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An extremely fragile, ancient Hebrew scroll has been digitally unwrapped for the first time, revealing the earliest copy ever found of an Old Testament Bible scripture. Known as the En-Gedi scroll ...

The first extensive study of Indigenous Australians' DNA dates their origin to more than 50,000 years ago, backing the claim that they are the most ancient continuous civilisation on Earth. Scientists used the genetic traces of the mysterious early humans that are left in the DNA of modern populations in Papua New Guinea and Australia to recontruct their journey from Africa around 72,000 years ago.Experts disagree on whether present-day non-African people are descended from explorers who left Africa in a single exodus or a series of distinct waves of travelling migrants.The new study supports the single migration hypothesis. It indicates that Australian...

New TV series about combat in Afghanistan

Despite the tough challenges currently facing his SpaceX company, Elon Musk has made clear that he’s as determined as ever to get humans on Mars in the next 10 years. “I’m certain that success is one of the possible outcomes for establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, a growing Mars colony,” the SpaceX chief said in a recent interview with Y Combinator, adding that up until just a few years ago he wouldn’t have been able to make the same claim. Musk said that getting “a meaningful number of people” to Mars “can be accomplished in about 10 years, maybe sooner,...

Full title: Human skeleton discovered at Antikythera shipwreck after more than 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea Buried beneath sand and the fragments of ancient pottery, researchers have discovered the 2,000-year-old remains of a sailor who died upon the ill-fated 'Antikythera ship.' Archaeologists have investigated the famous shipwreck off a tiny Greek island for which it's named for over a century, revealing a trove of remarkable artefacts – including the mysterious 'Antikythera Mechanism,' thought to be a 'guide to the galaxy.'

Exclusive video of ISIS testing a new terror weapon. The Arabian Catapult!

The mission itself has a projected launch date of December 2021 for the robotic component and some time in the mid-2020s for the crewed mission. NASA has given the program the go-ahead to proceed to Phase B, culminating in a preliminary design review and baseline of the robotic spacecraft in late 2017. The crewed mission is still in the very early discussion phase. Administrator Bolden expanded on some of Dr. Holdren’s points, noting that it is NASA’s intent to develop technology and techniques that can later be used by private industry. All three panelists were advocates of ARM being a...

“Our work demonstrates that the gut bacterial microbiome in chronic fatigue syndrome patients isn’t normal, perhaps leading to gastrointestinal and inflammatory symptoms in victims of the disease,” said Maureen Hanson, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell. “Furthermore, our detection of a biological abnormality provides further evidence against the ridiculous concept that the disease is psychological in origin.” In a study published this month in the journal Microbiome, Cornell University researchers looked at stool and blood samples of 48 people diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (or more formally, myalgic encephalomyelitis) and at 39 healthy volunteers. They found two...

A scientist who named a new species of parasite after President Obama defended his decision, and said that it was meant to honor Obama, not insult him. "Before you accuse me of being some kind of hater, racist or worse — as plenty have — let me be clear: I absolutely intended it as an honor," retired biology professor Thomas Platt wrote in the Washington Post late Thursday. . . Platt named his new species Baracktrema obamai, which is a flatworm that lives in the blood systems of the hosts they inhabit.

There's increasing evidence to show that trees are able to communicate with each other. More than that, trees can learn. The main reason humans cannot perceive how clever and complex they are is because we exist in such short time scales by comparison. There's a tree in Sweden for instance, a spruce, that is more than 9,500 years old. That's 115 times longer than the average human lifespan.

Workers will lose their jobs as Europe shifts to a green economy, European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič has admitted, amid warnings the world faces political and economic turmoil not witnessed since the 1930s. Šefčovič made an impassioned plea for national governments to make sure that no one was thrown on the scrapheap of the green revolution. But, he added, “climate change is here and it poses an imminent danger.” “We should not create obstacles by not taking good care of people who may be intimidated by this transformation,” he said before calling for social programs such as retraining those made...

Paleontologists have teamed up with a paleoartist to create a model which challenges everything you thought you knew about the typical dinosaur. Dr. Jacob Vinther ofa Psittacosaurus — nicknamed a "parrot-lizard" — is about the size of a turkey, has bristles on its tail and a birdlike beak. In other words, a bit weird, but also pretty cute. It's also quite likely that the animal had feathers and a horn on each cheek, the experts say. Quite aptly, Psittacosaurus belongs to the group ceratopsians, which basically means "horned faces" in Greek. It's the same group that contains Triceratops. The scientists...

Never before in human history have babies and children grown up so cleanly, and our diets have lost many of the elements most crucial to the health of our guts. We have become very bad hosts to our microbes. [snip] Babies and toddlers often aren’t allowed to play in the dirt or sand, and when they are, they are wiped clean immediately. Phrases like, “Yuck! Don’t play in the mud!” or “Don’t touch that bug, it’s dirty!” have become second nature. We need to unlearn these habits. By preventing babies and children from following their innate impulse to get dirty,...

The sugar industry began funding research that cast doubt on sugar’s role in heart disease — in part by pointing the finger at fat — as early as the 1960s, according to an analysis of newly uncovered documents. The analysis published Monday is based on correspondence between a sugar trade group and researchers at Harvard University, and is the latest example showing how food and beverage makers attempt to shape public understanding of nutrition. In 1964, the group now known as the Sugar Association internally discussed a campaign to address “negative attitudes toward sugar” after studies began emerging linking sugar...

I turn 45 in November and was just diagnosed with a Bicuspid Aortic Valve. I have no symptoms whatsoever. My doc heard a murmur last month and I had an echocardiogram yesterday. Nurse called me today with the news. I do have pretty high cholesterol, and my blood pressure is usually around 135/80. Any Freepers or their loved ones have this? Any comments are appreciated as I'm continuing my research on the subject.

Remember “weaselpecker,” that hard-to-believe photo of a weasel riding a bird, Rescuers-style? Those types of animal interactions go viral because they seem rare to us. Yet the phenomena of species riding other species isn’t actually that unusual. In 2004 and 2006, researchers documented two instances of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) giving a lift to a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) near Hawaii... Here are some other instances of animal-on-animal action...

The most precise map of the night sky ever assembled is taking shape. Astronomers working on the Gaia space telescope have released a first tranche of data recording the position and brightness of over a billion stars. And for some two million of these objects, their distance and sideways motion across the heavens has also been accurately plotted. Gaia's mapping effort is already unprecedented in scale, but it still has several years to run. Remarkably, scientists say the store of information even now is too big for them to sift, and they are appealing for the public's help in making...

Every morning Alyssa Fairbanks takes a palmful of pills. Twelve to be exact. Green, white, brown, yellow, purple — calcium, vitamin D, magnesium and potassium for muscle cramps. Diuretics to keep toxins flushing, fluids moving. They tend to pool in her abdomen, which became so distended in May she was airlifted to Salt Lake City to drain the liquid from her petite frame. She takes her medication upstairs in her bedroom, a loft directly above where two parents are trying to feed a tableful of kids. It’s not private, there is no door. But it is home for now, and...

The opioid epidemic in America has captured the attention and efforts of policymakers. The Obama administration seeks to allocate $1.1 billion to fight opioid abuse. States are requiring prescribers check databases as part of prescription drug monitoring programs to identify patients who may have dependency or abuse problems. Canada has taken a slightly different approach to help treat addicts: prescribing pharmaceutical-grade heroin.

New Study Shows Awe Bad for ‘Science’ (If by ‘Science’ You Mean Atheism) Douglas Axe Psychology professors from Claremont McKenna, Yale and Berkeley have just published a study that should be “disconcerting to those interested in promoting an accurate understanding of evolution.” Specifically, they’ve identified an insidious factor that has crept into science films and videos, undermining the ability of viewers to be good Darwinists.Awe is the culprit, they say. All those jaw-dropping nature documentaries have been messing with our minds.Most wildlife shows are packaged with the usual Darwinian narrative, spoken in an authoritative tone that isn’t supposed to be...