Relic Finds Reveal Zulu War Cover-Up


Paleontologists searching for fossils in a remote area of South Africa were astonished to find spent bullets and cartridge case remnants in an area not previously known as a battle site.  A chemical analysis of the cases and traces of propellant identified the items as being from the time of Britain's wars with the Zulus and the Boers.  Investigators seeking further information about the previously unrecorded presence of British soldiers in the area have found papers in British Government archives which show that a third battle was fought after Isandlwana and

Gravity does funny things.   While the Earth looks rather round in pictures from space, the distortions that would have to occur in order to have uniform gravity everywhere would make it look more like...a potato, or a squashed basketball.

ESA's GOCE satellite has gathered enough data to map Earth's gravity with unrivaled precision, and so we get the most accurate model of the 'geoid' ever produced.  The geoid is the surface of an ideal global ocean in the absence of tides and currents, shaped only by gravity. It is a crucial reference for measuring ocean circulation, sea-level change and ice dynamics.  

Open access, where scientists pay a fee to publish so that the public and other scientists can read the study for free, is a negligible issue to most scientists, according to a new research report in The FASEB Journal.

An Arctic Decade 2001 - 2011


For thousands of years the Arctic has been covered in perennial ice with seasonal changes at the margins and some natural variation, seen as losses and recoveries of extent.

For hundreds of years observers have noted that seasonal and local variations at the margins can leave some relatively small regions ice free one year, and solidly iced up in other years.