Newsdesk Archive
David Robinson Simon, a Californian attorney and author, has argued that meat and dairy producers in the US and, increasingly, Australia, are teaming with governments to encourage people to consume more animal products than they otherwise would.
In his book Meatonomics, he laid out the part played by subsidies, legislation and regulation in the provision of meat, eggs and dairy at the prices and in the quantities that consumers had become accustomed to.
The coal sector benefits from £356 million in subsidies a year in the UK despite the Government’s pledge to phase out use of the highly-polluting fossil fuel, a report suggests.
Dutch officials on Monday opened what is being billed as one of the world's largest offshore wind farms, with 150 turbines spinning in action far out in the North Sea.
Scientists working in the Arctic circle over the past few decades have unearthed several massive viruses that some say could be re-awakened if the permafrost that imprisons them dissolves.
Alt: Climate Change Is Freeing Ancient Infections From Their Icy Prisons
Related: The 'dragon-skin' ice in Antarctica researchers warn is a sign of 'dark chaos' in the planet's frozen oceans
The first arctic explorer isn’t who you think. More than 2,300 years ago, Pytheas of Massalia traveled to the Arctic Circle and back – and, when he came home, nobody believed him.
In a time when most people believed that the sun was dragged across the sky by a god, Pytheas made it to a place where the sun doesn’t rise all winter long. He found a place covered in permafrost, a frozen ocean, and drifting icebergs, and he had to come home and try to explain what he’d seen.
Los Millares is an impressive size settlement that was in use from the end of the 4th millennium BC to the 2nd millennium BC. During these twenty centuries, the mysterious people who created this settlement became a highly advanced society famous for the production of copper and construction of a remarkable hillfort.
A bony crest running along the skull of male apes may play a role in how they choose their sexual partners, a new study has found.
And, the feature could shed light on the social structures of extinct human ancestors.
Over the past few decades, advances in DNA technology have completely changed our view of our species' past. We can now trace our ancestors out of Africa, into North America, and across the vastness of the Pacific. What often goes missing within this big picture of continual expansion is that our ancestors didn't sit still once they had settled an area.
By using highly advanced brain imaging technology to observe modern humans crafting ancient tools, a neuroarchaeologist has found evidence that human-like ways of thinking may have emerged as early as 1.8 million years ago.
Related: Ancient humans: What we know and still don’t know about them
New research suggests that advances in the production of Early Stone Age tools had less to do with the evolution of language and more to do with the brain networks involved in modern piano playing. The findings are a major step forward in understanding the evolution of human intelligence.
Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) say the early Earth was likely to be barren, flat and almost entirely under water with a few small islands, following their analysis of tiny mineral grains as old as 4.4 billion years.
Researchers have come up with an unusual proposal to slow, or even reverse, the cognitive decline that comes with old age: small, daily doses of cannabis extract.
The idea emerged from tests on mice which found that regular, low doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis – impaired memory and learning in young animals, but boosted the performance of old ones.
Alt: Cannabis reverses aging processes in the brain, study suggests
Low to moderate intake of red wine can delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers have now found out how wine compounds are protective against neuronal death: they should pass through your stomach first.
Much of life is beyond our control, but dining smartly can help us live healthier, longer
To some extent, when it comes to healthy aging, we become what we eat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in four deaths results from heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.
Why do we yearn for the explosive gustatory delight of sugar? Neural feedback loops, sensory pleasures and environmental factors like poor sleep all amplify our desire for a sugar rush. But new research suggests some of us—much more than others—may also be genetically attuned to crave such sweet sustenance.
How corrupt UN charity barons keep Africans poor, sick and hungry
Related: Ethical business practice can flourish in nations with serious corruption problems
Related: New York set to become first state to offer free college tuition under new deal
Related: Flint sends foreclosure notices to 8,000 residents who refused to pay for contaminated water
Related: Study: Stressing about finances can be harmful to a baby's health
Our body temperature might not ever get much hotter than 37°C. But it turns out that the insides of our cells can reach a scorching 50°C.
Our cells effectively burn food in oxygen to produce energy. Unlike a fire, this is a controlled process involving several steps, but it still generates a lot of heat.
Researchers from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium, have succeeded in developing a process that purifies air and, at the same time, generates power. The device must only be exposed to light in order to function.
More than a million people are thought to die a year from air pollution in China, but now the country is fighting back with innovative solutions.
In 1976 this city by the Yellow Sea, some 100 miles east of Beijing in Hebei Province, was obliterated by an earthquake that killed at least 240,000 people—around a quarter of the population. Afterward the city was rebuilt, and it helped build modern China.
New research shows that low oxygen therapy is able to eliminate brain lesions developed from mitochondrial dysfunction in mice. Eventually, hypoxia therapy could be used to treat people with similar disorders and maybe even reverse signs of aging in otherwise healthy individuals.
The basic idea is simple: Trees are roughly half carbon by mass, and growing trees devour and store carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for most human-caused climate change. To provide an incentive to keep forests standing, climate negotiators envisioned a carbon market through which wealthy countries responsible for most carbon emissions could pay poorer countries to protect forests. While no one thought such a scheme could prevent climate change, it seemed like a good strategy to at least slow it down.
As can be seen above, the Waggonwaybreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway, has retreated substantially since 1900. Svalbard’s glaciers are not only retreating, they are also losing about two feet of their thickness each year. Glaciers around the world have retreated at unprecedented rates and some have disappeared altogether. The melting of glaciers will affect people around the world, their drinking water supplies, water needed to grow food and supply energy, as well as global sea levels.
If scientists can’t solve the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle by direct discovery, perhaps they can do it by process of elimination. One of the more popular recent theories is that the area is directly above a massive methane gas deposit that occasionally releases a massive methane gas bubble
The search for life in the Universe takes many paths. There’s SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which is searching for signals from a distant ancient civilization.
Alt: Astrophysicist: ETs May Have Already Lived And Died In Our Solar System
Bricks have been 3-D printed out of simulated moondust using concentrated sunlight – proving in principle that future lunar colonists could one day use the same approach to build settlements on the moon.
If life still exists on the Red Planet, it must be very rare – or so an unexploited energy source in the atmosphere suggests.
The Martian atmosphere is unusually rich in carbon monoxide, which many microbes here on Earth can convert to carbon dioxide to yield energy for growth.
The final few days of April played out like weather bingo — deadly tornadoes in Texas, historic rainfall and flooding in the Midwest, a blizzard in the Plains, and extreme heat and humidity closer to home.
Given the pattern the jet stream is about to enter, this might be the tip of the iceberg.
An Abu Dhabi-based eco firm plans to tow icebergs to the UAE from Antarctica in early 2018 to harvest the ice for pure drinking water.
Alt: UAE plans to drag an iceberg from Antarctica to provide drinking water for millions
The crack in the Larsen C Ice Shelf that looks set to spawn a giant berg has suddenly forked.
Satellite imagery of the 180km-long fissure acquired in recent days shows a clear branching behaviour at its tip.
It isn’t big and it isn’t clever. But the benefits, known to anyone who has moved home, climbed a mountain, or pushed a broken-down car, have finally been confirmed: according to psychologists, swearing makes you stronger.
Physicist and social justice crusader Albert Einstein once referred to American racism as a "disease of white people." He was speaking metaphorically, but a host of research in recent years has shown that racism, like a disease, can harm the physical health of both its victims and its perpetrators.
A decline in homophobia is allowing young men to embrace the benefits of a non-sexual bromance with close male friends. According to Stefan Robinson of the University of Winchester in the UK, young men nowadays are socially encouraged to enjoy deep, emotional and physically intimate friendships.
Related: Bisexuality Can Benefit Animals
HAVE we had it all back to front? Ten years ago, a man known as the Berlin patient was cured of HIV. It was thought that a bone marrow transplant he received for cancer, from a person immune to HIV, had eradicated the virus from his body. But evidence from a new group of people suggests an immune reaction provoked by the transplant may actually have been responsible.
The CRISPR gene-editing tool has already shown a lot of potential for helping doctors treat the most stubborn diseases, and now scientists have used it to target the "command centre" of cancerous tumours, stopping their growth and boosting survival rates in mice.
One of the greatest ethical debates in science - manipulating the fundamental building blocks of life - is set to heat up once more.
According to scientists behind an ambitious and controversial plan to write the human genome from the ground up, synthesising DNA and incorporating it into mammalian and even human cells could be as little as four to five years away.
Researchers have successfully developed a method to grow inner ear tissue from human stem cells, a finding that could lead to new platforms to model disease and new therapies for the treatment of hearing and balance disorders.
Related: Oxford student creates first synthetic retina
Made In Space, Inc. is known as the company behind the 3D printers on board the International Space Station. Astronauts have used the startup’s AMF, or Additive Manufacturing Facility, on the ISS to churn out everything from finger splints to tools, sculptures and even other printer parts.
This is the first of several launches for the company, which is focused on small satellites that weigh only a few dozen pounds, unlike SpaceX’s large probes.
In the coming decades, the world’s largest space agencies hope to mount some exciting missions to the Moon and to Mars. Between NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), there is simply no shortage of proposals for Lunar bases, crewed missions to Mars, and robotic explorers to both.
Icy exomoons dragged towards their star could hold onto life-giving atmospheres and liquid oceans for billions of years – if they’re big enough.
Related: The Mystery of Pluto's Beating Heart
Combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations, an international team of scientists has discovered a vast wave of hot gas in the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster. Spanning some 200,000 light-years, the wave is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
A giant meteor impact on Earth nearly 2 billion years ago triggered more explosive and long-lived volcanic eruptions than previously thought, a new study finds.
Alt: Ancient meteorite impact sparked long-lived volcanic eruptions on Earth
Scientists have directly dated Stone Age rock paintings in southern Africa reliably for the first time. Their work reveals that early hunter-gatherer peoples created art at three sites in the region, some 5,700 years ago. And the findings open the door for archaeologists and other researchers to date thousands more rock paintings in this part of Africa — and so piece together the lives and development of ancient people there.
The Scythians roamed over a vast swath of this region, from Siberia to the Black Sea, for about 800 years beginning about the ninth century B.C. They were known for their equestrian battle skills, including the ability to shoot arrows while riding, and for the brutal treatment of those they defeated.
Something odd happened in the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, around 50,000 years ago. Modern humans and their immediate ancestors had been using tools for a few million years prior, but the repertoire was limited. Then, all of sudden, there was an explosion of new tools, art and other cultural artifacts.
An international team of researchers at the University of Calgary and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Science have shown just how precarious the recovery of life was following Earth’s greatest extinction event, about 251.9 million years ago.
A dramatic, growing scar in the landscape of Siberia is a paleontologist's dream.
Batagaika crater, seen growing in a series of satellite images taken between 1999 and 2016, is a "megaslump," a feature caused by the collapse of melting permafrost.
It's named after a Nordic god and drills deep into the heart of a volcano: "Thor" is a rig that symbolises Iceland's leading-edge efforts to produce powerful clean energy.
Chicken is a favorite, inexpensive meat across the globe. But the bird's popularity results in a lot of waste that can pollute soil and water. One strategy for dealing with poultry poop is to turn it into biofuel, and now scientists have developed a way to do this
A team of international scientists led by the University of Oxford has combined ancient DNA analyses with statistical modelling to pinpoint the timing of the selection for traits associated with modern chickens. They found that medieval Christians who fasted may have played a part in producing less aggressive farm birds.
In its time, about 125 million years ago, it must not have seemed remarkable. Jianianhualong tengi was just over three feet long and weighed about as much as a Chihuahua—hardly a match for many of its Cretaceous contemporaries.
But a recent study of this diminutive dinosaur could have an outsized impact on scientists’ understanding of how feathers evolved.
Today’s depictions of agile, often feathered animals are a far cry from the saggy tail-draggers of yesteryear. How did early research get it so wrong?
A new sauropod species has been named Galeamopus pabsti by the same team which recently reinstated the brontosaurus as a distinct genus.
The fossil of a dinosaur that has been languishing in a museum for decades has been re-examined - and it turns out to be that of a new species.
Brachiosaurus, depicted in Jurassic Park, now has an early relative
Alt: Long-Necked 'Viper' Dino Is the Earliest Titanosaur on Record
A fossilised ancient creature boasting huge pincers resembling can-openers, a hinged two-piece shell and more than 50 pairs of legs has been discovered, shedding light on the evolutionary past of a huge and diverse group of animals.
One of the last dinosaurs living in Africa before their extinction 66 million years ago has been discovered in a phosphate mine in northern Morocco.
Related: Discovery in northern lakes may be key to understanding early life on Earth
A tiny shark tooth, part of a mantis shrimp and other microscopic marine organisms reveal that as the Andes rose, the Eastern Amazon sank twice, each time for less than a million years. Water from the Caribbean flooded the region from Venezuela to northwestern Brazil.
Alt: A Vast and Now Vanished Amazon Sea Is Discovered
Scientists have discovered a 4,000-year-old funerary garden- the first such garden ever to be found- on the Dra Abu el-Naga hill in Luxor, Egypt.
Humans have always been endlessly fascinated with our evolutionary history, and discovering a new species of human that once roamed the Earth is certainly cause for interest. When scientists announced the discovery of a tiny hobbit-like bipod called Homo floresiensis in Indonesia way back in 2003, they thought perhaps it was simply an evolutionary fork of the well-documented Homo erectus, but now they’re not so sure.
We have an astonishing new way to study our early human ancestors: looking for their DNA in ancient sediments in places such as caves.
Alt: Scientists Extract DNA From Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt
The Shroud of Turin contains an image – the so-called Man of the Shroud – that many believe identifies it as the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, and has an extensive history since the mid 1300s when it was first put on display.
The grim reaper comes for everyone in the end, but sometimes he is in less of a rush. This was certainly true for Sodimedjo, an Indonesian man who died on Sunday, but whether he was the full 146 years he claimed remains doubtful – not least because his purported birthdate is 30 years before local birth records began.
For those who cannot exercise, it could be the answer: rather than spending hours in the gym, the benefits of fitness training could be delivered in a tablet.
As of 2011, the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show, at least 6.4 million children in the US had been diagnosed with ADHD. Only about 6 percent are taking medication for the condition. The vast majority, then, are doing something else — perhaps counseling, or other forms of treatment, or nothing at all.
Powerful and potentially addictive opiate painkillers are being handed out too readily, leading doctors have warned after it emerged that the number of times the drugs are being prescribed in the UK has doubled in the past decade.
In the US, 28 states plus Washington DC have legalised medical marijuana in some form. An analysis has shown that compared with other states, those regions spent less money on prescriptions through Medicaid
Related: To Calm the Gut, Look to Weed and Hot Peppers
Related: Study looks at cannabis ingredient's ability to help children's tumours
In late 2015, Rolling Stone wrote about an unlikely "hot new business trip" taking Silicon Valley by storm: microdosing LSD. It was the post that launched a thousand blogs, and in the year and a half since, nary a media outlet hasn't written about microdosing at least once.
High-fat foods are often the primary target when fighting obesity, but sugar-laden 'diet' foods could be contributing to unwanted weight gain as well.
Related: Low-fat dairy linked to lower tendency towards depression
Related: Low-sodium diet might not lower blood pressure
Hotheaded, impulsive men who shoot first and ask questions later are a staple of Westerns and 1970s cop films, but new research shows there might be truth to the trope.
Related: Youth violence on decline, new study shows
Related: How childhood stress can knock 20 years off your life
You won’t breathe easy after reading this: a few of the nanoparticles in the air you are inhaling are entering your bloodstream and building up in the diseased areas of your arteries.
Related: Humans alter Earth's chemistry from beyond the grave
In the case of solar system bodies passing close to the sun, there are two important effects playing a crucial role in the orbital evolution. One of the effects is from the general relativity and the other effect is from Newtonian theory of gravitation.
After NASA announced in February the discovery of a solar system with seven planets—three of which were deemed potentially habitable—UChicago postdoctoral scholar Sebastiaan Krijt began wondering: If a life form existed on one of these planets, could space debris carry it to another?
The International Space Station (ISS) is usually a pretty clean place. But where there are people, there are microorganisms.
And when you're trapped in a giant hunk of metal some 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the surface of Earth, you really want to know what that furry white stuff is growing in the corner.
The universe is incomprehensibly vast and some estimations, like the one made by Berkeley’s Peter Behroozi, say that the odds of there being other life-sustaining planets are pretty good.
Related: New Planet Discoveries Signal a Shift in the Hunt for Alien Life
Related: Astronomers detect dozens of new quasars and galaxies
Ever since enthusiasm started growing over the possibility that there could be a ninth major planet orbiting the sun beyond Neptune, astronomers have been busy hunting it. One group is investigating four new moving objects found by members of the public to see if they are potential new solar system discoveries. As exciting as this is, researchers are also making discoveries that question the entire prospect of a ninth planet.
A relocatable lander could explore the hazy skies of Saturn's intriguing moon Titan, according a new mission proposal. As the eight-bladed whirlybird travels across the moon, it could investigate some of the most promising potentially habitable sites on the Saturn satellite, where methane and ethane fall from the sky and flow as rivers and lakes.
Great news for Cassini fans: The NASA spacecraft sent word that it successfully completed its first pass through the uncharted territory between Saturn and its rings late Wednesday.
Alt: Cassini shoots through the gap between Saturn and its rings, returning the closest views ever of the planet
Related: No Turning Back: Titan Flyby Assures Cassini's Crash Into Saturn
A recent study on a space anomaly that has perplexed scientists for years has some suggesting that it could be explained by a parallel "bubble universe" — although there are other, more standard potential explanations, as well.
Physicists have learned how they could breed Schrödinger cats in optics. Scientists tested a method that could potentially amplify superpositions of classical states of light beyond microscopic limits and help determine the boundaries between the quantum and classical worlds.
Thanks to scientists who have ventured outside the laboratory, we have learned that tight-knit groups of females experience synchronized menstrual periods over time, that cohesive groups engaged in decision-making discount dissenting viewpoints in the interests of consensus, and that couples who stay together long enough begin to look alike.
Previous research shows that multitasking, which means performing several tasks at the same time, reduces productivity by as much as 40%. Now a group of researchers specializing in brain imaging has found that changing tasks too frequently interferes with brain activity. This may explain why the end result is worse than when a person focuses on one task at a time.
Scientists have successfully assembled working human brain circuits in a dish. Their model could shed light on how a number of neurodevelopmental diseases arise, including rare forms of autism.
It's not easy being a soldier or a spy: you have to immerse yourself in dangerous situations, assess intelligence in the field, speak foreign languages, and handle all kinds of technical equipment and weaponry.
Alt: US military bosses reveal radical plan to hack soldier's brains to give them superhuman capabilities
Blindfolded, would you know the smell of your mom, a lover or a co-worker? Not the smells of their colognes or perfumes, not of the laundry detergents they use — the smells of them?
A robotic arm is sublime at stacking boxes on a production line, but workplace robots struggle with social niceties. Now researchers are teaching robots the right way to act in social situations in the hope of making it easier for humans and robots to work together.
When robot Nao laughs, he does so with his whole body: slapping his knees, shaking his head. But the adorable android, made by SoftBank Robotics, is not merely good at expressing mirth; he can correctly identify as much as 65 percent of happy laughter outbursts in humans
Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States.
That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market.
The average single-family home takes roughly seven months to complete, but MIT researchers have developed a cutting-edge system that does the job in less than a day.
The team has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building.
After being turned on for the first time, the UK’s newest fusion reactor has achieved first plasma. This simply means that the reactor was able to successfully generate a molten mass of electrically-charged gas — plasma — inside its core.
Alt: A step closer to limitless energy: UK's latest nuclear fusion reactor could supply the grid with clean power by 2030
Hydrogen is currently used to upgrade crude oil and synthesize ammonia, a critical building block of the fertilizers applied in modern agriculture. It also could be valuable as a feedstock for generating green electricity and as an ingredient in environmentally friendly fuel cells to power cars and trucks. But hydrogen is commonly produced from natural gas heated by steam, which results in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems.
People who have had their brains cryogenically frozen could be 'woken up' within three years, a pioneering Italian surgeon has claimed.
Professor Sergio Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, is aiming to carry out the first human head transplant within 10 months and then wants to begin trials on brain transplants.
Scientists have looked at all 14,500 participants in Children of the 90s and found that if a girl's maternal grandmother smoked during pregnancy, the girl is 67 percent more likely to display certain traits linked to autism, such as poor social communication skills and repetitive behaviors.
Related: 'Granny style' is best way to take a basketball free throw, study shows
In newly updated clinical guidelines, researchers analyzed which integrative treatments are most effective and safe for patients with breast cancer. This systematic review adds to the growing literature on integrative therapies for patients with breast cancer and other cancer populations.
The journal Tumor Biology is retracting 107 research papers after discovering that the authors faked the peer review process. This isn’t the journal’s first rodeo. Late last year, 58 papers were retracted from seven different journals— 25 came from Tumor Biology for the same reason.
Related: Early puberty increases cancer risk, research proves
It is a mystery that has perplexed psychologists and philosophers since the dawn of humanity: why are most people honest?
Now, using a complex array of MRI machines and electrocution devices, scientists claim to have found the answer.
Female dragonflies use an extreme tactic to get rid of unwanted suitors: they drop out the sky and then pretend to be dead.
A moth that looks and acts just like a spider is so convincing that it receives elaborate courtship displays from its predator.
Many prey species mimic other poisonous prey or blend into the background to escape predators. The metalmark is one of the few that mimics its predator.
Related: Tarantulas use their lateral eyes to calculate distance
Biologists have provided the first evidence that a widely used pesticide can significantly impair the ability of otherwise healthy honey bees to fly. The study, which employed a bee “flight mill,” raises concerns about how pesticides affect honey bee pollination and long-term effects on the health of honey bee colonies.
Related: Wandering pesticides end up in ‘beebread’
Desert tortoises are native to the southwestern desert, and a population of the reptiles had made their home near the U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California.
Which came first, the cup or the dome? Unlike the old chicken-versus-egg conundrum, this question appears to have an answer. A new study suggests that the familiar open-cup style—built by nearly three fourths of today's passerines, or perching birds—is a modification of roofed spherical structures that just a handful of species now make.