JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A South African-led study has uncovered fossils of a new species of small-bodied humans that once populated the Micronesian Island of Palau.Since the discovery of a so-called hobbit fossil from the island of Flores in Indonesia, scientists have debated whether those remains are of modern humans, reduced in stature for some undetermined reason, or whether they represent a new species, Homo floresiensis. The fossils discovered by Professor Lee Berger of the University ... [full story]

Scientists aboard the NOAA research vessel Oscar Dyson in the North Pacific have sighted a creature of great rarity and even myth: a white whale.   White killer whale - NOAA photo  The white killer whale was spotted with its pod about two miles off Kanaga Volcano, part of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, on February 23. At the time, Kodiak-based Oscar Dyson was on a research expedition for NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, assessing pollock fish stocks near Steller ... [full story]

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University are working to find an efficient method of processing bio-diesel fuel and ethanol from one of the world’s most plentiful organisms – algae – which could lead to breakthroughs in reducing the world's dependency on petroleum.   Ganti Murthy and photobioreactor - OSU photo  Applying the findings to mass-produce algae and extract its oils could be five to 10 years in the future, but the advantages are worth the ... [full story]

TRUCKEE, Calif. – A rare wolverine has been documented in the Tahoe National Forest by a researcher from Oregon State University working with colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station – the first confirmed sighting of the animal in nearly three-quarters of a century.   Katie Moriarty, an OSU graduate student, documented this rare wolverine found in California  Katie Moriarty, a graduate student in OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, has been conducting research ... [full story]

Pasadena, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released today. ... [full story]

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon.A broad debris disk and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons."Until now, only planets were known to have rings, but now Rhea ... [full story]

A popular, an­ciently rooted idea about clin­i­cal de­pres­sion—that it re­sults from a chem­i­cal im­bal­ance—still finds its way in­to many news re­ports, a study has found.There’s just one prob­lem: the claim has lit­tle or no ba­sis, the stu­dy’s au­thors say. In fact, the main­stream sci­en­tif­ic view is that de­pres­sion’s causes are simply un­known. Absinthe Drinker by Pablo Picasso (1901). The study is tak­ing on added rel­e­vance in light of oth­er new re­search cast­ing doubt on the ... [full story]

Nothing like a bird chirp­ing in the morn­ing to re­mind you of nature’s glory, right?Not quite. A rather creepy new re­search find­ing sug­gests some bird songs are a bit un­natur­al—in­flu­enced by pol­lut­ants, which cause at least one species of birds to change their songs. The European Starling. Stumus Vulgaris. Courtesy Wash. Dept. of Fish & Wildlife It’s the latest of a number of studies to note that some of pol­lu­tion’s bi­o­log­i­cal ef­fects are not only ... [full story]

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A sophisticated new climate model simulation of long-term global warming suggests that even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, the planet will continue to get warmer for 100 to 200 years. The delay would be caused by a warming of the world’s oceans, which would increase biological productivity as well as limit the oceans’ ability to absorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide, according to Andreas Schmittner, an oceanographer at Oregon State University ... [full story]

SAN FRANCISCO - A research team in Sweden said Charles Darwin was wrong about the genetic basis for the yellow skin of some chickens.Greger Larson, a research fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden and at Durham University in Britain, said yellow-skinned chickens have a different version of a gene than their white-skinned cousins.Darwin believed that all chickens came from a wild species known as the red junglefowl but when the research team looked for a ... [full story]

A vault designed to pro­tect va­nish­ing seed va­rie­ties for fu­ture gener­a­t­ions opened Feb. 26 on a re­mote Arc­tic is­land.The Sval­bard Glob­al Seed Vault, a pro­ject of the Nor­we­gian go­vern­ment, re­ceived in­au­gu­ral ship­ments of 100 mil­lion seeds that orig­i­nat­ed in over 100 coun­tries.  The seed vault's entrance juts out from a mountainside. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust) With de­posits rang­ing from un­ique va­ri­eties of Af­ri­can and Asian food sta­ples such as maize, rice, wheat, cow­pea, and ... [full story]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA senior managers completed a review Friday of space shuttle Endeavour's readiness for flight and selected March 11 as the official launch date for the STS-123 mission. Commander Dominic Gorie and his six crewmates are scheduled to lift off to the International Space Station at 2:28 a.m. EDT. During the 16-day mission, the crew will deliver and install the first section of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory and the ... [full story]

PARIS - The European Space Agency's first automated transfer vehicle, the Jules Verne, has been placed on top of an Ariane 5 rocket for launch from French Guiana.The Jules Verne -- encapsulated in a huge container on top of the launcher with a total mass of about 21,000 tons -- will become the largest payload ever launched by Ariane 5. The historic mission with the first European space supplier for the International Space Station is ... [full story]