News Briefs 25-01-2010

Good news about the possibility of a stem-cell reboot for us dame-brammaged folks. Am I stupid or brave for wanting to be first in line for the human trials?

And, remember Friday's link to the mysteries of the Sphinx? You can see practically everything in that article in Nova's Riddles of the Sphinx ('watch online' link at top of the page).

• Royal Society to discuss if extra-terrestrials are here on Earth.
• Update: Aliens are likely to look and behave like us: Leading scientist claims aliens would share human weaknesses for greed, violence and the exploitation of others.
• Eight UFO cases that generate buzz: Investigators see references to rockets and aliens going back 6,000 years.
• Living Ivory-Billed Woodpecker photographed.
• Stone Age surgery skills uncovered.
• Amateur archaeologists unearth home of Roman water gods. Secrets of Roman aqueduct lie in chapel.
• Scientists want to dig up Leonardo da Vinci.
• New exhibit at Washington State History Museum explores history of sasquatch.
• Was Robin Hood one of the Knights Templar? John Paul Davis's Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar is available at Amazon US & UK.
• Iran alleges time-wasting as British Museum curator trawls through thousands of cuneiform clay fragments for Cyrus the Great's legacy.
• Bigger, better telescopes needed to find near-Earth asteroids. What a photo!
• Earthlings casting a wary eye for rogue asteroids may be comforted to learn that our planet is not a sitting duck.
• Comets left their mark on Jovian moons.
• Eclipse facilitates stunning view of Sun's magnetic field. Nice pic for Kathrinn. ;-)
• Mysterious band of particles holds clues to Solar System's future.
• Lasers to beam solar energy from space to Earth.
• Study shows human brains can only manage 150 meaningful friendships.
• Mind reading, brain fingerprinting, and the law.
• Gorillas play competitive games just like humans.
• How much life in a cubic foot? Images capture diversity and abundance of earth's ecosystems.
• Microsoft has known about the IE Zero-Day flaw - the critical security vulnerability that hackers exploited to breach Google, Adobe, and other US companies - since last September, but did not patch the hole until Thursday.
• Tsunamis send electric signals through the ocean that appear to be sensed by the vast network of communication cables on the seabed.
• Cattle mutilations remain a mystery.
• Is the big cat mystery finally solved?
• Wild About PA, 5-part cryptid series: Pennsylvania Mystery Species, Clue No. 1, Bigfoot - Is he running with mountain lions?, Loren Coleman talks about other hidden species, upcoming Festival, and Bigfoot in PA, belief, hope, skepticism.
• Whether this photo and video are of Bigfoot or a bear, our fascination with cryptids is real.
• Meet the scientists risking their lives to find Earth's rarest species. Yep, Jeff Meldrum is included.
• Found in wallpapers, dresses and even libido pills: Arsenic, the Victorian Viagra that poisoned Britain.
• Philip Hoare reviews Karin Sanders's Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination, and wonders just what is it about those ancient, leathery figures that so intrigues us.
• Occult cited in Romanian election: Top contender recalls ‘negative energy attack’.
• Cover-up claims as David Kelly post mortem set to stay under wraps for 70 years.

Quote of the Day:

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars, human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Albert Einstein