GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – A Mayan city whose fabulous art has beguiled collectors for decades but whose true location was until now a mystery has been pinpointed in the jungles of northern Guatemala, scientists said on Tuesday.
The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists.
They say that this month sees the lowest extent of ice cover for more than a century.
The Arctic climate varies naturally, but the researchers conclude that human-induced global warming is at least partially responsible.
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
JAPANESE zoologists say they have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world.
The pictures, taken a year ago but only due to be published later today, have come from Tsunemi Kubodera, of Tokoyo’s National Science Museum, and Kyoichi Mori, of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association.
Some forms of baldness could eventually be corrected through gene therapy.
Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say it is possible to regrow fur on bald mice by correcting a genetic mutation.
In both mice and humans, the mutation affects the natural process of hair growth, shedding and regrowth.
The mutation, in a gene called hairless, affects the production of a protein called wise that can inhibit hair growth if it accumulates.
In humans and mice with mutations in hairless, hair doesn’t grow back after being shed.
By introducing a normal hairless gene into bald mice, scientists at the Kennedy Krieger Research Institute and Johns Hopkins University could restart the hair growth process.
They say the findings provide insight into the hair growth process but say more research is needed as other components are involved in growth.
Theoretical physicists in the UK have shown that it should be possible to use clusters of proteins to perform complex logic operations. The work could also improve our understanding of protein “switches” (Phys. Biol. 2 159).
A new generation of superfast broadband Internet access promises to do more than accelerate Web browsing and file downloads. Five to thirty times as fast as DSL, these new—and surprisingly affordable—wide pipes can in some cases enable new video, voice, and data services.
Spearheading the coming bandwidth bonanza are fiber-optic services from Verizon and SBC—and hefty bandwidth increases from competing cable providers. For customers, these offerings can immediately speed up music, photo, video, and software downloads; they could eventually enable HD-quality video on demand, custom views of live events, and other bandwidth-intensive services.
A molecule has been designed to move in a straight line on a flat surface by closely mimicking human walking.
The “nano-walker” could allow massive storage of information on a tiny chip, say its creators at UC Riverside.
It also, they say, demonstrates that concepts from the macroscale world we inhabit can be duplicated at the scale of atoms and molecules.
The research, led by Ludwig Bartels, will be published in next month’s issue of Physical Review Letters.
A UC Riverside news release reports:
A mini robot that can scan 50 metres deep into the earth, called “Arturito”, is said to have discovered the 18th-century buried treasure on the Juan Fern?ndez island, home to Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish adventurer immortalised by Daniel Defoe as Robinson Crusoe. The island lies 660 kilometres from the coast of Chile.
The Chilean company responsible for developing Arturito, Wagner Technologies, announced that the robot had found the booty by probing 15 metres below ground. The company plans to start excavating as soon as permits can be obtained.
By some estimates the haul would include 800 barrels of gold ingots, silver pieces, gems and other riches worth up to $10 billion. The announcement has already sparked a dispute over who could claim the treasure, with the Chilean government suggesting it would have full rights.
The warnings keep piling up. Author Paul Roberts cautions his readers about “The End of Oil.” National Geographic’s cover story last month examined how the world might survive “After Oil.” The Economist magazine asks, “Is the age of oil drawing to a close?”
With the discomfort growing, consumers are considering fuel-efficient cars. Industry has gotten serious in its search for alternatives. New efforts are focused on wind, solar, nuclear, and even old, reliable coal (in a cleaner version) for the energy future.
But is the world really running out of oil? The short answer is no. Earth is swimming in the stuff. What’s changed is that the era of cheap oil ? a period that has lasted 150 years ? is showing its age. Only a dramatic breakthrough ? either in technology or consumption patterns ? can forestall its conclusion in a decade or two.
If it happens, the end of cheap oil would have a profound effect: stunting world economic growth, constraining China’s rise, and challenging Western lifestyles. America’s joy ride, in particular, could come to a screeching halt.
“The US has 2 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. But it burns 25 percent of the world’s transportation fuels,” says an analyst close to the oil industry who asked not to be named. “This isn’t going to work out in the long run.”
“My dream is to have a material that’s genetically controllable and genetically tunable. I’d like to have a DNA sequence that codes for the production of any kind of material you want,” she says. “You want a solar cell, here’s the DNA sequence for it. You want a battery, here’s the DNA sequence for it.” Her lab has already produced the first virus-assembled nanoelectrode and virus-assembled battery, created in collaboration with professors Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang. The battery reached the theoretical capacity for energy density with the material they created and, by putting it on a flexible surface, Belcher weaves these into soldiers’ uniforms to try to lighten their loads. Now, her lab seeks to develop a virus-based transistor.
When it comes to working out the relationships between ancient languages, grammar is more enlightening than vocabulary, scientists say.
There are some 300 language families in the world today. Researchers have long studied similarities between the words in different languages to try to work out how they are related. But the rate of change in languages means that this method really only works back to 10,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens evolved more than a hundred thousand years ago and by 10,000 years ago had already settled around the globe. So researchers are keen to peer further back in time to see how language evolved and spread.
To do this, Michael Dunn and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Germany decided to look at grammar.
1 in 5 people, or more then one billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and things are getting worse. Over the next two decades, the average supply of water per person will drop by a third, possibly condemning millions of people to an avoidable premature death.
See the BBC’s map of fresh water and get the facts on it’s depletion.
Nature has a web focus dedicated to the crisis.
Get educated, this is real.
The Left parties have sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stop the proposed move to privatise water supply in the capital under “pressures from World Bank” saying it will result in hike in tariffs.
In a letter to Singh, they said “the experience of implementing such World Bank dictated privatisation of water supply around the world has seen huge increases in tariffs and deprivation of water for the poorer sections”.
They said the project has raised a number of questions which have not been satisfactorily answered by the Delhi government or the Jal Board.
Alleging that the terms and conditions associated with the credit money given by the World Bank are “onerous and one-sided”, they demanded immediate withdrawal of the loan application.
A watchdog group, naming what it calls “the 13 most corrupt members of Congress,” is calling for ethics investigations of some of the most prominent leaders on Capitol Hill in a report to be released Monday.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says in its report that the 13 members, among them Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), might have violated a variety of congressional ethics rules.
The bipartisan list includes three Californians: Reps. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe).
Cunningham is one of two House members whose residences have been searched as part of separate federal criminal investigations. The other, Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), also is named on the watchdog group’s list.
Three of those named on the list ? Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) ? were cited for their dealings with onetime super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is the subject of congressional and federal grand jury investigations. Abramoff was indicted last month on fraud charges relating to a Florida business deal. He has pleaded not guilty.