Mayan apocalypse: Serbia's mystic mountain targeted by believers
Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of the Balkan country, say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse.
Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, conceals a pyramidal building inside, left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago. Arthur C Clarke, the British science fiction writer, reportedly identified the peak as a place of "special energy" and called it "the navel of the world". |  |
Grassroots Funding for a Stellar Noah's Ark?
Given the "big bang" of exoplanet discoveries over the past decade, I predict that there is a reasonable chance a habitable planet will be found orbiting the nearest star to our sun, the Alpha Centauri system. Traveling at just five percent the speed of light, a starship could get there in 80 years.
One Earth-sized planet has already been found at Alpha Centauri, but it is a molten blob that's far too hot for life as we know it to survive. The eventual discovery of a nearby livable world will turbo-boost interest and ignite discussions about sending an artificially intelligent probe to investigate any hypothetical life forms there. |  |
Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity.
Growing food in the desert: is this the solution to the world's food crisis?
The scrubby desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide, is not the kind of countryside you see in Australian tourist brochures. The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead smelting and mining, the coastal landscape is spiked with saltbush that can live on a trickle of brackish seawater seeping up through the arid soil. Poisonous king brown snakes, redback spiders, the odd kangaroo and emu are seen occasionally, flies constantly. When the local landowners who graze a few sheep here get a chance to sell some of this crummy real estate they jump at it, even for bottom dollar, because the only real natural resource in these parts is sunshine.
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1990 IPCC Report Successfully Predicted Warming, New Study Shows
Time has proven that even 22 years ago climate scientists understood the dynamics behind global warming well enough to accurately predict warming, says an analysis that compares predictions in 1990 with 20 years of temperature records.
After an adjustment to account for natural fluctuations, the predictions and the observed increases matched up, the current research found. |  |
Revealed: Seven Milky Way planets could harbour life
An ambitious project to catalogue every habitable planet has discovered seven worlds inside the Milky Way that could possibly harbour life.
Marking its first anniversary, the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog said it had far exceeded its expectation of adding one or two new planets this year in its search for a new earth. In recent years scientists from the Puerto Rico-based Planetary Habitability Laboratory that runs the catalogue have sharpened their techniques for finding new planets outside our solar system. |  |
From fish to man: Research reveals how fins became legs
Vertebrates' transition to living on land, instead of only in water, represented a major event in the history of life. Now, researchers reporting in the December issue of the journal Developmental Cell provide new evidence that the development of hands and feet occurred through the gain of new DNA elements that activate particular genes.
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The Flores Hobbit's face revealed
Homo floresiensis, as the hobbit is officially known, caused a storm of controversy when it was discovered in Flores, Indonesia in 2003. Some argued the hobbit was an entirely new species, while others suggested it may have simply been a diseased specimen of an existing human species. Using techniques she has previously applied to help police solve crimes, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong and specialist facial anthropologist, Dr Susan Hayes, moulded muscle and fat around a model of the hobbit's skull to flesh out her face.
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Catfish learning to hunt pigeons on land (VIDEO)
In an unusual development that researchers are calling evidence of adaptive behavior, some catfish have taken to jumping on land to hunt live pigeons.
Discover Magazine's Ed Yong writes, "These particular catfish have taken to lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. In the process, they temporarily strand themselves on land for a few seconds."
Researchers captured video of the European catfish, which reside in the River Tarn in southwestern France. In the footage, several of the fish, which range in length from 3 to nearly 5 feet, are seen thrusting their bodies from the shallow banks onto land where they capture pigeons and drag them back into the water.
Discover Magazine's Ed Yong writes, "These particular catfish have taken to lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. In the process, they temporarily strand themselves on land for a few seconds."
Researchers captured video of the European catfish, which reside in the River Tarn in southwestern France. In the footage, several of the fish, which range in length from 3 to nearly 5 feet, are seen thrusting their bodies from the shallow banks onto land where they capture pigeons and drag them back into the water.
Consider drugs decriminalisation system, MPs say
The government is being urged by MPs to closely consider a system of drugs decriminalisation used in Portugal.
The Home Affairs Committee said it was impressed with the approach to cutting drug use where people found with small amounts are not always prosecuted.
It also asks ministers to monitor the effects of cannabis legalisation in other parts of the world.
The Home Office rejected its call for a Royal Commission on UK drugs policy, saying that was "not necessary". However, the Home Office minister, Jeremy Browne, said the government was "open to new ways of thinking".
The Home Affairs Committee said it was impressed with the approach to cutting drug use where people found with small amounts are not always prosecuted.
It also asks ministers to monitor the effects of cannabis legalisation in other parts of the world.
The Home Office rejected its call for a Royal Commission on UK drugs policy, saying that was "not necessary". However, the Home Office minister, Jeremy Browne, said the government was "open to new ways of thinking".
Brain cells made from urine
Some of the waste that humans flush away every day could become a powerful source of brain cells to study disease, and may even one day be used in therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. Scientists have found a relatively straightforward way to persuade the cells discarded in human urine to turn into valuable neurons.
The technique, described online in a study in Nature Methods this week1, does not involve embryonic stem cells. These come with serious drawbacks when transplanted, such as the risk of developing tumours. Instead, the method uses ordinary cells present in urine, and transforms them into neural progenitor cells — the precursors of brain cells. These precursor cells could help researchers to produce cells tailored to individuals more quickly and from more patients than current methods. |  |
Precisely Engineering 3-D Brain Tissues
Borrowing from microfabrication techniques used in the semiconductor industry, MIT and Harvard Medical School (HMS) engineers have developed a simple and inexpensive way to create three-dimensional brain tissues in a lab dish.
The new technique yields tissue constructs that closely mimic the cellular composition of those in the living brain, allowing scientists to study how neurons form connections and to predict how cells from individual patients might respond to different drugs. The work also paves the way for developing bioengineered implants to replace damaged tissue for organ systems, according to the researchers. |  |
2012 in Review: 9 Important Archaeological Discoveries
Great things happen every year, but it never fails that by the time we reach the holiday season, most of them have been forgotten to all but a few die-hard news junkies and history buffs. In case you weren’t obsessively poring over the details of this year’s archaeological news, here’s a year-end round-up.
190-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs/A New Colossus of Amenhotep III/The World’s Oldest Preserved Honey/An Ancient, Tsunami-Ravaged Irish Settlement/A Massive Hoard of Gold and Silver Coins/The SS Terra Nova, a Ship that Carried Explorers to the South Pole/A King Buried Under a Parking Lot/Largest Ever Egyptian Sarcophagus Identified |  |
Harvard’s 3D-Printing Archaeologists Fix Ancient Artifacts
Indiana Jones practiced archaeology with a bull whip and fedora. Joseph Greene and Adam Aja are using another unlikely tool — a 3-D printer.
Greene and Aja work at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, using 3-D printers and 3-D scanning software to recreate a ceramic lion that was smashed 3,000 years ago when Assyrians attacked the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nuzi, located in modern day Iraq. Using a process called photomodeling, the Harvard team photographed sculpture fragments in the museum’s collection from hundreds of angles to create 3-D renderings of each piece, then meshed them together to form a semi-complete 3-D model of the original artifact. |  |
Oldest Pharaoh Carvings Discovered in Egypt
The oldest-known representations of a pharaoh are carved on rocks near the Nile River in southern Egypt, researchers report.
The carvings were first observed and recorded in the 1890s, but only rediscovered in 2008. In them, a white-crowned figure travels in ceremonial processions and on sickle-shaped boats, perhaps representing an early tax-collecting tour of Egypt. The scenes place the age of the carvings between 3200 B.C. and 3100 B.C., researchers report in the December issue of the journal Antiquity. During that time, Egypt was transitioning into the dynastic rule of the pharaohs. |  |
Space Bursts Provide Insight to Theory of Everything
Light from some of the universe's most energetic explosions is allowing scientists to probe the nature of space-time, according to new observations of so-called gamma-ray bursts from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Ikaros spacecraft. Photons released by these bursts help place limits on a unified model of all of the forces of nature — what scientists call a "theory of everything."
Using the Gamma-Ray Burst Polarimeter (GAP) onboard the spacecraft, a team of Japanese scientists have made the most precise measurements of energetic gamma-ray burst photons to date. |  |
Secretive Air Force Space Plane Ready for Tuesday Liftoff
The secretive U.S. Air Force X-37B robotic space plane has been cleared to lift off Tuesday (Dec. 11).
The X-37B vehicle and its cargo bay packed with a classified payload is set to make the third mission of the program. Also called Orbital Test Vehicle-3, or OTV-3, the unpiloted craft is slated to be hurled into Earth orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) at 1:03 p.m. EST (1803 GMT). There's an interesting angle to the upcoming mission. This third flight will use the same X-37B spacecraft that flew the first test flight, the OTV-1 mission, back in 2010. |  |
Hubble Zooms in on Unusual NGC 922
An international team of astronomers using the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the most detailed image so far of the spiral galaxy NGC 922.
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 922 is located in the southern constellation of Fornax at a distance of about 150 million light years. The new Hubble picture reveals that the NGC 922’s spiral arms are disrupted, a stream of stars extends out towards the top of the image, and a bright ring of nebulae encircles the core. The galaxy’s current unusual form is a result of a cosmic bullseye some 330 million years ago. |  |
Nazca Lines are a Labyrinth, New Study Shows
A five-year study by British archaeologists sheds new light on the enigmatic drawings created by the Nazca people between 100 BC and CE 700 in the Peruvian desert.
The Nazca geoglyphs, commonly known as the Nazca Lines, are located in the arid Peruvian coastal plain some 250 miles south of Lima. They have attracted a host of theories purporting to explain them ever since they were discovered during the 1920s – notably the bizarre ideas of Erich Von Daniken who supposed they were made by visiting extra-terrestrials. |  |
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