Skydiver Felix Baumgartner lands highest ever jump
Austrian Felix Baumgartner has broken the record for the highest ever skydive by jumping out of a balloon 128,000ft (39km) above New Mexico.
The 43-year-old was hoping also to break the sound barrier during his descent - although that mark awaits confirmation. Video cameras relayed the moment Baumgartner stepped from his balloon capsule to begin his fall to Earth. It took 10 minutes for him to reach the desert surface below. |  |
The truth is out there… UFO expert Nick Pope talks about aliens
I’ve been involved with the subject of UFOs since 1991, but unlike most people with this interest, this didn’t result from my having a sighting and it wasn’t a hobby – it was my government job! I worked for the Ministry of Defence for 21 years, from 1985 to 2006. I had a varied and enjoyable career, but by far my most bizarre MoD job was one that I did from 1991 to 1994, when my responsibilities included researching and investigating UFOs.
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Has our war on microbes left our immune systems prone to dysfunction?
An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases
 could be co-marketed with the Thomas Rockwell’s children’s classic How to Eat Fried Worms. It begins with the author, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, recounting his border-crossing to Tijuana to infect himself with Necator americanus—hookworms—in an attempt to cure the asthma, hay fever, food allergies, and alopecia that had plagued him since childhood. In the next three hundred pages, the author very cogently explains the idea that led him to willingly infect himself with a parasite known to cause severe diarrhea, anemia, and mental retardation in children. |   |
Rejection improves eventual impact of manuscripts
A study of papers’ histories from submission to publication unearths unexpected patterns.
Just had your paper rejected? Don’t worry — that might boost its ultimate citation tally. An excavation of scientific papers' usually hidden prepublication trajectories from journal to journal has found that papers published after having first been rejected elsewhere receive significantly more citations on average than ones accepted on first submission. |  |
Testosterone Increases Honesty, Study Suggests
Testosterone is considered THE male hormone, standing for aggression and posturing. Researchers working with Dr. Armin Falk, an economist from the University of Bonn, have now demonstrated that this sex hormone surprisingly also fosters social behavior. In play situations, subjects who had received testosterone clearly lied less frequently than individuals who had only received a placebo.
The results have just been published in the Public Library of Science's international online journal PLoS ONE.
The results have just been published in the Public Library of Science's international online journal PLoS ONE.
Neanderthals ... They're Just Like Us?
The Neanderthals are both the most familiar and the least understood of all our fossil kin.
For decades after the initial discovery of their bones in a cave in Germany in 1856 Homo neanderthalensis was viewed as a hairy brute who stumbled around Ice Age Eurasia on bent knees, eventually to be replaced by elegant, upright Cro-Magnon, the true ancestor of modern Europeans.
For decades after the initial discovery of their bones in a cave in Germany in 1856 Homo neanderthalensis was viewed as a hairy brute who stumbled around Ice Age Eurasia on bent knees, eventually to be replaced by elegant, upright Cro-Magnon, the true ancestor of modern Europeans.
Neanderthal expert weighs in on ancient ancestors
CHRON
Last Tuesday one of the world's leading experts on Neanderthals, Jean-Jacques Hublin, spoke at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The founder and director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Hublin also spoke with Chronicle science writer Eric Berger about the latest research into the closest ancestor of modern humans, who died out about 30,000 years ago.
The Mystery of the Money Tree Revealed
Buried in ancient Chinese tombs, money trees are bronze sculptures believed to provide eternal prosperity in the afterlife.
One money tree was crafted in southwest China during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE). Supported by a ceramic base, this rare piece of art stands 52 inches tall and spans 22 inches wide. Dragons and phoenixes — symbols of longevity — and coins decorate the tree's 16 bronze leaves. |  |
Prehistoric man ate panda, claims scientist
Early humans used to eat pandas, a Chinese scientist has claimed.
Wei Guangbiao said prehistoric man ate the bears in what is now part of the city of Chongqing in south-west China. Wei, head of the Institute of Three Gorges Paleoanthropology at a Chongqing museum, said excavated panda fossils "showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man". |  |
Too much of a good thing can be bad for corals
MIAMI -- A new study by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science shows that corals may be more severely impacted by climate warming when they contain too many symbiotic algae. The single-celled algae living inside corals are usually the key to coral success, providing the energy needed to build massive reef frameworks. However, when temperatures become too warm, these algae are expelled from corals during episodes of coral 'bleaching' that can lead to widespread death of corals. Until now, it was thought that corals with more algal symbionts would be more tolerant of bleaching because they had 'more symbionts to lose.' The new study shows that the opposite is true.
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Explosive Volcanic Eruptions Caused By Mixing Magmas
Meteorologists know mixing cold air and warm air triggers powerful thunderstorms. Now, geologists have discovered a similar phenomenon at work beneath one of Europe's most hazardous volcanoes.
The Las Cañadas volcano, on the island of Tenerife near Spain, last exploded approximately 170,000 years ago, and is due for another eruption. Researchers believe they have identified what happens in the volcano's magma chamber just prior to such massive eruptions, which could help scientists predict the next blast before it happens. |  |
Scientist warns of Fuji eruption chaos
A Japanese scientist has warned Mount Fuji is due for a "big-scale explosive eruption" that could affect millions of people and cause billions of dollars worth of damage.
Last month a study found the which could even trigger a volcanic eruption.
It said the added pressure could have been caused by last year's earthquake, which was followed a few days later by another large tremor directly underneath Fuji.
Professor Toshitsugu Fujii, the head of Japan's volcanic eruption prediction panel, says an eruption could cause chaos and carnage all the way to Tokyo.
Last month a study found the which could even trigger a volcanic eruption.
It said the added pressure could have been caused by last year's earthquake, which was followed a few days later by another large tremor directly underneath Fuji.
Professor Toshitsugu Fujii, the head of Japan's volcanic eruption prediction panel, says an eruption could cause chaos and carnage all the way to Tokyo.
Mysterious Elk-Shaped Structure Discovered in Russia
A huge geoglyph in the shape of an elk or deer discovered in Russia may predate Peru's famous Nazca Lines by thousands of years.
The animal-shaped stone structure, located near Lake Zjuratkul in the Ural Mountains, north of Kazakhstan, has an elongated muzzle, four legs and two antlers. A historical Google Earth satellite image from 2007 shows what may be a tail, but this is less clear in more recent imagery. Excluding the possible tail, the animal stretches for about 900 feet (275 meters) at its farthest points (northwest to southeast), the researchers estimate, equivalent to two American football fields. The figure faces north and would have been visible from a nearby ridge. |  |
Magic mushroom depression therapy prepped for controversial clinical trial
David Nutt, a prominent and often controversial investigator at Imperial College London, has landed about $800,000 from the U.K.'s Medical Research Foundation to test the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" as a possible new treatment for depression.
Working with the knowledge that psilocybin has been linked to long-term relief for cases of serious depression, Nutt has lined up a manufacturer able to produce a dose that can be injected in about 30 patients. Investigators will take brain scans of the volunteers to help determine how the therapy works.
Working with the knowledge that psilocybin has been linked to long-term relief for cases of serious depression, Nutt has lined up a manufacturer able to produce a dose that can be injected in about 30 patients. Investigators will take brain scans of the volunteers to help determine how the therapy works.
Fish Feces Fight Climate Change
Millions of tiny fish pooping out even tinier turds may have a big impact on climate change. The fish, such as anchovies, feed on single-celled algae that live on the ocean’s surface. A study in Scientific Reports found that the fish feces sink rapidly to the bottom of the ocean, carrying with it the carbon from those algae.
Fish feces travel fast. Grace Saba of Rutgers University and Deborah Steinberg of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found that anchovies’ dung drops approximately 2,500 feet per day. |
China now eats twice as much meat as the United States
China now eats twice as much meat as the United States and must rein in its appetite or face a food crisis, one of the country's leading farm experts has warned.
"It is not possible to feed everyone so much meat," said Wen Tiejun, the dean of Renmin university's Agriculture school a leading advocate of rural reform. "People must simply eat less". In the last 30 years, Chinese demand for meat has quadrupled, according to figures from the US Agriculture department. The country now eats a quarter of the world supply, or 71 million tons a year. |  |
‘Ironman’ suit could help paraplegics walk
A robotic exoskeleton similar to Ironman’s powered armor suit could help paraplegics walk, according to NASA researchers who designed the device to keep astronauts in shape on flights to Mars.
The 57-pound X1 suit is worn over a person’s body and can be used to either assist or inhibit movement of the leg joints.
Inhibit mode provides the resistance astronauts need for a workout while idle for months-on-end in a spaceship bound for Mars or doing time on the International Space Station.
The 57-pound X1 suit is worn over a person’s body and can be used to either assist or inhibit movement of the leg joints.
Inhibit mode provides the resistance astronauts need for a workout while idle for months-on-end in a spaceship bound for Mars or doing time on the International Space Station.
Galileo: Europe's version of GPS reaches key phase
The third and fourth spacecraft in Europe's satellite navigation system have gone into orbit.
The pair were launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. It is an important milestone for the multi-billion-euro project to create a European version of the US Global Positioning System (GPS). With four satellites now in orbit - the first and second spacecraft were launched in 2011 - it becomes possible to test Galileo end-to-end. |  |
Scientists probe fresh Martian meteorite
A meteorite that streaked to Earth in a blazing fireball over the Moroccan desert is one of the freshest samples of the Red Planet’s surface and atmosphere that scientists have ever seen.
Desert nomads recovered fragments of the Tissint meteorite, one of just five from Mars that have been seen during their descent, after it landed early in the morning of July 18, 2011. The space rock resembles a meteorite found in Antarctica in 1980 that was the first to show strong evidence of its Martian origin. But unlike other Martian meteorites that have sat on Earth’s surface for tens or hundreds of years before being discovered, Tissint hasn’t had much time to be altered by terrestrial influences. |  |
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