Space station shipment launched from Virginia

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. –  A commercial cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, carrying food, science samples and new odor-resistant gym clothes for the resident crew.

Orbital Sciences Corp. launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia coast, its third space station delivery for NASA.

Daylight and clouds limited visibility, but observers from North Carolina to New Jersey still had a shot at seeing the rising Antares rocket. It resembled a bright light in the early afternoon sky.

Its destination, the space station, was soaring 260 miles above Australia when the Cygnus took flight. The unmanned capsule should arrive there Wednesday.

This newest Cygnus contains more than 3,000 pounds of supplies, much of it food. Also on board: mini-satellites, science samples, equipment and experimental exercise clothes. NASA said the new type of clothing is resistant to bacteria and odor buildup. So the astronauts won't smell as much during their two hours of daily workout in orbit and they'll require fewer clothing changes.

NASA is paying for the delivery service. The space agency hired two companies -- the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and California's SpaceX -- to keep the space station well stocked once the shuttle program ended. The international partners also make shipments; the European Space Agency, for example, will launch its supply ship in 1 1/2 weeks from French Guiana.

This particular Cygnus delivery was delayed a few months by various problems, including additional engine inspections and, most recently, bad weather at the Wallops Island launch site.

The Cygnus will remain at the space station for about a month. It will be filled with trash and cut loose for a fiery re-entry. Unlike the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the Cygnus is not built to return safely to Earth.

Saturday, meanwhile, marked the 5,000th day of continuous human habitation at the 260-mile-high outpost. Six men currently are on board, representing the United States, Russia and Germany.

"Humans are explorers!" German astronaut Alexander Gerst said via Twitter.

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Why some chimps are smarter than others

Anfisa, a 8-year-old female chimpanzee, washes a window of her enclosure where she lives at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, January 29, 2013.REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

Chimpanzees don't just get their smarts by aping others chimps, like humans, inherit a significant amount of their intelligence from their parents, new research reveals.

Researchers measured how well 99 captive chimpanzees performed on a series of cognitive tests, finding that genes determined as much as 50 percent of the animals' performance.

"Genes matter," said William Hopkins, a neuroscientist at Georgia State University in Atlanta and co-author of the study published today (July 10) in the journal Current Biology. [The 5 Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet]

"We have what we would call a smart chimp, and chimps we'd call not so smart," Hopkins told Live Science, and "we were able to explain a lot of that variability by who was related to each other."

Animal 'intelligence'

People don't usually talk about animal intelligence, but rather animal learning or cognition. American psychologists John Watson and B.F. Skinner developed the notion of behaviorism in the early 20th century, which said that scientists should study only the behavior of animals, not their mental processes. This was the dominant approach until about 1985.

But in the last few decades, studies have shown convincingly that animals are capable of cognition. What remained unknown was the mechanism behind it, Hopkins said. Many studies of human twins suggest that intelligence is heritable, but few studies have looked at whether this is true in other primates.

In the new study, Hopkins and his colleagues gave chimpanzees at the Yerkes Primate Center, in Atlanta, a battery of cognitive tests adapted from ones developed by German researchers for comparing humans and great apes. The tests measured a range of abilities in physical cognition, such as the ability to discriminate quantity, spatial memory and tool use. The tests also examined aspects of social cognition, such as communication ability.

The researchers created a genetic pedigree of the chimps, showing how they were related to each other. This would be like taking a group of 300 random people, sticking them on another planet where they could breed and have children, and testing their intelligence 50 years later, Hopkins said.

About half of the variability in the chimps' performance on the cognitive tests could be attributed to their relatedness, the results showed. "I was a little surprised by that. It was higher than I thought would be," Hopkins said.

In addition, neither the sex of the animals nor their rearing history (whether they were raised by their mother or by humans) seemed to affect cognitive performance, the researchers found.

Nature vs. nurture

In humans, some people believe that intelligence is primarily a result of schooling. But for chimps, this can't be a factor, since they don't go to school, Hopkins said. "The fact that we can establish this in an organism that has none of the baggage of our social-cultural systems points strongly to the role that genes play in their intelligence," he said.

Alex Weiss, a psychologist who studies nonhuman primates at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the study, said the findings were "really interesting, particularly as these findings mirror what has been found for decades in studies of human twins and human families." It provides just one more example of the similarities between chimpanzees and humans, Weiss told Live Science.

But while the results suggest that "nature" matters a bit more than "nurture" for intelligence, Hopkins said other findings don't support that interpretation. Environment and experience still have an influence on cognitive performance. For example, if you compare chimps that have been trained to use sign language to ones that haven't, the trained animals do much better on cognitive tests, he said. "So there's a case where nurture really matters."

Curiously, the results of the study support the idea of general intelligence, rather than the theory of multiple intelligences such as mathematical, verbal or musical ability that American psychologist Howard Gardner developed. General intelligence suggests that individuals posses a general learning ability that makes it likely that a person who possesses one form of intelligence will posses others.

Next, the researchers will attempt to replicate their findings in another colony of chimpanzees. They also hope to incorporate brain scans of the chimps, to establish if heritable features of intelligence correlate with specific structures in the brain's cortex. Finally, they aim to look for specific genes correlated with intelligence, to see how those might be passed down in the chimpanzees.

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World's oldest erotic 'graffiti' discovered on Greek island

Tourists admire the Aegean, which is home to the island of Astypalaia.AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis

Think phallic graffiti art exclusively belongs to the baseless present? Think again. An archaeologist has uncovered what the Guardian touts as the earliest erotic graffiti on the planet, found in Greece—and predating, in one case, even Athens' Acropolis.

Since 2011, Dr. Andreas Vlachopoulos has been directing fieldwork on the Aegean island of Astypalaia, and the professor may have given the students working with him a little more insight than he'd at first intended when he happened upon extremely explicit erotica chiseled into the limestone rocks that line the cape.

In one instance, dating back to 5th century BC, two gigantic penises are etched next to the name Dion; in another, dating to 6th century BC, one man boasted: "Nikasitimos was here mounting Timiona." "We know that in ancient Greece sexual desire between men was not a taboo," Vlachopoulos tells the Guardian.

"But this graffiti … is not just among the earliest ever discovered. By using the verb in the past continuous [tense], it clearly says that these two men were making love over a long period of time, emphasizing the sexual act in a way that is highly unusual in erotic artwork." One theory is that soldiers were once stationed at this outpost overlooking the bay; other carvings include that of ships, daggers, and wave-symbolizing spirals.

Either way Astypalaia, best known for what Archaeology International called "the largest ancient children’s cemetery in the world," with at least 2,700 infant burials identified in one place, can now add ancient porn among its claims to fame.

(Meanwhile, in Italy, art restorers have been accused of scrubbing away the erotic...)

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Were ancient child skulls gifts to the lake gods?

An illustration of Bronze-Age lake dwellers in Switzerland and Germany, who may have buried children's skulls at the perimeter of their settlements as gifts to lake gods to ward off flooding.Benjamin Jennings et al, Antiquity 2014

Children's skulls found at the edges of Bronze Age settlements may have been a gruesome gift for the local lake gods.

The children's skulls were discovered encircling the perimeter of ancient villages around lakes in Switzerland and Germany. Some had suffered ax blows and other head traumas.

Though the children probably weren't human sacrifices killed to appease the gods, they may have been offered after death as gifts to ward off flooding, said study co-author Benjamin Jennings, an archaeologist at Basel University in Switzerland.

Lake dwellers

Since the 1920s, archaeologists have known that ancient villages dotted Alpine lakes in Switzerland and Germany. However, it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that many of the sites were excavated, yielding hunting tools, animal bones, ceramics, jewelry, watchtowers, gates and more than 160 dwellings. Tree rings on wooden artifacts from the sites suggest people lived there at different periods between 3,800 and 2,600 years ago. [Mummy Melodrama: Top 9 Secrets About Otzi the Iceman]

The Bronze Age lake dwellers regularly faced flooding. Whenever lake levels rose, they would pick up and move to dry land, only to return once the waters receded. To adapt to this watery threat, the people built houses on stilts or on sturdy wooden foundations, and created palisades, or fences, made from bog pine, the researchers wrote in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.

But in addition to finding evidence for such architectural adaptations, archaeologists also unearthed more macabre details of life (and death): children's skulls and skeletal remains encircling the villages at the palisade edges. Many of these ancient skulls were placed there long after their initial burial, at a time when the settlements experienced the worst inundation from rising lake levels, the researchers wrote.

Gift to the gods

In the current study, Jennings and his colleagues took a closer look at the fossil skeletons.

Most were from children under age 10, and though the skeletal remains revealed tooth decay and signs of respiratory ailments, those health troubles would not have been severe enough to warrant a mercy killing, the researchers wrote in the journal article.

The skulls showed evidence of head trauma from battle-axes or clubs, though the injuries don't have the uniformity associated with a ritual killing. As a result, it's more likely the youngsters were felled in warfare, rather than killed as a sacrifice for the gods, the researchers wrote.

Either way, it's clear these weren't ordinary burials, he said.

"Across Europe as a whole there is quite a body of evidence to indicate that throughout prehistory human remains, and particularly the skull, were highly symbolic and socially charged," Jennings told Live Science in an email.

At these sites, "the remains are found at the perimeter of the settlement not inside and not outside, but at a liminal position on the border between in and out," Jennings added. And at one of the sites, the remains were placed at the high-water mark of the floodwaters. Taken together, the details of the burial suggest the remains were placed as an offering to protect against flooding, Jennings said.

Still, there are many unanswered questions about these mysterious Alpine people.

"There are very few instance or examples of burials in the vicinity of the lake settlements, and so we really do not know where the majority of the lake dwellers are buried, or how they treated their dead," Jennings said.

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Giant Rubik’s Cube floats on Hudson to celebrate creator's birthday

Beyond Rubik's Cube at Liberty Science Center

New Yorkers were treated to the surreal sight of a giant Rubik’s cube floating on the Hudson river on Friday.

Towed on a barge, the colorful inflatable cube made its way from Staten Island to Manhattan’s west side and back again, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the iconic toy and the seventieth birthday of its creator, Erno Rubik.

The cube’s river journey was part of ‘Beyond Rubik’s Cube,' an exhibition running at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J, in partnership with Google and Erno Rubik. The $5 million exhibition offers 7,000 sq ft of puzzles, history, art and engineering inspired by the famous cube.

“The goal of the exhibition is that it’s interactive and designed to inspire peoples’ creativity – we’re doing things like this (floating cube) to get people thinking,” Liberty Science Center spokeswoman Mary Meluso told FoxNews.com.

The exhibition, which runs at Liberty Science Center until November, will go on an international tour (accompanied by the inflatable cube), for seven years, Meluso told FoxNews.com. “We want this to go out into the world and get peoples’ creative juices flowing,” she added.

Hungarian inventor and architect Rubik, who turns 70 on Sunday, was looking for a model to explain three-dimensional geometry when he created his famous cube in 1974.  Since then, more than 350 million of the cubes have been sold, making it the bestselling toy of all time.

Liberty Science Center is inviting people to celebrate Rubik’s birthday via social media using #RubiksParty.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

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Lack of nitrogen kills space buffs' hopes for NASA probe

It looks like space buffs' plan to push an aged NASA space probe into a new orbit has come up against a deal-breaker. Weeks after making contact with the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, the group of citizen scientists has learned the tanks on the spacecraft are apparently empty of nitrogen, the New York Times reports.

Since the gas is required to fire the thrusters that would alter the probe's trajectory—the group had planned to boot it out of its heliocentric orbit and into one where it could better communicate with Earth—it's a massive problem.

"Odds are, there is nothing we can do," says Keith Cowing, a leader of the reboot project. "Without that, you don't have a rocket." The group fired the thrusters just last week, but when they tried to activate the thrusters yesterday and Tuesday they just sputtered.

Space.com reports scientists initially thought a "valve malfunction" could be at fault, but Cowing last night wrote they were instead pinning the blame on a lack of nitrogen, which is needed to push the fuel, called hydrazine, to the thrusters.

As for why the thrusters appeared to work last week, that was "probably the result of residual hydrazine that was already in the system that had pressure," says Cowing, per Space News.

He says ISEE-3 is now operating in science mode, meaning it's sending data back to Earth that'll be accessible for the next three months or so.

After that, it'll be so far from us that communicating with it will become cost-prohibitive.

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Researchers explore cursed 450-year-old shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

Researchers have begun exploring the wreckage of the Mars, a Swedish war ship that sank during a naval battle in 1564. 

Johan Rönnby, professor of maritime archeology at Södertörn University in Sweden, was recently awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society for his project, "The Maritime Battlefield of Mars (1964)."

Rönnby spoke to FoxNews.com via Skype from nearby the wreck site, which is located 12 nautical miles southeast of the island of Oland in the Baltic Sea.

"It's a unique ship," Rönnby said. "Maybe the biggest in the world during this time. And when it exploded, because it actually exploded during the fight, it went down to the bottom ... so we are diving on the wreck, but we are also diving on the sunken battlefield."

The ship sank during a bloody battle against a fleet from Denmark and the German city of Lübeck. Mars was rumored to have been cursed because many of its 130 cannons were made from melted church bells.

Rönnby says due to the brackish water and conditions of the Baltic Sea, the ship is remarkably well-preserved.

"The cold and darker water of the Baltic Sea preserves wreck in a fantastic way, and that's really the reason we have Mars on the bottom like this," Rönnby said.

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RÖNNBY IN THE VIDEO ABOVE

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Who needs to ‘walk like an Egyptian’ when you can count like one?

Contrary to popular belief, there is not only one way to do a math problem.  Developing in isolation, separated from the rest of the world by desert, the ancient Egyptians created a form of math that was fundamentally different from the math we know and use today.  In his book ‘Count Like An Egyptian: A Hands-on Introduction to Ancient Mathematics’, author David Reimer guides readers through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division done in the Egyptian style.  

David joined Fox’s Tracy Byrnes on set to explain how math problems were solved in the time of the pharaohs and even put her to the test with some math problems of his own.  

David Reimer’s book can be found here.

Check out the interview above and discover how math in Ancient Egypt really worked.

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Mysterious stash of coins found hidden in cave

A cave in Britain may have been the perfect hiding place for a stash of coins … because 2,000 years passed before anyone found them. A climber sheltering from the rain happened upon four coins in Dovedale, Derbyshire, reports the Ashbourne News Telegraph, which led to a National Trust excavation of the site, called Reynard’s Cave.

And what exactly did they find? A trove of 26 Roman and Late Iron Age coins and 20 Late Iron Age gold and silver pieces that may have belonged to the Corieltavi Tribe; three of the Roman coins pre-date the 43 AD invasion of Britain, reports the BBC.

The discovery is a triple mystery: Roman coins have never been found in a cave, coins from these two civilizations have never been buried together, and the Corieltavi have long been thought to have occupied areas further east during the Late Iron Age.

The stash was possibly hidden in a cave for protection; Late Iron Age coins were largely symbols of power and status, rather than used to buy goods.

However, it's possible the coins' owner squirreled away his "best stuff," or was awaiting an increase in their value, speculates one archeologist on the dig. The project proved exciting for one participant—a military vet involved in the excavation as part of a rehabilitation program.

"I was working at the back of the cave, in the dark, and I was the first person to find a coin—a silver coin. It was so exciting,” she tells the Telegraph. The coins have been cleaned and will become permanent museum display. (In other ancient news, Rome’s Coliseum was once a condo of sorts.)

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Beach bummer: toxic slime will hit Lake Erie again

Satellite image of a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie in 2011, one of the worst blooms in recent years.MERIS/ESA, processed by NOAA/NOS/NCCOS

Slimy green mats of toxic algae will again threaten the western shores of Lake Erie later this summer, according to an algae forecast released today July 10.

The predicted Lake Erie algal bloom will be smaller than in the past three years, but still above the average for the past 12 years, according to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) forecast. The algae are also expected to collect on certain shorelines instead of spreading out evenly across the lake, NOAA said in a statement. In previous years, the toxic algae have clung to the western third of the lake, in Ohio and southern Ontario.

This year's forecast calls for some 24,250 tons (22,000 metric tons) of blue-green algae to overtake Lake Erie's waters, while the average since 2004 is 15,430 tons (14,000 metric tons). [Photos of the Great Lakes: North America's 'Third Coast']

This is the third year the agency has forecast the amount of toxic slime that would choke Lake Erie during the late summer. The forecast is based on models of fertilizer runoff and satellite tracking of precipitation and snowmelt.

The noxious blooms occur when fertilizer runoff feeds the runaway growth of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. The algae are harmful to marine life and to humans. Decaying cyanobacteria suck up oxygen, creating dead zones. Some kinds of algae also emit toxins that damage or irritate the nerves, skin, liver and kidneys of humans and other animals. Lake Erie is the drinking water source for millions of people in the United States and Canada.

The lake suffered from severe algal blooms in the 1960s, but the thick mats disappeared after a water quality agreement was signed in 1972. The toxic algal blooms returned with a vengeance in 2000, due to changes in when and how farmers apply agricultural fertilizer, according to studies by researchers at the University of Michigan and other institutions. Scientists also think climate change is a factor, with Lake Erie's waters becoming warmer and more hospitable to algae.

"The reemergence of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie is an ecological and economic setback for communities along the coast," U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in the statement.

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Russia plans to colonize moon by 2030, report says

May 17, 2011: The moon appears near the earth's horizon in this photograph of an orbital moonset taken from aboard the International Space Station.Reuters

Nearly a half-century after America won the Space Race, Russia apparently wants to take another crack at landing on the moon.

A report in the Russian-language newspaper Izvestia Thursday said the nation is planning to put a manned colony on the moon as soon as 2030, and is racing to dispatch the first robotic rovers to explore the lunar surface two years from now, according to The Moscow Times.

By 2028, Russia would be ready to send manned missions to orbit the moon, and in the program's final stage, humans would be sent to the lunar surface to set up the infrastructure for a colony using local resources.

The first stage of the program is expected to cost around 28.5 billion rubles ($815.8 million), though Russia hopes to attract private investors to help bankroll the project.

Benefits of establishing a moon colony include access to the "treasure trove" of rare and valuable minerals, as well as the strategic importance of using the moon as a launchpad for future missions into deep space, The Moscow Times reports.

The paper adds that China, India and Japan are also developing lunar exploration projects, and a California-based company, Moon Express, is planning to send its first robotic spacecraft to the satellite next year, according to the company's website.

U.S. astronauts first landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and the United States later made five other landings on the Earth satellite. No humans have visited the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Click here to read more from The Moscow Times.

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Rare megamouth shark caught off Japan

FILE: Fishermen off the coast of japan pulled in a rare megamouth shark, similar to the one pictured, marking only the 58th time one was encountered by humans, Japanese news outlets reported.Reuters

Fishermen off the coast of Japan hauled in a rare megamouth shark recently, marking the 58th time in history one of its kind were seen or caught by man, Japanese news outlets reported.

The Japan Daily Press reported Thursday that scientists performed an autopsy on the 1,500-pound female shark in front of onlookers at the Marine Science Museum in Shizuoka City. The shark was reportedly caught from a depth of about 2,600 feet. It's unclear precisely when it was nabbed, according to the report.

The first megamouth was discovered in Hawaii in 1976, prompting scientists to create an entirely new family and genus of sharks. The megamouths are docile filter-feeders with wide, blubbery mouths.

RARE GOBLIN SHARK CAUGHT OFF KEY WEST

Others megamouths — considered one of the rarest fish in the world — have been encountered in California, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Senegal, South Africa, Mexico and Australia. It's known to inhabit the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

"As with the two other filter-feeding sharks, the basking and whale sharks, this species is wide-ranging," according to a profile of the animal on the museum's website. "However, the megamouth is considered to be less active and a poorer swimmer than the basking or whale sharks."

The megamouth primarily feeds on large quantities of krill and its maximum size is at least 17 feet long. The sperm whale is its only known predator, researchers say.

In 2009, fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark. The 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Tomb dating back to 1100 B.C. found in Egypt

An Egyptian conservator cleans limestones at a newly-discovered tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. at the Saqqara archaeological site, 19 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.AP

Archaeologists and journalists gather at a newly-discovered tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. at the Saqqara archaeological site, 19 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.AP

An Egyptian archeology worker covers limestones at a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

Lead archaeology workers supervise as their colleagues dig a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

An Egyptian conservator works at a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

CAIRO –  Archeologists have found a tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. south of Cairo, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said Thursday.

Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said that the tomb belongs to a guard of the army archives and royal messenger to foreign countries. Ibrahim said the Cairo University Faculty of Archaeology's discovery at Saqqara adds "a chapter to our knowledge about the history of Saqqara."

Ola el-Egeizy of Cairo University said the tomb contains "very nice inscriptions" of the funerary procession and the afterlife of the deceased.

The tomb was found near another one dating back to the same period belonging to the head of the army that was discovered in the previous excavation season. That tomb was larger but much of what remains is mud bricks as "most of its stone blocks were stolen and many of them are in museums all over the world," said el-Egeizy. Because of the blocks, archaeologists had long known that the tomb existed though it was not uncovered until recently.

Saqqara was the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis and site of the oldest known pyramid in Egypt.

Egypt's vital tourism industry has suffered in the wake of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

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Space telescope reveals weird star cluster conundrum

NGC 2024 is a star cluster found in the center of the Flame Nebula, approximately 1,400 light-years from Earth. This observation combines X-ray and infrared data from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes, respectively.NASA

We thought we had star formation mechanisms pinned down, but according to new observations of two star clusters, it seems our understanding of how stars are born is less than stellar.

PHOTOS: Herschel’s Coolest Infrared Hotshots

When zooming in on the young star clusters of NGC 2024 (in the center of the Flame Nebula) and the Orion Nebula Cluster, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up with infrared telescopes to take a census of star ages. Conventional thinking suggests that stars closest to the center of a given star cluster should be the oldest and the youngest stars can be found around the edges.

However, to their surprise, astronomers have discovered that the opposite is true.

“Our findings are counterintuitive,” said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, lead scientist of this new study. “It means we need to think harder and come up with more ideas of how stars like our sun are formed.”

It is thought that stars form after the gravitational collapse of vast clouds of dust and gas, or nebulae. The densest material can be found at the nebula’s center and, as the thinking goes, will be ripe for the first stars in that nebula to appear. After the first stars in the nebula’s center burst to life with fusion burning cores, the leftover gases in the less dense portions of the nebula will generate stars later on.

ANALYSIS: Orion’s ‘Death Stars’ Exterminate Baby Planets

After using Chandra data to gauge the stars’ masses and brightnesses, and then combining that data with infrared observations, stellar ages could be calculated. In the case of NGC 2024, the researchers noticed that the stars in the cluster’s core were 200,000 years old, but the stars on the outer edges were much older — around 1.5 million years old. Likewise, the Orion Nebula Cluster hosts stars in its core that are 1.2 million years old and the ones around the edge were 2 million years old.

This discovery has caught astrophysicists on the hop and may turn our understanding of star forming regions on its head.

“A key conclusion from our study is we can reject the basic model where clusters form from the inside out,” said coauthor Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. “So we need to consider more complex models that are now emerging from star formation studies.”

So what’s going on? Is our understanding of stellar mechanics really that wrong? Not necessarily, but star cluster evolution models will certainly need some tweaking.

NEWS: Spitzer Sheds Light on Colony of Baby Stars

The researchers have several possible answers to the conundrum. First, it could be that there’s simply more gas in the center of the star-forming nebula that allows stars to be born long after stars have finished forming in the depleted edges of the cluster. That would make it appear that there are older stars at the edges than in the core. Secondly, stars that formed first in the cluster’s center have more time to gravitationally interact with other stars, causing them to be slingshotted to the cluster’s edges, leaving younger stars behind.

Thirdly, the young stars could be formed in the cluster’s center by filaments of gas and dust that fall into the center of the cluster. This could be envisaged as a sort of “conveyer belt” effect where older stars are replaced in the core by new stars being created by in-falling material.

Whether one of these theories is the correct one (or whether it’s a combination of all three) remains to be seen, but this is certainly a reminder that the physics of star formation is far from being fully understood; it is an exciting and evolving field of study that turns up its fair share of surprises.

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Scientists make new find in photos of freakish shark

A giant deep-sea isopod or Bathynomus giganteus.Reuters

A rare goblin shark was caught last month off the coast of Key West, Fla., in what biologists are calling “an important scientific discovery,”Carl Moore/courtesy of NOAA

Researchers studying photos of a rare goblin shark hauled up in the Gulf of Mexico last month say they've spotted something just as exciting—and just as weird-looking—in the shrimpers' catch.

Mixed in with the shrimp are unusually large numbers of giant isopods, a deep-sea creature that resembles a cat-sized woodlouse, reports the Houston Chronicle, which has a photo gallery of the catch.

Scientists believe their presence, along with that of the goblin shark, indicates that the trawler passed over a "whalefall"—a decaying whale on the ocean floor, perhaps as much as a mile below the surface.

Entire ecosystems can spring up around the dead whales, living off the carcass for decades. "While I think (the) goblin shark is cool and all, look at all those freakin' giant isopods!" tweeted marine biologist Andrew Thaler, who plans to seek funding to send a submersible to the site.

If his team makes it there, they may encounter the same goblin shark: The captain who caught it says he returned the strangest creature he's encountered in his 50 years of shrimping to the Gulf after taking photos.

"Anything that's alive we try to put back in the ocean," he tells CNN. (More on the freakish shark here.)

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Bear in Israel undergoes surgery to repair herniated disc

May 7, 2014: Mango, a 19-year-old male Syrian brown bear, rests on a bed as zoo veterinarians and staff prepare him for surgery in the Ramat Gan Zoological Center's animal hospital near Tel Aviv, Israel.AP

RAMAT GAN, Israel –  Surgery can be a real bear. Even for a bear.

In Israel, a 19-year-old Syria brown bear named Mango underwent surgery Wednesday to repair a herniated disc, said Sagit Horowitz, a spokeswoman for the Ramat Gan Zoological Center near Tel Aviv.

Zoologists first noticed Mango had a problem when he started to show signs of paralysis in his hind legs in the last few weeks, said Dr. Merav Shamir, who led the surgery on the furry patient.

"It started acutely," she said. "He wasn't able to move his right hind limb and it progressively deteriorated over the following 48 hours to become completely paralyzed on the hind limbs."

Horowitz said veterinarians discovered the 550-pound bear had the injured disc during an X-ray taken after noticing his worsening paralysis. That disc compressed Mango's spinal cord and caused the paralysis he had been suffering through, Shamir said.

Veterinarians shaved parts of the bear's furry back to prepare him for surgery Wednesday, as well as intubated him. They propped his head up on a pillow wrapped in a trash bag and put an IV through his snout. They also wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around his right paw.

Such unique procedures aren't uncommon at the Ramat Gan Zoological Center, the premier zoo of Israel. Last year, veterinarians there used acupuncture to cure the chronic ear infection of a 14-year-old Sumatran tiger named Pedang.

Shamir said other bears with a similar disc problem like Mango had been euthanized and that the surgery he underwent was novel for bears — though often performed on small dogs.

"I'm nervous now — I'll be happier in a few hours," Shamir said before the hourslong surgery began. "I wish him luck."

Veterinarians will know in the coming weeks whether Mango makes a full recovery.

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1 in 5 women will undergo pelvic surgery in her lifetime, study says

About 1 in 5 women now will undergo certain pelvic surgeries during her lifetime, nearly double the risk of having one of these surgeries in the 1990s, according to a recent study.

Researchers looked at women's likelihood of undergoing surgery before age 80 for either stress urinary incontinence (a condition that can cause urine to leak during sneezing or laughing), or pelvic organ prolapse (in which pelvic organs begin to droop within a woman's body).

"Surgeries for both of these conditions have increased substantially," said Dr. Jennifer M. Wu, associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's department of obstetrics and gynecology, an author of the study. "The 20 percent figure is nearly double that of earlier U.S. studies, which reported rates of 11.1 percent and 11.8 percent," for stress urinary incontinence surgery and pelvic organ prolapse surgery, respectively, she said.

Wu said she is not surprised by the results of this study, because stress incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse are very common conditions, which 1 in 3 women will experience in her lifetime. Many women, however, are embarrassed discussing symptoms such as involuntary urine leakage with their doctors, she said. [7 Embarrassing Health Problems (And How to Treat Them)]

"It's often not talked about until they are referred to a sub-specialist," Wu told Live Science. "Many women have suffered in silence for years with problems such as 'accidents' in public places. This can lead to social isolation for many of them."

Stress incontinence can be triggered by any sudden pressure increase within the abdomen. Pelvic organ prolapse occurs when a pelvic organ, such as the bladder, drops (prolapses) from its normal spot in the lower belly and pushes against the sides of the vagina, causing bulging, pressure or urine leakage during intercourse. This can happen when the muscles that hold the pelvic organs in place get weak or stretched from childbirth or surgery.

In the study, researchers used 10 years of data from a database of U.S. health plan claims and doctors' visits that included more than 10 million women from ages 18 to 89. Previous studies on this topic had small sample sizes, or were limited to one geographic region, Wu said.

The study appears today (May 7) in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

"Many women believe these conditions are a normal part of the aging process," Wu said. "They're not."

However, surgery is not the only option. "With prolapse, one treatment option is no treatment at all," she said. "We just watch and wait if it's not affecting a woman's quality of life."

Other options, she said, include treatment with a pessary device, which is used to lift the bladder or apply compression to the urethra during activities certain activities, or pelvic floor physical therapy (Kegel exercises) designed to improve muscle tone.

For women with bladder incontinence, she said, nonsurgical treatments include lifestyle changes such as weight loss for those who are overweight or obese, dietary changes, anti-spasmodic medications, a pessary, Kegel exercises and nerve stimulation.

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Stonehenge-area inhabited thousands of years prior to building of monument

Visitors take photographs of the world heritage site of Stonehenge, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013.AP Photo/Alastair Grant

The ancient monument of Stonehenge dates back to between 2500 BC and 3000 BC—but when it was built, people had already been living in the area for millennia, researchers found after a dig.

Artifacts from what is now Amesbury, the nearest settlement to Stonehenge, dated to 8820 BC. It's been inhabited ever since, the BBC notes, making it Britain's oldest settlement, something the Guinness Book of Records has now officially recognized.

(As such, Thatcham has lost the honor.) The year was established after burnt flints and large animal bones were unearthed; they point to feasts held there, Smithsonian reports.

"The site blows the lid off the Neolithic Revolution in a number of ways," says researcher David Jacques, who notes that it provides evidence of "people staying put, clearing land, building, and presumably worshiping, monuments." Experts had believed the stones were erected by European immigrants, notes Culture24, but in fact the area was a hub for people in the region, says Jacques.

It "was a forerunner for what later went on at Stonehenge itself," he says. "The first monuments at Stonehenge were built by these people. For years, people have been asking why is Stonehenge where it is; now at last, we have found the answers." Giant pine posts were placed in the area long before Stonehenge was there, sometime before 6590 BC, reports the Guardian; the study offers a "missing link" between the posts and the stone monuments.

(Click to read about Stonehenge's sonic secret.)

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British space scientist Colin Pillinger dies at 70

Dec. 19, 2003: A photo from files showing The Beagle2 spacecraft projects leading scientist Professor Colin Pillinger, in London.AP

LONDON –  Colin Pillinger, an ebullient space scientist who captured the popular imagination with his failed attempt to land a British probe on Mars, has died. He was 70.

Pillinger's family said Thursday that he died at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge after suffering a brain hemorrhage while sitting in his garden.

Pillinger, a professor of interplanetary science at the Open University, was the driving force behind the largely privately funded Beagle 2 space mission.

The tiny craft -- named for the ship that took naturalist Charles Darwin on his 19th-century voyage of discovery -- was supposed to land on Mars on Christmas Day in 2003 and search for signs of life. But contact with the probe was lost soon after it separated from its European Space Agency Mars Express mother ship on Dec. 19. An investigation found that it may have burned up in the planet's atmosphere.

The loss of the probe, which cost the government more than $40 million and the private sector another $80 million, prompted questions in Britain about Europe's ability to participate in the race to Mars.

Pillinger, who had become famous with his bushy sideburns and enthusiastic delivery of frequent media updates on the mission, was bitterly disappointed but held out hope of a second attempt.

"We have unfinished business on Mars," he said in 2005. "The science is more important now than it ever was."

A new European Mars mission, ExoMars, is due to launch in 2018.

Britain's astronomer royal, Martin Rees, said Pillinger was "an archetype eccentric professor" who had done a great deal to communicate and popularize science.

Rees said the Beagle mission "was a failure, but a heroic failure. Several far more expensive and elaborate Mars missions failed, and he deserves huge admiration for the way he cobbled together the funds for this project against all the odds, inspiring interest and enthusiasm along the way."

Pillinger gained a PhD from Swansea University in 1968 and began his career at NASA, analyzing samples of moon rock. He worked at Cambridge and the Open University, a pioneer of distance learning.

PIllinger, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2005, is survived by his wife Judith, daughter Shusanah and son Nicolas.

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Fla. marine scientists blocked from Cuba research

TAMPA, Fla. –  Marine biologists who study the Gulf of Mexico have a joke: The FBI, the DEA, the CIA -- none of them have anything on scientists when it comes to tracking the flow of secretive traffic between Cuba and the United States.

"They have not gotten the memo," quipped David Vaughan, with Sarasota-based Mote Marine Laboratory, whose international criminals are not spies but spiny lobsters -- as well as sharks and dolphins. "They are constantly breaking the travel embargo."

But one group of scientists isn't laughing any more, instead watching helplessly as they become the next punch line in marine biology.

Like all employees of Florida's public universities, scientists are prohibited by a law passed in 2006 from using state money for travel to Cuba.

More than most scientists, though, marine biologists see access to the communist island nation just 90 miles of Florida's shores as the difference between success and failure in their field.

'It is more difficult for us in Florida than any other state in the US to work with Cuba.'

- Donald Behringer, an assistant professor at University of Florida

Now, they're being left further behind as researchers from other states and from private institutions in Florida scramble to take advantage of new signs that Cuba relations are improving: an easing of travel restrictions by the White House, an agreement to cooperate in oil spills, even a tour by the University of Tampa baseball team.

Scientists already have begun collaborating with their counterparts in Cuba on research that could reverse the deterioration of coral reefs, prevent overfishing, and lead to better understanding of the gulf ecosystem.

They're doing work that could benefit Florida. They're just not from USF, the University of Florida or Florida State University.

"We are connected," said Donald Behringer, an assistant professor at UF's School of Forest Resources and Conservation & Emerging Pathogens Institute. "In order to understand our own ecosystem we also have to understand Cuba's.

"Unfortunately, it is more difficult for us in Florida than any other state in the United States to work with Cuba."

------------------------------

Senate Bill 2434, titled "Travel To Terrorist State," forbids money that flows through a state university -- including grants from private foundations -- to be used for travel to a nation on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba is on the list.

Sponsored by former Senate President Mike Haridopolos, the bill was passed in 2006 without a single no vote in either the Florida House or Senate then signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush.

Florida is the only state in the country with such a prohibition.

Professors can use their own money to travel to Cuba for research, but only on personal time. And it's an expensive trip.

"I've been able to cobble together money for a plane ticket and go to Cuba a few times," said Behringer, "but it's hard. Faculty members from other states can use research money to pay their way. This puts Florida schools at a disadvantage."

An American who worked on a new oil spill cleanup protocol involving five gulf nations, including the U.S. and Cuba, said he is confident this agreement will pave the way for future collaboration on environmental issues between the U.S. and Cuba.

When that day comes, said Dan Whittle of the Environmental Defense Fund, protocols will be based on research projects already under way.

The oil spill agreement, brokered and advanced through meetings in Tampa, awaits publication by the Coast Guard before it becomes official.

"There is so much expertise at public universities in Florida," said Whittle, who directs the fund's work on marine and coastal ecosystems in Cuba. "It's a shame their hands are so tied."

------------------------------

Researcher Vaughan, director of tropical research with the private Mote Marine Laboratory, said new agreements and protocols will be an opportunity for U.S. scientists to make contributions to the environment they once thought impossible because of politics. Vaughan specializes in coral reefs and works with Cuban scientists.

Shut out of these new opportunities, Florida's public school professors fear losing out on more than a role in new discoveries. Florida may also lose out on attracting the brightest marine biology students.

The University of North Carolina, for example, has an annual student summer expedition to Cuba to study the coral reefs off its shores. The University of Tampa has a marine biology department and though it has no plans to visit Cuba, other departments at the private school and the baseball team have.

"Obtaining knowledge is always important," said Frank Muller-Karger, a professor at the USF College of Marine Science. "Sure, we can learn what another researcher discovered in Cuba. But top students want to develop knowledge."

Proponents of the 2006 act said at the time that any travel to Cuba financially supports an oppressive regime.

Gov. Rick Scott, asked about the lingering impact on Florida universities, echoed that sentiment in a statement to the Tribune last week.

"Governor Scott is committed to growing opportunities so Florida families can succeed and live the American Dream," said John Tupps, Scott's deputy press secretary, "and he is firmly opposed to the Castro regime that works to oppress such opportunity and freedom."

------------------------------

State Sen. Arthenia Joyner, a Tampa Democrat whose district includes the University of South Florida, was part of the unanimous vote in 2006 but says now that times have changed.

"It's a different world today," Joyner said. "We need to acknowledge that."

There are no signs today of efforts to overturn the law, even at the university level.

USF issued this statement to The Tampa Tribune last week: "The University of South Florida stands for the core values of academic freedom and the open exchange of knowledge and ideas in the least restrictive environment possible. The current restrictions were enacted in the political process and we recognize that is where they will be resolved."

Of the six marine biology professors from state universities who were asked for comment on the issue, all agreed the law hurts their institutions, but only Behringer from UF and USF's Muller-Karger would speak on the record against it.

The others said they were concerned about getting involved in politics.

Muller-Karger had this response: "The reaction you describe shows that people are actually quite worried about how the state may interpret their interest in working these issues, or just worried stiff about speaking about a binding Florida law."

He added, "This has nothing to do with politics. It is about knowledge, managing our resources and doing what is best for our environment."

The law forbidding state money from funding trips to Cuba affects other disciplines.

Those studying Latin American art, music, language, politics, geology and history could benefit from visiting the Communist nation. But marine biology stands out as a field where advances in research stand to directly benefit the state of Florida more than any other region on earth.

"So no one else is as affected by what goes on in Cuban waters than Florida" said Muller-Karger.

Marine biologists call it "connectivity."

------------------------------

For instance, spiny lobsters served in Tampa restaurants could have hatched from eggs laid in Cuba and made their way to Florida in the Gulf's currents. Much of the snapper and grouper that supports Florida's fish industry could also originate in or pass through Cuban waters.

To better understand this marine life, scientists track their travels between the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Florida and Cuba. Learning where each species originates can help in reaching agreements on fishing limits and other protective measures.

Still, coral reefs are the top priority for U.S. marine biologists working with Cuba.

Scientists predict that by 2050, all coral reefs will be in danger from pollution and changes in water temperature and sea levels.

Natural reefs in Martin, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties generate an estimated $3.4 billion in income a year through recreation, education and science.

More importantly, reefs protect coasts by reducing wave energy from storms and hurricanes. And as home to more than 4,000 species of fish and countless species of plants, coral reefs support some 25 percent of all known marine species.

Whether a coral reef is off the shores of Cuba or the U.S., the waters they share suffers from its degradation. In addition, coral larvae from Cuba finds its way to reefs in Florida and vice versa.

So if a reef in Cuba disappears, it has a ripple effect, said John Bruno, a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of North Carolina.

"If the coral babies in Florida come from Cuba," Bruno said, "then that would be a big problem for the state."

------------------------------

Bruno's students travel annually to Cuba and the reef they seek out most is the pristine "Gardens of the Queen," or Jardines de la Reina.

Most of Cuba's reefs are in decline, said Vaughan of Mote Marine, but "la Reina" remains healthy.

He believes U.S. researchers can help other reefs by learning its secret to survival.

Cuba, in turn, can benefit from more advanced U.S. technology, said Whittle with the Environmental Defense Fund.

A forum was established in 2007 to formalize this kind of cooperation -- the Tri-National Workshop, attended by top marine biologists from Mexico, Cuba and the U.S.

They meet at least once a year on issues affecting turtles, sharks, dolphins, coral reefs, fisheries and marine protected areas.

"We can learn more by working with other country's scientists," Whittle said. "We share their knowledge, we share ours, and we work together to find out how we can help one another."

Mote Marine, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy are private, U.S.-based participants.

Florida's public universities are not at the table. Neither is U.S., making it the only of the three nations without government involvement.

"We're working together," Vaughan said, "to find out answers to things we could not know as individuals."

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Energy ribbon at solar system's edge a 'cosmic roadmap'

A model of the interstellar magnetic fields which would otherwise be straight -- warping around the outside of our heliosphere, based on data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer. The red arrow shows the direction in which the solar system moves through the galaxy.NASA/IBEX/UNH

Cosmic ray intensities (left) compared with predictions (right) from NASA's IBEX spacecraft. The similarity between these observations and predictions supports the local galactic magnetic field direction determined from IBEX observations made from particles at vastly lower energies than the cosmic ray observations shown here. The blue area represents regions of lower fluxes of cosmic rays. The gray and white lines separate regions of different energiesâlower energies above the lines, high energies below.Nathan Schwadron/UNH-EOS

A strange ribbon of energy and particles at the edge of the solar system first spotted by a NASA spacecraft appears to serve as a sort of "roadmap in the sky" for the interstellar magnetic field, scientists say.

By comparing ground-based studies and in-space observations of solar system's mysterious energy ribbon, which was first discovered by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) in 2009, scientists are learning more details about the conditions at the solar system's edge. The study also sheds light into the sun's environment protects the solar system from high-energy cosmic rays. [Photos and Images from NASA's IBEX Spacecraft]

"What I always have been trying to do was to establish a clear connection between the very high-energy cosmic rays we're seeing [from the ground] and what IBEX is seeing," study leader Nathan Schwadron, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire, told Space.com.

Previously, maps from ground-based observatories showed researchers that clusters of cosmic rays — extremely high-energy particles that originate from supernovas — are correlated with the IBEX ribbon. The ribbon is roughly perpendicular to the interstellar magnetic field while cosmic rays stream, on average, along the interstellar magnetic field. (The particles themselves are created from interactions between the solar wind and interstellar matter.)

In the longer term, Schwadron said work like this will help scientists better understand more about the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. This is a region that only one mission — NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft — has reached so far, and scientists know little about what that environment is like.

Travelling through the transition zone
The sun's sphere of influence in the solar system is known as the heliosphere. The sun's "solar wind" of high-energy particles flows within the heliosphere and pushes back against high-energy cosmic rays originating in interstellar space. The transition zone between these two regions is called the heliosheath.

Here's where a mystery arises: Voyager 1's measurements of the magnetic field from the edge of interstellar space show a starkly different direction of the magnetic field inferred in the IBEX ribbon, Schwadron said.

"At that point, you say to yourself what’s wrong? What could possibly be the issue? It seems like we now have good independent confirmation that the IBEX ribbon is ordered by the interstellar magnetic field, and we know that Voyager 1 takes fairly good measurements," Schwadron said.

The few studies examining this issue, showing little consensus. An October paper co-authored by Schwadron in Astrophysical Journal Letters argued that Voyager 1 could be measuring interstellar plasma coming in through magnetic field lines, but may still be in the heliosheath itself. This stands in contrast to findings from NASA and other science groups saying Voyager 1 is definitively in interstellar space.

The researchers noted that Voyager 1 is picking up its information "at a specific time and place," but IBEX's data is collected and averaged across vast distances, so that could also lead to discrepancies.

"What is really missing here is our understanding of the physics," Schwadron said, adding that reconnection between magnetic field lines could be an example of something that changes the conditions of the boundary region.

The research was published Thursday in the journal Science Express and includes participation from several United States research institutions.

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We've found Amazon River's true source, scientists say

In this Oct. 4, 2005 file photo, a boat tries to make its way through a section of the Amazon River suffering from lower water levels near Uricurituba in northern Brazil.AP Photo/A Critica, Euzivaldo Queiroz,File

It's an argument that's persisted for nearly four centuries: Where does the Amazon River begin? 

The question is complicated by the number of tributaries that feed into it, with at least five Peruvian rivers grabbing the title at some point since the mid-1600s.

Now, a group of researchers write in Area that the Apurimac River has wrongly been attributed as its source since 1971, and they have a replacement: southwestern Peru's Mantaro River.

If the designation sticks, another change would follow: The Amazon would grow, with another 47 to 57 miles being tacked on to its roughly 4,000-mile length.

But it's a somewhat muddied conclusion. First, the definition of "source" isn't entirely established, but the currently accepted explainer is "the most distant point up the longest tributary in the river's drainage basin," explains National Geographic.

Using topographic maps, satellite imagery, digital hydrographic datasets, and GPS tracking data to chart the Mantaro, the team determined it was roughly 10 percent longer than the Apurimac, handing it the title.

Except the Mantaro doesn't flow year-round; a dam constructed in 1974 causes it to run dry for nearly five months. Some geographers say that means it's not a contender; the study's authors say man-made or temporary changes shouldn't factor in.

A Smithsonian geographer concedes that the Mantaro could be considered "a new source of the Amazon"—but not "the source." (It's not the only Amazon discovery made in recent months.)

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NASA solves mystery of 'jelly donut' on Mars

This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right imagNASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

Feb. 4, 2014: This image from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where a rock called "Pinnacle Island" had been -- before it appeared in front of the rover in early January 2014.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contNASA/JPL-Caltech

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island."NASA/JPL

It was a complete unknown -- it was a rolling stone.

A mystery rock that appeared before NASA's Opportunity rover in late January -- and bore a strange resemblance to a jelly donut -- is no more than a common piece of stone that bounced in front of the cameras, NASA said Friday.

The strange rock was first spied on Jan. 8, in a spot where nothing had sat a mere two weeks earlier. Dubbed "Pinnacle Island" by NASA scientists, it was only about 1.5 inches wide. But the rock's odd appearance -- white-rimmed and red-centered, not unlike a jelly donut -- made many sit up and take notice.

'We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from.'

- Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson

Now researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology have finally cleared up the mystery.

Yep. It's a rock.

"Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance," said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. "We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from."

Examination of Pinnacle Island revealed high levels of elements such as manganese and sulfur, suggesting these water-soluble ingredients were concentrated in the rock by the action of water. 

"This may have happened just beneath the surface relatively recently," Arvidson said, "or it may have happened deeper below ground longer ago and then, by serendipity, erosion stripped away material above it and made it accessible to our wheels."

Now that the rover is finished inspecting this rock, the team plans to drive Opportunity south and uphill to investigate exposed rock layers on the slope.

Opportunity has trolled the Martian surface since Jan. 24, 2004, far outlasting its original 90-day mission. 

Steve Squyres, the rover's lead scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y said the Red Planet keeps surprising scientists, even 10 years later.

"Mars keeps throwing new things at us," he said.

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Mammoth tusk may be largest found in Seattle area

SEATTLE –  The mammoth tusk found this week at a construction site appears to be the largest and most intact mammoth fossil ever uncovered in the Seattle area, experts say.

Scientists at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture say the fossil dates back at least 16,000 years when ice swept through the Seattle area.

Although it's possible the paleontologists who began digging out the fossil on Thursday will find more than just a tusk, experts doubt that will happen.

Mammoth elephants lived all over the United States and Europe in ancient times, but finding a tusk or any part of those animals is rare, said Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies and Montana State University.

"We don't find them every year or even every five years," said Horner, one of the nation's most famous paleontologists.

In most cases, artifacts found at construction sites are destroyed by equipment before anyone even notices them, Horner said.

The fate of this mammoth tusk was entirely up to the landowner, because Washington has no state laws governing finds of this type. Horner said that is true anywhere in the United States.

"Americans like their private land," he said, adding that Americans don't like to pass laws putting restrictions on owners of private land, even to protect history.

Allyson Brooks, the Washington state preservation officer, said the situation would be different if construction workers had found human remains or other items of archaeological value because Washington state has laws for those situations.

With paleontological finds, the landowner can do whatever he or she wants -- sell it, destroy it, donate it or ignore it, Brooks said.

This time, the landowner decided to donate the tusk to the Burke Museum, just as Horner hoped would happen.

It's a relatively rare find and should be preserved for educational reasons, so children will know mammoth elephants once lived in Seattle, he said.

"A lot of times, people think these things are worth a lot of money," Horner said. Their true value is educational, not what someone can sell a tusk for on eBay, he said.

As paleontologists and graduate students began carefully digging away the dirt around the tusk on Thursday afternoon, Julie Stein, executive director of the Burke Museum, said AMLI Residential has been wonderful to work with.

Scott Koppelman, senior vice president of AMLI Residential, said after contractors found the fossil buried about 25 to 30 feet below street level, the company turned quickly to the museum for assistance.

He said the company's first response when hearing of the find was the community benefit.

"The excavation will cause us some construction delay, but the scientific and educational benefits of this discovery clearly outweigh the costs and delay," Koppelman said. "This is an exciting discovery for our local Northwest history."

In 2004, Washington state halted construction on a section of a major bridge project, on which $58 million had already been spent, at the request of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe after remains of an ancient Indian village and burial ground were discovered.

Discoveries of animal remains from the Ice Age are less common than human remains in western Washington. Preservation of bone and tusks depends on the environmental conditions, such as the water table, the acidity of the soil and how deeply the object was buried, Brooks said.

"A lot of time, teeth preserve better than other bones," she said, likening tusks to teeth. She said teeth and tusks are what she and the scientists she works with consider "biological rock."

The last big find of an ancient animal of this sort in western Washington happened in 1977, when a mastodon tusk was found near Sequim, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula.

Mammoths and mastodons are related and probably roamed the Earth around the same time. Both were very large and hairy. Mammoths and modern-day elephants are members of the same biological family.

Scientists at the Burke believe this tusk came from a Columbian mammoth, which is the Washington state fossil. The tusk, which could be as large as 8 feet long, is expected to be the largest and most intact mammoth tusk ever found in the Seattle area.

Gov. Jay Inslee did not wish to comment on the tusk discovery, but a member of his team had something to say.

"This has turned every adult in Seattle back into a 10-year-old," said the governor's spokeswoman, Jaime Smith.

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Chernobyl 2? Watching the world’s aging power plants

Satellite imagery from May 2013 of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea.DigitalGlobe

The Kalinin nuclear power plant in Russia.IAEA

North Korea’s aging Yongbyon nuclear power plant will probably not lead to a nuclear catastrophe, despite an alarming report calling it the next Chernobyl -- but the danger posed by the world’s aging reactors is real nonetheless.

The defense publication Jane’s recently detailed efforts to bring the small Yongbyon reactor back online, saying they could lead to a meltdown like the  Chernobyl incident in 1986. According to the article, Yongbyon uses obsolete technology that was responsible for a 1957 accident in the United Kingdom and “could lead to a disaster worse than the Ukrainian one."

But Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official who manages the 38 North blog for the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told FoxNews.com he disagreed strongly with the Jane’s report. And when Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a scientist-in-residence with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, ran an analysis, he concluded that the scale of the reactor posed a far smaller threat than Jane’s suggested.

“In the worst case scenario, the accident would release a dose 500,000 times lower than Chernobyl,” Dalnoki-Veress said.

'The Russians are running into this, the French are running into this, the Japanese are running into this. It’s a big issue.'

- Jon B. Wolfsthal, deputy director of California’s James Martin Center

Nonetheless, the average nuclear power plant is more than 20 years old and is anticipated to last no more than 30 or 40 years, leaving the world facing a potential crisis: How safe are aging nuclear power plants?

No country has a greater reliance on nuclear power than the U.S., which had 104 reactors online in 2011. But all of them have been online since 1990, and most since 1980.

“By far the largest problem is here in the U.S.,” said Jon B. Wolfsthal, deputy director of California’s James Martin Center.

“But the Russians are running into this, the French are running into this, the Japanese are running into this. It’s a big issue.”  

France had 58 nuclear reactors connected to the power grid in 2011, according to a 2012 reference work by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Fifty-six of them have been operating since 1990, and 43 have been online since 1985, making them around 30 years old. Japan is in a similar situation, with 51 plants online in 2011 (not including the Fukushima plant), nearly all of which were in operation 20 years earlier.

There were 435 nuclear power plants online worldwide as of New Year’s Eve, 2011. As of that date, 138 others had been permanently shut down, though only 11 cited obsolescence as the reason.

Plot construction of nuclear plants on a grid and you’ll see a near perfect bell curve; most of the world’s power plants were built during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, peaking between 1974 and 1976, a three-year span that saw construction begin on 118 plants worldwide. By comparison, ground was broken on just 29 plants throughout the ’90s.

But nuclear power is seeing a renaissance. China has 42 power plants planned for construction, according to the IAEA, and Russia has 35. As of Dec. 31, 2011, 114 were planned, and an additional 65 reactors were under construction.

Yet Chris Englefield, a senior manager in radioactive substances regulation for the U.K. Environment Agency, noted in a 2012 paper that there are no nuclear security specialists. He says there is a need to professionalize security and to facilitate minimum standards of competence and regulatory procedures.

The U.N.’s IAEA acts as a nuclear watchdog at times, but it also helps to do just that, aiding member countries in maintaining power plants to tease extra years from them while preventing incidents.

“One of the IAEA’s key missions is to support its member states in their efforts to improve nuclear safety,” said IAEA spokesman Serge Gas. “In that context, the agency does not single out individual nations, but rather encourages all of them to improve all the time.”

Jeremy A. Kaplan is Science and Technology editor at FoxNews.com, where he heads up coverage of gadgets, the online world, space travel, nature, the environment, and more. Prior to joining Fox, he was executive editor of PC Magazine, co-host of the Fastest Geek competition, and a founding editor of GoodCleanTech.

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Archaeologists find 3,600-year-old mummy in Egypt

Feb. 13, 2014: A preserved wooden sarcophagus that dates back to 1600 BC, when the Pharaonic 17th Dynasty reigned, in Egypt.AP Photo/Egypt's Supreme Council Of Antiquities

Feb. 13, 2014: A preserved wooden sarcophagus that dates back to 1600 BC, when the Pharaonic 17th Dynasty reigned, in Egypt.AP Photo/Egypt's Supreme Council Of Antiquities

Feb. 13, 2014: Egyptian men digging up a preserved wooden sarcophagus that dates back to 1600 BC, when the Pharaonic 17th Dynasty reigned, in the ancient city of Luxor, Egypt.AP Photo/Egypt's Supreme Council Of Antiquities

CAIRO –  Spanish archeologists have unearthed a 3,600-year-old mummy in the ancient city of Luxor, Egypt's Antiquities Minister said Thursday. Prosecutors accused nine people including three Germans of smuggling stone samples from pyramids.

In a statement, Mohammed Ibrahim said the rare find in a preserved wooden sarcophagus dates back to 1600 BC, when the Pharaonic 17th Dynasty reigned.

He said the mummy appears to belong to a high official. The sarcophagus is engraved with hieroglyphs and decorated with inscriptions of birds' feathers.

The exact identity of the well-preserved mummy will now be studied, Ibrahim said, adding that it was discovered by a Spanish mission in collaboration with the Egyptian antiquities ministry.

Antiquities department head Ali Al-Asfar said the two-meter sarcophagus still bears its original coloring and writings.

Meanwhile, Egypt's top prosecutor referred three Germans to criminal court on charges of smuggling and damaging antiquities and six Egyptians for acting as their accessories.

Hisham Barakat said authorities issued arrest warrants for the alleged German thieves, who fled to their country after the incident. He said authorities would communicate with Germany to restore the pieces they say were taken last April under the pretext of use for research.

The Egyptian defendants are already in detention.

Barakat says the Germans, along with their Egyptian guides, entered the famed pyramids of Giza with permits to visit but not excavate, and left with samples of stone from the ramparts of two tombs and the burial room of King Khufu.

Egyptian archaeologist Monica Hanna says the German researchers wanted to use the samples prove their hypothesis in a documentary they later filmed, which says that the pyramids were built by a people that pre-dates the ancient Egyptians.

The online documentary, removed in the wake of the controversy, showed one researcher inside the inner chambers of the Khufu pyramid, taking samples from the king's cartouche.

Egypt has experienced a security vacuum since its 2011 uprising. Thousands of artifacts have been stolen.

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Second Danish zoo plans to kill young giraffe to stop inbreeding

Not again!

Despite the death threats and worldwide disgust when the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark killed 2-year-old giraffe Marius to prevent inbreeding on Sunday, Feb. 9, a second zoo in the country plans to kill a giraffe -- and says it’s in the animal’s best interest.

The second giraffe, coincidentally also named Marius, lives at the Danish Jyllands Park Zoo. To make room for a female giraffe it plans to acquire, the zoo plans to put down its 7-year-old male, balancing out genders in the facility.

Why kill a giraffe?

Q: How did the zoo end up with a giraffe it couldn't keep?

A: Breeding groups in zoos are made up of a single bull and a group of females. Zoo's remove female offspring to prevent inbreeding, and males to prevent fighting.

Q: Aren't there other options?

A: Zoos could design new giraffe facilities, but many don't have that option. A young bull could theoretically be sent to an all-female group as stud, but experts prefer a larger, more mature male for that, and Marius didn't fit that bill.

Q: What about contraceptives or castration?

A: Yes and no. Until recently, either would have required sedation, which is a relatively high-risk operation with giraffes. They are liable to break their necks when they fall while sedated.

Read more about the zoo's policies here

“We can't have two males and one female. Then there will be fights,” zoo keeper Janni Lojtved Poulsen told Danish news agency Ritzau. “If the breeding program coordinator decides that he should be put down, then that's what we'll do,” Poulsen said.

The first Marius was killed because his genes were already well represented in the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, which aims to maintain biodiversity and didn’t want an excess of similar genes. Despite an online petition arguing that the zoo should spare his life, Marius was shot in the head -- according to European zoo-keeping guidelines -- before being butchered and fed to lions.

Will the second Marius face a similar fate? It might be possible for the zoo to find another place for the giraffe to live, Reuters reported, but the probability of that is small. Like the first Marius, the Jyllands Park giraffe is considered unsuitable for breeding.

Poulsen defended the zoo’s plans, despite the widespread disgust of animal lovers.

“Many places abroad where they do not do this, the animals live under poor conditions, and they are not allowed to breed either. We don't think that's OK,” she said.

'We can't have two males and one female. Then there will be fights.'

- Zoo keeper Janni Lojtved Poulsen

The Jyllands Park Zoo has not said whether it will have a public dissection of its Marius similar to the one held at the Copenhagen Zoo.

The watchdog group Animal Rights Sweden said the plight of Marius underscores what it believes zoos do to animals regularly.

"It is no secret that animals are killed when there is no longer space, or if the animals don't have genes that are interesting enough," the group said in a statement. "The only way to stop this is to not visit zoos."

"When the cute animal babies that attract visitors grow up, they are not as interesting anymore.”

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Found: Rare beetle collected by Darwin 180 years ago

A close up of the colorful beetle species Darwinilus sedarisi.Natural History Museum (London)

A brightly colored beetlecollected by Charles Darwin more than 180 years ago has been identified as a new species after hiding in museum storage for decades.

The discovery of Darwinilus sedarisi whose scientific epithet honors both Charles Darwin and the writer David Sedaris was announced Wednesday (Feb. 12) to coincide with the 205th anniversary of Darwin's birthday.

'Finding a new species is always exciting, finding one collected by Darwin is truly amazing.'

- Entomologist Stylianos Chatzimanolis

The South American beetle specimen had been considered lost for decades in a collection at the Natural History of Museum in London. It only resurfaced a few years ago when a scientist studying tropical beetles from the New World stumbled upon the insect. [StarStruck: Species Named After Celebrities]

"I received on loan several insects from the Museum in London, and to my surprise I realized that one of them was collected by Darwin," Stylianos Chatzimanolis, an entomologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said in a statement. "Finding a new species is always exciting, finding one collected by Darwin is truly amazing."

This rediscovered male insect was among the specimens that Darwin an avid beetle collector picked up in 1832 at Baha Blanca in Argentina, a city about 400 miles (640 km) southwest of Buenos Aires, early into his five-year journey aboard the HMS Beagle. Darwin's observations during that fateful trip led to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Only one other specimen of Darwinilus sedarisi has ever been collected in the wild another male found in Ro Cuarto, a city in Argentina's province of Crdoba, sometime before 1935. Chatzimanolis did not find any other members of the species after scouring the insect stockpiles at European and North American museums, but hopes that additional members might come to light either in the wild or museum collections.

"Much of the area between Baha Blanca and Ro Cuarto has been converted into agricultural fields, and it is questionable if that is a suitable habitat for the species," Chatzimanolis wrote in his description of the species. "One of course hopes that a newly described species is not already extinct."

The beetle has sawtoothed antennas anda hexagonal-shaped head that's metallic green in color. Darwinilus represents a new genus of rove beetles, the largest family of beetles that includes more than 57,000 known species.

As for the species name, sedarisi, Chatzimanolis decided to honor author and humorist David Sedaris, "as an appreciation for his fascination with the natural world."

"I spent many hours listening to Mr. Sedaris' audiobooks while preparing the specimens and the figures for this and other manuscripts," Chatzimanolis wrote. Among Sedaris' many titles is "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary" (Little, Brown and Company, 2010), a book of fables starring anthropomorphized animals.

A full description of Darwinilus sedarisi is in the journal ZooKeys.

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Major Native American site found in downtown Miami leaves city in quandary

MIAMI –  As more Native American archaeological sites are being uncovered around the nation, the findings are posing difficult questions for the cities where they are found.

In Miami, a major prehistoric Native American village has been discovered at a downtown site where developers plan to construct a movie theater, condos and hotel building.

The discovery has pitted developers against archaeologists and historic preservationists who want the find preserved in its entirety. Developers say the public is better served by removing a portion and putting it on display while continuing with construction.

Little is still known about Native American architecture but more sites are being found with advances in technology and a better understanding of the subtle markers that remain.

In a vacant lot between gleaming hotels in downtown Miami are a series of holes carved into the bedrock that form eight circles.

At first glance, the site seems like an eyesore. But it's here where archaeologists say they have uncovered a major prehistoric Native American village, one of the largest and earliest examples of urban planning ever uncovered in North America.

It's also where a movie theater, condos and 34-story hotel are expected to be built.

The discovery has pitted developers against archaeologists and historic preservationists. The dispute comes as an increasing number of Native American sites are being uncovered around the country with advances in technology and a greater understanding of the subtle markers left behind to look for. The discoveries pose difficult questions for cities such as Miami that must decide whether it is best to preserve the remains of an ancient society or, often times, destroy it in hopes of revitalizing a new one.

"Let's be honest with each other," said Eugene Stearns, the attorney representing MDM Development Group, which owns the property and is eager to move forward with construction. "Every great city is built on the shards of a former great city."

At its height, archaeologist Bob Carr estimated as many as 2,000 people lived in the Tequesta village, starting around 500 B.C. It likely extended a quarter mile along the Miami River and then wrapped around Biscayne Bay.

Much of the village consisted of thatched, hut-like buildings the Tequestas, one of South Florida's earliest tribes, built by digging holes with clam shells into the soft limestone, and then inserting pine logs to hold floors, walls and roofs.

Because of the materials used -- straw, wood -- the only remnants of the buildings are the postholes, today still forming 18 to 40-foot circles in the blackened bedrock.

MDM has proposed carving out a section of the limestone containing the circle formations and placing it on display in a public plaza.

Preservations, however, say removing a piece of architecture isn't like moving a painting from one museum to another.

"The idea that you would carve out a chunk and move it to some other place and put it into exhibition sounds strange to me and sad," said Mark Jarzombek, associate dean of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology's School of Architecture and Planning. "These places are very site specific. There's a reason why they made this village or town there which has to do with orientation, landscape, access to rivers."

MDM has spent $3 million conducting an archaeological review and is now anxious to continue construction. Stearn said all of the planned commercial space has been leased and half of the residential units have been sold.

"There are enormous financial obligations and commitments that have to be met," he said. "And they need to go forward."

Miami isn't the only city grappling with how best to preserve an ancient site while allowing development to advance. Nationwide, Native American sites are being discovered at a quickening pace.

"Archaeology is really going through a bit of a golden era now with uncovering these sights," Jarzombek said.

In California, where as many as 1 million Native Americans may have once lived, Dave Singleton with the Native American Heritage Commission said he receives reports from county coroner offices regarding Native American remains about once every 10 days.

Construction crews have unearthed burial grounds, artifacts and villages in rural, desert areas to downtown Los Angeles. Any time remains are found in California, construction is halted while an archaeological review is done and a descendant identified.

With a few exceptions, however, construction has eventually resumed.

Hundreds of tools and other artifacts, along with possible burial sites, were found at a planned 250-megwatt solar energy project east of the Coachella Valley in 2011, slated to be one of the largest in the nation. Tribal leaders said federal officials had deemed the findings "unprecedented."

Construction was temporarily halted but later allowed to continue. A mitigation plan that included an extensive study and public outreach was developed.

"We, of course, like the other tribes of the area, were shocked and saddened," Jay Cravath, cultural director of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe said. "Mitigation will not change the damage that was done."

Singleton said the Native American groups are not opposed to development, but they object to the generation of plants and transmission lines that go through burial grounds and destroy sacred sites.

Miami-Dade County archaeologist Jeff Ransom, however, plans to recommend full preservation at a city meeting Friday and, if the committee members agree, MDM could be forced to redesign the site.

Ransom would like to see the huts and village reconstructed, and he believes the site could be turned into a viable heritage tourism destination.

Miami is a city vying to become an international destination not just for its nightlife and beaches but also its art and culture. Revitalizing the city's downtown with a new museum district, shops and restaurants has been seen as a central part of that.

There are some Native American within urban areas that have been successfully preserved. A Hohokam mound next to a hospital near Phoenix was purchased by the city of Mesa in 1988 and stabilized by a team of archaeologists. It is now a six-acre cultural park.

"What more human and intelligent and culturally rich way to revitalize a place than to recognize its antiquity and to celebrate its earlier native occupants?" said Peter Nabokov, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Developers in Miami contend it would be difficult to preserve the site and promote it as an area for tourists to visit because it is on soft limestone rock, has no drainage and is corroding from rain and pollution. They also note the site is prime real estate that would cost the city about $100 million to purchase.

Stearns, MDM's attorney, said the archaeological value of preserving the postholes in their current state ultimately doesn't outweigh what could be gained in terms of education and development by carving them out and building on top.

"Archaeologists see them differently," Stearns said. "They can wax eloquently about the significance of the postholes. But I dare say that's not a view shared by most others."

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