upon an enemy. Both the curse and the identity of the intended target remain a mystery.

It might sound like an April Fools' joke, but the warning is apparently completely legitimate, as South Carolina has a history of Lizardman sightings. The SC Emergency Management Division tweeted out a handy map of where Lizardmen have been spotted in the past along with an overlay of the projected path of the upcoming solar eclipse on 21 August.

Eleven NASA and NOAA satellites, high-altitude balloons, hundreds of ground-based telescopes and even the International Space Station will all take advantage of this unique shadow-chase across the surface of the Earth on 21 August. However, it is not just looking up at the moon and sun that is important. Total eclipses also provide us with an unprecedented opportunity to examine our own planet under quite unusual conditions.

When a child suffers a long-term or chronic illness, one of the greatest psychological problems they confront is isolation from their peers and schoolmates. After speaking to children with a multitude of different health conditions, an engineer came up with an answer: a telepresence robot called AV1 designed to sit on a vacated classroom desk and be the eyes and ears of the sick child at home in bed. The child can see and hear the teacher, and the robot's rotating head offers a 360-degree view of the class.

French wine, Antarctic ice cores and an Indonesian volcano seem about as unconnected as things can get, but a recently published research paper ties them together.  Ice cores from both the Arctic and Antarctic showed a massive increase in sulfur in snow that fell in 1257. That sulfur could have come only from a huge volcanic eruption, but its location was a mystery for decades.  Geologic detective work showed it came from the Samalas volcano in Indonesia, the most sulfur-rich eruption of the past 7,000 years.

A rare workshop for the production of chalkstone vessels, dated to the Roman period, is currently being excavated in a small cave at Reina in Lower Galilee.   This is the fourth such workshop to be found.

A rising number of sea lions are being poisoned by toxic algae blooms in California, according to The Associated Press.  So far, 68 sea lions have been treated by the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.   According to a NOAA spokesman, the number is more pronounced than seen in the past few years.  The sea lions are getting sick because they eat sardines and anchovies that feed on the toxic algae. The algae releases a toxin called domoic acid, which affects the brain, and can even kill humans when contaminated shellfish is consumed.

Your thoughts are your own, are they not? Despite what you say or do in public, privately around others, or what information you share online, the thoughts, ideals, and actions contained within your own mind should be yours, and yours alone. However, advances in technology dealing with brain-imaging/brain-scanning, developed in order to study and interpret the human mind, may be encroaching on this way of thinking, and posing the question: is it our right to control our own thoughts and processes?

Thousands of years after they were built, the mysteries of Iron Age hillforts are shrouded in the mists of time.  More than 1000 are scattered around Wales.  Large portions of England, Scotland and Ireland have none.  Some hillforts are barely noticeable, but the enormous earthwork remains of others evoke the magic of The Hobbit.  Not all of them were used merely for defending communities from attack.

Archaeologists may have discovered evidence of an ancient civilization that disappeared from a corner of the southwestern US over seven centuries ago. The exodus of the Ancestral Puebloans known as the Anasazi has baffled scientists for years after they vanished without a trace from Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park in the 13th Century.

British antiquities experts are calling for an international body to investigate and repatriate stolen artefacts to counter the looting and sale of antiquities from the Middle East.  The pillaging of archaeological sites and museums as well as illicit digging has surged in the security breakdown that followed the 2011 Arab Spring.

When SpaceX’s latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) lifts off, among the rest of its payload will be something that has possible ramifications for future long-term space travel: an experiment to design computers that are resistant, if not immune, to the effects of radiation in space.

A team of astronomers have discovered using helioseismology and Doppler effects to measure waves over the course of 16 years that the core of our sun rotates about four times faster than the surface.

According to a new study by a team of astronomers from the Center of Cosmology at the University of California Irvine, such mergers are far more common than we thought. After conducting a survey of the cosmos intended to calculate and categorize black holes, the UCI team determined that there could be as many as 100 million black holes in the galaxy, a finding which has significant implications for the study of gravitational waves.

The importance of the Q’eswachaka Bridge, which crosses the Apurimac River in Peru, is extensive. To understand the impact this bridge has had on the Great Inka Road and the communities it connects today, it helps first to understand the history behind the bridge.  As the Great Inka Road, or Qhapaq Ñan in Quechua, was constructed, many logistical problems arose. Spanning nearly 25,000 miles, the Inka Road network runs through many different terrains, including the Andes Mountains. To solve the problem presented by steep canyons and gorges, the Inka pioneered suspension bridges as early as the 13th century that would allow soldiers, messengers, and officials to safely cross and further expand their civilization's reign.

In 1933, US Admiral Richard Byrd's second Antarctic expedition took with it three Guernsey cows.  The cows, named Klondike Gay Nira, Deerfoot Guernsey Maid and Foremost Southern Girl, plus a bull calf born en route, spent over a year in a working dairy on the Ross Ice Shelf. They returned home to the US in 1935 to considerable celebrity.

In the past few years, geneticists have accrued hundreds of archaeological samples — many of them petrous bones — from sites around the world and used them for blockbuster ancient-genomics papers that have charted the spread of agriculture, languages and little-understood cultures.  “It’s been like the Wild West, with several ancient-DNA labs approaching museums across the world on a daily basis,” says Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Humanity’s farthest and longest-lived spacecraft, Voyager1 and 2, achieve 40 years of operation and exploration this August and September. Despite their vast distance, they continue to communicate with NASA daily, and are still probing the final frontier.

Recent damage to Bocan Stone Circle, was photographed and reported on 11 Aug, 2017, by Diana Redig, a visitor from Belgium . The Bocan Stone Circle in County Donegal is a large despoiled ring-cairn with seven massive stones still erect in the east. Two stones larger than the rest mark the entrance. The alignment of the circle is E/W, and the peaks of Sliabh Sneacht and the three Paps of Jura visible in the distance may have been used to create this imaginary line.  Redig requests image gathering for comparison and further investigation.

Bot accounts are a persistent problem on Twitter, where they can be used to spam out favorable news stories, celebrity accounts, and influence politics more broadly.  A new spambot system called the Botometer, built by researchers at Indiana University and Northeastern University, looks at over 1000 factors ranging from the tweets themselves, including metadata on how and where they were posted, to the composition of followers.  Early results have been alarming.

A student on a university excursion to Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth found a rare green glass spearhead shaped by one of the island’s former Aboriginal prisoners.  Spearheads fabricated from glass or ceramics were used by the prison population for trade and perhaps to hunt quokkas, small wallaby-like marsupials

Trees have the ability to capture and remove pollutants from the soil and degrade them through natural processes in the plant. It's a feat of nature companies have used to help clean up polluted sites in small-scale projects. Now, a probiotic bacteria for trees can boost the speed and effectiveness of this natural cycle, providing a microbial partner to help protect trees from the toxic effects of the pollutants and break down the toxins plants bring in from contaminated groundwater.

Peruvian archaeologists digging a site in the surburbs of Cusco, Peru, have unearthed a circular wall that was erected some 3,000 years ago, built by an ancient people known as the Marcavalle culture.

A coroner's official said that more than 200 bodies had been taken to the Freetown city mortuary, which was left struggling to cope. The Red Cross said the death toll had risen to 312.  However, a precise death toll is not yet clear and is likely to rise as many people might have been asleep when the mudslide happened in the early hours of Monday, 13 August.  An estimated 2,000 people have also been made homeless after heavy rains caused properties to disappear under water.

Human skulls unearthed in the world's oldest temple Gobekli Tepe, in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, were recently reported in the Turkish media with the wrong visuals.  Many Turkish newspapers mistakenly used photos of skulls from completely different geographic sites and cultures - even one that was on display in the British Museum until December 2016.

In the 1960s, intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley were fascinated by the effects of LSD, but today most professors are far too worried about respectability and tenure to investigate psychedelics themselves. Which is somewhat ironic, given that the field of Western philosophy has a huge debt to psychedelics, according to Peter Sjöstedt-H, a philosophy doctoral candidate at University of Exeter who has written a book on the philosophical significance of drugs. In fact, one of Plato’s most-cited theories may have been a direct result of hallucinogens.

University of West Florida archaeology students and researchers spent the summer uncovering more details about the Tristan de Luna Settlement of 1559 overlooking Pensacola Bay which existed for only two years.  Luna Settlement, with over 1500 settlers, was larger than both the St. Augustine and Santa Elena settlements combined.  Records reveal that four ships came to resupply Luna's colonists and soldiers after a big hurricane in 1559.

Total solar eclipses are not rare phenomena; every 18 months on average one occurs somewhere on Earth.  Benjamin Franklin and his shipmates likely had seen eclipses before. What was different for Franklin was a new understanding of the causes of eclipses and the possibility of accurately predicting them.  He wrote about them in Poor Richard's Almanac in 1735.

The first genetically modified (GM) salmon, containing extra genes to help them grow faster, has finally hit the supermarket shelves in Canada after years of opposition and delays. The salmon has been cleared as safe by the FDA and other regulators, but still faces opposition from groups generally opposed to GM foods.

A new history book details the tale of how three 19th-century engineers – the Frenchman Apollinaire Lebas, the Englishman John Dixon, and the American Henry Gorringe – managed to transport their respective obelisks to London, Paris and New York. Careful detective work results in the book’s final image – an enlargement of an 1870s photograph, sourced from France – of one obelisk still erect and minus its tip in Alexandria. The author concludes that, before transport, Gorringe had its replacement cut and then reattached by means of a rod.

Deeply spiritual cultures claim to remember a time when "people from the stars" freely interacted with members of the human species.  The near-annihilation of Native Americans has also meant the disappearance of ancient knowledge we might never win back.

There are just 30 to 50 critically endangered North Pacific Right Whales left in existence. Researchers sometimes go years between sightings, but NOAA biologists luckily heard the faint calls of these two on acoustic recorder.

Saturn's giant golden hazy moon, Titan, has been essential to Cassini's mission from its arrival there in 2004 to the very end.  Cassini is slated for a mission-ending plunge in a few weeks' time.  Titan is just a bit larger than the planet Mercury, and given its size, has significant gravity which has been repeatedly used for bending Cassini's course and changed its velocity as it orbits Saturn.

The defaced remains of a majestic female statue uncovered at the archaeological site in the citadel gate complex of Tayinat in Turkey may challenge our understanding of the public role of women in the ancient world.  Initial speculations are that the figure represents either Kubaba, divine mother of the gods of ancient Anatolia, or the wife of the Neo-Hitite king Suppiluliuma, or possibly Kupapiyas, the wife or mother of the dynastic founder of ancient Tayinat.

50,000 year old deer ribs found in France suggest that modern humans may have learned toolmaking skills from Neanderthals.  These artifacts add to the growing body of evidence showing that the common view of Neanderthals as dimwitted or primitive is far from the truth.

Hair analysis of the remarkably preserved mummified remains of several children in Argentina show that they had consumed beer and coca leaves, from which cocaine is derived, during a year long preparation for their ultimate sacrifice.  They were all between the ages of 4 and 13 at the time of their deaths.

This article introduces the subject of rchaeoacoustics and ancient musical instruments which can be used in conjunction with a number of ancient sites from around the world. Also includes research investigating the global spread of ancient sites demonstrating acoustic resonance properties, and ponders whether ancient cultures had an understanding of using sound for altered states of consciousness.

What's made of sugar, can carry four people and travel at 50 miles (80 km) per hour? A biodegradable car in the Netherlands whose inventors say could be the next step in environmentally friendly motoring.

Thousands of scientists and their supporters have marched across India to promote their work and demand increased funding for scientific and technical research.  In addition to funding, organisers called for the end to "propagation of unscientific, obscurantist ideas."

The water near the base of iconic Niagara Falls that border the U.S. and Canada turned an alarming shade of black before tourists' eyes following a foul-smelling discharge from a nearby wastewater treatment plant.

An estimated 1 in 3 American adults have hypertension.  Blood pressure levels are often assessed by using automatic blood pressure devices which can be prone to significant errors, sometimes leading to the prescription of blood pressure-lowering medications to patients who don't actually need them.  A research team has developed a new technique called photoplethysmography to more accurately measure systolic blood pressure.

A map showing how the ground around the Yellowstone supervolcano has deformed over the last two years has been released by the U.S. Geological Survey. The map shows movement around the caldera between 2015 and 2017 using radar images of Earth’s surface collected from orbiting satellites.

Looking directly at the sun without the proper eye protection under any circumstances can cause serious damage to the retina and a decline in eyesight, even blindness. Even if one part of the sun is still visible behind the moon it can cause damage.  Only bonafide eclipse glasses or hand-held filters in good shape will protect your eyes while viewing the eclipse.  So don’t try viewing with regular sunglasses or home made filters.

A fruit bat discovered in a remote Papua New Guinea rainforest has been given official recognition as a new species.  The flying mammal earned the nickname because of its unusual resemblance to the Yoda, the Star Wars Jedi Master.  It has a rounder jaw than similar species and appears as though it is smiling.

Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan and Peking University in China have successfully taught several chimpanzees of all ages to play the simple childhood game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

The ancient temple city of  Sambor Prei Kuk in Cambodia has survived centuries of monsoons, a bombing campaign, and rampant looting.  But it is now ready for its renaissance and is teasing tourists to its forest-cocooned ruins.  Cloistered by trees and winding dirt trails, the site has played second fiddle to its much bigger cousin to the West - Angkor Wat - but July's new UNESCO World Heritage listing could breathe new life into the once-thriving 6th century metropolis.  Sambor Prei Kuk, which means "the temple in the richness of the forest", boasts nearly 300 brick temples and heaps of ruins across a 25 square kilometre (nine square mile) compound.

High rainwater levels in the Florida Everglades have stranded animals on levees and tree islands, triggering emergency measures last week by water managers to drain flooded areas. The US Army Corps of Engineers was allowed to change its water storage rules to temporarily allow for more water to be held in a conservation area west of Palm Beach and Broward counties through the fall and into the dry season.  The effects of high water in the River of Grass ecosystem can have serious detrimental impact on several endangered species such as wood storks and snail kites.

Edinburgh University researchers have uncovered the largest volcanic region on Earth – with almost 100 previously unknown volcanoes 2km below the surface of the vast ice sheet that covers west Antarctica.  Geologists say this huge region is likely to dwarf that of east Africa’s volcanic ridge, currently rated the densest concentration of volcanoes in the world.

Comet Swift-Tuttle is moving four times faster than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, according to an astrophysicist, and the resulting impact would release 28 times as much energy – or, the equivalent of 20,000,000 hydrogen bombs exploding. For the next 2,000 years, this particular comet poses little threat to Earth and its inhabitants, but eventually a gravitational nudge from Jupiter could push it off course, resulting in a number of possible scenarios.

Nestled in the dramatic Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, UK, there's a roomy limestone cave where a few generations of people lived about 14,700 years ago. They littered the floor with the remnants of their meals, leaving hundreds of bones behind for archaeologists to find.  Scientists have analyzed bones from six separate human beings which bear the distinct marks of cannibalism.  Symbolic bone carvings and skull cups hint at early spirituality and ritual use.

A new study suggests that we are able to separate illusion from reality because our brain keeps tabs by constantly questioning its own past expectations and beliefs.  Hallucinations occur when this internal fact-checking fails.  Study findings confirm that, when it comes to how we perceive the world, our ideas and beliefs can easily overpower our senses.

Science has now proven that the fairy forts (also known as ringforts, lios or raths) were not in fact the abode of spirits, or entrances to their underworld realms, but instead are the remains of the most common form of one-off housing and defensive outpost in Ireland from the late Iron Age right through the Bronze Age, Early Christianity and up to the Medieval era in some places.

A National Geographic guest blogger offers highlights and insights from a trip down the Rio Grand Gorge National Monument in New Mexico.  The people of northern New Mexico have deep roots in the landscape—they hunt, fish and gather nuts and firewood on these lands. The monument is a recognition of that connection and an effort to preserve it in perpetuity.

As part of a ritual, a Minnesota shaman was wearing a special garment made of raccoon skins in an attempt to connect with an ancient Mesapotamian character called Enkidu, which is similar to Bigfoot.  He was allegedly in the woods performing his ritual while traveling through North Carolina when researchers from Bigfoot 911 encountered him and believed he was the creature they were looking for.

What was relegated to the world of pure science fiction twenty years ago is today a part of our daily lives. Remote-controlled drones have evolved in a short time from government projects to something kids look for under the Christmas tree, and we’ve only just begun.

8000 feet beneath the ocean's surface, NOAA scientists have spotted a mysterious glowing creature pulsating and hovering above the seafloor amid a spiderweb of tentacles.  Experts say the rarely-seen deep-sea 'dandelion animal', despite its solitary appearance, is not one organism but many individuals living and working together.

Scientists from Oslo made computer models using data from 8000 years ago to find out why the different underwater landslides had different outcomes.  The answer may lie in how the sediments slide.

Scientists have decoded the secrets behind a goldfish's ability to survive in ice-covered lakes. They've worked out how and why the fish turn lactic acid in their bodies into alcohol as a means of staying alive. Some goldfish were found to have levels well above legal drunk-driving limits in many countries.  Scientists have also calculated for fun, how long it would take to produce an alcoholic drink from the fish excretions. For fun, scientists have also calculated how long it would take to produce an alcoholic drink from the fish excretions.

An international team of archaeologists believes it is on the cusp of pinpointing the location of a secret room hidden within the Great Pyramid of Giza as it uses cutting-edge laser technology to map the ancient Egyptian wonder.

In 1939, the famed British statesman approached the question of extraterrestrial life with a scientist's mind. “With hundreds of thousands of nebulae, each containing thousands of millions of suns, the odds are enormous that there must be immense numbers which possess planets whose circumstances would not render life impossible,” Churchill concluded in his essay.  He wrote these words on the eve of World War II—more than half a century before exoplanets were discovered.

A new investigation of the stone age rock art panel at Hendraburnick Quoit in Cornwall, southwest England, found nearly ten times the number of markings when viewed in moonlight or very low sunlight from the south east. Researchers also discovered that pieces of white quartz which would have reflected moonlight or firelight had been deliberately smashed up around the site.  Over 105 engravings have been found under low-angled light which now makes it the most highly decorated and complex example of rock art known in southern England.

A 100-year-old fruitcake believed to be from the Scott expedition has been found in a nearly "edible" state in the Antarctic.  The cake, wrapped in paper and stored inside a rusted tin, was found in the Antarctic's oldest building, a hut on Cape Adare.  It is believed to have been brought to the Antarctic by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott during his Terra Nova expedition between 1910 and 1913.

It might appear that the concept of entanglement -- one of the most fundamental in quantum mechanics -- is in direct conflict with general relativity: Two entangled particles, "communicating" across vast distances, would have to do so at speeds faster than that of light -- a violation of the laws of physics, according to Einstein. It may therefore come as a surprise that using the concept of entanglement in order to build up space-time may be a major step toward reconciling the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity.  Using holographic duality, an MIT physicist derived the entangled quarks, and found that what emerged was a wormhole connecting the two, implying that the creation of quarks simultaneously creates a wormhole. More fundamentally, the results suggest that gravity may, in fact, emerge from entanglement.

The conventional timeline of human evolution and migration continues to crumble in the face of new research. The latest finding puts anatomically modern humans deep in Indonesia up to 73,000 years ago — tens of thousands of years before once thought possible. Alt: Ancient teeth suggest modern humans crossed the ocean from Asia to reach Indonesia 13,000 years earlier than previously thought

As the hullabaloo surrounding the Aug. 21 total eclipse of the sun swells by the day, a University of Colorado Boulder faculty member says a petroglyph in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon may represent a total eclipse that occurred there a thousand years ago. Related: Do Other Planets Have Solar Eclipses?

Archeologists in New Zealand are starting to unravel the mysteries of an early settlement near the northern tip of the islands that may have been founded by some of the first Polynesians to arrive in the region around 700 years ago. Related: Ancient pottery reveals insights on Iroquoian population's power in 16th century

The Middle Ages produced a staggering wealth of literary works in dozens of languages that spanned nearly 1,000 years. But no English translation has been available until now.

Bees seem to understand the idea of zero – the first invertebrate shown to do so. When the insects were encouraged to fly towards a platform carrying fewer shapes than another one, they apparently recognised “no shapes” as a smaller value than “some shapes”.

Scientists have long pondered why we sleep. Despite being nearly ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, the exact role of slumber remains an open question. While multiple studies suggest that, in both rodents and humans, it helps consolidate previously learned memories, the question of whether new information can be learned while snoozing has yet to be answered.

People who played action video games that involve first-person shooters, such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, experienced shrinkage in a brain region called the hippocampus, according to a study published Tuesday in Molecular Psychiatry. That part of the brain is associated with spatial navigation, stress regulation and memory. Playing Super Mario games, in which the noble plumber strives to rescue a princess, had the opposite effect on the hippocampus, causing growth in it.

Marijuana users had a higher risk of dying from hypertension. Compared to non-users, marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no association between marijuana use and death from heart disease or cerebrovascular disease.