In a series of tests at Cambridge University, birds had to compete against boys and girls aged four to ten.In two of the three tests, birds did just as well as children up to seven years old.The tests was modeled on Aesop’s fable in which a thirsty crow can drink from a pitcher if it uses pebbles to raise the water level to within its reach.In the first task, both the birds and children quickly realized that adding stones to a cylinder half-filled with water would raise the water level.But in th

  A spacecraft sending data from Mars to Earth had its signal repeatedly interrupted in 2005 and scientists say they‘ve learned the culprit -- the Sun.In August of that year, the Mars Express spacecraft was dutifully sending back data on the stratigraphy, or layering, of the upper regions of the Martian crust, when its signals were knocked off the air.Researchers in the Boston University Astronomy Department say solar flares, and the high-energy particles they emit, can strongly interfere with r

French archaeologists have discovered a roughly 5,000-year-old pharaonic solar boat in an expedition in Abu Rawash, west of the Egyptian capital, the antiquities ministry said on Wednesday.The antiquities minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the boat was up to 5,000 years old. “It goes back to the era of Pharaoh Den, one of the First Dynasty kings,” he said in a statement.The six-metre (19.6 feet) long and 1.5-metre wide boat “is in good condition,” he added. Its planks are now undergoing renovation

U.S. astronomers have released what they say are the highest-resolution images ever captured of the Sun’s corona, its million-degree outer atmosphere.NASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, on July 11 launched a sounding rocket and captured the 16-megapixel images in an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength of light.“Even though this mission was only a few minutes long, it marks a big breakthrough in coronal studies,” Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said.The new i

The artificial jellyfish. (Image credit: Harvard/Caltech)(UPI)U.S. researchers say they've used inanimate silicone and living cardiac muscle cells to reverse engineer a freely swimming artificial "jellyfish."Researchers at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology say the successful effort was a proof of concept for reverse engineering a variety of muscular organs and simple li

Finding it hard to keep up the passion in a long-distance relationship? Help might be on the way. A robotics professor in Singapore has invented a gadget equipped with motion-sensitive electronic "lips" that allow amorous but absent couples toexchange long-distance smooches via the Internet.Shaped like a small head with oversize silicone lips, the "Kissenger" -- short for Kiss Messenger -- was unv

A handout photograph shows a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. H-2A rocket which carries Arirang-3 taking off from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center in Tanegashima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan on Friday, May 18, 2012. (Bloomberg photos and graphics)An unmanned rocket carrying more than 4 tons of supplies to the International Space Station was successfully launched

(McClatchy)Current U.S. smokers are more likely to use e-cigarettes -- formally known as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems -- than non-smokers, researchers say. Researchers at the Schroeder Institute at the American Legacy Foundation, a non-profit Washington group that seeks to address the health effects of tobacco use, analyzed data from more than 6,000 adults who participated in two national

This photo is not directly related to this article.(123rf)Spear hunting may not have given Neanderthals their powerful right arms; it may have come from scraping animal skins for clothes and shelters, researchers say.Skeletons show Neanderthals, our closest known extinct relatives, had unusually strong right arms, as their right humerus -- the long arm bone associated with the biceps and triceps -

Astronomers say a planet two-thirds the size of Earth and 33 light-years away may be the nearest world to our solar system smaller than our home planet.Only a handful of exoplanets smaller than Earth have been found beyond the sun so far, astronomers said, and UCF-1.01 is the first ever identified with the Spitzer space telescope -- pointing to a possible role for the orbiting astronomy platform in helping discover potentially habitable, terrestrial-sized worlds -- NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laborato

A lack of exercise causes 1-in-10 deaths worldwide -- comparable to the negative impact of smoking, researchers say.The global study, published in The Lancet, found around 3-of-10 adults worldwide do not meet the recommended amounts of weekly activity -- 15-30 minutes a day of brisk walking.Within Europe, Malta was the most inactive -- 71 percent did no exercise -- followed by 68 percent in Serbia