discoveries

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5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including a long-lost piece of artwork and an ancient shell carving

(Newser) - Lots of enormous buried items make this week's list:
  • Biggest Man-Made Stone Block Found : What's 64 feet long, 18 feet high, and 1,650 tons? According to German archaeologists in Lebanon, it's the biggest stone block ever made by man. As impressive as it is, the ancient
...

How Red Wine Helps Fight Cancer
How Red Wine
Helps Fight Cancer
STUDY SAYS
Dec 5, 2014 3:53 PM CST

How Red Wine Helps Fight Cancer

Chemical resveratrol fights adverse effects of other booze, says study

(Newser) - Overindulgence of alcohol in general may raise your risk of cancer, but a University of Colorado team explains how red wine in particular could fend that cancer off. A study published in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology says that although alcohol has been linked as a risk factor for...

Male Smokers May Lose Y Chromosomes
 Male Smokers May 
 Lose Y Chromosomes 
STUDY SAYS
Dec 5, 2014 1:22 PM CST

Male Smokers May Lose Y Chromosomes

Research may explain men's higher cancer rates

(Newser) - Even if general appeals to one's health aren't enough to convince people to quit smoking , perhaps this new research out of Sweden will give men some pause. An Uppsala University study published yesterday in Science says that male smokers are, on average, three times more likely to lose...

Electric Eels Use 'Remote Control' to Paralyze Prey

Scientists say the fish are the only ones known to do that

(Newser) - Electric eels have long been known to deliver low-voltage pulses as a form of natural sonar—but now researchers out of Vanderbilt University have discovered the eels also deliver high-voltage shocks, which they use to paralyze their prey—from a distance, with no physical contact—in just three milliseconds. It'...

Obesity Can Knock 8 Years Off Your Life

Severe obesity can slash up to 8 years off a life: researchers

(Newser) - If you haven't yet grasped the danger of obesity, Canadian researchers have attempted to quantify it: Being obese can slash as many as eight years off your life—and leave you in ill health for up to 19 years before that death. Researchers compiled data from roughly 4,000...

Ancient Zigzag Means First Artist Wasn't Exactly Human

Scratches on shell pre-date Homo sapiens

(Newser) - A human ancestor carved a zigzag onto the shell of a mussel some 430,000 years ago. Now that shell, recovered from a riverbank in Indonesia in 1891, could alter our understanding of what it means to be human. Artistic creativity has long been considered unique to Homo sapiens: Before...

Older Men Really Do Have Worse Sperm
 Older Men 
 Really Do Have 
 Worse Sperm 
STUDY SAYS
Dec 2, 2014 2:46 PM CST

Older Men Really Do Have Worse Sperm

Quality, volume goes down as men age, study says

(Newser) - Every sperm is sacred, but older ones need even more TLC than previously thought. Although scientists have long theorized that sperm quality drops as men age, a University of Otago review of 90 studies from more than 30 countries confirms there are "consistent age-related declines" in the quantity of...

Toys Send Kids to ER Every 3 Minutes

Scooters top toy-related injuries, which have jumped 40% over 20 years

(Newser) - A study that shows toy-related injuries have jumped 40% over the past two decades might have parents reconsidering their kids' holiday wish lists. The report, published in Clinical Pediatrics today, shows that the injury rate for toy-related accidents, which affects boys and younger children the most, increased from 18.9...

Historian Watching Movie Spots Long-Lost Painting

'Sleeping Lady with Black Vase' was last seen in 1928, bought for $500

(Newser) - Hungarian art historian Gergely Barki was watching Stuart Little with his young daughter five Christmases ago when he noticed a painting above the mantelpiece in the film—and did a double-take. It looked just like "Sleeping Lady with Black Vase," a painting by Hungarian artist Robert Bereny that...

'Underwater Pompeii' Discovered Off Greece

Buildings just 6 feet underwater near island of Delos

(Newser) - It was believed that underwater ruins off the Greek island of Delos were simply ancient docks—but now experts are telling a much more exciting story. They've found what's left of several buildings, including a pottery workshop, at the site just six feet below the surface. The ruins...

Biggest Ancient Block of Stone Is Found

It weighs 1.6K tons, was never moved from quarry

(Newser) - Archaeologists studying an ancient quarry that is home to a famously gigantic stone block have now found an even bigger stone block at the site, reports io9 . This monster, which dates back to 27 BC, is 64 feet long and 19.6 feet wide. Though it is still mostly buried,...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including an ancient Tibetan canyon and one way that beer beats coffee

(Newser) - Even more secrets from the intriguing Antikythera Mechanism make this week's list:
  • Ancient Canyon Found Buried Deep in Tibet : A deep canyon lies alongside the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet, and its discovery has upended how geologists believe the Himalaya's gorges came to be.
  • Here's Why We
...

Antikythera Mechanism Gives Up More Secrets

Device even more ancient than thought, experts say

(Newser) - The incredible Antikythera Mechanism , an astronomical calculator unlike anything else that appeared for the next 1,000 years, is a "device out of time," experts say—and they now have a better idea what time it is out of. The mechanism, which was apparently able to accurately predict...

Inside Vultures&#39; Guts: Poison

 Inside Vultures' 
 Guts: Poison 
study says
Nov 27, 2014 8:50 AM CST

Inside Vultures' Guts: Poison

Study: Birds developed immunity to dangerous but helpful toxins

(Newser) - Vultures eat all kinds of nasty stuff that humans can't (and wouldn't if we could). But how do they survive living off the rotting flesh of roadkill? Researchers set out to answer that query by examining the guts of 24 turkey vultures and 26 black vultures trapped and...

Powerful People Don't Exactly Speak Softly

Margaret Thatcher underwent vocal training when she became prime minister

(Newser) - When we want to be perceived as powerful—think parents scolding misbehaving kids or shoppers haggling with car dealers—we tend to focus not just on our words, but the way we deliver them. Researchers at San Diego State University report in the journal Psychological Science that when people want...

Why Dogs Are Messy Drinkers —But Cats Aren't

Canines 'smash their tongues on water': researcher

(Newser) - When grabbing a drink, neither cats nor dogs are able to squeeze their cheeks closed to suck up liquids the way humans can. Instead, they have to use their tongues in processes researchers didn't understand until recently, Reuters reports. Cats, researchers found a few years back , put their tongues...

Why We Weigh Less on Fridays

Weekend behavior often results in subtle weight gain by Mondays

(Newser) - For most of us, weekends are a time to relax and indulge—maybe through more sleep, more couch time, or more calories in the food and beverages we consume. The result is that we tend to weigh slightly more on Sunday and Monday, but then slightly less again by Friday,...

Underwater Bot Finds Surprisingly Thick Antarctic Ice

SeaBED uses sonar to map the hard-to-reach ice, which is as thick as 65 feet

(Newser) - Until now, scientists have measured ice thickness using satellite images, visual estimates, and by drilling holes in the ice itself. But in Antarctica, much of the floating ice is actually underwater, with ice so thick that drilling and satellite images just don't work. For the past four years, a...

Horses, Rhinos Have Roots in Ancient India

Fossil discovery offers clues to ancient past

(Newser) - Back when the Indian subcontinent was still an island—before it joined what is now the rest of Asia—it was home to ancestors of today's horses and rhinoceroses, a new study suggests. Both modern animals are members of a biological order known as Perissodactyla, or "odd-toed ungulates,...

Jeweled Mummy Found Under Collapsed Roof

Mystery woman died about 4K years ago in Egypt

(Newser) - At some point about 4,000 years ago, a female aristocrat in her 30s died in southern Egypt. Archaeologists have finally found her—along with the jewelry she was wearing when buried, reports Discovery . The find is unusual because tomb raiders have generally picked such sites clean, but a stroke...

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