Scientists, environmentalists and even World War II historians have reacted with a mixture of excitement and concern to news that Russian geologists have drilled through to a huge subterranean lake in Antarctica, some 20 million years old.

It has taken more than 30 years to work through 3,700 meters of thick ice – drilling in temperatures as low as minus 80 centigrade. But it will have been worth it, if even half the claims being made about the lake are true. Sealed off below the ice for millions of years, the lake is a unique environment. “According to our research, the quantity of oxygen there exceeds that on other parts of our planet by 10 to 20 times. Any life forms that we find are likely to be unique on Earth,” says Sergey Bulat, the Chief Scientist of Russia’s Antarctic Expedition to Russian Reporter magazine. But there is one place not on Earth that has similar conditions – Europa, the mysterious satellite of Jupiter.

USA Today: Russian drillers reach huge lake below Antarctica

After 30 years spent drilling through a four-kilometer-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake. Scientists are set to reveal its 20-million-year-old secrets, and imitate a quest to discover ET life.

The Vostok project breathes an air of mystery and operates at the frontiers of human knowledge. The lake is one of the major discoveries in modern geography; drilling operations at such depths are unprecedented; never before has a geological project required such subtle technologies.

The main inspiration for the project – the Russian scientist who posited the lake’s existence – died just six months before the moment of contact with the lake’s surface. Now, the whole world is looking to Lake Vostok for crucial data which might help to predict climate change.

“Yesterday [on Sunday] our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed Russian scientist. Meanwhile, Itar-Tass news agency says the scientists still have a few meters to go.

Lake Vostok is a unique closed ecosystem hidden under some four kilometers of ice. Its water has been isolated from the atmosphere – and therefore from any contact with the outside world – since before man existed. The key question for scientists is, could the lake harbour life?

This is fascinating, a nuclear explosion from the Tumbler-Snapper tests performed in Nevada during 1952. It looks different from all nuclear explosions you've seen because it's what it looks like one millisecond after detonation. It looks like a skull by Tim Burton.

The face of atomic death just one second away from unleashing its absolute destruction. Only one millisecond after the bomb explodes, this 65.6-foot (20 meters) ball of fire appears in midair, with spikes that look like rotten teeth or stalactites of fire (called the rope trick effect). The explosion was captured by a Rapid Action Electronic camera—a high speed device designed to photograph nuclear explosions just milliseconds after ignition.

What's a Rapid Action Electronic camera? - The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. A Kerr cell is a panel that changes its polarization depending on the voltage applied. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.

Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July.

This is only the fifth time scientists have confirmed chemically Martian meteorites that people witnessed as they fell. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December. This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars' potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only Martian samples scientists can examine are those that come here in meteorite showers. Scientists and collectors of meteorites are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big money because they are among the rarest things on Earth, rarer even than gold. [...] Most other Martian meteorite samples sat around on Earth for millions of years, or at the very least for decades, before they were discovered, which makes them tainted with Earth materials and life. These new rocks, while still probably contaminated because they have been on Earth for months, are purer.

The Blaze: Confirmed: Meteorites Did Hit Earth From Mars…And They Cost 10x More Than Gold

CAIRO — Swiss archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a female singer dating back almost 3,000 years in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said on Sunday. The rare find was made accidentally by a team from Switzerland's Basel University headed by Elena Pauline-Grothe and Susanne Bickel in Karnak, near Luxor in Upper Egypt, the minister told the media in Cairo.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a singer for the supreme deity Amon Ra during the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945-712 BC), according to an inscription on a wooden plaque found in the tomb. She was the daughter of the High Priest of Amon, Ibrahim said. The discovery is important because "it shows that the Valley of the Kings was also used for the burial of ordinary individuals and priests of the Twenty-Second Dynasty," he added. Until now the only tombs found in the historic valley were those linked to ancient Egyptian royal families.

A BRITISH scientist has stumbled upon a treasure trove of Charles Darwin's work in a gloomy corner a building where it lay undiscovered for more than 150 years. - Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said today that glass slides containing important Darwin fossils were in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey. Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labelled "C. Darwin Esq". "It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realised it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen. He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he was wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered". Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker - a botanist and dear friend of Darwin - and the Rev John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.

A newly discovered form of chemical intermediary in the atmosphere has the ability to remove pollutants in a way that leads to cloud-formation and could potentially help offset global warming.

The existence of these so-called Criegee biradicals, which are formed when ozone reacts with a certain class of organic compounds, was theorized over fifty years ago, but they have now been created and studied in the laboratory for the first time.

According to Science Daily, the discovery was made possible through the use of a third-generation synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which produces an intense, tunable light that enables scientists to differentiate between molecules which contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations. The Criegee biradicals — named after Rudolph Criegee, who postulated their existence in the 1950′s — turn out to react with pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, much more rapidly than expected to form sulphates and nitrates. “These compounds,” Science Daily explains, “will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.”

Cygnus X, one of the most active regions in the Milky Way
(NASA/Reuters/ScanPix)

Most of the stars in the Milky Way have Earthlike planets meaning there are billions of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, a new study claims.

By scouring millions of stars in the night sky over six years, researchers found that the majority of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way have planets similar to Earth or Mercury, Venus or Mars, the other similar planets in our solar system. They estimated that in our galaxy there are about 10 billion stars with planets in the "habitable zone" – the distance from the star where solid planets can be found – many of which could in theory be capable of supporting life. Dr Martin Dominik, a German research fellow at St Andrews University, said: "Even if life existed on only one planet in each galaxy there would still be 100 billion in the universe. "We still don't have the evidence of life on another planet, and we could be unique, but confronted with these numbers it seems highly unlikely. "There are a small number of planets which we think could harbour life, a small number of candidates with what we believe might be the right conditions."

LuluP's Photo stream (flickr)

Experts say they have confirmed for the first time the precise origin of some of the rocks at Stonehenge.

It has long been suspected that rhyolites from the northern Preseli Hills helped build the monument. But research by National Museum Wales and Leicester University has identified their source to within 70m (230ft) of Craig Rhos-y-felin, near Pont Saeson. The museum's Dr Richard Bevins said the find would help experts work out how the stones were moved to Wiltshire.

For nine months Dr Bevins, keeper of geology at National Museum Wales, and Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University collected and identified samples from rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire to try to find the origins of rhyolite debitage rocks that can be found at Stonehenge.

By detailing the mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock, a process known as petrography, they found that 99% of the samples could be matched to rocks found in this particular set of outcrops.

Rhyolitic rocks at Rhos-y-felin, between Ffynnon-groes (Crosswell) and Brynberian, differ from all others in south Wales, they said, which helps locate almost all of Stonehenge's rhyolites to within hundreds of square metres. Within that area, the rocks differ on a scale of metres or tens of metres, allowing Dr Bevins and Dr Ixer to match some Stonehenge rock samples even more precisely to a point at the extreme north-eastern end of Rhos-y-felin.

Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University called the discovery of the source of the rocks "quite unexpected and exciting".

UNESCO: Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites

The depiction of the rich and cold-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” is backed up with scientific evidence, according to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. - The researchers found that people in lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to the suffering of others than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. The current study builds upon a similar one published in Psychological Science in 2010. That study found that people of upper-class status have trouble recognizing the emotions other people are feeling. People of lower-class status do a much better job.

The ill-fated Phobos-Grunt probe that got stuck in the orbit after an unsuccessful launch will fall to Earth on January 11, probably affecting four continents, the US Strategic Command shared its latest forecast. - The current orbit of the vehicle suggests that it could collide with the surface on a vast part of the globe, from latitude 51.4°N to latitude 51.4°S. anywhere in Africa, Australia, Japan, North America or southern part of Western Europe, but definitely not on the larger part of the Russian territory. A more-or-less exact prognosis on the coordinates of the crash can only be made several hours before the collision. According to the previous forecast, the probe was due to enter atmosphere on January 9.

NASA scientists have identified a new planet they believe to have several similarities to Earth. - Kepler-22b, named for the Kepler planet-hunting telescope it was spotted with, is the first planet to be confirmed beyond our solar system in what the Guardian called the "Goldilocks zone": not too hot, not too cold, and therefore possibly habitable. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth. It orbits a star similar to the Earth's sun and is believed to have a surface temperature of around 22 degrees Celsius, according to NASA. Astronomers say Kepler-22b's temperate climate makes it possible that it possesses liquid water, CNN reported. Kepler program scientist Douglas Hudgins described the discovery as "a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin." NASA still does not know what the planet is made of, however; it could be predominantly rock, gas or liquid. Scientists have "no idea" about the typical composition of planets of this size, Kepler deputy science team lead Natalie Batalha said, since there is no precedent in our own solar system. Since Kepler-22b is about 600 light years - or 3,600 trillion miles - from Earth, the chances of any earthlings ever making it there are slim.

Discover Magazine: Kepler confirms first planet found in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star!

A very informative documentary about the real cause of global warming. It clearly discuss about the fact that CO2 is not cause of global warming. Take a look also at the Great Global Warming Swindle and Green House Conspiracy in google video. This documentary discusses many topics that are not covered in the Swindle such as the hockey stick graph, from the viewpoint of Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas.

How do you capture a raven's heart? Arrest its attention by showing it a twig or stone. Ravens use referential gestures – one of the foundations of human language – to initiate relationships.

From an early age we learn to use referential gestures such as pointing to direct another's attention. "People think that this pointing forms the basis of language," says Simone Pika at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany. "It has also been linked with mental-state attribution – the idea that you understand what I am pointing out." Apes raised in captivity can learn to use referential gestures to communicate with their human caregivers. Now Pika and Thomas Bugnyar at the University of Vienna, Austria, have recorded common ravens (Corvus corax) using them for the first time.

The researchers observed seven pairs of wild ravens showing and offering stones, twigs and moss to each other – by holding the object in their beaks – in an apparent attempt to grab the attention of another bird and initiate a relationship. Importantly, the ravens made these gestures only when another bird was watching, and the items they show and offer are not food. They usually gesture only to members of the opposite sex.

Like humans, ravens form monogamous pairs that will defend a territory and raise their young together. They even develop a repertoire of vocalisations that are exclusive to the couple.

MSNBC: No flipping the bird, but ravens do make 'hand' gestures

Teams from the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch fully-fledged joint research next year aiming to recreate the giant mammal, Japan's Kyodo News reported from Yakutsk, Russia.

By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's marrow cells, embryos with mammoth DNA can be produced, Kyodo said, citing the researchers. The scientists will then plant the embryos into elephant wombs for delivery, as the two species are close relatives, the report said. Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, it said. For scientists involved in the research since the late 1990s, finding nuclei with undamaged mammoth genes has been a challenge. Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago. But the discovery in August of the well-preserved thigh bone in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning.

A new study by USC Annenberg researchers Stacy Smith (pictured), Marc Choueiti and Stephanie Gall surveys the top 100 grossing movies of 2009 and shows Hollywood’s addiction to films that marginalize and sexualize women is as strong as ever. - The study, "Gender Inequality in Popular Films," can be found here (PDF). Perhaps most troubling were the findings about young teen characters. Professor Smith and her research team of undergraduate students found the same prevalence of sexually revealing clothing and partial nudity in female characters in all age groups from 13 to 39. In fact, 13- to 20-year-olds were just as likely as 21- to 29-year-olds to be depicted that way. The survey found 33.8 percent of female teen characters were seen in sexy clothing, and 28.2 percent were shown with exposed skin in the cleavage, midriff or upper thigh regions. For male teen characters, the numbers were drastically lower – 5.3 percent shown in sexy clothing and 11.2 percent showing skin. Sexualizing a significant portion of women this age may contribute to males viewing girls and women as “eye candy” at younger and younger ages, Smith said. “Viewing sexualized images of females in film may contribute to self-objectification in some girls or women, which – in turn – may increase body shame, appearance anxiety and have other negative effects,” she said.

Process of human conception...

After crunching ice-age climate numbers, Oregon researchers and colleagues from Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Barcelona came up with two encouraging conclusions about future global warming.

The planet appears less sensitive to carbon dioxide changes than expected, their study says, so extreme temperature increases in the near future appear highly unlikely. And future warming may also be less than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, particularly at the upper end of the "likely" range.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation's paleoclimate program, drew on the known extent of ice sheets in the past and levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide taken from air trapped in Antarctic ice cores. Researchers also mapped ice-age temperatures based on pollen levels on land and concentrations of temperature-sensitive microorganisms in the ocean. Schmittner and colleagues then ran a climate computer model at different "climate sensitivities" -- the climate's reaction to greenhouse gas levels -- to see which sensitivities best pinpointed actual ice-age temperatures.

Their conclusion: The climate appears less sensitive to greenhouse gases than prior estimates. Based on the computer runs, doubling carbon concentrations would likely increase the world's average temperature from 3.1 to 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit over preindustrial levels, the study predicts. That's lower than the IPCC's likely temperature range for a doubling of carbon dioxide: 3.6 to 8.1 degrees. And it's a far cry from increases of up to 18 degrees held out as low probability possibilities. The study also concludes that increases greater than 11 degrees from a doubling of C02 "should be assigned near-zero probability." Computer runs using such severe climate sensitivity modeled the globe as entirely covered in ice during the ice age, the study said. Schmittner said the actual number was closer to 10 percent.

Finding that contradicts Einstein's theory of special relativity is repeated with fine-tuned procedures and equipment. - The scientists who appeared to have found in September that certain subatomic particles can travel faster than light have ruled out one potential source of error in their measurements after completing a second, fine-tuned version of their experiment. Their results, posted on the ArXiv preprint server on Friday morning and submitted for peer review in the Journal of High Energy Physics, confirmed earlier measurements that neutrinos, sent through the ground from Cern near Geneva to the Gran Sasso lab in Italy 450 miles (720km) away seemed to travel faster than light. The finding that neutrinos might break one of the most fundamental laws of physics sent scientists into a frenzy when it was first reported in September. Not only because it appeared to go against Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity but, if correct, the finding opened up the troubling possibility of being able to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect.

[Image 1 of 13] Air traffic routes are shown between North America and Europe. Felix Pharand-Deschenes has created global snapshots depicting how power lines, roads and even air traffic corridors have come to dominate the surface of Earth. His visualisations based on real data show air traffic routes, the underwater cables that carry the internet, road and rail networks and electricity transmission lines all superimposed over cities at night.

These mosquitoes are genetically engineered to kill — their own children. - Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood. The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria. But the research is arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled.

Plague germs teased from mediaeval cadavers in a London cemetery have shed light on why the bacterium that unleashed the Black Death was so lethal and spawned later waves of epidemics. - The DNA of Yersinia pestis shows, in evolutionary terms, a highly successful germ to which the population of 14th-century Europe had no immune defences, according to a study published Wednesday in the British journal Nature. It also lays bare a pathogen that has undergone no major genetic change over six centuries.

Physicist languishes in French prison for two years without trial: French intelligence services say he is a dangerous terrorist... family members and colleagues argue that he is a brilliant young physicist singled out because of his academic background. - French intelligence services say that Adlène Hicheur is a dangerous terrorist who was caught plotting attacks in Europe and beyond; family members and colleagues argue that he is a brilliant young physicist singled out because of his academic background. Guilty or innocent, on Saturday Hicheur will have spent two years in detention without trial. Hicheur, now 34, was arrested on 8 October 2009 in his home town of Vienne. At the time, the French-Algerian was a postdoc in high-energy physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and was working on the LHCb detector at CERN, Europe's premier particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland.

Scientists have discovered a hole five times the size of Germany in the ozone layer above the Arctic, allowing harmful ultraviolet radiation to hit northern Canada, Europe and Russia this spring. - The 2 million square kilometre Arctic hole is similar to the hole over the Antarctic, researchers write in the journal Nature, released yesterday. They say 80 per cent of the ozone was lost about 20km (13 miles) above the Arctic and that a prolonged spell of cold weather – when chlorine chemicals which destroy ozone are at their most active – was to blame.

A recent piece in Scientific American highlights a new geo-engineering endeavor being undertaken by UK scientists, who plan to pump toxic sulfate particles into the sky to supposedly thwart natural sunlight back into space, and ultimately prevent the earth from "warming." - The report explains that the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Change Engineering (SPICE) program (yes, this is a real program that confirms the existence of "chemtrails") has been given $30,000 to build a giant pipe that spews water and sulfates a mile up into the stratosphere. Supported at the end by a giant "stadium-size hydrogen balloon," the pipe will allegedly mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption, which the team building it insists will help to "cool" the earth.

El derrumbe de los tres rascacielos del World Trade Center fue una obra maestra de la demolición controlada / Ésta es la conclusión a la que llegan el doctor Niels Harrit y otros nueve científicos en el artículo "Material Termítico descubierto en los restos del World Trade Center". ¿Podría ser el más audaz ataque terrorista de la historia, una compleja obra maestra de demolición? Esto es lo que el catedrático de química Niels Harrit ha estado preguntando, a raíz de su investigación de los escombros del World Trade Center, que han revelado restos de explosivos. Esta es la tercera entrevista concedida por Niels Harrit en Televisión; las dos primeras se retransmitieron en la TV danesa y esta tercera en Rusia Today.

WASHINGTON — At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday. - Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found. Within that group, "we believe that there were 83 deaths," said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November. Among the 1,300 people exposed to STDs during research between 1946 and 1948, "under 700 received some form of treatment as best as could be documented," Hauser said.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

Gore Flings Barnyard Epithet at 'Organized' Climate Change Critics. - Climate skeptics have "polluted" public debate on global warming using the same tactics tobacco companies once employed to deny the health risks of smoking, former Vice President Al Gore said last week.

"Some of the exact same people -- by name, I can go down a list of their names -- are involved in this," Gore said Thursday at an Aspen Institute forum in Aspen, Colo. "And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it's nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn't trap heat. It's not -- It may be volcanoes.' Bullshit! 'It may be sun spots.' Bullshit! 'It's not getting warmer.' Bullshit!"

The Week: Al Gore's 'expletive-laden' climate change rant

Raw Story: Al Gore compares climate change skeptics to racists - Al Gore continued his criticism of climate change skeptics in an interview with Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on UStream, going as far as to compare them to the racists of the 20th century.

An aerial view of the Amazon river. (F. Lanting/Corbis)

Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon.

Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out we have only known half the story until now.

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider. Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km. The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon flows much faster than the Hamza, however, draining a greater volume of water. Around 133,000m3 of water flow through the Amazon per second at speeds of up to 5 metres per second. The underground river's flow rate has been estimated at around 3,900m3 per second and it barely inches along at less than a millimetre per hour.

Australian and English researchers may have stumbled upon the world's oldest fossil, presumed to be at least 3.4 billion years old. - The research teams, from the University of Western Australia and Oxford University in England, came across the fossils in Western Australia in a remote part of the state called Strelley Pool. The microscopic fossils include evidence that cells and bacteria lived in an oxygen free world 3.4 billion years ago, when the Earth was still in its early stage of existence. "At last we have good solid evidence for life over 3.4 billion years ago. It confirms there were bacteria at this time, living without oxygen," said Professor Martin Brasier of the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford. Brasier led the team with David Wacey of the University of Western Australia.

PARIS — Microfossils found in Australia show that more than 3.4 billion years ago, bacteria thrived on an Earth that had no oxygen, a finding that boosts hopes life has existed on Mars, a study published Sunday says. - Researchers from the University of Western Australia and Oxford University say the remains of microbes, located in ancient sedimentary rocks that have triggered debate for nearly a decade, have been confirmed as the earliest fossils ever recorded. The sample came from the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, a site called Strelley Pool, where the microbes, after dying, had been finely preserved between quartz sand grains. Pilbara has some of the planet's oldest rock formations, set down in the so-called Archean Eon when the infant Earth was a primeval water world, with seas that were the temperature of a hot bath.

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

Camera spies what could be streams of salt water.

Using a powerful camera on a spacecraft in orbit around the red planet, scientists have spied what may be small streams of salty water flowing on Mars during warm seasons. Scientists have identified seven craters on Mars in which dark, finger-like features appear and seem to flow down slopes or tiny gullies during late spring through summer.

The most plausible explanation is that these features are caused by salty, or briny water.

“We do not have direct detection of water,” said Alfred McEwen, a University of Arizona planetary geologist who led the team that made the discovery. "But these features are clearly associated with warmer temperatures on Mars, and we see them grow incrementally and fade."

Scientists have previously found large deposits of ice at the Martian poles, as well as water vapor in the atmosphere. There's also a wealth of evidence, such as ancient shorelines and river beds, of abundant surface water in Mars' past. But from the standpoint of finding living organisms on Mars today, the existence of water in a liquid form could make a big difference.

Raw Story: "Flowing water" on Mars sparks hunt for ancient life

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice. But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct. Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.

If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings. - Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage. "This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions. The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.

Controversial climate sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton is currently in Australia on a lecture tour. He spoke not once, but twice to Adam Spencer this morning...because Mr. Spencer hung up on him. Download the audio files here: Part 1 + Part 2

An international team of scientists based in Scotland has decoded the full DNA sequence of the potato for the first time. - The breakthrough holds out the promise of boosting harvests of one of the world's most important staple crops. Researchers at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee say it should soon be possible to develop improved varieties of potato much more quickly. The genome of an organism is a map of how all of its genes are put together. Each gene controls different aspects of how the organism grows and develops. Slight changes in these instructions give rise to different varieties. Each individual has a slightly different version of the DNA sequence for the species. Professor Iain Gordon, chief executive of the James Hutton Institute, said decoding the potato genome should enable breeders to create varieties which are more nutritious, as well as resistant to pests and diseases.

A study released this week shows that when a person is peer pressured, they can form false memories, convincing themselves of different recollections of the past to fit what others insist is true. The study was published in Science this week.

Study subjects watched a movie in groups, then were questioned individually about it afterward. Four days later, subjects were questioned again. In 70 percent of cases, the researchers found, participants changed their recollection of the film to match their groupmates' incorrect memories. This held true even for questions that the subjects had initially felt very strongly that they had answered correctly.

The researchers called these "socially induced memory errors" because they found conclusive evidence that it was the group that caused the change in answers: Participants were hooked up to an MRI while answering questions, and their hippocampus and amygdala lit up when changing their answers after being told the group's memory differed from theirs, but not when a computer told them they were wrong. In other words, peer pressure convinced people they were wrong, as opposed to cold facts. In half of the socially induced memory errors, the false memory actually replaced the person's initial, true memory.

Mother Jones points out that the results of this study could explain why poll numbers show such high levels of support for statements such as "Obama is a Muslim" and "Obama is not a U.S. citizen" — statements proven to be wrong by evidence, but vocally supported by some groups.

A joint Norwegian-American report claims that 71 percent of alcoholics have inherited the condition genetically, a far higher total than expected or previously put forward. - The results of the project, which comes from cooperation between Virginia Commonwealth University and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, contradict previous findings that suggested genetic causes lay behind half of cases. The study, carried out in Virginia, conducted two intervals with a year’s gap between them of 4,203 identical and non-identical white male twins aged 18 to 56. Based on the research, it is believed that some genes involved in inheriting alcoholism control how the body breaks down alcohol, while others deal more generally with people’s predisposition to addictive behaviour.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has forever changed our view of the moon, literally bringing it into sharper focus and showing us the whole globe in unprecedented detail. - This rich new portrait has been rendered by LRO's seven onboard instruments, which together have delivered more than 192 terabytes of data, images and maps -- the equivalent of nearly 41,000 typical DVDs. "This is a tremendous accomplishment," says Douglas Cooke, Associate Administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "The exploration phase of the mission delivered a lot more than it originally promised, and that's been just the beginning for LRO."

After the indignity of seeing its economy overtaken by China's earlier this year, Japan has clawed back a little pride, beating its east Asian rival to produce the world's most powerful computer for the first time in seven years. - The machine, nicknamed K – a play on the Japanese word kei, meaning 10 quadrillion, the number of operations per second it is designed to perform when it is completed next year – crushed the opposition when the latest rankings were announced at the International Supercomputing conference at Hamburg. It harnesses more power than the next five supercomputers combined, and is mush faster than its closest rival, designed by China's National University of Defence Technology. About 1m desktop computers would have to be linked up to replicate its performance.

A study found that whining is the most effective way of distracting people carrying out elementary cognitive tasks. - The sound of fingernails on a blackboard, people having loud conversations on mobile phones in public - the list of things that annoy us is extensive. But, as has long been suspected, the sound of a child whining is the most irritating in the world to adults, according to scientists. Participants who were asked to do simple subtraction while listening to a range of noises - including machine noise, infant cries and neutral speech - made more mistakes and completed fewer problems while listening to the whines of a child. 'You’re basically doing less work and doing it worse when you’re listening to the whines,' said study co-author Rosemarie Sokol Chang, a professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz. The results weren't affected by the gender of participants, or whether or not they had children of their own. 'It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, everybody’s equally distracted,' said Chang.

Lord Christopher Monckton appears in a powerful new video by CFACT in which he exposes the deceptions involved in Climategate, scientist by scientist. These scientists received more than $21 million in public funding, yet used deception to ensure that real world data did not interfere with the selling of global warming.

“When you listen to Chris Monckton clearly, logically and succinctly take you through what transpired at the University of East Anglia, it's like having a bucket of cold water thrown in your face,” said CFACT's Executive Director, Craig Rucker. “This will surely wake people up. Monckton holds nothing back.”

The video was shot at Berlin's Melia Hotel on Friday, December 4th during a climate conference co-sponsored by CFACT and several European think tanks. The conference included top scientists and experts, including Fred Singer, Nils Axel Mörner, Horst-Joachim Luedecke, and Henrik Svensmark.

“These scientists whom Lord Monckton exposes using tricks in place of science are no bit players,” Rucker said, “these are founding fathers of global warming and their credibility now lies in tatters. Sound science requires no sleight of hand. They have left their entire global warming argument more suspect than ever.

U.S. space shuttle Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, kicking off its 25th and final mission. The event was important to the eyes of media and scientists in China because the shuttle carries the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) particle detector, mankind's most ambitious effort to date to explore the universe' origin with Nobel laureate physicist Samuel Ting as the program's principal scientist. The 7,000-kg AMS worth 2 billion U.S. dollars will be placed in the International Space Station (ISS) and an international team of more than 600 scientists, including many from China's mainland and Taiwan, have joined Ting's exhausting but respectable AMS program.

China's scientists have played a crucial role in designing and manufacturing some core parts of the device. However, Chinese journalists who hoped to cover the launching of Endeavour were simply denied entry to the site by a ban initiated by Frank Wolf, chairman of the Committee of Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in the House of Representatives.

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings. Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids. The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak. She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found.

"We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "Aha!" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt. "To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," she said.

The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface.

In a project carried out out by an international team of astronomers with a telescope in New Zealand , a new class of planets has been found out in the universe: planets that do not orbit stars, but float freely out in space.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Japan-New Zealand survey, which was conducted in 2006 and 2007. The survey looked at the galactic bulge at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. For their search, the astronomers used the 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) telescope at Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand. What the astronomers discovered were a new class of planets around the size of the planet Jupiter. They are called isolated orbs, orphan planets, or free-floating planets. A free-floating planet is any object in the universe that has an equivalent mass to a planet, in this case the planet Jupiter, but is not gravitationally bound to any star, brown dwarf, or other such object, Instead, it orbits a galaxy directly. They also found that these planets are floating freely in space, without orbiting a star. Astronomers conjecture that they are outcasts from developing planetary systems.

Heart disease is supposedly a modern affliction, the result of a diet rich in animal fat and too many hours spent on the sofa. But recent discoveries suggest that strokes and heart attacks may have been bedeviling humans for millenia.

Dr. Greg Thomas is part of a team of scientists that recently discovered the earliest known case of atherosclerosis — clogged arteries — in ancient Egyptian mummies. The startling findings mean scientists may not understand heart disease as well as they think they do.

Thomas tells Weekend All Things Considered host Linda Wertheimer that his team began by running mummies through a CT scanner.

"Our hypothesis was that they wouldn't have [heart disease], because they were active, their diet was much different, they didn't have tobacco," he says. But they were wrong.

One of the mummies the team scanned was a princess in her 40s, who presumably ate fresh food and wasn't sedentary. "That she would have atherosclerosis," Thomas says, "I think we're missing a risk factor. Right now we know that high blood pressure, smoking, cholesterol, inactivity and other things cause athersosclerosis, but I think that we're less complete than we think." Ancient Egyptians did have access to meat, though Thomas says their diet consisted mostly of grains, fruits and vegetables.

The Raptor Resource Project brings you the Decorah Eagles from atop their tree at the fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. The live video feed is streamed online 24/7. At night an infrared light provides night vision to viewers through the cam. Infrared light is not visible to eagles, they do not see it or know it is there.

First hatch 4/2/11.
24-hour collage of first egg pip and hatch
Second hatch 4/3/11.
First glimpse of second hatchling
Third hatch 4/6/11.
Close-ups of the third hatch

Spider Refuge [Photograph courtesy Russell Watkins, U.K. Department for International Development]

Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons line the edges of a submerged farm field in the Pakistani village of Sindh, where 2010's massive floods drove millions of spiders into the trees to spin their webs.

Beginning last July, unprecedented monsoons dropped nearly ten years' worth of rainfall on Pakistan in one week, swelling the country's rivers. The water was slow to recede, creating vast pools of stagnant water across the countryside. (See pictures of the Pakistan flood.)

"It was a very slow-motion kind of disaster," said Russell Watkins, a multimedia editor with the U.K.'s Department for International Development (DFID), the organization tasked with managing Britain's overseas aid programs.

According to Watkins, who photographed the trees during a trip to Pakistan last December, people in Sindh said they'd never seen this phenomenon before the flooding.