Newsdesk Archive
Evolutionary biology tells us this story: everything evolved to make us better at reproducing. Everything has a function — and decoration is no exception. The peacock’s elaborate tail seems useless, but actually it tells us how genetically superior the bird must be if it can survive even with that unwieldy mass of feathers.
Wrong, says Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum. In his new book, The Evolution of Beauty, Prum argues instead that natural selection makes sense in a lot of contexts, but when it comes to desire and attraction, many selections are simply arbitrary. It’s not about what makes the animals fly better or run faster, it’s about what the animal itself subjectively enjoys. It’s what makes the animal happy.
Despite the lofty reputation of old violins by Italian masters such as Antonio Stradivari, blindfolded listeners in concert halls in New York and Paris say they preferred the sound of newer instruments.
For the first time in 500 years, scientists examining human remains from Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose will be able to determine if any bones come from the same person.
Officials say an ancient ornamental bronze stud has been stolen from an exhibit inside the Pompeii archaeological site.
The 6th century stud was one of four that decorated a reproduction of an ancient door that is part of a special exhibit "Pompeii and the Greeks."
The oldest Roman arch in Britain which is still used by traffic has been damaged after a lorry driver who was following his sat nav became wedged underneath it.
Based on original research, and drawing attention to the connections between the medieval Moorish king Boabdil, and current social and political concerns in Europe today, Cambridge academic Elizabeth Drayson presents the first full account in any language of the Moorish sultan of Granada, and head of the Nasrid dynasty.
The historic existence of the legendary English hero who ‘stole from the rich and gave to the poor’ is a perennial source of debate. Every few years, new evidence emerges of authenticity and possible identities of Robin and his friends/foes of Nottingham.
Archaeologists say a sacred burial site uncovered in Shrewsbury in February is over 4,000 years old.
They say the site, which was discovered at a Greek Orthodox Church, may be the country's oldest-known continuously used sacred ground. Finds suggest it has been used during every era since the late Neolithic period.
Alt: 'This is a living monument': 4,000-year-old Shropshire church is found to be the UK's oldest sacred site still in use
All organic materials such animal skins worn by Paleolithic or Neolithic peoples have, for the most part, disappeared. In the right environment though, such materials can last for thousands of years. If an environment is dry, and undisturbed, normally fragile, perishable material can last for millennia. One example of this is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found in an Armenian cave which is one of several other examples of ancient footwear.
A few yards into Vígishellir is a second man-made structure: an anomalous arrangement of stones, piled a few feet high to form an oval enclosure, 22 by 11 feet. Archaeologists believe it could be the oldest standing Viking structure in the world. Next to it is a pile of animal bones, methodically hacked into tiny pieces. Archaeological sites generally have telltale patterns that show scientists how they were used: domestic activity, craft production, ritual. Surtshellir eludes such clarities.
Few of the modern visitors to Teotihuacan are aware of the vast and mysterious underworld of caves and man-made tunnels that extends under much of the ancient site and for miles around. The existence of these tunnels has been known for centuries, but not even the most recent research has been able to solve the mystery of their origin and purpose.
Related: Did Ancient Aliens Impart Advanced Astronomical Knowledge to the Dogon Tribe?
Archaeologist Sarah Parcak uses satellite photos to locate ancient sites and she's finding them -- thousands
Archaeologists often spend years digging and hoping they'll find the remnants of ancient civilizations. There's a lot of ground yet to be uncovered. Archaeologist Sarah Parcak says less than 10 percent of the Earth's surface has been explored, so she's leading the way to speed up the search.
A team of international astrophysicists led by The Australian National University (ANU) has shown how most of the antimatter in the Milky Way forms.
Like a sweater stretched too often by wide shoulders, space-time can be permanently warped by the gravitational waves that constantly ripple through it. This distortion, called gravitational wave memory, could allow us to detect waves previously beyond our reach – even if we can’t see the event that caused them.
The combined power of three space observatories, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has helped astronomers uncover a moon orbiting the third largest dwarf planet, catalogued as 2007 OR10. The pair resides in the frigid outskirts of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from our solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.
You know the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?” Well, it also counts for drones. At least, that is the takeaway message from a recent paper titled “Learning to Fly by Crashing,” published by roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University. They subjected hapless drones to 11,500 collisions in 20 different indoor environments, spread over 40 hours of flying time, to prove it.
Biotechnology and the rise of AI may split humankind into a small class of ‘superhumans’ and a huge underclass of ‘useless’ people. Once the masses lose their economic and political power, inequality levels could spiral alarmingly
Related: Tennessee makes community college free for all adults
As automation continues to infiltrate more and more aspects of life, some are considering the potential of an AI taking over the presidency. With a higher capacity for unbiased, constructive problem solving, an AI president could potentially prove to be a better leader than our human ones.
It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.
For years, scientists have debated whether heavy inland snowfall on the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet — Earth’s largest — balances out the rapid melting in West Antarctica.
Given enough snowfall, the continent might not yet be contributing to sea level rise.
Antarctica may conjure up an image of a pristine white landscape, but researchers say climate change is turning the continent green.
Scientists studying banks of moss in Antarctica have found that the quantity of moss, and the rate of plant growth, has shot up in the past 50 years, suggesting the continent may have a verdant future.
Standing Rock is cast as an environmental protest, but the Native American Water Protectors are part of a religious tradition that predates Christianity
Related: Trump Made It a Lot Easier for Oil Companies to Drill in National Parks
The men and women who built Stonehenge left an indelible mark on the British landscape. However, researchers have discovered that their impact on other aspects of the nation may have been less impressive. In particular, their input into Britain’s gene pool appears to have fizzled out, having been terminated by light-skinned Bronze Age invaders who arrived just as Ancient Britons were midway through their great Stone Age project. In the end, these newcomers may have completely replaced the people who were building Stonehenge.
Scientists say they have found a possible layer of tectonic plates within the Earth’s mantle which could explain a mysterious series of earthquakes in the Pacific.
A famous feature of Mount Everest has collapsed, potentially making the world's highest peak even more dangerous to climbers.
Nepalese Sherpas have a physiology that uses oxygen more efficiently than those used to the atmosphere at sea level.
Seeing shouldn’t always be believing. We all have blind spots in our vision, but we don’t notice them because our brains fill the gaps with made-up information. Now subtle tests show that we trust this “fake vision” more than the real thing.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing and interesting phenomena in quantum physics is what Einstein referred to as a “spooky action at a distance” — also known as quantum entanglement. This quantum effect is behind what makes quantum computers work, as quantum bits (qubits) generally rely on entanglement to process data and information.
Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year’s Global Drug Survey.
People taking mushrooms in 2016 needed medical treatment less than for MDMA, LSD and cocaine, while one of the riskiest drugs was synthetic cannabis
Millions of Americans say they engage in extreme binge drinking — or downing at least eight to 10 drinks containing alcohol on a single occasion — and the behavior appears to be on the rise in the U.S., according to a new report.
Related: Personality may change when you drink, but less than you think
Engaging in light or moderate physical activity such as taking a walk or going for a bike ride is the best way for normally inactive people to beat the blues and improve their sense of well-being, according to a new study. Researchers say that in this study there was no additional emotional benefit gained from working out aggressively.
Related: No such thing as 'fat but fit', major study finds
Although not a replacement for bariatric surgery, temporary balloon could be used as early intervention or for those who do not want, or cannot have, surgery
Scientists have made an important step in understanding the organization of nerve cells embedded within the gut that control its function -- a discovery that could give insight into the origin of common gastrointestinal diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome and chronic constipation.
Caves are dark, dank, isolated, and home to very few plants or animals. At first glance they might seem devoid of life. But caves are full of microscopic creatures, bacteria and fungi at home in the gloom. These microbes, scientists are discovering, may be an untapped reservoir of new medicines to fight antibiotic-resistant germs.
The Ebola virus launches an all-out barrage against the body, often killing victims within a week or two. It plays a nasty trick on the immune system, infiltrating cellular components normally used to sort and digest food and waste, known as endosomes and lysosomes.
The stem cells that produce our blood have been created in the lab for the first time. These could one day be used to treat people who have blood diseases and leukaemia with their own cells, rather than bone marrow transplants from a donor. They could also be used to create blood for transfusions.
HIV has no cure. It’s not quite the implacable scourge it was throughout the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to education, prophylactics, and drugs like PrEP. But still, no cure.
A paper-thin, flexible device created at Michigan State University not only can generate energy from human motion, it can act as a loudspeaker and microphone as well
Researchers have developed the world's thinnest metallic nanowire, which could be used to miniaturise many of the electronic components we use every day.
Related: Scientists solve 400-year-old mystery of Prince Rupert's drops
Please welcome to the stage a master illusionist. An energy beam that stabs out of galaxy M87 like a toothpick in a cocktail olive is pulling off the ultimate magic trick: seeming to move faster than the speed of light.
Almost five times faster, in fact, as measured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Just four days after it began its search, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope has detected a set of rare radio waves known as ‘fast radio bursts’ coming from the constellation Leo.
These elusive signals last just a few milliseconds, and are thought to originate billions of light-years away – but, scientists don’t yet know what causes them.
Researchers have shown how singularities – which are normally only found at the centre of black holes and hidden from view – could exist in highly curved three-dimensional space.
The Universe is a strange place. Apart from the normal matter that we see around us, there appears to be a far larger amount of matter that we cannot see—the infamous dark matter. Even more puzzling, the Universe seems to be bathed in a similarly invisible dark energy, which drives the Universe to expand faster and faster. This all points to something missing from our understanding.
Reproduction may be possible in space, Japanese researchers have said, after freeze-dried sperm stored on the International Space Station for nine months produced healthy offspring.
Infertile mice have given birth to healthy pups after having their fertility restored with ovary implants made with a 3D printer.
Of the many 'white whales' that theoretical physicists are pursuing, the elusive magnetic monopole - a magnetic with only one pole - is one of the most confounding.
Compared to the Higgs boson in terms of its potential impact on modern physics, the magnetic monopole has been on scientists' minds for even longer.
A team of MIT researchers has designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete's body heat and sweat. These flaps, which range from thumbnail- to finger-sized, are lined with live microbial cells that shrink and expand in response to changes in humidity.
Related: Researchers design moisture-responsive workout suit
The presence of just a few autonomous vehicles can eliminate the stop-and-go driving of the human drivers in traffic, along with the accident risk and fuel inefficiency it causes, according to new research. The finding indicates that self-driving cars and related technology may be even closer to revolutionizing traffic control than previously thought.
Japan is backing a push for pollution-free vehicles that run on hydrogen and planning to build more hydrogen fueling stations so that fuel-cell vehicles on roads will grow to 40,000 by 2020, from the current handful.
Children and teens exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution have evidence of a specific type of DNA damage called telomere shortening, reports a new study.
Related: Farmworkers get sick after Trump’s EPA reverses Obama and approves poison that damages kids’ brains
Because of its quick lethality to freshly hatched flies and the ability to halt egg production, the artificial sweetener behind Truvia could be a potent but safe pesticide, according to a new study by Drexel University researchers.
Related: How toxic pesticides in ‘insect-friendly’ plants sold in garden centres could be killing endangered bees
It is hard to believe that the Ancient Egyptians, a culture completely infatuated with the preservation of life after death, would be concerned with the prevention of pregnancy. But they were one of the first ancient cultures to successfully employ birth control methods.
A team of Egyptian archaeologists found a cartouche of the last native Egyptian pharaoh under the home of a man in Abydos, Egypt. The man and his accomplices were doing an illegal excavation underneath the old mud-brick home.
A new chemical analysis finds that this 41,000- to 32,000-year-old obsidian tool, previously unearthed in a Syrian rock-shelter, was transported more than 700 kilometers. That means that long-distance movement of obsidian into the Middle East occurred much earlier than previously thought, researchers say.
Archaeologists find artefacts in a cave on Western Australia’s Barrow Island dating back more than 50,000 years, providing one of the earliest age brackets for the settlement of Australia
Alt: 50,000-year-old 'Atlantis of the South' discovered in Australia
A study finds that children as young as three and a half years old display an understanding of shared commitments, adding to a growing body of evidence that humans are a uniquely cooperative species.
Jake Harwood turned his lifelong hobby as a musician into a scholarly question: Could the sharing of music help ease interpersonal relations between people from different backgrounds, such as Americans and Arabs?
Scientists have discovered that being an only child doesn't just lead to behavioural differences that can set kids apart from those with siblings - it actually affects a child's brain development, too.
Large families and strong social ties help animals live longer, new research suggests.
In a huge study of female rhesus macaques, a scientist from the University of Exeter found those with many close female relatives have better life expectancy.
Related: Friends Help Female Vampire Bats Cope With Loss
The curtain is about to fall for the last time on the self-dubbed “Greatest Show on Earth,” America’s biggest and longest-running traveling circus. On Sunday, after 146 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will pump its caravan brakes permanently. Other traveling circuses may not be far behind.
Dam, what a find! Beaver dams could lower maximum water temperatures in streams – keeping temperature-sensitive fish safe from dangerous highs.
Previous studies suggested that beaver dams warm up the water, for example by expanding the water’s surface area, cutting the speed of water flow and removing shade by felling trees.
In the 1940s, Americans found a new way to love salt. Not simply for sprinkling on food — we’d acquired a taste for the mineral long before that — but for spreading on roads and sidewalks. Salt became a go-to method to de-ice frozen pavement.
“This report should rightly be considered an alarm bell, but it should also be seen as a roadmap for how we can correct course to better support native aquatic species,” said lead report author Peter Moyle
On 13 May 2017, California smashed through another renewable energy milestone as its largest grid, controlled by the California Independent System Operator (CISO), got 67.2 percent of its energy from renewables - not including hydropower or rooftop solar arrays.
China has for the first time extracted gas from an ice-like substance under the South China Sea considered key to future global energy supply.
Chinese authorities have described the success as a major breakthrough.
A single revolution of a turbine’s blades can power a home for 29 hours.
The new wind farm, actually an addition to an older facility installed a decade ago, comprises 32 of the gargantuan new turbines.
Related: EU nations set to wipe out forests and not account for emissions
The Swiss will vote in a referendum Sunday on a planned overhaul of the country's energy system by gradually replacing the power from its ageing nuclear reactors with renewable sources.
The new energy strategy has been in the making since shortly after Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant was destroyed in the March 2011 tsunami disaster, when the Swiss government decided to gradually close its nuclear plants.
"The best result on dark matter so far—and we just got started." This is how scientists behind XENON1T, now the most sensitive dark matter experiment world-wide, commented on their first result from a short 30-day run presented today to the scientific community.
They may be small, but they’re still stars. New observations indicate that objects born with a mass just 6.7 per cent that of the sun can shine for trillions of years rather than fizzle out as failed stars known as brown dwarfs.
Related: First radio detection of lonely planet disk shows similarities between stars and planet-like objects
In a plot that sounds straight out of, if not Bond, then perhaps Kingsman (or even Jonny English), the British government is set to release previously unpublished information it holds on UFO sightings in the UK, once the general election is over in June
Related: Australian government reviews funding for UFO group
Related: UFO hunters spot a strange 'flying disc' speed past the International Space Station on a Nasa live feed
Related: Falcon Lake incident is Canada's 'best-documented UFO case,' even 50 years later
As far as weird stars go, few are as strange as KIC 8462852, nicknamed Tabby's star. Tabby's star randomly dims and brightens for apparently no reason, which led some astronomers in 2015 to hypothesize that some sort of 'alien megastructure' was orbiting the star, occasionally blocking the light. Other scientists proposed a large asteroid field or a swarm of comets instead, but we still don't really know what's going on.
All of that might be about to change.
Alt: Astronomers scramble as ‘alien megastructure’ star dims again
Alt: The weirdest star in space is acting weird again. Is it aliens?
An Earth-sized world that swings around a star in the constellation of Aquarius has become a priority in the search for extraterrestrial life after scientists found that an atmosphere could have enveloped the planet for billions of years.
In the icy bodies around our solar system, radiation emitted from rocky cores could break up water molecules and support hydrogen-eating microbes. To address this cosmic possibility, a University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) team modeled a natural water-cracking process called radiolysis. They then applied the model to several worlds with known or suspected interior oceans, including Saturn's moon Enceladus, Jupiter's moon Europa, Pluto and its moon Charon, as well as the dwarf planet Ceres.
Renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has again called on humanity to redouble its efforts to colonize other worlds before the Earth becomes uninhabitable. This time, however, the deadline is even tighter.
Norway is boosting the flood defences of its Global Seed Vault on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard after water entered the entrance tunnel last year.
The storage facility, deep inside a mountain, is designed to preserve the world's crops from future disasters.
New research shows climate change is altering the delicate seasonal clock that North American migratory songbirds rely on to successfully mate and raise healthy offspring, setting in motion a domino effect that could threaten the survival of many familiar backyard bird species.
Related: Handstanding Skunks' DNA Shaped by Ancient Climate Change
Ancient trees are disappearing from protected national forests around the world. A look inside $100 billion market for stolen wood
It was a local hiker who noticed, during a backwoods stroll in May 2012, the remains of the body. The victim in question: an 800-year-old cedar tree.
Drone footage taken in the far northeastern regions of Canada finally sheds light on how narwhals use the massive tusks protruding from their heads.
Alt: What do the Narwhals do with their tusk?
An immediate extension of a fishing ban is desperately needed to save the world's most endangered marine species.
Campaigners say there are only 30 vaquita porpoises left, with their population having plummeted by 90% since 2011.
A Norwegian billionaire, who started out as a fisherman, has said he will give away most of his estimated $2.6 billion fortune in a bid to help clean up the world's oceans.
As global temperatures rise, coral bleaching events, in which ocean temperature hikes cause corals to expel their algal symbionts, are happening again and again (reefs worldwide are in the midst of one). Symbiont loss deprives the corals of the pigments that give them both nutrients, via photosynthesis, and color.
Organisms in nature adapt and evolve in complex environments. For example, when subjected to changes in nutrients, antibiotics, and predation, microbes in the wild face the challenge of adapting multiple traits at the same time. But how does evolution unfold when, for survival, multiple traits must be improved simultaneously?
A single process for how a group of molecules called nucleotides were made on the early Earth, before life began, has been suggested by a UCL-led team of researchers.
Nucleotides are essential to all life on Earth as they form the building blocks of DNA or RNA, and understanding how they were first made is a long-standing challenge that must be resolved to elucidate the origins of life.
The Garden of the Ediacaran was a period in the ancient past when Earth's shallow seas were populated with a bewildering variety of enigmatic, soft-bodied creatures. Scientists have pictured it as a tranquil, almost idyllic interlude that lasted from 635 to 540 million years ago. But a new interdisciplinary study suggests that the organisms living at the time may have been much more dynamic than experts have thought.
A tooth from Petrified Forest represents an unknown species that has baffled paleontologists for decades
Dinosaurs are our ambassadors to the deep past. There’s hardly a better example of this fact than the Triassic. This stretch of time, the first chapter of the three-part Mesozoic epic, is often referred to as the Dawn of the Dinosaurs and ran from about 250 to 200 million years ago. This is despite the fact that dinosaurs were minor players in the Triassic drama.
Toward the end of the 1980s, and with the Cold War era coming to a close, a number of deep sea hydrophones (that is, underwater microphones) once used for spying were getting a new lease on life. Specifically, they were being repurposed by agencies like NOAA for use in oceanographic studies.
Related: Is Nessie back? ‘Loch Ness monster’ is spotted swimming through a tranquil lake... but a nearby sailor doesn't even notice
Related: Pair of Strange Talking Bigfoot Reported in Malaysia
The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa.
Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before venturing further afield.
But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.
Alt: 7.2 million-year-old hominin remains discovered in the Balkans
Analysis of a 3.3 million-year-old fossil skeleton reveals the most complete spinal column of any early human relative, including vertebrae, neck and rib cage. The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that portions of the human spinal structure that enable efficient walking motions were established millions of years earlier than previously thought.
Archaeologists from the Scottish University have spent more than seven years painstakingly recovering and preserving everyday objects that indigenous Yup’ik people used to survive and to celebrate life – in a race against the clock before melting ice and raging winter storms reclaim the Nunalleq archaeological site.
A huge camp which was home to thousands of Vikings as they prepared to conquer England in the late ninth century has been uncovered by archaeologists.
Face-to-face, a human and a chimpanzee are easy to tell apart. The two species share a common primate ancestor, but over millions of years, their characteristics have morphed into easily distinguishable features.
Amanda Feilding used to take lysergic acid diethylamide every day to boost creativity and productivity at work before LSD, known as acid, was made illegal in 1968. During her downtime, Feilding, who now runs the Beckley Foundation for psychedelic research, would get together with her friends to play the ancient Chinese game of Go, and came to notice something curious about her winning streaks.
"I found that if I was on LSD and my opponent wasn't, I won more games,"
The criminalization of drug use has a negative effect on efforts to prevent and treat people with HIV, suggests a review of published research conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of British Columbia.
Having a guided psychedelic experience may be a powerful treatment for depression, anxiety, and addiction. A new review of clinical trials suggests that psilocybin-assisted therapy has the potential to help alleviate a variety of psychiatric disorders.
Related: The Quest to Cure One Man's Depression with Ayahuasca
A new study of near-death experiences (NDEs) has given a scientific footing to the oft-reported effect of the experience feeling 'more real than real' (e.g. ‘‘My death experience is more real to me than life”; ‘‘It was more real than real: absolute reality”; ‘‘I have no doubt that this experience was real. It was vastly more real than anything we experience here”.)
You feel somebody is looking at you, but you don’t know why. The explanation lies in some intriguing neuroscience and the study of a strange form of brain injury.
Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.
"Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet," it states. "We disagree."
Two new studies by the University of Alabama and the University of Washington have revealed the malicious possibilities lurking in the shadows of impressive promises of brain-computer interface (BCI) developers: the ability to access PINs and other private information.
At its I/O '17 conference this week, Google shared details of its AutoML project, an artificial intelligence that can assist in the creation of other AIs. By automating some of the complicated process, AutoML could make machine learning more accessible to non-experts.
Humans have accidentally created a protective bubble around Earth by using very low frequency (VLF) radio transmissions to contact submarines in the ocean. It sounds nuts, but according to recent research published in Space Science Reviews, underwater communication through VLF channels has an outer space dimension.
Related: NASA mission uncovers a dance of electrons in space