The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released 20 pages of training materials concerning the collection, processing, and analysis of biological evidence following fatal aviation accidents. The…
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Larry W. Bryant was a UFO researcher, writer, and government transparency advocate who pursued federal records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). His work…
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Interior of newly discovered Etruscan tomb, San Giuliano necropolis, Italy ROME, ITALY—According to a report in La Brújula Verde, a second intact Etruscan tomb has been discovered in central Italy’s San Giuliano necropolis by a team of researchers led by Davide Zori of the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) and Baylor University. More than…
Recently discovered Roman busts, Binyamina, Israel BINYAMINA, ISRAEL—Haaretz reports that two 1,700-year-old marble busts have been discovered in a wine-collection pit at a winepress dated to the Roman and Byzantine periods in northern Israel. One of the busts is inscribed in Greek with the name “Lycurgus,” perhaps referring to the legendary founder of Sparta, or…
Nearly 750 million people face hunger today, according to the U.N. World Food Program. And by 2050, global demand for food is expected to increase by 50 percent from 2010 levels, the World Resources Institute says.A smart agriculture special-issue report recently released by the IEEE Smart Agri-Food Initiative says meeting the demand will require technology…
A half century ago, a scrappy crew at the University of Massachusetts Amherst erected a wind turbine on Orchard Hill, the highest point on campus. It was a frugal production, cobbled together from the rear axle of a Ford truck, a donated generator and microcontroller, a steam pipe, and various handcrafted steel and fiberglass parts,…
Grape pips, Cetamura del Chianti, Italy CHIANTI, ITALY—According to a statement released by the University of York, analysis of grape seeds recovered from mud at the bottom of wells carved into the rock at the Etruscan and Roman site of Cetamura del Chianti suggests that vintners there cloned vines that produced white berries. Oya Inanli…
Medieval burial, Sayan Mountains, Russia ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA—Live Science reports that a tenth-century burial uncovered in southern Siberia's Sayan Mountains in 2014 contains the remains of a woman; a newborn; the spine of a sheep; and the skull, limbs, and skin of a horse. This grave and dozens of others were discovered during an investigation…
Excavations underway at Heraclea Sintica, Bulgaria RUPITE, BULGARIA—The Sofia News Agency reports that a fragment of a marble statue that may depict the goddess Artemis has been unearthed at the site of the ancient Greek city of Heraclea Sintica, which is located in southwestern Bulgaria. Ludmil Vagalinski of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences said that…
A newly identified crocodile species nicknamed “Lucy’s hunter” prowled Ethiopia’s rivers when Lucy’s species walked the Earth more than 3 million years ago. The giant predator was likely the most dangerous animal in the ecosystem and may have regularly hunted early human relatives.
Yen-Ling Kuo always wanted to understand how things worked. When she was growing up in Taiwan, reading the story of Michael Faraday in elementary school piqued her curiosity about the natural world. During that time, she was introduced to Logo, a computer program with a turtle cursor to help children learn basic coding through hands-on…
A tiny set of ancient genetic “switches” may have played a surprisingly large role in making human language possible. Researchers found that these DNA regions, which act like volume controls for genes involved in brain development, have an outsized influence on language ability despite making up less than 0.1% of the genome.
