Jerusalem will be shown in Google Earth and Google Maps after the Jerusalem City Council signed an agreement with the company. The sight of the city was prohibited for security reasons so far. According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the government decided to end the prohibition, considering that the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque are so representative of the city like other important monuments over the World, like the Coliseum in Rome. The government of Israel did not allow Goo... Read Full Story

A team of biologists from Germany and the Czech Republic made a surprising discovery: domestic cows and wild deer apparently have the ability to sense Earth’s magnetic field. But the most surprising aspect of the work relies on the tools and methodology employed. No expensive high-tech devices or extenuating field trips were involved. This five-people team simply browsed the world’s surface using Google Earth to look for cattle and deer herds and record each individual’s or... Read Full Story

A group of Israeli scientists have achieved something unthinkable, germinate a seed of date palm with a length of about 2,000 years. The seed, known as Methuselah was found in the ruins of Herod’s palace, and after 26 months, has obtained a plant height of 1.20 meters. Thus, Methuselah has become the seed germination world’s oldest, was found in the 60’s in the desert fortress of Masada, and since then has been carefully stored at room temperature. What scientists are looki... Read Full Story

Engineers the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a composite of paper with nanothreads completely waterproof and has an extraordinary ability to absorb hydrophobic materials (like oil). According to its creators, this “supertowel” is capable of absorbing 20 times its weight in oil, so their most immediate application might be to minimize the effect of oil slicks on beaches. This new material can be recycled many times for future use and which absorbs oil ca... Read Full Story

Laboratory tests on the vehicle explorer “Phoenix” confirmed the existence of water on the planet Mars, NASA said today. The U.S. space agency said yesterday that the robotic arm of “Phoenix” deposited one sample in an instrument that identified water vapor. “We have water on Mars, said William Boynton, thermal analyzer scientist at the University of Phoenix Arizona. According to Boynton, this is the first time concrete and secure the presence of liquid on the... Read Full Story

As biotechnology advances and the methods to detect and analyse DNA are more sensitive and accurate, scientists have found a new twist to the power of DNA. A recent paper in Biology Letters reports that it has been possible to detect the presence of the invasive frog American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) in ponds by measuring subtle amounts of its DNA in water samples. The experiments showed that it is possible to discover whether a pond has been taken by these frogs, but also the method all... Read Full Story

A huge step has just been made in the race to achieve a permanent lunar colony. Scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, have managed to set up a successful bacterial culture on a substrate made with lunar soil, plus the supplementation of air, water and light. They used a kind of bacteria that is very robust and capable of growing in highly inhospitable environments and were among the first organisms to have populated the Earth more than a billion years ago. ... Read Full Story

For the first time, stem cells from human embryos have been obtained without destroying the embryo from which they come. The breakthrough overcomes the main objection to the ethics of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research - the embryos must be killed to get hES cells. The new method removes a single cell from the embryo to generate a line of stem cells. The embryo results undamaged and develops normally. “These are the first hES cells created without destroying embryos,” says... Read Full Story

For the first time, stem cells from human embryos have been obtained without destroying the embryo from which they come. The breakthrough overcomes the main objection to the ethics of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research - the embryos must be killed to get hES cells. The new method removes a single cell from the embryo to generate a line of stem cells. The embryo results undamaged and develops normally. “These are the first hES cells created without destroying embryos,” says ... Read Full Story

DNA testing to establish ancestry are becoming very popular and are being offered by several companies. As the knowledge about the genetic composition of human populations accumulates, the manufacturers are including more markers to their tests in order to make them more accurate and span more ancestral lineages. Geneticists from the Department of Genetics, University of Leicester have discovered an unexpected outcome of these kinds of genetic tests. A study conducted studies of Y chromosoma... Read Full Story