The Korea Herald

Chimps said attacking humans in Africa

Oct 12, 2012

Habitat loss may be the cause of some violent attacks by chimpanzees on humans in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, scientists say.At least one person, a child, has been killed in recent months in a chimpanzee attack just south of Virunga National Park in the area around the city of Goma, park officials said.The park lies on the border between the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda.A woman attempted to scare the chimp away to protect the child but the chimp reacted aggressively, said Al
Mars rover photograph shows strange object

Oct 11, 2012

This image released by NASA on October 4, 2012 shows NASA`s Mars rover Curiosity as it cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site. (AFP-Yonhap News)A mysterious object photographed by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is a "shred of plastic material, likely benign," probably shed by the rover, engineers say.The bright object showed up on photos sent to Earth by the rover as
Caesar assassination site confirmed

Oct 11, 2012

Spanish researchers say they've identified the exact spot in Rome where Emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.Scientists at the Spanish National Research Council said the key to the discovery was a concrete structure 10 feet wide and more than 6 feet high, placed by order of Augustus, the adoptive son and successor of Julius Caesar, to condemn the assassination of his father.The locatio
‘Jurassic Park’ dino rebirth not possible

Oct 11, 2012

The concept of reconstructing dinosaurs from ancient DNA is unlikely since genetic material can only last 1 million years, Australian researchers say.While short fragments of DNA could possibly survive up to a million years, more complex sequences of genetic material would only have a half-life of around 158,000, dealing a blow to thoughts of living bringing dinosaurs back to life as featured in the storyline of the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park,” they said.Scientists made that determination after a
Study: Learning a language changes brain

Oct 9, 2012

(MCT)LUND, Sweden (UPI) -- Intensive learning of a new language can make certain areas of the brain increase in size, Swedish researchers say.Scientists studied young recruits at the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy who learned a new language at a very fast pace, going from having no knowledge of a language such as Arabic, Russian or Dari to speaking it fluently in the space of 13 months.M
Prehistoric spider attack frozen in time

Oct 9, 2012

U.S. researchers have found what they say is the only fossil ever discovered of a spider attacking prey caught in its web, a 100 million-year-old “snapshot.”In an engagement frozen in time, the extraordinarily rare fossils of the spider and its prey, a wasp, are entombed in a piece of amber, Oregon State University reported Monday.“This juvenile spider was going to make a meal out of a tiny parasitic wasp, but never quite got to it,” said OSU zoology Professor George Poinar Jr., a world expert o
U.S. mulled building flying saucers: documents

Oct 8, 2012

The U.S. Air force tried to build a supersonic flying saucer-like aircraft in the 1950s, a recently declassified document revealed.A document made in 1956, entitled “Project 1794, Final Development Summary Report” and disclosed by the National Archives, showed a plan to build a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.If constructed as initially designed, the craft could reach a top speed of Mach 4, and fly at an altitude of 30.5 kilometers with a maximum range of about 1,852 kilometers.The U.S. go
Einstein letter on God to be auctioned on eBay

Oct 8, 2012

A letter in which Albert Einstein dismissed the idea of God as a product of human weakness is being sold on eBay for a starting price of $3 million.The letter, handwritten in 1954, a year before Einstein's death, was addressed to philosopher Eric Gutkind. In it, Einstein discussed his views on religion, including calling “the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are ne
Team of Korean scientists makes breakthrough in graphene tech

Oct 7, 2012

Teams of Korean scientists have developed groundbreaking techniques that could bring forward the application of graphene.Graphene is a layer of carbon with the thickness of one carbon atom and in which the atoms are arranged in a tight honeycomb structure. The structure, which forms graphite when congregated in multiple layers, has some unique properties that have led to its being touted as a “miracle material” that could replace a number of widely used materials.Graphene’s tensile strength is 2
Daredevil readies 23-mile free fall

Oct 7, 2012

Felix Baumgartner of Austria is pictured before his jump at the first manned test flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico on March 15. (Red Bull content poll-UPI)An Austrian aerial daredevil planning to leap and free-fall from a balloon 23 miles over New Mexico says he will go supersonic before his parachute opens.Wearing a pressurized suit and helmet, Felix Baumgartner will plummet fro
Life found in lake frozen for centuries

Oct 5, 2012

Greenland(AFP)The world's most northerly lake, entombed under a layer of ice 2,400 years ago, is thawing and showing a return of organic life, European researchers say.The finding at Kaffeklubben So lake on the coastal plain of northern Greenland is the latest evidence that climate change in polar regions can result in rapid ecological changes, they said."It's kind of the end of the earth," Bianca
Boy finds woolly mammoth carcass in Siberia

Oct 5, 2012

(Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences)An 11-year-old boy in Russia has discovered the almost-complete 30,000-year-old carcass of a woolly mammoth, Russian media reported.Yevgeny Salinder found the 1,100-pound mammoth in the tundra of the Taymyr peninsula in northern Russia, Moscow News said.Scientists using axes and steam hoses worked for a week to dig it out of the permafrost i
Distant planets seen in strange alignment

Oct 4, 2012

Two exoplanets have been detected forming a never-seen-before celestial alignment, a phenomenon so new it doesn't yet have a name, Japanese astronomers say.Teruyuki Hirano of the University of Tokyo and colleagues used data from the Kepler space telescope to probe KOI-94, a star seemingly orbited by four planets, looking for a momentary dimming of the star's light when the planets transited, or pa
Vitamin D supplements don’t prevent colds

Oct 4, 2012

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (UPI) -- A randomized controlled trial of people who received a large dose of vitamin D did not have fewer incidence or severity of colds, New Zealand researchers say.Dr. David R. Murdoch of the University of Otago in Christchurch, New Zealand, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial to examine the effect of vitamin D supplementation on incidence and severity of upper
'Vampire' dinosaur preferred plant diet

Oct 4, 2012

A dwarf dinosaur weighing less than a modern house cat had a sharp beak and fangs like a vampire but was a plant-eater, a U.S. paleontologist says.The single specimen of the new species was originally chipped out of red rock in southern Africa in the 1960s but lay mostly unexamined in a fossil collection at Harvard University until Paul Sereno, a paleontology professor at the University of Chicago