Science & Technology
XinhuaThu, 22 Feb 2007 06:08 UTC
A group of construction workers stumbled upon 46 ancient tombs, between 1,500 and 2,500 years old while digging to build a new soccer stadium in Deportivo Cali in southwestern Colombia, an archaeologist team said on Wednesday.
For the first time, telescopes have captured the light spectra emitted directly from planets outside of our solar system. Researchers trained the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope on two extrasolar gas giant planets, called HD 209458 b and HD 189733 b.
Seminole --- A 16-year-old high school student stumbled upon what archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century.
Researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto have just completed an analysis of hospital visits in Ontario, showing that, compared to people born under other astrological signs, Virgos have an increased risk of vomiting during pregnancy, Pisces have an increased risk of heart failure, and Libras have an increased risk of fracturing their pelvises.
The large amount of data - from 10,000,000 Ontario residents - showed that each of the 12 astrological signs had at least two medical disorders associated with them, thus placing people born under a given sign at increased risk compared to those born under different signs.
NEW YORK - Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers - and someday, even limbs - with tricks that sound like magic spells from a Harry Potter novel.
There's the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.
Contrary to conventional thought dating back to Freud, victims of traumatic events do not subconsciously repress the memories but rather recall them with a clarity reminiscent of reality.
That startling finding comes from a five-year-study conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The same study, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) concludes that people have much more difficulty recalling pleasant memories than they do unpleasant.
A giant asteroid named Apophis could be on a trajectory to careen into Earth in 2036. That was the prediction NASA scientists made in 2004, suggesting a 1 in 37 chance that the space rock would hit our planet.
The danger has since receded - the revised likelihood that Apophis will hit Earth is 1 in 45,000. But the close call has galvanized efforts among scientists to predict and hopefully prevent a potentially apocalyptic impact.
A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study.
The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.
And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.
People are born with "kinship detectors" that help us stay away from romantic entanglements with our siblings that could lead to evolutionary disaster, a new study suggests.
But the system is far from fail-safe, the scientists found.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following:
On a "moral-wrongness" scale of 19 crimes, people ranked brother-sister sex as being below child molestation but above other, relatively minor offenses such as drug dealing and smoking marijuana. The ranked results, from most to least immoral, are below:
1. Molesting a child
2. Rape
3. A man killing his wife
4. A woman killing her husband
5. Consensual father-daughter sex
6. Consensual mother-son sex
7. Father-daughter marriage
8. Mother-son marriage
9. Consensual brother-sister sex
10. Brother-sister marriage
11. Assault with a weapon
12. Robbing a bank
13. Selling cocaine
14. Breaking and entering
15. Embezzlement
16. Smuggling illegal aliens into the country
17. Public drunkenness
18. Speeding on the highway
19. Smoking marijuana
It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!
The Earth's hum comes from the bottom of the sea and not from turbulence in the atmosphere, says a US researcher, backing a novel theory put forward in 2004.
The hum is a low rumble continually present in the ground even when there are no earthquakes happening, but is detectable only by very sensitive seismometers. Its frequency is near 10 millihertz, below the range of human hearing.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following: It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!