Citing fears that doomsday believers, curiosity seekers, and "above all" journalists, will flood a French mountaintop on Dec. 21, the supposed day of the Mayan apocalypse, local officials are banning access to the mountain.
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Neanderthals May Have Sailed to Crete
Neanderthals, or even older Homo erectus("Upright Man") might have sailed around the Mediterranean, stopping at islands such as Crete and Cyprus, new evidence suggests.
The evidence suggests that these hominid species had considerable seafaring and cognitive skills. "They had to have had boats of some sort; unlikely they swam," said Alan Simmons, lead author of a study about the find in this week's Science. "Many of the islands had no land-bridges, thus they must have had the cognitive ability to both build boats and know how to navigate them.". |  |
Mini bio-bot walks when its rat heart cells beat
With the aid of a 3-D printer, researchers have fashioned soft, quarter-inch-long biological robots out of gel-like material and rat heart cells. When the cells beat, the bio-bots take a step.
The robots resemble tiny springboards, each with one long, thin leg resting on a stout supporting leg. The thin leg is covered in the heart cells. When the cells beat, the long leg pulses, propelling the bio-bot forward, according to the research team from the University of Illinois.
The robots resemble tiny springboards, each with one long, thin leg resting on a stout supporting leg. The thin leg is covered in the heart cells. When the cells beat, the long leg pulses, propelling the bio-bot forward, according to the research team from the University of Illinois.
The West's First Gene Therapy Goes On Sale Mid-2013
The first gene therapy to be approved in the West will hit the market by the middle of next year, opening the masses to a controversial treatment that directly alters a patient’s own DNA. Dutch biotech uniQure’s Glybera was approved for sale by the European Commission late last month.
Gene therapies emerged--appropriately--about the same time the first human genome was being mapped during the 1990s, though the study of gene therapies goes back as far as the 1970s. |  |
Wax-Filled Nanotubes Flex Their Muscles
Here's a twist: Scientists have designed a flexible, yarnlike artificial muscle that can also pack a punch. It can contract in 25 milliseconds—a fraction of the time it takes to blink an eye—and can generate power 85 times as great as a similarly sized human muscle. The new muscles are made of carbon nanotubes filled with paraffin wax that can twist or stretch in response to heat or electricity. When the temperature rises, the wax melts and forces the nanotubes to contract. Such artificial muscles, the researchers say, could power smart materials, sensors, robots, and even devices inside the human body.
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Mummified Dog Found in Mexico Believed to be 1000 Years Old (VIDEO)
What is said to be the first found in Mexico, a 1,000-year-old mummified dog is now being studied by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
The dog was one of many relics and archaeological materials found in 1953 to recently be sent to the INAH. It was among around 2,500 pieces uncovered in the Candelaria Cave (Cueva de la Candelaria) in Coahuila. |  |
Largest neolithic ruins in China studied
SHIMAO, China, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- City ruins found in northwest China's Shaanxi province covering more than a thousand acres are the largest ever found dating to neolithic China, scientists say.
Archaeologists studying the 4,000-year-old Shimao Ruins in Shenmu County measured the exact size of the ancient stone city, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
Archaeologists studying the 4,000-year-old Shimao Ruins in Shenmu County measured the exact size of the ancient stone city, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
Archaeologists Return to Uncover Ancient Karkemish
After nearly a century, archaeolgists have finally returned to excavate and conserve the ancient remains of Karkemish (Carchemish), a monumental capital city near the northwestern edge of Mesopotamia that was mentioned in both Biblical and extra-Biblical texts.
Here, kings and conquerors of the Mittani, Hittite, and Neo-Assyrian empires established seats of power and here, the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar II defeated the combined troops of Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt and Assyrian allies at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. |  |
Notes From Earth: Our Ancestors, the Acoustical Engineers
When priests at the temple complex of Chavín de Huántar in central Peru sounded their conch-shell trumpets 2,500 years ago, tones magnified and echoed by stone surfaces seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. The effect must have seemed otherworldly, but there was nothing mysterious about its production. According to archaeologists at Stanford University, the temple’s builders created galleries, ducts, and ventilation shafts to channel sound. In short, the temple’s designers may have been not only expert architects but also skilled acoustical engineers.
The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that sound meant more to our ancestors than archaeologists once realized. |  |
In Billions of Years, Aliens Will Find These Photos in a Dead Satellite
Of all the images that have ever been made, would you be able to select just 100 to represent our species and human achievement? Trevor Paglen’s Last Pictures is a project to do not only that, but also launch those images into geosynchronous orbit around Earth – all so that long after humans are gone, any space-wanderer will be able to fathom what humanity was all about.
The project is based on the idea that after billions of years, all signs of human civilization will have eroded away on Earth, but its satellites will still spin around the planet, making them the best bet for an indefinite time capsule.
The project is based on the idea that after billions of years, all signs of human civilization will have eroded away on Earth, but its satellites will still spin around the planet, making them the best bet for an indefinite time capsule.
Two-Thirds Marine Species Remain Unknown
Between 700,000 and one million species live in the world's oceans, according to a thorough new analysis, which also estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of those species have yet to be named and described.
The new numbers are far smaller than previous estimates, which had put the tally of marine species as high as 10 million or more. By coming up with a more accurate picture of what we know and what we don't yet know about marine life, the study should help scientists better focus conservation efforts where they're needed most. |  |
China’s advantage erodes in a key area: rare earth minerals
Two years after China limited its exports of “rare earth minerals,” unnerving developed countries that depended on them for industrial uses, production is expanding at sites outside China.
And as new sources of rare earth minerals have appeared, that has meant new jobs — including in the tiny town of China Grove, N.C., where Japan’s Hitachi Metals is planning to produce high-tech magnets from rare earth minerals. The Hitachi plant and its 70 new manufacturing jobs are a small example of how market forces can sometimes undercut China’s trade clout. |  |
In Nairobi, Kenya, biogas from human waste wins over few cooks
What if someone decided to clean up Nairobi's slums and dispense with what locals call the "flying toilet," a plastic bag of feces thrown into the choked, filthy gutters?
And what if that someone worked out a way to use the generated biogas as an inexpensive cooking fuel so that slum dwellers no longer needed to chop down trees for charcoal?. |  |
Solar trucks provide electricity in Sandy’s wake
In the Sandy-ravaged Rockaway Beach neighborhood of New York, a 10-year-old truck outfitted with 256-square feet of solar panels is a working example of how cities can prepare for superstorms of the future.
The truck, Rolling Sunlight, is one of several mobile solar generators deployed in the region as part of the Solar Sandy coalition of solar companies and nonprofits that have banded together to provide residents and relief workers with electricity.
The truck, Rolling Sunlight, is one of several mobile solar generators deployed in the region as part of the Solar Sandy coalition of solar companies and nonprofits that have banded together to provide residents and relief workers with electricity.
NASA's New, Stunning Imagery Of Solar Storms
Scientists who study solar weather try to find patterns in the violent, chaotic motion of magnetic field lines above the sun's surface. Though the lines aren't actually visible, their patterns are illuminated by the streams of hot plasma that travel along them. But, while the giant coronal loops that form during major solar storms are easy to pick out, the field lines are generally so tangled up that it's hard to pick any one of them out.
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NASA Photos Show Mile-Wide Asteroid in Deep Space
A team of NASA scientists has captured amazing radar images of a huge, mile-wide asteroid as it drifted silently millions of miles from Earth — its closest approach to our planet for the next 200 years.
Astronomers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used the agency's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. to capture three new radar views of asteroid 2007 PA8 between Oct. 28 and 30. By the end of the cosmic photo session, the asteroid was about 5.6 million miles (9 million kilometers) from Earth.
As of Monday (Nov. 5), the asteroidwas about 4 million miles (6.5 million km) from our planet. That is about 17 times the distance between the Earth and moon.
Astronomers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used the agency's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. to capture three new radar views of asteroid 2007 PA8 between Oct. 28 and 30. By the end of the cosmic photo session, the asteroid was about 5.6 million miles (9 million kilometers) from Earth.
As of Monday (Nov. 5), the asteroidwas about 4 million miles (6.5 million km) from our planet. That is about 17 times the distance between the Earth and moon.
Road Trip! The Interstellar Kind
The notion of humanity exploring distant worlds has long been the substance of dreams; from early Renaissance thinkers condemned for their heretical thinking, to fodder for modern day science fiction plots.
With humanity's insatiable appetite for knowledge and discovery, it is only natural that armed with enough curiosity we should seek to explore new horizons. |  |
Curiosity Rover Measures Radiation and Wind on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has lately been investigating the wind and radiation on Mars, providing data on some uniquely Martian weather phenomena.
The probe’s main objectives on Mars are to scour the planet for signs of ancient habitability. “But we also have some pretty important goals of studying the modern environment,” said geophysicist Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for Curiosity during a press conference today. ”And it’s a pretty dynamic environment.”. |  |
Roaming robot may explore mysterious Moon caverns
William 'Red' Whittaker often spends his Sundays lowering a robot into a recently blown up coal mine pit near his cattle ranch in Pennsylvania (see video). By 2015, he hopes that his robot, or something like it, will be rappelling down a much deeper hole, on the Moon.
The hole was discovered three years ago when Japanese researchers published images from the satellite SELENE1, but spacecraft orbiting the Moon have been unable to see into its shadowy recesses. A robot might be able to “go where the Sun doesn't shine”, and send back the first-ever look beneath the Moon's skin, Whittaker told attendees at a meeting of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme in Hampton, Virginia, this week. |  |
Stone me! Spears show early human species was sharper than we thought
The ancestors of humans were hunting with stone-tipped spears 500,000 years ago, according to a new study – around 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. This means that the technology must have been developed by an earlier species of human, the last common ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals.
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