Newsdesk Archive
The proton has lost a little of its bulk. A fresh attempt to pin down its mass, with three times the precision of the previous best try, finds that the subatomic particle is 30 billionths of a per cent lighter than we thought.
There’s a new particle in town, and it’s a double-charmingly heavy beast. Researchers working on the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of the esoterically named Xicc++ particle. The find could help us probe our understanding of one of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe.
In the continuous pursuit of a truly renewable and clean energy source, nothing compares to nuclear fusion. Although scientists have already found ways to harness the energy from the reaction that powers stars, it hasn't been an easy feat.
University of Washington researchers have invented a cellphone that requires no batteries—a major leap forward in moving beyond chargers, cords and dying phones. Instead, the phone harvests the few microwatts of power it requires from either ambient radio signals or light.
For years, our electronic devices have been getting smaller and faster, but the trend can’t continue until we solve one big obstacle: batteries.
Batteries are the bottleneck of any electronic system
New study demonstrating that human ethical decisions can be implemented into machines has strong implications for managing the moral dilemmas autonomous cars may face on the road
STEP into a taxi in south London later this year and you might not have to think about paying a tip. The UK’s first fully public trial of autonomous vehicles will soon be under way.
Starting 2019 onwards, all vehicles manufactured by veteran automaker Volvo will either be hybrid or electric. According to Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Car Group's president and CEO, "We are convinced that the future of Volvo is electric."
France is considering banning the sale of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, the country’s environmental minister said Thursday, according to multiple reports. It’s unclear, however, whether this proposal is an official position of French President Emmanuel Macron’s new government, and if so, how it will be implemented
Related: Traffic found to be a major source of atmospheric nanocluster aerosols
There’s been a lot of scepticism about whether renewable energy can produce all our future energy needs. So last week, a Chinese province went out of their way to show it was possible for the entire region to run solely on green energy.
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.
If greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced, ice-free areas are expected to surge by as much as 17,000 square kilometres
A chunk of ice bigger than the US state of Delaware is hanging by a thread from the West Antarctic ice shelf, satellite images revealed Wednesday.
When it finally calves from the Larsen C ice shelf, one of the biggest icebergs in recorded history will be set adrift—some 6,600 square kilometres (2,550 square miles) in total, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
In his poems of the Iliad, the Greek Philosopher Homer introduces us to the mythical city of Troy, which remained a curiosity to many until the late 1870s when Heinrich Schliemann, on a hunch, began excavating the remains of an ancient city in Turkey. Although he was an amateur archaeologist and his methods were considered somewhat outlandish, Schliemann would evidentially find Troy and confirm its place in history.
There is a hill in the Amazon rainforest that stretches out over two acres of land. It is called Montegrande and, to look at it, it seems like nothing more than another hill. A particularly steep one perhaps, but nothing more than an overgrown mound of earth. For centuries, it was ignored, and, in time, as Peru’s cities and towns stretched further out in the Amazon, farmers even set up their homes on top of it.
In a remote corner of northwest China, a recently excavated 3,000-year-old sun altar offers clues to how the region's tribal cultures practiced religion thousands of years ago.
Alt: 3000-Year-Old Earthworks Confirmed as Sun Worship Altar on China’s Silk Road
In the farmlands of southeastern Turkey there is a hill that rises out of the landscape. Unlike the surrounding plateaus, it has a gentle slope like a mound. At its top is a depression which looks like a belly button, hence the name Gobekli Tepe which means “potbelly hill.” Potbelly Hill looks unnatural to the landscape and it is
Radar technology detects inner stone structure thought to commemorate Neolithic building dating to 3500BC and a focal point for Neolithic community
Chalking or “scouring” the horse was already an ancient custom when antiquarian Francis Wise wrote about it in 1736. “The ceremony of scouring the Horse, from time immemorial, has been solemnized by a numerous concourse of people from all the villages roundabout,” he wrote.
Small cradles of chrysanthemums, illuminated by a single candle, flicker in the moonlight, bobbing along the fast-flowing Ganges River.
They are offerings. For hundreds of millions of Hindus around the world, the river is the goddess Ganga, or Mother Ganga, who descended to Earth from her home in the Milky Way.
Urban streams and wetlands play an important role in the proper functioning of our cities. They protect our houses from floods, provide green spaces for recreation, trap and breakdown pollutants and provide valuable habitats for many native plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians and birds.
The most extensive study to date on neonicotinoid pesticides concludes that they harm both honeybees and wild bees.
Researchers said that exposure to the chemicals left honeybee hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and solitary bees produced fewer queens.
Plants and brains are more alike than you might think: Salk scientists discovered that the mathematical rules governing how plants grow are similar to how brain cells sprout connections. The new work, published in Current Biology on July 6, 2017, and based on data from 3D laser scanning of plants, suggests there may be universal rules of logic governing branching growth across many biological systems.
Mindful meditation is becoming an increasingly popular tool, one that people use to manage both their emotional and mental health. The practice is, in essence, the art of not reacting—the art of finding inner stillness through the use of external stillness. It’s taking the time to close your eyes, turn your focus inward, and put all of your energy into just breathing.
The School of Chinese Medicine (SCM) of Hong Kong Baptist University recently completed a clinical trial on the use of acupuncture for weight control. After an eight-week treatment, the participants' average body weight decreased by 2.47 kg, with a weight loss of 7.2 kg for the most successful participant
For the 10 million Britons suffering from arthritis, it may be cold comfort to know that they might not be alive today at all, were it not for their aching limbs.
The medieval cemetery in Ii Hamina in northern Finland on the Iijoki river was originally discovered by accident. A recent study examined the isotope compositions of the teeth of the dead. It turned out that the population in the small village survived throughout the 15th and 16th centuries despite the Little Ice Age.
Out-of-the-ordinary archaeological finds never fail to fascinate us as we dig into the past – like the prehistoric potato granules unearthed in Utah, which experts say could be up to 10,900 years old.
Did the Norsemen of Scandinavia have tattoos? Did runic script adorn their arms as they sailed their longships down fjords? While material remains offer few clues, one piece of historical evidence says 'yes' - at least for those Varangians who plied the Volga with their trade goods, traveling throughout Russia, Central Asia, and even down to the Middle East.
Tel Aviv University archaeologists have revealed that cloth samples found in the Israeli desert present the earliest evidence of plant-based textile dyeing in the region. They were found at a large-scale copper smelting site and a nearby temple in the copper ore district of Timna in Israel’s Arava desert and are estimated to date from the 13th-10th centuries BCE.
Those who are lucky enough to have well-kept family records may be able to trace their history back several generations. Some can even track family connections going back a few centuries. But what if you were told that you are a descendant of a Stone Age man that was brutally murdered around 5,300 years ago?
Neanderthals treating toothaches?
A discovery of multiple toothpick grooves on teeth and signs of other manipulations by a Neanderthal of 130,000 years ago are evidence of a kind of prehistoric dentistry, according to a new study led by a University of Kansas researcher.
It’s a sex-laced mystery. If modern humans didn’t reach Europe until about 60,000 years ago, how has DNA from them turned up in a Neanderthal fossil in Germany from 124,000 years ago?
The answer seems to be that there was a previous migration of early humans – more than 219,000 years ago. One that we’re only just starting to reveal from piecemeal evidence that is DNA extracted from fossilised bones.
Scientists in Peru have managed to reconstruct the face of a powerful ancient female leader using 3D printing.
The woman, known as the Lady of Cao, belonged to the Moche culture in northern Peru and died 1,700 years ago.
To date, the exact purpose of Paleolithic cave paintings is unknown. Evidence suggests, however, that these ancient works of art are more than mere decorations. Cave paintings may have played a role in Paleolithic man’s religious rituals.
Archeologists digging in a 5,000-yearold graveyard in Shandong Province, the home of Confucius, found a number of skeletons measuring close to 1.9 meters, making this a land of relative giants in a country of short people.
Using five different scientific approaches, a team including University of Wyoming researchers has given considerable support to the idea that humans lived year-round in the Andean highlands of South America over 7,000 years ago.
Related: Ancient Inca Festival Celebrating Sun God, Once Practiced in Secret, is Revived in Peru
Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
Related: Breakthrough in dating Viking fortress
The South Caucasus—home to the countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—geographically links Europe and the Near East. The area has served for millennia as a major crossroads for human migration, with strong archaeological evidence for big cultural shifts over time. And yet, surprisingly, ancient mitochondrial DNA evidence reported in Current Biology on June 29 finds no evidence of any upheaval over the last 8,000 years.
The discovery of a hundred-million-year-old specimen, beautifully preserved in amber, shows how the birds of yesteryear hatched fully prepared for takeoff
Paleontologists like us are used to working with fossils that would seem bizarre to many biologists accustomed to living creatures. And as we go farther back in Earth’s history, the fossils start to look even weirder. They lack tails, legs, skeletons, eyes…any characteristics that would help us understand where these organisms fit in the tree of life. Under these circumstances, the science of paleontology becomes significantly harder.
Over two million years ago, a third of the largest marine animals like sharks, whales, sea birds and sea turtles disappeared. This previously unknown extinction event not only had a consid-erable impact on the earth's historical biodiversity but also on the functioning of ecosystems. This has been demonstrated by researchers at the University of Zurich.
Alutiiq Museum archaeologists have located the remains of a stone fish trap and an associated set of petroglyphs on northern Kodiak Island. The features are believed to be prehistoric and reflect Alutiiq salmon fishing traditions. While petroglyphs are a well-known feature of Kodiak’s cultural landscape, the fish trap is a rare find. It is the first intertidal fishing structure identified in the Kodiak region.
Scientists have discovered two phases of liquid water with large differences in structure and density. The results are based on experimental studies using X-rays.
Related: Dr. Gerald H. Pollack | The Fourth Phase of Water
Using an off-the-shelf camera flash, researchers turned an ordinary sheet of graphene oxide into a material that bends when exposed to moisture. They then used this material to make a spider-like crawler and claw robot that move in response to changing humidity without the need for any external power.
Researchers have built an electrocaloric refrigerator the size of a beverage coaster that can generate a temperature difference of about 2 K between the hot and cold ends of the device.
A woman claiming to be his daughter filed a paternity suit
On Monday, a judge in the case ordered Dalí’s body to be exhumed, a step made necessary, the court said, because there are no other items from which Dalí’s DNA can be extracted
Fragments of carved bone unearthed at an ancient site on a Turkish hillside are evidence that the people who spent time there belonged to a neolithic “skull cult” – a group that embraces rituals around the heads of the dead.
The remains were uncovered during field work at Göbekli Tepe, an 11,000-year-old site in the south-east of the country, where thousands of pieces of human bone were found, including sections of skulls bearing grooves, holes and the occasional dab of ochre.
Alt: The World's Oldest Known Temple Was Home to a ‘Skull Cult’
A federally funded research effort to revolutionize water treatment has yielded a direct solar desalination technology that uses energy from sunlight alone to heat salt water for membrane distillation. The technology could provide off-grid water treatment for some of the 1 billion people who lack access to clean water.
The notion of an artificial leaf makes so much sense. Leaves, of course, harness energy from the sun to turn carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates that power a plant’s cellular activities. For decades, scientists have been working to devise a process similar to photosynthesis to generate a fuel that could be stored for later
France is to stop granting licences for oil and gas exploration as part of a transition towards environmentally-friendly energy being driven by Emmanuel Macron’s government.
Towering walls of concrete entomb lush forests on mountainsides in southwest China as workers toil on the dry riverbed below to build the country's latest mega-dam.
The colossal construction site in Sichuan province swallows three rivers, providing another display of China's engineering prowess but also of the trauma it inflicts on people and nature along the way.
Wind energy is soaring in the U.S.; the nation’s renewable energy capacity has more than tripled in the past nine years, and wind and solar power are largely responsible. Now businesses want to harness even more wind energy, at a cheaper price—and one of the best ways to lower cost is to build bigger turbines.
In the past three years, global emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have levelled after rising for decades. This is a sign that policies and investments in climate mitigation are starting to pay off. The United States, China and other nations are replacing coal with natural gas and boosting renewable energy sources. There is almost unanimous international agreement that the risks of abandoning the planet to climate change are too great to ignore.
Robots are paving the way toward lucrative space mining as NASA and private startups launch pioneering prospecting missions to precious metal-rich asteroids.
Space mining may sound like science fiction, but it’s real, and big developments are on tap in the next decade.
The asteroid is Apophis, discovered in 2004 by Roy A. Tucker, David J. Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. At that time, astronomers calculated that the 40-million-ton, 370 meters (1214 feet) wide rock had a 2.7 percent chance of hitting the Earth on Friday the 13th in April, 2029, when it will pass within 18,600 miles of the planet.
Japan plans to put a man on the moon by 2030, according to a new proposal by the government's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa).
It is the first time Jaxa has announced its intentions to explore the lunar surface, and will most likely form part of an international mission, the agency said.
Now that we can detect gravitational waves, a new generation of stargazers is turning its attention to the Universe and using observatories that can be disrupted by a passing rabbit. Gravitational-wave detectors are going to give us an entirely new view of our place in the cosmos.
The plane of our solar system is warped in the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt, suggesting the presence of an unknown Mars-to-Earth-mass planetary object far beyond Pluto—but much closer than Planet Nine.
Physicists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeing an everyday phenomenon in a new light.
By focusing laser light to a brightness one billion times greater than the surface of the sun - the brightest light ever produced on Earth - the physicists have observed changes in a vision-enabling interaction between light and matter.
Passengers at Boston's Logan International Airport were surfing their phones and drinking coffee, waiting to board a flight to Aruba recently when a JetBlue agent came on the loudspeaker, announcing: "Today, we do have a unique way of boarding."
Related: U.S. now can ask travelers for Facebook, Twitter handles
CERN and the Large Hadron Collider depend on a massive computer grid, as does the global network of scientists who use LHC data. CERN scientists are now teaching an AI system to protect the grid from cyber threats using machine learning.
Scientists have reconstructed in detail the collapse of the Eurasian ice sheet at the end of the last ice age. The big melt wreaked havoc across the European continent, driving home the original Brexit 10,000 years ago.
An odd extinct mammal that lived in South America during the last ice age had a long neck like a llama's, three-toed feet like a rhino's and what may have been a tapir-like trunk. This peculiar combination of traits fueled a mystery lasting nearly two centuries about how to classify the bizarre beast.
In a twist for archaeologists, two ancient human sites in Spain recently yielded a treasure trove of bones—packed inside mounds of fossilized hyena poop.
The million-year-old droppings are part of two hyena latrines, areas where the bone-crunching carnivores piled up their waste to mark territory and keep the rest of their habitat tidy.
The shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, are dry and inhospitable, with grasses as the dominant plant type. It hasn't always been that way. Over the last four million years, the Omo-Turkana basin has seen a range of climates and ecosystems, and has also seen significant steps in human evolution.
Digging for Rome’s new underground network has unearthed the charred ruins of an early 3rd-century building and the 1,800-year-old skeleton of a crouching dog that apparently perished in the same blaze that caused the structure to collapse.
In a remote corner of northwest China, a recently excavated 3,000-year-old sun altar offers clues to how the region's tribal cultures practiced religion thousands of years ago.
The ruins were discovered in 1993, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, but were not excavated until last year. Archaeologists can now confirm their initial suspicions that the site was used as a sun altar during the Bronze Age.
China drone-maker DJI is betting on flying machines that shoot pesticide instead of photos to fend off growing competition in the global remote-controlled aircraft market.
The SolarWise garden in Ramsey, Minnesota, doesn't look especially cutting edge as solar farms go. But in April, it quietly achieved a milestone: It became the first U.S. solar facility to host commercial beekeeping. The apiary is part of an effort to rethink how land for clean energy can be used to supply more than just kilowatts.
Widely used insecticides damage the survival of honeybee colonies, the world’s largest ever field trial has shown for the first time, as well as harming wild bees.
The farm-based research, along with a second new study, also suggests widespread contamination of entire landscapes and a toxic “cocktail effect” from multiple pesticides.
Is this a cigarette habit with some benefits? A species of urban bird seems to harness the toxic chemicals in cigarette butts in its fight against nest parasites – although there is a downside to the practice.
Waves of globalization brought these warriors to new shores, where certain species spread like wildfire
If you’ve never been stung by a fire ant, consider yourself lucky.
The biological differences between men and women can affect the way they react to certain drugs and treatments, according to a new study in Nature Communications. If this sounds like a no brainer, you probably haven't looked at many biomedical studies.
Sleep problems may provide early clues about worsening suicidal thoughts in at-risk young adults as well as a potential way to intervene, a new study suggests.
If you prefer the bitter taste of black coffee to the syrupy sweetness of vanilla lattes, there's a greater chance you're a sadist or psychopath. A new study published in the journal Appetite indicates that the preference for bitter tastes, like that of black coffee, is linked to these often reviled traits.
Traditional therapies for chronic low back pain are often ineffective. New research shows that yoga may be a good alternative for treating this condition.
The cacophony of noise town centres could trigger heart problems, a new study suggests, after scientists found that fluctuating sounds on busy high streets disturb normal cardiac rhythms.
Alt: Living near noisy roads could make it harder to get pregnant
A robotic doctor that can be controlled hundreds of kilometres away by a human counterpart is gearing up for action.
Getting a check-up from a robot may sound like something from a sci-fi film, but scientists are closing in on this real-life scenario and have already tested a prototype.
The end of painful vaccination jabs is on the horizon after scientists proved that a skin patch is just as effective at inoculating patients and can be applied at home in just a few minutes.
Carnegie Mellon University scientists can now use brain activation patterns to identify complex thoughts, such as, "The witness shouted during the trial."
This latest research led by CMU's Marcel Just builds on the pioneering use of machine learning algorithms with brain imaging technology to "mind read."
Because plants can't get up and run away, they've had to be clever instead. They are the chemists of the living world, producing hundreds of thousands of small molecules that they use as sunscreens, to poison plant eaters, to scent the air, to color flowers, and for much other secret vegetative business.
When will we learn to stop messing around with killer whales? Not anytime soon, if new reports from Alaska are any indication. Fishing boat captains from the Gulf of Alaska to the Bering Sea claim they’re losing their catches to pods of orcas that stalk the boats and wait until the nets are completely full before attacking with blazing speed and gorging on tons of halibut and black cod.
Related: In Unprecedented Loss, Endangered Whales Die of Mysterious Cause
The greater strength of chimpanzees, relative to humans, may have been explained by American scientists.
A study suggests the difference is mostly due to a higher proportion in chimps of a muscle fibre type involved in powerful, rapid movements.
Are there merits to munching mud? Some monkeys seem to go out of their way to add it to their standard diet of leaves, fruits and insects. In Amazonian Peru, at least, one primate species seems to use mud medicinally, possibly to prevent stomach upsets before they even begin.
The ongoing deforestation around the fringes of the Amazon may have serious consequences for the untouched deeper parts of the rainforest. A new research study shows that it is not only the climate that is adversely affected by deforestation. In fact, the very stability of the ecosystem in the entire Amazon region is altered when deforestation takes place in the outermost regions.
It appeared out of nowhere in April just off North Carolina's Outer Banks—a new land mass poking through the surf, a brand new Atlantic Ocean island.
Along this dynamic stretch of sea, where the cold, southbound Labrador Current churns and crashes into warmer Gulf Stream waters, it is not unusual for patches of ground to emerge and then quickly subside. Yet even for this place, this new formation is of a scale rarely seen.
In at least the third such study published in the past year, scientists have confirmed seas are rising, and the rate of sea level rise is increasing as time passes — a sobering punchline for coastal communities that are only now beginning to prepare for a troubling future.
As humans put ever more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the Earth heats up. These are the basics of global warming. But where does the heat go? How much extra heat is there? And how accurate are our measurements? These are questions that climate scientists ask. If we can answer these questions, it will better help us prepare for a future with a very different climate. It will also better help us predict what that future climate will be.
CAPE GRIM, Tasmania — On the best days, the wind howling across this rugged promontory has not touched land for thousands of miles, and the arriving air seems as if it should be the cleanest in the world.
But on a cliff above the sea, inside a low-slung government building, a bank of sophisticated machines sniffs that air day and night, revealing telltale indicators of the way human activity is altering the planet on a major scale.
Julius Caesar could have stayed home on March 15, 44 B.C. But mocking the soothsayer who had predicted his death, the emperor rode in his litter to Rome’s Forum. There he met the iron daggers of 60 senators.
As he lay in a pool of blood, he may have gasped a final incrimination to his protégé Brutus: You too, my son? Or maybe not. But he certainly would have breathed a dying breath, a final exhalation of some 25 sextillion gas molecules. And it’s entirely possible that you just breathed in one of them.
At times, the streets of the ancient world may have been rife with the smell of sewage, garbage and decaying animals; however, there were also sweet smells that could be acquired--for a price. The historical use of incense stretches back for millennia, although the substances burned could vary from place to place.
Seven hundred years ago, Timbuktu was a dream destination for scholars, traders, and religious men. At the southern edge of the Sahara desert in what is now Mali, travelers from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt, and Morocco met in the bygone metropolis to exchange gold, salt, and ideas. According to a description of Timbuktu in 1526 by the diplomat Leo Africanus, “more profit is to be made there from the sale of books than from any other branch of trade.”
Since 1975, the number of fires ignited by lightning has increased between two and five percent, driven by an increase in volatile thunderstorm weather
Alt: Lightning-Caused Fires Rise in Arctic as the Region Warms
So do giraffes get struck by lightning at higher rates? Intuitively, the obvious answer is "yes." Standing between fourteen and nineteen feet tall when fully grown, giraffes tower above the savannah and open woodland landscapes where they dwell. Of course, lightning doesn't always strike the tallest object in an area
Related: Here's what happens when lightning doesn't hit the ground
In February, Pavel Fomenko was told that the body of a young female tiger had been discovered underneath a car parked outside the town of Luchegorsk, in eastern Russia. Fomenko – head of rare species conservation for WWF Russia – took the corpse for examination where he uncovered the grim details of the animal’s death.
Burned Area Emergency Response teams— they may be one of most important parts of wildfires that you've probably never heard of. As the last flames of a raging wildfire are being contained, these BAER crews begin safeguarding lives, property, and natural resources threatened by additional perils that fires create.
One Australian engineer is enlisting technology to fight the battle against deforestation. Dr. Susan Graham has helped develop a pair of drones that can help mitigate some of the damage by planting trees at a rate that far outpaces what is possible to do by hand.
The world's first 'Forest City,' created to fight pollution, is now under construction in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province, China.
Designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, a team that develops green projects all around the world, the futuristic Forest City will be home to a community of about 30,000 people.
The restoration of the globe’s protective shield of ozone will be delayed by decades if fast-rising emissions of a chemical used in paint stripper are not curbed, new research has revealed.
Alt: Ozone layer recovery will be delayed by chemical leaks