Technology unravels mysteries of ancient corpse.

Glassy-eyed with a hole in the head – meet Nesperennub, the virtual-reality mummy. A new three-dimensional reconstruction of his insides swoops through musty layers of linen to penetrate his holy skull, without putting the ancient artefact at risk.

Egyptologist John Taylor smuggled the British Museum’s sealed coffin into a hospital computerized tomography (CT or CAT) scanner after hours. The resulting 1,500 flat scans hav

pparently credible websites may not necessarily provide higher levels of accurate health information, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers examined the relation between credibility features and accuracy of contents of 121 websites that provided information on five common health topic: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ankle sprain, emergency contraception, menorrhagia, and female sterilisation.

The entire contents of the selected websites were assessed for three credib

Research by a University of Sunderland psychologist has revealed that one in four people may have a special gift for predicting uncertainties like the weather.

Tests carried out by Professor Richard Heath, from the university’s Business School, also showed that this uncanny ability could possibly extend to the financial markets.

During his research volunteers were shown temperature figures for the previous eight days and were asked to predict the following four days.

The f

Since the 30s of the 20th century, after two wars and revolutions, a lot of women have been joining scientific activities. At last, after centuries of fighting for their rights, women became considered full members of society. Women were welcome to work if they wished to – but only on equal terms with men. However, men and women were not to equalize in rights in terms of housekeeping obligations. It so happened that women did housekeeping, brought up children, and worked as hard as men. Initially, i

An ambitious project is underway to build the world’s smallest electronic nose.

If the project succeeds, it is expected that the technology would have many potential applications in areas such as environmental monitoring, healthcare and food safety.

The aim is to combine the odour sensors together with the signal processing components on to a single silicon chip, around a square centimetre in size. The instrument would require very little power and could be held comfortably

Linguists filter languages for sound before meaning.

Bilingual people switch off one language to avoid speaking double Dutch. By first sounding out words in their brain’s dictionary, they may stop one tongue from interfering with another.

Those fluent in two languages rarely mix them up. They switch between language filters that oust foreign words, Thomas Munte of Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, and his team suggest 1 .

Their

Colorado State University is leading a team of researchers who plan to develop sunflowers into a rubber-producing crop, alleviating the harvest of rubber trees in Southeast Asia and Brazil – currently the only natural source of rubber in the world.

The United States is currently totally dependent upon imports for its rubber supply, importing nearly 1.3 million tons a year at a cost of $2 billion. Almost all natural rubber comes from rubber trees including those grown on plantations in Malays

Eddies appear in the ocean like in the atmosphere. Atmospheric eddies are short-lived, extremely speedy, and often very hazardous. Oceanic eddies are slower and can be observed only with the use of special equipment, but these eddies gently mixing ocean waters affect the climate in general.

For more than ten years specialists from the Pacific Institute of Oceanology in Vladivostok have observed the oceanic eddies formed at the confluence of two largest undercurrents in the west of the Pacif

The Society for General Microbiology (SGM) has launched Microbiology Online – a new web site for biology teachers and technicians in schools and colleges. The site is packed with information and resources to support microbiology teaching at all key stages and post-16 level.

In return for completing an on-line feedback form the SGM are offering schools the chance to win either a World of Microbes teaching pack for KS2 or a bioreactor kit worth £105, which is suitable for KS3/4 and post-16. T

New research by economists at the Universities of Warwick and Oxford has provided surprising information on just how much people hate a winner. It also shows what lengths human beings are prepared to go to damage a winner out of a sense of envy or fairness.

The researchers, Professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick and Dr Daniel Zizzo of Oxford, designed a new kind of experiment, played with real cash, where subjects could anonymously “burn” away other people’s money – but only a

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam have demonstrated that the climate in South Mexico changed following the collapse of the Maya empire. From preserved pollen grains the paleoecologists could deduce that the climate quickly became dryer.
The climate becoming dryer, explains the decrease in the population following the collapse of the Maya empire. The climate researchers have therefore helped to solve an archaeological mystery.

With the help of pollen grains, the paleoecologis

Some of the world’s leading scientists are rubbing shoulders with experts at the University of Abertay Dundee to study tiny plant-like organisms that could unlock billion dollar industries for Europe.

Representatives from famous European universities and research centres, including the renowned Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Czech Academy of Sciences, are putting algae under the microscope in a project considered so important by the EU that it has been given a 1.75m Euro grant (around £1

Women who hold back feelings of anger may end up more irate in the long run. According to new research, women experience a rebound effect when they suppress angry emotions, which can result in greater feelings of fury.

In the study, Judith Hosie and Alan Milne of the University of Aberdeen compared different methods of regulating anger and sadness in subjects exposed to footage from emotional films. The researchers instructed one group of men and women to express any feelings of anger brou

Shared names prompt good deeds.

When seeking help from a stranger, ask someone who shares your name: people are more likely to assist a namesake, an e-mail study has revealed 1 .

A shared name indicates two people are likely to share genes, so evolution may have taught us to be nice to our namesakes, suggests psychologist Margo Wilson who carried out the study at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Unusual names are particularly good a

CORDIS, the European Commission`s Research and Development Information Service, is offering a new online service dedicated to science and technology foresight and the future of European research. The service is part of the re-launch of a redesigned and upgraded CORDIS `Research beyond 2002` site to reflect the latest developments on both the European research area (ERA) and the Sixth Framework programme (FP6).

Technology Foresight

The new service provides information on res

Dental diary of a teenage hominid aged 1.5 million years.

Our early ancestors never went through the awkward age, suggests a new analysis of dental records. Extended youth may have emerged relatively late in human evolution.

Although apes cut the apron strings at around 12 years, despairing human parents are well aware that their kids take at least 18 years to grow up. The development of this prolonged growth period is seen as a key event in human evolution, allowing extra ti