Though hot tubs, whirlpools and spas are widely used for relaxation and fun, they can pose serious risk for injury. Over the past two decades, as recreational use of hot tubs has increased, so has the number of injuries. A recent study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that from 1990-2007, the number of unintentional hot tub-related injuries increased by 160 percent, from approximately 2,500 to more than 6,600 injuries per year.

According to the study, published in the online issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 73 percent of the patients with hot tub-related injuries were older than 16 and approximately one half of all injuries resulted from slips and falls. Lacerations were the most commonly reported injuries (28 percent) and the lower extremities (27 percent) and the head (26 percent) were the most frequently injured body parts.

"While the majority of injuries occurred among patients older than 16, children are still at high risk for hot tub-related injuries," said study author Lara McKenzie, PhD, principal investigator at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "Due to the differing mechanisms of injury and the potential severity of these injuries, the pediatric population deserves special attention."

A team of Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a new tomb of an aristocrat from Ancient Thrace near the southern town of Nova Zagora.

The team led by archaeologist Veselin Ignatov found a burial tomb of 12 square meters date back to the end of 1st century and beginning of 2nd century AD. It is located outside of the village of Karanovo.

The burial site of the Thracian aristocrat contains a number of interesting items including a silver treasure of vessels and artifacts that were place there to be used by the aristocrat in his afterlife.

Those include two silver cups with images of love god Eros, and a number of other ornate silver and bronze vessels.

The archaeologists have also found a chariot and fragments of a shield. The expedition called Karanovo 2009-2010 has just started to uncover their new find, and Ignatov expects a lot more valuable items to be discovered.

A metal-detecting enthusiast has unearthed a 2,000-year-old treasure hoard worth an estimated £1 million in a field near Stirling.

The amateur hunter, who has not been identified, found four gold neckbands dating to the Iron Age.

He informed Scotland's Treasure Trove Unit which sent a team to excavate the site, the Daily Record newspaper reported. The bands, or "torcs", made from twisted gold, are thought to date from the 1st and 3rd century BC.

A similar one found in Newark, Nottinghamshire, in 2005 sold for £350,000. The Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel will now value the latest discovery. A spokesman for the National Museums of Scotland said: "There has been a significant find."

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.

"Matter is not distributed uniformly in the Universe," says Masayuki Tanaka from ESO, who led the new study. "In our cosmic vicinity, stars form in galaxies and galaxies usually form groups and clusters of galaxies. The most widely accepted cosmological theories predict that matter also clumps on a larger scale in the so-called 'cosmic web', in which galaxies, embedded in filaments stretching between voids, create a gigantic wispy structure."

These filaments are millions of light years long and constitute the skeleton of the Universe: galaxies gather around them, and immense galaxy clusters form at their intersections, lurking like giant spiders waiting for more matter to digest. Scientists are struggling to determine how they swirl into existence. Although massive filamentary structures have been often observed at relatively small distances from us, solid proof of their existence in the more distant Universe has been lacking until now.

We all know adolescents get testy from time to time. Thank goodness we don't have young tyrannosaurs running around the neighborhood.

In a new scientific paper, researchers from Northern Illinois University and the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford report that adolescent tyrannosaurs got into some serious scraps with their peers.

The evidence can be found on Jane, the museum's prized juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, discovered in 2001 in Montana.

Jane's fossils show that she sustained a serious bite that punctured through the bone of the dinosaur's left upper jaw and snout in four places, the researchers report. The injury wasn't life threatening and eventually healed over, according to the scientists. The bite did leave scars, however.

"Jane has what we call a boxer's nose," says Joe Peterson, an NIU Ph.D. candidate in geology and lead author of the study published in the November issue of the journal Palaios. "Her snout bends slightly to the left. It was probably broken and healed back crooked."

A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost 3 million euro (£2.6 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, said the project will put his company (www.galacticsuite.com) at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it, and forecast space travel will become common in the future.

Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories.

"Starburst galaxies have not been accessible in gamma rays before," said Fermi team member Seth Digel, a physicist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif.

"Most of the galaxies Fermi sees are exotic and distant blazars, which produce jets powered by matter falling into enormous black holes. But these new galaxies are much closer to us and much more like our own."

Learning to talk also changes the way speech sounds are heard, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale-affiliated research laboratory. The findings could have a major impact on improving speech disorders.

"We've found that learning is a two-way street; motor function affects sensory processing and vice-versa," said David J. Ostry, a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories and professor of psychology at McGill University. "Our results suggest that learning to talk makes it easier to understand the speech of others."

Neuroscientists and Magicians Are Studying How Sleight of Hand Affects the Brain, and Its Potential to Diagnose Autism

Las Vegas can be a magical place. It certainly is for Penn and Teller, who have been performing magic in their own Las Vegas theatre for almost eight years.

The house is packed every night - a testament to both Penn and Teller's draw . . . and to the universal appeal of magic itself.

"What makes for a successful trick?" Blackstone asked Teller, who never says a word on stage. He broke his silence for our interview (but insisted that we not show his moving lips).

An ancient South American civilization which disappeared around 1,500 years ago helped to cause its own demise by damaging the fragile ecosystem that held it in place, a study has found.

Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nasca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, have uncovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their "catastrophic" collapse around 500 AD.

The Nasca are probably best known for the famous "Nazca Lines", giant geoglyphs which they left etched into the surface of the vast, empty desert plain that lies between the Peruvian towns of Nazca and Palpa.

The depictions have spawned various wild theories, including that they were created by aliens. Most scholars now believe that they were sacred pathways which Nasca people followed during the course of their ancient rituals.