Stray Dogs Master Complex Moscow Subway System
Every so often, if you ride Moscow's crowded subways, you notice that the commuters around you include a dog - a stray dog, on its own, just using the handy underground Metro to beat the traffic and get from A to B.
Yes, some of Moscow's stray dogs have figured out how to use the city's immense and complex subway system, getting on and off at their regular stops. The human commuters around them are so accustomed to it that they rarely seem to notice. |  |
Ancient Chinese pottery confirmed as the oldest yet found
Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say.
The findings, which will appear in the journal Science on Friday, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in east Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers. |  |
'UFO' in the Baltic Sea cuts off electrical
equipment when divers get within 200m
The divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea say their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m.
Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away. He is quoted as saying: 'Anything electric out there - and the satellite phone as well - stopped working when we were above the object. 'And then we got away about 200 meters and it turned on again, and when we got back over the object it didn’t work.' |  |
Is the Baltic Sea 'Sunken UFO' a Scam?
The ocean explorers who discovered a huge, UFO-shape object on the floor of the Baltic Sea last year are having a heck of a time figuring out what it is.
A suspiciously hard time, some would say. The Swedish divers, who call themselves the Ocean X Team, claim the object is giving off electrical interference that keeps foiling their attempts to investigate it. "Anything electric out there — and the satellite phone as well — stopped working when we were above the object," said diver Stefan Hoberborn in an Ocean X press release. "And then we got away about 200 meters and it turned on again, and when we got back over the object it didn't work. |  |
Report: US to get seas rising by 2030 (Update)
The West Coast will see an ocean several inches (centimeters higher in coming decades, with most of California expected to get sea levels a half foot higher by 2030, according a report released Friday.
The study by the National Research Council gives planners their best look yet at how melting ice sheets and warming oceans associated with climate change will raise sea levels along the country's Pacific coast. It is generally consistent with earlier global projections, but takes a closer look at California, Oregon and Washington. |  |
New deglaciation data opens door for earlier First Americans migration
CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new study of lake sediment cores from Sanak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska suggests that deglaciation there from the last Ice Age took place as much as1,500 to 2,000 years earlier than previously thought, opening the door for earlier coastal migration models for the Americas.
The Sanak Island Biocomplexity Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, also concluded that the maximum thickness of the ice sheet in the Sanak Island region during the last glacial maximum was 70 meters – or about half that previously projected – suggesting that deglaciation could have happened more rapidly than earlier models predicted.
The Sanak Island Biocomplexity Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, also concluded that the maximum thickness of the ice sheet in the Sanak Island region during the last glacial maximum was 70 meters – or about half that previously projected – suggesting that deglaciation could have happened more rapidly than earlier models predicted.
Amazing Shrinking Nanoparticles Could Sneak Into Tumors & Kill Them
As anyone who has played with a powerful laser or just suffered a bad sunburn can attest, light has an impressive power to physically change objects. And now we know that light can make nanoparticles expand and contract like miniature Hoberman Spheres. MIT and Harvard researchers engineered nanoparticles that shrink to less than a third of their original size when exposed to ultraviolet rays; in the darkness or under visible light, they open back up to their more stable, larger size.
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Alan Turing: Inquest's suicide verdict 'not supportable'
Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed.
Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland has questioned the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest. He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict. Indeed, he argues, Turing's death may equally probably have been an accident. What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning. |  |
Robots join hunt for wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane
U.S. Navy warships and aircraft failed to find Amelia Earhart when the pioneering female aviator vanished in the South Pacific during her second attempt to fly around the world in 1937. This summer, aviation archaeologists have enlisted the help of underwater robots to find the wreckage of Earhart's aircraft.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (or TIGHAR) suspects that Earhart's Lockheed Electra landed on a reef of the uninhabited coral atoll formerly known as Gardner Island and stayed there for several days before waves washed the aircraft over the reef's edge — perhaps enough time for the aviator and her navigator to have sent out radio distress calls. The expedition plans to deploy ship sonar and two robot submersibles to search the slope of the underwater reef for any aircraft parts. |  |
New Satellite Lets Anyone Experiment in Space
For a few hundred dollars, anyone can now buy time to run their own experiments aboard a small satellite set to launch next year. A physicist and two engineers are building a 4-inch (10 centimeters) cubic satellite designed to carry hobbyist processors into space and run citizen-written programs.
The researchers, including consultants to NASA's Ames Research Center, want to develop a cheap spacecraft that makes space science affordable to everyday people, according to their Kickstarter page. They're now gathering donations for spaceworthy hardware, assembly and launch. |  |
Genetic legacies – Sheba’s Children
Researchers have started to unveil the genetic heritage of Ethiopian populations, who are among the most diverse in the world. They found that the genomes of some Ethiopian populations bear striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria, a potential genetic legacy of the Queen of Sheba and her people from the ancient kingdom of the Sabaean (in modern Yemen).
A truth to ancient stories?
The team have already detected similarities between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an.
A truth to ancient stories?
The team have already detected similarities between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an.
Wordsworth was right - daffodils do cheer us up
The poet wrote that at the mere thought of the flowers "my heart with pleasure fills", and now scientists say they could help treat medical conditions in the brain.
Studies have found that compounds in Crinum and Crytanthus - South African species of snowdrops and daffodils - are able to pass through the blood brain barrier, the defensive wall which keeps the brain isolated. The wall is a major problem in treating brain diseases including depression because drugs are pumped out as quickly as they are put it, say scientists from the University of Copenhagen. |  |
Horace of the Horizon: A Fictional Story
GHMB moderator, and part-time author Dave Sproull is currently writing a free online fictional story featuring Graham Hancock and Ancient-Civilization related themes that newsdesk readers may find of interest. It's coming in regular installments, but you can read the first four parts here:
Stay tuned for part 5 and future installments. |  |
Non-Profit Steps Up to Fill Killer Asteroid Monitoring Gap
To combat a space-based threat, try a space-based solution. Within the next six years, the B612 Foundation plans to launch the Sentinel Mission – a dedicated infrared telescope that will be on the lookout for killer asteroids.
The project will be the first privately funded deep space mission and will greatly expand the catalog of known near-Earth objects. The foundation estimates it will cost several hundred million dollars to build the telescope and hopes it will be ready to go by 2017. While large comets and asteroids strike the Earth infrequently – the last major one killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — they are a potential hazard. An object larger than half a mile across could cause global climate shifts and mass extinctions. Smaller rocks around 200 feet in diameter could easily level a city. |  |
Magnetic Plasma Tornadoes Spin in Sun’s Atmosphere
Mathematicians at the University of Sheffield have uncovered evidence of vast magnetic vortices spinning in the atmosphere off the Sun.
Spinning vortices, which bear a resemblance to tornadoes on Earth, have been spotted previously in the atmosphere of the Sun, but these smaller twisters differ because they carry energy from the convection zone below the Sun’s surface to the outer atmosphere. It’s thought that as many as 11,000 of the vortices could be swirling across the surface of the star at any one time. They’re surrounded by a magnetic skeleton, and comprised of plasma — a fourth state of matter, alongside solid, liquid and gas, which is thought to account for 99 percent of the matter in the universe. The temperature of these tornadoes? A few millions of degrees kelvin. |  |
Probing an 'Invisible' Exoplanet's Atmosphere
To study the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system, astronomers have had two choices: pick one that flies across the face of its parent star relative to Earth's perspective (an event known as a transit), or wait for a new generation of more sensitive space telescopes that can directly capture the planet's faint light.
Now, there's a third option. Using a cryogenically-cooled infrared detector on a telescope in Chile, astronomers ferreted out beams of light coming directly from Tau Boötis b, a massive planet about 50 light-years from Earth. |  |
Should We Have Cloned Lonesome George?
The recent death of Lonesome George, the famed Galapagos tortoise believed to be the last representative of his subspecies, has many experts wondering how we should try to save other endangered and at-risk animals.
Cloning is one option. While cloning methods for reptiles are not as advanced as those for mammals, scientists also say they face other incredible obstacles. |  |
Massive Pile of Elephant Ivory Burned in Gabon—A First
More than ten thousand pounds of elephant ivory went up in flames today in the central African country of Gabon, a fiery act intended to snuff out a recent spike in poaching.
The government-held stockpile represents roughly 850 elephants that must have been killed for their ivory, which is increasingly in demand in Asia for artistic pieces. |  |
Austrian Family Lives a Life without Plastic
Is it possible to live modern life without plastic? One Austrian family, concerned about dangers to the environment and health caused by the material, decided to find out. What was meant to last a month has evolved into a new way of life.
Try to imagine living without plastic for just a single day. No computer, no mobile phone, no car and certainly no pre-packaged food. Modern life, marked by the ubiquity of plastic, makes avoiding the synthetic substance a nearly impossible undertaking. But concerned by a growing number of health and environmental problems that arise from constant contact with plastic, one Austrian family decided to go without. |  |