The X-mas Files – ‘festive’ UFO caught on camera
TO the untrained eye it looks like a luminous spinning top or Christmas bauble glowing in the night sky. But UFO experts are hoping that this mysterious picture might assist them in their quest for extraterrestrial life.
The unidentified flying object was spotted over Pitlochry in Perthshire last week by Adrian Musat, a chef from Romania.
The 40-year-old first noticed the object when he looked out of his window at 7:30am on 
5 November. He managed to capture a series of images on his video camera before it vanished 40 minutes later.
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Saturn's Titan - "Mirrors the Conditions that Led to Origin of Life on Earth"
The atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan is often viewed as an analog to what the Earth's atmosphere may have been like billions of years ago. Despite the 800 million miles between the two worlds, both may have had their atmospheres created through the gravitational layering and processing of asteroids and comets.
"We see Titan as a natural oasis of remarkable astrobiological significance to understand the environment in which origin of life took place on Earth," said Josep M. Trigo-Rodriguez, of the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC-IEEC) in Barcelona, Spain.. "It seems that a plausible scenario to build life consists of a dense atmosphere, where small particles like organic haze and meteoric metals could act as catalysts for the formation of more complex organic compounds from simple precursors such as carbon monoxide and methane, thus promoting increasing complexity." |  |
Dark energy map puts the squeeze on dark matter
There is more movement in the universe than astronomers can explain. The galaxies are spinning more quickly than expected, while space itself is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, which is something astronomers thought was simply impossible until they discovered it in the mid-90s.
Clearly, something is missing from our knowledge of the cosmos. Rather than tinker with the gravitational theories of Newton and Einstein to cause more movement from the matter that we know exists, most astronomers prefer to believe that the universe is made up predominantly of invisible matter and energy. |  |
Lonely 'homeless' planet found for the first time
The lonely planet, called CFBDSIR2149 at the moment, is deemed “homeless” as it does not orbit a star.
It is the first isolated planet of its kind ever to be discovered by scientists, after more than a decade of searching in a process described as “looking for a single needle in amongst thousands of haystacks." Up to seven times the size of Jupiter, it is free-floating with no gravitational link and meets the specific criteria of mass, temperature and age to be designated as a “planet”. |  |
Tutankhamun's replica tomb unveiled
Before the Conrad Hotel overlooking the Nile Corniche, where an exact replica tomb of the ancient Egyptian mysterious king Tutankhamun is located, thousand of journalists, TV cameras and photographers gathered to witness on Tuesday the unveiling of the tomb by European Commission Vice President Catherine Ashton and the Minister of Tourism Hisham Zaazou.
The tomb was immediately opened to public after its official inauguration within the framework of the two-day-long EU Task Force Conference on Tourism and Flexible Investments. |  |
Stone Tools Point to Creative Work by Early Humans in Africa
At a rock shelter on a coastal cliff in South Africa, scientists have found an abundance of advanced stone hunting tools with a tale to tell of the evolving mind of early modern humans at least 71,000 years ago.
The discovery, reported in the current issue of the journal Nature, lends weight to the hypothesis that not only did anatomically modern Homo sapiens emerge in Africa but also, to a previously unsuspected extent, their cognitive capacity for abstract and creative thought and the conception of increasingly complex technologies associated with modern human behavior. |  |
How brainless slime molds redefine intelligence
Gardeners sometimes encounter them in their backyards—spongy yellow masses squatting in the dirt or slowly swallowing wood chips. Hikers often spot them clinging to the sides of rotting logs like spilled bowls of extra cheesy macaroni. In Mexico some people reportedly scrape their tender bodies from trees and rocks and scramble them like eggs. They are slime molds: gelatinous amoebae that have little to do with the kinds of fungal mold that ruin sourdough and pumpernickel. Biologists currently classify slime molds as protists, a taxonomic group reserved for "everything we don't really understand," says Chris Reid of the University of Sydney.
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Urban grasshoppers change their tune for females
Grasshoppers that live in noisy urban environments are having to change their song, a study has found.
Researchers suggest that high levels of background noise may affect the grasshoppers' mating process. They say the insects are forced to increase the volume of the low-frequency sections of their call. Results of the study, by scientists from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, are published in the journal Functional Ecology. |  |
Britain’s largest spider on the move for first time in 20 years
For arachnophobes it may not be welcome news – Britain’s largest spider is starting to make a comeback.
The fen raft spider, which can have an adult leg span of up to four inches across and bodies an inch long, has successfully bred at a new location in the wild for the first time in more than 20 years following a reintroduction programme to save them from dying out. |  |
Endangered mountain gorilla population on the upswing
The world's mountain gorilla population has grown slightly to 880 animals, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conservation group. That's up from an estimated population of 781 animals in 2010.
The critically endangered animals live in only two places in the world — Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and the Virunga Massif area, which spans parts of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. |  |
Expedition to Count Endangered Chinese Porpoises
How many finless porpoises are left in China's Yangtze River? An expedition is under way to count how many of these endangered animals survive in the heavily polluted waterway.
There are less than 1,800 of the animals in the wild, mainly in the central and lower reaches of the 3,915-mile (6,300 kilometers) Yangtze River and two large adjoining lakes, Dongting and Poyang. Two recent surveys found that populations of the endangered animal, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, had plummeted in Dongting Lake. Numbers in Poyang, however, remained relatively stable — 450 porpoises were counted there, the WWF, which is helping to organize the expedition, reported. |  |
Great whites 'not evolved from megashark'
A new fossil discovery has helped quell 150 years of debate over the origin of great white sharks.
Carcharodon hubbelli, which has been described by US scientists, shows intermediate features between the present-day predators and smaller, prehistoric mako sharks. The find supports the theory that great white sharks did not evolve from huge megatooth sharks. The research is published this week in the journal Palaeontology. |  |
What Lives in Your Belly Button? Study Finds "Rain Forest" of Species
Rob Dunn and his team of ecologists aren't your average navel gazers. They're professional navel gazers, thank you very much, and their new study details the microbial contents of 60 volunteers' belly buttons.
The upshot? Belly buttons, it turns out, are a lot like rain forests.
The whole thing started about two years ago. An undergrad's only-in-a-biology-lab idea—sampling colleague's navel bacteria for a holiday card—struck a chord with the North Carolina State University team, which had adopted a new focus on citizen science.
The upshot? Belly buttons, it turns out, are a lot like rain forests.
The whole thing started about two years ago. An undergrad's only-in-a-biology-lab idea—sampling colleague's navel bacteria for a holiday card—struck a chord with the North Carolina State University team, which had adopted a new focus on citizen science.
US Titan supercomputer clocked as world's fastest
The top two spots on the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers have both been captured by the US.
The last time the country was in a similar position was three years ago. The fastest machine - Titan, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - is an upgrade of Jaguar, the system which held the top spot in 2009. |  |
Can humans subconsciously predict the future?
Can our bodies predict future events that matter to us, even if we're unaware of it? Some evidence suggests they can. The basic scientific observation is that human physiology differs between two situations: just before an unpredictable exciting/scary event happens (like seeing a picture of a snake about to strike) versus just before a boring event happens (like seeing a picture of a lamp). This phenomenon is sometimes called presentiment (as in "sensing the future"), but because I'm not entirely sure we're really sensing the future, I like to call the phenomenon anomalous anticipatory activity (AAA; imagine the motor club, but the complimentary roadmaps could be maps of the future).
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Human Brain Is Wired for Harmony
Stop that noise! Many creatures, such as human babies, chimpanzees, and chicks, react negatively to dissonance—harsh, unstable, grating sounds. Since the days of the ancient Greeks, scientists have wondered why the ear prefers harmony. Now, scientists suggest that the reason may go deeper than an aversion to the way clashing notes abrade auditory nerves; instead, it may lie in the very structure of the ear and brain, which are designed to respond to the elegantly spaced structure of a harmonious sound.
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Meditate That Cold Away
To blunt your next cold, try meditating or exercising now. A new study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that adults who practiced mindful meditation or moderately intense exercise for eight weeks suffered less from seasonal ailments during the following winter than those who did not exercise or meditate.
The study appeared in the July issue of Annals of Family Medicine. Researchers recruited about 150 participants, 80 percent of them women and all older than 50, and randomly assigned them to three groups.
The study appeared in the July issue of Annals of Family Medicine. Researchers recruited about 150 participants, 80 percent of them women and all older than 50, and randomly assigned them to three groups.
Meditation produces enduring changes in emotional processing in the brain
A new study has found that participating in an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating. In their report in the November issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston University (BU), and several other research centers also found differences in those effects based on the specific type of meditation practiced.
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Vegetative man tells doctors ‘I’m not in pain’ via MRI communication
More than 12 years after a car accident left him in a vegetative state, a Canadian man has begun communicating with doctors who are monitoring his brain activity through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans.
The BBC reports that 39-year-old Scott Routley has been able to communicate to doctors that he is not in any pain, marking the first time an uncommunicative, severely brain-damaged patient has been able to give direct answers regarding their care and treatment. |  |
Ancient Visions of a 2012 Eclipse
Get ready for a full solar eclipse coming to your planet on November 13, 2012. This will be the final full eclipse of the current 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count,and that is just the beginning. The significance of this event transcends even Mayan cosmology, in which, as we will see, it is deeply integrated, speaking to a unified planetary vision of natural cycles, harmonic mathemagics, and the opportunity for aradical cultural renewal. Evidence for human interest in recording natural cycles goes back 35,000 years or more. The earliest known artifact to express a substantial mathematical awareness,with the potential to be used in a properly “calendrical” fashion, is The Ishango Bone. This baboon fibula was incised with 168 tally marks, and inset with a crystal,around 25,000 years ago in equatorial Africa, near the headwaters of the Nile river.
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