A team of archaeologists has discovered the tomb of a Bulgarian princess in the northern Bulgarian town of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria's medieval capital.
According to a report in The Sofia Echo, archaeologists Nikolai Ovcharov and Hitko Vachev have excavated on August 2 what has been described as the grave of a Bulgarian princess, buried in the courtyard of the St. Peter and Pavel church in Veliko Tarnovo.
The two archaeologists have concluded that the grave dates back to the 14th century or earlier, sometime after the reign of Tsar Ivan Assen II.
Science & Technology
© European Space Agency
The area being used to test the rover is built from sand, gravel and rocks.
The area being used to test the rover is built from sand, gravel and rocks.
The 90-square-metre playpen, known as the Planetary Utilisation Testbed is filled with sand, soil, gravel and rocks designed to recreate the look and feel of the Mars surface.
The ESA engineers are using the area to test the sense of direction of a prototype of the six-wheeled ExoMars rover. The final version will have to travel across the surface without the aid of a map, as well as to drill 2 metres beneath the Martian surface in search of life. Ensuring the rover can look after itself is vital to the mission's success.
A difference between the brains of psychopaths and ordinary people has been identified in a study that could promise new approaches to diagnosing and treating the disorder.
Research by British scientists using advanced brain-scanning techniques has revealed that a critical connection between two regions of the brain appears to be abnormal in psychopaths.
The findings are preliminary and do not show that brain anatomy causes psychopathy but they suggest a plausible biological explanation for the antisocial and amoral behaviour that characterises the condition.
Research by British scientists using advanced brain-scanning techniques has revealed that a critical connection between two regions of the brain appears to be abnormal in psychopaths.
The findings are preliminary and do not show that brain anatomy causes psychopathy but they suggest a plausible biological explanation for the antisocial and amoral behaviour that characterises the condition.
© Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty
Workers excavate a section of the Sierra de Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain in June.
Workers excavate a section of the Sierra de Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain in June.
About 150 miles north of Madrid, a jeep pulls up to a clump of trees in the Sierra de Atapuerca, a collection of hills that are rich with caves.
A man with a helmet and a miner's headlamp gets out. He looks more like a mountain guide than a scientist. He's Juan Luis Arsuaga, Spain's best-known paleontologist.
He walks into a large cave, which is marked by a pirate flag. "This is the entrance to the site that has produced the most human fossils in history," Arsuaga says. "What better way to mark it?"
Biomolecular computers, made of DNA and other biological molecules, only exist today in a few specialized labs, remote from the regular computer user. Nonetheless, Tom Ran and Shai Kaplan, research students in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute's Biological Chemistry, and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments have found a way to make these microscopic computing devices 'user friendly,' even while performing complex computations and answering complicated queries.
© J. M. Kenoyer / harappa.com
The team led by a University of Washington researcher has used computers to extract patterns in ancient Indus symbols. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows distinct patterns in the symbols' placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.
From Swiss Army knives to iPhones, it seems we just love fancy gadgets with as many different functions as possible. And judging from the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism, the desire to impress with the latest multipurpose must-have item goes back at least 2000 years.
© ESA
Why were we so confident? Exquisite measurements of the radiation left over from the big bang led us to believe that we could work out the curvature of the universe to within a few per cent. In doing so, we have determined how much energy the universe contains and that most of it is in an exotic form called dark energy, which is driving the expansion of space.
However, recent discoveries have left me wondering if these claims were premature. As we learn more about dark energy and its effect on the expansion of space and time, we find that dark energy and the shape, or geometry, of the universe are worryingly intertwined.
By changing our assumptions about dark energy we can radically modify our constraints on the shape of the universe. Equally, without a much more precise measurement of the geometry, it is impossible to determine the nature and evolution of dark energy. Our picture of the universe has, to some extent, been blown wide open again.
© BBC
The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed.
The relics include statues, art work, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master.
© photos.com
The story of a Great Flood is present throughout many ancient cultures. But did it really happen?
The story of a Great Flood is present throughout many ancient cultures. But did it really happen?
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."Approximately 9,000 to 5,000 years ago in the northern Turkish province of Sinop, an event of spectacular historic magnitude took place. So spectacular, in fact, that some believe it represents proof that the "Great Flood" recounted in the Bible may have been an actual (though somewhat exaggerated) representation of real events.
-- Genesis 7:11-12
In September of 2004, an expedition in the Black Sea by a team of scientists from various institutions (including the National Geographic Society) determined that the sea in question was not always as we know it today.
