An Archaeological Mystery in a Half-Ton Lead Coffin

The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient

city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop.
(Images Credit: University of Michigan)

In the ruins of a city that was once Rome's neighbor, archaeologists last summer found a 1,000-pound lead coffin.

Who or what is inside is still a mystery, said Nicola Terrenato, the University of Michigan professor of classical studies who leads the project -- the largest American dig in Italy in the past 50 years.

The sarcophagus will soon be transported to the American Academy in Rome, where engineers will use heating techniques and tiny cameras in an effort to gain insights about the contents without breaking the coffin itself.

"We're very excited about this find," Terrenato said. "Romans as a rule were not buried in coffins to begin with and when they did use coffins, they were mostly wooden. There are only a handful of other examples from Italy of lead coffins from this age -- the second, third or fourth century A.D. We know of virtually no others in this region."

This one is especially unusual because of its size.

"It's a sheet of lead folded onto itself an inch thick," he said. "A thousand pounds of metal is an enormous amount of wealth in this era. To waste so much of it in a burial is pretty unusual."

Was the deceased a soldier? A gladiator? A bishop? All are possibilities, some more remote than others, Terrenato said. Researchers will do their best to examine the bones and any "grave goods" or Christian symbols inside the container in an effort to make a determination.

"It's hard to predict what's inside, because it's the only example of its kind in the area," Terrenato said. "I'm trying to keep my hopes within reason."

Human remains encased in lead coffins tend to be well preserved, if difficult to get to. Researchers want to avoid breaking into the coffin. The amount of force necessary to break through the lead would likely damage the contents. Instead, they will first use thermography and endoscopy. Thermography involves heating the coffin by a few degrees and monitoring the thermal response. Bones and any artifacts buried with them would have different thermal responses, Terrenato said. Endoscopy involves inserting a small camera into the coffin. But how well that works depends on how much dirt has found its way into the container over the centuries.

If these approaches fail, the researchers could turn to an MRI scan -- an expensive option that would involve hauling the half-ton casket to a hospital.

The dig that unearthed this find started in summer 2009 and continues through 2013. Each year, around 75 researchers from around the nation and world, including a dozen U-M undergraduate students, spend two months on the project at the ancient city of Gabii (pronounced "gabby").

The site of Gabii, situated on undeveloped land 11 miles east of Rome in modern-day Lazio, was a major city that pre-dates Rome but seems to have waned as the Roman Empire grew.

Studying Gabii gives researchers a glimpse into pre-Roman life and offers clues to how early Italian cities formed. It also allows them broader access to more substantial archaeological layers or strata. In Rome, layers of civilization were built on top of each other, and archaeologists are not able or allowed to disturb them.

"In Rome, so often, there's something in the way, so we have to get lucky," Terrenato said. "In Gabii, they should all be lucky spots because there's nothing in the way."

Indeed, Terrenato and others were surprised to find something as significant as this coffin so soon.

"The finding of the lead coffin was exhilarating," said Allison Zarbo, a senior art history major who graduates this spring.

Zarbo didn't mind that after the researchers dug up the coffin once, they had to pile the dirt back on to hide it from looters overnight.

"The fact that we had to fill the hole was not so much of a burden as a relief!" Zarbo said. "For academia to lose priceless artifacts that have been found fully in context would be very damaging to our potential knowledge."

Students spent most of their time pick-axing, shoveling, and manning the wheelbarrows, said Bailey Benson, a junior who is double majoring in classical archaeology and art history.

"By the end of the day, not even a 20-minute shower can remove all the dirt and grime you get covered in," Benson said. "It's hard but satisfying work. How many people can say they uncovered an ancient burial?"

This research is funded in part by the National Geographic Society. The managing director of the project is Jeffrey Becker, assistant professor of classics at McMaster University. The field director leading the coffin studies is independent researcher Anna Gallone. The Italian State Archaeological Service (Soprintendenza di Roma) is authorizing and facilitating the project.

University of Michigan

Venus-Mercury to pair up for next 2 weeks

Image: Space.com

Reports indicate that sky gazers are going be treated with the rare spectacle of Venus and Mercury forming an eye-catching pair for nearly the next two weeks, about 30 to 60 minutes after sunset.

“Mercury is pretty hard to spot most of the time, so a lot of people have never recognized it in their lives,” said Alan MacRobert, a senior editor of Sky and Telescope magazine.

“Now’s your chance. This is as good as Mercury gets, especially with Venus marking the way,” he added.

Venus is the brighter of the two planets. It’s the famed “Evening Star,” currently making its way out from behind the glare of the Sun into twilight view.

Avid sky watchers should look for Mercury glittering to Venus’s lower right from now through about April 3rd, and almost directly to Venus’s right from about April 4th through 10th.

Their exact orientation will depend a bit on an observer’s latitude.

They will appear closest together on April 3rd and 4th, separated by about the width of two fingers held at arm’s length (3 degrees).

By April 10th, Mercury will be fading rapidly, as it swings toward the direction between Earth and the Sun and shows us less and less of its sunlit side.

Although the two planets appear close together, they’re not. Venus is about 1.5 times farther away.

On April 3rd, Mercury and Venus are 94 million and 146 million miles from Earth, respectively.

That means it takes their light 8.4 and 13 minutes to reach us.

“Don’t miss this chance to do a little astronomy from your backyard, balcony, or rooftop,” said Sky and Telescope associate editor Tony Flanders. “It’s a big universe, and planets await,” he added.

ANI

Expansion of universe due to dark energy

Astronomers have confirmed the mysterious dark energy as the most comprehensive evidence yet for the accelerated expansion of the universe, based on a study of nearly half a million galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

They mapped the matter distribution and the expansion history of the universe to conclude that the universe was indeed expanding faster and faster with time, a BM Birla Science Centre release said here on Sunday.

"Our results confirmed that there is an unknown source of energy in universe which is causing the cosmic expansion to speed up," leading astronomer Ludovic Van Waerbeke of Leiden University in the Netherlands is quoted having said in the press note.

Till 1997, the accepted model of the universe was that assisted by some unknown substance called dark matter, the universe is actually slowing down as it expands. It was believed that ultimately the universe would halt and possibly collapse.

The identity of dark matter itself was anybody's guess. It could have been black holes or exotic particles or unseen stars called brown dwarfs. This was called the Standard Bib Bang Model, the release said.

The breakthrough published in the American Science magazine recently has been supported by two observational surveys called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy and Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

But early that year, Dr B G Sidharth, Director of the B M Birla Science Centre proposed an opposite theory -- that pushed by a mysterious force called dark energy, the universe was accelerating.

Early last century Einstein proposed a force called cosmic repulsion so that the universe would not collapse, but soon dismissed it as his greatest blunder when it was discovered shortly thereafter that the universe was expanding, the release said.

The latest finding from the HST is the most comprehensive to date confirming this paradigm shift in science, it said.

PTI

China creates world's first genetically modified cow

Chinese scientists have created the world's first genetically modified cow that can give milk rich in Omega-3 fatty acid, Xinhua reported.

"Two embryo-cloned and genetically-modified dairy cows were born June 23 last year. One of the cows has been found to have Omega-3 fatty acid level 10 times higher than a normal cow," said Li Guangpeng, head of the Biological Technology Laboratory at Inner Mongolia University.

"We did not announce the birth of the cows until now because it has taken time to check the cows' effective genetic traces," Li said.

He said it takes 14-15 months for a cow to become sexually mature, and another nine months to produce milk. The cows have been fed with normal cow feed.

Dubbed a "good fat", Omega-3 is an essential fatty acid necessary for human health. But it cannot be made by the human body. It is abundant in walnuts and cold water fish like herring, mackerel and sturgeon.

IANS

A robot to support old people

Staying alone may not be a nightmare any more, thanks to scientists who are developing a robot which they claim can support independent living for the elderly people.

A team, led by the University of the West of England in Bristol is working on a project aimed at creating the robot and some sensors as part of an intelligent system of caring for older people.

According to the scientists, the project produces three key systems of caring - a wearable health status monitor with smart sensors woven into undergarments; a secure tele- alarm and health reporting system; and a nutrition support system which will consist for example of reminders for when meals and drinks should be taken.

All these systems will be linked to a robotic platform, which will also facilitate communications -- helping people to keep in touch with friends or relatives, or create shopping lists using voice recognition, they say.

Lead scientist Dr Praminda Caleb Solly said, "We are working with some of Europe's leading robotic and wearable sensor companies in this field, to ensure that the technology being developed enhances the lives of older adults and gives them the ability to make informed lifestyle choices.

"We hope that the health monitoring and the nutrition support systems will help people to track and maintain better standard of health and activity, helping them live alone for as long as possible.

"Six user groups of older people -- three in the UK and three in the Netherlands will take part in the research.

Initially we will look closely at the context in which older people live, their expectations and perceptions, to ensure the technology that is developed brings real benefits to them."

PTI

Universe expansion is speeding up

Astronomers have claimed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, after studying thousands of galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope.

In its research, an international team has analysed nearly 446,000 galaxies to map the matter distribution and the expansion history of the universe, proving again that Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is indeed correct.

And the astronomers clearly found that the universe was indeed growing faster and faster with time, as predicted by Einstein.

"Our results confirmed that there is an unknown source of energy in universe which is causing the cosmic expansion to speed up, stretching the dark matter further apart exactly as predicted by Einstein's theory," lead astronomer Ludovic Van Waerbeke of Leiden University in the Netherlands said.

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that space and time is a soft geometrical structure of which the shape and evolution are entirely determined by the matter within it.

According to the astronomers, the universe is composed of dark matter and normal matter with third constituent called "dark energy", which over the past two billion years has been the force behind the accelerated expansion of the universe.

"The data from our study are consistent with these predictions and show no deviation from Einstein's theories," Van Waerbeke said.

PTI

Japan unveils willing dental patient -- a robot

The robot can express pain, roll her eyes and even drool like a real patient
Photo: AFP

Few people would want to be guinea pigs for aspiring dentists but Japan has found an always-willing patient -- a robot.

Doctors and robotics researchers on Thursday unveiled a humanoid that happily goes under the drill for orthodontics students and can also express pain, roll her eyes and even drool like a real patient.

"Hello," female-looking "Hanako" said cheerfully as an aspiring dentist closed in during a presentation in Tokyo. "Please take care of me."

But the robo-patient's mood can quickly take a real-life turn for the worse if the grinding and drilling get too much or the wrong spot is hit.

"It hurts," said Hanako, dangerously moving her plastic head while a dental student was grinding her resin teeth, which are designed to be taken out and examined later to assess the student's skill.

In the demonstration, under the watchful gaze of an instructor, the dental student reacted quickly, deactivating and moving the sharp-pointed grinding tool to avoid damaging Hanoko's teeth or gums.

"Please raise your left hand when it hurts because it's dangerous to move your mouth," the student told the machine lying in the dentist's chair.

To add to the realism, Hanako can also move her eyes and eyelids, jaw and tongue. She even discharges a saliva-like liquid and slowly slackens her jaw muscles to simulate the gradual "fatigue" of a real patient.

Hanako was developed by the medical Showa University and a research team led by humanoid pioneer Atsuo Takanishi, a professor at Waseda University, both Tokyo-based, as well as robot maker tmsuk based in southern Japan.

The price tag is confidential, the inventors said.

Japan already has humanoid robots for a variety of tasks, from receptionists to photo models, but the field of patient robots is still small. Hanako is the world's first that has been used to evaluate the skills of dental students on a large scale, according to Showa University. This month 88 of its students trained and took clinical exams using her.

Koutaro Maki, vice director of the Showa University Dental Hospital, told a press conference that the use of the humanoid meant a vast improvement from the traditional method to teach and train young dentists.

"We still have a system where the 'apprentices' watch doctors with higher skills, borrow from them and copy them... This is not scientific," he said.

"Education in the medical and dental fields is underdeveloped. I wouldn't say it's the Galapagos islands, but it is undoubtedly a final frontier. The key to cultivating this undeveloped land is a robot."

The great thing about using robots, Maki said, is that it "allows students to make many mistakes" from which they can learn. Shugo Haga, a 26-year-old dentist-in-training, said he had previously used a mannequin's head but said it felt like using a mere "object."

Sitting next to Hanako, he added: "This one isn't easy to cope with, but she is close to being a patient."

Bureau Report

The Real Alien Ant Farm

NASA technology and macrophotography come together to produce a stunning set of images of the real alien ant farm.

Image Credit

We might be a little in danger of coming over all Monty Python if we pose the question what has NASA ever done for us? It is a good question, however and one which we will seek to answer in an occasional series of articles, beginning with this one. The real alien ant farm!

Image Credit

Generations of children have been fascinated by ant farms (not to mention adults who often use the kids wanted one as an excuse) but when it comes to dirt, you can’t really see a great deal of what is going on inside. Enter NASA. Back in 2003, the Space Agency wanted to see how ants would create their tunnels in zero gravity. However, there was a problem, not so much for Houston but for the ants.

Image Credit

Image Credit

The problem was gravity, specifically the almighty amount of it associated with getting a shuttle off terra firma and in to space. If sand had been used then it would shift under the gravity and inevitably crush the life out of the ants. A container full of squished ants would not be very useful for any sort of study in space – unless it was to be a taste test of some kind.

Image Credit

Life and death can be observed through this clear gel. So, how do you get the tiny harvester ants with their powerful jaws and tenacious nature up beyond the blue? NASA rose to the problem and their solution was to create the gel that you can see here. Because of its chemical composition it does not collapse during launch. Wouldn’t that happen to the ants too? The answer is no – ants are incredibly resilient and able to withstand t he G force of lift off with no problem. Hardly a surprise when you consider they can lift up to twenty times their body weight.

Image Credit

So, you have something that works as both habitat and nutrition for the ants, which meant that all the astronauts had to do was to sit back and observe how they went about the business of tunnelling without any gravity. The answer was pretty much as usual but the question had to be answered. The main difference was that the tunnels were wigglier than those made by the same species in the same gel back home on Earth.

Image Credit

Furthermore, scientists could put all the food and water necessary to sustain the ants on their trip inside the gel. What’s more they were also able to put in anti-fungal agents and antibiotics to help ensure the ants would not get ill! The other main advantage of the gel is that it is clear. Scientists had always found it difficult to get to grips with how ants did the tunnelling and how exactly they navigated underground because – to state the obvious – they could not observe them doing it properly.

Image Credit

However, business folk were not tardy when it came to recognizing the commercial potential of this amazing aqua blue gel and soon enough the old concept of the ant farm was overhauled to this amazing sight. So, it’s not just users of non-stick frying pans who have benefited from the efforts of NASA after all!

Image Credit

Via

Venomous Jellyfish

The male box jellyfish Copula sivickisi, top, and female engage in a complex mating ritual unique among cnidarians (jellyfishes, hydroids, anemones, corals and their kin). Scientists hope that studying the evolutionary relationships will help in the development of antivenoms and treatments for stings. Photo: Alvaro E. Migotto

Venomous Jellyfish

With thousands of stinging cells that can emit deadly venom from tentacles reaching 10 feet in length, the 50 or so species of box jellyfish have long been of interest to scientists. Researchers now say they have determined the evolutionary relationships among the various species of box jellyfish, providing insight into the evolution of their toxicity. Pictured here is the Craybdea branchi, a box jellyfish native to the South African coast. Photo: Brent Viljoen

www.nytimes.com

Neptune may have gorged on a planet and stolen its moon

A team of scientists has suggested that Neptune may have polished off a super-Earth that once roamed the outer solar system and stolen its moon to boot, which could explain mysterious heat radiating from the icy planet and the odd orbit of its moon Triton.

Neptune’s own existence was a puzzle until recently.

The dusty cloud that gave birth to the planets probably thinned out further from the sun.

With building material so scarce, it is hard to understand how Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets, managed to get so big.

In 2005, a team of scientists proposed that the giant planets shifted positions in an early upheaval.

In this scenario, Uranus and Neptune formed much closer to the sun and migrated outwards, possibly swapping places in the process.

That would have left behind enough material just beyond their birthplace to form a planet with twice the Earth’s mass, according to calculations published in 2008 by Steven Desch of Arizona State University in Tempe.

According to a report in New Scientist, Desch and colleague Simon Porter now say that Neptune’s peculiar moon Triton may once have been paired with this hypothetical super-Earth.

Triton is larger than Pluto, and it moves through its orbit in the opposite direction to Neptune’s rotation, suggesting that it did not form there but was captured instead.

For Neptune to capture Triton, the moon would have had to slow down drastically.

One way to do this is for Triton to have had a partner that carried away most of the pair’s kinetic energy after an encounter with Neptune.

In 2006, researchers argued that Triton was initially paired with another object of similar size that wound up being gravitationally slung into space after the pair ventured near Neptune.

But Triton could have slowed even more if its former partner were a heavy super-Earth.

That’s because a more massive body could carry away more of the pair’s kinetic energy, Desch calculated in a study presented earlier this month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

“It would be a lot easier to capture Triton if it were orbiting something bigger,” he said.

Neptune may have engulfed the super-Earth.

“Heat left over from the impact could explain why the planet radiates much more heat than its cousin Uranus, which is similar in mass and composition,” Desch said.

ANI

Climate catastrophe ushered in the dinosaurs

A climatic catastrophe more than 200 million years ago ushered in the age of the dinosaurs by wiping out their rivals, a new study says.

An abrupt rise in atmospheric gases, coupled with powerful volcanic eruptions decimated crurotarsans, creatures closely related to today's crocodiles, according to a study led by Brown University paleobiologist Jessica Whiteside.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the first to make the link between volcanic activity, climate change and the widespread extinction of a specific animal species.

Scientists gathered fossil evidence of plant and animal extinctions, along with the carbon signature found in the wax of ancient leaves and wood in lake sediments intermixed with basalt that marked the volcanic activity.

They found that huge volcanic eruptions throughout the planet increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, wiping out half of plant species and marking the end of the Triassic period, one of five great mass extinctions of Earth's history.

More than 200 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangea broke up as the North American and African plates began drifting apart. During their separation, the plates created a basin that eventually became the Atlantic Ocean while fissures cleaved the area.

Massive outflows of lava ensued, covering over 3.5 million square miles (nine million square kilometers), an area about the size of the continental United States.

The volcanic eruptions lasted about 600,000 years.

But the reasons underlying dinosaurs' survival, diversification and massive size for 160 million years while their crurotarsan foes did not evolve in a similar fashion remains a "mystery," Whiteside said.

One of the main hypotheses is that they were somehow physiologically superior to the crutotarsans, she added. "The truth is that nobody really knows, it just happened at the right place at the right time."

She said it was a "very complicated" situation similar to the mass extinction and disappearance of dinosaurs when a meteorite hit the Earth.

Bureau Report

'World's strongest insect can pull load 1141 times its weight'

Dung beetle species Onthophagus taurus, that has been named as the world's strongest insect by scientists, can pull a load 1,141 times its own body weight.

It is equivalent of an average person pulling six fully-laden double decker buses, the Daily Mail reported.

A team of researchers from QueensMary University of London tested the physical strength of male dung beetles by measuring the amount of force required to pull a rival from the hole a female beetle has dug to reproduce in.

Rob Knell, one of the researchers said: "Female beetles of this species dig tunnels under a dung pat, where males mate with them. If a male enters a tunnel that is already occupied by a rival, they fight by locking horns and try to push each other out."

Male dung beetles prove their supremacy in front of a female by pushing any competing males out of the tunnel, Knell said in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Insects are well known for being able to perform amazing feats of strength, and it's all on account of their curious sex lives," he added.

PTI

2009 - Fifth warmest recorded year

Noting that the decade 2000-2009 was warmest ever recorded, the World Meteorological Organisations (WMO) has said that 2009 was the fifth-warmest year since climate records began in 1850.

In a report on its 60th anniversary, the UN weather agency said the nineties were warmer than the eighties.

The report showed that the decade 2000-2009 was warmest ever recorded.

The World Meteorological Day was celebrated yesterday to commemorate the entry into force of the WMO Convention that led to creation of the Organisation in 1950.

"As we celebrate today the 60th anniversary of the World meteorological Organisation, I would like to pay tribute to the meteorological community worldwide working together continuously beyond all borders to save and protect people, their homes and their livelihoods," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarrud.

PTI

Galaxy in early Universe went through ‘teenage growth spurt’

Newly-discovered galaxy SMM J2135-0102
(Photo: Chinanews.com.cn)

Reports indicate that an international team of scientists has found a massive galaxy in the early Universe creating stars like our sun up to 100 times faster than the modern-day Milky Way, which they have described as “a teenager going through a growth spurt”.

Due to the amount of time it takes light to reach Earth, the scientists observed the galaxy as it would have appeared 10 billion years ago – just three billion years after the Big Bang.

They found four discrete star-forming regions within the galaxy known as SMM J2135-0102.

Each region was more than 100 times brighter than star-forming regions in the Milky Way, such as the Orion Nebula.

The researchers suggested that star formation was more rapid and vigorous in the early Universe as galaxies went through periods of huge growth.

The findings provide a unique insight into how stars formed in the early Universe, the scientists added.

According to lead author Dr Mark Swinbank, in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, “This galaxy is like a teenager going through a growth spurt. If you could see it today as an adult, you’d find the galactic equivalent of the football player Peter Crouch.”

“We don’t fully understand why the stars are forming so rapidly but our results suggest that stars formed much more efficiently in the early Universe than they do today,” he said.

“Galaxies in the early Universe appear to have gone through rapid growth and stars like our sun formed much more quickly than they do today,” he added.

The scientists estimate that the observed galaxy is producing stars at a rate equivalent to 250 suns per year.

ANI

Doublesex gene determines fruit fly gender

''Doublesex'' (dsx) gene in fruit fly, not only determines the shape and structure of the male and female body, but also moulds the architecture of their brain and nervous system, resulting in sex-specific behaviours, according to a study from the Glasgow University and Oxford.

For a long time, the courtship behaviour of the fruit fly has long been used to study the relationship between genes and behaviour— it is innate, manifesting in a series of stereotypical behaviours largely performed by the male.

And until recently, the gene ''fruitless'' (fru), which is specific to the adult male fruit fly, was thought to be the key to male behaviour and the development of male specific neural circuitry of flies.

However, the researchers have shown that fru does not explain the complete repertoire of male behaviours in the fly: female flies in which the fru gene has been activated demonstrate some, but not all, of the characteristics usually associated with courtship behaviour in males.

The researchers have also shown that dsx plays an important role in shaping the neural circuitry involved in this behaviour.

"The dogma was that dsx made fruit flies look the way they did and fru made them behave the way they did. We now know that this is not true. dsx and fru act together to form the neuronal networks – the wiring – for sexual behaviour," Nature quoted Dr Stephen Goodwin from the University of Oxford, who led the research, as saying.

While fru has so far been found only in insects; dsx is found throughout the animal kingdom, where it plays a fundamental role in sex determination, and so is of particular interest to researchers.

The researchers used a transgenic tool generated in his lab and could map dsx throughout the fly''s development using a fluorescent protein marker that illuminates areas where DSX is active.

This highlighted profound differences in neural architecture between the sexes.

In males, the researchers were able to show that dsx complements fru activity to create a ''shared'' male-specific neural circuit; in females (where fru is inactive), dsx forms a female-specific circuit.

Importantly the researchers could to manipulate these cells, impinging their ability to function, and show that these circuits are responsible for behaviours unique to the individual sexes.

"It has been suggested that there are only minor trivial differences between the neural circuits that underlie behaviour in males and females. We have shown that in fact there is quite a bit of difference in the number of neurons and how these neurons connect, or ''talk'', to each other. These differences can have big consequences on the structure and function of the nervous system," explained Goodwin.

In addition, while dsx was known to establish the gender of the adult fly, the pattern of dsx activity in the adult was unknown.

The researchers have shown that this pattern is not ubiquitous, but rather is restricted in a specific and telling manner.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

ANI

Researchers create 3-D invisibility cloak

European researchers have taken the world a step closer to fictional wizard Harry Potter's invisibility cape after they made an object disappear using a three-dimensional "cloak," a study published in the US-based journal Science showed.

Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London used the cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science.

"It's kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet -- except this time the carpet also disappears," they said.

"We put an object under a microscopic structure, a little like a reflective carpet," said Nicholas Stenger, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

"When we looked at it through a lens and did spectroscopy, no matter what angle we looked at the object from, we saw nothing. The bump became invisible," said Stenger.

Invisibility cloaks have already been developed but they only worked on two dimensions. In other words, the objects that were supposed to be made invisible were immediately visible from the third dimension, the study said.

The "cloak" invented by the European team is the first to work on three dimensions.

PTI

Orangutans can swim

The assumptions that Orangutans prefer to remain at bay from water seem to have fallen flat after a group was snapped getting wet for various reasons.

Conservationists were stunned when a group of orphaned Orangutans that had been relocated to Kaja Island in Borneo splashed themselves with one pair even having sex in water.

"My guess is that the male chose the location because there was less chance of him being interrupted by other, more dominant males," New Scientist quoted Anne Russon of York University in Toronto, Canada, as saying.

Russon continued: "Orang-utans are famous for their fear of water. They have high body densities and can't help but sink."

Russon added: "One day we saw an adolescent orang-utan called Sif wade into deep water, hunker down and then lunge forward making simple paddling movements with her arms and legs. It was kind of like a bad dog paddle."

The study has been published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

ANI

First-time cosmonauts set to blast off with toy duck

Photo: AFP/Yuri Kadobnov

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov brandished a small toy duck Friday as he and his crewmates prepared to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) in April.

The tiny toy was picked out by his daughter as an impromptu "weightlessness sensor," said Skvortsov, who will take off from Baikonur on April 2 along with fellow Russian Mikhail Korniyenko and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson.

"We thought it was light and pretty enough. I think it should bring us luck," said Skvortsov, a uniformed air force colonel, speaking at the Star City training facility outside Moscow.

The astronauts will spend two days in a cramped Soyuz capsule before arriving at the ISS, where they will join US astronaut Timothy Creamer, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov.

One of the three Russians will have to sleep on the US side of the space station, since the Russian side has only two beds, officials said.

Skvortsov, 43, and Korniyenko, 49, are both set to make their first space flight after training together. "The hardest thing in our profession is the waiting. Sasha (Alexander) and I have been waiting 12 years for this flight," said Korniyenko, a former Moscow policeman, who is set to turn 50 in space.

"The most important thing is not to break down, to keep yourself going, to keep training despite all the difficulties. Then you will achieve success," Korniyenko said.

Caldwell-Dyson made her first space flight in 2007. Speaking Russian and English, she said she had "very little time" to train with her Russian colleagues but described it as "rewarding".

"I think the most challenging part we'll face in orbit will be maintaining our team work during the very busy timeline we have," she said. Earlier Friday the head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos Anatoly Perminov said that a moratorium on space tourism to the ISS would continue "for two or three years," as NASA will remain reliant on the three-seater Soyuz launch.

"There are many people interested. Very many countries have made requests, but now it is physically impossible for us," Perminov said, the Interfax news agency reported.

Bureau Report

Endangered orangutans being wiped out to make KitKat chocolates

A new probe has claimed that endangered orangutans are being wiped out to make KitKat chocolates.

The palm oil ingredient in the KitKat chocolate is allegedly grown on Indonesian land cleared of rainforest where the rare apes live.

Greenpeace claims that the work is carried out by a company using illegal methods.

The worldwide trade in the oil is considered the single greatest factor threatening the orangutan.

In letters to Greenpeace, seen by The Sun, Nestle has admitted buying palm oil from PT Smart, part of the Indonesian giant Sinar Mas.

Over the past two years Greenpeace found evidence of Sinar Mas clearing rainforest for plantations in the Papua province.

It means the apes are forced out of forests as they are cut down and end up on palm oil plantations.

They are regarded as a “pest” and are killed or sold to protect the crop. At least 1,500 have died in one year.

Sinar Mas is alleged to have persistently broken forestry laws.

Unilever, makers of Magnum, Cornetto and Ben and Jerry’s cancelled its 20 million pound deal with Sinar Mas last year.

Nestle and Kraft launched investigations after Greenpeace claimed they buy palm oil from PT Smart. Kraft cancelled its contracts earlier this year.

In Indonesia, Nestle gets the oil from the group, but in other markets - including the UK where KitKats are made - it buys from firms supplied by Sinar Mas, among them global giant Cargill.

“We do purchase from Cargill and have sought assurances about their supply chain,” said a Nestle spokesman.

“Cargill has informed us that Sinar Mas needs to answer Greenpeace’s allegations by the end of April. They indicated they will delist Sinar Mas if they do not take action by then,” he added.

According to Greenpeace spokesman Ian Duff, “KitKats contain palm oil from suppliers who are trashing rainforests and driving orangutans to extinction.”

ANI 
.

Earth - Venus involved in long-distance relationship?

New calculations by scientists have suggested that Venus and Earth might literally be involved in a long-distance relationship, with our planet speculated to be tugging on the core of Venus and exerting control over its spin.

Whenever Venus and Earth arrive at the closest point in their orbits, Venus always presents the same face to us.

This could mean that Earth’s gravity is tugging subtly on Venus, affecting its rotation rate.

That idea, raised decades ago, was disregarded when it turned out that Venus is spinning too fast to be in such a gravitational “resonance”.

But Earth could still be pulling on Venus by controlling its core, according to calculations by Gerard Caudal of the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin, France.

According to a report in New Scientist, Caudal made large assumptions about Venus’s interior, which we know little about.

For his hypothesis to be correct, the planet would, like Earth, need a solid core surrounded by a liquid layer.

This could allow the solid core to rotate slower than the rest of the planet.

The core would also have to be asymmetric or heterogeneous, so that Earth can exert a variable tug as Venus spins.

“For the resonance to be possible, there should be something that the gravity of the Earth could grasp,” Caudal said.

This latter requirement could be problematic for the hypothesis, according to Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“In order to maintain a resonance, the inner core must be out of round by a significant amount,” he noted.

Yet persistent imperfections in planetary cores tend to smooth out because the core is hot and under great pressure, according to David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

“Still, the resonance theory is worth revisiting,” he said.

“Watching for changes in Venus’s spin over time using radar observations may reveal more about what’s going on inside the planet,” said Margot.

ANI

Scientist solves space mystery using lunar images

Reports indicate that a researcher from The University of Western Ontario in Canada has helped solve a 37-year old space mystery using lunar images released by NASA and maps from his own atlas of the moon.

Using his atlas and the NASA images, Phil Stooke, a professor cross appointed to Western’s Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Geography, pinpointed the exact location of the Russian rover Lunokhod 2, discovering tracks left by the lunar sampler 37 years ago after it made a 35-kilometre trek.

The journey was the longest any robotic rover has ever been driven on another celestial body.

As soon as the NASA photos were released, scientists around the world, including Stooke, began work to locate the rover.

Stooke set up a searchable image database and located the photograph he needed, among thousands of others.

“The tracks were visible at once,” said Stooke. “Knowing the history of the mission, it’s possible to trace the rover’s activities in fine detail. We can see where it measured the magnetic field, driving back and forth over the same route to improve the data,” he said.

And we can also see where it drove into a small crater, and accidentally covered its heat radiator with soil as it struggled to get out again. That ultimately caused it to overheat and stop working. And the rover itself shows up as a dark spot right where it stopped,” he added.

The find will mean that older maps published by Russia will now need to be revised, he said. Stooke said that NASA scientists have used his atlas in both preparation and data recovery.

His next project is a similar volume on Mars exploration which will include the best maps of the moons of Mars.

ANI

Mysterious ‘dark flow’ might be tug of another Universe

The galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 (known as the Bullet Cluster) lies 3.8 billion light-years away. It's one of hundreds that appear to be carried along by a mysterious cosmic flow.
NASA/STScI/Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

Scientists say that a mysterious dark cosmic flow, which is carrying along many galaxy clusters in the universe, might be the tug of another universe.

Recent research has found that the universe is not only expanding, it’s being swept along in the direction of constellations Centaurus and Hydra at a steady clip of one million miles per hour, pulled, perhaps, by the gravity of another universe.

Scientists have no idea what’s tugging at the known world, except to say that whatever it is likely dates back to the fraction of the second between the universe’s explosive birth 13.7 billion years ago and its inflation a split second later.

“At this point, we don’t have enough information to see what it is, or to constrain it. We can only say with certainty that somewhere very far away the world is very different than what we see locally. Whether it''s ‘another universe’ or a different fabric of space-time we don’t know,” Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Discovery News.

Kashlinsky and colleagues have spent years building up evidence for what they call “the dark flow.”

They look at how the relic radiation from the Big Bang explosion scatters as it passes through gases in galaxy clusters, a process that is something akin to looking at stars through the bubble of Earth’s atmosphere.

With data on more than 1,000 galaxy clusters, including some as distant as 3 billion light-years from Earth, the measurements show the universe’s steady flow is clearly not a statistical fluke, according to Kashlinsky.

The force and direction of the flow holds steady across space and through time.

“It’s the same flow at a distance of a hundred million light-years as it is at 2.5 billion light-years and it points in the same direction and the same amplitude. It looks like the entire matter of the universe is moving from one direction to the next,” Kashlinsky said.

The observation fits theoretical models of how our universe might be impacted by sibling universes, predicted by string theory that we cannot directly detect.

It’s like our universe is a box and everything that it contains is inside it like milk in a carton, physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Discovery News.

“If our universe is all that’s there, then the liquid in the box shouldn’t be sliding. Whatever is pulling it has to be bigger than the size of the box,” she said.

“There is a structure beyond the horizon of our universe and that structure is exerting a force on our universe and creating this flow,” she added.

ANI

The chilli hand grenade is ready to explode!

It's ready to explode and not just in the mouth. The 'bhut jolokia' - recognised as the hottest of spices - will pack a punch when mixed with handgrenades to deal with terrorists, as trials by Indian defence scientists have shown.

A defence spokesperson said scientists at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in Tezpur in northern Assam were making a trial run of the hand grenades and other repellents by using the bhut jolokia.

"The chilli grenade is a non-toxic weapon and when used would force a terrorist to come out of his hideouts as the smell is so pungent that it would literally choke them," R.B. Srivastava, a senior scientist and director of the DRDO said.

The DRDO scientists had already carried out trials for the hand grenades mixed with the world's hottest chilli and so far the tests have been satisfactory.

The bhut jolokia belongs to the capsicum Chinese family and is native to Assam. It is recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest of all spices.

The hotness of the bhut jolokia, measured in Scoville heat units was 1,001,304. It's nearly twice as hot as Mexico's red savina (577,000), the variety it replaced as the hottest. By comparison, a New Mexico green chilli contains about 1,500 Scoville units, while an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000.

"Work is on to develop other such things using bhut jolokia for effective utilisation by the security forces in dealing with riots and tackling insurgency and terrorists," Srivastava said.

The non-lethal grenades devised by the DRDO could numb the enemy and immobilise them without seriously wounding or killing them.

"There are other applications as well, what we call women power. A specially made chilli powder could act as a tool for women to keep away anti-socials and work in this regard is also on," he said.

There were also plans to use bhut jolokia paste or powder in teargas shells for dispersing violent protesters or rioters.

"We are also trying for a scientific validation to find out if bhut jolokia could be incorporated into the food menu for soldiers in higher reaches to keep them warm. Physiological studies are on in this regard," Srivastava said.

And the chilli powder would also be rubbed on the fences around army barracks in the hope the strong smell would keep animals out of bounds.

"The chilli paste could also act as a major repellent against wild elephants in some parts of Assam and other northeastern states," the scientist said.

A kilogram of bhut jolokia sells at about Rs.300.

IANS

Butterflies 'fly early as planet warms'

Australian scientists say they have uncovered a "causal link" between the early emergence of a common butterfly and human-induced global warming.

Dr Michael Kearney of the University of Melbourne and colleagues report their study on the butterfly Heteronympha merope in this week's issue of Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"It's now coming out about 10 days earlier than it was 60 years ago," says Kearney.

"When you look at the air temperatures over that time, it's getting warmer."

Kearney says the local Wurundjeri Aboriginal people have traditionally defined one of their seasons as beginning when they see the male of the common brown butterfly on the wing.

"That part of their calendar would be shifted 10 days earlier," he says.

Kearney says that while previous studies have found a correlation between global warming and animals coming out earlier in spring, this study is the first to provide evidence of a causal link between this phenomenon and human-induced global warming.

He says, his team has carried out laboratory experiments to quantify the physiological effect of rising temperatures on butterflies and has also shown the measured temperature increases are not due to natural climatic variation.

"It's causal all the way through," says Kearney.

Lab work

For the laboratory work, team member, Natalie Briscoe spent hours in the lab, feeding caterpillars under different conditions to see how temperature affected their emergence into winged butterflies.

"The warmer it is, the faster they will emerge," says Kearney.

This enabled the researchers to calculate how many days it would take a caterpillar to emerge given a particular temperature.

They then combined this laboratory evidence on butterfly physiology with historical temperature records, to predict how soon butterflies would have emerged each year between 1944 and 2005.

Kearney and colleagues found these predictions matched with butterfly emergence times as stated in museum records.

Records showed an increase of approximately 0.14°C per decade in the region and the shift in emergence date had shifted 1.6 days per decade over the same period, says Kearney.

Climate modelling

The final step taken by the researchers was to link the regional temperature changes with human-induced global warming.

Team member, climatologist, Professor David Karoly applied global circulation models to the Melbourne region, taking into account local factors that influence climate.

This suggested that the regional temperature changes observed over the decade were unlikely to be observed without the influence of human greenhouse emissions, says Kearney.

He and colleagues used temperature records from the Laverton weather station, located on Melbourne's outer edge.

This weather station was used to avoid the "urban heat island" effect of the city of Melbourne on temperature records, says Kearney.

The research is part of an Australian Research Council-funded project to predict the response of species to shifts in climate.

Kearney says the team hopes the findings from the butterfly study can be applied to other less common species.

Anna Salleh
ABC News
.

People leave unique 'germ print'

People leave more than fingerprints when they touch objects: They also deposit a tell-tale trail of germs that could help investigators solve crimes, according to US researchers.

They were able to map a unique bacterial genetic signature left by nine different people, and say this germy DNA lasted through day-to-day temperature changes, humidity and sunlight.

"Each one of us leaves a unique trail of bugs behind as we travel through our daily lives," says Assistant Professor Noah Fierer, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who led the study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

"While this project is still in its preliminary stages, we think the technique could eventually become a valuable new item in the toolbox of forensic scientists," he says.

Researchers have long known that people are colonised with billions of microbes, both inside and on the body. And studies have shown that these colonies are unique to the individual and even their location on the body.

Fierer's team wanted to see how much of a trail might be left by these mostly benign bacteria. So they swabbed the computer keyboards of volunteers to show that each person left not only a trail of unique bacteria, but one that lasted.

In each case, they could show the DNA from the keyboards and computer mice more closely matched DNA from germs on the hands of the owners than they did anybody else's hands.

According to Fierer's team, the technique was about 70% to 90% accurate.

The University of Colorado team had previously found that a typical person carries about 150 bacterial species on the hands, and that any two given people only share about 13% of these different species.

"The obvious question then was whether we could identify objects that have been touched by particular individuals," says Fierer.

Hardy creatures

They also left the bacteria out in the open for two weeks to see if they would break down. "That finding was a real surprise to us," said Fierer. "We didn't know just how hardy these creatures were."

The researchers were able to do the study because of rapid advances in techniques and equipment for sequencing DNA. A larger project is under way to sequence all the DNA in the human 'microbiome' - the collection of bugs that live on the skin, in the nose, hair, ears and digestive tract.

These organisms help digest and metabolise food and may affect skin conditions.

And unlike non-native disease-causing germs, they are not dislodged by standard hygiene.

According to the researchers, "Palm surface bacterial communities recover within hours after hand washing."

Reuters

Mysterious cosmic ‘dark flow’ tracked deeper into universe

Credit: NASA/Goddard/A. Kashlinsky

A new study has tracked the mysterious cosmic ‘dark flow’ to twice the distance originally reported in the Universe.

The study was led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“This is not something we set out to find, but we cannot make it go away,” Kashlinsky said.

“Now we see that it persists to much greater distances - as far as 2.5 billion light-years away,” he added.

The clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward Centaurus/Hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain.

Evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from Earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow.

“We detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot state as strongly as we’d like whether the clusters are coming or going,” Kashlinsky said.

The new study builds on a previous one by using the five-year results from WMAP and by doubling the number of galaxy clusters.

“It takes, on average, about an hour of telescope time to measure the distance to each cluster we work with, not to mention the years required to find these systems in the first place,” said Harald Ebeling at the University of Hawaii. “This is a project requiring considerable followthrough,” he added.

According to Fernando Atrio-Barandela at the University of Salamanca, Spain, who has focused on understanding the possible errors in the team’s analysis, the new study provides much stronger evidence that the dark flow is real.

For example, the brightest clusters at X-ray wavelengths hold the greatest amount of hot gas to distort CMB photons.

“When processed, these same clusters also display the strongest KSZ signature - unlikely if the dark flow were merely a statistical fluke,” he said.

In addition, the team, which now also includes Alastair Edge at the University of Durham, England, sorted the cluster catalog into four “slices” representing different distance ranges.

They then examined the preferred flow direction for the clusters within each slice.

While the size and exact position of this direction display some variation, the overall trends among the slices exhibit remarkable agreement.

The researchers are currently working to expand their cluster catalog in order to track the dark flow to about twice the current distance. Improved modeling of hot gas within the galaxy clusters will help refine the speed, axis, and direction of motion.

ANI

Meteorites 'may have kick-started life on Earth'

Life on Earth may have been kick- started by meteorites which bombarded our planet four billion years ago, a new study has suggested.

Previously planetary scientists thought that nothing could have survived the "heavy bombardment".

But, now a team at Aberdeen University has claimed that microbes -- the primitive forms of life -- survived the massive barrage of impacts by taking refuge deep underground -- and actually thrived on the temperatures generated.

For their study, the researchers analysed a mineral called pyrite, in a crater on Devon Island, a wilderness in the Canadian High Arctic, which were deposited by a type of microbe which likes heat and is also capable of withstanding temperatures close to boiling point.

According to them, hyperthermophiles had colonised all of the Haughton Crater - over 12 miles across and at least 200 metres below the Earth's surface, indicating they would have been able to live deep underground in the darkness known as the "deep biosphere", 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

"When the Earth was young, over four billion years ago it was repeatedly hit by large meteorites which would have shocked and melted the planet's surface. Until now scientists have imagined that primitive life would not have been able to withstand this pummelling.

"But our analysis of the mineral told us that this ancient microbe could have been able to survive meteorite bombardment through a combination of living underground and reinvading the surface rock while it was still very hot.

"So the asteroid bombardment may well have led to the primitive lifeforms flourishing rather than wiping them out.

"Our findings add to a growing body of evidence that there is much life on our planet that lives deep below out of sight and that this is where early life on Earth may have started.

"Similar meteorite craters with similar minerals occur on Mars, and this work highlights an approach that could help us look for evidence of life there," Prof Parnell, who led the team, wrote in the 'Geology' journal.

PTI

48 Hawaii-only species given endangered listing

Honeycreeper birds, a fly and several ferns, trees and shrubs found only on a Hawaiian island were among 48 species added Wednesday to the endangered species list, boosting the number of such classifications by the Obama administration from two to 50.

In the decision, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the government would also be declaring more than 40 square miles on Kauai as critical habitat for these species, a move that would help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service adopt a new approach to protecting imperiled species by restoring health to the broad ecosystems they inhabit.

Previously, the service tried to protect endangered species by adopting separate plans to revive their respective habitats. This led to disjointed and overlapping efforts, particularly in Hawaii, which has more endangered species than any other state.

"This is more of holistic approach," said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Ken Foote.

Suzanne Case, Hawaii executive director for The Nature Conservancy, commended the ecosystem approach, saying it would enable officials to focus on battling large scale threats like weeds and feral pigs.

Two honeycreeper birds, a fly, and 45 ferns, trees and shrubs were given federal protections Wednesday.

The Interior Department announced preliminary plans in October 2008 to list the 48 species and establish critical habitat for them. In the interim, it collected public comment and prepared to make the rule final.

The Center for Biological Diversity called the classification long overdue, noting some of the species have been candidates for listing for more than 20 years. The Tucson, Ariz.-based environmentalist group filed a petition to list the 48 Kauai species in 2004 and then followed with a lawsuit two years later.

WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based group, filed its own lawsuit in January because the federal government was taking longer than the law required to issue a decision.

Like many of Hawaii's endangered species, birds, insects and plants on Kauai — a mostly rural island northwest of Honolulu — are under threat from invasive species infiltrating their habitats.

Feral pigs burrow holes in the forest while looking for food, creating places for still water where mosquitoes breed and spread diseases that kill native birds. Sheep devour native forest trees that rare birds rely on for food.

Lacking natural predators, populations of these mammals have exploded around the islands. Invasive weeds are also edging out native plants.

One of the newly listed birds is the akikiki or Kauai creeper, a small, dark gray and olive honeycreeper in the Alakai Wilderness Preserve that eats insects and spiders. Only some 1,300 of the birds left, down 80 percent compared to the 1960s. Its listing partner, the green and yellow-feathered Kauai akepa, or akekee, numbers just 3,500, down from 8,000 in 2000.

Almost all — or 98 percent — of the land designated as critical habitat is already categorized as such for other endangered or threatened species. Most of the land is owned by the state.

The Interior Department isn't designating a critical habitat for the loulu palm because the plant is popular among collectors and officials did not want to reveal the location of its habitat.

Bureau Report

Indian-American professor turns chicken feathers into fuel

Manoranjan "Mano" Misra, an Indian American professor known for turning coffee grounds and chicken feathers into fuel, been honoured as the 2010 Regents' Researcher by the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

Misra, director of the University of Nevada, Reno's Renewable Energy Centre, has published 183 technical papers in the areas of materials, nanotechnology and environmental and mineral process engineering, according to Nevada News.

A faculty member since 1988, he has had 10 patents published and another 12 are pending. He has secured over $25 million dollars in grant funding. Misra's work also includes applied nano-technology for solar hydrogen generation, hydrogen storage, biomaterials for prosthetic implantation and sensor technology.

Misra's work in the removal of arsenic from drinking water has earned him national recognition, as well as three patents. Several industries have taken licenses from the University to use his arsenic technology for water purification.

His patented process for mercury removal from the cyanide streams of gold mining operations is being used in Nevada and internationally. Misra's recent research in renewal energy, more specifically in using coffee grounds and chicken feathers to produce biodiesel fuel, has garnered media attention.

Misra's expertise is also recognised for his service as a reviewer for 12 different journals, including Science and Nature. He also is a panel reviewer for the Department of Energy- Alternative Energy, National Science Foundation and the Department of Defence, among others.

He has been a professor in the department of chemical and metallurgical engineering since 1993 and served for six years as the chair of the metallurgical and materials engineering department.

Currently he is the director of the Centre for Mineral Bioprocessing and Remediation and is on the faculty of the environmental science and engineering department and the biomedical engineering department.

PTI

'Miracle' baby elephant cheats death in birth

A baby elephant believed to have died during a nine-day labour was born alive at an Australian zoo on Wednesday, amazing its keepers and defying expert opinion that such an outcome would take a "miracle".

Sydney's Taronga Zoo said Monday that the calf had died in the womb after becoming trapped in a position from which they believed there was no chance of a successful birth.

But the male elephant was delivered showing signs of life early Wednesday morning and by afternoon was attempting to suckle from its mother and take tentative steps around its pen.

Zoo director Cameron Kerr said that advice from Berlin-based elephant reproduction expert Thomas Hildebrandt was that such an outcome after a protracted labour has never been seen before.

"He said the birth will completely re-write the elephant birth text books," Kerr said.

On Monday, Hildebrandt told the media that an ultrasound and the failure to detect a heartbeat had led experts to believe the calf was dead.

"Should the calf be born alive, it would be a miracle," he said at the time.

Experts now believe the calf survived the nine-day labour in a coma, and this could explain why they had thought the calf was dead.

"That unconscious state would explain the complete absence of any vital signs during all the checks and examinations we conducted during the labour," said senior veterinarian Dr Larry Vogelnest.

The zoo said the next 24 hours were critical in keeping the almost 100 kilogram (220 pound) calf alive, particularly given that only 50 percent of first-time elephant mums have successful deliveries.

"Porntip is already showing signs of being an excellent mother, trying to help him suckle although he hasn't quite managed to suckle yet," Vogelnest said.

"She's in good health and has been getting to know her calf, gently touching the young animal with her trunk."

The zoo said other elephants in the herd were excited and curious about the new addition, reaching out to him with their trunks.

"The calf has already had some contact with the other elephants in the herd, touching trunks with the older females and also the zoo's first calf, Luk Chai, an eight-month old male," Vogelnest said.

Luk Chai, the first baby elephant ever born in Australia, was delivered at Taronga in July 2009. He was naturally conceived.

The new male calf is the second elephant conceived by artificial insemination in the country, after the birth of a female, Mali, at Melbourne Zoo in January.

Taronga's Asian Elephants are part of a controversial programme to breed the endangered creatures which began after the animals arrived from Thailand in 2006. As few as 33,000 Asian elephants are thought to remain in Asia.

The zoo said they expected a lot of interest in the newborn after news of its death prompted an outpouring of sympathy letters and cards from the public.

Bureau Report

Gourmet diners 'may spell extinction' for sea turtle

Malaysians' voracious appetite for turtle eggs could drive the marine creatures to extinction on its shores, conservationists warned on Wednesday.

According to a report by environmental group WWF-Malaysia, hundreds of thousands of turtle eggs are eaten in Malaysia every year, despite campaigns to get them off the menu.

"One of the contributing factors to the leatherback turtles' disappearance from our shores is egg consumption," said WWF-Malaysia executive director Dionysius SK Sharma.

"We wouldn't want the same thing to happen to our green and hawksbill turtles."

Turtles once arrived in their thousands to lay their eggs on Malaysian beaches, which are collected and sold on markets. But they are now increasingly rare due to poaching and coastal development.

The report, prepared by TRAFFIC Southeast Asia showed that the market demand for turtle eggs exceeded supply.

It estimated that 422,000 eggs were traded in the northeastern state of Terengganu alone in 2007, more than twice the number of green turtle eggs laid in the state, and that eggs were being brought in from outside to meet demand.

Most consumers consider turtle eggs a "delicacy" and eat them for pleasure, not as a source of protein or for reputed medicinal or aphrodisiac effects, the report said.

"A change in attitude and behaviour is needed to turn the tide if we want to ensure the survival of turtles," Sharma said.

Conservationists have urged the government to impose a nationwide ban on the consumption and commercial sale of turtle eggs.

Sharma said that some 10,000 leatherback turtles nested in Terengganu every year in the 1950s but that this had been reduced to just 10 a year at present.

Bureau Report

Small hobbit a big challenge to Darwin's theory

Hunched over a picnic table in a limestone cave, the Indonesian researcher gingerly fingers the bones of a giant rat for clues to the origins of a tiny human.

This world turned upside down may once have existed here, on the remote island of Flores, where an international team is trying to shed light on the fossilized 18,000-year-old skeleton of a dwarf cavewoman whose discovery in 2003 was an international sensation.

Her scientific name is Homo floresiensis, her nickname is "the hobbit", and the hunt is on to prove that she and the dozen other hobbits since discovered are not a quirk of nature but members of a distinct hominid species.

"They butchered the animals here," said the researcher, Rokus Due Awe, studying the toothpick-sized rat bones possibly left over from hobbit meals.

The discovery of Homo floresiensis shocked and divided scientists. Here apparently was a band of distant relatives that exhibited features not seen for millions of years but were living at the same time as much more modern humans.

Almost overnight, the find threatened to change science’s understanding of human evolution. It would mean contemplating the possibility that not all the answers to human evolution lie in Africa, and that human development was more complex than thought.

AP

Sea ice extended to Equator once

Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the Equator 716.5 million years ago, which gives weight to the theory of a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and led by scientists at Harvard University. The new findings, based on an analysis of ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern Canada, bolster the theory Earth has, at times in the past, been ice-covered at all latitudes.

"This is the first time that the Sturtian glaciation has been shown to have occurred at tropical latitudes, providing direct evidence that this particular glaciation was a ‘snowball Earth’ event," said lead author Francis Macdonald.

ANI