Science Special News

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Stephen Hawking advertises for helper

Acclaimed British physicist Stephen Hawking is looking for an assistant and an advertisement in the Cambridge University magazine states that he wants a graduate student to help him prepare lectures and assist with scientific papers. The winning candidate would be paid a salary of up to 23,457 pounds (34,574 euros, 44,331 dollars) and be based in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. "If you were accepted for the post you would be responsible for maintaining and improving this computer system as well as other pieces of support equipment," the advert said. "You would help him to prepare and deliver seminars and public lectures and assist with scientific papers. You would also accompany Professor Hawking on his many travels and assist other members of the group. "Flexibility, stamina and a confident and caring personality, together with a valid driving licence, are essential for this demanding job." Hawking, 64, was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting condition motor neurone disease at the age of 22.

He is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer and voice synthesiser. The academic, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge -- a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton -- became world-renowned with the publication of the international best-seller "A Brief History of Time" in 1988. His research has centred on theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, looking at the nature of such subjects as space-time, the "Big Bang" theory and black holes.

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'Snake god curse' creates mass hysteria

While psychologists explained it as mass hysteria triggered by fear and tension, an alarmed Nepal town began ritual worships to propitiate a dead snake whose curse was said to be causing dozens of school students to faint, weep and scream. The Laxmi Secondary School in Lekhnath town in Kaski district, west of the capital city Kathmandu, presented a strange sight for two days in a row. Students, mostly girls aged 14 to 17, began falling down in a dead faint, weeping loudly, kicking and screaming and making signs of extreme fear and distress.The first fits began Tuesday, when nearly two dozen students displayed the symptoms. The alarmed school authorities and parents were nonplussed by the phenomenon and at a loss as to what to do.Nearly two dozen more students, including some boys as well, displayed the same bizarre behaviour Wednesday as well, causing frantic parents to take their wards to the district hospital.The principal of the school, Sribhadra Baral, decided to suspend classes for the rest of the week.

Shamans have been called to exorcise the slain snake's spirit before the school reopens Sunday.Some teachers and local residents told visiting journalists, including private television channel Kantipur, that the disturbance had been caused by the curse of a snake god.Last month, the school authorities killed a snake found on the premises. According to local superstition, the snake was a deity that has been haunting the school to avenge its slaughter. Some of the afflicted students said they had fainted after seeing a huge snake that was poised to bite them.

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Early British colonists wiped out by ice ages

Humans have tried to colonise Britain on at least eight separate occasions in the past 700,000 years, palaeontologists said yesterday. On each occasion but the last populations were wiped out when an ice age arrived. "British people today are new arrivals, we're products of only the last 12,000 years," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum. The findings, which mean that modern native Britons are descended from a continuous line younger than their counterparts in the Americas and Australia, are part of the five-year Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (Ahob) project, which concluded this month. Evidence from burial sites shows that modern humans, homo sapiens, arrived in Britain around 30,000 years ago. But Professor Stringer's project showed that other species of humans made the journey from Africa via Europe some time earlier. A recent fossil discovery in Pakefield, Suffolk, was identified as a species called homo antecessor, nicknamed pioneer man, and was dated at 700,000 years old. It pushed back the first evidence of humans by some 200,000 years. Pioneer man was known to have lived in southern Europe 800,000 years ago and probably made the journey to Britain via a connecting land bridge. "It looks like there were eight separate colonisation attempts we can record and seven of those were unsuccessful," said Prof Stringer, speaking yesterday at the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich. "Britain was re-populated over and over again. This is a very young continuous occupation we're seeing here." Each unsuccessful population died out or was forced to retreat due to an adverse change in climate.

"Britain has suffered some of the most severe climate changes of any area of the world during the ice ages," said Prof Stringer. "At this time Britain was on the edge of the inhabited world, at the edge of human occupation and human capabilities." When the first humans arrived Britain was warm, resembling modern north Africa. The human inhabitants would have shared the country with hippos, elephants, rhinos and hyenas. But ice covered the country at several stages, making the environment similar to that of Scandinavia. As an ice age approached temperatures dropped too low for the unadapted people to survive. The Ahob project also shed fresh light on Neanderthal man. Danielle Schreve, of Royal Holloway, University of London, found evidence these humans may not have been scavengers with low intelligence, as often described. By examining animal bones and teeth - including those of 11 woolly mammoths -and 2,500 stone tools used to kill and butcher them at a site in Lynford, Norfolk, Dr Schreve concluded that Neanderthals adapted to climate change, made plans and worked in groups to hunt animals.

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"Fairy circle" intreagues residents

Fairies have been dancing in the garden of a Staverton couple, according to ancient English folklore. A large fairy circle has appeared in the lawn of Tom and Sue Gaylard's home in School Lane. Mrs Gaylard, 85, said: "It amazed me. I had never heard of it or seen anything like it before and I couldn't believe it."The perfect ring of mushrooms, know as a fairy or pixie circle, first appeared about three years ago and has re-appeared annually, each time getting bigger.Mr Gaylard, an 85-year-old retired railway worker, has lived in Staverton with his wife for more than 20 years. He said: "We don't believe in fairies of course but it is known as that. We didn't really pay much attention to it but then our daughter-in-law saw it and ran out to make a wish in it."In times gone past the rings, some of which are hundreds of years old, defied explanation spawning a host of legends in countries around the world to explain their presence.

In English folklore the rings were said to be caused by fairies dancing in a circle, wearing down the grass beneath their feet. Toads would then sit on the worn down areas, poisoning it and allowing the fungus to grow - hence the name toadstool.In Sussex, fairy rings were called hag tracks', while in Devon it was believed that fairies would catch young horses in the night and ride them round in circles.In Denmark elves have been traditionally blamed for the rings while in parts of Austria they were thought to be the result of land being scorched by the breath of dragons.The rings are in fact naturally occurring circles of fungi that can grow up to 10 metres in diameter. They are caused by fungi under the ground casting out spores in a circular pattern resulting in the distinctive ring.In some cases the fungi remain underground and the ring is marked by discoloured patches of grass.

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Earth like planets may be common

Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. These solar systems feature gas giants known as "Hot Jupiters," which orbit extremely close to their parent stars -- even closer than Mercury to our sun, University of Colorado researcher Sean Raymond said.The close-orbiting gassy planets may help encourage the formations of smaller, rocky, Earthlike planets, they reported in the journal Science."We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own," Raymond said in a statement.The team from Colorado, Penn State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Maryland ran computer simulations of various types of solar systems forming.The gas giants may help rocky planets form close to the suns, and may help pull in icy bodies that deliver water to the young planets, they found.

"These gas giants cause quite a ruckus," Raymond said.Water is key to life as humans define it."I think there are definitely habitable planets out there," Raymond said. "But any life on these planets could be very different from ours. There are a lot of evolutionary steps in between the formation of such planets in other systems and the presence of life forms looking back at us."As many as 40 percent of the 200 or so known planets around other stars are Hot Jupiters, the researchers said.

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Ancient pyramid discovered in Ukraine

Archaeologists in Ukraine have unearthed the remains of an ancient pyramidal structure that pre-dates those in Egypt by at least 300 years. The stone foundations of the structure, which probably resembled Aztec and Mayan ziggurats in South America, were discovered near the eastern city of Lugansk. It is thought they were laid about five millennia ago during the early Bronze Age by animists who worshipped a sun god. The "pyramid" is in fact a complex of temples and sacrificial altars topping a sculpted hillside with steps on its sides.Viktor Klochko, head of the excavation, said the discovery was of international significance. "This is the first monument of its age and kind found in eastern Europe," he told the Guardian. "It changes our whole conception of the social structure and the level of development of the cattle breeders and farmers who were the direct ancestors of most European peoples."

There are about 100 pyramids in Egypt, and the remains of Mesopotamian pyramids are preserved in Iraq and Iran. Ziggurats are also found in Mexico, and the Nubians built pyramids as burial sites for monarchs in the Nile valley. But pyramid structures are rare in Europe. One of the few is a Roman-era pyramid near Nice, France, that may have been built by legionnaires involved in an Egyptian cult. Although graves have been found at the Lugansk site, archaeologists think it was used for sacrifice by burning, rather than as a burial ground. "People lived in the surrounding valleys and climbed up it to carry out their ceremonies," said Mr Klochko. "They had a pagan cult that bowed down to the sun, as did the ancestors of the Slavs."

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Space shuttle Atlantis blasts into orbit

Space shuttle Atlantis thundered into orbit Saturday with no obvious damage from debris to worry NASA or the six-member crew as they prepared to resume construction of the international space station for the first time since the 2003 Columbia disaster. After two weeks of delays due to storms and technical glitches, Atlantis rose from its seaside pad through a partly cloudy sky at 11:15 a.m. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin declared the launch "majestic." "It was worth the wait and we're ready to get to work," said Atlantis commander Brent Jett. Jett and his crew now face one of the most challenging construction tasks in space history. But they also have trained for the mission, initially scheduled for 2003, longer than any crew in the past. As they headed into space Saturday, more than 100 cameras zoomed in for any signs of foam breaking off its external fuel tank, the problem that doomed Columbia.

Early reviews of the video found no glaring damage. NASA's cameras spotted three possible hits two small foam streams and one ice chunk but they came so late that the debris wasn't moving fast enough to do much damage, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said. "We are looking at nits nothing of any remote consequence," Hale said. "Not only am I not alarmed, I'm really at ease after looking through this video." The first and most noticeable hit was just four minutes after launch when a dribble of small foam particles hit Atlantis' right belly, but it didn't appear to cause any damage, Hale said.

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Climate returning to dinosaur era

Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday. Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear."We may very well already be on the breaking edge of a wave of mass extinctions," Thomas told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.Scientists predict average global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees centigrade by 2100, mainly as a result of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into the air from burning fossil fuels for transport and power."If the most extreme warming predicted takes place we will be going back to global temperatures not seen since the age of the dinosaur," Thomas said."We are starting to put these things into a historical perspective.

These are conditions not seen for millions of years, so none of the species will have been subjected to them before," he added.Thomas said scientific observations had already found that -- as predicted by the climate models -- 80 percent of species had already begun moving their traditional territorial ranges in response to the changing climatic conditions."That is an amazingly high correlation. It is a clear signature of climate change," he said.Not only had the animals, birds and insects started to react, but there was evidence vegetation was also on the move.For example, climate-triggered fungal pathogen outbreaks had already led to the extinction of more than one percent of the planet's amphibian species, Thomas said.

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Woman communicates by "thought"

A woman who had suffered severe brain injury in a car accident and was in a vegetative state managed to communicate just by using her thoughts, say scientists from the UK and Belgium. They scanned her brain and discovered that she was able to understand verbal commands - she could even visualize herself playing tennis when verbally triggered to do so by the scientists.You can read about this discovery in the journal Science.The scientists could not say how common this ability might be among other patients who are diagnosed as being in a 'vegetative state'. They added that she might be one in a million, as all vegetative patients are different and have damage to different parts of their brain.FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) was used to record brain activity in the woman five months after her accident. Doctors had diagnosed her as being in a persistent vegetative state. When a person is in a persistent vegetative state he/she has lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment, but keep non-cognitive neurological function and preserved sleep-wake cycle.

In lay terms, it roughly means the person is technically alive but his/her brain is dead.While mapping her brain the scientists asked her to visualize simple tasks.Team leader Dr Adrian Owen, Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK said "The tasks we chose are based on many years of brain imaging research that shows different areas of the brain are activated when we perform different kinds of tasks."The scientists were startled to find that her brain patterns, when she was asked to imagine herself playing tennis or moving around her home, displayed the same activated cortical areas in a manner indistinguishable from that of the healthy volunteers.

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