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Traces of painted red numbers have been discovered during the ongoing restoration of the Colosseum, indicating various sectors of the amphitheatre similar to the seating system employed by today's stadiums. The numbers were painted on the arches of the Colosseum to guide visitors to their respective stands, according to their social class. Describing it as an "exceptional discovery", the monument's director Rossella Rea said that restorers had not expected the painted numbers to have survived. The director of the restoration project Cinzia Conti said the discovery proved the delicacy of the water-powered process, which removes dirt and smog residue but...

Consumer doggie DNA testing is old hat at this point, having been around since 2007. But cat-lovers who wish to decipher their pet's breed are out of luck -- no such tests exist for felines. That fact reflects the state of the underlying science. Since the first full dog genome was sequenced ten years ago, geneticists have identified hundreds of genes behind canine diseases and physical traits. By comparison, just a handful of such genes have been identified in cats. But a group of geneticists is working to close this gap by sequencing 99 domestic cats. This week the researchers...

A new study has used advanced imaging techniques to identify previously unknown tattoos on the ribcage of the 5300-year old man known as Ötzi, bringing his total number of tattoos to 61... Thanks to more than two decades of analysis, scientists arguably know more about Ötzi's health and final days than those of any other ancient human. He died at around 45 years of age after being shot in the back with a stone-tipped arrow and bludgeoned. In the 12 hours preceding his death he climbed into the mountains from an Italian valley, and ate a last meal consisting of...

The new 2015 Ram 1500 Rebel brings a one-of-a-kind off-road design to the full-size truck segment. “Offering an off-road-style package on the Ram 1500 has been on our to-do list for some time but the right combination didn’t present itself until now,” said Bob Hegbloom, President and CEO — Ram Truck Brand, FCA US LLC. “The Rebel drops right into a core segment of the truck market with unique design cues and can-do attitude backed by Ram Truck engineering.

VIRGIN Australia has become the first airline to react to months of declining jet fuel prices, announcing it will restructure its US airfares to reflect the savings. Although it will not do away with the fuel surcharge altogether, the airline will incorporate fuel costs into fares the same as other operating expenses. Flights from Brisbane and Sydney to Los Angeles, are the only routes Virgin Australia operates which attract a fuel surcharge of $680.

Orange County health officials confirmed that five Disneyland park employees have tested positive for measles. Of those, two had reportedly been vaccinated. To date, up to 53 measles cases have been confirmed in California. Officials said 20 of the confirmed cases are in Orange County and 12 are associated with visits to the Disney parks in mid-December. Two people are currently hospitalized.

Survivor: Worlds Apart is the 30th season of Survivor. It begins Wednesday, February 25, 2015 on CBS at 8/7c with a special 90 minute episode. References: Official Survivor site at CBSWikipedia article There will be three teams of six players each, divided by social status: blue collar, white collar, and no collar. More. It will be held in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, the same location as Survivor: Nicaragua, Survivor: Redemption Island and last season's Survivor: San Juan del Sur — Blood vs. Water. The players range in age from 52 to 22. Nine are from California, with seven from...

A team of archaeologists are discovering new finds on a tiny island just off the Black Sea coast near Sozopol, Bulgaria -- finds that may shed additional light on the location and features of a lost temple to Apollo erected by Archaic Greeks in the late 6th century BCE. Epigraphic sources document that a temple to Apollo was raised on an island near the ancient Greek colony of Apollonia Pontica, which is located near present-day Sozopol. But there has been no evidence to suggest where the temple was actually located -- until recently, when an archaeological team under the direction...

Although M. tuberculosis probably first emerged some 40,000 years ago in Africa, the disease did not take hold until humans took to farming... A previous analysis by his team had shown that the common ancestor of all the M. bacterium strains circulating today began spreading around 10,000 years ago in the ancient Fertile Crescent, a region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Nile Delta that was a cradle of agriculture... 4,987 samples of the Beijing lineage from 99 countries... the information to date the expansion of the lineage and show how the strains are related... the Beijing lineage did indeed emerge...

"The voice from the cockpit does not show any sign of a terrorist attack. It is only the pilot, sounding very busy," Andreas Hananto, an investigator at Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, said in an interview with the news agency Reuters. He said Monday that investigators had heard "no threats" in the recordings. "We didn't hear any voice of other persons other than the pilots," Nurcahyo Utomo, another investigator, told Reuters. But it remains a mystery what brought down the aircraft on December 28 as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya toward Singapore with 162 people on board.

The culture ministry said research on the tomb's bones showed the buried woman was over 60 years old and about 1.57 metres tall while the two men were aged 35 to 45 years old. One of the men had cut marks in his left chest that were most likely from mortal injuries inflicted by a knife or small sword, the ministry said. The men had an estimated height of 1.62 to 1.68 metres. The few burned bone remains of the fifth interred person, who was cremated, could not reveal the person's gender and authorities said further testing would be carried...

The grant will allow the team to archaeologically survey the village using a variety of methods, with particular focus on the group of timber-framed buildings which are present on an estate map of 1631. Many of these buildings probably have their origins within the medieval period. Dr Nash said: "Based on place-name evidence, the village of Tilley probably has its origins during the Early Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) period. The 'ley' element of Tilley translates into 'leah', meaning wood clearing." The project, one of the largest of its kind, will include a dendrochronology survey of 28 buildings that stand within the Tilley...

Ninety percent of the fats found in Neolithic cooking pots from Ireland came from dairy products, according to a new study conducted at the University of Bristol. "We know from previous research that dairying was an important part of many early farming economies, but what was a big surprise was the prevalence of dairy residues in Irish pots. It looks to have been a very important food source," said Jessica Smyth of the School of Chemistry. The remaining ten percent of the residues came from beef or mutton fat, or a mixture of milk and meat. "People can obviously cook...

A senior Cabinet minister in Ireland says he’s gay, becoming the first openly homosexual government figure in the history of the traditionally conservative Catholic country. Sunday’s announcement on state radio by Health Minister Leo Varadkar received widespread praise for its straightforward honesty. Analysts said his decision was likely to be viewed with hindsight as a landmark of social change in a country that, until 1993, outlawed homosexual acts. Varadkar said he decided to declare his sexuality in advance of government moves this year to advance gay rights. These include plans to legalize gay marriage, permit homosexual men to donate blood,...

The caddie for Robert Allenby said the Australian golfer was kidnapped from a bar Friday night in Honolulu, beaten and robbed before being dropped off in a park more six miles away. Allenby's caddie, Mick Middlemo, told Golf Channel's Steve Sands that Allenby was in a wine bar near Waikiki with Middlemo and another friend. Neither Middlemo nor the unidentified friend was with the Aussie at the time of the alleged kidnapping. Allenby sustained significant facial injuries and was robbed of his wallet, cell phone, cash and credit cards, according to Middlemo. Allenby, 43, missed the cut at the Sony...

Oldowan stone-knapping dates back to the Lower Paleolithic period in eastern Africa, and remained largely unchanged for 700,000 years until more sophisticated Acheulean hand-axes and cleavers, which marked the next generation of stone tool technology, came on the scene. It was practiced by some of our earliest ancestors, such as Homo habilis and the even older Australopithecus garhi, who walked on two legs, but whose facial features and brain size were closer to those of apes. In testing five different ways to convey Oldowan stone-knapping skills to more than 180 college students, the researchers found that the demonstration that used...

A multi-purpose bone tool dating from the Neanderthal era has been discovered by University of Montreal researchers, throwing into question our current understanding of the evolution of human behaviour. It was found at an archaeological site in France... Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia in the Middle Paleolithic between around 250,000 to 28,000 years ago. Homo sapiens is the scientific term for modern man. The production of bone tools by Neanderthals is open to debate. For much of the twentieth century, prehistoric experts were reluctant to recognize the ability of this species to incorporate materials like bone into their...

Mittens, shoes, weapons, walking sticks -- lost in the high mountains of Norway thousands of years ago -- are now emerging from melting ice. Around 7,000 years ago the Earth was enjoying a warm climate. Now glaciers and patches of perennial ice in the high mountains of Southern Norway have started to melt again, revealing ancient layers... The summer of 2014 was hectic in this respect. In Oppland County alone, Pilø and his colleagues found 400 objects, now emerged from the deepfreeze. Among these were a horse skull and hiking staffs from the Viking Age. An arrow shaft found by...

A new archaeological find on the Danish island of Falster can be traced back to the first Roman Emperor, Augustus. A bronze figure representing the Greek figure Silenus, from the time of Rome's first emperor, Augustus, has been found on the south-eastern Danish island of Falster. This find suggests that there was close contact between the Roman empire and Scandinavia, before and after the emperor's reign... At first sight the figure seemed so finely detailed that the finder took it home in the belief that it was a modern object. Later she handed it over to the National Museum of...

Pro-life Bikers will join the March for Life in Dallas, Texas where the Roe v. Wade abortion case originated. The North Texas Ride for Life will take place on Saturday, January 17th at 3:00 PM. Last year, pro-life bikers brought electricity to marchers who made their way to the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse housing the district court where Roe was first filed in 1970. Texas History: In March 1970, a suit was filed in Dallas on behalf of plaintiff Jane Roe and all other women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options.” At the time,...

In November, the Society for American Archaeology sent a letter to the St. Louis organization that said, in part, "This action by the St. Louis Society constitutes a stark violation of the ethics of the science of archaeology." A basic problem is selling such items at auction, where they may be bought by private collectors and removed from public view and study. "The objects in question, collectively known as the Harageh Collection, were entrusted to the St. Louis Society in 1914 in return for that organization's support of the Egyptian excavations directed by Sir Flinders Petrie," the letter reads. "They...

The travel company Expedia conducted a poll asking fliers to name the most annoying types of airplane passengers. Jimmy was going to just read the list, but he thought it would be more interesting if the great Sir Patrick Stewart acted it out.

"At 7:31 a.m. a passenger aboard Disney Magic reported a man in the water. The passenger had thrown multiple lifesavers in the water to help him," said Rodriguez. "They rescued him and gave him medical attention." The man was taken to a local hospital and was in good condition before he was flown back to the United States, Rodriguez said. "This man was reborn. Most people that experience that kind of fall break their neck. It's like hitting concrete," he said. ... Royal Caribbean closed-circuit TV video showed the man was alone on the Oasis ship Deck 5 when he...

NASA announced that an alarm sounded in the US segment at about 4 a.m. EST. indicating a possible ammonia leak. As a result, all six Expedition 42 astronauts and cosmonauts evacuated the US segment. “Flight controllers in Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston saw an increase in pressure in the station’s water loop for thermal control system B then later saw a cabin pressure increase that could be indicative of an ammonia leak in the worst case scenario,” according to a NASA announcement.

Dubai leapfrogged Heathrow to become the world's busiest airport for international passengers in 2014, the head of the Gulf hub said on Monday. Dubai International airport dealt with about 71m international passengers in 2014, according to chief executive Paul Griffiths, surpassing the 68.1 million that passed through Heathrow. "Heathrow is losing a lot of traffic to Dubai because we're able to cater for the connections that Heathrow no longer has the capacity to service," said Mr Griffiths, referring to how the UK's largest airport is operating at near full capacity on its two runways.

Jewelry used by women and men in the Urartian era provide detailed information about social class differences, Van Yuzuncu Yil University Head of Archaeology Department Associated Professor Rafet Cavusoglu has said. Artifacts and jewelry from the Urartian Kingdom 3,000 years ago, unearthed during excavations in the eastern province of Van, shed light on the mentality of life style and management of the era. Cavusoglu, who has been working on Urartian civilization for 21 years and examining these artifacts, said that as well as agriculture and stockbreeding, the Urartians were developed in metal embroidery, too. "The Urartians used jewelry such as...

Delayed air passengers opened three emergency exits, aborting their flight's takeoff from Chengdu, according to Chinese state media. Twenty-five passengers were detained after China's latest 'air rage' incident. Passengers frustrated by China's fast growing but delay-plagued aviation sector opened their plane's exits on Saturday, forcing the China Eastern flight to taxi back to the terminal. China's state news agency Xinhua said the incident happened early on Saturday morning when China Eastern's flight to Beijing was delayed by a snow storm. Passengers had been left waiting in their seats for hours as ice was removed from the plane's fuselage. The flight...

General Motors Co on Monday showed its Chevrolet Bolt concept car with an electric driving range of more than 200 miles and a $30,000 price tag, offering a view into where the U.S. automaker is pushing in development of electric vehicles (EV). The all-electric Bolt is a concept car not currently slated for production, but Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra said the company is committed to developing an affordable long-range EV, and GM said they could develop the car in as little as 18 months. “This is a real game changer,” Barra told reporters at the media preview at the...

The study, based on DNA analysis of corn cobs dating back over 4,000 years, provides the most comprehensive tracking to date of the origin and evolution of maize in the Southwest and settles a long debate over whether maize moved via an upland or coastal route into the U.S. Study findings, which also show how climatic and cultural impacts influenced the genetic makeup of maize, will be reported Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Plants. The study compared DNA from archaeological samples from the U.S. Southwest to that from traditional maize varieties in Mexico, looking for genetic similarities that would...

This frightening picture of two brothers with their hair on end was snapped just minutes before they were struck by lightning at Moro Rock, California, leaving the younger boy with third-degree burns and another man dead.  Electrical charges in the atmosphere just before a strike can lift hair into the air, providing nature's last warning of a bolt from the blue.These boys, 18 and 12, didn't know that, and the image has spread rapidly across the web this month.  The story behind the classic 1975 picture has come to light on the blog of Michael McQuilken, the teenager on the...

One of the tugs holding the stricken cargo ship Hoegh Osaka in the Solent has crashed into the vessel. The tug moved from its position during high winds and collided with the ship on Saturday afternoon. No-one was injured but the tug was damaged and had to be replaced. The salvage operation was hampered on Saturday because of poor weather conditions but the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said salvors had since managed to board the ship. {snip} The MCA said salvors were now intending to start work on the ship's ballast before pumping the 3,000 tonnes of water out...

"The amazing thing is the mechanical engineering aspect," says James Evans, a physicist and science historian at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. He is part of an international group working to crack the puzzle of the device's origins and purpose. Evans recently added a new twist with an analysis that suggests it dates to 205 B.C. -- as much as a century earlier than previously believed. If he's right, it is more likely that the Antikythera Mechanism was inspired by the work of the legendary Greek mathematician Archimedes. It would also mean the device was built at...

The world's largest container ship, the Globe, is docking in Britain for the first time as it continues its maiden voyage. But how vast and powerful is it and how long until it's superseded? Size The Globe is more than 400m (1,312ft) long, the equivalent of eight Olympic-size swimming pools. It is 56.8m (186ft) wide and 73m (240ft) high, its gross tonnage is 186,000 - the equivalent of 14,500 London buses, according to the Port of Felixstowe, where it arrived on Wednesday. But the record-breaking aspect of the Globe, owned by Shanghai-based China Shipping Container Lines and built in South...

Location of the tomb was, after all, an archaeological enigma lacking historical descriptions of its visual appearance.The authors said that not a single burial of the Mongolian imperial family has been identified. What is more, there are largely undocumented cultural heritage sites across a sparsely populated and undeveloped landscape. So while looking for the tomb was a motivation, the effort was also to leverage the power of human perception in a search for the unexpected. This was a challenge. The authors said that without a pre-existing reference for validation they turned towards consensus, defined by kernel density estimation, to pool...

Five more people who visited Disney theme parks in California last month have fallen ill with measles, bringing the number of cases in the state to a dozen, local health officials said Friday. Six patients in Orange County have been diagnosed with the illness who visited the local theme parks last month, and only one was fully vaccinated against the disease, said Nicole Stanfield, a spokeswoman for the county’s health care agency

Rock soil droplets formed by heating most likely came from Stone Age house fires and not from a disastrous cosmic impact 12,900 years ago, according to new research from the University of California, Davis. The study, of soil from Syria, is the latest to discredit the controversial theory that a cosmic impact triggered the Younger Dryas cold period. The Younger Dryas lasted a thousand years and coincided with the extinction of mammoths and other great beasts and the disappearance of the Paleo-Indian Clovis people. In the 1980s, some researchers put forward the idea that the cool period, which fell between...

A new study suggests that dogs may have first successfully migrated to the Americas only about 10,000 years ago, thousands of years after the first human migrants crossed a land bridge from Siberia to North America. The study, which looked at the genetic characteristics of 84 individual dogs from more than a dozen sites in North and South America, is the largest analysis so far of ancient dogs in the Americas. The findings appear in the Journal of Human Evolution. Unlike their wild wolf predecessors, ancient dogs learned to tolerate human company and generally benefitted from the association: They gained...

Fresh light has been shone on Norwich's grisly medieval history, after archaeologists uncovered evidence suggesting the site of a proposed £7m car park was once a 13th Century leather workshop... Archaeologists have already dug seven trials trenches, each four metres by four metres, to investigate the low-lying site near to the River Wensum. An eighth trench is set to be dug and evaluated after planned demolition works have taken place, with analysis of any finds to feed into a new report in early 2015. Evaluation of the site to date has identified activity from the prehistoric period to the modern...

On a day in which the international news cycle was dominated by the Islamic terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, President Obama traveled to Wayne, Michigan, to deliver a pre-arranged speech celebrating his rescue of the U.S. auto industry. Ironically, the Ford Assembly Plant that Obama visited is closed temporarily this week because of lack of demand for the small cars and hybrids the plant produces, with 2014 sales of the Ford Focus down 6 percent and the C-Max hybrid down 22 percent. […] Obama, in his speech, neglected to note Ford did not join...

The tomb dates to the Fifth Dynasty of the Pharaohs -- about 4,500 years ago. Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed the tomb of a previously unknown queen, Egyptian officials say. The tomb was found in Abu-Sir, south-west of Cairo, and is thought to belong to the wife or mother of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled 4,500 years ago. Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said that her name, Khentakawess, had been found inscribed on a wall in the necropolis. Mr Damaty added that this would make her Khentakawess III. The tomb was discovered in Pharaoh Neferefre's funeral complex. Miroslav Barta, head of...

A rock inscription portraying the rare transfer of two obelisks from a quarry has been unearthed at Gebel el Silsila, Egypt's largest sandstone quarries located to the north of Aswan, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced Monday. The discovery is the result of the Gebel el Silsila Survey Project, an epigraphic survey mission of Lund University, Sweden that has been active in the site since early 2014, according to the statement. Scenes depicting the phases and the technique of detaching blocks, loading them in sailing boats before sending them to their destinations through the River Nile, have been also discovered in...

A new study contradicts the idea that the prehistoric Rapa Nui people of Easter Island suffered a demographic collapse brought on by poor environmental stewardship. Scholars had theorized that unchecked agricultural growth after the first settlers arrived around A.D. 1200 strained the island's fragile ecosystem to the breaking point, leading to the erosion of topsoil and the eventual death by starvation of many members of Rapa Nui society. But prehistoric demographics are notoriously difficult to determine with precision. Phys.org reports that an international research team has evaluated the claim that the population of Easter Island collapsed by studying how land...

In Why Homer Matters, historian and award-winning author Adam Nicolson suggests that Homer be thought of not as a person but as a tradition and that the works attributed to him go back a thousand years earlier than generally believed. Speaking from his home in England, Nicolson describes how being caught in a storm at sea inspired his passion for Homer, how the oral bards of the Scottish Hebrides may hold the key to understanding Homer's works, and why smartphones are connecting us to ancient oral traditions in new and surprising ways... About ten years ago, I set off sailing...

I’m an older O.C. divorcé with a young Filipino wife I met on the Internet, and I know what you’re thinking. Can’t say I blame you. But you’re wrong.I’m pouring drinks for my guests when the police arrive. It’s 3 p.m. on a Saturday and we’re hosting a friend’s baby shower in our open garage. The two officers survey the scene carefully before striding toward me with bad news. “We got a complaint from your neighbor,” one of the officers says with a nod. After they sort it out and determine we’re not committing any crimes or posing a public...

Normally when you buy a pickup you worry about things like depreciation, operating costs, and how long the truck is going to last. Not this guy — he more than got his moneys worth with this one. Back in 1976 when Bob Sportel was 24 he bought a used, rusting 1957 half-ton Chevy pickup for $75 because he needed a way to get to work. He just retired from his job after 38 years — driving the same truck. According to KARE-TV in Minnesota, Sportel originally tried to buy the truck for $50. His only “extravagance” as he puts it...

28 objects from the Late Bronze Age have been discovered by a farmer during field work near Chojnice (Pomerania). The artefacts found their way to the museum. The farmer -- discoverer can count on a reward. The discovery was announced on December 16 by the spokesman for the Pomeranian Conservator Office, Marcin Tymifski. He explained that the treasure consists of three axes with sleeves and handles, a chisel, spearhead, fragments of a spiral brooch and bracelet, as well as numerous items that were parts of a horse harness, including six ornamental plates, bells and other items that once ornamented the...

Indian archaeologists uncovered a 4,000-year-old copper crown in the village of Chandayan, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh this week, from what they believe was the late Indus Valley civilization. According to Dr. Rakesh Tewari, the director general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), this is only the second crown discovered at an Indus Valley site in either India or Pakistan. Earlier, a silver crown was found at another late Indus Valley site in what is now the Fatehabad district of Haryana state in northeast India... The copper crown, decorated with a Carnelian and a Fiance bead...

Brother Noah of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico says he failed to stay peaceful while dealing with United Airlines on the phone, the New York Times reported. “I said to her something like: ‘Thank you for speaking. God bless you. I will pray for you. But you have not been helpful,’” he told the broadsheet. When David Segal, author of "The Haggler" column, suggested this did not sound like much of an outburst, Brother Noah said he knows the tone of his voice “manifested anger.”

Such an inflatable heat shield could help a spacecraft reach the high-altitude southern plains of Mars and other areas that would otherwise be inaccessible with existing technology. The experts note that rockets alone can't be used to land a large craft on Mars as can be done on the moon.... Parachutes also won't work for a large spacecraft needed to send humans to Mars, they add. Hence the inflatable rings, known as the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, which would be filled with nitrogen and covered with a thermal blanket. Once deployed for landing, the rings would sit atop the spacecraft,...

As a direct result of Obama's intervention in Cuba, "a large group of prominent Havana dissidents -- activists, civil society advocates and independent journalists -- were arrested as they headed for a pro-free speech... event."..... In an open letter to Obama, Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, a member of the Cuban Christian Liberation Movement, writes "that there is nothing new in treating as 'normal' the illegitimate government in Havana, which has never been elected by its citizens and has been practicing state murder with impunity. That strategy already has been done by all the other governments without positive consequences for democracy...